Chapter Five #2
The girl’s mouth opened then pressed tight shut on what was no doubt a furious retort. Instead, she said tightly, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Then you never heard them quarrel?”
“No, ma’am.”
A loyal servant would never tell, but Constance, concentrating on the maid’s wooden face rather than on her words, persevered. “Then you saw no signs that either of them ever—er…strayed?”
“What sort of signs?” Nancy asked with undisguised aggression.
“Well, for example, did either of them ever ask you to carry notes by hand, or verbal messages?”
“No, but then they wouldn’t, would they? It ain’t my place to run messages. Besides, he’s got an office full of clerks for that sort of thing, and she’s got Miss Webb.”
“Then Miss Webb took messages by hand for her?”
“I didn’t say that,” Nancy protested at once. “I never saw her do so, and she never told me that she did. Just saying no one asked me. It’s a respectable house.”
Solomon re-entered the room, caught Constance’s gaze, and shook his head minutely. So no bag had been left in the hall. Well, it was more likely that Caterina had fetched any such bag from its hiding place after both her husband and her maid had left her alone.
Constance stood up. “Thank you, Nancy. How many other servants live in the house?”
“Just me, Mr. Collins, Cook, and Miss Webb. Oh, and Fred the boot boy. Coachman lives above the coach house in the mews.”
The boot boy interested Constance, for he had a legitimate reason for wandering the house at night, leaving polished shoes outside doors and collecting any left there.
As though Nancy had heard her thoughts, she said wryly, “Fred’s only ten. He gets sent to bed at nine and does the boots in the morning.”
Constance inclined her head, grateful for the information. “Who keeps the keys?”
Nancy’s eyes widened. “What keys?”
“To the house. And to the rooms within the house.”
“Mrs. Montague had keys to the front and back door. I think Mr. Montague has a full set, outside and in. So does Mr. Collins. Cook’s got a back door key. The room keys are all in the locks on the inside of the rooms. They’re not used much, so far as I know.”
“What about the bedchambers?”
“Oh, Miss Webb’s got a key for Mrs. Montague’s. She locks it when she wants to be alone.”
“So I gather,” Constance murmured, rising to her feet. “Thanks for your help. You can go back to your duties now. Ask Miss Webb to join us in Mrs. Montague’s room, if you please.”
Nancy quite clearly did not please, and left tight-lipped.
Constance and Solomon exchanged a speaking look.
“She wouldn’t tell us if there were anything really wrong in this house,” Constance said, “but I tend to believe her that there wasn’t.”
Solomon nodded acknowledgment, holding the door for her. With the growing feeling that they were wasting everyone’s time, including their own, Constance again climbed the stairs with Solomon and entered the dead woman’s bedchamber.
The body had been removed and the bed stripped, but otherwise, the bedchamber looked exactly the same, even with the curtains open. As before, the vase of roses dominated the room in terms of both beauty and scent.
“They’re lasting well,” Solomon remarked, moving toward the cupboard where they had seen light traveling bags and a case before.
“They do if you change the water every day. Solomon, I think Nancy would have said if Caterina had brought a bag back with her that night. Could she have hidden the flowers beneath her cloak?”
“Thorns and all?” Solomon said dubiously.
“While embracing her husband and enjoying a glass of sherry with him? I don’t understand why she hid them at all, if she was in the habit of bringing favored posies back with her from the theatre.
Besides which, they might not have shared a bed every night, but he was likely to look in on her, surely before he went to work in the morning. ”
“And so was bound to see the roses,” Constance said. “Damn it, if we solved that little puzzle, we’d be free.”
In fact, if it hadn’t been for that little puzzle, she doubted they would still be asking questions.
Mary Webb stalked through the open bedroom door. “Nancy said you were here again, asking impertinent questions while Mr. Montague is out.”
“It is for Mr. Montague that we’re asking them,” Solomon said smoothly. “And we all appreciate your help. Tell me, when Mrs. Montague came upstairs on Wednesday night, was she still wearing her cloak?”
“No,” the maid said. “It was over her arm. Why?”
“Could you show us the cloak she was wearing?”
With a long-suffering expression, Mary went to the wardrobe and extracted a silk velvet cloak in midnight blue with a luxuriantly large hood.
It fell in such generous folds that its wearer could indeed have hidden a bouquet there.
But when Constance passed her fingers over the lining with great thoroughness, she found no pulled threads, no tears or bits of thorn or foliage.
No bright-red petals. And Caterina had not been wearing it by the time she entered the room.
Solomon said, “When Mrs. Montague locked her door at night, did she take the key out of the lock?”
“Of course. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to get in of a morning without disturbing her.”
Constance glanced at the door. The key was back in the lock on the inside. “Where did she put the key when she removed it?”
“On her bedside table.” Mary took the proffered cloak from Constance’s hands and hung it back up in the wardrobe.
Solomon waited until she turned to face them again before he said, “Have you ever carried notes or verbal messages between Mrs. Montague and her friends?”
“No,” Mary said, not very convincingly.
Constance sighed. “We know all about Carl Darrow. So you might as well tell us.”
To her surprise, Mary committed the solecism of sitting down uninvited in the presence of her supposed betters.
She sank onto the bed, covering her face with her hands.
“Only the once. I didn’t like doing it and told her I wouldn’t do it again.
I don’t know why she had to see him at all, with a husband so devoted to her… ”
“Did she confide in you?” Constance asked gently.
Mary flapped one damp hand and groped for her handkerchief.
“She didn’t need to. She was an open book.
She just chattered, and all too often recently it was about this violinist. He fascinated her.
But she loved the master, she really did.
She was just like a child who has to taste the sweet, even when it’s forbidden. ”
“Did Mr. Montague know about Darrow?”
“God, no. She would never hurt him.”
“And what he didn’t know couldn’t,” Constance murmured. It was a flawed philosophy. She had used it herself, cynically enough, to justify the straying husbands who flocked to her establishment.
“I left the theatre to be with her when she married Mr. Montague because I wanted the respectability. Better to be a lady’s maid than a theatre dresser. Or that’s what I told myself.” Mary’s eyes were streaming again, her voice muffled in her handkerchief. “But I miss her…”
Constance went and placed a gentle hand on the maid’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
The handkerchief fell away, and Mary’s swimming eyes pleaded with her. “To her, she wasn’t being unfaithful, because she never stopped loving her husband.”
Another justification Constance had heard used by some men. Well, what’s sauce for the goose…
“The world won’t understand,” Mary said intensely. “Don’t tell them. For his sake if no other…”
“Do you mean Mr. Montague’s sake?” Solomon asked. “Or Mr. Darrow’s?”
The maid flapped her hand again. “Both, I suppose.”
And her own, no doubt. Servants tended to be tarred with the same immoral brush as their employers. But there was no doubting that Mary Webb was genuinely upset and grieving for her mistress.
“We only want to be sure how she died,” Constance said gently. “Not to judge her, or you. Tell me, apart from the roses, have you ever noticed anything else appearing overnight in this room? Other flowers? Gifts? Ornaments?”
Mary wiped her eyes again and frowned in concentration. She shook her head. “No. I don’t remember anything.”
“Do you think she might have gone out again on Wednesday night when the household was asleep?”
“She could have,” the maid said, clearly dubious.
“But she hated being tired in the morning. She liked to spend time with Mr. Montague before he went to work, and she was always serious about her voice exercises, even on the days she didn’t have formal rehearsals or performances.
She said if she wasn’t rested, it spoiled the clarity of her voice. ”
“Is that why she and her husband have separate bedrooms?” Solomon asked.
A flush of outrage showed the maid was recovering from her uncontrolled display of emotion. “I couldn’t say, sir.”
“Had they quarreled recently?” he pursued.
“Not to my knowledge,” Mary replied firmly.
“Had she quarreled with Darrow?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“How often does Mr. Kellar come to the house?” Solomon asked unexpectedly.
Mary blinked. “He was away for a long time. Since he’s come home, a few times for dinner, a few morning calls when Mrs. Montague was at home.”
“And before he went away the last time? Did he come to the wedding?”
“He gave her away. He was a friend of her parents and helped her escape the nasty revolutions. He’d pop up occasionally after that, always without warning. She was always glad to see him, hopeful he’d be settling in England for good.”
“Did your master and mistress quarrel much?” Constance asked.
The maid’s lips tightened once more. “No, ma’am.”
“Did she quarrel with anyone that you know of?”
Mary shrugged. “A few disagreements in the theatre, nothing she could not deal with. She was the prima donna, after all.”
“Did you ever come across unexplained cuts or bruises on her body?” Constance asked. “As if a quarrel had turned violent?”
Mary stared. “No, ma’am,” she said in outrage.
And that, at least, was truth.
“Thank you,” Solomon said, with clear dismissal.