Chapter Nine #2
“There are just a few trifling matters that niggle at us,” Solomon said. “Perhaps you can help us clear them up, although this may not be the best time.”
“There is no good time,” Montague said bleakly. “But at least let us walk as we talk. I don’t want her memory sullied.”
Solomon cast him a surprised glance as they strolled to the edge of the room. “Neither do we. Do you think it’s even possible?”
“With words like murder floating in the air, yes,” Montague said in an intense murmur. “What is it you want to know?”
“The roses,” Solomon said. “They seem to have come from the garden in the square.”
Montague had already told him he hadn’t put the roses there. He merely looked very slightly irritated, without the guilt of a man caught in a lie. “We don’t take flowers from there.”
“Who does?”
“No one. In theory, though, I have heard people complaining about it from time to time. To be honest, I never paid much attention. I have less trivial things to occupy me.”
“You obey the rules,” Solomon said. “From talking to people about her, I see your wife as a more rebellious spirit.”
A smile flickered across the widower’s face. “She was.” The smile was already dying.
“My wife had the idea that Mrs. Montague, wakeful that night for whatever reason, slipped outside during the night and cut the roses herself in order to give them to you first thing in the morning. Does that sound like something she might do?”
Montague blinked rapidly. “Yes,” he whispered, and buried his face in his barely touched sherry glass.
“Thank you,” Solomon said. “I don’t suppose she was a climber?”
Montague lowered his glass, frowning. “What on earth do you mean?”
Solomon smiled. “My wife likes, in private, to remind herself of a wild childhood by climbing trees and so on.” More like drainpipes, stone walls, and roofs. “The dignity of adulthood can be frustrating for her. I wondered if your wife was the same.”
Montague looked baffled. “I never saw her do such a thing, and she never mentioned it. Besides, after her heart issues, she would have surely been foolish to take excessive exercise.”
It didn’t seem to enter Montague’s head that his answer kept the mystery open.
Again, not the act of a guilty man. Solomon imagined Montague’s feeling for his wife to be much like Solomon’s own when he had first seen Constance—dazzled and overwhelmed by beauty and the force of desire.
He wondered now if Montague had ever got beyond the heady brilliance to an understanding and deeper love of the woman beneath, flaws and all.
“But she could easily have slipped out of the house for five minutes without anyone hearing?” Solomon asked.
“She probably could, but I doubt she did. She knew the importance of rest to her career and, latterly, to her health. She was very strict about sleep.”
“Even though, by the accounts of everyone, she seemed particularly euphoric after her performance that night?”
To give him his due, Montague considered that, and again came the flicker of a tragic smile.
“There was a mischievous streak in her—rebellious, you called it—and she had a loving nature. She might have taken those few minutes to fetch forbidden roses, just to surprise me in the morning. Is that all that troubles you?”
Solomon decided frankness might work. “Apart from the arrangement of the pillows, and Mr. Kellar’s certainty that something is wrong.”
“That,” said Montague, “is down to Kellar’s own arrogance. He wanted Caterina to depend on him alone. He is jealous.”
Solomon’s stomach gave an uncomfortable twist. He had been here before with suspicions of Kellar, which had then proved to be untrue. “You mean he wanted to marry her himself?”
Montague gestured impatiently with his free hand. “He was more like a doting father—no man would have been good enough for his precious girl. And, of course, there is snobbery. Kellar is a gentleman. I am merely in trade.”
Something else to ask Juliet, perhaps—was Kellar really the gentleman of birth and breeding he always seemed? Exactly who were his antecedents?
“Will you excuse me?” Montague said with perfect politeness.
Solomon inclined his head. “Of course.”
Montague moved away to some other people, who had clearly already helped themselves from the buffet laid out in the dining room.
The figure of Carl Darrow caught Solomon’s attention.
He stood alone, his expression solemn, as suited the occasion, but not betraying the profound grief of the previous day.
It was a good act. But Solomon felt sure that was all it was. There was something just a little lost and entirely vulnerable about the violinist. And then Geoffrey appeared at his elbow and the impression passed.
Solomon strolled on, listening to the hushed conversations about Caterina’s great talent and Montague’s touching devastation. He decided to look into the dining room. First, though, he sought the cloakroom to wash his hands, which still bore traces of dirt from the garden and the windowsill.
As he left the cloakroom again, two men were crossing the hall to the front door.
Montague, showing a valued guest out. Only the guest in question was Darrow.
Intrigued, Solomon paused by the cloakroom.
Neither man had seen him. They appeared to be talking together with perfect courtesy.
Whatever Darrow’s animosity, he was hiding it.
Montague opened the front door, ushering the other man out. “I’ll walk with you to your hackney.”
Darrow did not demur, and a twinge of unease twisted through Solomon. Impossible to tell if the tension he sensed came from himself or the men in front of him. From Darrow, he thought suddenly. The man was definitely uncomfortable, his shoulders rigid and held just a little too high.
If he had killed Caterina, in some moment of mad rage at her rejection, what fury might he harbor toward her husband? Surely no harm could come to the man in broad daylight…?
Montague did not close the front door tight. Solomon strolled after them, as though also enjoying a moment of fresh air. Among the array of carriages waiting in the street, the grubby old hackney was easily recognized. Two people were already inside—Reid and an unknown young woman.
Solomon slowed, tilting his head toward the sky, although he kept his gaze firmly on the men in front, who halted by the hackney door. As Darrow opened it, Montague inclined his head to the other passengers and offered his hand casually to Darrow.
“I know she thought a great deal of your music,” Montague murmured.
Darrow could do nothing but accept the hand, but there was an almost imperceptible pause before he did. And then he twisted round to put his foot on the step.
It would have been easy to miss, but Solomon was watching minutely. With perfect timing and lightning speed, Montague kicked one leg from under the younger man, who fell sprawling face first onto the hackney floor.
Montague, already turned away, didn’t appear to notice either the fall or the exclamations within the carriage. He merely walked calmly back in the direction of his house. Certainly, he did not glance at Solomon nor appear to see him.
And yet the moment changed everything. It meant Montague knew very well that Darrow had been his wife’s lover. And revenge, however petty, even on such a day as this, was sweet.
*
“He knows,” Solomon said abruptly, when their carriage had picked up Janey around the corner from the square. “He knows about Darrow.”
“Montague?” Constance said, frowning. “What makes you think so?”
Solomon told them about the incident by the hackney.
Constance, staring at him, seemed as stunned as he. “This gives him a motive of passion… Not only that, we have misunderstood him from the first.”
“And if he led us to that misunderstanding,” Solomon said grimly, “then he is far subtler and a far better actor than we have given him credit for. Kellar could be right about him.”
From the back-facing seat, Janey was scowling at them. “He ain’t evil just ’cause he thumps a man who’s touched his wife.”
“But he didn’t thump him,” Constance said.
“He tripped him in such a way that only he and Darrow should know who was responsible, while causing the man maximum embarrassment in front of his friends and the waiting coachmen. It was humiliation for Darrow while keeping Montague’s own, and his wife’s, reputation unsullied. ”
Janey grimaced, clearly finding the attack tame and trivial. In her world, her old world, it was. But not in Montague’s.
“Did you speak more to Kellar?” Solomon asked Constance.
She sighed. “Yes. But he said nothing about Montague—he couldn’t really, in those surroundings.
I tried to make him talk more about Caterina and her parents, and he seemed to—up to a point—but the man is impenetrable.
From everyone else, I really just confirmed my view of Caterina as a charismatic, vital woman who drew people to her like moths to a candle but was close to very few.
Even Montague’s sister had nothing bad to say about her personally.
Did you learn anything from the neighbors, Janey? ”
“They’re respectable people,” Janey said with a cheeky grin, “though not top of the trees like us. Their servants ain’t so snooty neither, and most were happy enough to talk.
The Montagues are well thought of, and she much admired.
Some of the mistresses try to copy her style of hair and dress, with sometimes hilarious results.
About the roses, I only picked up one clue—don’t know how useful it is. ”
“Go on,” Solomon said.
“One of the maids at number twelve heard her master grumbling about someone stealing flowers from the garden in the middle of the night. He’s got a bee in his bonnet about it, so she didn’t pay much attention, but she thinks it was Wednesday night he saw someone in there, and Thursday morning at breakfast he was complaining about it. ”
“Did he see who it was?” Constance asked eagerly.
“The maid didn’t believe he did. But he blames it on someone called Arthur Wainright at number two.
They’ve been feuding for years, according to her, so she don’t believe it.
Says Wainright’s an amiable old codger and would only do it to wind Mr. Jones up—Mr. Jones being the master at number twelve. ”
“But it is definitely a man this Jones claims to have seen?”
“So his maid says.”
Constance looked at Solomon. “Then it wasn’t Caterina who took the roses to her room.”
“If Jones is right and didn’t just dream the whole thing,” Janey said.
“I don’t suppose,” Solomon said, “that you managed to speak to anyone at the Wainright house?”
“There was a manservant there found the whole thing amusing, said Wainright and Jones had grown up together and never agreed on anything. I tried to get him to say whether it was him or his master, but he only laughed, claims his lady friend would wallop him for bringing her a dozen red roses because she’d assume he was making up for some guilt and had stolen them besides. ”
“We’ll call at number two tomorrow,” Constance said with the kind of vagueness that meant she was thinking of several things at once. “They all bear more investigation.”
“Who?” Janey asked.
“Montague,” Solomon said. “Darrow. And Kellar.”