Chapter Twelve #2
Mary sniffed and lovingly laid another folded gown in the trunk.
“Were you and your mistress aware that Mr. Montague had been engaged to be married about ten years ago?”
“Of course,” Mary said indifferently. “Some people just have bad luck.”
And others make their own. “Did it concern your mistress?”
“Concern her?” Mary turned from the wardrobe to face Constance. “What do you mean?”
“Someone told us that Mrs. Montague was afraid of her husband. Since it was not an impression we had gained before, I thought you would be the best person to ask.”
“Afraid of him? Of course she wasn’t.” Mary stared at Constance, derision slowly fading from her expression until she didn’t look quite so certain. “Afraid of losing him, maybe.”
“Then fear wasn’t why she locked him out of her bedroom?” Constance asked.
“I told you, that was no more than a sign of her wishes. He had a key to get in if he chose, and she was happy with that. They trusted each other.”
All the same, Mary was thinking about it, perhaps considering certain events in the light of such a possibility.
“Did you ever see unexplained cuts or bruises on your mistress’s body?”
Mary stared at her, affronted. “Of course not! What are you trying to imply?”
“I am trying to find out the truth. Were you aware that Mr. Montague knew about her liaison with Carl Darrow?”
“Oh no,” Mary said, her hand flying to her mouth in clear distress. “She would have hated that!”
“But she knew that he knew. Or so she told her friend Mrs. Locke, to whom you took Mrs. Montague’s note for Mr. Darrow. Look, I need your help. Come and sit down with me. Tell me about Mrs. Montague’s mood on Monday the twenty-seventh of June.”
Mary blinked. “How am I supposed to remember that?” All the same, she sat down, watching as Constance consulted her notes.
“It was a day she left the house early, as though she were going shopping or calling on friends. She won’t have taken you with her because she was going to Mrs. Locke’s home.”
Mary frowned with the effort in remembering. “There was one morning that week—it might have been the Monday—when she was quiet. Thoughtful, I’d say. And the same evening, she seemed much…grimmer.”
“As though she’d done something she hadn’t liked? Was she angry? Worried? Sad?”
Mary shook her head impatiently. “I don’t think so. More…determined.”
Determined to do what? To keep her word to her husband and give up Darrow? Or to leave her husband and bolt to Europe with her lover?
“Did she ever say or do anything that implied she might go away for a time? A holiday? Or a visit to a friend some distance away?”
“No, I don’t think so. We didn’t know how long the opera would run.”
But then, it seemed Caterina confided different things to different people. Her reticence might have been because she had no intention of leaving. Or because she wasn’t taking Mary with her when she went—afraid, perhaps, that Mary, by accident or design, would betray her to Montague?
Constance met the maid’s doubtful gaze. “Help me build a picture of her last days. Collins and Nancy say she left the house a little after midday on that Monday, the twenty-seventh. Is that your recollection?”
Mary nodded.
“What time did she return to the house?”
“After her performance. Just after eleven, I think, and she came up to bed shortly after.”
“Did she lock her door after you left her?”
Mary thought about it. “Yes. Yes, I think she did.”
Constance wrote it down. “Good. Now, what about Tuesday the twenty-eighth? How was she then?”
“Brisk,” Mary said. “She went out after luncheon and took me with her. She intended to buy a birthday present, she said, after calling on a friend. In the end, the visit took too long and we went straight to the theatre. The carriage took me home and returned for her later.”
“Whom did she visit?” Constance asked. “Mrs. Locke?”
“No. It was an old music teacher, George Martin.”
“For another lesson?”
“Not that I heard. Besides, she wouldn’t want to strain her voice before the evening’s performance. She has a better teacher now, but she regards Mr. Martin as a friend, values his opinion. He’s a pleasant old bird, sharp as a tack. I expect they just got talking.”
“Where does he live?” Constance asked.
“Theobalds Street.”
“And when did she come home from the theatre that night?”
“At the usual time, give or take a few minutes.”
“Did she lock her door?”
“I think… Actually, I’m not sure. I can’t remember.”
“Very well, let’s move on to Wednesday the twenty-ninth, a week before she died…”
*
By the time she left Mary, Constance had a fairly full account of Caterina’s movements to and from home. It was nowhere clear enough to offer an explanation, but she was satisfied with the beginning.
It seemed that on Monday the twenty-seventh of June, the day Caterina was supposed to end her relationship with Darrow, she had instead locked her husband out of her bedchamber.
And she had been grim and determined. Was she planning her escape because she suspected Montague of murdering his betrothed ten years before?
Descending the stairs, Constance intended to go out into the square and wait for Solomon to emerge from whichever house he was currently in. Only the hall was empty, and the door to what looked like Montague’s study was open.
Montague was out at his office. None of the servants would see her.
She would never get a better chance.
She darted into the room and straight to the big mahogany desk.
Montague was a tidy man, and an oddly impersonal one for the passionate Caterina di Ripoli’s husband.
No papers were left on his desk, only a stand of pens and inks.
No clutter of keepsakes and personal items, no books except what looked like business ledgers.
Two landscape pictures graced the walls.
No comfortable chair for reading or resting, not even one for visitors. This was strictly a work room.
Constance quickly tested all the drawers, finding them all unlocked, which spoke of a certain amount of trust in his household, apart from one.
The unlocked drawers contained blank paper and spare ink, an appointment book, a few letters waiting to be answered or copied, and another complete set of house keys.
Constance flipped through the appointment book, in which he seemed to have recorded largely business meetings, but a couple of entries mentioned visits to the theatre and supper with Caterina.
A few dinner parties had been attended and hosted in the spring, presumably before the opening of the current opera.
And one Sunday dinner with Kellar was noted starkly, shortly after his arrival in England.
Yet Kellar was more familiar with the house than that. Had he visited often in the past? Or had he called on Caterina in the mornings, while her husband was out at his office?
More carefully, Constance read the entries for the days between the twenty-seventh of June and the sixth of July, but there were no scheduled suppers with his wife noted, or any unusual meetings.
Very little seemed to have been entered after the sixth, as though Montague’s efficiency had taken an understandable knock.
Replacing the book exactly where it had been, Constance closed the drawer and set about picking the lock of the middle one on the left-hand side.
Hurried footsteps in the hall made her pause, her heartbeat racing.
Kneeling on the floor behind Montague’s desk was not a comfortable position to be found in.
She jumped up and hurried to the fireplace, keeping her eye on the study door. The footsteps moved on into the drawing room. The maid dusting, no doubt. Constance slipped back to the desk and returned the handy little tools to the lock. A second later, it clicked.
Keeping alert for any movements across the hall, she slid the drawer open. Only two small bundles of letters nestled within, tied with ribbon. Intrigued, Constance lifted one and untied it carefully.
A quick glance showed her each letter was written by the same hand, that of Sophie Worthington.
They seemed to be replies to his, modest love letters containing a touching air of excitement that ran all through their courtship and betrothal.
Sophie seemed to have been young, lively, innocent.
And she very much looked forward to marrying dear Digby.
Constance moved to the last letter in the bundle, the most recent. But she found no trace of disagreement, no quarrel between the pair that might have resulted in murder. Memorizing the address from which the letters had been written, she quickly retied the bundle and replaced it in the drawer.
The other, smaller bundle was correspondence with Caterina.
The letters stopped after their marriage, as if, after that date, she had never gone very far without her husband.
These were much shorter than Sophie’s letters, but much more effusive and frank from the beginning.
She sent him a thousand passionate kisses, missed him every moment they were apart, lived only for the sound of his voice and the terribly few hours spent in his arms.
Both sets of letters were moving in their different ways, but Caterina’s made Constance feel particularly guilty for prying.
More than that, they niggled at her certainty that Montague was the murderer of both women.
She could see no reason for him to kill Sophie.
It wasn’t as if he had married anyone else around that time.
Caterina was not yet in England. Also, the mere fact that he had kept those letters—and only them—showed a softer, more sentimental side to the man that did not fit with murder.
And he locked up the letters like a symbol of that hidden side, revealed only to his loves.
In a hurry now, she retied Caterina’s letters and placed them beside the others before closing the drawer and using her tools to spring the lock back into place.
The awareness came upon her slowly. No sound disturbed her, no movement at the corner of her eye caught her attention. She simply felt uneasy, which she did anyway for invading the privacy of someone’s dead loves—even if he was a murderer. And then she knew she was being watched.
Her stomach dived as she dropped the picks into her bag and rose slowly to her feet.
Digby Montague stood in the doorway watching her.