Chapter Fourteen
The address in Kensington from which Sophie Worthington had written her love letters was not a modest one.
A detached house, it was the largest in the leafy street.
Constance was glad she had worn something more decorative than her severe office gown.
It was quite possible, of course, that Sophie’s parents had moved in the decade since she had died.
A butler opened the door to Constance’s ring, and she presented her business card, asking for Mrs. Worthington. To her relief, he invited her to wait in a comfortable reception room while he established whether or not the lady of the house was at home.
Constance looked out of the window and wished she had used her personal card rather than the Silver and Grey one.
Many people found “inquiries” to be both repugnant and impertinent.
If she was denied, she supposed she could always write, although there were no guarantees of an answer, and she would be reduced to the time-consuming process of meeting the lady or her husband “by accident.”
A rustling at the door caused her to turn just before it opened and a modestly but fashionably dressed lady in dove gray walked in.
The woman was somewhere in her fifties, with neatly pinned, almost-white hair.
Her posture was erect, her manner curious rather than outraged.
Her eyes bore that sad, faded look of the bereaved, even when they smiled.
“Mrs. Silver?” she said. “I am Mrs. Worthington. What can I possibly do for you?”
She didn’t invite Constance to sit, which was quite understandable.
“First, please forgive my intrusion,” Constance said pleasantly. “I am investigating a lady’s recent death and hoped you could provide me with some answers.”
Mrs. Worthington’s eyebrows flew up. “Why? Am I acquainted with this lady?”
“I would be surprised. You have probably heard her name, Caterina di Ripoli, otherwise known as Mrs.—”
“Montague,” Mrs. Worthington interrupted. “Digby’s wife. I could not attend the funeral, but I sent flowers.”
“Then you and Mr. Montague are still close?”
“No, not really. Just a card at Christmas, and we notify each other of weddings and funerals. I was glad when he married, though the lady was a curious choice from a worldly point of view.”
“Did you attend the wedding?” Constance asked.
She shook her head. “I didn’t think that would be appropriate.”
“Did he notify you of Mrs. Montague’s death? Or did you learn about it in the newspapers?”
“He wrote to me. Mrs. Silver, I am at a loss. What is it about the poor young lady’s death that you are investigating?” There was a very slight emphasis on the last word that may have signified contempt for the work or for Constance herself. “She died of a weak heart, did she not?”
“Is that what Mr. Montague told you?”
“Yes. It was in the papers, too. Are you saying it is not true?”
“She did have a heart irregularity,” Constance said carefully, “successfully controlled by her physician’s treatment.
She was healthy enough to sing the main part in an opera six nights a week and to practice rigorously every day.
To all intents and purposes, she was a healthy and active young woman.
And yet she apparently died in her sleep. ”
Mrs. Worthington’s eyes fell.
“It was like that with your daughter too, was it not?” Constance said gently.
The lady raised her eyes again, and this time they were outraged. “What are you trying to imply?”
“The similarities are on the bare surface. I am trying to find out if they go deeper. Let me tell you the circumstances of Mrs. Montague’s—”
“I don’t wish to hear about them!” Mrs. Worthington snapped. “Are you some kind of ghoul? A reporter for some disgusting scandal rag?”
“No, ma’am. I am rather desperately trying to find the truth about one young woman’s inexplicable death.”
Mrs. Worthington waved one dismissive hand, swinging away from Constance. “Sometimes death is not explained. God just takes his own and we are left to cope with it, to make sense of it.”
“That is what I am trying to do,” Constance said at once. “Make sense of it. And, if possible, prevent it from happening again.”
“You are not a doctor!”
“No, I am not. But I can observe, and I can think. So can you. Mrs. Montague went to sleep one night, apparently happy with her whole life. She was found dead by her maid in the morning. There were no marks on her body, no obvious signs of bodily distress or poisoning. But her pillows had been moved into a position in which she never slept. Somehow, a vase of roses had made their way into her bedchamber during the night, probably cut from the garden in the square opposite the house. Does any of that sound remotely familiar to you?”
Mrs. Worthington moved away from her and sat down. Distractedly, she waved Constance to the chair opposite.
“Only in the suddenness. My daughter was found in our own garden, where she had been reading. I thought she had fallen asleep in the sunshine and took her hat out to her. She didn’t want to damage her skin so close to the wedding. But she wouldn’t wake up…”
“It was you who found her?” Constance asked.
Mrs. Worthington nodded. “She looked so peaceful… I dropped the hat over her face—as a joke, you know, to wake her—but she didn’t stir.
Though she was still warm to the touch, I could not rouse her.
I shouted into the house for them to fetch the doctor immediately, and then my husband and Digby ran out and Digby felt dementedly for her pulse, for a breath, and found none.
The doctor came quickly, but I already knew my daughter was dead. ”
She ended on little more than a whisper.
Constance had to swallow before she said, “Mr. Montague had been with your husband before they came out to join you after you shouted?”
“What?” Mrs. Worthington blinked, as though making belated sense of Constance’s question.
“No. No, we were expecting him, but he hadn’t yet arrived.
I think he just came in and saw Stanley—my husband—bolt out of his study.
He followed him, of course, sensing the emergency.
He still had his hat in his hand when I saw him.
” Her lips twisted. “Foolish, the little things one remembers about such huge, shattering events…”
“They can be,” Constance said, “and sometimes they are very helpful. I’m sorry to ask this of you, but could you possibly show me where this happened?”
Mrs. Worthington stared at her, jaw dropping. But something had changed. Outrage had vanished from her eyes, and wary curiosity had taken its place.
She closed her mouth and nodded. “Very well.”
Constance followed Mrs. Worthington through the house to a sunny parlor with French doors to a colorful garden. They stepped onto a close-cut lawn and walked toward a large, well-established pear tree.
“It was summer then, too,” Mrs. Worthington said. She pointed behind the tree. “That is where I found her. From the parlor, I could only see her legs and feet, and the sun was shining directly onto them…”
“And you found her lying down? On the grass?”
“On a red tartan blanket. I still have it, though I never use it.”
“Was she on her back or her front?”
“On her back, with her eyes closed. Her book was open beside her.”
“Was her head on a pillow?”
Mrs. Worthington shook her head. “No… She had brought a cushion to sit on, though she must have tossed it aside when she lay down. Usually, she sat on the cushion with her back against the tree trunk. Ever since she was a child…”
Constance’s stomach gave a twist of recognition. “Where was the cushion when you found her?”
“A few feet away.” Mrs. Worthington pointed toward a bed of bright, sweet-scented roses. “Just by the flower bed, lying carelessly, as though it had been knocked or thrown there without attention.”
Constance imagined a faceless young woman, little more than a child, sitting reading, with her back against the tree. The soporific effect of the sun on this contented girl could have caused her to move position, stretching out on her back, shoving the cushion aside with her right hand.
She looked around the garden, saw the path around to the front of the house.
There was a tall old gate that had probably once been used to keep children safely corralled.
She could imagine Montague walking up that path and through the gate, as silently as he had entered his house and his study this morning.
Keeping to the same path, he could easily have kept himself from view from the parlor, where Mrs. Worthington had been sitting.
Had Sophie already been asleep when he approached the tree? Had he picked up the cushion and simply held it over her face until she stopped breathing? If so, would her mother not have noticed the frantic kicking of her legs as she fought to save her own life?
Surely it was more likely that he found her in her usual position, with her back against the tree.
She was probably delighted to see him. Perhaps they had kissed and he had swept her, lover-like, onto his knee, still hidden by the tree while he seized the cushion she had been sitting on and smothered her with it.
He was a big man. He could have controlled her thrashing without moving that cushion.
And when she was dead, he had simply smoothed out any grimace or sign of distress from her skin.
Closed her eyes. Perhaps he had even picked up escaped feathers from the cushion, from her nose and mouth and hands, replaced fallen pins from her hair, and then laid her out on the blanket so that only her legs were visible from the house, and hurried back down the path.
Perhaps he had taken a short walk to calm his breath and his nerves.
Or just gone straight to the front door and rung the bell…
“Was there a postmortem examination?” Constance asked.