Chapter Eighteen
Martin was clearly surprised to see Constance on his doorstep once more, but he invited her in and asked how he could help her today.
“It’s really something we didn’t think to ask you yesterday,” Constance said, preceding him into the same sitting room. “Do you, by chance, keep any kind of private archive? Commemorating your love of music?”
“Why yes, I do.” He beamed at her. “Would you like to see it?”
“I would,” Constance said, grateful it had been so easy. “Thank you.”
He led her out of the room again and up the narrow staircase to a room at the back of the house. It might once have been a bedroom but it now contained only a narrow table, a chair, and many cabinets, each labeled with a range of letters, A-D, E-H, and so on.
He indicated a large box of cards on top of the first cabinet.
“Everything is cross-referenced,” he said proudly.
“The main files here are under the names of individual composers and musicians. These ones are by the year of each performance. But with the card index, you can easily find concert halls, theatres and music festivals, and you can even search by city too.”
“This is a massive undertaking,” Constance said in genuine awe. “Are these all concerts and performances you attended personally?”
“Sadly not, though that’s how I began. Friends began to send me programs and notices in local newspapers, from here and abroad. I have many papers delivered, too.”
“Do you keep the whole newspaper?” Constance asked. “Or just make cuttings of the pieces that relate to music?”
“I try to make cuttings where possible, but where it cuts through interesting articles on the other side of the sheet, I keep the whole thing. And index everything, of course.”
“Of course.” Constance met his proud gaze. “Is this what you meant when you said Caterina was going over old times?”
He smiled slightly but did not answer.
“Why didn’t you say so directly?” Constance asked.
He gave an apologetic shrug. “It was what she wished. She didn’t want people knowing what she was looking for.”
Constance’s heart was beating fast. “And what was she looking for?”
“My dear, I cannot break that confidence. It is all I have left of her.”
Constance fought to hide her frustration. After all, she admired his honor. “I understand,” she managed. “But will you tell me at least who it was she feared would find out?”
“No one. She just wanted to be the only one who knew. Though we made the connection together.”
“What connection?” She knew he wouldn’t answer that either, and he didn’t, not directly.
He said, “You spoke his name to me already.”
Which didn’t really narrow it down. She had spoken the names of all three of her suspects to him. Or Solomon had. “Mr. Martin, I believe someone murdered Caterina. Surely you don’t want her killer to go unpunished?”
He dropped his gaze, then immediately returned it to hers. “You truly believe that?”
“I do. What name was she looking for?” Montague? Darrow? Kellar? She found she was holding her breath.
“Charles Derrick,” Martin said in a rush.
Constance blinked. “Who the devil is Charles Derrick?”
Martin turned and went out.
Which Constance took as permission.
*
Digby Montague was annoyed when he observed the couple going separate ways. Now he had to choose which to follow. He picked the woman, because she had already proved she had no scruples about prying. And she would be easier to deal with. Without her, Grey would be broken like him. And useful.
So he got his own carriage to follow Mrs. Grey’s. He found it parked on Theobalds Street.
What the devil could she be doing there? He couldn’t recall being here in his life before. He knew it was not where Darrow lived, nor Kellar. Nor even Mrs. Locke, who had given her home over to Caterina’s adultery.
He signaled the coachman to stop, and climbed down on the other side of the road.
“Excuse me.” On impulse, he stopped a messenger boy in an apron who was hurrying up the street in the opposite direction. “Could you tell me who it is who lives at number twenty-one?” It was Montague’s best guess. Mrs. Grey could have gone into the houses on either side of twenty-one.
“Twenty-one? That would be old Prof Martin.”
Digby smiled. “That’s what I thought. Thank you.”
The boy hurried on with a grin, and Digby racked his brains for the reason Martin’s name sounded familiar.
Surely he was a friend of Caterina’s? The memory surfaced slowly—an old fellow with wild hair, like Beethoven’s.
An amateur musician who had spent whatever fortune he had inherited on traveling the world and listening to music he would never be good enough to play himself.
Caterina had met him in Italy and introduced him to Digby quite early in their relationship.
He had come to the wedding breakfast, though not to Caterina’s funeral.
She hadn’t mentioned him much in recent months, but she had rarely cut people altogether. Silver and Grey must be clutching at straws, interviewing everyone who had ever known Caterina.
It had to stop. The recovery of Digby’s firm depended on confidence and respect. He could not have suspicion hanging over his head. Apart from anything else, prying into his life might well revive old shames, old accusations.
India.
Oh yes, past time to scare them off.
He strolled casually across the road and up the path to number twenty-one. There was no one in the front room, as far as he could see, so he carried on up the path that led around the side of the house to a small garden.
Though it was tiny, someone clearly looked after it. The building was in decent repair too. A movement at the kitchen window caused him to dart back against the wall. Someone, a middle-aged maid, was making tea.
Being careful to avoid her line of vision, Digby looked in the first window, a small dining room. On the upper floor were two windows. And at the smaller, something moved.
A paper folder, almost against the window. A trickle of things spilled from it, printed paper, several smaller pieces, like cuttings from newspapers.
The blood sang in Digby’s ears. Suddenly Martin’s face sharpened in his mind, as did conversations between the man and Caterina.
And what Caterina had told Montague about him.
He didn’t just travel all over the place to hear music.
He kept mementos, reviews, records of everything that touched even vaguely on performances.
All over the world… Digby’s one reckless act had been to attend a British concert in India, far away from his own plantations and the center of his trade, a completely different region of the vast country, where no one knew Digby Montague.
Or the false name he had chosen. It had been a lucrative visit, though it involved behavior of which he was not proud.
It had seemed safe enough to attend the concert under his assumed name, to play his violin for British officials and traders.
It had even dulled suspicion at the time…
until it had all come out in several papers, his fraud and the connection between his names.
And he had never been able to return to India since.
Could that be what Mrs. Grey was looking into? It was certainly her distinctively beautiful face he glimpsed at the window, engrossed and determined.
The back door flew open suddenly and a rough female voice yelled, “That’s me away, professor! Your tea’s brewing! See you Friday!”
He had time to dart ignominiously behind a large honeysuckle bush. Bees buzzed all around him, but the back door closed, and brisk footsteps clumped away down the path to the front gate.
Digby closed his eyes in momentary relief.
But truly, this was for the best. He took the trouble to look through the kitchen window. The maid had left only two cups and saucers on the tray. Good. There was no one else in the house but Mrs. Grey and Martin. He would never have a better opportunity.
*
Solomon stared at the sad little rose petal and the still-sharp thorn on his palm. He saw at once how it was done.
Carl Darrow had picked the roses from Eagle Square’s garden and tied them to his back while he climbed up to Caterina’s window.
The thorns had torn at his coat and trapped a disturbed petal.
Solomon even found the length of string in the coat pocket that must have been used to tie the flowers in place.
The riddle of the roses was solved.
Caterina had never agreed to run away with Darrow.
He must have tried to threaten her into continuing the relationship, perhaps by making it public and thus humiliating Montague as well as Caterina herself.
So Caterina had gone to her old friend Martin in search of information—and she had found it.
That accounted for her euphoria. She had triumphed over Darrow and saved her marriage, with whatever she had learned from Martin.
Darrow, still refusing to accept his dismissal, changed his tune, trying instead the romantic gesture of roses, to climb up to her window and get himself admitted into her bedchamber…
Either Caterina had let him in, or he had just climbed through the window and found her asleep.
But from there it was no longer clear-cut. Had he left her to sleep, to wake to his gift of a dozen red roses in a vase? Or had he smothered her with a pillow? Either while she slept or in some struggle when she continued to reject him?
Or did Caterina tell him what she had learned to his discredit? Was that why she’d had to die?
Or…had Montague entered the room with his own key, even found them together, and murdered his wife? Was that why Darrow was so certain in apportioning blame? Keeping quiet about his own presence in order to keep himself as free from suspicion as possible.
No, solving the mystery of the roses did not quite solve the murder. Someone else could still have come into the bedroom after Darrow did. Kellar could have made the climb. Montague could have entered with his key.