“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 didnotplease, 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 Caterinahadbrought 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 forthat 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 thebed, 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.”
