*
They timed theirvisit well. Caterina’s funeral service should have been well underway, and they were not likely to be disturbed by Montague or the other mourners. At the same time, it was almost feasible for the servants left behind to believe they had come straight from the church.
“Mr. Montague should not be long,” Constance said breezily as soon as a rather harassed-looking Nancy let them in.
As she had hoped, the servants were busy laying out the funeral meats, and were thoroughly glad to leave Constance and Solomon totheir own devices. They gathered that Collins the butler had gone to the funeral, representing the staff, which meant even the boot boy was pressed into service helping Cook and carrying things.
Having shown them to the spotlessly clean drawing room, Nancy fled again.
Constance did not bother sitting down. Solomon opened the drawing room door a crack and then walked quietly out. Constance closed it behind her and followed him upstairs to Caterina’s room.
It felt empty in a way it hadn’t before, as though Caterina’s spirit had finally left through the open window. Or because the roses had finally gone too.
The trunk Constance had last seen in Caterina’s dressing room at Covent Garden stood by the bed.
Solomon went straight to the window, lifted it higher, and peered out. A rush of cooling air whisked around the room. Constance walked to the cupboard where Caterina’s medicine had been kept, praying it was still there.
It was. She took it all, every measured powder wrapped in paper, sweeping them into her small black bag. She placed two handkerchiefs and her purse and comb over the top, just in case the bag opened accidentally, and then closed the cupboard again.
There was nowhere in the room they had not looked on the first occasion they were here, except beneath the mattress. Solomon came to help her lift it.
“Well?” Constance asked. “Is the wall climbable?”
“It might be, though if the window were closed, Caterina would have had to let him in. We need to look more closely from below.”
Constance nodded, sweeping her hand beneath the mattress and finding nothing. No love letters or threatening notes or empty papers that had once contained powdered digitalis.
“Letters,” she murmured, as Solomon lowered the mattress again. “There were flakes of charred paper in the grate when we were firsthere…” They were gone, now, the hearth thoroughly cleaned. “Do you think Caterina burned Darrow’s letters after she ended their relationship?”
“Or he did after he’d killed her?”
“One of them must have destroyed them. After all, how do you conduct a secret liaison without communicating? No one that we can find carried messages between them. How did they know where and when to meet? Was it written in stone? Every Monday at three o’clock, at this friend’s house?”
“Perhaps they communicated only through the friend,” Solomon suggested. “Or perhaps Kellar is completely deluded and the poor woman simply died naturally.”
Or he was having them pursue shadows for no reason they could fathom.
They left Caterina’s room and, on impulse, Constance caught Solomon’s arm and tugged him further along the passage to the room next door. She pressed the latch and they went in.
This was obviously Montague’s room, left neat and tidy. Something glinted on the bedside table. Caterina’s wedding ring. The sight was indescribably sad. She turned away. Solomon pulled open a few drawers.
“If he kept private letters from his wife, they’re not here,” he murmured. “But…” He stood aside to allow her a glimpse of the open middle drawer above the dressing table. What looked like a complete set of house keys lay there on a large ring. Beside it, unlinked to anything, was a solitary key.
“Caterina’s door key,” Constance said. She had a sudden vision of the man in his shining white nightgown, carrying the key and a single candle, drifting like a pale ghost through the darkness from this room to his wife’s, silently unlocking the door, setting down the candle, sitting beside her on the edge of the bed while he reached for one of the propped-up pillows and held it over her face, pressing harder as shebegan to struggle in blind terror…
She shuddered, blinking the horrific vision away. What would it take for a husband todothat to his wife?
She went to the window that looked out onto the square. “He could have seen whoever picked the roses, if he didn’t do it himself. But he wouldn’t have seen anyone climbing up to Caterina’s window. Or heard, probably.”
“Why would he pick roses and murder his wife?” Solomon asked.
“He could have left the roses for her before she was murdered.Ifshe was murdered. This is astupidcase, Sol.”
He took her hand and led her out of the room. As they approached the staircase, the voices of the servants below drifted upward, an older woman’s voice, presumably the cook’s, issuing orders and the maids answering.
Constance and Solomon slipped out of the front door apparently unnoticed. Solomon pulled it almost shut behind him, and they hurried round the side path to the back garden.
It was walled and enclosed in almost complete privacy. An elm tree and an apple tree blocked the view from the houses on either side, and a high wall at the end meant she couldn’t see the mews lane and its lower buildings beyond. And behind that seemed to be a faceless, non-residential building, perhaps a warehouse or offices.
As they approached the house and the first ground-floor window, a luxuriantly spread table was visible, a white-capped maid rearranging dishes to make room for others. Solomon stepped back out of range of any casual glance from within, tugging Constance with him. One of Caterina’s windows was immediately above.
The old elm tree grew a few feet from this end of the house, its knobbly trunk sticking out toward the building before bending back toward the garden wall and the house next door. The face of the Montagues’ house was uneven. Constance reckoned she could climb up to Caterina’s window via the tree easily enough, though perhapsnot in a billowing silk-and-lace gown and crinoline.
Solomon, with no such impediment, jumped, catching one of the overhanging branches, and hauled himself up to stand on the knotted bend of the tree. From there, he climbed to the next branch and inched his way over to the wall of the house, just above the dining room window. He found the first foothold easily and reached up to grasp the sill of Caterina’s window. A second later, he pried up the sash, opening it slowly as wide as it would go. Then he climbed on to the sill to look inside, gauging, presumably, how easy it would have been to enter the room quietly. He then closed the sash again to where it had been set before and quickly retraced his steps to descend.
He wasn’t even out of breath as he brushed his hands together to dislodge dirt. Constance brushed down his coat and one knee with her gloves. No words being necessary, they then walked back to the front of the house, where it was simple to push the door open and close it again behind them.
Collins the butler stepped out from the dining room and paused, gazing toward them with one eyebrow raised.
