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 theappointment 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.
