Chapter Thirteen
She could nottell how long he had been there, but she saw no point in losing the rest of her dignity by lying. So she said nothing. Neither did he. After a long, tense moment, he moved with deliberation and closed the study door.
Suddenly, she was glad of the desk between them. Her skin prickled all over. She altered the grip on her bag, which could double as a useful weapon in a crisis, and calculated the time it would take her to reach the bell rope.
“Did you read them?” Montague asked, his voice expressionless.
“Some of them,” she replied. “I’m sorry. This must seem to you an intolerable invasion of your privacy.”
“It should,” he agreed, taking a few steps further into the room. “But, in fact, I find it hard to care. Whether or not you read them, my wife will still be dead. I take it Kellar is now convinced beyond all doubt that I killed her?”
“Kellar’s convictions are a mystery to us too.” No harm in reminding him that she and Solomon came as a pair. Used to spotting the signs of violence in advance, she could see no warning of it in Montague. Yet her body reacted on its own, every nerve alert and ready. Monague could have killed two women and got away with both. Right now, it wasn’t much comfort to know that if she became the third, Solomon would hunt him to destruction. At the very least.
“If anything,” Constance said, feeling her way, “the letters would appear to stand in your favor. But I would not have read them if wedidn’t have grounds for suspecting you. To put it vulgarly, you have most to gain from your wife’s death, and your business is in need of funds. You would have had no trouble entering her room, with or without roses. And you have not been truthful with us.”
“I see no reason why I should be,” he said frankly. “You have no authority, and I have every right to keep my private life just that.”
“Be assured that if you have done no wrong, your secrets are safe with us. My main reason for reading your letters is our discovery that the late Miss Worthington died in a disturbingly similar manner to your wife.”
Montague’s lips twisted into a bitter smile. “I thought Kellar must have ferreted out that fact. How much worse do you imagine it made me feel to see Caterina like that? Suddenly dead with no reason, no cause, a nightmare that repeats as though I’m cursed.”
“You?” Constance said coolly. “It is the women who are dead. And you never told us about Carl Darrow.”
Montague gave a quick, impatient shrug. “What honorable man would publicize his wife’s shame and his own?”
“When did you discover she was involved with Darrow?”
He moved toward the desk and dropped into the hard chair at its other side, rubbing a hand across his face. “I knew from the way she spoke of him, another interest, another fascination. And I knew from her distraction when it actually began.” The corner of his eye twitched. “He was not the first, but I doubt she was aware I knew about the others.”
“Why did you tell her you knew about Darrow?”
“Because I had had enough. I couldn’t go on constantly looking over her shoulder for yet another man. I wanted my wife tobemy wife. Perhaps I should have spoken before, but…she was like some wild, rare creature not subject to the laws of the rest of the world. She needed her freedom to follow her heart, and I knew I held a piece of her that no one else ever would. They were passing ships. I was her rock.”
While he spoke, Constance had moved subtly and now stood by the bell rope. Sitting, he was less threatening, but she did not like his unfocused stare. And his sudden, rare openness set her teeth on edge. It was almost as if he were acting.
“Someone else called you her rock,” she commented.
“Steady but dull. And yet Caterina’s needs were not the only ones to be considered. The affair with Darrow went beyond her usual two weeks, and I had had enough.”
Constance caught her breath. Was this to be a confession? And if so, would she get out of this room alive?
She took a firmer grip of her bag, felt the bell rope nudge against her arm. “So what did you do?”
“I told her. It was a Sunday, and we were both free all day. We walked in the park and talked, and it all came out. I told her I had reached the end of my tether, that she had the choice of ending the affair or leaving me, because I could stand no more. She wept, appalled that she had hurt me, and promised to see Darrow the very next day to break everything off between them for good.”
His eyes refocused on Constance, and she inched her fingers near enough to grasp the bell rope.
He said, “I further told her there were to be no more men, that she had to keep her vows to me or make a clean break, because I would live like this no longer. She agreed.”
Constance licked her lips. “And this conversation took place on Sunday the twenty-sixth of June?”
He blinked, as though surprised by the detail. “Yes. It must have been.”
“Did she tell you afterward that she had spoken to Darrow and ended things between them?”
“Yes. She told me the next evening when she came home from the theatre. She smiled and made a fuss of me.”
But locked you out of her room…
