“Of Carl Darrow, perhaps?”
Solomon opened his eyes with a snap, the remembered words still bouncing around his mind. Most of them had been spoken by George Martin yesterday. The final question had been Constance’s.
“…she knew she was dying,”Martin had said sadly,“and came to say goodbye.”
And again, Constance’s interpretation:“…she was saying goodbye because she was leaving the country with Darrow.”
Solomon sat up. “What if she wasn’t?” he said aloud. Old words and new ideas still spun around his mind, and his heart raced as though he had been running instead of sleeping.
“Who wasn’t what?” Constance mumbled, throwing one arm across his middle and burrowing back into the pillow.
After their luscious night of love, this was not how Solomon had imagined their morning greetings. But the idea was vital and had to be captured—it had to be the center of everything.
“Caterina,” he said. “What if she wasn’t at Martin’s house to say goodbye at all? He was an old friend who shared her love of music, but beyond that we know nothing about him. Except that Caterina hadn’t seen him very often since her marriage, before visiting him three times in one week for several hours at a time. Not to say goodbye but togo over old timesand to talkmostly of music and musicians. Why go to Martin and no one else? Who and what is he?”
Constance opened her eyes and hauled herself into a semi-sittingposition, leaning against his shoulder. She was frowning with the effort to throw off the mists of sleep and think.
“He listened to her sing at various places across the country,” she recalled. “He wasn’t really a teacher, but she used his opinions to help her improve because he was so knowledgeable. But somehow, he kept missing Darrow’s performances. Which surely implies he heard lots of others in his travels. A keen music lover, known as ‘the professor,’ who has collected no doubt many program notes, notices, and reviews of performances.”
“A source of information, in other words,” Solomon said, excitement soaring. “Information about Darrow? We know she talked about him.”
“But it doesn’t matter what shetalkedabout, does it? It matters what she saw, what Martin might have let slip or let her see among his reviews. He could have kept whole newspapers.”
“So she could have discoveredanything,” Solomon said intensely, “about her husband, about Darrow, even about Kellar. Both Montague and Kellar are music lovers, after all, an amateur violinist and an amateur singer. Martin could have seen any of them where they had no business to be. Or Caterina could have learned of it by herself. Montague’s scandal in India? Sophie Worthington’s death… Or where Darrow was when he wasnotat the Royal Academy. God knows what she could have discovered about Kellar. But she waslooking, Constance, I’m sure of it.”
“If one of them threatened her, then she needed to fight back,” Constance said. “With information of her own.”
“She could have been trying to win her freedom from Montague,” Solomon said, “or to counter some threat of Darrow’s or Kellar’s. She needed to keep one of them away from her… Or all of them?”
Constance’s eyes, no longer clouded by sleep, were sparkling. “It’s a better theory, but we need toknow. We need a plan.”
She scrambled out of bed, still naked from last night’s passion, andfound her bag, from which she dragged all her notes before climbing back onto the bed. “When I established the schedule of Caterina’s movements, I also noted when Montague left the house for work, alone, and when he returned. If we can find any discrepancy, any time unaccounted for… The trouble is, we can’t go there without incurring the wrath of Montague and his police protectors.”
“We haven’t been forbidden his place of work, though,” Solomon pointed out, peering over her shoulder at the notes. Having seen what he needed to, he all but leapt out of the other side of the bed. “And if we’re early enough, he need never know we’ve been. After that, I suggest we return briefly to the office to see if Janey’s back and what she has discovered. And then I’ll go and shake Darrow while you call again on Martin and find out what information he has in that house. I’ll join you there as soon as I can. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Constance said with enthusiasm.
She had that euphoric feeling, perhaps similar to Caterina’s on the night she died, that the mystery was almost solved at last.
*
Montague’s home, sofull of Caterina’s presence, still felt heavy with her loss, tugging his spirits downward. But today, as he closed the front door and marched briskly up the path to his waiting carriage, he realized the oppression of his grief lifted in the fresh air. It was a new day, and he had dealt rather neatly with the obstacles of Silver and Grey.
He had been right to go straight to Galsworth at Scotland Yard. By now, surely, the prying pair were well warned off and would not dare come near him again. He had the chance of revival, in every way, and he was going to snatch it with both hands. He would embrace the hard work. It was all that kept the guilt and grief at bay.
His spirits lifted further as his carriage trundled through the morningsunshine toward the offices of Montague and Son. It would soon be a proud firm once more. As soon as he had his hands on Caterina’s money, his troubles would be over. In the meantime, he had the promise of it to buy him more credit—and the patience of his current creditors. Money from the next shipment was about to pour in…
He was almost at the door when he caught the distinctive sight of the Greys together, descending the steps from his office door. They made a rather charming picture with their beauty and their closeness, her hand casually in the crook of his arm. Happily trying to destroy what was left of Montague’s life.
For a moment, the blood froze in his veins. And then anger flooded in.
Howdarethey?
The carriage had come to a halt. John Coachman was actually opening the door, so God knew how long Montague had been sitting there, staring and fuming, his good spirits vanishing like the sun behind that cloud just drifting over the river toward him.
He got down stiffly, nodding to the coachman before he walked briskly up the steps and swung right toward the clerk who fielded all visitors.
“Good morning, sir,” Jennings said nervously. They didn’t normally exchange many words.
