“Yes. I want your reassurance that you’ll stop interrupting my life. It’s hard enough losing Caterina without your haunting me with insulting questions and suspicions.”
“Surely nothaunting,” Solomon said. “But I can assure you that our inquiries are progressing. In fact, you could help speed things to a conclusion for me, if you would. You told us earlier that Mrs. Montague had agreed to leave her husband and run away with you to Italy.”
“Yes.”
“How were you getting there?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said you and she planned to leave together immediately after the performance on Friday. Where to? Did you reserve a hotel room somewhere, or did your ship sail immediately?”
“That,” Darrow said stiffly, “is none of your business.”
“On the contrary, it is vital. I need to know what ship you had booked passage on.”
“It is not relevant. She died before we could leave.”
“The implication being she diedbecauseyou were about to leave?”
“I don’t know.” Genuine anguish suffused his voice. “But I don’tput it past that…” He halted and drew a steadying breath. “We didn’t book. We didn’t mean to leave a trail for Montague to follow. We were going to catch the night train to Dover and take the first packet we could find to France. We didn’t even buy our railway tickets in advance.”
“I see.” Solomon held the younger man’s gaze, though he could feel the promising theories in his mind crumbling under the weight of the violinist’s sheer pain. “Whom did you tell about your departure? Mrs. Philpot? Mr. Reid?”
Darrow grimaced. “Of course not. I needed every penny I had. If you must know, I intended to flee without paying my rent.”
“Then you didn’t tell Mr. Martin, either?” It was a shot in the dark, to see if the name meant anything to him.
Darrow frowned. “Who?”
“Caterina’s friend, ‘the professor,’ on Theobalds Street.”
“Never heard of him,” Darrow said without much interest. “I told no one. And neither did Caterina. Or so I believed.” Abruptly, he raised both hands, dragging his fingers through his hair. “Damn it, I hate this. I want it finished. Will you tell me what your suspicions are so that I can allay them, and try to get on with my life?”
Solomon inclined his head, trying not to hope for too much, but he could almost feel the prickles dropping from Darrow’s manner. For the first time, surely, the young musician was preparing to be totally honest with a man he didn’t much like or trust.
“I want to know why Caterina visited Martin three times in one week,” Solomon said.
Darrow exhaled slowly. He seemed…resigned. “I’ll get us a cup of tea. The old dragon downstairs might have a pot brewing.”
He strode past Solomon to the door, leaving it half open as he called downstairs, “Mrs. P?” Then he clattered the rest of the way down.
And Solomon would never have a better opportunity. He wentfirst to the table, raking amongst the chaotic mix of sheet music, much of it annotated, newspapers, letters, an appointment diary that recorded only professional engagements, including the one Darrow had played at the establishment in the spring. Flicking through to the pages just before and after Caterina’s death, he found the orchestra dates and an engagement last night.
He couldn’t study it any further just now. He doubted Darrow would be much longer, and there were too many places to look. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for.
He moved to the chest of drawers, discovering a couple of folded shirts, neckties, and underwear, nothing obviously hidden. He went to the wardrobe in the corner, in which hung one good pair of trousers and one mended pair, likewise an old coat and a decent evening coat, plus a heavy wool overcoat that had seen better days.
Hastily, Solomon felt inside the pockets and found nothing more interesting than an omnibus ticket and a miniscule pencil. He looked under the hat on the top wardrobe shelf, swiftly ran one finger around the lining, and abandoned it. All the while, he strained his ears for any sound of Darrow’s return. The violinist must have been making his own tea or waiting impatiently for Mrs. Philpot to do it from scratch. Either suited Solomon’s purpose, although he was running out of places to look.
He dropped to the floor, peering beneath the wardrobe, and his eye was caught by a half-hidden ball of something on the floor of the cupboard, right at the back among the shadows. He fished it out, discovering it to be a rolled-up coat, very worn and soft to the touch.
What an odd thing to do to a coat.Even one that needed cleaned or mended. His heart racing—surely Darrow could not be much longer now—he uncoiled the garment until he held it by the collar and felt it all over.
There were no holes. It was just a little threadbare. But the back was quite badly roughened, the fabric pulled, as though it had beendragged about stony ground, or…
His fingers encountered something sharp. He pulled it free of the fabric, and a faded red petal fluttered to the floor.
