So he got his own carriage to follow Mrs. Grey’s. He found it parked on Theobalds Street.
What the devil could she be doing there? He couldn’t recall being here in his life before. He knew it was not where Darrow lived, nor Kellar. Nor even Mrs. Locke, who had given her home over to Caterina’s adultery.
He signaled the coachman to stop, and climbed down on the other side of the road.
“Excuse me.” On impulse, he stopped a messenger boy in an apron who was hurrying up the street in the opposite direction. “Could you tell me who it is who lives at number twenty-one?” It was Montague’s best guess. Mrs. Grey could have gone into the houses on either side of twenty-one.
“Twenty-one? That would be old Prof Martin.”
Digby smiled. “That’s what I thought. Thank you.”
The boy hurried on with a grin, and Digby racked his brains for the reason Martin’s name sounded familiar. Surely he was a friend of Caterina’s? The memory surfaced slowly—an old fellow with wild hair, like Beethoven’s. An amateur musician who had spent whatever fortune he had inherited on traveling the world and listening to musiche would never be good enough to play himself. Caterina had met him in Italy and introduced him to Digby quite early in their relationship. He had come to the wedding breakfast, though not to Caterina’s funeral.
She hadn’t mentioned him much in recent months, but she had rarely cut people altogether. Silver and Grey must be clutching at straws, interviewing everyone who had ever known Caterina.
It had to stop. The recovery of Digby’s firm depended on confidence and respect. He could not have suspicion hanging over his head. Apart from anything else, prying into his life might well revive old shames, old accusations.
India.
Oh yes, past time to scare them off.
He strolled casually across the road and up the path to number twenty-one. There was no one in the front room, as far as he could see, so he carried on up the path that led around the side of the house to a small garden.
Though it was tiny, someone clearly looked after it. The building was in decent repair too. A movement at the kitchen window caused him to dart back against the wall. Someone, a middle-aged maid, was making tea.
Being careful to avoid her line of vision, Digby looked in the first window, a small dining room. On the upper floor were two windows. And at the smaller, something moved.
A paper folder, almost against the window. A trickle of things spilled from it, printed paper, several smaller pieces, like cuttings from newspapers.
The blood sang in Digby’s ears. Suddenly Martin’s face sharpened in his mind, as did conversations between the man and Caterina. And what Caterina had told Montague about him. He didn’t just travel all over the place to hear music. He kept mementos, reviews, records of everything that touched even vaguely on performances.
All over the world…Digby’s one reckless act had been to attend a British concert in India, far away from his own plantations and the center of his trade, a completely different region of the vast country, where no one knew Digby Montague. Or the false name he had chosen. It had been a lucrative visit, though it involved behavior of which he was not proud. It had seemed safe enough to attend the concert under his assumed name, to play his violin for British officials and traders. It had even dulled suspicion at the time…until it had all come out in several papers, his fraud and the connection between his names. And he had never been able to return to India since.
Could that be what Mrs. Grey was looking into? It was certainly her distinctively beautiful face he glimpsed at the window, engrossed and determined.
The back door flew open suddenly and a rough female voice yelled, “That’s me away, professor! Your tea’s brewing! See you Friday!”
He had time to dart ignominiously behind a large honeysuckle bush. Bees buzzed all around him, but the back door closed, and brisk footsteps clumped away down the path to the front gate.
Digby closed his eyes in momentary relief.
But truly, this was for the best. He took the trouble to look through the kitchen window. The maid had left only two cups and saucers on the tray. Good. There was no one else in the house but Mrs. Grey and Martin. He would never have a better opportunity.
*
Solomon stared atthe sad little rose petal and the still-sharp thorn on his palm. He saw at once how it was done.
Carl Darrow had picked the roses from Eagle Square’s garden and tied them to his back while he climbed up to Caterina’s window. The thorns had torn at his coat and trapped a disturbed petal. Solomoneven found the length of string in the coat pocket that must have been used to tie the flowers in place.
The riddle of the roses was solved.
Caterina had never agreed to run away with Darrow. He must have tried to threaten her into continuing the relationship, perhaps by making it public and thus humiliating Montague as well as Caterina herself. So Caterina had gone to her old friend Martin in search of information—and she had found it. That accounted for her euphoria. She had triumphed over Darrow and saved her marriage, with whatever she had learned from Martin.
Darrow, still refusing to accept his dismissal, changed his tune, trying instead the romantic gesture of roses, to climb up to her window and get himself admitted into her bedchamber…
Either Caterina had let him in, or he had just climbed through the window and found her asleep.
But from there it was no longer clear-cut. Had he left her to sleep, to wake to his gift of a dozen red roses in a vase? Or had he smothered her with a pillow? Either while she slept or in some struggle when she continued to reject him?
