Devil in Music by Ross Kate

Author:Ross, Kate
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781937384722
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
Published: 2013-07-02T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

23

Julian entered the room he shared with MacGregor as quietly as he could, but even so MacGregor’s nightcapped head popped out from under the bedclothes. After years of being summoned at all hours to extract gallstones and deliver babies, he had a great capacity for starting wide awake at the slightest sound, and falling asleep as soon as the disturbance was over. “What o’clock is it?”

“Nearly two.”

“What have you been up to?”

“Walking in the garden. I ran into the marchesa in the belvedere. As long as you’re awake, I think I’ll ring and see if Dipper’s returned from the festival.”

He pulled the bell-rope. MacGregor sat up in bed, saying tartly, “Heaven forbid a man should have to take off his own clothes at night.”

“Quite so,” Julian agreed.

“What was the marchesa doing in the belvedere?”

“Not a great deal.”

“Didn’t you want to know why she was there?”

“I asked. She said it seemed the last place people would be likely to look for her. She wanted to be alone. Hearing Orfeo sing had disturbed her.”

“You mean, because she thinks he killed her husband?”

Julian set his candle on a table and sat down, stretching out his legs before him. “I think there’s more to it than that. She begged me to find Orfeo, and I don’t think it was simply to avenge her husband’s murder. There was a passion behind her request that I don’t understand.”

“Sounds as if she knows more about Orfeo than she’s telling.”

“Or feels more about him. But then again, we may be looking at this the wrong way round. Perhaps she wants Orfeo found and charged with the murder in order to protect someone else—one of Marchese Lodovico’s family, or even herself.”

“Or de la Marque?” MacGregor suggested.

“Yes,” said Julian after a moment, “or de la Marque.”

Dipper came in. “I’m glad to see you back safe and sound,” Julian said.

“Thankee, sir. But there was nothing to fret your eyelids about. When it comes to larking, this here festival can’t hold a candle to Bartholomew Fair or the Westminster Dog Pit.”

“Have you heard about our visitation tonight?” asked MacGregor. “Orfeo turned up and sang us a ditty in the garden.”

“Yes, sir. Commissario Grimani, he’s been in the village rounding up all the sbirri as ain’t too snuffy to stand upright.”

Julian thought it like Dipper to know the Italian equivalent of calling the police pigs or traps in English. “Did you see Fletcher and St. Carr in the village tonight?”

“No, sir. But I wasn’t there long. Nina and me, we got separated, and she went out in a boat with some of the other servants, and I didn’t want her to think I was knocking up a lark with Rosa, so I swam out to her boat.”

“In this weather?” exclaimed MacGregor. “I know it was a mild evening, but even so, you’ll catch your death of cold. Why didn’t you take a boat?”

“I thought she’d like this better, sir. H’Italian gals, they likes a cove to cut a dash.”

“She won’t like it so well when you start snuffling and sneezing,” MacGregor warned.

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