CHAPTER XXI
Maria was silent and preoccupied throughout the day, and did not attempt to rouse Montalto from his apathy. He made no reference to the letters, though he gave some thought to the subject in the privacy of his study, and practically decided to consult the police on the morrow, since no other course suggested itself to his not very active imagination.
One of Giuliana Parenzo’s horses was lame, and another had a bad cold, and she telephoned to ask if Maria would take her for a drive and make a few visits with her. Having no ready excuse, Maria agreed to the proposal on condition that Giuliana should not object to waiting for her a few minutes outside the Church of the Capuchins. She had ascertained from her maid, who was a Roman, that twenty-three-and-a-half o’clock meant sunset at all times of the year, which seemed to her a clumsy way of reckoning, the more so as she had to make further inquiries in order to ascertain the hour at which the sun actually went down. It turned out to be about a quarter before five, but as she was not quite sure, she thought it best to go at half-past four. If Padre Bonaventura had not come in she could wait for him. Giuliana probably had some visit to make at one of the modern hotels in the vicinity, for she and her husband necessarily knew many foreigners.
Accordingly, at half-past four, when the brown front of the old church was just beginning to glow in the evening light, the Countess’s carriage stopped before the steps. Giuliana had said that she preferred to wait, as she had nothing to do in the neighbourhood, but, to Maria’s surprise, she now also got out.
‘It is a long time since I was here,’ she explained, ‘so I have changed my mind. I shall not be in your way if I stay near the door.’
‘In the way? How absurd!’ Maria laughed a little as she went up the steps.
They parted just inside the door; Giuliana knelt down by a straw chair on the right, while Maria went up the church diagonally towards the left, in the direction of the confessional which Padre Bonaventura usually occupied.
She found him in the last chapel on the left, by the door of the sacristy, in the act of shaking hands with Castiglione, who was evidently taking leave of him. Coming upon them so suddenly when the evening glow through the upper windows made the church very light, it was out of the question to draw back into the shadow. The monk saw her first, but Castiglione turned his head a second later, and the three were standing together.
Maria drew herself up very straight in the effort to check a cry of surprise, and Castiglione made rather a stiff military bow; but she saw his eyes in the rosy light, and he saw hers. A moment later he was gone, and her ears followed the musical little jingle of his spurs as he went down the nave towards the door, near which Giuliana Parenzo was kneeling.