Page 36 of The Missing Page
Then Camilla stopped laughing and frowned. “But wait—no, you’re wrong, Martha. John Davis didn’t run off with Gladys. When the police came, John Davis was already gone. But Gladys was still here—and running around like a chicken with her head cut off because she was convinced they’d arrest her just for sport.”
At the other end of the table, Leo turned all his attention to Martha and Camilla. James knew that the timing of Gladys’s disappearance was an open question—had she disappeared before or after Rose?
“Then who did he run off with?” asked Martha.
“I never really thought about it. There were too many other things to think about that summer.”
“Too right.” The two women caught one another’s eye and raised their glasses in a wry little toast.
Too many other things to think about. Gladys and the handsome chauffeur were mere footnotes in a story that involved the disappearance of one girl, and—he glanced at Lilah—the arrival of another.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Leo’s pulse thrummed with the familiar thrill of getting close to the truth.
“I’ve had two glasses of wine and I’m a bit muzzy around the edges, but we all agree my cousin was a lesbian, yes?” James murmured in Leo’s ear when they found themselves alone in the hall after everyone left the dining room in favor of the drawing room.
“At least Camilla thought so, and evidently Marchand as well,” Leo agreed. What Leo thought more intriguing was that apparently the entire village believed Rose was carrying on a flagrant affair with the chauffeur, but her family was convinced she had a different secret entirely. He wondered if she had attempted to tell them the truth. It hardly bore thinking of. “Christ, but did you see his face? If Camilla had said Rose was a cannibal he couldn’t have been more outraged.”
James shot him a confused look. “He’s hardly the only one to hold that opinion.”
“Yes, yes. But your cousin is long dead.” Leo entered the cloakroom, found his coat, and put it on. “The scandals of her personal life ought to have long since mellowed into something that can be alluded to at the dinner table. There weren’t even any impressionable youngsters at the table who might have been led down the garden path. Lilah’s an actress, for heaven’s sake. And for the past twenty years everyone has believed that Rose killed herself, something that Marchand himself has alluded to and which surely is even less respectable than lesbianism.”
“It all makes me feel a bit sick.”
“Hmm?” Leo paused in buttoning his coat and looked at James, concerned.
“The Marchands of the world will always think I’m unfit to be mentioned at the dinner table. Bent. Not quite right in the head. There’s hardly any circumstance of my life that can be discussed in polite company.”
This wasn’t true and they both knew it—James was a perfectly respectable doctor, well-loved by his patients and a fixture in the village. But Leo understood what he meant—these weren’t the only things that mattered. Sometimes what mattered were the things you couldn’t speak out loud, the things you didn’t dare be honest about. “Let me take you home,” Leo said. In Wychcomb St. Mary, there were at least a few dinner tables where they were welcome, secrets and all.
“Leo, I—” James started, and it had to be professional instinct that made Leo stop him.
“Don’t.”
James had been about to say something he couldn’t take back—something sentimental, something dangerous. And he shouldn’t go around saying that sort of thing, especially not to people like Leo.
Leo squeezed his eyes shut like a complete amateur, and when he opened them, James was looking at him with an expression that wasn’t hurt, thank God, but was somehow worse: it was fond. “Shut up about it and don’t quarrel with me,” Leo said. “We’re in the cloakroom.”
“I’ll tell you again later, then.”
Please don’t, Leo wanted to say. Instead he unbuttoned his coat and hung it back up. “I’m not leaving. Not yet.”Not with you in this state, he didn’t say. “Let’s go into the drawing room and say that you’ve convinced me to stay for a drink.”
“I thought you wanted to talk to the Carrows about Madame while I speak to Camilla. She’s rather above par at the moment, so perhaps it’s an opportune time to talk about indelicate topics.”
Leo wanted to say that the Carrows could wait, that this whole bloody affair could wait if it came to that. But James had a stubbornness about his jaw and a flintiness about his eyes and Leo knew he wasn’t going to be deterred. “All right,” Leo said, once again putting his coat on. “If you need me, I have a room at the Three Bells in the village. I’ll ring you in the morning.”
Leo made himself turn and walk out the door and head down the path to the lodge.
Now that Leo wasn’t in as much of a hurry as he had been the previous night, he could take a good look at the lodge. It occupied half of what must have been a stable block before it had been turned into a garage. Ivy covered the walls and a garden bed was tucked into what was probably a sunny corner in the summer. Discreetly out of view of the main house hung a clothesline. The lodge had a worn-in comfort that Blackthorn proper lacked.
When he knocked, Carrow himself answered the door.
“Car still giving you grief?” Carrow asked by way of greeting.
“No, not exactly,” Leo said. “May I come in and ask you a bit about that lot?” He gestured to the house.
“Can’t do that,” Carrow said, even as he ushered Leo inside. “Wouldn’t want to give you inside information that might let you win the treasure hunt, would I? Fancy a drink? Beer all right?”
