Page 4 of The Missing Page
He hadn’t had any such scruples two years earlier, when James visited him at his plush Harley Street office. Then Sir Anthony had employed phrases likeunfortunate family history of mental imbalanceandbest to err on the side of cautionandit’s quite a nice sort of place, more like a spa than a hospital.
James mustered up all his cordiality and shook hands with the older man. “Good to see you, Sir Anthony.”
“You look well,” the older man responded, grasping James’s hand firmly.
“Mother,” said the girl on the sofa. “Do keep your spectacles on. You’re missing the ashtray by a yard.”
Only then did James turn his attention away from Sir Anthony to the young woman. She had fine features and white-blond hair so fair as to be nearly silver and wore a dark blue tailor-made. He had the distinct impression that he had met her before. “You must be my cousin Lilian.”
She seemed to notice James’s confusion and laughed, a broad smile transforming her face from an almost pre-Raphaelite languor to a vivaciousness that made James smile automatically in return. “You probably know me as Lilah Fairchild. Do call me Lilah. Everybody does.”
It took James a moment to make sense of her words and understand that he was shaking the hand of an actress he had seen on stage and screen. “I saw you last month inTwelfth Night,” James said, feeling faintly starstruck. He and Leo had taken the train into London for a matinee. “It was splendid, not that you need me to tell you so. I had no idea you were Camilla’s daughter.” Obviously, he had not recognized her stage name, nor had he detected any family likeness, since Lilah’s fairylike beauty was so unlike the robust, dark handsomeness of the Bellamys. He’d have thought she got her looks from her father’s side, but one glance at the strong features and solid frame of Sir Anthony was enough to dispel that notion.
“We keep the family connection quiet,” Lilah said, her gaze darting to where her father stood nearby.
Before James could figure out what that meant, Sir Anthony interrupted.
“You still have that little practice of yours?” he asked James.
“Yes,” James said, forcing politeness. The man spoke as if James’s medical practice was an embarrassing hobby. Being a village doctor might not have been what James once thought he’d do with his life, but it was satisfying and it was a chance to do some good in the world. He said none of this. “I do.”
“Hmm,” Sir Anthony said, as if examining a troubling rash.
The door swung open again and Martha entered, visibly flustered and carrying a tray of tea things. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Stop talking like you’re a housemaid, Martha,” Camilla said, lighting another cigarette and making no effort to take the tray from Martha’s arms. “You’re not here to serve us.”
Martha made a sound that sounded to James’s ears like disbelief. “Well, here’s tea, such as it is. Oh, thank you, Jamie, just put it on the coffee table.”
“I’ll warn you, James,” Camilla said. “It’ll be stale scones and a packet of digestive biscuits. Mrs. Carrow is a very good cook, but her arrangement is that she only does dinner. These days one can’t really set one’s own terms with the help, can one?”
“I suppose not,” James said. He had been more or less fending for himself since his cleaner was murdered the previous autumn, but that had more to do with his reluctance to have anyone poking around his house and discovering that Leo didn’t sleep in the spare room than it did any difficulty in finding suitable help.
“One takes what one can get. Martha, darling, what are you going to do now?” Camilla asked. “You can’t mean to stay on at Blackthorn all alone, can you?”
James watched irritation flash across Martha’s face. This was the familiar and justifiable impatience of the poor when confronted with rich people who can’t bring themselves to understand how everybody else lives. Between the small fortune she’d inherited from her mother and the handsome income her husband no doubt brought in, Camilla Marchand had probably never needed to trouble herself with such questions as whether she would have a roof over her head in a week’s time.
James thought there was something else in Martha’s irritation, something that went beyond pounds and shillings, but he couldn’t quite identify it.
Whatever annoyance Martha felt with her cousin, she swept it away and adopted a neutral tone—indeed, one very much like he’d expect from a housekeeper whose wages depended on her pleasant manner. “Whether I can stay on at Blackthorn depends on who the house goes to.”
“I—oh, I see.” Camilla absently tapped her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, causing ash to scatter all over the tabletop and drift to the carpet. “I had thought—well, never mind what I had thought.”
James assumed that Blackthorn would go to Camilla, as Uncle Rupert’s sole surviving child. And probably Camilla had been under the same impression. Now she had a line between her eyebrows, and an awkward silence fell over the drawing room.
What they all needed was tea, and since nobody had started to pour it out, James decided to take matters into his own hands, distributing cups of dismayingly weak tea.
Lilah drummed her vermilion fingernails on the arm of the sofa. “I suppose that if Granddad meant to keep things simple, he wouldn’t have made a point of this circus.”
“Lillian,” her father said warningly.
“Well, it’s true,” Lilah said, ignoring her father’s tone. She reached for her mother’s cigarette case, helping herself before offering it to James. “If he meant to be reasonable about it, he would at least have told Mother about his plans ages ago. It’s not as if he died suddenly. Poor Granddad was extremely ancient.” She let James light her cigarette. “I dare say none of it’s going to be what we expect.”
As if on cue, a knock sounded at the front door and Martha sprang to her feet. She returned a moment later with a woman so dissimilar from the ladies already gathered in the drawing room as to seem like a specimen from an unrelated species. She wore what appeared to be an old-fashioned tea gown of purple velvet and a great quantity of scarves. Her hair was hennaed to a bright red and she wore no hat. She could have been any age between thirty-five and fifty-five.
“This is Madame Fournier,” Martha said, the name awkward on her tongue in a way that suggested the new arrival was a stranger in the house.
“A pleasure,” said Madame Fournier in thickly accented English.
