Page 47 of The Missing Page
James strongly doubted that Leo, or anyone, wasfinewith the prospect of possibly digging up a body, or a skeleton, or whatever they were afraid of finding. But he probably wouldn’t faint or break down while doing it, so that put him one up on James. And there was something about the way he had looked at James while speaking, as if daring James to stop him from doing this for him.
“Thank you,” he said, holding Leo’s gaze. Leo gave him a quick nod.
Camilla was at the tree again. She wore a tweed skirt and coat and the wind whipped through her hair.
“What’s going on?” she asked as Leo stepped on the shovel and broke ground.
“Why were you out here this morning?” James asked.
“Because Rose asked for it to be planted. The old tree had stopped producing fruit and she knew how Martha and I were about cherry preserves.” Her eyes were wide and clear, and James would have sworn she was telling the truth. “And I miss her.”
“That’s all?”
“What else would it be?” But even as she asked the question, her gaze was locked on Leo and the shovel. “What’s happening?” she asked.
James didn’t answer.
“This doesn’t make sense.” She gripped James’s arm. “You’ve got this all wrong. You expect to find Rose, but that can’t be right.”
“Why don’t you go inside,” James suggested gently. “You’ve had a hell of a twenty-four hours.”And it’s not going to get any easier, he didn’t say.
“You can’t seriously expect me to go lie down while you’re out here attempting to dig up my sister’s body,” Camilla said. Her words cut through the sound of the wind and the steady slice of Leo’s shovel cutting through the dirt. James was faintly shocked that it was Camilla, of all people, who gave voice to the thing that so far none of them had spoken aloud.
“No, I suppose not,” James conceded.
“Why not just tell me what’s going on?”
“We found a note that said ‘I saw what you did by the cherry tree’ in your husband’s pocket. There’s reason to believe he was being blackmailed.”
The hole was knee deep now. James was struck by the sudden thought, both ghastly and somehow reassuring, that this was not the first time Leo had been called upon to dig a hole six feet deep.
The clouds, which had been threatening rain since that morning, finally broke. James looked at Camilla, at the raindrops landing on her face. That day when she had brought him tea and biscuits in his bedroom, she had been crying, he remembered. What had happened to make her go from tears at her sister’s disappearance to calmly saying it was none of her business? Was her change in attitude because she was covering up for her husband? Except—James found it hard to believe that she could remain married to a man she knew to have killed her sister.
“You think Anthony killed Rose,” Camilla said finally, leveling him with a challenging stare that reminded him of nobody so much as Rose herself, and maybe a little of Lilah.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “But something happened here.”
Lilah came up to them. “Should we call the police?”
“And tell them what?” James asked. “We can wait until we…” He didn’t dare finish that sentence. What had been in the family for so long could stay there for another hour or so.
Leo paused to wipe rain off his forehead, and James cursed himself for not having packed his Macintosh. Leo, at least, had his overcoat. It seemed that Leo had struck a root. He moved a few feet to the side to begin another hole. James went to him and put his hand over Leo’s on the shovel handle. “I’ll spell you.”
“Let me do this,” said Leo, a little out of breath, his hair damp with rain. In his words James heard an unspokenfor youthat he couldn’t, wouldn’t reject. He just nodded his head and went back to Camilla. Lilah stood by Martha, holding her arm as if preventing her from moving closer.
And toward the back of their morbid gathering, sheltered by the eaves of the lodge, stood Carrow, his cap pulled low over his forehead and his hands in his pocket.
Over the sound of the rain was a dull thud as the metal shovel struck something. James could see Lilah’s brow furrow in a confusion mirroring his own; whatever horrors were in that hole shouldn’t clank against a shovel.
Leo, now standing in the hole, crouched so low that James could only see the top of his head. “I need a spade,” he called, and it was Carrow who came forward with one.
There came more sounds of metal against metal and then, finally, Leo lifted a box of some sort out of the hole and placed it on the ground. With a hand from Carrow, Leo hoisted himself out of the hole and crouched down to examine the box.
“What is it?” Lilah asked. But James wasn’t paying attention to her. His attention was divided between Leo, who was attempting to pry the box open with a pocketknife, and Camilla, whose body was suddenly devoid of tension. Whatever was happening, this made sense to her.
James knelt on the ground beside Leo. The object appeared to be a metal toolbox, now blackened with age and dirt and covered in rust. The hinges weren’t budging and neither was the latch.
“We’ll have to break it,” Leo muttered. Then he did something with his knife that made the hinges give way. The box sprang open.
