Page 27 of The Missing Page
“Because they prefer to ignore unpleasantness. And having James around might have required them to acknowledge that Aunt Rose had ever existed. Children do ask questions.”
“The world is filled with people who prefer to ignore unpleasantness, but most of them manage to cope when the alternative is being cruel to an orphan they’re actually related to.” And itwascruelty, the way the Marchands and Rupert Bellamy and even Martha Dauntsey had ignored James. “Are they ordinarily cruel people? You know them better than I do. Was your grandfather ordinarily cruel? Your mother?”
She appeared to consider it. “No. I would have said they weren’t. My mother has no spine, though, and will usually go along with whatever my father says.”
The implication, Leo noted, was that her father was in fact cruel.
“But Granddad wasn’t cruel. I don’t know why he never asked James back.” She sighed and turned back to the photograph in the newspaper. “I’m counting seven servants. What odds do you give that none of them knew anything?”
“Slim to none,” Leo said. “One of them had to know. Maybe someone paid them off to keep secret. Maybe someone got them out of the way.” He tapped the photograph of the servants, touching first Gladys Button and then the man who had to be the chauffeur.
Lilah raised her eyebrows. “You think someone killed them?”
“The papers keep saying that they ran off, but nobody is saying where they went. You’d think the police would have tracked them down and asked them questions. Hell, you’d think they’d have arrested the chauffeur just for the sake of having somebody to arrest. It makes me think they either did a very good job of disappearing or somebody got rid of them.”
“Look at this,” Lilah said when they had flipped through a few more pages. “Two days after Rose’s disappearance, the paper ran an obituary of Mr. Foster, citing his cause of death as complications from appendicitis.”
Leo leaned in. “Evidently, his father was vicar of the church near Blackthorn. If you recall, Foster is the name of the vicar mentioned in your grandfather’s will. His death is awfully convenient. The police want to talk to the chauffeur and he disappears. The police want to talk to the vicar’s son and he dies. It makes me wonder if anyone else disappeared or died that summer.”
“Other than Gladys Button.”
“Exactly. Counting Rose, that’s four people who left Blackthorn and never returned.” It was five, Leo realized, if one included James. He hadn’t died or disappeared, but he had been got rid of all the same, and Leo couldn’t help but think that it mattered. “Do you think Martha or your parents know anything?” asked Leo, doubtful that he’d get a useful answer but still curious as to how Lilah would respond.
She tapped her varnished fingernails on the tabletop. There was a curious tension in her frame that hadn’t been there the previous night. “I think they’re all so used to keeping secrets that they hardly know how to go about thinking about the truth, much less telling it.”
“I think they all know something, but that they’ve spent twenty years telling themselves that it’s nothing. They’re used to ignoring inconsistencies or peculiarities. And this lot don’t even talk to one another, so they’ve never had a chance to compare notes.”
Next, they looked at the September newspapers. By September, interest in Rose Bellamy had faded considerably. The police had received dozens of letters from people reporting to have spotted her everywhere from Chicago to Cairo. The paper strongly hinted that rich and eccentric young ladies were liable to run off at the slightest provocation.
It occurred to Leo that he was sitting next to a rich young lady who had herself run away. He read that line aloud and watched Lilah wrinkle her nose.
“Plain misogyny,” she said.
“Can’t argue with that. But you ran away, didn’t you? From school, I believe you said?”
She looked narrowly at him. “Yes. To audition for a role in a film.”
Instead he adopted a gentler tone. “How did your father react when you ran away?”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “He said he had always expected me to do something disgraceful. What’s your point?”
Leo wasn’t quite sure, but this case revolved around people running away, disappearing, not being where they belonged. As always, he wanted to follow every loose thread to the knot at the center, even if it made people uncomfortable. He was about to ask more—had there been trouble at school? Had she wished to upset her parents? How readily had her mother agreed to let her have her way?
But he saw the faintest trace of a resemblance to James in the young woman’s face and lost all interest in making her squirm.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The scent of the grocer—soap and fresh fruit and sawdust—hit Leo like the aroma of a foreign bazaar. He had remarkably little reason to ever enter a grocer’s, eating most of his meals either in restaurants or not at all. James had his groceries delivered, except for when mysterious parcels appeared on his doorstep from Wendy. Leo took a moment to notice the slightly too cold temperature, the shelves of inscrutably ordered tins and packets behind the counter, the way people moved with the determination of those who had done the same thing dozens of times and no longer had to think about it.
Behind the counter was the woman he had seen with Madame Fournier at the tea shop, her mouse-colored hat now discarded. According to what James had told him, this woman, Mrs. Mudge, formerly Bridget Halloran, had been the cook at Blackthorn in 1927. He hoped she had a long memory. Gauging how best to approach her, he took off his own hat and adopted his most genial air. “Mrs. Mudge,” he said, keeping his voice too low for any shoppers to overhear, but not so low as to invite curiosity. “I’d like to speak with you for a few moments. It’s about the Bellamys.”
Her posture immediately stiffened and she folded her arms across her stress. “I’ve nothing to say about them.” She had an Irish accent, and spoke with the unease of someone who didn’t want to get a friend in trouble. This was how most people reacted when the police or some other authority came around asking questions about someone they cared about or pitied—they didn’t want to say anything, but they also weren’t prepared to lie. Most people, when forced to choose between lying and informing, became annoyed at having been backed into that corner. He thought he saw a flicker of just that annoyance on Mrs. Mudge’s round face, so he changed tack.
“I’m actually wondering if you could help me with something. My name is Leo Page, and I’m a sort of friend of a friend of the Bellamys. You might remember a child, James Sommers, who spent his holidays at Blackthorn.”
Whatever she had been expecting, it hadn’t been that, because her expression shifted from irritation to bemusement. “Why, yes. Too skinny by half but ate whatever one put before him. A well-mannered boy.”
Leo allowed himself to smile. “I’ll bet he was. He’s a doctor now, and he did a great deal of good in the war. He fixed me up when I was in a tight spot in France, and so I’m trying to help him out a bit now. You’ve probably heard about Mr. Bellamy’s will,” he said, guessing that Madame Fournier would have told her all about it over lunch. “The will mentioned everyone who had been a servant at Blackthorn back then. You probably got a letter from the solicitor yourself.”
