Page 43 of The Missing Page
James looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he sighed. “No, it’s because you’re a lovely man.”
Leo snorted. “Now I know you’re full of it. Anyway, this is not the time to have this conversation. We’re both tired and it’s been a trying night.”
“What conversation?”
Leo blamed weeks of exhaustion catching up with him. “The one where I point out that your worst fear—the one about people putting knives and bullets and poisons into one another? That’s me. That’s my life’s work.”
“No it isn’t.”
Leo jabbed the poker into the smoldering coals. “I know what my job is, James.”
“I mean it isn’t my worst fear. It’s a hang-up. It’s faulty wiring.” He passed a hand over his jaw. “What I’m worried about—the thing that keeps me up at night—is war. My brain apparently isn’t sophisticated enough to develop a phobia of war, so instead I’m fixated on gore and blood.”
“Oh.”
“Ihavebeen to a psychologist, you know. It didn’t work out with Marchand, but I did see someone else for a while. Also, I don’t know the exact details of your job, but we both know plenty of people whose job actually was to put bullets and knives and whatnot into people. That’s literally what soldiers do, Leo. And I’m not afraid of them as individuals.”
Leo understood all this. James’s words made sense and ought to be reassuring, but instead they made all the inchoate doubts that had been swirling around his mind for the past few weeks coalesce into something he couldn’t avoid. “I can’t keep doing it.”
James went rigid. “Can’t keep…” He made that same gesture, back and forth between them.
“What? Lord, no, not that. I can’t keep on doing my job.”
James nodded slowly and took Leo’s hand, then brushed his lips over the knuckles. “All right.”
“All right? That’s it? You’re not going to tell me to stop?”
“It’s not my place.”
Leo wanted to scream. He wanted James to see that itwashis place, but he also didn’t want James to say a bloody thing about it because if James spoke, it would be offers and promises and Leo couldn’t handle that. He moved out of his crouching position so he was sitting beside James, his arms wrapped around his knees.
“I can’t wait to see what you do next,” James said.
For the first time in his adult life, Leo felt in danger of crying, so instead he cleared his throat and looked away and did useless things to the fire.
But James evidently had had enough. He gently took hold of Leo’s hands, then straddled his lap. “Thank you for the pajamas.”
“I’m sorry that old arsehole died on you,” Leo mumbled into James’s collar. “Actually, I just wish he’d waited to die until after he got back to London.”
“Do you want me to tell you why I was worried about poison?” James asked.
“Are you sure you want to?” Leo asked, pulling back just enough to see James’s face.
“Earlier in the day, Camilla said her medicine was missing. She takes Seconal, a barbiturate.”
“Would a barbiturate overdose cause a heart attack?”
“With a barbiturate overdose, one worries about the heart slowing to the point that it stops entirely, which is not at all what happened tonight. But there was something odd that happened during dinner.”
“Madame’s spilled wine glass?” Leo asked.
“Exactly. Plenty of opportunity to slip something into Marchand’s glass during the confusion.”
“But who would want to poison him? Assuming Madame is Gladys Button—and I still see no reason not to—and she was blackmailing him, she had every reason to wish to keep him alive.”
“Who else might have had the opportunity? Mrs. Carrow could have put something in his glass while she was setting the table,” James said. “But I can’t think what motive she’d have, or how she could be sure where Sir Anthony would sit. There were no place cards and no attempt to sort out precedence. No, it had to have happened during the spill. The glasses could have been switched, I suppose. Marchand might have put something in Madame’s glass, maybe hoping to get rid of his blackmailer, and then Madame either accidentally or deliberately switched the glasses.”
James stared at him. “Ilovethat your mind works that way.”
