Page 42 of The Missing Page
“I can’t think about it now. Damn it.” And with that, James made for the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Leo remembered when James had sewed him up during the war. He had been just as he was that evening: efficient and calm, as if there was nothing he hadn’t seen and nothing he wasn’t equal to. Leo always got a satisfied little thrill when he remembered exactly what it was James did all day. It sounded so ordinary on the face of it: he was a country doctor with a slightly shabby surgery who spent his days treating chilblains and chest infections. He didn’t have a practice on Harley Street; he would never be famous or celebrated for what he did. Leo knew enough of James’s past to gather that his present career was a step down from what he had been aiming for before the war, when he had been a promising surgeon, when the realities of scalpel and sutures hadn’t sent him into a blind panic. He was so quietly competent about what he did that sometimes it was easy to forget that he went about making people well, making lives better and sometimes outright saving them.
And now he was in the library with two policemen and Leo’s heart hurt for him—not because he gave a damn about what happened to Marchand but because he cared about everything that happened to James.
The detectives hadn’t left a uniformed officer outside the room to keep an eye on the house’s occupants, from which Leo gathered that they were treating this as an accidental death and were simply talking to James as a physician who happened to be on the scene.
It also meant that Leo could position himself near the closed library door and overhear most of the conversation from within.
“As I said, I was worried he might have taken something that interacted badly with his digitalis, or perhaps that he had taken too much digitalis. It can happen, unfortunately, no matter how sternly doctors warn against taking more than we prescribe. Some people can’t get over the idea that if one tablet is good, two will be better.” James sounded weary.
“But Sir Anthony was a medical man himself, was he not?” asked the detective.
“We’re notorious for making the worst patients. In any event, I suppose the postmortem will show if anything was amiss.”
Leo heard the sounds of chairs being pushed back and men getting to their feet, and immediately backed away from the door.
After seeing the policemen out, James leaned against the closed door and shut his eyes. When he opened them, he noticed Leo sitting on the bench in the hall.
“You’re still here,” James said. There was a faint note of rebuke in his tone that Leo didn’t know what to make of.
“Of course I am. Everyone has gone to bed,” Leo said, his voice very quiet and gentle, “and Mr. Trevelyan went home.”
James nodded again, not meeting Leo’s eyes.
“You didn’t expect me to go to the inn, did you?” Leo got to his feet and went to him. “I’m staying. It’s late and I don’t want to drive.”
“I’m not going to have an episode or whatever it is you’re worried about,” James snapped. “I really only get that way with blood and gore, so you don’t have to look after me.”
“I know you don’t,” Leo said, hearing a soothing note in his voice that felt strange and out of place.
James visibly bristled. “I’m not as fragile as you think.”
“I don’t think you’re fragile in the least, but if you want to argue, let’s do it behind closed doors.”
James headed upstairs, but once they were in the bedroom he retreated to the bathroom, and Leo soon heard the sound of the shower running.
When James emerged, a towel wrapped around his waist, Leo was laying James’s pajamas out on the bed. He felt oddly caught out performing this act.
“You really don’t have to do this,” James said.
“Christ, James. I know I don’t,” Leo said, feeling defeated. “And I know I’m bad at this. I know you don’t need me. You’re past thirty and a goddamn doctor and you’ve been through hell all on your own. But I—fucking hell. Just take the goddamn pajamas, all right?”
James shot Leo a slightly startled look, but he put on the pajamas. He was doing up the last button before he spoke.
“Bad at what?” James asked. “You said you were bad at this.”
Leo was crouched by the fireplace, attempting to start a fire using some coal that he had had pilfered from a small stockpile in the boiler room. “If I say ‘looking after you,’ are you going to take it as an insult? Because I don’t mean it that way. I don’t really know how to be a friend, let alone…” He made a vague gesture between them.
“That fire’s never going to take.”
“Ye of little faith,” Leo muttered, and prodded a coal with a rolled-up piece of newspaper.
James sat beside him before the empty hearth. “You seem to be doing a fine job. Not at building the fire. At…” He made the same vague gesture between them, accompanied by a wry smile. “Not that I have all that much experience. But I don’t have any complaints.”
“That’s because you have low standards and you let people walk all over you.”
