Page 44 of The Missing Page
Leo blinked. “What.”
“You think it puts me off, but you’re wrong.”
Leo was pretty sure the strange heat in his face was a blush; this was truly a night of horrific firsts. “We don’t even know if he was poisoned.
“Did you notice whether the police took the glasses from the dining room table?”
“Yes, and they took samples of food with them as well, although that stew was in a single dish and we all ladled out our own portions, so I suspect that’s out.”
“So we ought to know in a few days?”
“Give or take.” Leo drummed his fingers on his knee. “Let’s go to bed and think about this in the morning.” He let himself be pulled to his feet and into James’s waiting embrace.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The first rays of sunlight were streaming through the window when Leo woke. That meant it was probably around seven o’clock, and since they hadn’t managed to get to sleep until past two, Leo could have done with quite a bit more sleep. But there were things to do—he didn’t care how many murders took place at Blackthorn, he still wanted to get James back to Wychcomb St. Mary that night, which meant he needed to get to work as soon as possible. Gingerly, so as not to disturb James, he tried to slide out from under James’s arm. But he must not have moved carefully enough, because James opened the eye that wasn’t pressed into his pillow.
“Too early,” James mumbled. “Back to bed.”
“Sleep. I’ll be back in an hour with tea.”
“I’ll come with you,” James said, sitting up.
“No, no. You can sleep for another hour, so you might as well.”
It spoke to how tired James must have been that he lay back down without a protest and was fast asleep by the time Leo was dressed.
When Leo reached the stairs, instead of going down, he continued straight, toward a group of rooms that were on the opposite side of the house from the guest rooms. Here, he hoped to find Martha Dauntsey’s bedroom and maybe the late Mr. Bellamy’s.
He passed what had to be Martha Dauntsey’s room, door ajar and bed hastily made. In the corner was a bookshelf jammed full of volumes, the accumulated reading of a lifetime, if Leo judged correctly. By the window stood a writing desk, and next to it an armchair with threadbare upholstery. Everything in the room was worn and tired-looking, shabby in the way that well-loved homes often were.
Across the hall was another room that might once have been a family bedroom but was now a box room. The walls were papered with a floral pattern that might once have been red, but which had long since faded to a tepid blush. Leo wondered if this might have been Rose’s room. On a whim, he stepped to the window and threw it open. When he stuck his head out, he could see a sliver of gray winter sea. It was his first glimpse of the sea since he had arrived here. He could also plainly see the door of the lodge. Carrow was already awake, smoking a cigarette.
Further down the corridor was a room that could only be Rupert Bellamy’s. It had the same well-worn comfort of Miss Dauntsey’s bedroom, only more opulent. He turned in place, taking in the photographs on the wall. They were much like any other collection of family photographs, except that the people in these were richer than most. Especially in the older pictures, the women were all but draped in pearls and jewels. He caught sight of an honest-to-god tiara in one photograph.
There was Lady Marchand at about twelve years old, looking like she was on her way to church—white gloves, clean pinafore, neatly curled hair—and beside her was a girl who looked like she had been dragged head-first out of a tree and shoved into a frock against her will.
Another photograph showed a man and a girl with dark hair and similar profiles, about fifty and twenty respectively. They wore riding clothes and stood beside an enormous black horse they both seemed inordinately proud of. Leo didn’t give a fig about that horse, or any horse for that matter. Instead, he looked at the woman who had disappeared and caused all this trouble. He looked at her face, as if something there might tell him her secrets.
There wasn’t anything, of course. She was just an ordinary rich girl.
A few frames over was a picture of what appeared to be Lady Marchand’s wedding day. So, this was the party that had taken James away from his cricket match. Camilla wore a gown that Leo could tell, even at a remove of twenty years, must have cost a small fortune and weighed at least a stone. Sir Anthony, Leo was irked to admit, was almost devastatingly handsome in the usual cutaway and tails.
Rose was in the picture as well, looking vaguely uncomfortable in a way that Leo couldn’t pinpoint. She had been much happier in the picture with the horse. So had her father, come to that. Well, it stood to reason—other than the newlyweds, people rarely looked happy in wedding photographs.
Off to the side in the wedding photograph stood a grim-faced boy in cutaways. Leo almost laughed, because he had seen that same expression on James’s face too many times. It was one of his favorite expressions, though he’d never tell James—that look of dutiful resignation with which he answered calls from patients at horrible hours, or when he did some other unpleasant task that he was too honorable to even dream of shirking. That’s what James was, an honorable man; Leo had always scoffed at honor as a means for men to let themselves become emotionally overwrought over trifles, but in James it was something else. It was something solid and reliable and good.
Leo scanned the photos and sighed. They did nothing but illustrate the parts of a story that he already understood. There was another, apparently separate story that was hidden from these photographs, but which Leo could see just as clearly: a pickpocket-turned-maid who ran away, a man who married an heiress but had no money, and a woman who disappeared.
Satisfied that he had seen all he needed to see, Leo moved quietly down the stairs, more from instinct than from any real fear of being discovered.
The police had locked the dining room and the door was still shut. He debated picking the lock and seeing for himself whether there were any traces of powder in the wine glasses, but doubted that the police would have left that kind of evidence sitting around.
Leo really ought to have checked the wine glasses himself last night, between the time Marchand died and the arrival of the police. But at the time he had been more concerned with James. The police, after all, could be relied on to put liquids in little vials and test for common substances. There was nothing to be lost by letting them do their job—no national secrets would be compromised and James wouldn’t be put in danger.
The realization that his list of priorities began and ended with national secrets and James Sommers, and probably not even in that order, didn’t come as a surprise.
The kitchen was empty but the kettle was warm. Martha, he supposed, must have made herself some tea already. He put the kettle back on the hob and set about making himself a cup; he’d wait to make James’s until a bit later so it didn’t get cold. He didn’t bother scrounging for sugar or milk and instead took his cup of black tea outside.
