Page 28 of The Missing Page
The shuttered expression was back in force. “That I did. I have better things to do, don’t I.”
“Sensible,” he said, although he wondered what might motivate a person to pass up a possible legacy. “No sense borrowing trouble. To be honest, I’m rather worried that this is going to drag up some sordid old stories and cause trouble for people who don’t want to be mixed up in it at all, Dr. Sommers included.”
She gave a slight nod, so small that she might not have even known she was doing it.
“And he’s not the only one who’s been dragged into it,” Leo went on. He was about to take a gamble. If Madame Fournier really was Gladys Button—and that GB sewn into Madame’s luggage was enough for him to bet on—and if after twenty years she was close enough with the former cook at Blackthorn to meet for tea, then maybe Mrs. Mudge had a soft spot for the maid who had run away all those years ago. “There’s a housemaid whose name keeps coming up. Gladys Button.”
“She wasn’t a housemaid,” Mrs. Mudge said immediately, as Leo had hoped she would. “She was a lady’s maid.”
“Ah, I see,” Leo said. And that was important, wasn’t it? Reformed thief Gladys Button had been elevated to the heights of lady’s maid and then dropped into a household of servants who must have been all too willing to turn up their noses at an upstart. She must have been dreadfully unhappy. Small wonder she had run away, with or without the enticement of a handsome chauffeur, and it occurred to Leo that the maid’s disappearance might have nothing to do with Rose Bellamy. If another servant had taken Gladys under their wing, that might be the sort of connection both of them would remember twenty years later.
“Alfie!” Mrs. Mudge called to an aproned young man who was rearranging a stack of apples. “You’re at the till until I get back.”
She led Leo to a storeroom that was even chillier than the shop. There weren’t any chairs, but Mrs. Mudge sat on an overturned crate and Leo followed suit.
“Gladys didn’t do anything,” Mrs. Mudge said at once. “She was a good girl and not mixed up in any of that sad business, no matter what the papers said, thank you very much. Too biddable by half, mind you, but she was young, and there but for the grace of God. You mustn’t bother her. She went through more than enough back then.”
None of what this woman had said was proof that Madame was indeed Gladys, which was what Leo most wanted to know. “For her to travel all this distance, though, and after so many years,” he said delicately.
“I wouldn’t say that Weymouth is such a great distance away,” Mrs. Mudge said, and Leo had to suppress a triumphant smile. “I wouldn’t have told her about the solicitor’s letter if I knew she meant to nip down for the weekend.”
That was as much confirmation as he needed that Gladys and Madame Fournier were one and the same, and he judged that pressing for clarification would raise Mrs. Mudge’s alarm bells. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask why in heaven’s name Gladys had seen fit to arrive at Blackthorn in disguise, but then remembered what he had overheard of Gladys’s telephone conversation that morning.I told him he had until tonight,she had said. She hadn’t come to collect a legacy that Gladys Button might be due, but rather to conduct some other business altogether.
He let the conversation drift back to where it had been a moment earlier. “It was a pity that her name had to be dragged through the papers,” he said.
“It was a sin and a shame, what with how grateful she was to even be there. The poor child. She acted as if that lot whisked her off the gallows. Mind you, I wouldn’t hire a”—she lowered her voice—“young offender, or whatever they call them these days, but the gentry get their ideas and there’s no reasoning with them, is there, begging your pardon. Well, as I said, I wouldn’t hire somebody like that myself, but Gladys was a good girl and it was only right to give her a chance, however badly it turned out for her. If she ever did anything untoward, and I’m not saying she did, mind you, it was because someone filled her head with nonsense.”
This, Leo gauged, was as close as Mrs. Mudge would come to admitting that she thought Gladys was up to no good—either now or twenty years ago.
“Mrs. Mudge, what do you think happened to Rose?”
“Why, she ran off with the chauffeur, didn’t she?” Mrs. Mudge asked, as if Leo were being especially dense. “They put about that story about the drowning to cover it up. She was—well. I’d say she was no better than she ought to be, but she wasn’t even that good.”
“I see,” Leo said. This was the first he’d heard anything of the sort.
Mrs. Mudge hesitated with the dilemma of someone who has good gossip but doesn’t want to be seen as the sort of person who spreads gossip. “You could ask anyone,” she said, gesturing around as if to encompass the entire village. “The pair of them were shameless, Miss Bellamy and the chauffeur. She was in and out of the lodge at all hours, and the housemaid who collected his washing found Miss Rose’s clothes and even—” she lowered her voice “—her underthings right on the floor, where God or anyone could see them.”
Leo thanked Mrs. Mudge for her help and began the cold walk back to Blackthorn, his head swimming with possibilities.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
James spent the remainder of the afternoon in the drawing room poring over photograph albums. Lilah had returned from Plymouth in a palpably edgy mood but with a brand new electric fire, and now the drawing room was, if not warm, then at least borderline comfortable. Martha sat near the fire, mending a shapeless garment, and Lilah perched by the window, smoking a cigarette. Even Sir Anthony was quiet, reading the newspaper and smoking an endless series of cigarettes at the desk. Camilla was half asleep on the settee. Mr. Trevelyan had arrived that afternoon and was next door in the library. Only Madame Fournier was absent, having declared herself in need of a rest before dinner.
“I was wondering something,” said James, not meeting the eyes of anyone in the room. “Rose turned twenty-one in May of 1927. That’s when she would have inherited Aunt Charlotte’s fortune, wasn’t it?” The Sommers family had been enormously wealthy; very little of his father’s share had made its way to James, his mother having had expensive tastes and a penchant for roulette, but Aunt Charlotte’s inheritance ought to have been more or less intact. “Do any of you know what happened to it?”
He didn’t expect an answer. Leo said that Rose hadn’t been declared dead, so either that money was still sitting around somewhere or someone in this room had figured out a way to get a hold of it.
“Rather crass to declare people dead just to get money,” Camilla murmured sleepily from the sofa. “Father and I were of one mind.”
“Quite right,” agreed Sir Anthony. “Vulgar.”
“Wait. Are you saying she had only just inherited? Only months before she—before whatever happened to her?” Lilah asked. There was a sharpness to her voice that James hadn’t heard before. It seemed to surprise Camilla too, because the older woman was now sitting straight, all traces of sleepiness vanished from her face. She looked at her daughter and something seemed to pass between the two women.
“Well, yes,” said James, slightly surprised. He had assumed that they all knew this. But Lilah could hardly be expected to know the details of Rose’s inheritance if nobody ever spoke of her. “She turned twenty-one that spring. Right after your mother got married.”
“Can we find out whether she cashed it all in? All at once? Would the bank still have those records?” Lilah asked. The question seemed to be addressed to the room, but she was looking at her mother, and her mother was returning the gaze.
“You’d have to ask Mr. Trevelyan,” said Martha. A wrinkle had appeared on her brow. “He’ll be here again for dinner.”
