Page 48 of The Missing Page
It was empty.
Behind them, Carrow burst into laughter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Leo, soaked to the bone, sat in the kitchen, the empty metal box open before him on the table.
“Why would anyone bury an empty box?” he asked. But of course nobody buried empty boxes. Somebody had buried this box when it had something in it, and then someone else had stolen its contents.Thatwas what Gladys had seen.
“I suppose my father took whatever was in it?” asked Lilah.
“I had hoped you hadn’t overheard any of that,” said James.
“There was no love lost between my father and myself,” Lilah said. “And I think you know it. He always did his best to make me feel weak and troublesome, as if I were a disaster waiting to happen.”
Her words crystalized something in Leo’s thoughts. “He told Rose she needed a doctor.” He caught James’s eye. At first, they had thought that perhaps Marchand was advising a troubled and possibly suicidal Rose to see a psychiatrist. Then they had wondered whether he meant she needed to see a doctor to advise her about her pregnancy. But she hadn’t been suicidal, and she hadn’t been pregnant. “Why might that have been?” he asked carefully, because Lilah didn’t know there was any mystery surrounding who may or may not have been pregnant that summer.
“He was always telling people they needed doctors,” Lilah said. “He did it to you yesterday in the drawing room, James.”
James drew in a breath. “Damn it, he did.” He turned to Leo. “He said a lot of nonsense about how I needed to stop practicing medicine and get to an asylum or risk a complete breakdown.”
“He was a bully, but he tricked people into thinking he was concerned and that he knew their minds better than they did,” Lilah said.
“What if he did that to Rose?” Leo asked. “What if she told him something sensitive? Or, more likely, what if he found out.” He kept his gaze fixed on the box as he spoke, knowing that James would understand that they were talking about Rose preferring women, and not wanting to give away too much of their own secrets in front of Lilah.
“And then he told she was unwell,” James said darkly.
“We’re talking about Aunt Rose being a lesbian, yes?” Lilah asked, sounding tired. “You know, I was at dinner yesterday too. I’ve spent twenty years learning to decipher Bellamy subtext.”
“Yes, well,” James said, sounding sheepish. “Would your father have assumed a lesbian needed psychological treatment?”
“What do you think, James,” Lilah sighed. “Of course he would have. And hehas.”
“He told her she needed a doctor,” Leo repeated, only half paying attention to James and Lilah’s conversation. What else might he have said? Was he threatening her or goading her? Was he telling her what would happen if she stayed or trying to make her leave—or trying to insinuate that she ought to do worse?
Leo got to his feet so abruptly the chair started to tip over before James caught it. “I’ve beenblind. Lilah, I need you to speak to your mother.” And then he told Lilah what he needed to know.
Leo thought about what he knew. A series of photographs. A person who knew they were queer, and all the ways a conservative family and a conventional doctor could punish them for that. All the good reasons for which a person might leave everything behind.
Leo knew about secrets. Professionally his life revolved around secrets, but privately it did as well. What he and James were to one another was, and had to be, a secret. There were secrets that destroyed, but there were also secrets that created.
“What time is it?” Leo asked.
“It’s only ten,” James answered.
That gave them two hours before Mr. Trevelyan returned and expected an answer to the question Rupert Bellamy had posed in his will. “I have to speak to Carrow. Will you come?”
James was already on his feet. Before leaving the kitchen, he braced an arm against the closed door and drew Leo to him with a hand at the small of his back. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Not yet,” Leo said, taking a moment to rest his forehead against the solid warmth of James’s shoulder. “I ought to speak to Carrow first.”
“All right,” James said slowly and without protest, smoothing a hand up Leo’s back. “Is Carrow somehow mixed up in this? Don’t tell me he’s the chauffeur.”
Leo let out a short laugh. “I can tell you that I haven’t the faintest idea where that chauffeur went or what became of him.” That was about the only thread of the tangle he hadn’t worked loose, and he hoped Carrow could help him with that as well. Reluctantly, he pulled away.
Leo pushed open the back door and passed through, James following him. It had stopped raining, but it was cold and wet, without a patch of blue in the sky or fleck of green on the ground.
Mrs. Carrow opened the door to them right away.
