James entered the dining room to discover Camilla and Lilah grimly inspecting a box of Farmer’s Glory.
“It simply won’t do,” Camilla pronounced, as if personally aggrieved by this box of cereal.
“There was toast, but it went fast,” Lilah said. “Good morning, James. Where’s your Mr. Page?”
James pulled out a seat for himself. “He’s gone to ring the garage.” In truth, Leo was prowling about somewhere he shouldn’t be. He poured some of the cereal into a bowl and reached for a small pitcher containing milk so skimmed as to be nearly blue.
“It just won’t do,” Camilla repeated. “When I think of the meals Martha used to organize at Blackthorn, it’s hard to believe the same person could put a box of cold cereal on the table and still hold her head up.”
“Rationing, Mother,” Lilah said, in the tone of someone who had waged this battle a number of times and had little hope of being listened to.
“I sometimes have cold cereal for my own breakfast,” James ventured. “Nothing wrong with it.”
“Of course not,” said Camilla magnanimously. She almost certainly had never eaten a single spoonful of oat flakes or wheat flakes or any other kind of flakes in her life. “But this is Blackthorn. And Martha’s been the mistress of Blackthorn since Mother died.”
“You say that as if it’s an official position,” said Lilah, “like Master of the Horse or Warden of the Bedchamber or—”
“But that’s how she treated it, darling. She was always very serious about things being done correctly. She and Rose used to get into tremendous rows when Rose tried to sit down to dinner in grease-stained coveralls, or when Rose wandered about the house with a sandwich in one hand. And now here Martha is serving things in packets, the poor dear. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
It was the word coveralls that did it, or maybe that word combined with the Blackthorn dining room, identical to how it had been in 1927. As clear as if it was happening that moment, he could see Rose leaning against the door frame in a filthy pair of coveralls, carrying a spanner in one hand and eating a tea cake with the other.
“It’s my own home,” Rose said through a mouthful of cake. “I’ll wear whatever I please.”
Martha looked up from where she was arranging a vase of flowers on a table that was set for twenty. “Consider your sister. If people think she was raised in a home with no standards—”
“Camilla’s an heiress. Nobody will care in the least whether she has an eccentric sister. She could have twenty eccentric sisters and people would still be lining up to marry her.”
“But—”
“Let it drop, Martha. It’s my home. Here, at least, I ought to have some peace.”
“Rose—”
“I said let it drop, damn it. If you don’t like it, you can take yourself off elsewhere, can’t you.”
James had been folding napkins, too young for either woman to care whether he overheard their quarrel. Although quarrel seemed to be understating the case: the degree of exasperated ire in Martha’s voice had been jarring, but even more surprising was the venom with which Rose had delivered that last line. Martha hadn’t anywhere else to go, and for Rose to tell her to take herself off was unmistakably cruel.
“That settles it,” said Lilah, getting to her feet and startling James from his reverie. “I’m going to assemble a foraging party and see if I can turn up a grapefruit or a packet of crackers.”
“They quarreled a lot, didn’t they,” James said when he and Camilla were alone. “Rose and Martha, I mean.”
“Like cats and dogs,” Camilla confirmed. “When Martha came to live here, Rose thought herself too old to need looking after. Martha was scandalized by how feral Rose and I had become without a mother, and set about trying to civilize us. So they were rather at cross purposes, you see.”
It was hard to imagine anyone more civil than the woman sitting across the dining table, with her straight back and her crisp consonants. James made an encouraging noise and hoped Camilla continued.
“And then there was the question of How Blackthorn Should Be Run,” said Camilla, pronouncing the phrase in a way that left no doubt as to its capitalization. “Martha wanted everything just so, as befit the house and its master. Whereas Rose simply wanted to ride her horses and muck about under the bonnets of Father’s automobiles. Martha saw to it that there were dinner parties and dances and an endless parade of house parties every summer. Father did love it, of course, playing lord of the manor, but it was Martha’s doing.”
There was more to it than that, James knew. There were only so many reasons why a widower would entertain on a grand scale, and chief among them was marrying off his children. Based on the argument he had just recalled between Martha and Rose, Camilla’s prospects had been at the forefront of Martha’s mind, at least. That conversation must have taken place at least a year before Rose died, because Camilla hadn’t yet married—and he was sure she was already married that last summer.
And yet, Camilla hadn’t made the kind of match that most parents would consider a triumph. At only twenty years old, she had married a doctor over ten years her senior. A psychiatrist, no less, which was the sort of occupation still spoken of in hushed tones and must have only been whispered about twenty years earlier. Anthony Marchand had been a family friend, of sorts, so there was that mitigating factor. And he had gone on to have a distinguished career. But the knighthood and the Harley Street practice had only come after his marriage to Camilla.
James told himself to stop being cynical. It could have been a love match. The fact that there seemed to be no warmth between the couple now didn’t mean they hadn’t been in love twenty years earlier.
“All this entertaining,” James said, dragging his thoughts back to the present. “It all stopped when Rose died?”
Camilla opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated for the briefest moment. “Entirely. Poor Martha,” said Camilla. “I think that’s what puzzles me most about Father’s will.”
“How so?” asked James, failing to follow his cousin’s change in topic.
“He always looked after Martha. He seemed to even enjoy looking after Martha. They got along better than most married couples, and for more years than most, come to that. For him to leave Martha with hardly enough to live on seems so peculiar, in addition to it being rather cruel to force her to relive that summer.”
“She wasn’t even his niece, was she?”
“No, she was a third cousin on the Sommers side. Beatrice Sommers married General Dauntsey, who gambled away all his money and hers as well. Martha was their only child.”
“Where will she go now? If Blackthorn is to become a home for reformed criminals, where is Martha to live?” James asked.
“I daresay she’ll come stay with us in London. Or perhaps she could hire a cottage or a flat.” She spoke these last two suggestions with the uncertainty of someone who could not begin to imagine how one went about hiring cottages or flats.
“Maybe she’ll come up with a solution for Mr. Trevelyan and keep the house for herself,” suggested James.
“Martha? It seems hardly likely that she knows anything.”
James wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or if Camilla had emphasized she, as if to suggest that people other than Martha might be more likely to know what had happened to Rose.
“It seems to me that anyone who cares about Martha’s well-being ought to put their heads together and find a solution to present to Mr. Trevelyan, so she won’t have to leave her home,” James suggested.
“But I don’t really know anything. I already told you so,” said Camilla. With her fingernail, she shoved a stray flake of cereal around the tablecloth. “It never seemed any of my business.” Before James could absorb the idea that Camilla hadn’t thought her sister’s disappearance was any of her business, Camilla shook her head briskly. “Which is to say that it seemed an unsavory sort of business to dwell on,” she said decisively.
Camilla’s gaze strayed to the wall over one end of the table, where hung the Gainsborough painting her father had bequeathed to her. It was a landscape, about three feet across, in which sailboats, enormous cows, and wholesome peasants all somehow converged at a stretch of coastline where the sea was as still and sedate as a bathtub.
“It reminds me of Blackthorn,” Camilla said, producing a pair of spectacles to better view the painting.
It had been a while since James had seen the shore near Blackthorn, but he certainly didn’t remember any cows or peasants or calm waters. In fact, he was pretty sure cows didn’t even look like that. He didn’t remember pastel hues, either—he remembered rocks and waves and Rose daring him to go further. James didn’t see how this gauzy painting could remind anyone of Blackthorn, or, for that matter, anywhere else. “It’s a lovely painting,” was all he felt capable of venturing with a straight face. “Do you recall who was here the day of the, ah, incident? I’m afraid I was too young to remember. You were there, and so was Sir Anthony. I remember you bringing me tea while the policemen poked about downstairs.”
“Tea?” Camilla asked, looking perplexed for the first time that morning.
“I was in my bedroom, and you brought up a tray of tea and biscuits.” James had no idea why he had been in his bedroom. Probably to keep him out of the way of the policemen. He remembered peering out the window at the police inspecting the grounds while eating the biscuits Camilla had brought him.
“Oh goodness,” Camilla said. “You do have a memory.” She looked at him shrewdly. “Perhaps Father knew what he was about, making sure you were a part of this.”