When Leo saw Lilah Marchand at the Plymouth library, he wasn’t exactly surprised. Visiting the library for archived copies of old newspapers was a natural step to take when investigating something that had happened twenty years earlier. He was rather more surprised that nobody else had thought of it. Unless, of course, they already knew that newspapers from August 1927 would contain no useful information about Rose Bellamy’s fate.
He watched Lilah talk to the librarian, but they were speaking too quietly for him to overhear. When the librarian disappeared for a moment, then returned with a large volume which she slid across the desk toward Lilah, he casually approached, his hands in his pockets.
“Miss Marchand,” he said, and watched as, for the briefest moment, she startled, then recovered herself so quickly that he might not have noticed if he hadn’t been in the habit of watching for just such a thing. She had smoothed over her surprise awfully quickly, but that was because she was an actress, he reminded himself, not because she had something dangerous to hide. Everyone in this mess was a civilian, at least. Nobody in James’s cursed family seemed to be spies, high-ranking military officials, members of criminal organizations, government operatives, would-be fascists, or literal Nazis. Just a bunch of hapless amateurs. It ought to feel like a holiday.
“It looks like we’ve had the same idea,” he told her, gallantly unburdening her of the heavy volume that the librarian brought her and simultaneously assuring his own access to whatever material she had deemed worth a trip into Plymouth. A glance at the spine confirmed that it was indeed exactly what he was looking for: a bound volume of the local newspaper dating from August 1927. “Shall we find a table to share?”
“I have a suspicion that you won’t hand that book over to me unless I agree.” Her voice held very little of the warmth it had the previous night. “Were you following me?”
“Honestly, no,” Leo said. “I only thought to get some background information on your aunt’s disappearance.”
“And what’s your interest in all this?”
Before answering, he led the way to a table in a corner of the room where their conversation wouldn’t disturb too many other patrons, and held out a chair for her.
“I’m here because James Sommers sewed me up during the war and I’m not going to forget about it anytime soon. If I can help him out with this mess, then I’ll do it.” This was close enough to the truth that he was in the rare position of hoping he looked sufficiently honest while actually being honest. But Lilah seemed satisfied.
He adjusted the volume so that it sat evenly between them. The musty smell of old newsprint and ink was intense, but not unpleasant. He pulled a small notepad and pencil from his coat pocket and watched as Lilah retrieved the same items from the handbag he had rifled through a few hours earlier.
Leo turned to the evening edition from the second of August. “Bellamy Heiress Missing,” he read aloud, the headline in heavy capitals, the black of its ink only slightly faded by time. “Reward for any information leading to her whereabouts.”
Accompanying the article was a photograph of Rose, then one of Blackthorn. In the following days, there were the usual platitudes from various local eminences as well as Rupert Bellamy and Anthony Marchand. Marchand said all the expected things, but at great length, and Leo had the distinct impression that he enjoyed the attention.
Several times the name Stephen Foster was mentioned as a person the police wished to speak to, but who was unavailable due to being hospitalized for an appendectomy. This Mr. Foster was evidently the vicar’s son, and described as a close friend of the Bellamy family, with the strong hint of a romance between him and Rose Bellamy. This was the second time Leo had run across the name Foster in connection with this case, and he made a note of it.
Then came a handful of wildly contradictory stories about the chauffeur, various pieces of unsubstantiated gossip, and a photograph of a Blackthorn maid who was also missing. Leo squinted at the photograph, but it was impossible to make out anything more than a small and colorless young woman with fair hair. There was also a photograph of all the Blackthorn servants, each of them little more than a gray-toned humanoid shape. It was too blurry for him to decide whether any of the figures could be Madame Fournier or either of the Carrows, the three people currently at Blackthorn who could plausibly have been employed there twenty years earlier.
But beneath the photographs, a caption named the missing maid as Gladys Button. She was described as a young woman with an unfortunate past: she had been arrested for pickpocketing, but instead of being sent to prison, she was given to the custody of the Society for the Reformation of Young Delinquents, where she had received training to go into service. The article went on to say that the society had been founded five years earlier and that Anthony Marchand was on the board of governors.
Leo also noticed what was absent from all the newspaper accounts: a list of guests who had been present at Blackthorn. Apart from Sir Anthony, Rupert Bellamy, and Mr. Trevelyan, nobody was mentioned by name. He wondered if Martha had been telling James the truth when she said that nobody else had been present that day.
“When do you suppose this photograph was taken?” Lilah asked, indicating the photograph of the Blackthorn servants that accompanied the newspaper article.
The group of servants was posed outside Blackthorn, in a part of the garden Leo recognized from that morning. The low-lying branches of a fruit were visible, all heavy with flowers. “It’s spring,” Leo said, touching the blossoms in the photographs. “Or early summer, maybe. But it could have been taken the previous year. There might not have been a more recent photograph. Why does it matter?”
“Why are you really here?” Lilah retorted. “And don’t tell me that James is keen on inheriting Blackthorn. I can’t imagine anybody is, other than Martha. I also can’t imagine that James is mean-spirited enough to try to do Martha out of a home.”
And wasn’t that a curious thing to say. It was true that Blackthorn would need to have a boatload of money sunk into it in order to make it comfortable, and Leo didn’t know whether the five thousand pounds in Rupert Bellamy’s estate would allow for that sort of expense after death duties were paid.
“It isn’t only the house that stands to be won,” Leo pointed out. “There’s also the money. Besides, you evidently want it at least a little, unless you research old newspapers for fun.”
“This is my family history.” There was a defensive edge to her words that probably only came through because she was annoyed with him. Why, he wondered again, had Lilah traveled all the way from London?
“It’s James’s family history as well. He hasn’t any other family, you know. And after your aunt disappeared, he was never invited back to Blackthorn. It sounds like nobody ever made an effort to even see him.”
Lilah pressed her lips together. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Why not?”
“Because they prefer to ignore unpleasantness. And having James around might have required them to acknowledge that Aunt Rose had ever existed. Children do ask questions.”
“The world is filled with people who prefer to ignore unpleasantness, but most of them manage to cope when the alternative is being cruel to an orphan they’re actually related to.” And it was cruelty, the way the Marchands and Rupert Bellamy and even Martha Dauntsey had ignored James. “Are they ordinarily cruel people? You know them better than I do. Was your grandfather ordinarily cruel? Your mother?”
She appeared to consider it. “No. I would have said they weren’t. My mother has no spine, though, and will usually go along with whatever my father says.”
The implication, Leo noted, was that her father was in fact cruel.
“But Granddad wasn’t cruel. I don’t know why he never asked James back.” She sighed and turned back to the photograph in the newspaper. “I’m counting seven servants. What odds do you give that none of them knew anything?”
“Slim to none,” Leo said. “One of them had to know. Maybe someone paid them off to keep secret. Maybe someone got them out of the way.” He tapped the photograph of the servants, touching first Gladys Button and then the man who had to be the chauffeur.
Lilah raised her eyebrows. “You think someone killed them?”
“The papers keep saying that they ran off, but nobody is saying where they went. You’d think the police would have tracked them down and asked them questions. Hell, you’d think they’d have arrested the chauffeur just for the sake of having somebody to arrest. It makes me think they either did a very good job of disappearing or somebody got rid of them.”
“Look at this,” Lilah said when they had flipped through a few more pages. “Two days after Rose’s disappearance, the paper ran an obituary of Mr. Foster, citing his cause of death as complications from appendicitis.”
Leo leaned in. “Evidently, his father was vicar of the church near Blackthorn. If you recall, Foster is the name of the vicar mentioned in your grandfather’s will. His death is awfully convenient. The police want to talk to the chauffeur and he disappears. The police want to talk to the vicar’s son and he dies. It makes me wonder if anyone else disappeared or died that summer.”
“Other than Gladys Button.”
“Exactly. Counting Rose, that’s four people who left Blackthorn and never returned.” It was five, Leo realized, if one included James. He hadn’t died or disappeared, but he had been got rid of all the same, and Leo couldn’t help but think that it mattered. “Do you think Martha or your parents know anything?” asked Leo, doubtful that he’d get a useful answer but still curious as to how Lilah would respond.
She tapped her varnished fingernails on the tabletop. There was a curious tension in her frame that hadn’t been there the previous night. “I think they’re all so used to keeping secrets that they hardly know how to go about thinking about the truth, much less telling it.”
“I think they all know something, but that they’ve spent twenty years telling themselves that it’s nothing. They’re used to ignoring inconsistencies or peculiarities. And this lot don’t even talk to one another, so they’ve never had a chance to compare notes.”
Next, they looked at the September newspapers. By September, interest in Rose Bellamy had faded considerably. The police had received dozens of letters from people reporting to have spotted her everywhere from Chicago to Cairo. The paper strongly hinted that rich and eccentric young ladies were liable to run off at the slightest provocation.
It occurred to Leo that he was sitting next to a rich young lady who had herself run away. He read that line aloud and watched Lilah wrinkle her nose.
“Plain misogyny,” she said.
“Can’t argue with that. But you ran away, didn’t you? From school, I believe you said?”
She looked narrowly at him. “Yes. To audition for a role in a film.”
Instead he adopted a gentler tone. “How did your father react when you ran away?”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “He said he had always expected me to do something disgraceful. What’s your point?”
Leo wasn’t quite sure, but this case revolved around people running away, disappearing, not being where they belonged. As always, he wanted to follow every loose thread to the knot at the center, even if it made people uncomfortable. He was about to ask more—had there been trouble at school? Had she wished to upset her parents? How readily had her mother agreed to let her have her way?
But he saw the faintest trace of a resemblance to James in the young woman’s face and lost all interest in making her squirm.