“We ought to get dressed,” James said, making no effort to get out of bed.
“Two more minutes.” Under several blankets and with his head resting on James’s chest, Leo was warm for the first time in what felt like weeks. He had no urge to return to the cold, even though James was right. Someone could knock on their door at any minute and he’d rather not have to scramble to make himself presentable. He reached an arm out from under the covers and blindly groped for the cigarette case on the bedside table. James got there first and a moment later passed him a lit cigarette.
With a groan, Leo sat up and took the cigarette. “Downstairs they’re using a Ming vase as an ashtray but I can’t find so much as a lump of coal in this house,” he complained.
“Perhaps Martha doesn’t have any money? That’s the only explanation I can come up with for the state of things.”
“The lawyer would have released some of the estate funds for housekeeping. That’s standard.” At least Leo thought it was standard among people who had both funds and estates.
“Maybe Martha simply didn’t want to go to any trouble on this gathering? It’s rather hard on her to have to entertain a house full of guests after two decades of being a recluse, only two weeks after her sole companion died.”
“She’s grieving,” Leo mused. “Can we look at those photographs you found?”
They got dressed and neatened up, then sat on the edge of the bed with the album open between them. Leo turned the pages slowly, watching a decade pass before his eyes. There was nothing in the photographs that he hadn’t already guessed, but looking at them gave his mind space to assemble what he knew. When he got to the last page, he shut his eyes and thought.
Camilla and Marchand had apparently tried to make it look like Rose had drowned. At the time of Rose’s death, Camilla and Marchand might have believed they stood to inherit a small fortune from Rose.
Gladys Button, the thief turned lady’s maid, had disappeared at the same time Rose did. Twenty years later, she had traveled to Blackthorn in disguise.
Meanwhile, someone was blackmailing Marchand—or possibly Marchand meant to blackmail someone.
He could arrange those facts into a logical—and ordinary—enough pattern: Gladys knew something about Marchand, possibly the role he played in Rose’s death—and meant to profit off it, but used a disguise so no danger would follow her home. That seemed plausible enough.
But that story, however likely, didn’t account for all the stray bits of oddness that he had gathered over the past day. There was the question of where Rose’s money had gone. There were the circumstances surrounding Lilah’s birth. And what had happened to the chauffeur?
Most infuriating of all was the absence of a body. There would be no satisfying answer to Rose’s fate without a body, living or dead.
“I wonder,” Leo said, closing the final album, “if you could steer conversation to a few topics this evening.”
“I could try.”
“It might involve being terribly rude,” Leo cautioned, and explained to James what he needed to find out.
James listened attentively as Leo counted off the salient points on his fingers. “Don’t try to be sly,” Leo cautioned afterwards. He could give James the tools to do this—his own tricks of the trade but adjusted for James’s personality and comfort. “Just be cheerfully oblivious and plow through any awkwardness. You’d be amazed how many people will just give in when the alternative is looking like they have something to hide. The goal is bluff good humor.”
“You want me to be boorish.”
“Not quite, because nothing you say will be rude on the face of it. You’re asking things that anyone might ask, but utterly failing to notice that the people you’re speaking to are trying to avoid answering.”
James nodded. “I can do that.”
Out of seemingly nowhere, Leo was beset with a wave of—gratitude, maybe? James trusted him. He trusted Leo enough to risk permanently alienating his only family.
And there was also something else, a fierce satisfaction at being allied with James, at facing this with him, together.
“There’s another thing I need you to do,” Leo murmured as they descended the stairs. “I want to look around in the library. Can you watch the door for me?”
“I’ll hoot like an owl if anyone approaches,” James said solemnly.
Leo jabbed him with an elbow. “Just knock on the door like a normal person. I don’t much care if anyone sees me going through your uncle’s papers. We’re supposed to be snooping this weekend, even if nobody seems to remember it. Damn it, you’re all so polite.”
“Disgusting, I know.”
“Rather. It’s just that if I find anything, I don’t want anyone else to follow my lead.”
“Why not? I needn’t remind you that I don’t particularly want to inherit this place, do I?”
Leo rolled his eyes. He knew that. “It’s not that. If there’s a secret worth burying for twenty years, I’d rather people not know it’s been unburied.”
The import of this seemed to register with James. “You’re worried.”
Leo managed to refrain from saying that he didn’t know how not to be worried when James was within ten leagues of even the most theoretical danger. “Just a precaution,” he said, and James shot him a skeptical look.
In the library, Leo made for the drawers that were of a size to contain files. There weren’t many, and Leo judged that the important papers would be at the solicitor’s office in Plymouth. But Leo wasn’t interested in those. Mr. Trevelyan had said that Rupert Bellamy was in the habit of drafting his own wills and simply sending them to the solicitor. In that case, he might still have drafts of the earlier, outdated documents, retained so he could repeat the same phrasing, or simply to keep a record.
The first drawer contained bills—all paid promptly and in full, Leo noticed. There was a ledger in which household expenses were itemized in a precise feminine hand, from the minor (eight shillings sixpence to the butcher, another four shillings for eggs) to the major (eight pounds for a new boiler). As Leo scanned the columns, he saw what he thought might be a pattern. Little was spent on Blackthorn’s upkeep beyond what it would take for two people to live comfortably.
The second drawer contained a checkbook, a stack of banknotes, and little else.
But in the third drawer he found what he was looking for: an entire file holding nothing but Rupert Bellamy’s old wills.
The first one dated from 1929 and left all his assets to be divided evenly three ways among Camilla Marchand, Lilah Marchand, and Martha Dauntsey. It was interesting that Lilah, who at that point was a child of two years old, merited her own share even though her mother was alive. The next will was dated from several years later and said much the same thing but with a handful of annuities for servants and contributions to charity.
The 1940 will left everything to Martha Dauntsey, with an annuity for Lilah Marchand, and several pieces of art for Camilla. The 1942 will appeared to be identical to the 1940 will, but with a flat sum to Lilah rather than an annuity.
Outside the library door, he could hear the sounds of people walking toward the dining room. He’d have to hurry. Once more, he flipped through the various iterations of Rupert Bellamy’s will and finally noticed something. The 1942 will was missing a page. The signature wasn’t there.