That, of course, had been the other possibility, the one that Leo had favored. There had been no full-length photographs of Martha from the summer of 1927 whatsoever.
“You weren’t here when Rose disappeared,” James said, recalling that Martha had needed to be told of Rose’s disappearance, and that she hadn’t been mentioned in any of the newspaper reports. “Were you already at the hospital?”
“I left Blackthorn in June, when the situation became too obvious to conceal with cardigans and scarves. We all but closed up the house. I planned to come back after the deed was done.”
“Who was the, ah…” James found that there really was a limit to the social gaffes he was willing to make.
But Martha seemed to understand. “Stephen Foster,” she said.
“And he, ah, wouldn’t do the decent thing?” James winced at his phrasing.
Camilla let out a single ha!
“Oh, he would,” said Martha. “But I wouldn’t. We were badly suited. And Rupert needed me here.”
“Did Uncle Rupert know?”
“Of course,” Martha said, sounding surprised. “Everyone knew. Well, everyone in the family, at least. I thought you knew, James. You were here for part of the summer, after all.”
James didn’t know how he could have missed such a thing, but then realized that at age twelve he might not have known the difference between a woman who was becoming a bit portly and a woman who was expecting a baby, especially if she was taking care to conceal her shape. “What did you plan on doing with the baby?”
“Adoption,” Martha said simply.
“Stephen was furious,” Camilla said.
Before James could ask what had happened to result in Camilla and Marchand taking Lilah, the girl herself entered the drawing room, breathless.
“It’s Madame Fournier,” Lilah said. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” James repeated.
“She took her luggage and left,” Lilah explained. “And she must have gone on foot.”
“She might have taken a cab,” James pointed out.
“She can’t have rung for one. I’ve been on the telephone with my agent since dinner,” said Lilah. “And there’s only the one line in the house.”
“Ought we to go after her?” asked James.
“She was free to go whenever she pleased,” Martha said. “We can’t very well chase her down.”
“Awful fishy, though.”
“Everything about her was fishy,” agreed Lilah.
“Indeed,” said Camilla, her brow furrowed as if she were trying to do sums in her head.
Before James could decide whether to tell them that Madame Fournier was Gladys Button, Marchand came to stand behind Lilah in the doorway.
“What’s this about Madame Fournier having left?” he demanded
“Just that. She’s gone,” Lilah answered.
“Good God.” Marchand’s face was red and splotchy and he put a fist to his chest.
Lilah looked at her father, perplexed. “Whatever is the matter?”
“I—where are my pills?”
James got to his feet, operating on instinct alone. “Lie down on the sofa,” he told the older man. “What pills? Digitalis?” he guessed. “Do you know where he keeps them, Lilah? All right, fetch them, will you? Martha, go get Carrow and have him bring the car around.”
Lilah made for the door, but Camilla got to her feet instead, suddenly seeming to sober up. “You won’t know where they are. I’ll get them.”
James arranged Marchand’s hands over his head to improve blood flow. “Anthony, listen. What do you take the digitalis for?”
“My heart,” the older man croaked, and then shut his eyes.
James sighed, and began to suspect that Marchand had prescribed these pills for himself without ever visiting a heart specialist or even a general practitioner. “Yes, but what about your heart? Heart failure? Arrhythmia?”
Marchand made a vague and useless sound of assent. His breaths were coming fast and his forehead was covered in sweat. With a sinking feeling, James realized this probably wasn’t a simple attack of angina.
“Anthony,” James said. “Stay awake.” Marchand made no response and James swore under his breath.
And then there was a firm hand on his shoulder. “Carrow’s bringing the car round and I’ll help you carry Marchand out,” Leo said.
“Thank God. I worried you’d have already left.” James felt the relief he always did in an emergency when there was somebody at hand who he could rely on. “His pulse is erratic,” he said a moment later, examining his wristwatch. “Where in hell is Camilla? Lilah, find your mother and ask what’s taking so long. Leo, go up to my bedroom and bring down my medical bag. You’ve seen it before, you know what it looks like. It’s on top of the wardrobe.”
There would be digitalis in James’s bag; he carried it with him in case he was called to treat heart failure. But if Marchand’s heart symptoms weren’t due to his underlying heart condition and were instead—
He forced himself to think logically. Marchand’s symptoms were typical of a heart attack. The only reason James was doubting this diagnosis was his knowledge that somebody in this house had secrets that might be worth killing over. That, and something he had seen out of the corner of his eye at dinner.
And the fact that Madame Fournier was gone.
And Camilla’s missing Seconal.
Christ, he needed to think straight.
Leo returned, closing the door to the drawing room behind him. “Carrow just pulled up in front of the house. Do you want to give Marchand anything before we get him into the car?”
If Marchand had been poisoned or covertly administered a drug that interfered with his already dodgy heart, the best James could do was administer activated charcoal. He couldn’t administer both charcoal and digitalis, as the charcoal would likely prevent the digitalis from taking effect.
But it felt reckless to the point of madness to treat a man for poisoning when he was in the midst of what nearly all physicians would assume to be a heart attack. James was being paranoid. He was letting his own fears get the better of him.
James rummaged through his bag and removed the bottle of digitalis. Then he paused and took out the vial of activated charcoal. He swore and tossed the charcoal back into the bag.
“Hold his jaw open,” James said, and Leo did so while James shoved a tablet into the back of Marchand’s mouth and then dribbled in some water from a glass that Leo handed him. “Come on,” James pleaded, then swore when Sir Anthony spit some of the water out.
James heard the door open. “His pill case was empty,” said Lady Marchand.
Of bloody course it was. Well, it hardly mattered, as James had given him digitalis anyway, but who knew if the results would have been different if the man had got his medicine sooner. Marchand wasn’t breathing at all now, blast him. “Have Carrow open the back door of the car, will you, Camilla?” That, at least, would get Camilla out of the room and prevent her from watching her husband go from bad to worse.
“Watch what I’m doing,” James said to Leo, and pressed down on Marchand’s chest a couple of times. “Now you do it.” James bent forward and breathed into Marchand’s mouth. The man’s skin was getting cold, damn it all to hell, but James kept working, and Leo didn’t say a word.
Finally, his forehead covered in sweat and his muscles aching, James paused to put his stethoscope to Marchand’s heart. Nothing. He tossed it to the floor.
“Shit,” Leo said.
James, still kneeling, buried his face in his hands. He had lost other patients—Christ, he had stopped counting during the war. And Sir Anthony wasn’t even his patient, just a man who got sick when James happened to be his best bet for staying alive. But there was still the shock of it, the sense that he was supposed to have done better, the wrongness of being there when someone went from being a person to…not.
He felt a hand between his shoulder blades.
“Do you want me to tell Camilla and Lilah?” Leo asked.
James shook his head. “That’s my job. But can you find Martha and let her know that the police will need to be called in, and then tell Carrow that we won’t need the car after all? Christ.”
“The police?” Leo echoed.
“A sudden death. A matter of routine.”
“Maybe so, but that charcoal wasn’t a matter of routine, was it?”
James recalled that Leo had enough experience with field medicine to know what activated charcoal was used for, and that it wasn’t for treating heart attacks.
“The fact that I considered administering charcoal is why I can’t avoid calling the police,” James said.
“I’m so sorry,” Leo started, but James cut him off.
“I can’t think about it now. Damn it.” And with that, James made for the door.