As he made his way toward the drawing room, James encountered detail after familiar detail. The carpet at the top of the stairs; the painting of a rather mangy-looking dog hanging opposite his bedroom door; the wallpaper with a pattern that looked peculiarly like faces. He hadn’t thought about any of these things for years, but evidently Blackthorn existed in a corner of his mind, intact and undisturbed, sealed tight with a layer of dust, even though he hadn’t thought about it in decades.
He supposed it could have felt like a homecoming of sorts, but instead, each remembered detail made James feel vaguely queasy—which, in turn, made him feel oddly guilty and ungrateful, as if he were still the orphaned child here on sufferance.
Even before pushing open the heavy door, James heard the crisp tones of a cut-glass accent emanating from inside the drawing room.
“Not a fire lit in the whole house,” the woman said, her voice a drawl that split the difference between amusement and irritation. “And I forgot, if you can credit it, Lilah darling, that your grandfather never put in central heating. We always come in summer, of course, and one doesn’t think to ask. Why on earth Martha didn’t put her foot down, I cannot imagine. We all know what Father was, but you’d think that with him gone she’d at the very least light a fire.”
James hesitated on the threshold, his hand poised to open the door, but not quite ready to enter. That voice. It was his cousin Camilla, of course: Lady Marchand, Uncle Rupert’s only surviving daughter. It could hardly be anybody else. They had run into one another in London a few times before the war—once at the theater, once when James was taking a girl out to dinner, back when he still was trying to convince himself that he wanted to do that sort of thing. What James remembered most from these meetings was Camilla’s rich attire and the general air of money that seemed to follow her around like a cloud. She always seemed vaguely surprised to discover that James still existed, despite having spent every summer with him until he was twelve and then sending him a handful of birthday cards when he was still at school, sometimes with a crisp five-pound note folded inside.
James opened the door in time to hear a much quieter female voice respond.
“I daresay Aunt Martha is used to being uncomfortable, Mother,” said a slim, platinum-haired woman who sat straight-backed on the sofa. “She’s spent thirty years at Blackthorn, which is long enough to accustom one to all manner of inconvenience.”
“You only say that because you don’t remember what Blackthorn used to be. Poor Martha,” sighed Camilla. James hadn’t remembered her as being particularly striking as a young woman—compared to Rose, everyone else seemed faded and unremarkable. But whatever had been the case twenty years ago, in her early forties, Camilla was very handsome. Her dark hair was fashionably dressed beneath a smart black hat. She wore a tailored gray dress and matching cardigan that suggested, rather than announced, mourning. The girl on the sofa must then be her daughter, Lilian. He had never met her, as she had not yet arrived on the scene that final summer he spent at Blackthorn. That meant she must now be at most twenty.
James deployed his warmest smile, the one he used for stubborn patients and ornery nurses. “Hullo,” he said, awkwardly hovering in the doorway and rather wishing Martha were there to smooth over the introductions. How was one meant to introduce oneself to one’s own relations? “I don’t suppose you remember me.” He regretted the words immediately—it was as if being at Blackthorn had transformed him back into into the shy and diffident child he had once been, a boy used to being shuffled among aunts and uncles during school holidays, forever on his best manners.
But Camilla turned to face James, turning on him a pair of bright blue eyes only slightly obscured by gold-rimmed spectacles. “Of course I remember you, James. Don’t be absurd. You’re the very image of your father.”
James sucked in a breath. He was used to people sidestepping the issue of his father.
“Camilla,” murmured a man in a tone of unmistakable reproach.
James turned to see Sir Anthony Marchand rise to his feet. He was at least ten years older than his wife, with thick gray hair and piercing blue eyes. Sir Anthony had risen to prominence as a Harley Street psychiatrist, although James still remembered when he had been referred to in hushed tones as a nerve specialist. Before marrying Camilla, he had attended James’s own father in the private asylum where Theodore Sommers had been sent after the war. As a child, James had never warmed to him, possibly because of associations with his father’s absence, or simply because Marchand had only rarely joined in sailing and swimming and playing tennis.
But as an adult, and as a physician himself, he knew that Sir Anthony Marchand was considered the best, and when James, in a fit of desperation after his own war, needed help, he had sought out Marchand.
James preferred not to think about that appointment.
“One can hardly escape noticing the likeness,” said Camilla, whose gaze hadn’t left James since he entered the room.
“No need to mention such things,” Sir Anthony said to his wife, his voice pitched low enough that James might almost believe he wasn’t meant to hear, but then the older man glanced apologetically at James.
Camilla removed her glasses and slid them into her handbag, and James repressed a sigh. Sir Anthony, like so many people, believed that it was better to pretend that James’s father had never existed. Perhaps he believed that suicide shouldn’t be alluded to in a civilized drawing room, or perhaps he believed that James would go to pieces at the slightest provocation. Or maybe he just didn’t like being reminded of a patient he had lost.
He hadn’t had any such scruples two years earlier, when James visited him at his plush Harley Street office. Then Sir Anthony had employed phrases like unfortunate family history of mental imbalance and best to err on the side of caution and it’s quite a nice sort of place, more like a spa than a hospital.
James mustered up all his cordiality and shook hands with the older man. “Good to see you, Sir Anthony.”
“You look well,” the older man responded, grasping James’s hand firmly.
“Mother,” said the girl on the sofa. “Do keep your spectacles on. You’re missing the ashtray by a yard.”
Only then did James turn his attention away from Sir Anthony to the young woman. She had fine features and white-blond hair so fair as to be nearly silver and wore a dark blue tailor-made. He had the distinct impression that he had met her before. “You must be my cousin Lilian.”
She seemed to notice James’s confusion and laughed, a broad smile transforming her face from an almost pre-Raphaelite languor to a vivaciousness that made James smile automatically in return. “You probably know me as Lilah Fairchild. Do call me Lilah. Everybody does.”
It took James a moment to make sense of her words and understand that he was shaking the hand of an actress he had seen on stage and screen. “I saw you last month in Twelfth Night,” James said, feeling faintly starstruck. He and Leo had taken the train into London for a matinee. “It was splendid, not that you need me to tell you so. I had no idea you were Camilla’s daughter.” Obviously, he had not recognized her stage name, nor had he detected any family likeness, since Lilah’s fairylike beauty was so unlike the robust, dark handsomeness of the Bellamys. He’d have thought she got her looks from her father’s side, but one glance at the strong features and solid frame of Sir Anthony was enough to dispel that notion.
“We keep the family connection quiet,” Lilah said, her gaze darting to where her father stood nearby.
Before James could figure out what that meant, Sir Anthony interrupted.
“You still have that little practice of yours?” he asked James.
“Yes,” James said, forcing politeness. The man spoke as if James’s medical practice was an embarrassing hobby. Being a village doctor might not have been what James once thought he’d do with his life, but it was satisfying and it was a chance to do some good in the world. He said none of this. “I do.”
“Hmm,” Sir Anthony said, as if examining a troubling rash.
The door swung open again and Martha entered, visibly flustered and carrying a tray of tea things. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Stop talking like you’re a housemaid, Martha,” Camilla said, lighting another cigarette and making no effort to take the tray from Martha’s arms. “You’re not here to serve us.”
Martha made a sound that sounded to James’s ears like disbelief. “Well, here’s tea, such as it is. Oh, thank you, Jamie, just put it on the coffee table.”
“I’ll warn you, James,” Camilla said. “It’ll be stale scones and a packet of digestive biscuits. Mrs. Carrow is a very good cook, but her arrangement is that she only does dinner. These days one can’t really set one’s own terms with the help, can one?”
“I suppose not,” James said. He had been more or less fending for himself since his cleaner was murdered the previous autumn, but that had more to do with his reluctance to have anyone poking around his house and discovering that Leo didn’t sleep in the spare room than it did any difficulty in finding suitable help.
“One takes what one can get. Martha, darling, what are you going to do now?” Camilla asked. “You can’t mean to stay on at Blackthorn all alone, can you?”
James watched irritation flash across Martha’s face. This was the familiar and justifiable impatience of the poor when confronted with rich people who can’t bring themselves to understand how everybody else lives. Between the small fortune she’d inherited from her mother and the handsome income her husband no doubt brought in, Camilla Marchand had probably never needed to trouble herself with such questions as whether she would have a roof over her head in a week’s time.
James thought there was something else in Martha’s irritation, something that went beyond pounds and shillings, but he couldn’t quite identify it.
Whatever annoyance Martha felt with her cousin, she swept it away and adopted a neutral tone—indeed, one very much like he’d expect from a housekeeper whose wages depended on her pleasant manner. “Whether I can stay on at Blackthorn depends on who the house goes to.”
“I—oh, I see.” Camilla absently tapped her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, causing ash to scatter all over the tabletop and drift to the carpet. “I had thought—well, never mind what I had thought.”
James assumed that Blackthorn would go to Camilla, as Uncle Rupert’s sole surviving child. And probably Camilla had been under the same impression. Now she had a line between her eyebrows, and an awkward silence fell over the drawing room.
What they all needed was tea, and since nobody had started to pour it out, James decided to take matters into his own hands, distributing cups of dismayingly weak tea.
Lilah drummed her vermilion fingernails on the arm of the sofa. “I suppose that if Granddad meant to keep things simple, he wouldn’t have made a point of this circus.”
“Lillian,” her father said warningly.
“Well, it’s true,” Lilah said, ignoring her father’s tone. She reached for her mother’s cigarette case, helping herself before offering it to James. “If he meant to be reasonable about it, he would at least have told Mother about his plans ages ago. It’s not as if he died suddenly. Poor Granddad was extremely ancient.” She let James light her cigarette. “I dare say none of it’s going to be what we expect.”
As if on cue, a knock sounded at the front door and Martha sprang to her feet. She returned a moment later with a woman so dissimilar from the ladies already gathered in the drawing room as to seem like a specimen from an unrelated species. She wore what appeared to be an old-fashioned tea gown of purple velvet and a great quantity of scarves. Her hair was hennaed to a bright red and she wore no hat. She could have been any age between thirty-five and fifty-five.
“This is Madame Fournier,” Martha said, the name awkward on her tongue in a way that suggested the new arrival was a stranger in the house.
“A pleasure,” said Madame Fournier in thickly accented English.
For an awkward moment, everyone stared at Madame Fournier as if absorbing how out of place she was among the Sevres and Aubussons of the Blackthorn drawing room. Everyone seemed to expect somebody else to take charge. Camilla plainly expected Martha to act as hostess, while Martha expected Camilla to do the same. As for Sir Anthony, he probably thought awkward silences were psychologically edifying.
James flung himself into the breach. “Have some tea, Madame,” he said. “Sugar?”
When James glanced up as he handed Madame her tea, he saw an elderly man standing in the open doorway, carrying a sheaf of papers. He had sparse white hair and a weathered face partly obscured by a pair of thick spectacles. Even at a distance of several yards, James could see that the papers shook in the man’s grip. This had to be the solicitor, Mr. Trevelyan. He was very old, at least eighty; twenty years ago, he would still have seemed very old to a twelve-year-old James.
Martha went to him and relieved him of his papers, then led him to a wingback chair near the fireplace—which, James couldn’t help but think, would have been a kinder gesture if the fireplace had contained an actual fire or even an electric one.
“It’s nearly five,” James heard Martha tell the solicitor, “so the Carrows will come up shortly and then we can start. They’re the couple who live in the lodge and look after Blackthorn,” she added, seemingly for James’s benefit.
“They were mentioned in Rupert’s will, so they ought to be present,” Mr. Trevelyan added.
No sooner had the words been spoken then two more people entered the room, a man and a woman.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Dauntsey,” said the woman, addressing Martha. “Had to get the roast in the oven.” In one hand she clutched what appeared to be a hastily removed apron. She had a soft West Indian accent, and was about thirty, Black, and plump. She was pleasant looking, with an air of competence about her that made James feel optimistic about dinner. The man by her side was a little bit older, with skin that might originally have been fair but was darkened by what looked like a lifetime spent in the sun. He was dressed for the outdoors, including a cap that he didn’t remove. Instead of sitting, they stood by the door—not, James thought, out of deference, but from a reluctance to be any more involved in the proceedings than strictly necessary.
James’s attention was on the Carrows, so he couldn’t have said exactly what happened or who was responsible, but Madame Fournier’s teacup, which a moment before had been safe in her hand, was now shattered on the floor, its contents distributed between the carpet and Sir Anthony’s trouser leg.
“Oh dear,” Martha said, looking around futilely for something to mop up the spill. Sir Anthony dabbed ineffectively at his trouser leg with a pocket handkerchief. James managed to extract the tea towel from the tray without upending the teapot, and handed it to Sir Anthony, who took it without thanks.
A clock then began to chime, loud enough to bring any conversation to a standstill. It was the tall casement clock in the hall, James recalled, able to picture it vividly. It tolled five times, during which the assembled guests mostly avoided looking at one another.
“I won’t take up too much of your time,” Mr. Trevelyan said. His voice was thin and shaky, but it carried across the drawing room. “The late Rupert Bellamy’s will was quite simple.” He took a pair of spectacles from his pocket and balanced them on his nose. “To my wife’s cousin Martha Dauntsey, in recognition of her devotion, I leave two hundred pounds and an annuity of fifty pounds a year.”
James tried not to look as if he were watching Martha for a reaction, but he didn’t see her face register any reaction. Fifty pounds a year was no mean thing, but it was not enough to live on unless Martha were to abide in shabbier circumstances than he could imagine any relation of his—or of any of the Bellamys—willingly inhabiting.
The solicitor continued. “To my daughter, Camilla Marchand, I leave the Gainsborough that hangs in the dining room at Blackthorn.”
Camilla looked like she was about to speak, presumably to ask what was to become of the rest of Blackthorn’s contents as well as the house itself, but Mr. Trevelyan didn’t pause.
“To my wife’s nephew, James Sommers, I leave the photograph of his father on Coronation Day in 1911.”
James hadn’t known such a thing existed. Bequeathing James a photograph of a man who had been so thoroughly erased from the family history seemed at best a mixed blessing. A sick feeling began to gather in the pit of his stomach.
“To Reverend—” Mr. Trevelyan broke off. “We can pass over that bequest, as the legatee is not present.”
He cleared his throat and continued. “To Miriam and Henry Carrow, I leave one hundred pounds in recognition of their service. To anyone who was employed at Blackthorn in 1927, I leave one hundred pounds, if they can provide proof of their identity and employment so as to satisfy the law firm of Trevelyan and Hodges, Plymouth.”
At the mention of 1927, the room, which had already been quiet, went utterly still.
Mr. Trevelyan looked up and peered at his audience over the rims of his spectacles. “That part of the will is straightforward. The next part is also straightforward, but unconventional.” He returned his attention to the paper before him. “The residue of my estate, including the property of Blackthorn as detailed in Appendix A and the contents of the bank accounts and financial assets detailed in Appendix B, I leave to whichever of those named above and present the day this document is read discovers what happened to Rose Bellamy on the first of August, 1927.”
For the space of two heartbeats the room was utterly silent. James saw Martha’s hands gripping the arms of her chair so hard that her knuckles were white. He saw Camilla’s mouth hang open. Sir Anthony’s face darkened to an alarming shade of puce. Even Lilah’s face was grave. From where James sat, he could not see Madame Fournier or the Carrows without turning his head, which he managed to resist doing.
“There’s one final clause. In the event that no satisfactory solution has been presented to Robert Trevelyan or his representatives at the stroke of noon, two days after the reading of this will, the residue of the estate, including Blackthorn and all its contents, is to be held in trust for the Society for the Reformation of Young Delinquents.”
Another silence fell, during which James heard nothing but the ticking of the grandfather clock.