Hither Page

by Cat Sebastian

  Tonsillitis kept James blessedly busy during the next day, and it was nearly midnight when he staggered up the walk to his house. As he approached his front door, a lean silhouette emerged from the shadows.

  “It’s only me.” It was Leo Page. As if there were anyone else who would be lurking on his doorstep.

  “What the hell are you doing skulking about like that?” James demanded.

  “I wasn’t skulking.” He took a step nearer so James could see his face clearly. Page’s dark hair shone almost black in the moonlight. “I was waiting for you. That’s entirely different.”

  “Why the devil didn’t you send a note? People don’t stand about in weather like this. You’ll scare somebody to death. And it’s not healthy. You’re not even wearing a hat,” he added, realizing he sounded like an old lady. Even in the dark, he thought he could see Page’s mouth curling upwards.

  “Maybe you’ll invite me in, then,” he said softly. “For my health.”

  James drew in a sharp breath. There was no mistaking Page’s meaning. James knew it was wiser to decline, safer to proceed alone as usual into his empty house. But he saw Page’s breath clouding faintly in the darkness and wanted to be closer. He had meant to barricade himself safely in the confines of routine and order until his mind settled down. At the moment, though, there was no end in sight—it could mean a lifetime without sex, without companionship, without even close friendship. But he didn’t want to be alone indefinitely. It didn’t seem fair. And wasn’t that laughable—demanding that war wounds do the decent thing and not trouble one overmuch.

  Stepping past Page, he fumbled in his pocket for his latchkey. He felt Page’s eyes on him as he turned the key in the lock and crossed into the darkened foyer. He flicked on the lamp near the door and got a good look at Page’s face, which was white with cold.

  “I’ll start a fire,” he said, taking off his topcoat, “after I put the kettle on.”

  Page turned in the hall, not making any effort to conceal that he was taking stock of his surroundings. James wondered what it looked like through his eyes. The surgery took up half the ground floor, but still, the house was too big for a bachelor; without patients its silence was conspicuous, the air stale and cold. He had bought the house from the old doctor at the same time he bought the practice, acquiring house, furniture, patient list, and receptionist all at once. When he had come back from France, he could think of nothing he wanted more than to return to Wychcomb St. Mary. The doctor’s retirement seemed nothing less than providential. James had stepped wholesale into the role of country doctor with the relief of stepping into a warm towel after a cold bath, but imagining it through Page’s eyes made him feel like a child who had been caught trying on his father’s shoes.

  “I would have thought you’d have a housekeeper and a hot dinner waiting for you,” Page remarked, hanging his hat and coat on pegs behind the door.

  “A village woman comes in every morning to clean out the surgery and twice a week to make a couple of suppers and tidy up downstairs a bit.” James peeled off his own coat and hung it beside Page’s, then put his black bag on the floor beneath. The bag, too, had been the old doctor’s. He stepped into the kitchen, then lit the stove and put the kettle on the hob. “But tonight it’s tinned soup and cold sandwiches.”

  Page shot him a frankly flirtatious glance. “Are you inviting me to stay for supper?”

  James hadn’t thought that far. He glanced at the can of soup that sat beside the hob. He had meant to warm it up and eat it alone at the kitchen table while solving that day’s crossword and listening to the wireless. That was how he spent his evenings when he wasn’t invited out to dinner or called away to a patient. He was dimly aware that he wanted Page to be several hundred miles away—Moscow or Bolivia or wherever people like him plied their trade—but also simultaneously in his bed. The middle ground of sharing a meal with him alone in an empty house seemed dangerously intimate.

  “I’m not sure whether I’m inviting you for supper or trying to treat a hypothermia case,” he said, striving for lightness. “Here, I’ll go lay the fire and you pour the water when it boils. Tea is in the cupboard, cups are in the board by the sink. Can you manage or are your hands numb?”

  Page’s expression was amused. “You do realize I’m no stranger to uncomfortable conditions, don’t you? I didn’t spend my youth snug by the fire.”

  James was struck anew by the fact that he had a spy in his kitchen. He half expected his windows to shatter with an exploding shell, the air to fill with the smell of smoke and death. He ran his hands over the rough surface of the old refectory table, keeping his gaze locked on the faded wallpaper with its cheerful roosters presiding over baskets of improbably grouped flowers and fruits.

  “Neither did you,” Page added. “We both were very busy for a few years there, I daresay, but the war is over now,” he said softly, and James looked over, startled, unsure how Page had known precisely what was in his mind. He supposed spies made it their business to read minds. “You’re safe,” Page went on.

  “It’s not about that,” James said, knowing he sounded petulant. “I’m not worried about my own safety.” And, rationally, he wasn’t. It would just be extremely convenient if his entire brain could get on board with that knowledge. He swallowed. “I was going to get filthy drunk tonight.”

  “Don’t let me stop you. But what were you going to be, ah, drinking about?”

  James debated a convenient falsehood, but more deception was the last thing he needed in his dealings with Leo Page. “I don’t like you being here.”

  A shadow passed across Page’s face. “You aren’t meant to. It’s an ugly business. Sometimes I don’t like it much myself. But it’s necessary. Like cleaning out the chimney.”

  “I don’t mean the...” he gestured vaguely. “Spycraft, or what have you. What I don’t like is what it means. It’s as if the war didn’t end and never will end. How do we go on knowing that people are willing to blow one another up, again and again? Cut one another to bits. Twice in half a century, Page. Are we going to keep doing this?”

  “No,” Page said swiftly, as if he had already thought about this. “Now there are atom bombs. That changes things.”

  James thought he was going to be sick. “That’s not comforting.”

  “It’s not meant to be. Listen, Sommers. War isn’t the worst thing people are capable of. The people I killed in the war—most of them at least—were Nazis. The men you patched up, you did it so they could go out and kill more Nazis. Some things are worth blood and guts.”

  “I know that,” James protested. “But...” How could he explain that sometimes when he shut his eyes, he saw nothing but death, nothing but the piles of gore and flesh that people turned one another into? “My head is a mess.”

  Page stepped closer. “That’s all of us, mate.”

  “No, I assure you that I’m farther gone than most. And I wasn’t even a soldier. All I did was, as you said, stitch people up. What right do I have to—”

  “No.” Page laid a hand on his shoulder. “What you’re not going to do is talk about shell shock or combat fatigue or brain fuckery as if it’s a special treat that you haven’t earned.”

  James huffed out a startled laugh. “I know that. Thank you. I—”

  “Shut up.” Page was very close now, his hand still heavy on James’s shoulder. He smelled of cigarette smoke and hair pomade, second-hand shops and shaving soap. All James needed to do was lean in, angle his head, and they would be kissing. That would earn him some time, a reprieve from the ghosts that lived in his head, the sort of distraction he hadn’t had in too long. But he felt the cold radiating off the man. First things first.

  James went into the parlor to light the fire. He usually relied on the heat from the stove, and then a hot water bottle in his bed, but it was bitterly cold, and Page looked like he needed something more. With shaky hands, James set about lighting the kindling. Damn it. It was only a fire. And he was only light
ing it for the comfort of a man who looked like he could use some. After a few minutes of rearranging twigs and fanning flames, he had the fire going. He sat back on his heels to admire his work.

  Some minutes later, Page appeared in the doorway carrying two cups of tea. He had taken off his coat. “That’s a proper fire. Where did you get firewood?” asked Page from the doorway.

  “It’s from Marston.” James had been saving it, but he wasn’t going to tell Page so.

  “Is that allowed?”

  “A tree fell on Marston’s land, and he gave me some of the firewood when I splinted his broken finger. But if you’d like to report me for black market procurement of firewood, please, by all means, go ahead.”

  Page snorted. “I’ll resist the urge.”

  James took the proffered cup of tea and watched as Page sat beside him on the hearthrug, cross-legged. “How did you know how I take my tea?” he asked after taking a sip. It was black and not very sweet.

  “I noticed at the vicarage and then again at Little Briars.”

  James supposed Page was in the business of noticing things. He frowned. “What did you come here to tell me? What was so urgent that you had to freeze at my door?” He saw in the set of the other man’s jaw what he ought to have known as soon as he saw the man in the dark: he hadn’t come for flirtation. He was here for work. He had learned something.

  Page looked at him over the rim of his cup, his eyes flashing darkly. “I don’t know if I want to spoil things by telling you.”

  “There’s nothing to spoil,” James lied.

  “I’m cold, and I’m tired, and I’d like to pretend that we’re just two men in an empty house, enjoying one other’s company.” Page sipped his tea but didn’t take his eyes off James. “Whatever that means is up to you.”

  There was no room for doubt in Page’s words. James swallowed. “I’ve never been good at pretending.”

  “Ah, but I’m good enough for both of us.” He didn’t move any closer to James. He was dropping that decision in James’s lap.

  James kept his gaze on the fire, focused on the smell and warmth of the wood fire, the worn carpet beneath him. He was in Wychcomb St. Mary, he was safe, there was peace—and there was no such thing as safety or peace. Maybe it was simply that it had been so long since James made a bad decision that he had forgotten what it felt like, or maybe he just wanted to be reminded that bodies could be warm and well and alive. He turned to face Page and cupped his jaw in one hand. Page went still, then raised an eyebrow.

  “Doctor,” Page began.

  “Oh, be quiet,” James said, and closed the gap. He took Page’s face in between his still-cold hands and stroked his thumbs over the man’s cheekbones. Too tenderly for a man this dangerous, too slow for people with no future. Any more time with Page would cut him open and expose all his weaknesses, but for a moment before the hearth, he let himself imagine it was possible. He allowed himself to enjoy the illusion for a moment, then turned his head away.

  “Tell me why you came here tonight,” James said, his heart still pounding, his body asking for more.

  Page sighed, and James didn’t miss the disappointment that flickered across the other man’s face. “I feel this is a conversation best had at a polite distance,” Page said, gracefully getting to his feet and regarding the fire. The flickering light transformed him into a dark, dangerous silhouette. Was it James’s imagination or was Page’s accent different than it had been a few moments ago? James had thought the man had a west country accent, but now his voice had a refined polish. He scrambled onto his own feet with much less grace than Page had managed.

  “So?” James asked.

  “Well, then. I saw Wendy at Wych Hall last night, searching through the bushes. Norris saw her too. She had a torch. I think you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that Wendy Smythe has something to hide, and that it’s not going to stay hidden for long.”

  LEO KNEW WHAT IT LOOKED like when a man was being confronted with a set of facts that made him rethink everything he thought he knew, and now he was watching it happen to Dr. Sommers.

  “Surely she might have had a reason to be there?” the doctor protested, his arms folded across his chest. “She traipses all over the countryside, sometimes on foot, sometimes on that rickety old pushbike. She had just been there earlier that day. Maybe she dropped something.”

  “Could be,” Leo said dubiously.

  “You can’t—are you saying that you think she was returning to the scene of the crime?” Sommers shook his head, plainly dumbfounded. Another man might have been angry, but Sommers looked confused and disappointed—disappointed, Leo realized, in Leo for harboring suspicions of Wendy Smythe.

  Leo took out a cigarette, more because he wanted to look at something other than Sommers coming to grips with the fact that he, Leo, was an evil-minded bastard and this girl Wendy might be even worse. “She was near the french doors leading to Armstrong’s library.”

  “You can’t think—”

  “I’m not sure I do. After all, if Wendy wanted to kill this woman, she could have done it in any number of ways more convenient than waiting for the middle of a dinner party. Their bedrooms were four paces apart from one another.” If Sommers realized this meant Leo had snooped upstairs at Little Briars, he didn’t betray any surprise. “I need your help in finding out what she was doing there. And, Dr. Sommers?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s in my interest that Mildred Hoggett’s death not be the subject of an official investigation. But if Wendy is poking around at the scene of the crime, other people will notice. And then the local authorities will have no choice but to act. I would dearly like to prevent that from happening.” Without paying much attention, he had put on the accent he used to impress people like Colonel Armstrong, as somebody might put on their best coat, and now he felt gauchely overdressed.

  The doctor’s face clouded. Probably he had the honest man’s instinctive distaste for subverting the course of justice. That was a luxury Leo never had. If only honest men knew how many lives had been saved with a bit of criminal conspiracy, they’d think it one of the cardinal virtues. This was probably how butchers felt when someone felt sorry for pigs while halfway through a ham sandwich.

  Speaking of which. “I’ll leave you to your supper, Dr. Sommers.” He could have charmed his way back into the doctor’s good graces. He probably could have gotten the man into bed if he wanted to. But he didn’t need Sommers to like him. He had always been able to take or leave the sort of thing the doctor was offering—a bit of pleasure, that was all. Anything else was for other men. Leo had forgotten that, and Sommers’ reaction was a timely reminder.

  For a moment he thought Sommers would renew his invitation to stay for supper. But then he shook his head as if to dislodge the idea that Leo was somebody he wanted to spend time with. “Good night, Mr. Page. Try to stay warm. Maybe whatever it is you need to do could wait for some sunshine.”

  They both knew this was nonsense. Leo would be spending the next few hours with no company but an electric torch, combing the bushes at Wych Hall for whatever it was Wendy Smythe had been looking for. That wasn’t something that could be done in the daytime. Maybe some of that was visible on his face, or maybe Sommers realized that on his own, because before Leo could say anything, Sommers took his muffler from a peg by the door and looped it around Leo’s neck. The scratch of the wool sent electricity coursing through his nerve endings as much as any caress might.

  “At least try not to freeze to death,” Sommers said. “Even if you are used to it.”

  And so Leo went into the night, wrapped in a wool muffler that smelled of antiseptic soap and slow caresses by a rare wood fire, a reminder of an honest man who still wanted to keep him warm.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning the Griffiths children still had a fever, which was only to be expected. But they seemed properly put out by being confined to bed, which was an excellent sign. James prescribed further res
t. Slightly more concerning was the vicar’s condition.

  “He’s still in bed,” Mary Griffiths said as she led James to the bedroom. “And he has on his silk pajamas. They haven’t made an appearance since he had his appendix out last year.”

  After taking the vicar’s temperature and examining his throat, James frowned. “I’m afraid you’re going to need something more than rest and beef tea.”

  Griffiths groaned. He was shivering with the fever and his eyes were glassy. “Go away, Sommers,” he rasped.

  “No such luck, old boy. You need something to kill the bacteria that are wreaking havoc on your body. You’ve a fever of a hundred and four.”

  “I don’t want your snake oil. Made me sick as a dog last time I had that stuff.”

  That stuff was Prontosil, an antibacterial drug used to treat infections. “Last time you were sick as a dog before you even took the medicine.”

  “It gave me a rash.”

  It never ceased to amaze James how ordinarily rational, clear-thinking men could become superstitious and addle-brained when it came to medicine. The vicar had waited to have his appendix removed until the thing was ready to burst, and even then it had taken some doing for Mary to get him to the hospital.

  “It might have done,” James said, closing his bag, “or it may have been the illness itself that caused the rash. In any event, a rash is better than letting your brain roast inside your skull from fever. I’ll call the chemist and have them send a bottle over.” The children upstairs would do fine without the drugs. But Griffiths was fifty years old and not in the best of health.

  Griffiths grumbled unintelligibly. “If you’re calling the chemist, have them put together a jar of Mary’s nerve tonic. Her bottle went missing.”

  “Nerve tonic?” James repeated. “I’ve never prescribed Mary anything of the sort.”

  “Wasn’t you. She’s had it for years,” the vicar rasped. “She never takes it, but carries it about in her bag like a lucky rabbit’s foot. But the other day she dumped out her bag when she was looking for her spare keys and realized she couldn’t remember the last time she had seen the Veronal.”