Hither Page

by Cat Sebastian

  “I ought to have brought you to Little Briars,” Leo murmured, his hand still on the hook.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like the idea of you being alone right now.”

  James bristled. “I don’t need nursing. I’m a doctor.”

  “I’ve heard doctors make the worst patients.”

  “And I already told you I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

  “I know that. What I’m saying is that I don’t want to leave you alone, and the ladies at Little Briars would probably do a better job taking care of you than I will.”

  “You’re staying?” James asked, befuddled.

  “We were at Wych Hall half the night and nobody could expect me to wake up poor Agnes at the Rising Sun to let me in at this hour. Besides, your car is the only one in the drive, and I’ll be out of here bright and early, so your reputation will be untarnished.”

  James hadn’t been thinking of his reputation, only of how Leo’s presence would not do anything to soothe his rattled mind. The man James was—no use mincing words—falling for wasn’t even real. It was all battle camouflage. And the last thing on earth James needed was another reminder of war.

  But when Leo led him up the stairs and into the bedroom, James went docilely. He let Leo strip him down to singlet and shorts and lay him in bed. He watched as Leo seemed to deliberate, glancing between the chair by the window and the half empty bed. James, his limbs weak after the events of that night, languidly patted the bed beside him. Finally, Leo kicked off his shoes and climbed into bed. James couldn’t have said whether he moved to Leo or if it was the other way around, but his back was soon against Leo’s chest, one of Leo’s arms tucked snugly around him.

  LEO WAS TOO ACCUSTOMED to waking up in odd places and indeed with surprising companions that he didn’t need more than a few seconds to recall whose bed he was in, whose warm body pressed beside his side. He allowed himself to linger for the space of a few heartbeats, allowed himself to acknowledge that in another lifetime he might have found a way to stay. But in this world, he didn’t have the luxury of long mornings with lovely men. With a sense of grim resignation, he extracted himself from James’s embrace and crept downstairs, where he used the telephone in the surgery to call Templeton’s secretary.

  “Hello, Aunt Laurel, it’s Leo,” he said once his call was put through. Standard practice was to assume the switchboard operators were always listening in, which was why sensitive information was usually delivered in code or by messenger, but they had certain set phrases that got the job done and wouldn’t stand out to eavesdroppers.

  “I hope you’re well,” she said unconvincingly, perhaps explaining why she had a desk job rather than a field assignment.

  “I hate to call so early, but I’m here on work for the Home Office and forgot to pack that book by my bedside.” This meant he needed Templeton to establish his bona fides with all the appropriate bureaucrats.

  “Oh. I’ll get on that,” she said, not bothering to suppress a yawn. “Your uncle’s not happy with you.”

  Leo grit his teeth. “Well, I’m not happy with him, either. You might let him know that—” He broke off. There was only so much he could say on the telephone.

  After disconnecting, he lingered a moment at the receptionist’s desk, fingering the battered wire paper trays that sat on the scarred wooden surface of the desk. He looked out at the small waiting area with its moss green linoleum floors and its walls that had been distempered a slightly paler shade of green. The room couldn’t be mistaken for anything but the surgery of a country doctor, and Leo could see why the very typicality of the place was comforting to James.

  Leo tiptoed upstairs, trying not to wake the doctor. He erased all traces of himself from James’s bedroom and rumpled the sheets in the spare room. Then he neatly made the bed. He was fairly certain that Leo Page, church window enthusiast or Home Office specialist or whatever he was supposed to be, wouldn’t leave an unmade bed.

  “What was the point in rumpling the sheets if you were only going to make the bed?” James asked from the doorway. He looked weary, which stood to reason after having only had four hours of sleep, interrupted by bad dreams. Or, at least, they had seemed pretty damned unpleasant to Leo, who had only had to experience them second-hand. Still, James looked rumpled and adorable, wearing trousers and an old jumper, and something in Leo’s heart gave a demented little leap at the sight of him.

  “There’s a difference between a bed that’s been slept in and then made and a bed that hasn’t been slept in at all. Your cleaner will know that difference.” He deliberately fluffed a pillow.

  “She doesn’t come upstairs.”

  Ah, yes. Leo remembered now. James wanted his house to be a safe place he could have a life with someone. He hadn’t said as much, but it didn’t take a mind as sharp as Leo’s to figure it out. This house only made sense if there were someone to share it with. There was a superfluity of furniture, for one: an extra chair by the fire, too many hooks by the door, a bed too large for one man. Even the wardrobe had all the hangers pushed to one side, as if waiting for another person’s coats and trousers.

  Leo’s clothes weren’t going to find a home in anyone’s wardrobe. It wasn’t possible. Not with his work, his constantly shifting identity, his inability to be honest about the basic details of his life. But Templeton had married. He had heard that there was a Lady Templeton and several small Templetons living in a house in Hampstead Heath. And surely other agents had settled down to some semblance of a regular, civilian life. But most people, presumably, started out with mothers or fathers or siblings, so maybe they were in the habit of having people they belonged to, a house they belonged in. He had always counted it a blessing that he didn’t expect to have that kind of life. His work would be so much harder if there were people he cared about. But the truth was that Leo didn’t even know how to begin to build that kind of life in the first place.

  Absently, he shut the wardrobe door. But in doing so, he saw a small trunk wedged behind the wardrobe, where the roof slanted down. It was fastened with a padlock. Leo nudged it with his foot. “Looks like the sort of thing that ought to be marked with an X on a treasure map,” he said.

  “Oh, that,” James said, rubbing the back of his neck. “That’s, er. That’s my arsenal, I suppose.”

  “Your—I beg your pardon?”

  “Cora’s, really. Miss Delacourt. She has a couple of rifles and half a dozen handguns. I’m afraid she’s always been fond of firearms.”

  “Yes, she told me the most shocking story the other day.”

  “Edith was afraid she might be going a bit dotty. She’s long past seventy, you know. And when we were all worried about a German invasion, Cora got into the most disturbing habit of cleaning and loading her weapons every day. She taught Wendy how to shoot. Edith was afraid the two of them would shoot anybody they suspected of being a German soldier parachuting in. So Edith packed up it all up, locked it, and as soon as I came home, she asked me to keep it safe.”

  Leo didn’t know what shocked him more—that fluffy old Cora Delacourt had a small arsenal or whether she had attempted to instruct Wendy, who at the time couldn’t have been more than twelve, how to shoot. Although, during the war, Leo had seen people older than Miss Delacourt and younger than Miss Smythe fighting for the resistance. For that matter, Leo himself hadn’t reached his fifteenth birthday when he started working for Templeton. It was hardly unheard of—

  “Dare I ask what you’re thinking to make you grimace like that?” James regarded him quizzically. “Better stop before your face freezes that way.”

  Leo attempted a neutral expression and stepped forward. He brushed a bit of lint off the front of James’s jumper, letting his hand linger over the beating heart below. James placed his hand on Leo’s, holding it in place. “Good morning,” Leo said, feeling stupidly shy as he looked at the other man’s open expression.

  James’s mouth quirked up. “Good morning,” he repeated.<
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  “Look, I’m going to spoil things by asking about the murders.”

  James stiffened, almost imperceptibly, but he didn’t step away and didn’t take his hand away from Leo’s. “Go ahead.”

  Leo leaned in, resting his forehead against James’s shoulder. He breathed in the scent of wool and hard soap. “What were you going to tell me about last night? You said there was something you ought to tell me.”

  “Two days a week I’m attending physician at a nursing home in Bourton on the Water. Yesterday I saw Edward Norris visiting a patient who is more or less catatonic.” Leo listened as James relayed what he had seen and heard in Dempsey’s room. “What I don’t understand,” James concluded, “is why he’d use a false name.”

  “Norris deserted.” Leo spoke the words into the bristly underside of James’s jaw. This was the first time he had ever seen the man unshaved. “During the Tunisia Campaign. He spent time in one of our more ghastly military prisons and then was sent to Normandy.”

  “And then, after all that, dubious war record and all, went to work for a colonel? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Armstrong wasn’t even his commanding officer. There was no connection between the two men before Norris came here, as far as I can tell.”

  “There’s one other thing. Mary Griffiths’ Veronal went missing from her handbag.”

  “Does she remember when?”

  “Unfortunately not. And she truly does leave that bag everywhere. Wendy has to fetch it for her at least once a week.”

  Leo suppressed a groan. He was starting to get a pretty clear picture of at least part of this case. “All right,” he said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going up to Wych Hall to sit in on the police interviews. They’re going to want to ask Marston whether he saw or heard anything, so you might want to give him a heads up.” He felt James nod.

  “I’ll stop by Marston’s cottage after I see my morning patients.”

  “I admire you, you know,” Leo said.

  “What?” James asked, startled.

  “I know this is hard. And you’d be well within your rights to bar the door and refuse to have anything to do with me. Hell, if I were any kind of friend that’s what I’d insist you do, but instead here I am asking you to cooperate.”

  James pulled back far enough to look Leo in the eye. “Will I see you later?”

  “You might not want to.” Leo swallowed. “Things are about to get a bit dicey.”

  James took Leo’s chin and stopped him from looking away. “I’m not an idiot,” he said softly. “I know that. I also know it has nothing to do with you other than that you happen to be here.” Before Leo could protest that this wasn’t exactly true, James leaned close. “May I?”

  Leo didn’t think anyone had ever asked his permission to kiss him, and for a moment he savored the novelty of being treated like something worthy of care. “Please,” he whispered, and James brushed his lips over Leo’s own. It was just a small thing, barely a kiss at all, but it sent shivers along Leo’s skin. He wanted more—no surprise there—but there wasn’t time and, moreover, he didn’t want to go to bed with James under anything like false pretenses.

  “My God,” Leo said, “when are we going to get a chance to do this properly?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Leo, for the first time in his life, wished he could say the same.

  Chapter 12

  After his morning surgery, James went to the vicarage to check on his patients. He had expected to find the house mostly quiet, with its four inhabitants in various stages of illness. But when he let himself into the parlor, he realized he had walked into an impromptu meeting of the Women’s Institute, convened on an emergency basis to discuss the murders.

  “There’s a madman on the loose,” said a middle-aged woman James recognized as the grocer’s wife.

  “Nonsense, Louise,” said Edith Pickering. “A loose madman—” she snorted in derision at the idea “—wouldn’t only murder people at Wych Hall. One assumes he’d cast a wider net.”

  “Richard says it’s proof positive somebody was after Colonel Armstrong all along. Poor Mrs. Hoggett’s death must have been meant for the colonel,” said a third woman, who was holding an infant.

  “How does a person push a woman down a flight of stairs when he means to murder a grown man?” asked Edith in evident skepticism. “Rubbish.”

  “What I mean is the drugs,” said the third woman. “Perhaps they were meant for the colonel.”

  “But then why the stairs?” asked the grocer’s wife.

  “Maybe she wasn’t pushed. Maybe she was given the drugs and then fell.”

  “Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe the colonel was killed because he knew something about who killed Mildred,” Mary Griffiths croaked from the sofa where she huddled pitifully, a shawl haphazardly settled around her shoulders. She had spots of color on her cheeks and was plainly trying her best not to fall asleep despite the chatter of women and the clink of teacups.

  Everyone fell silent as they turned that idea over in their minds, giving James an opportunity to get a word in edgewise.

  “You all need to leave right this minute, especially you, Mrs. Talbot,” he said firmly, indicating the woman holding the infant. “The vicar is ill, and if you have eyes in your head, you’ll see that Mrs. Griffiths is ill as well. At this rate, the entire damned village is going to have tonsillitis for Christmas.”

  “Language, James,” admonished Edith Pickering.

  “Out,” he repeated. “The lot of you. And you,” he said to Mary, after all the women but Edith had left, “get in bed. I don’t want to see you on your feet for the next forty-eight hours.” He checked her throat—bright red with the telltale white patches of streptococcus, damn it—took her temperature, and sent her to rest in the spare room where she and her husband wouldn’t disturb—or, god forbid, reinfect—one another.

  After the vicar’s wife shuffled upstairs, James turned to Edith. “How is Wendy?” he asked. “She seemed poorly yesterday.”

  “I daresay she’s fallen ill as well.” She sighed. “She fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, and she woke up so late this morning the chickens were quite beside themselves. Cora’s sitting with her now.”

  “Which means Cora will get sick. And so will you.” Damn it. “I’ll need to get someone in to nurse the Griffiths.”

  “Well, if I’m going to get sick anyway, I might as well take care of Mary,” Edith said, as if daring James to contradict her.

  Resigned, he gave her basic instructions and climbed the stairs to see the vicar. “Griffiths,” he said, knocking on the door. There was no answer, so he turned the knob and stepped inside. The vicar was asleep, which was good. Approaching the bed, he touched the vicar’s forehead. It was feverish, but not worryingly so.

  “Sommers,” the vicar croaked.

  “Any new symptoms?” James asked.

  “Not any worse.” He made an effort to sit up in bed and James shoved a pillow behind him. “How are Mary and the children?”

  “I heard the children making a racket upstairs, so I daresay they’ve made a full recovery. Mary’s resting. It’s you I’m here to see.”

  The vicar waved away James’ concern. “How are you, James? Two deaths, both violent. That can’t have been easy for you.”

  James felt himself flinch from the kindness. “I’ll live.”

  Griffiths frowned. “I suppose that with Armstrong dead there’s no question but that there’s a murderer about. I didn’t think, but—” He shook his head. “The police asked me if I noticed anything unusual at that dinner party. I told them that I didn’t.”

  James felt his heart give an extra thud. “And was that the truth?”

  “It was. Everything was precisely as it ought to have been. The colonel was droning on about Dieppe to the extent that I thought Cora Delacourt would fall asleep. The secretary attempted to flirt with my wife, which is to
say it was a day ending with Y,” Griffiths said with total unconcern. “I sat next to Wendy, who had a lot to say about vegetable marrows or turnips or what have you, which left me at loose ends to watch everyone else. I saw Mrs. Hoggett take dishes from the maid to bring to the kitchen, and it was all business as usual. I even saw her drinking from that flask of hers. Nothing in the least unusual.”

  James agreed—it all sounded perfectly typical of a gathering in Wychcomb St. Mary. “But then why do you seem troubled,” he asked the vicar.

  “Because there have been two deaths, and that means I’ve missed an evil element right on my doorstep. Either my powers of observation are lamentably poor, or this evil element is so ingrained into the fabric of our lives here that it’s become invisible to me. And, James, I don’t know which is worse.”

  THE WYCH HALL STAFF gave their statements in a small parlor the police had taken over, the room bright with the sunlight reflecting off the fresh snow outside. Superintendent Copley of the Worcestershire Constabulary was about forty, a smallish man with salt and pepper hair and a mustache. He seemed thorough and competent. Leo hadn’t decided yet whether he was relieved or dismayed to find he wasn’t dealing with a bumbling rustic policeman.

  The gardener claimed to have seen nothing amiss yesterday. Indeed, Leo had seen him in the taproom of the Rising Sun, about three pints in at around the time Armstrong was being murdered. Sally Bright continued her impression of a flustered and terrified girl. “Is there a madman?” she asked, eyes round with fear. Laying it on a bit thick, Leo thought, but neither the superintendent nor his sergeant seemed to notice. She explained that she had gone to bring the colonel his customary brandy and had found him dead.

  The housekeeper entered the room with an air of outraged sensibility. “Aren't you the man who was writing about the church windows?” Mrs. Clemens asked, ignoring the superintendent and turning instead to Leo.