“You could say that.” I reached for the manila envelope.
* * *
Because of her previous experiences, Emma took the story of Reginald and the journal in stride. She was far more intrigued by my mother’s account of Dimity’s collapse.
“That’s a new one on me,” she said. “Dimity never breathed a word about it to us, and if anyone in Finch knew of it, I’m sure we would have heard by now. As for the location of the clearing… I think I may be able to help you there. I discovered orienteering when I moved to England. It’s taught me the value of recognizing landmarks.” She noticed my blank expression and explained, “It’s a kind of cross-country race, using a map and compass.”
“Is that what Derek meant when he said you were always off roaming the countryside?” I asked.
“I’m afraid my husband doesn’t share my enthusiasm for the sport,” she replied. “But Peter and Nell and I belong to a club in Bath. It frequently holds meets in this area.” She pointed to one of the distant hills in the photograph. “It’s hard to say for sure—places like this change so much over the years—but I think… I think that’s the ridge Peter fell from last summer. No damage done, but it took a while to get him back up to the top. We came in last that day. Let me get some of my maps and—”
“Will this do?” I offered her the topographic map.
“Oh, yes, that will do nicely,” said Emma. “Now, let me see….” Her eyes darted back and forth from the photo to the map, as her finger moved along the curving lines. “They have contests like this in the orienteering magazines,” she commented. “I must say that I never expected to…” Her finger stopped. “I think… yes, that has to be it. I should have recognized it right away. It’s much steeper and more heavily wooded than most of the hills around here. It’s called Pouter’s Hill.”
“It’s right behind the cottage?”
“It’s part of the estate,” Emma explained. “I’ve never been up there myself, but it’s the correct orientation to give you this view of those hills.”
“Is that a path?” I asked, touching a broken line that ran up the hill.
“Yes,” said Emma. “It starts on the other side of the brook out back.” She pointed. “Here. From the way it’s marked I’d say that it was pretty rough going. I wouldn’t try it today if I were you.”
“Just knowing where it is is enough for now.” I started as a cold nose nudged my hand. Ham had come to claim a reward for his good behavior and he’d certainly earned it, curled patiently on his blanket while the humans had chattered endlessly. “Hello, you sweet thing.” I scratched behind his ears and glanced at Emma for permission to give him a treat from the table.
She shrugged. “Why should you be any different?” Ham approved of my oatmeal cookies, too, and wolfed down three of them before Emma called a halt. “Would you like to have a look round the place?” she offered.
By then I was glad of a chance to stretch my legs, and Ham was more than ready for a romp. He frisked at our heels as Emma took me from room to room. “The house was badly run-down when we bought it—a handyman’s dream, as we say in the States, and therefore an ideal home for Derek. We’ve battled dry rot and mildew, but our worst enemy has been our predecessors’ bad taste. Please don’t ask me to describe the wallpaper we found in the parlor. It took us a whole summer to get rid of it.”
The parlor walls were now plain whitewashed plaster, but the furnishings were eccentric, to put it mildly. The television sat atop an antique and worm-eaten altar, and the coffee table was an intricately carved wooden door overlaid with glass. A pair of elegant Louis XIV chairs faced a plain-as-dirt horsehair sofa, and a Chinese black-lacquered desk held a Victorian globe lamp, a brass pig, and a human skull. “Derek comes home with all sorts of things,” Emma explained, “and we thought that the family room should be furnished by the family.” She pointed to the television. “That’s Derek’s little joke, and the chairs were Nell’s idea. I don’t know who brought the skull in here, but Peter chose the desk.”
The parlor reflected an active family life. It was littered with books and magazines, a forgotten shoe peeked out from under the couch, and a bowl half-filled with cherry pits graced a marquetry chest beneath the windows. When I saw the chest, I realized that I had forgotten to ask Emma about the missing photo album. When I put the question to her, she nodded thoughtfully.
“Nell was working on a project for school last spring, something about the role of women in the Second World War. Dimity loaned her some pictures for it, but I thought she’d returned them.” She glanced toward the hall. “But let’s make sure.” With Ham galloping ahead, we went upstairs to what I thought was a second-floor bedroom. When I hesitated, Emma said reassuringly, “We’re not about to invade my daughter’s inner sanctum. This is the children’s study.”
In marked contrast to the parlor, the study was sparely furnished and orderly, with heavy-laden bookshelves, filing cabinets, and a pair of desks facing opposite walls. “I’m happy to say that the children take their schoolwork very seriously. They may make a shambles of the rest of the house, but they’re neat as a pin in here. Nell’s half is on the left.” Emma scanned the bookshelves on that side of the room while I went through the drawers in her daughter’s desk. Five minutes later, Emma came up trumps.
“Is this it?” She handed me a brown leather photograph album labeled 1939-1944.
Too excited to speak, I nodded, then opened the album on Nell’s desk and flipped rapidly through it. There were three or four pictures on each page, all of them affixed with black paste-on paper corners. Dimity had written brief captions beneath each of them: names, dates, places. I turned past pictures of Dimity posed alone or with groups of other women in military uniform, catching my breath when my mother’s young face appeared in the crowd, until I came to the end.
“Damn,” I muttered, “there’s nothing missing.”
“What do you mean?”
“If the photograph from Pouter’s Hill came from this album, there’d be an empty space somewhere. But there isn’t.”
“Oh, I see.” Emma half sat on the edge of the desk, her arms folded. “What a shame.”
“No, wait. Maybe I’m just jumping the gun again.” Sitting in Nell’s chair, I switched on her desk lamp, reopened the album, and began going through it slowly, spreading it flat at every page. “I used to work with rare books, and one of the things I had to check for was vandalism—theft, really. There’s a big market for old woodcuts and engravings.”
“Like those framed botanical illustrations you see in antique stores?” Emma asked.
“Right. Some come from books that are too far gone to salvage, but some…” I turned the fifth page, spread it flat, and stopped. “Some are razored out of perfectly sound volumes. Like this.” Emma bent low for a closer look as I thumbed a series of quarter-inch stubs, all that remained of twelve black pages.
“You don’t think—” I began, but Emma shook her head decisively.
“Not Nell. Not in a million years.”
I sighed, closed the album, and brought it back downstairs to the kitchen, where Reginald eyed me sympathetically and Emma looked once more at the photograph of the old oak tree.
“There’s still hope,” I said wistfully. “Maybe Bill’s father will find the missing pages.”
“I wonder who could have given this to your mother,” Emma mused. “The couple we bought this place from passed away several years ago, and I don’t know of any other… May I read your mother’s description?”
I had told her about it earlier. Now I dug out the letter and handed it to her. She read it intently.