“Tomorrow morning, Hendricks? When you’ve finished the milking, come and see me.”
The man’s face brightened. He pulled on his cap, rubbed his palm against his trousers (which improved the state of neither), thought the better of shaking any aristocratic palms, and tugged his hat instead, wishing us all a happy evening as he retreated.
Holmes, for once, was sidetracked. “What was the significance of the glass?” he enquired.
Marsh very nearly smiled. “When I first started coming in, once they grew accustomed to me, they began to bring me their problems and disputes. Not that I mind—it’s part of what you might call the job—but it looked to dominate my visits here. So I let it be known that if they could catch me before I’d finished my first drink, I’d help them; otherwise they’d have to wait until my mind was clear. It’s become a sort of game between us. They’re considerably more scrupulous about following the rules than I am—I would have gone ahead with whatever is troubling Hendricks, but he’d have been uncomfortable.”
In his life as an itinerant scribe, Mahmoud had observed the Arab rules of hospitality with his clients, although in that land the rituals had centred around coffee rather than alcohol: When coffee ceased to be offered, or accepted, business was concluded. The unlikely parallel amused me; Holmes, however, was back on the scent.
“Does that rule apply to any guests you might bring here? Is our conversation now limited to record bags of grouse and the breeding lines of retrievers?”
Marsh shrugged—and even that was an English shrug, not the eloquent, full-shouldered gesture of Palestine. “I’ve not brought a guest here before. Other than my cousin,” he added, making it clear that Alistair was not guest, but family.
“In that case,” said Holmes, “I should like to ask how your nephew Gabriel was killed.”
The question took me by surprise. I had thought the cause behind Marsh’s tension when he pronounced the words Until my brother’s son Gabriel died was the upheaval that death had inflicted on the family, particularly on Marsh’s own future. Holmes, on the other hand, had traced the tension further back, to the boy’s death itself, and indeed, he seemed to have hit it on the head: The bleak, dying-man look settled back onto Marsh’s face; his right hand crept up to finger the scar on his face, which the sudden clamp of tension had drawn into a sunken gash. He drained his glass, looked around to catch the landlord’s attention, and waited until the next round was on the table. He ignored the beer, picking up the smaller glass and looking into it.
“They said, ‘died in service,’ ” he told us at last, but he had to throw the fiery contents of the small glass down his throat before he could get the rest of it out. “I think he was killed by a firing squad.”
I do not know which of his companions let out the sound, something between pain and disbelief, but it could have been any of the three of us—even Alistair, who must have heard the story before. Alistair squirmed in his chair and dug a pen-knife out of his pocket, eyeing the pile of logs on the hearth, but after a minute, he folded the knife away. Holmes slumped down into the hard chair and prepared to listen, fingers steepled over his waistcoat, eyes half closed and glittering in the firelight like those of an observant snake.
“I only began to suspect it a few weeks ago,” Marsh resumed. “My brother Henry had been ill for a long time before he died, so that I found his affairs in chaos. I have to say, Sidney did his best, but Henry tended to take back certain responsibilities, and then not carry through. There were unpaid feed bills from three years ago, notifications from the builders concerning urgent roof repairs set aside. Last month, among a collection of papers concerning the local hunt, I happened across an envelope with some things belonging to Gabriel. An identity disc, half a dozen field post-cards, a couple of letters addressed to Henry. And the death notifications.”
His fingers started to go back to the scar, then he caught the movement and changed it to run the hand over his face, rasping the stubble with his callused palm. “Have you ever seen an official notification? Of course you have; who hasn’t? Well, in the first years of the war the notifications of executions were apparently blunt to the point of being brutal. And to top matters off, they stopped the family’s pension payments. But after an awful lot of these came through the War Offices, and local councils started having to provide support for the survivors, and questions began to be asked in Parliament, the powers that be began to think it might be considered punishing the innocent, that it might prove more politic to act humanely towards the families left behind. So they disguised the truth and reinstated the war pensions.
“Gabriel’s notification says ‘died in service’ like all the others, but the wording is different, more ambiguous. And the sympathy of the King and Queen is pointedly omitted.”
“That is hardly conclusive,” I objected.
“I think it is. And I think my brother knew. Henry kept a diary, although it’s for the most part simply a list of where the hunt went this day or how many birds were taken on that, with the occasional farm details. But he wrote one entry, in August of the year Gabriel was killed, in which he reflects on the nature of bravery and cowardice. Only a few lines, but it’s as if he was bleeding onto the page. Add to that the fact that he wouldn’t let his wife send out memorials. Sarah wrote to me about that one; she couldn’t understand. She was a gentle thing—ill a lot, but a good mother to the boy. My brother wouldn’t have told her that Gabriel’s death was anything but honourable, for fear of her health. As it was, Sarah died the following winter in the influenza epidemic. Other than Henry, and the four of us sitting here, no-one knows. I suppose Ogilby might suspect the truth; Ogilby knows everything that goes on in the house, but he won’t have breathed a word.”
“But . . . why?” Why would a young aristocrat, so eager that he signed up the very day he turned eighteen, commit a capital offence a year later? Why would a boy of noble birth not have received a lesser sentence? Why would a Hughenfort . . . ?
“I don’t know. I do know he was blown up in February, when a shell hit his trench and buried him in the mud along with half a dozen others. He nearly died before they dug him out, and spent the better part of a month in hospital and on leave. And then as soon as he went back up the line he was in heavy action—even in the desert we knew that the Germans were on the very edge of breaking through, so all hell must have been loose in France. I should suppose the boy’s nerves must have been dicier than anyone imagined, otherwise his commanding officer would have pulled him out.”
Marsh dropped his head into his hands, both elbows on the scarred wooden table. “He wrote a last letter to Henry. ‘Dearest Pater,’ it begins, but it doesn’t say anything of substance, only some memories of summer evenings at the Hall and the hope that he can remain—” Marsh’s voice wavered, then caught. “—remain brave. Ah, sod it all, I wish I’d known the poor little bastard.” He stood up so fast he nearly upended the heavy table and hurled his half-empty glass into the fireplace. “Sorry, I need to . . . ,” he began, and waved in the direction of the public house’s back door. His stride showed little indication of the four measures of strong drink and the pint and a half of ale he’d put away in a short time. The inn went deathly still; when he had passed through the door, I felt the villagers’ resentful eyes settle on us: What had we done to their duke?
When he came back past the bar, the duke stopped to have a word with Franks before resuming his place. More drinks soon joined the collection, although a number of the glasses on the table were nearly full. Before we’d had more than a couple of swallows, however, Marsh got to his feet again, more circumspectly this time.
“We shall miss the dinner gong if we do not leave, and that will make my sister cross. Not that I mind making Phillida cross, but I prefer to choose my fields of battle instead of declaring outright warfare.” As he told us this, his pronunciation deliberate, he took up his overcoat and began to button it on with equally deliberate fingers. We followed his example, and the dogs,
familiar with the sequence of events, rose, shook themselves, stretched with eager yawns, and trotted over to put their noses at the door.
When the cold air outside hit Marsh, he stumbled against Alistair, but recovered immediately. I was glad to see that we were not about to attempt the now completely invisible path through the wall and into the parkland; instead, we turned up the road, which, though equally difficult to see, was identifiable by the surface underfoot and the occasional lighted cottage along its length, and which presented no brambles at our legs.
Marsh began to recount the history of the Franks family—the arrival of the publican’s grandfather during the third Duke’s time, the family’s losses during the War, and an elder son in trade down in London, but I did not listen much, being more interested in keeping my feet on the track and wondering just how late the Hughenfort family took dinner. It would take us at least an hour and a half, even at a brisk pace, to circle the wall and follow the entrance drive, and our pace could hardly be termed brisk.
It would appear, however, that part of the evening’s sequence involved a telephone call from village to Hall, because before we reached the metalled main road, a set of powerful head-lamps approached from the direction of the Justice gates. They turned into our track, caught our figures, and halted. The driver’s door opened; Holmes and I piled into the back, followed by the dogs.
Marsh came last, Alistair’s surreptitious hand on his elbow. He dropped hard into the seat, but before the hand could retreat, he seized it and gripped it hard for a moment before letting go. “Good night, my brother,” he said, and Alistair shut the door.
Marsh closed his eyes, smiled to himself, and muttered something under his breath. I realised with surprise that it had been in Arabic: “Eyes like a cat,” he had murmured. A phrase I had once heard him apply to Ali when we were crossing the desert by night.
With this phrase two things became clear. One, that despite his recent injuries, Alistair would be walking alone to Badger Old Place through the moonless night. And two, that Marsh was very drunk indeed.
He sobered during the drive back to Justice Hall, and went up the steps with straight back and steady pace.
“Have you rung the gong yet, Ogilby?” he asked that gentleman.
“Not yet, Your Grace. Lady Phillida suggested they might wait a while longer.”
“I can’t be bothered changing, Ogilby. And I’m sure my guests are famished. Give us five minutes, and ring.”
I scurried up to my room to rid myself of overcoat and muddy shoes, and was straightening the pins in my hair when a hollow reverberation began to rise through the house. We reached the drawing room before the Darlings, and were thus witness to the astonishment followed by vexed disapproval with which Lady Phillida greeted the sight of her brother, still dressed in mud-spattered tweeds and holding what was clearly not his first drink of the evening. She then glanced at us, saw that we were similarly under-dressed, and her face went polite again.
“We’d have been happy to wait—but it does not matter in the least. In fact, it’s rather fun to be Bohemian; the business of changing is so stuffy, don’t you think?”
Bohemian or not, Sidney Darling stepped forward to present his properly clad black arm for me to go into the dining room upon, leaving the rest to sort themselves out as best they would. He deposited me at Marsh’s right hand.
We were seated at one end of a table that could have accommodated thirty with ease. As it was, a great deal of empty wood stretched out to one side, and only two of the room’s forest of candelabra had been lit for us, a pair of Baroque silver objects that reminded me of the fountain outside, although I could not make out any pelicans in the tangle of figures. A display of plate glinted on a side-table, and the walls glimmered here and there with gilt. Three footmen and Ogilby were on hand to ensure we did not starve, die of thirst, or pull a muscle in reaching for the salt.
I wondered if the family dined in such lonely splendour every night, and on the whole imagined not. There would be a smaller family parlour, or the breakfast room put to dual purpose. I was honoured, if uncomfortable, not only because my two-year-old walking skirt was so severely below the standards of the room, and our dinner companions so out of sorts: The room was also physically chill, without a few dozen warm companions to supplement the fires, and it was probably just as well that I was wearing wool and not silk.
After several false starts, and eschewing both beekeeping and theology as unpromising, we embarked on a conversation concerning Opera. Darling with relief seized on the stage as a point of communication with the guests—or half of them, at any rate, since my passion for warbling sopranos is fairly cool. Holmes, however, admitted to an interest, and so the two men kept the conversational ball in motion, aided by the occasional remark from Lady Phillida or myself.
Marsh drank steadily.
Tenors and librettos, set design and the acoustics of various halls kept the silence at bay, although after ninety minutes of it, Darling was beginning to repeat himself and any real interest was long since exhausted. Lady Phillida and I had a chatty moment over the meat course about fashion, when she asked where my skirt had come from. I was tempted to tell her that Gordon Selfridge’s had a good selection of them on the rack, but instead gave her the truth, and the name of the married couple who made most of my clothes. She raised an eyebrow, but not, it transpired, a disapproving one.
“They’re quite well known,” she told me, as if I might be unaware of this fact.
“Yes, they do beautiful work. And she has an extraordinary eye for fabric.”
“It’s rather surprising,” she said, then hastened to explain. “That they would take you on, I mean. I understand they have quite a long waiting list of clients.”
And I, clearly, was not quite up to snuff. The extraordinary thing was, I reflected, she had not intended an insult. “They were my mother’s tailors,” I told her. “And relatives of hers. Cousins or something.”
I could feel Lady Phillida’s shock from across the table, although she was too well bred to allow it onto her face. That one would admit to blood ties with tailors was perhaps forgivable, but—Jewish tailors? She gaped at me for a moment as if I’d demonstrated an unsavoury habit, and then pulled herself together. Funny, I thought, taking up my fork again, she doesn’t look Jewish.
Oh, this was going to be a long week-end.
In vino veritas, or so it is said. I did not expect to prise a great deal of veritas out of our host while he was in his cups, but it was worth listening to whatever flotsam might wash up from the depths of his ducal mind on the flood of whisky, ale, and claret he was consuming.
Unless he simply passed out on the hearth.
However, he continued to hold his various liquors well, simply becoming ever more taciturn as the meal wound to its close. With such a small gathering, I hoped we might overlook the ritualistic segregation of women and the subsequent reassembly in the drawing room, and to my relief it was so. In fact, Lady Phillida excused herself with a head-ache, and although her husband hesitated, in the end he came down on the side of joining her and leaving us three to finish the evening.
The library was cosy. A pair of decanters stood on a tray with the appropriate glasses for port and brandy. Marsh picked up the nearest decanter, which happened to be the port, splashed some in three of the glasses, and handed us each one without asking if we wanted it. He sank into an armchair and stared into the flames; I thought he had forgotten we were there until he spoke.
“I’ve never been shot, myself,” he informed us, sounding reflective. “Stabbed, yes; cut by a broken bottle, run down by a lorry, beaten, burnt, even trampled by an enraged camel once, but never shot. I wonder how it feels.”
“It doesn’t feel,” I responded. “The body ceases to communicate with the mind; all the person registers is a profound sense of shock. That was my experience, at any rate.”
He took his eyes from the fire. “You? You’ve been shot?”
“With
a pistol. A few weeks after we left you—the same case we came to you to avoid, in fact.”
“Where? Where did he shoot you?”
“It was a she. In my shoulder.” I rested my hand on the fabric over the puckered scar, and was startled when Marsh laughed merrily.
“Never had I met a woman such as you. Do you remember when Ali—”
He froze over the name, and at the intrusion of a life that was over. Then he set about retracing the thread of his thoughts.
“So, being shot resembles a deep stab wound. Not the surface cuts—at those the body screams from violation. The mortal wounds are too terrible for the mind to acknowledge, so it retreats. Interesting. That is encouraging. You see, I find myself wondering sometimes what young Gabriel felt. Knowing it was coming, having to stand upright and proud despite the state of his nerves, waiting for his men—his own men—to raise their rifles and take aim at his chest. What a death, for a boy of eighteen. Poor bloody little bastard.” The picture in his mind had gone far beyond suspicion: He clearly had no doubts concerning his nephew’s fate.
He downed the wine in his glass and went to the tray again. This time his hand fell on the other decanter, and brought back a glass with enough brandy in it to stupefy an elephant. He drank half of it straight down as if it had been water, fingered the scar on his face, and then noticed what he was doing and shifted the glass to his right hand.
“When Alistair and I were boys,” he said, his voice just beginning to slur, “we would meet at a hut old man Bloom the gamekeeper kept in the woods, and listen to his stories. There was one day . . .” Tales of boyhood foolishness carried him along until he had reached his goal of insensibility, until his voice faded and he sat as if he’d been clubbed, far beyond speech, veritable or otherwise. Holmes stubbed out his half-smoked cigar, removed the glass from Marsh’s senseless fingers, and went to fetch Ogilby.
They came back with a muscular young man who looked enough like the morning’s footman to be a brother. Between them, the footman and Ogilby got Marsh upright and supported him out of the library. Holmes and I stood and listened to the muttering, bumping progress of the men.
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