Justice Hall mr-6

by Laurie R. King

  “I’m very sorry, Holmes, I should have kept everyone out, but there was just too great a press. Bloom must have had fifty or sixty beaters, and they were all over.”

  “I doubt there’d have been much evidence to begin with. The fallen leaves are too thick to show footprints, there is nothing that would take a fingerprint, and the only threads I could see are rough white cotton. I take it the beaters wore some kind of smock?” he asked, holding up the thread in question.

  “Most of them.”

  “Very well. You say the boy Peter and his father were here?”

  “So the boy said. The other twin, Roger, was a little closer to me.”

  Holmes squatted to examine the ground, tracing boot-marks with his long gloved fingers. He shifted, lowered his head to gain a more extreme angle, and then stood up.

  “And Marsh—if you would take up his position, Russell?”

  I went to the holly clump where the two cousins had fallen, and faced Holmes. He settled his walking-stick into his shoulder and sighted down it to the first stand of mixed evergreen shrubs.

  “The bird breaks,” he said. “One. Two. Bang.”

  As my rough sketch the night before had suggested, he was now facing a point about halfway between the two evergreens. He repeated his motion, only this time faster, continuing until he was aiming at me. “One-two-three-four-five-bang,” he got out, and nearly fell over as his feet corkscrewed around themselves.

  “Unfortunately, Holmes, the bird was over there. In fact,” I said in surprise, “the bird is still over there.”

  We converged on the spot and looked at the twice-shot fowl.

  “Why do you suppose they left this here?” I wondered.

  “Overlooked in the dusk, or perhaps squeamishness. The bird was nearly the death of their duke, after all. However, I think it worth performing a cursory necropsy on the creature. Just to confirm a theory. How are you at plucking birds?”

  I put my hands together behind my back. “It takes me an hour and rips my fingers to bits,” I told him.

  To my surprise, he sat down on a nearby log, removed his gloves, and proceeded to strip the bird of its feathers, with a practiced jerk of the wrist such as I had seen Mrs Hudson perform. In a brief time a cloud of feathers spilt across his boots. I sat down—clear of the feathers—to observe. “Birds in their little nest agree,” he startled me by chanting in a sing-song voice as he tugged at the feathers, “it is a shameful sight, when children of one family, fall out and chide and fight. So, Russell, what see you?”

  Two distinct patches of shot were embedded in the rubbery skin. One followed the upper edge and tip of the right wing; the other, the shot that actually killed it, formed a cluster along the left side of the head and body.

  “The bird could conceivably have got those two injuries at the same time,” I suggested, “if the right wing was up in flight.”

  “Russell, Russell,” he scolded, plopping the disgusting object into my lap and tugging at the half-frozen body until its wings were outstretched. “Which way is the shot on the left side buried?”

  I poked at the clammy skin, and hazarded an opinion that was half guess. “As the bird flew, almost immediately below.”

  “And the right wing?”

  “Harder to tell.” Plucking a bird leaves it looking comprehensively raw.

  “What about this?” His naked finger traced a half-inch welt along the wing that ended at a tiny hole in the body.

  “That came from in front of the bird, level, and at a forty-five-degree angle.”

  “I agree. Two shots, then.” Reaching into a pocket, he pulled out a folding knife and two wadded-up sheets of writing paper. He dug half a dozen small, rough pellets from the bird’s wing, folding them into one sheet, then did the same with those in the body. I looked at the resulting large, smooth shot, and was glad: Peter Gerard had brought down a bird, not a duke. Holmes cleaned his knife on some moss and folded it away, then rose and looked down dubiously at the mutilated pheasant.

  “We can’t very well carry it back with us, Holmes.”

  “Pity. I’ve grown rather fond of it. Without that bird’s testimony, a degree of uncertainty would remain.”

  “Leave it here for the foxes, Holmes.”

  “I suppose so.”

  We arrived back at Justice in time for tea, to find the house guests still in residence and embarked on various pursuits of childhood, the two children returned from their week-end banishment looking on in adult disdain, and Marsh ill but demanding that we continue our consultation.

  He was ensconced on an elaborately ornate brocade divan with fringes along its lower edge, propped into a great number of pillows in a room of tropical heat. Holmes and I stripped off as many layers as we could without impropriety, and fell on the tray of tea and sandwiches with enthusiasm.

  Marsh waited with growing impatience, his face flushed with heat both internal and external, his eyes feverish but focussed. Alistair did not look much better; between Monday’s head injury and the scatter of shot in his own arm, I thought he wanted nursing himself. Holmes drank his tea, but when he reached for the pot, Marsh spoke up impatiently.

  “You must have found out more, about Gabriel. What else did your four soldiers say?”

  “Those four, and three more Saturday morning. Do you object to a composite—the statements of the men and what there is of an official record?”

  “By all means,” Marsh growled. Holmes claimed an armchair with a nearby perch for his cup, and drew out his pipe.

  “Gabriel Hughenfort sailed to France in December 1917, following a scant five months’ training, and joined his regiment on the twentieth. They were occupying a supporting position, behind the lines, and moved back up to the Front in early January. By the time he first stood in the trenches, the young man had picked up enough common-sense knowledge to keep his head down. He acquitted himself honourably, and without mishap, during that period on the Front, then through the cycle behind the lines.

  “His second front-line duty, he was not as lucky. His section of trench took a direct mortar hit, and he was buried—in, as one of my informants picturesquely described it, ‘a blast of mud that was thinner than some soups I’ve et, and a lot richer in meat.’

  “His fellows waded in and dug him out, scraped out his mouth and pummelled the breath back into him, then sent him to the rear—unconscious—with the next stretcher party. He spent three weeks in hospital, took a brief leave in Paris, then was sent to a new regiment farther up the line. Just in time to catch the March push.

  “After that, the lad’s story becomes more vague. The official records of his second regiment from that period are extremely spotty—some of them went down in the Channel, according to Mycroft’s informant—and the evidence of his companions not much better. There was general agreement that the boy stood with them throughout March, including a period when they were fifteen straight days under fire in their waterlogged pits, unbathed, under-fed, and rotting inside their boots, but holding their ground as they’d been ordered. You’ll recall General Haig’s ‘back against the wall’ speech: ‘Every position must be held to the last man; each of us must fight on to the end.’ His fellows remembered Gabriel’s presence during that time.”

  The details of the boy’s last weeks were not helping his uncle’s state of mind. Iris, keeping an eye on Marsh’s face, finally had to interrupt.

  “Why does this matter?” she demanded. “Of what earthly importance could it be where he was transferred and what the men knew about him?”

  Holmes did not react to this heresy against the supremacy of knowledge; at least, he did not reveal a reaction. He also did not reveal in so many words the original assignment: to find a means of freeing the seventh Duke from his obligations. Instead, his answer walked a line between caution and clarity.

  “We were asked to come here and assist Marsh in the decisions he has to make. One of those decisions, concerning the paternity of the boy Thomas, will come into our ken
on Wednesday. But, it appeared to me that there were other areas of uncertainty that cried out for clarification. The death of the sixth Duke’s heir was one of those. The business practices of Sidney Darling may prove to be another. This shooting, particularly in view of Alistair’s injury earlier in the week, may prove to be a third. I would not go so far as Schiller in asserting that there is no such thing as chance, but I would agree that what seems mere accident often springs from the deepest sources of cupidity.”

  Alistair puffed up and began to protest that his had been a stupid accident, but Holmes merely put up a hand to stop him, and went on.

  “The chaos of battle can hide many things. Rivalries explode; guns may find a mark short of the enemy. Without knowing Gabriel, I cannot know the likelihood that he was caught up in such a rivalry or resentment, but even before I began to investigate his life, I knew one thing: Had he survived, the boy would have become an extremely wealthy and influential man.”

  “And if you didn’t know Marsh as well as you do, you might be investigating him,” Iris interjected. By her expression, the thought worried her not in the least; seemed to amuse her, almost. And Holmes smiled as he nodded.

  “If I did not know him, then yes, I would be looking closely at his whereabouts during July 1918.

  “However, I do not think that will be necessary. On the other hand, I should very much like to know if the fifth Duke’s brother, Philip Peter, had a son, and similarly Ralph Hughenfort.”

  “Uncle Philip?” Marsh said, simultaneously with Alistair’s “My brother Ralph, do you mean?”

  “Yes,” Holmes said. “To both.”

  “Philip died a few years ago, in South Africa. He was a monk of some sort—not Catholic, but I’ve never heard of a marriage.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone marrying Ralph,” Alistair told us, pronouncing the name “Rafe.” He went on, “My brother had a fever when he was small; it left him uncontrollable. He ran away when he was nineteen, first to India and then Australia. Rose, our sister, used to get long, sorrowful letters from him, with requests for money, but they stopped during the War. His last one said he was thinking of joining the Anzacs. He probably lies in Gallipoli with all the others.”

  “A degree of certainty in any of this would be a pleasant surprise,” Holmes complained, as if the Hughenfort family had conspired against the solution of his case. If, indeed, it could be considered a case.

  “My brother began enquiries into his whereabouts after the War, but had not much luck,” Marsh told him.

  “Another pair of assignments for my brother,” Holmes said darkly. “And now, I should like to see Gabriel’s final letter, if you don’t mind. And what diaries you may have.”

  At Marsh’s nod, Alistair went over to a third-rate nineteenth-century portrait on the wall, pulled it back, manipulated the dial behind it, and handed Holmes the packet that I had returned on Thursday afternoon.

  Holmes glanced at the field post-cards, then read all four letters, the three from Gabriel and the sympathy note from the Reverend Mr Hastings. When he was finished, he folded them into their envelopes and handed them back to Alistair; the leather-bound journals he retained. We watched Alistair lock the safe again as if he was performing some rite, and when he was back in his seat, Holmes asked Marsh, “Very well; what can you tell me about your brother Lionel and his wife?”

  Not much, it seemed. After Lionel had fled scandal to Paris, the only news Marsh had received was the occasional curt fact from their elder brother Henry or third-hand scandal through scandalised family friends. Marsh had seen Lionel once in Paris, finding him self-consciously aesthetic and deliberately dissipated; he had a flock of beautiful young men. Marsh’s voice showed how distasteful he had found the meeting. He had not tried to see Lionel again.

  Of the woman, again he knew only what Henry had written, that she appeared a middle-aged whore. I wanted to ask how the sixth Duke could have believed the child to be Lionel’s, if Lionel was known to prefer pretty young boys to aging women, but in the present company, I thought the undercurrents quite complex enough already. And considering the variations in human relations, I supposed anything was possible.

  We had been in Marsh’s quarters little more than an hour and a half, but it was becoming obvious that the master of Justice was an ill man, increasingly feverish and unable to concentrate on the business at hand. There was nothing that could not wait until Marsh’s head cleared, so we left him with Alistair. At the door to her room, Iris hesitated, then asked, “I don’t suppose you’d care to join me for Evensong? The rector remembered that I loved the service, and offered to say it for me.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I’d enjoy that. If he doesn’t mind having an unbeliever in the congregation.”

  “That would make two,” she said cheerfully, to my confusion. “I’ll meet you in the chapel in a quarter of an hour.”

  I went to my room, meditating on the oddity of a self-described nonbeliever attending church services not once, but twice in a day.

  The air in the ornate little chapel was as frigid as its marble walls and smelt of incense, but the rector possessed a pleasing sensitivity for the magnificent rhythms of the Evensong liturgy, and seemed to bring the three of us together as a congregation, along with the memorial plaques and statues that cluttered the walls. Iris had taken a seat near the naked feet of the ice-white alabaster boy who, I saw by the plaque, represented young Gabriel. The sculptor had swathed the sentimental figure in Roman toga, and caused the ethereal face to gaze down at the viewer in a disturbingly Christlike manner, the calm blank eyes seeming to focus on the pew where we were seated.

  The rector chanted portions of the liturgy, said others, and at the end thanked us for permitting him to do the service there. Then he quietly departed, leaving us to the family ghosts.

  Silence settled over the stones, the wood, the drapes and brasses. Without a fresh dose of incense, I now caught the honey smell of the beeswax, which transported me back to the Holy Land, and Holmes the beekeeper tracking down our foe by a fragrant stub of stolen candle.

  I found myself smiling at the unlikely memory, linked to this distant spot by a pair of cousins. I turned slightly to say something to Iris about it, and saw on her features the same tragic expression that I had glimpsed the previous night, when Holmes had described the sorrow of the battle-hardened soldiers.

  She was looking up at the memorial to Gabriel with that very expression—naked loss and grief. In a burst of revelation that shook me to my bones, I comprehended why: The boy’s foreign birth and its date; the regular letters Iris sent to a young soldier she scarcely knew; Marsh’s near-tears and Iris’s compulsive church-going at the effigy’s feet; the devastation wrought on the family. And I understood why Marsh was not able to leave this place.

  “My God!” I exclaimed, then caught myself and glanced over my shoulder to be sure we were alone before I continued in a lower voice. “Henry wasn’t Gabriel’s father, was he? You and Marsh—Iris, you weren’t the boy’s aunt. You were his mother!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The woman on the bench beside me went as white as the marble boy above. I nearly seized her shoulders to keep her from collapsing to the floor, but then the blood swept back into her face with a flush. She turned to face the altar, showing me her ear and jaw-line.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Iris, please.” She stared at the altar, unresponsive. “I won’t tell a soul. Not even Holmes, if you insist, although I suspect he’ll figure it out on his own in another day or two. Just tell me the truth.”

  I thought she would remain silent; after a few moments, however, her eyes were drawn to those of the alabaster boy, and she moaned. “Oh, Lord. I was afraid this might happen. Well, I suppose you’ll have to hear it—but not here, not with the children back and servants going past outside the door. Come, the garden.”

  It was not a great deal colder out of doors than it had been in the chapel, although i
t was by now fully dark. I did not see that standing in the darkness for the conversation would offer any more security than would a warm room of the house—the dark hides listeners as well as walls do—but I had not reckoned with Iris’s intimate knowledge of Justice. She strode down the paths as if she possessed a cat’s vision, warning me of steps and turns. After a minute we crossed an expanse of crunchy gravel, took two steps up onto a wooden platform, and patted our way to seats on the bench that ran along the sides. We were in the Palladian music house I had noticed in the garden, set in a sea of pale gravel. If we kept our voices low, no-one could approach close enough to hear us without warning, and there was no space in which two children might be hiding.

  Besides, I thought: Some conversations are best held in the dark.

  “Yes,” she began. “You’re right. Gabriel was my son, although I don’t see how you could have known.”

  “Your voice, when you speak of him as much as I’ve made you the last couple of days. It’s not the voice of an aunt.”

  “And yet I was. Scrupulously so. I sent him no more gifts than I sent any of the other children in my family, for Christmas and birthdays. I never gave him the faintest reason to think Henry and Sarah were not his parents; I’m positive of that.”

  “I’m sure you’re right that he never suspected. He’d never have written that last letter had he not thought of them as his true—and, I have to say, much loved—parents.”

  “He was a loving boy. He deserved the home they gave him.”

  “How . . . ?” I asked.

  “How did it come about?” I was more interested in how they had got away with it, but this would do as a beginning. “It was more or less as I told you—there weren’t many lies in that story. Marsh’s parents looked at Henry—approaching forty, married for ten years with no sign of a child—and they turned the pressure on Marsh. He and I had been friends since childhood, most of our friends and families thought we’d marry sooner or later, so why not do the thing now? Marsh and I had a long talk—at The Circles, in fact, not Hampstead Heath, although for once without Alistair—and we decided that if we both had to marry for the sake of our families, we might as well marry a friend.