“No.” It was Marsh, looking unmovable. “The ball is intended to welcome the seventh Duke to Justice. It will do that.”
“Oh, Marsh,” Iris exclaimed. “You can’t put the boy in harm’s way!”
“I must. He will be removed immediately thereafter, and he and his mother will be sheltered until the matter is resolved.” I did not much care for the grim way in which he pronounced the word resolved, but Iris did not seem to notice. He went on. “However, Mary’s suggestion remains valid. I will let it be known that we will be searching for the church register. Whichever of the two breaks for the Continent first . . . will be our man.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Saturday’s ball was to be fancy-dress, its theme Tutankhamen’s Tomb, which had been opened the previous winter and instantly plunged the world into a state of raving Tutmania. While I was away in Canada, Justice Hall had been transported to the Valley of the Kings. With the minor complication of weather most unsuited to the Egyptian desert, in a dim light one might suspect one was in the archaeological dig that had just resumed for the season in Luxor, three thousand miles away. The final doors of Tutankhamen’s inner tomb lay ripe for the opening, but Phillida Darling had anticipated the event.
Wire and papier-mâché palm trees now lined the drive; the pelicans of the fountain had somehow become ibises; crocodiles made of wood and rubber inhabited Justice Stream and its new forest of reeds and papyrus at the shallow beginning of the pond. Huge sheets of painted canvas had been suspended from the battlements, obscuring the house’s front façade with row after row of enlarged Egyptian tomb paintings. A trio of stuffed camels sheltered under the portico of the stable wing; an enormous cage, its wire cunningly disguised under vines, occupied the portico on the side of the kitchen block. A closer look at the cage revealed two depressed-looking apes huddling in one corner. The lawn and terraces had either been dug up or had temporary mounds of soil heaped on top, with the odd shovel and barrow sticking out of the caps of melting snow to indicate work in progress. Three men were working up at the roof-top, fixing what looked to be torches along the battlements. Down below, the big double doors of Justice now resembled the entrance to a royal tomb, guarded by two enormous stuffed crocodiles, rearing up on their hind feet and tails. Blood-curdling shrieks came from within, either some terrible human sacrifice or a flock of parrots.
I could only stand in awe near the newly ibised fountain, wondering that Justice Hall did not collapse in mortification.
Iris had either been looking out for me or happened to be passing near one of the few unobscured windows, because she came out of the tomb door, dressed in reassuringly normal trousers, and grinned at my slack-jawed state.
“Quite an effect, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Words fail me.”
“Wait ’til you see the Hall.”
“I don’t know that I’m strong enough.”
“Well, I shouldn’t recommend standing out here too long. Phillida’s animal man seems to have lost one of his crocodiles; it’s walking around loose, or crawling, or whatever it is crocodiles do.”
“Probably lurking under the bridge, hoping for a deer. Or one of the dogs.” Still, I thought I might go inside, away from concealing shrubbery. As we passed through the tomb-painted drapes, I asked, “Do you know if Phillida has asked any stray scholars of ancient Egyptian to this bean-feast?”
“Haven’t any idea.”
“It’s just, I believe that string of hieroglyphs there says something extraordinarily rude about the reader’s mother.”
Ogilby held the door for us, dressed, I was relieved to see, in his usual butler’s black formality. At least he had not had an Anubis mask placed on his head or been stripped down to the loin-cloth of Egyptian servants.
The Great Hall, on the other hand . . .
The cavernous stone expanse had undergone a complete metamorphosis; I was now standing within a vast tropical grotto, moist-aired and with no hint of an echo. Every corner was thick with head-high reeds and ponds filled with flowering water-lilies; the upper galley was a jungle of vines that neared the floor; every accessible surface was a riot of lapis, gold, carmine, and emerald scarabs, hieroglyphs, and lotus flowers. A family of disturbingly realistic mummies guarded the inner door. (They had to be papier-mâché; surely Phillida couldn’t have persuaded the British Museum . . . ?) Three parrots on high perches screamed their fury, frightening the ape a man was attempting to coax onto an artificial tree. A crew was moving half a dozen monumental statues into place, with a fifteen-foot-high cat-headed god the current object of their attentions. A flock of seven flying ibises had been suspended from the dome. One of their stuffed companions had settled onto the outstretched arm of the classical athlete.
It was absolutely breathtaking.
“How on earth did she do this?” I wondered aloud. “Look—those lotus are actually blooming. Shouldn’t they be dormant this time of year?”
“Some of them are silk—all the vines are—but she did have two or three dozen pots forced in a hot-house. And Marsh wouldn’t let her paint directly onto the marble, so all the columns are covered in canvas.”
“It’s even warm in here.”
“The radiators and fireplaces have been blasting away for three days to get it to this point.”
“Extraordinary. I shudder to think what this must be costing them.”
“Justice hasn’t had a new duke in twenty-one years. Phillida thought it only right to welcome him in a style worthy of the title.”
I met Iris’s eyes, and found them dancing with the same secret pleasure I felt in my own. I glanced around to be sure we weren’t overheard, then said, “I wonder if she will appreciate the surprise we have in store for her?”
“It will be a shock, but in the end the additional news value will make up for it. Justice and the Darlings will be the talk of all Europe for weeks.”
“How many guests are expected?”
“No-one seems exactly sure, but the special train they’re running from Town holds around two hundred. That’s probably more than half of them.”
The logistics were appalling. “Where on earth are they all going to sleep?”
“Oh heavens, they won’t sleep. It’s dancing ’til dawn, a breakfast of eggs and champagne, then back on the train, or however they got here.”
“I’m exhausted already.”
Iris looked surprised. “Surely you’ve been to a fancy-dress ball before?”
My entire life, at times, seemed to be fancy-dress. “Since the end of the War, I’ve been rather occupied with other things.”
“Well, as parties, they tend to be somewhat . . . uninhibited. There’s a freedom in wearing costume. Normal mores and attitudes are set aside.”
“Three hundred uninhibited Young Things. I hope Phillida’s hidden away all the breakables.”
“More to the point, she’s borrowed strong young manservants from every house in the county, to keep things from getting too out of hand.”
“I can only hope she gives the servants a week off when they’ve survived this.”
“Oh, Ogilby is in heaven, and Mrs Butter is having the time of her life. Not a one of them would miss this for the world.”
With a last glance at the fifteen-foot-high statue of Bast (plaster, I guessed, by the ease with which two men were carrying it up the stairs), I followed Iris past a trio of stuffed flamingos and through the corridor of outraged marble busts wearing gauze head-dresses, ending up at the library, which was miraculously free of Egyptian fetters.
Marsh Hughenfort looked like a man whose fever has broken, leaving him clear-eyed and clear of purpose for the first time. He greeted me casually, but with Mahmoud’s hidden meaning behind his eyes, speaking of appreciation and the anticipation of action. He sat in his chair, completely relaxed in the way he had once been when reclining by a camp-fire, and it came to me that he looked more a duke now that he had been supplanted than ever he had when that title had actually ridden his s
houlders. Seeing his dark eyes full of life again made my heart glad.
“My brother’s guests, they are well?” he asked me.
And Alistair had been restored to “brotherhood,” I noted. “They slept well, and were fed to repletion by Mrs Algernon. When I left them, the boy was being led off into the meadow on a disgustingly fat pony by Mr Algernon. They seemed to be plotting out the most effective spot for a snowman, if the snow comes back.”
“Mary, I . . . Thank you. My entire family is in your debt.” There was a lot of weight behind that statement—the entire weight of the Hughenfort name, in fact. It was a concept both English and Bedouin.
“I was pleased I could be of service.”
“And yet, I find that I must now ask a further service of you and Holmes.”
“You are my brother,” I told him. In Arabic.
He inclined his head, acknowledging not only that he understood the statement, but that he saw the truth of it. “I wish to make the announcement tonight, during the dance. I wish to introduce the rightful duke before matters become any more complex.”
“What does Helen think?”
“My s—my nephew’s wife is a woman worthy of him. She understands that there is no safety in Canada that is not to be found here. She regrets you ever found her, she is angry with herself that she did not have the foresight to conceal the boy from us, she detests the idea of revealing him to public scrutiny and the inevitable acclaim and uproar that will follow, but she also sees that it is the best way. The boy cannot hide forever. Best it is dealt with here and now.”
“By ‘dealt with’ you mean . . . ?”
He met my gaze evenly. “I mean that I am no longer a duke. I am a commoner, with different rules of behaviour. I mean that I may be required to take brutal action in order to protect my duke. My five-year-old liege lord. I believe you take my meaning.”
“And the service you require?”
“Not to stand in my way.”
The eyes opposite me were dark with warning and with purpose. I had seen those eyes before, and I did not really want to know precisely what he had in mind to wrest the truth of the matter out of its participants. I knew him well enough to be certain that if atrocity could be avoided, he would do so; but I also knew that if brutality was the only way to protect the boy, he would not hesitate for an instant. I nearly opened my mouth to say, I won’t help you, and I don’t want to see it, but caught back the words. He knew that I wanted no part in torturing information out of a man; he would not force me to help, or to witness it.
Unless it proved necessary.
I felt that in the brief minutes I’d been in the library, we had carried on a lengthy discussion. Holmes and I often communicated in such a manner, to all intents and purposes reading the other’s mind, but it happened rarely with anyone else. I could only nod, to show that the discussion was over and that we were, however unhappily, in agreement.
“So when do you propose to tell Lady Phillida that she is giving a party for the wrong person?” I asked.
“Not until the last minute. However, strictly speaking, the invitations say merely that we are to honour Justice Hall’s seventh Duke. That is precisely what we shall be doing.”
“Even though the menu would more appropriately be fizzy lemonade and sausage rolls, followed by an eight o’clock bed-time. You’ll bring him to the dance?”
“My brother Ali will do so, when the evening is under way. In the meantime, the boy is safe with him.”
“And afterwards?”
“I will make the announcement. I will tell the entire room that this boy appears to be the legal heir, even though the actual marriage papers have yet to be found. I will say that on Monday morning a delegation from Justice Hall will leave for France, to seek out the village where Gabriel and Helen were married, and there they will make enquiries from the priest as to the ceremony. That will cause one of two things to happen. If our culprit has already destroyed the copy of the marriage certificate he took from Gabriel—which any sensible person would have done in those circumstances—then he will depart for France with all due haste, there to remove any register in which the priest might have entered the ceremony. And possibly to remove the priest himself. If, however, he is stupid enough to have kept the stolen paper—or overly confident, which amounts to the same thing—then he will make haste to retrieve his copy, either to destroy it or to be absolutely certain that it remains where he hid it. In either case, we shall be at his heels, to see which way our man breaks from cover.”
“This sounds like one of Holmes’ plans,” I said uneasily.
“We collaborated.”
“I thought so. He’s used it before, this idea that when threatened with destruction, a person retrieves what is most valuable first, be it baby or the instrument of blackmail. I have to say, however, that isn’t always the case. A person in a panic is as likely to grab a toothbrush as a diamond necklace, just as a cold-blooded person will control the immediate reaction to fly to the object of desire. The cases Holmes has tried this on haven’t invariably turned out quite as he would have wished.”
“I see. Well, failure lurks outside every gate. If this does not succeed, we shall be forced to try . . . harsher methods. In any case, if we do not have our man by Monday night, the boy and his mother will leave the country. Our friend Mycroft Holmes has some plan for them. It involves an air field, so they will feel at home.”
I would not ask how long he planned to wait after Monday before giving up on the idea of the villain’s breaking from cover. He would set beaters around the shrubbery after his game, and if that technique failed, he would go in after the man himself. I suppressed a shiver.
“How do we divide them up?”
“You and Holmes will watch Ivo Hughenfort tonight, after I have made my announcement. Ali will be with Sidney. When I have finished and handed the boy over to his mother, I will relieve Holmes and send him to Ali. You and I will then follow Ivo, Ali and Holmes will watch Sidney.”
I thought about it. He clearly considered Sidney Darling the more likely suspect, since Ali’s powers of surreptitious pursuit could be surpassed only by the suspect’s own shadow. I wondered if Holmes agreed with his assessment.
“You are to watch our suspects, Holmes and I are to watch your backs,” I clarified.
He grinned. “It is a role you have played before, Amir.”
“And until Monday night, how do you intend to ensure the boy’s safety?”
“Iris and the boy’s mother will be with him.” Before I could formulate a polite way of saying that the two women were completely without experience in the finer arts of body-guarding, he smiled. “Along with one of your brother-in-law’s people, whom your Holmes is bringing from London. A kindly grey-haired woman, very deceptive, very competent. I see what you are thinking, Mary, and I agree: I had rather spirit the boy away this instant and keep him beneath my robes than expose him to danger. But he is a Hughenfort, and we have been soldiers for a thousand years. However, I believe that if the boy’s legitimacy can be rendered null, there will be no reason for our culprit to murder him. The risk would be great, and the alternative too simple. No; this is the only way.”
It was not the only way, but it was the most direct, and in any case the situation had been firmly taken out of my hands. I could merely await my orders and pray all would go well.
“I am your humble servant,” I replied. In Arabic.
“Servant you may be,” he rejoined. “Humble I sincerely doubt.”
Iris came in then, and dropped onto the settee with a cigarette and a shake of the head. “Marsh, I shall remain forever grateful to you that I am not called upon to mastermind an affair such as this. Planning a dinner party for six stretches my abilities.”
“Phillida seems to find it a pleasure,” he mused.
“She’s quite mad. I found her arguing with the stuffed-animal man that he’d brought an alligator with the crocodiles. I ask you, how did she know? And what does it
matter?”
“Only to another alligator,” I said.
“What are you going as, Mary?” she asked me.
“It’s a surprise. I mean, to me as well. Holmes is in London, and said he’d bring something back for me.”
“You don’t sound too happy about it.”
“Holmes has a dreadful habit of allowing his sense of humour free rein at times like this. Once he dressed me as a lady of the evening. Another time I wore a water-butt.”
“A water-butt? You’re joking. And I thought you said you’d never been to a fancy-dress ball before.”
“No ball, just disguise. A barrel under a drainpipe. A very damp and draughty disguise.”
“Well, I am sure if what he comes up with is too awful, the costume box is still there—isn’t it, Marsh? Mary could come as Napoleon. He tried to conquer Egypt once, didn’t he?”
“More or less. But he’s a few thousand years late for the theme of this ball.”
“You honestly think that will make a whit of difference to the guests? Half of them won’t even know where Egypt is.”
“I could always decapitate one of the stuffed ibises in the Hall, put it on my head and come as Thoth.”
Still, I couldn’t help wondering what sort of costume Holmes would show up with.
Our council was interrupted by the door’s flying open and Lady Phillida’s stepping in—a harried-looking Lady Phillida who had neglected to put on her face that morning. The thin lines of her plucked eyebrows were nearly invisible, giving her a look of naked surprise that did not agree with the tension in her jaw.
“Have you seen the children?” she demanded without preamble.
“We have not,” Marsh said.
“That feeble Paul woman is the most useless governess. I should have left them in London.”
“If they come here, I shall ask them to report to you instantly,” Marsh told her.
She turned a glare on him, her forehead puckering with the suspicion that he was laughing at her concerns. Some other thought seemed to occur to her as well, triggered by her belated awareness that her brother was in an unusual state of mind, and that on a day such as this, any new factor could prove catastrophic.
Justice Hall mr-6 Page 35
