“Ah, Mary,” said Iris, lowering a gun from her shoulder. “What kind of weapon do you fancy?”
“The one I use at home is an American make, my father’s old gun. What do you recommend?”
“How good a shot are you?”
“Passable.”
“Is that modesty or honest judgment?”
“Well, better than passable, I suppose.”
“Thought so.”
“Not quite in the formidable class, though.”
She grinned at me. “Men take pride in such odd things, don’t they?” She held out the gun she’d been examining, and suggested, “Let’s see how this one suits you.”
I automatically broke it and checked that it was unloaded, then set it to my shoulder while she watched critically.
“You’re left-handed, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but I shoot the usual way. I don’t seem to have a dominant eye.”
“That one’s too short for you. Try this.”
She took back the first one and exchanged it for one slightly longer in the stock, squinted at my technique with that one, and reached for a third.
At the fifth gun, I had to ask about the size of this arsenal, which was nowhere near depletion. “Who was the gun collector here?”
“Oh, there’s always been a big collection. Marsh’s father and brother were both fine shots.”
“But some of these are new.”
“Sidney,” she said succinctly. “Look, I don’t suppose you can shoot without the glasses?”
“Not unless we place everyone else behind me.”
“Right. Well, try this one; it tucks under a bit closer.”
I tried that one, and then another, a sweetly balanced Purdey that nestled into my shoulder like an infant’s head.
“Sidney seems very much at home here,” I commented as I dry-fired at the various stuffed heads poking out of the walls.
“Marsh’s brother turned a lot over to him, especially after the War.”
“Alistair showed me Sidney’s future stud farm.”
“He’s done some good work around here,” she said, meaning Sidney and sounding reluctantly approving. “He’s a hard man to like, but I’ll admit that without Phillida and Sidney, Justice Hall would be in sad condition. Is that one all right, then?”
“It’s a beauty. You’re sure you don’t want it?”
“I’ve got my gun. Marsh wanted to know if we want two loaders each, or one, or none.”
“What do you like?”
“Truthfully? I prefer to be on my own. It means I only get a handful of birds at each stand, but I’m not out to feed the district. I let the men do rapid-fire volleys and get the high count.”
“That sounds good to me.”
“Are you sure? We’ll end up fetching a fair number of our own birds.”
“All in a day’s exercise,” I told her cheerfully. Apart from which, servants at one’s shoulders did inhibit conversation so.
We joined the others in the terraced front drive. I was apprehensive that they might have been waiting for us, but it appeared that although Sidney Darling was there, Marsh and Alistair were not. We did receive a couple of disapproving glares from the older guests, either because of our clothing or our mere presence, but Iris blithely ignored them, and set about the introductions like one who had been participating in these events for years. As indeed, in a way, she had.
The oldest gun was a judge and former member of Parliament in his early sixties, Sir James Carmichael (grey hair, pale blue eyes, and a rigid posture that spoke of spinal problems rather than discipline). He was paired with Peebles, who indeed turned out to be the Marquis of Purbeck; both men had brought their own loaders and dogs. There was a cousin of Alistair’s named Ivo Hughenfort (thirty-five, intense, dismissive of introductions and interested only in getting the day started), and two young men, boys really, who turned out to be nonidentical twins out for their first day’s shoot. They were with their father, Sir Victor Gerard, another business acquaintance of Sidney Darling’s, who walked with a limp that would grow worse as the day went on.
Iris even included a few of the hired men in her greetings, men she had known when they had headsful of hair not yet grey. “Webster—I’d know you anywhere. How have the years treated you? That can’t be your son? He’s changed a bit since he was two. And you’re . . . no, no, don’t tell me, you caught us damming up the trout stream one time, I thought I’d die of terror: Doyle? No—Dayle, that’s right. You still raise ferrets?”
Childhood knowledge of the country and its people, intimate and too deeply implanted to be worn away by twenty years of living abroad. The men looked at her sideways—they could not help being aware that her marriage to the current duke was somehow irregular, even if they didn’t know the details—but they responded to her as to one of their own, going so far as to venture a joke or two. It was a thing they would not do with Sidney Darling.
Marsh finally appeared, carrying a gun, with an unarmed Alistair trailing behind and looking resolute. Shooting, I guessed, was not a favourite with Alistair. We were twelve guns in all, it would seem, with the twins and their father holding one gun between them, and Alistair just out for the air. Iris and I were the only women. Twelve guns, plus loaders and dogs and however many men had been hired to drive the birds to us.
The drivers were, of course, already deployed in the fields and woods. A day such as this was a carefully choreographed affair; a well-conducted shoot was a work of art, balancing the timing and presentation of the birds with the number and abilities of the guns. I knew within seconds of Marsh’s appearance on the steps that the day’s planning was not his, but that of Darling in conjunction with the head gamekeeper, a short, taciturn countryman by the name of Bloom. After a brief consultation, Bloom gathered together his loaders and their dogs, and in two groups, the well-dressed and the working man, we moved out into the parkland.
In addition to the men introduced by Iris, our party included Sidney’s four business partners from the night before. The two Germans were called Freiburg and Stein, and were looked upon with mistrust by the others: They might dress like Englishmen and speak the language fluently, but the War was too fresh for easy acceptance of the enemy, even when he had lived here long enough to smooth out everything but his Rs and Vs. The Londoners Johnny and Richard were more formally a banker named Matheson and an industrialist by the name of Radley, who had made a major fortune on armaments during the War. These two were as thick as the proverbial thieves they probably in fact were, and spent most of their time talking about the American stock market.
Iris talked with Dayle for a while about ferrets; when he was called away by the chief gamekeeper, I turned to her.
“I was led to understand that the Darlings moved inside the London social whirl. These guests of theirs seem fairly staid.”
“Apparently they alternate their social circles. After one week-end when a trio of experimental artists sabotaged the shoot, got roaring drunk, and offended a magistrate, Phillida decided the two sorts were best kept apart.”
“Pity,” I said. The party looked as if it could use a bit of livening up.
“I don’t know. The Marquis and the twins look as if they might have some fun in them.”
I gave a snort of laughter, then nearly leapt out of my boots as a figure appeared at my shoulder—but it was only Marsh, silent as always in his approach.
“You found a gun to your satisfaction?” he asked.
“Iris found one for me, yes. Will you tell me why you wanted me to come shooting today?”
His answer was oblique to an extreme. “You have not heard from your Holmes?”
In a house crawling with servants, one could hardly expect that a message from London would go unnoted. I took his answer to indicate that my presence was required in Holmes’ absence.
“If I do not hear from him by tomorrow, I shall make enquiries. What is it you want?”
“This is an interesting group of pro
fessional men my brother-in-law has brought together. I should be interested to know if you perceive a particular . . . link between any two or three.”
“You think this may be a business meeting, then?” I had thought the same myself, the night before.
“I do not know. You and Holmes, you are perceptive. I should like to hear your thoughts when the guests have left on Monday.”
“They won’t speak freely in front of me.”
“Neither would they before Holmes. I wish the wisdom of your eyes, from the distance that will be placed upon you.”
“Very well. I will watch.”
“Thank you. You are good with that gun?”
“I am an adequate shot.”
“Better if you would be allowed to bring the birds down with a knife, I think?” There was a smile deep in the back of his eyes, but he turned away before it could reach his mouth. I, however, laughed aloud.
“What did that last comment mean?” Iris asked curiously, when he had left us alone.
“He’s referring to this odd skill I have with a throwing knife,” I told her—clear indication of how I had come to trust her in the few hours I had known her: This was not an admission one would make to a casual acquaintance.
“When did he witness this skill?”
I met her eyes. “In Palestine.”
“Do you know,” she said, shifting her gaze to Marsh’s retreating back, “that’s the first time I’ve heard him refer to his time there, even obliquely, since I came. In France he would talk about it freely, the handful of times he came to visit me, but every time I say anything about it here, he just looks blank. He said that Phillida isn’t to know, but even when we’re out of hearing of the house, he won’t talk.”
And to think that I had speculated that he might actually have wanted to return home from Palestine, I thought wryly. “I believe,” I said slowly, “that the possibility of having to remain here permanently is so painful, the only way he can accept it is to cut himself off completely from that life.”
“He calls Ali ‘my cousin,’ ” she agreed ruefully.
“Yes, and he punched Holmes—my husband—for using the name Mahmoud.”
“Good heavens.”
“Yes. Of course, he’d been drinking at the time.”
“Who? Marsh? Marsh?”
“He seemed to be drinking more or less continuously until you arrived.”
She stared at me, disbelief struggling with the unlikelihood of my being mistaken, until acceptance asserted itself.
While we had been talking, we were following the others without paying much attention to them, other than making sure to keep a safe distance from other ears. Now we found that we had come to a halt on a rough patch of open ground between two long fingers of woodlands. The coppice to the right was alive with untoward sounds, the cries of alarmed birds punctuating the approaching racket of the beaters: their whistles and calls, the crackle of their boots, and the thwack of sticks against tree-trunks. Anticipation mounted; cartridges slid into place; dogs quivered on their haunches; shoulders grew ready for guns.
Twelve guns seemed to me an unwieldy number; at any rate, it was more than I’d ever shot with before. I had been on organised drives any number of times, although I preferred the informal method of flushing birds out one or two at a time; I braced myself for the noise, and glanced down the line at the others. Twelve in all: Freiburg and Stein had been placed nearest the wood, followed by Iris and myself, then Sidney Darling with Alistair’s cousin, Ivo, on his left. The banker Matheson and the industrialist Radley came next, then Sir James and the Marquis; on the far end, nearly a third of a mile from Freiburg, stood a cluster consisting of Marsh and Alistair with Sir Victor and his two boys. The twins were taking turns under their father’s tutelage, while Marsh looked as if he had little intention of pulling a trigger. Yes, twelve was a lot of guns; I couldn’t help wondering if the head-keeper Bloom had been given any say in the matter.
The first pheasant of the day broke from the woods, taking off high in an effort to escape the pressure of the strange noises closing in so inexorably. It took me by surprise, but Iris had her gun up and fired, and the bird dropped to the ground with a soft thud. She took the next one too, then I got one, and then the sky was full of fleeing birds and deadly lead shot. The roar of the pair at our left was nearly continuous, since Darling and Ivo Hughenfort had two loaders each and both were aggressive shots. Unnecessarily so, I thought, on the part of Darling, who was for all intents and purposes the host here. Iris and I plucked birds from their flight selectively; Darling and Hughenfort sent a killing cloud of pellets out before them; the rest did as best they could with the birds that got through. The doctrine of Ladies First was acceptable, particularly when the ladies loaded for themselves, but I could not see that the boys on the far end would get much practice today with this arrangement. Rabbits, perhaps: They’d got two already.
The pale smocks of the beaters began to be visible through the final trees; the last wily birds launched themselves into the air; the guns fell silent. The first drive of the day was over, with forty-seven limp bodies to hang on the game-cart. Three of them were mine, six Iris’s, a round dozen went to Darling, and ten to his partner. I reckoned six for a one-woman show counted as top score, and going by Darling’s dark looks, he was aware of her superiority as well. Iris seemed oblivious, merely collecting her bag with her own hands, but on the way back to the cart she gave me a wink, making it clear how conscious she was of offended male pride. I stifled a smile, and wondered if Darling would move us down the line a bit for the next drive.
Sure enough, at the next stand, which was a lightly wooded area through which a stream wandered, Darling suggested positions in a slightly different order. My inexperienced eye could see no difference between our deciduous copse and that of Freiburg and Stein fifty yards away, but either the drive or the location meant that our birds came high and fast. I pruned any number of high branches, but only brought down two birds, despite the overall superiority of numbers: fifty-three this time, two of them woodcock. Darling and Ivo Hughenfort were engaged in a mild rivalry, with fourteen each—until, that is, Iris came happily up and thanked Darling for suggesting that she stand where she had.
He looked confused, and blurted out, “But you only got five.”
“And all of them deliciously tricky,” she responded, all enthusiasm. “One of them straight overhead—I have bits of shot in my hair. No, five birds like those are worth twenty in the open. I shall thank Bloom for them.”
Darling watched her troop off to fetch another pair of birds, frowning in an attempt to decide if she was serious. I nearly laughed aloud, and when our paths coincided, I said to her, “You’re being wicked to that poor man.”
“That poor man is stacking the decks.”
“Shall I load for you on the next drive, get your numbers up a bit?”
“You don’t need to do that—if I wanted loaders, I’d have asked for them.”
“Just one drive?”
“Well, all right. It’s very naughty, though.”
“What, to stack our own deck?”
She shot me a grin of pure mischief. “I shall have a word with Bloom.”
Our third stand, near to midday, was in open ground again. We spread ourselves out across the rolling hillside, each of us backed by one or two loaders and their dogs. Except Iris and me. She took my gun and snapped it to her shoulder two or three times. She would have to compensate each time to the differences in make, length, and weight, hardly an ideal situation when the goal was a quick fire. At least hers took the same cartridge as the Purdey—I wouldn’t have to fumble too much in my loading.
The others, naturally, saw the change. Alistair abandoned Marsh and his family group to stroll back the line in our direction.
“Do you wish me to assist?” he asked.
“No,” said Iris briskly. “Thanks, old boy, but we’re fine.”
As a loader I was far from professional, bu
t we quickly reached a rhythm, Iris thrusting the hot gun back to me without looking, me slapping the full one back into her hand, the stock leaving my grasp in an easy, continuous motion. The drive was a heavy one, and it seemed to me a larger percentage came our way this time than the last, but I had little time to look up or even note the birds falling. I dashed the hot barrel open, knocked the spent cartridges to the ground, shoved the fresh ones in, and snapped it shut in time to exchange it for the other gun. Around and around the guns went. I was vaguely aware of birds raining down, but it seemed a long time before the continual roar along the line slowed to a sporadic bang. One last bird broke, overhead and behind Iris; she spun around and took it.
Triumphant, panting with exertion, she was transformed, very near beautiful. I was sweating myself and felt it fair to join in the triumph.
“Twenty-five,” said Alistair. Even his eyes gleamed. Iris threw back her head and laughed aloud.
Darling, with two loaders and perfectly matched guns, had got twenty-three.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
While we were busy decimating the avian population of the parkland, a luncheon had been transported for us over hill and dale, so that at the next rise we came upon a mirage of folding tables and snowy linen laid out on the upper lawns. The dog-carts and Daimler in the background helped account for the phenomenon, but the redoubtable Ogilby, standing beside a tray of crystal goblets with a bottle of wine already in his hand, appeared to have summoned our meal from the faeries of the wood.
The wine was white and slightly fizzy; the temperature of the food the only concession to the distance from the Justice kitchens. I was suddenly ravenous, and even the presence of half a dozen beautifully coiffed and clad women did not stay me from my plate. Phillida made introductions, and I dutifully nodded and murmured acknowledgments around my mouthfuls of food, but it was not until Ogilby had begun to produce coffee on an elaborate machine over a spirit flame that I began to put them together.
The two German women were as unmistakable, and as inseparable, as their husbands. The tall horsey sort of woman was attached to Sir Victor and the twins, and was dutifully bent over a blow-by-blow account of their bag, which had come to a brace of pheasants each, a hare, and three rabbits. Sir James was linked with a rather exotic-looking dark-haired beauty named Costanza, who spoke with an American accent; the Marquis seemed unattached; a conventionally pretty blonde woman losing the battle with her frown lines was the wife of Alistair’s cousin Ivo; and a flighty, flirty girl of about my own age, a friend of Phillida’s, was I thought there on her own but later decided had a male left back at the house.