At midday, we stopped at an inn for luncheon. On the way inside, one of the drivers took me aside for a consultation.
“The farther into the countryside we go, Miss Russell, the worse the roads will be. If you want to stop the night and continue tomorrow, just say the word.”
“If this turns to snow, the roads could be completely impassable tomorrow,” I noted. He said nothing, not even to answer my unspoken question, leaving the decision up to me. “Let’s go on after we’ve eaten. If the driving gets too difficult, that’s your word to speak.”
He looked offended, although it was the conditions I was questioning, not his skill. We ate quickly, and upon returning to the motorcar I took the seat beside the driver, to leave more space for those behind the glass. Ben stretched his legs across the seat, Gabe looked at picture books on his mother’s lap, Iris stared out the window, and we drove on through the darkness, the drizzle changing to snow in our head-lamps, then back to rain.
We passed through Arley Holt and past the deserted train station, and at the turning with the post saying JUSTICE HALL, we went left, spurning the crowded manor house, whose every guest room would soon be bursting, for the quieter spaces of Badger Old Place. These larger motorcars seemed almost certain to become wedged between the tight sides of the lane, but in the end we emerged unscathed. Down the frozen track, through the gates and the outer yard, threading into the lodge-house tunnel and there was Badger’s neat gravel, the chapel, and the high Elizabethan windows, glowing with light and welcome.
Gabe had fallen asleep with his thumb in his mouth, and he clung to his mother’s side while our two drivers deftly eased Ben into his chair. Introductions were made, and while Mrs Algernon bustled and welcomed like the excellent housekeeper she was, Alistair had eyes only for the boy, this cranky, waist-high snippet of Hughenfort on which so much rested, the futures of two men and of a great house; apart from his distraction, Alistair’s welcome was warm (for him) and he waited until we had been given hot drinks and rooms before he climbed into one of Mycroft’s motorcars and was driven away.
We changed our clothes, while Gabe pounded up and down the various stairways to rid himself of the tiresome journey. This took a quarter of an hour, after which we sat down to Mrs Algernon’s plain and excellent dinner, then adjourned to the Hall, where the child eyed the huge boar’s head uncertainly and the rest of us settled into the novelty of a floor that didn’t heave or bump beneath us. The entire time, from the moment we climbed down from the car, throughout the meal, and as we took our places before the fire in the Hall, we moved in a kind of limbo. In part this was tiredness compounded by the disorientation of our Canadian companions; but we were also simply waiting. At last our ears caught the sound of tyres on the gravel outside. Ali came in first, and then Marsh, with Holmes behind them closing the door.
Marsh stood in the doorway, a stone thinner but restored in his energies, apparently unaware of Alistair’s hands tugging away his coat and plucking the hat from his head. All of Marsh’s tremendous powers of concentration were focussed upon the woman standing in front of the fire and on the child grown suddenly shy, taking refuge in her skirts. Marsh’s fingers went up to his face—not, as I first thought, to trace the scar, as he was wont to do in Palestine when troubled. Rather, his fingers came to rest across his lips, a gesture of such uncertainty, I should not have imagined him capable of it.
Iris eased him into the moment, crossing the room to greet her husband with a very European sort of kiss, then looping her arm through his in order to lead him forward. “This is Ben O’Meary,” she told him; I doubt Marsh even noticed he was shaking the hand of a man in a wheeled chair. “And Helen.”
Helen stood before him, straight and proud, her son half hidden behind her. Marsh stepped forward and took her hand briefly.
“Welcome to England, Mrs Hewetson,” he said evenly.
“Please, it’s Helen.”
“Helen, then. Thank you. And this is young Gabriel.”
“Gabe,” came an indistinct mutter from the cloth around her thighs.
“Can you shake hands with Lord Maurice, Gabe?” Helen asked the top of his head.
The child seemed to consider this for a minute, then began to unwrap himself from her skirts. He stepped away and looked up at Marsh, chin raised, black hair tumbled.
Marsh’s heart seemed visibly to stutter. Certainly the breath caught in his throat—I could hear it do so. His blunt fingers came up again towards his face, and then he noticed the boy’s small hand, extended towards him. Slowly, he stretched out his arm and wrapped his hand gently around that of the child, his son’s son.
“Oh, Gabe,” he said, his voice impossibly soft. “I am very, very happy to meet you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Late that night, when the Canadians had bedded down and the Algernons taken to their quarters, we gathered in the first-floor solar for a council of war. Holmes and I diverted to our rooms to trade our tight collars and high shoes for clothing more conducive to comfort and thought. When Holmes had donned a smoking jacket and I my house-slippers, we walked back down the corridor and let ourselves in.
The room was dimly lit and filled with indistinct shapes, an Aladdin’s cave of family treasures. My eyes came to rest on the figures before the pulsing flames, and my heart leapt in sudden, startled joy at the image that greeted my eyes—then my vision cleared, and the figure that I had seen as Mahmoud Hazr in Arab dress turned more fully into the light, and it was only Marsh, wearing a long, old-fashioned smoking jacket over his trousers and shirt.
However, as we settled to our places around the fire, I found I could not shake the image of Mahmoud among us. For one thing, he was brewing us coffee—true, using an elaborate glass machine over a spirit lamp rather than the graduated brass pots of the Arabs, and spooning the grounds from a Fortnum and Mason’s packet instead of pounding the beans to powder in a wooden mortar, but the scent evoked the ghosts of tents and robes. And carpets—but there, too, the room moved East, for in the weeks I’d been away Badger’s plain Turkey floor covering had been overlaid with smaller, more ornate carpets. Like the floor of a tent. The drawn curtains might well have been goat’s-hair walls, the fire in the stone hearth crackled with the same rhythm as one laid in a circle of rocks on sand, and the flickering across the gathered faces seemed to darken them, so that even Iris appeared swarthy. The odours of coffee and cigarettes teased my mind, the man squatting before the flames in a tumble of robes, the easy silence before talk began . . .
Abruptly, I stood and switched on one of the electric lamps, and the room was jerked back to Berkshire. The others blinked at the sudden glare, and reason returned. We took our coffee in porcelain cups with handles on their sides and saucers beneath; we were in chairs, not on the floor; the tobacco the others lit was Turkish, not the cheapest black stuff of the desert smoker. I breathed a sigh of relief, took a swallow of Piccadilly coffee, then glanced over at Marsh.
And saw Mahmoud in his eyes, in the hidden amusement of that private, all-seeing gaze, acknowledging what my illuminating efforts meant, why I had needed to do it. His gaze held me in my spot, and then I found myself smiling slowly back, that same warm, intimate sharing of a private joke.
I do not know that I have ever felt more at peace with the world than at the moment when Mahmoud returned.
Ali, of course, had known it before anyone else—probably before Marsh himself. His hands had sought out a scrap of firewood and his folding pen-knife, and were shaping the wood into one of the incongruously childlike figures he had used to carve around the camp-fire. This one was perhaps fated to become a giraffe, although at the moment it was little more than two lumps connected by a long neck.
Iris, who had never seen these two in their alternate personalities, was looking puzzled, even slightly alarmed at the unfamiliar currents running through the room; Holmes, however, took it in at a glance, nodded approvingly, and drew out his pipe and tobacco pouch. It was he who broke the silence
.
“I suppose it hardly needs saying that the boy is who he seems to be?”
“There could be no doubt,” Marsh answered. I peered across at him: Had that been a faint accent I heard, a faintly Semitic placement to the R?
“He is the very image of Gabriel at that age,” Iris confirmed. “The boy Thomas may be a fake, but not Gabe.”
“I agree,” said Alistair, not looking up from his carving.
“Very well; that settles the problem of inheritances,” Holmes said, and made to go on to the next item of business on his agenda. I, however, was not so sure.
“It may settle the question of the title,” I cut in, “but I wouldn’t assume it settles the future of Justice. Helen is by no means clear in her mind that coming here would be best for the boy.”
Holmes was already shaking his head dismissively. “It matters not. If the boy is Gabriel’s son, born in wedlock, then he is the seventh Duke. What his mother decides to do about the child’s living arrangements may require lengthy negotiations, but that element of the problem lies in the future. Are we in agreement?”
It was somewhat unusual for Holmes to consult with his partners before tying off his conclusions, but then, this was hardly his usual sort of case. However, the once and (potentially) future duke, his wife, and his cousin were all in accord: The strawberry leaves, at least, had been lifted from Marsh’s head.
“We are still left with the question of Sub-Lieutenant Hughenfort’s untimely death. I take it we agree that the man who arranged his death is still at large, and that he must be dealt with before we can all feel free to return to our natural orbits?”
“The child wouldn’t live to see mid-summer,” Alistair growled, and sliced a vicious strip from the knot of wood in his hand. Iris winced at his words, Marsh sat silent, but we all agreed: The five-year-old Duke of Beauville could not be left vulnerable.
“From the early days of this case,” Holmes resumed, flaring a match into life and setting it to his pipe-bowl, “we have been confronted with a choice of villains, coming down eventually to two. And before you interrupt me again, Russell, let me say that the three of us occupied the War Records Offices for a solid week—very solid, taking into account the state of the sofas on which we slept—and after scouring the files, we came up with no definitive evidence, not a shred that would eliminate either man from consideration.”
I raised my cup to my lips, to hide the smile I could not help: Normally it was Holmes who managed to snag the more interesting and productive path of an investigation. This time he had sent me off on a boat into the frigid Atlantic, and I’d come up with gold while he had uncovered only a lot of dust. A few years before, I might have pointed this out; now, I merely took a swallow of coffee and kept my eyes demurely on the fire.
Rather sourly, Holmes continued. “There are two prime candidates for Gabriel Hughenfort’s murder-by-proxy. Sidney Darling came most immediately to hand—a man with deep ties, both financial and social, to his wife’s family home. Even before the War, Darling had a lot to say in the running of the estate and the tenant farms. Since the War, Darling has been virtually running the place. The proposed stud is his project, the Hall and the London house are his freely to use, he has position, authority, everything but the title. All that would have changed were his nephew to have inherited, when Lady Phillida would have been issued an income and become a guest in the Hall, not its mistress. As for opportunity, Darling’s position in 1918 was such that he could readily have arranged for Gabriel’s transfer and, later, the condemnatory letter. Darling had considerable interest in preserving the status quo at Justice Hall. Similarly, when Marsh came, he too represented a threat. Little doubt, then, when handed a golden opportunity to replace the seventh Duke with the malleable child of a half-educated French woman by the simple mechanism of a stray shotgun shell, he might have been sorely tempted.
“Thomas was clearly Darling’s protégé. We know Darling has been to Lyons, to coach the mother and convince the boy. However, we must not place too heavy an emphasis on this scheme, for he might well have been motivated by the simple knowledge that if he could provide Marsh with a satisfactory heir, Marsh would very probably retreat back into whatever hole he’d been occupying since Cambridge, leaving Darling to continue as before. Self-interest does not invariably lead to homicide.
“Our other candidate is Ivo Hughenfort. Means he had, for he too was in a position to act as voice for his superiors and insert orders of transfer or letters of condemnation. Motive could be had by the realisation that in the past few years he had been suddenly and unexpectedly moved from eighth in the line of succession to fourth. In January 1914, there were so many men before Ivo, the possibility that he might one day be duke might well never have occurred to him. Such a catastrophic upheaval of the natural order would have been unthinkable, until the War. Lionel died in May of that year, and the son he left might well not stand up to a legal battle. Then Ralph, the sixth in line, was apparently killed in Gallipoli, and Philip Peter was reputed to have died without children. Marsh and Alistair had not been heard from in years, and could well have got themselves killed in some dusty land. Remember, Mme Hughenfort told us that some family member came to see the boy during the War? That could well have been Ivo, confirming for his own eyes that Thomas was arguably no Hughenfort. Suddenly, in the space of a few years, there was by all appearances only one boy, a vulnerable young soldier already on the Front, standing in the way of Justice Hall.”
Holmes allowed silence to fall while he fiddled with his pipe, then started up again. “This is, however, entirely speculation. Either man had an equal opportunity to sabotage the wheels of justice, either could have been Gabriel’s ‘uncle’ the red-tab major, who said he would lodge an appeal and did not; who in the final hours convinced the boy that a noble silence would safeguard the family honour in the face of disaster; who took away with him the boy’s precious letters and papers—including the secret marriage certificate—and ensured that none but his generalised night-before-battle letter ever saw light of day.
“It could have been either,” he said, his summation coming to a close. “It could have been both, working together then as they occasionally do now. It could, I will admit, be another party altogether whose spoor I have entirely overlooked, although the likelihood of such a possibility is near to infinitesimal.
“How, then, do we lay hands on our villain?”
As if in answer, a pen-knife flashed through the air, to sink its point into a waiting log and stand there, quivering. Iris flinched; I looked at Alistair with new respect: A pen-knife is no throwing blade. One glance at his features, however, and the words of praise died away from my lips.
The knife had not been Alistair’s irritable comment: It had been Ali’s answer to the question of how we were to reveal the villain. Ali the cut-throat sat in the room with us, holding the gaze of his brother Mahmoud, both of them cold, and ruthless, and far, far away.
“No!” It was Holmes who spoke loudly, but I had been saying it internally. I had once witnessed Mahmoud and Ali get a piece of information out of a thief by threatening to blind him with a burning cigarette. They’d have done it, too, had he not given way.
Marsh blinked, and tore his eyes away to look at Holmes. After a moment, Marsh wavered, glanced involuntarily at Iris (who of course had not followed the silent discussion going on under her nose), and then looked into the flames. “Harsh times, harsh methods,” he said. “Let us hope it does not come to that here.”
That was as much of a promise as Holmes could elicit. With a final glare at the cut-throat nobleman, he turned his attention to me.
“One of the difficulties we encountered while you were on your Atlantic cruise was that both of the gentlemen in question had removed themselves from view. Darling was in Berlin for most of the past ten days, overseeing the hiring of staff for the offices of his new business there, and only returned to London on Monday. Ivo Hughenfort simply vanished, taking his manservant with
him and leaving word only that he planned to return to Berkshire in time for the ball this week-end.
“I need hardly add, I think, that careful searches were conducted of the houses and grounds of both men. Four safes in total between them,” he noted, the tedium of extended safe-cracking clear in his voice, “and not a cache of letters to be found. A variety of illegal activities, particularly on the part of Mr Darling, but nothing to connect either with Gabriel Hughenfort.”
“The letters may have been destroyed.”
“It is always possible, although it is my experience that the criminal mind is generally loth to destroy an object which might be of future use.”
“So what do you propose?” I asked, although I thought I knew.
“A trap,” he replied. Marsh, Alistair, and Iris looked interested.
“Something to send him to his hiding place?”
“Precisely. It is a method I have used before—with, I will admit, varying degrees of success—but more often to bring an object to light than to confirm its existence. Success will require a minimum of four people, two on each suspect. I do not usually possess such riches.”
“What about me?” Iris objected.
“Have you any experience in what they call ‘tailing’ a suspect?” Holmes asked her.
“No, but how difficult—”
“Then you shall be our support staff. We are dealing with a clever man here, and it can not be expected that he will break immediately from cover. The more caution he possesses, the longer the process will take. You shall be in a central position near a telephone, with a motor and driver to hand, in order to bring whatever equipment or assistance we might require.”
“Such as what?” she demanded, certain she was merely being humoured.
“Anything from a change of disguise to a stick of dynamite.”