Justice Hall (33 page)

“What, Justice Hall?”

“None other. It would seem that young master Thomas has a photograph of Justice Hall that he hides from his mother. The boys couldn’t mistake that fountain.”

“He hides it from his mother?”

“A man gave it to him, they said, a month or two ago, along with a story that his father lived there, and some day would come and claim Thomas.”

“Which could be nothing more than the phantasy of a fatherless boy, but for the picture, which had to come from somewhere.”

“I thought you’d find that provocative. Particularly considering that shortly after that, Thomas’s hair went dark. But half an hour after that interview, I found a man who could identify Sidney Darling.”

It was a night for being demonstrative: Holmes was seized by such glee that he snatched my hand from its resting place on the table and kissed it briefly, startling the waiter who was overseeing the respectful entrance of four noble cheeses.

“Tell me,” Holmes commanded, when the cheeses’ trio of escorts had left us.

“It was about six weeks ago. He had purchased a piece of furniture from Mme Hughenfort—a cabinet or trunk of some sort, although the word he used was unfamiliar to me. Whatever it was, it was massive, such that he could not move it down the stairs on his own—that he made clear. One evening his wife’s brother arrived, and the two men decided to go and fetch the thing. They went upstairs and knocked at her door. There were voices on the other side, and the woman’s voice, which the customer recognised as that of Terèse Hughenfort, continued speaking as she came to the door.

“My informant gained the impression that she was expecting someone, possibly her son, who came up the stairs as they were going down again, so that she opened the door without asking who was there. She seemed startled at seeing her visitors, and turned to look over her shoulder at the man in the room, but he was standing in plain view, so Madame merely allowed them to take the object and leave.

“The man was quite definite. He even thought the visitor was English, although he couldn’t decide if the man had just looked that way, being tall, blond, and aloof, or if he’d said something and had an accent. He looked at the photograph of Sidney, and said it could have been him, although he wouldn’t swear on his son’s head that it was. All Englishmen look rather alike to him, it would seem.”

Our pleasure in the delicate cheeses was surpassed only by the savour of being able to tie Darling in with Mme Hughenfort. Still…

“It doesn’t actually prove anything, though, does it?” I asked. “Darling could easily say that he wanted to see the boy for himself, to try to save Marsh the trouble. There’s no evidence that it was Darling who suggested that Madame dye the boy’s hair, or that she insist on going to London rather than invite the family to her home ground. That is to say, if Darling was out to present Marsh with an adequate heir so that Marsh would clear out of Justice and leave it to the Darlings to run for him, he’d hardly have sent her a signed letter of instruction, would he?”

Holmes, looking ever more pleased, folded his table napkin and drained his glass. “There is but one way of knowing.”

“Oh, Holmes. You don’t intend—”

“A spot of burglary? But of course.” He looked over to catch the eye of the attentive waiter, and smiled.
“L’addition, s’il vous plaît.”

We made a detour to our rooms so I might assume a more practical outfit for the role of burglar. When eleven o’clock had rung, we slipped out of the service entrance into the dark streets. A light rain had begun, all the better for our purposes since it sent passers-by scurrying for shelter with their heads tucked down. I led Holmes up to my friendly brasserie, and nodded down the street at the house.

“The door between the florist’s and the ironmonger’s,” I told him. “Their
appartement
is on the top floor, facing the street.” It was a three-storey building, flush to a taller building on one side and with a narrow alley on the other. “I don’t know if their flat goes all the way to the alley, or if the corner room is attached to the neighbour.” The entire floor was uniformly dark.

“I propose we find out,” Holmes said, and launched himself out across the street. Rather wishing that we’d remained disguised by the priests’ robes, which might stay the gendarmes from actual assault, I followed.

I had been inside the building earlier that day, so I already knew which flats were inhabited by nervous dogs and which by deaf old ladies. The central vestibule was not locked, and we encountered no-one on the stairs, although twice dogs began to yap frantically inside their doors and caused us to quicken our steps. Outside the Hughenfort door, Holmes took out his pick-locks and bent to work.

The lock was old and simple, a matter of a few moments’ nudging before we were inside. The curtains were shut tight, which made matters easier yet, and we divided up our attention, beginning at opposite ends of the flat.

This is what we learnt about Mme Hughenfort: She was an untidy housekeeper, although the rooms were clean beneath a layer of dust and clutter, and she had a frugal taste in foodstuffs and alcohol. Her furniture and clothing were serviceable but cheap, with the exception of a few items that might easily have been gifts. The boy’s room reflected more care than hers, his coats and shoes newer, his bedclothes thicker than hers.

We found no picture of Justice Hall among his things, although there was a dust-free gap on a shelf that might have held the sort of treasure-box valued even by boys who are not required to move house every few months: He might well have seized it to take into exile. The walls held awards from school, a letter of commendation from a teacher, and some drawings he had made, spare and surprisingly sophisticated. I spotted an essay the boy had been writing, glanced through it, and found that it too demonstrated an unexpected maturity in its language and its grasp of history. I put it back, thoughtful.

In her room we found nothing incriminating, until we reached the upper shelf of a built-in cupboard and saw an ornate enamelled music box, about four inches by nine, with a scene of some Bavarian village in the snow. The box was locked.

Holmes drew out his pick-locks again.

She did not keep her legal papers in the box, but for our purposes something far better. Holmes slid his fingernail over the catch to keep the box from playing, and with his other hand took out the contents.

Love letters from three different men over a twenty-year period, none of which was signed “Lionel” or written in an English hand. Snapshots of a younger, slimmer Terèse, mostly with friends, including one showing her dressed in a heavy winter coat, arm in arm with a tall Nordic-looking blond man. The dates had been pencilled onto the back of each in French schoolgirl writing; the one with the blond said, “
Pieter, novembre 1913
.”

One of the letters was signed with that name, the one that contained, along with a number of romantic lines I had just as soon not have read, the following admission (in French):

I will never cease loving you, my darling Terèse, but I cannot leave my wife. A divorce, with her in the state she is, would be the act of a scoundrel. So although I would give my life to be with you, I cannot in good conscience sacrifice hers. Farewell, my sweet girl. Think of me well.

The letter bore the date of early December 1913. A month before Terèse had married Lionel Hughenfort.

Did she snag him, or was she simply an old friend who needed a great favour? I thought the latter, that she was desperate, pregnant and abandoned; he was ill, in need of a housekeeper, generous with his family’s money, and not unwilling to do his judgemental family in the eye by dragging in this unsuitable match.

There may even, I reflected, have been a degree of affection between them. The photograph of the pregnant Terèse and the worn-looking Lionel that occupied a place among the débris of her dressing-table was an obligatory presence, since the man was her son’s declared father, but it might also have a sentimental value to her. The pose, while hardly that of two newlyweds expecting a first child, nonetheless seemed to indicate friendship rather than a mere business transaction. They were leaning into one another, their faces at ease, as if each were taking a pause from the world’s tumult with a similarly beset companion-at-arms. Neither seemed to place much trust in the other’s strength, but at the same time, neither seemed to think it likely that the other was an active threat. And in the sort of life their faces testified to their having led, being safe from attack was nearly as good as being protected.

Holmes laid aside the photo of Terèse with Pieter and his last letter to her, put the rest back into the music box, then eased the lid down and locked it.

“She’ll notice them missing,” I remarked, not meaning it as an objection. Holmes did not take it as such, either.

“That may be for the best,” he replied as he carried the box back to the cupboard.

I could see what he meant: that Terèse Hughenfort would take the missing objects as a declaration that the family was on to her scheme. However, when the monies continued to come (as I assumed they would, knowing Marsh), their arrival would send the further message that support would continue, so long as she did not attempt to foist her cuckoo’s child into the family nest.

Out on the street again, doors locked behind us and dogs safely passed, I brought out the only real disappointment of the evening’s excursion.

“It would have been nice to have some hard evidence of Sidney Darling’s involvement in the attempt to place the boy in Justice.”

Holmes was shaking his head before I had finished. “I believe you’d find that one of those occasions when the truth does more damage than a convenient lie, Russell. We still can’t be certain if Darling was planning actual fraud, or if he was simply aiming at the easiest path for everyone: giving the duke an acceptable heir, a boy with the potential of being shaped to make a master for Justice when his time comes. Darling no doubt believes that such a situation would set Marsh’s mind at rest, allowing a return to the status quo: Marsh and Alistair back to wherever they’ve been for the last twenty years, the Darlings back in charge of Justice. Nothing criminal there.”

He was right. The peculiar thing was, Darling’s goal and ours were proving to be more or less the same thing. And as I’d said before, if I had to choose a commoner to train up as a duke, Thomas Hughenfort would be an ideal candidate: a supple mind, good manners, and an unspoilt upbringing by a caring mother.

Alistair’s response to that, unfortunately, would dominate: The boy’s blood was simply not that of the Hughenforts.

   There was little more to be done in Lyons, short of confronting Mme Hughenfort, which was most definitely not in our brief. We spent an hour in the morning uncovering the owner of the flat to which the mother and son had fled, finding to our utter lack of surprise that the name was that of her long-time accountant to whom cheques were sent.

We were on the next train to Paris, where we spent the night, and arrived in London to the sound of church bells.

   Holmes went into the first telegraph office we could find that was open on a Sunday, to dispatch a brief message to Justice Hall saying that we were back in the country and would report soon. Then we took ourselves to a small and inordinately luxurious hotel, where we were fed and pampered and could talk the whole matter through without being overheard.

In most investigations, Holmes aimed for the truth—no less, no more. In this case, we sought the truth, but perhaps not too much of it, and preferably truth of the right sort. Marsh was both client and brother, and his fate was in our hands.

Put simply, if we loved Mahmoud, we would lie to him. A simple declaration that, yes, the boy is your brother’s son, and the huge weight of Justice would be lifted from Marsh’s shoulders, allowing him and Ali to slip out from under that estate, those walls, that role of self-mutilating service, and resume the light existence of nomads. Marsh wished to trade stone walls for those of goat’s hair as badly as his cousin did—of that we were both certain. All it would take was one word, a simple, unadorned “yes,” and our brothers would be free.

“I have, on occasion, lied to a client,” Holmes mused, addressing rather owlishly his several-times-emptied glass. “It goes against my grain, rather, but particularly in my youth I hesitated not to play God.”

“But—with Marsh?”

“There’s the rub,” he agreed. “If it were merely a matter of backing Marsh up, I should happily lie to the prime minister himself, perhaps even the king. But to keep the facts from him, to make his decision for him? That is a far different matter.”

My initial objection had been founded more on the impossibility of deceiving the man than on the immorality of doing so, but I had to agree with this argument as well.

“What do you suggest?” I asked him.

“I propose to return to the scent I was working before Mme Hughenfort led us astray.”

“Interviewing soldiers?”

“One in particular, although not a soldier. The chaplain who wrote that letter of condolence to Gabriel’s father. Hastings said he’d known Gabriel, and may well have sat with Gabriel his last night. I wrote to him before we left for France, and hope to collect his answer in the morning. Considering the bureaucratic tangle the boy appears to have been caught up in, the companion of his last hours may know more than the commanding officer.”