Justice Hall (47 page)

“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.

“Are you all right?” she asked sharply.

“I am feeling very well indeed.”

“You’re not drunk? Oh, God, Marsh, you can’t be drinking today! Iris, can’t you—”

“I am not drinking, I have not drunk, I will not drink.”

“Look, Marsh, I know you must be concerned about tonight, but really, there won’t be anything to it. Sidney will stand up after dinner and introduce you, you’ll say thank you for coming, and then everyone will get back to the dancing. Just a brief moment so as to introduce formally the seventh Duke. I know how you hate a crowd, but you can do that, Marsh, can’t you?”

“Alistair will make the introduction.”

“No, no; Sidney’s got his speech all ready.”

“Phillida.” That was all Marsh said, but the unaccustomed note of complete authority in his voice got her attention. She blinked, and took another step inside the room as if to see him more clearly. Her antennae were quivering; she knew something was up here, just not what it was, or how it would affect her.

“But Sidney—”

“No. I want Ali.”

“I don’t have the time for this,” she fretted. “Oh, very well, Alistair it is. Just tell him that all he has to do is introduce the seventh Duke of Beauville. Surely he can handle that.”

“Don’t worry,” Marsh told her. “The seventh Duke will have his introduction.”

Now she was certain that he was hiding something from her, and it worried her deeply. “Marsh, what do you have planned? You’re hiding something. I swear, Marsh, if you do anything to spoil this evening, I’ll—”

“Phillida, I will not spoil your evening. Your guests will go away happy.”

She might have pursued the matter—not that it would have done her much good, since her brother clearly had no intention of explaining further—but shouts and a crash from somewhere back in the house caught her attention. “Oh, Lord, what’s happened now? I have to go. Iris, Mary, keep an eye on him,” she pleaded, an attempt to enlist the sensible minds in the room onto her side—a futile attempt, as our faces told her. She threw up her hands, left the library, and then stuck her head back inside. “If you see the children, tell them to go to Miss Paul instantly, or I shall be quite angry.”

The door banged shut, and I made to go as well, but stopped when Marsh said, “Angry with me, do you suppose, or angry with the children?”

“Both, I should think,” Iris told him.

“In that case, perhaps I should have mentioned to her that they’re in the conservatory.”

Iris and I turned sharply in our chairs, to look through the billiards room to the glass house beyond. Indeed, after a few seconds, the anaemic vine jerked as if its roots were under attack.

“I merely told her that I hadn’t seen them,” Marsh explained placidly. “Which I hadn’t.”

“Marsh, you’re terrible,” Iris scolded.

The liberated duke just shrugged. He looked so pleased with himself, I could have hugged him.

   Taking pity on Lady Phillida, Iris and I went out through the conservatory. A rattle of half-dead shrubbery followed our opening of the door, followed by an exaggerated stillness.

Iris spoke into the damp, mildewed air. “Your mother wants you to go back to your nurse.”

“She’s our governess,” protested a voice from the dead palm.

“I don’t care if she’s your headmistress, your absence is troubling your mother, who has quite enough on her mind without you two adding to it.”

After a minute of whispered consultation, the bushes disgorged two very untidy children, leaves in their hair, soil to their knees, and rebellion on their grubby faces.

“They’ve taken over all our hiding places,” Lenore complained.

“Even the cabinet in the drawing room,” Walter added.

“Can’t you play somewhere else?” Iris asked.

“We’re forbidden to go in the stables wing, and Mrs Butter told us that if she sees us again near the kitchen, we won’t eat for a week.”

“That leaves a lot of the Hall to hide in. This whole wing.”

“It’s all bedrooms upstairs, except the old nursery, and all the rooms on the ground floor we’ve been told to keep away from, too.”

“I see your problem,” Iris said solemnly. “Shall I ask your uncle if you might be permitted, just this once, to make use of the billiards room, when no-one else is using it, and the Armoury, if you promise not to touch any of the weapons?”

“Oh, yes, please!”

“But first you report to your governess and let her know you’re all right. Then ask if she would mind if you just kept to yourselves, but reported in to her once an hour. That may be an acceptable compromise.
If
you keep your side of the bargain. And brush yourselves clean before she sees you!” Iris called after their rapidly disappearing figures.

A first-rate shot and a woman with negotiating skills—I was amazed that Mycroft had not kept her as one of his own. When the children had left us, Iris lingered, clearly wanting to talk, but not sure how to begin.

“It should go all right,” I said, more to provide an opening than from any enthusiasm for Holmes’ proposed trap.

“Do you honestly think so?”

“Well,” I said, “the whole thing sounds uncertain, but it has been my experience that the more solidly constructed a plan looks to be, the more vulnerable it is. This one has the virtue of simplicity: Whoever is behind this, he
will
want that evidence of marriage, whether it’s Gabriel’s certificate that he has locked away in a bank vault somewhere, or the actual church register in France. And we do have sufficient man-power to go after him. Both those factors work in our favour.”

“And if he’s already destroyed both the certificate and the register?”

“Then in a few days we let it be known that Helen has a copy, and where, and lay the trap that way. It’s not perfect, Iris; such things rarely are. But if any group can lay hands on this particular culprit, it’s this one.” There was no point in letting her see my uneasiness; if the plan blew up, we should have to deal with it then. As a reassurance, however, it was inadequate, and Iris went off not much satisfied.

I spent the rest of the morning doing a certain amount of hide-and-seek myself, exploring the crannies and crevices of Justice Hall that I had not seen before. In this search I was aided by the librarian Mr Greene, to whom I had brought another sprig of winter-tough rosemary and who in return had lent me the original plans for the house. The volume was bound in green leather with gilt embossing, and was too cumbersome to be of any use while moving about the rooms and corridors, but I borrowed the big desk in Marsh’s rooms, and in that relative privacy made copious notes. What the servants thought of this friend of their duke’s creeping up the servants’ stairways and through the corridors on the wrong side of the baize doors, I hated to think, but most of them were far too busy to enquire, or even take notice.

I saw the Darling children once or twice, and was cautious about opening passages, lest they follow me inside, but they seemed happy enough with the Armoury and later constructed a fortress beneath the billiards table.

By the afternoon I was satisfied that I knew the ground as well as anyone could who had not been born and raised in Justice Hall. I even knew where the secret passages had to be, the concealed doors and the remainder of the spiral staircase, although lacking keys I could not investigate other than on paper. I returned the bound drawings to the library and went downstairs to take my leave of Marsh. To my surprise, he stood up from his conversation with the head butler.

“If you could wait a minute, Mary, I’ll join you. Are we finished, Ogilby?”

“Thank you, Your Grace.”

Poor man, I thought; what confusion would reign here on the morrow, when “Your Grace” would be a waist-high child with a Canadian accent. “I’m happy to wait.”

“Have one of the cars sent around, if you would, Ogilby. I’ll be at my cousin’s house for tea. If Lady Phillida starts to worry, tell her I promised to be back here in good time.”

“Very good, Your Grace.”

“Come, Mary. Let us escape before we find ourselves pressed into service as Ra and Hathor.”

Mrs Algernon provided us with a plentiful tea, on the theory that food would not be had for hours (no doubt true) and that we should at any rate be having too good a time that night to bother eating (which, having spent the afternoon teased by the rich odours from the Justice kitchens, I truly doubted). Afterwards, Marsh, Helen, and the child bundled up in their thickest coats and went for a long walk; when they came back, Marsh was carrying the tired boy and Helen was joking with the older man as if she’d known him all her life. There were snowflakes on their hats, and Algernon appeared before they had completely divested themselves of garments to say that he didn’t think the snow would last for long, the sky looking none too determined about the matter, but that maybe we’d want to move ourselves over to the Hall sooner rather than later, just in case. Mrs Algernon insisted we take another cup of tea, which involved our third meal of the afternoon. As we were sitting down in the solar before the fire with our cups, Holmes blew in, looking remarkably disreputable, a number of large parcels in his arms.

“Have you brought my costume?” I demanded. His mouth was already filled by one of Mrs Algernon’s sustaining little meat tarts, but he waved me towards the pile of things he had deposited just inside the door of the solar. I went over, and determined which was mine by the method of holding up each one and waiting for a shake or finally, a nod. The brown paper wrapping and crude twine gave me no great hope, but to my astonishment, what I pulled out was a more elegant version of the boy’s costume I had worn all through Palestine those years before: loose head-cover, baggy trousers, and long overshirt, even a heavy sheepskin coat to go over it all. All that was lacking were a curved knife for my belt and the torturous sandals Ali had inflicted on me in the beginning—which had in any case soon been replaced by the very boots residing in Alistair’s guest-bedroom wardrobe. In these clothes, I would be “Amir”—with rather more embroidery and a lot less dirt.

“This costume is anachronistic to a theme of ancient Egypt, Holmes,” I commented, but he did not take it seriously as a protest, as indeed had not been intended. Besides which, no doubt the nomads of the desert had dressed in much the same manner for the whole of their existence. I eyed the other packages. “Is yours… ?”

“The same,” he answered. Which explained why my constitutionally tidy partner had neglected to shave this morning, that he might present a more ferocious visage.