Justice Hall (49 page)

When I had reached the end, I felt as if his patient and dignified words had been seared onto my brain. I gave the boy’s letter back to Iris, the mother he had not known. She folded it reverently back into its envelope, and handed it to Marsh, along with the handkerchief she had borrowed. She then picked up the other documents from her lap, looking at the packet of letters wrapped in ribbon. “Isn’t that Helen’s handwriting?”

“I should think it would have to be,” Marsh replied.

“And this… their marriage certificate? Oh, that utter bastard.”

Marsh, however, was already looking at the means of turning his anger into action. “This will simplify things somewhat,” he said grimly.

“I agree,” I said, with feeling. Instead of having to watch the crowd of nearly 350 guests and servants to see which of our suspects made for the exit, then track him unnoticed through house and countryside, by motorcar and train, until he led us to his hiding place, we could now simply wait in the Armoury for him to show. Ali might shadow a nervous hare across a barren hillside unseen, needs be, and would have no problems in the corridors of Justice Hall, but with the hiding place known, the potentially disastrous complexities of Holmes’ plan were sliced through like the Gordian knot. It was a tremendous relief.

   The time had come; the inevitable could be delayed no longer; I had to join the party.

Life has ill prepared me for finding any enjoyment in a press of merrymakers. My parents had entertained a certain amount in my childhood, but those were quiet affairs, with intelligent conversation the main interest. Conversation in the Great Hall was far from intellectual; the level of hilarity was already such that a stentorian bellow was required to make polite response of one’s name. A band had started up in one corner of the gallery, jazz music loud enough to be appreciated in New Orleans and punctuated by the cries of the distraught parrots. Painted Cleopatras danced with laurel-leafed Caesars (never mind that they were thirteen hundred years too late for Tutankhamen), archaeologists with belly-dancers; women with elaborately outlined eyes linked arms with men wearing masks of various creatures that obscured vision as well as visage and had already begun to be pushed onto the tops of heads. Six men with eyes like Rudolph Valentino’s and wearing little more than loin-cloths (their eyes, unfortunately, bore the only resemblance to the actor) were clustered together, attempting to invent an Egyptian dance-step, eliciting gales of mad laughter from a dozen equally heavily painted young women in gauze drapes. Drinks of many unlikely hues rested (briefly) in glasses of various shapes, and I could only anticipate that the place would be reduced to sprawled heaps of comatose human beings in masks long before that eggs-and-champagne breakfast to which Iris had referred. I settled my
abayya
on my shoulders and resolutely pushed my way out into the pulsing mass of humanity.

If I regarded the exercise as an investigation into the social dynamics of crowds, I found, I could keep from being overwhelmed. If I smiled vacantly and nodded at the shouted attempts at conversation of my neighbours, if I kept an untasted drink in one hand so as to forestall a dozen others being pressed on me, if I kept my elbows clamped against my sides so as to protect my ribs, and most of all if I kept moving along the edges of the room, the sheer hysterical energy of the place did not come crashing in upon me and send me gibbering for the open air.

The band added a weirdly humming stringed instrument—to simulate Egyptian harmonies, I supposed—and fifty people joined the six Valentinos in their dance. With a splash and a chorus of whoops, a nearby thicket of papyrus began to leap about violently as a dripping Caesar rose from his lily-pond: jumped, pushed, or fallen? It hardly mattered, to him least of all. A young woman danced by me with one of the artificial jungle-vines wrapped around and around her diaphanous costume, which she may have intended as an exotic belt but which made her look as if she had just escaped from being tied to a post. A red-headed boy went past, doing a brisk fox-trot with one of the stuffed crocodiles that had reared up at the front doors, and I was nearly flattened by a pair of women in brilliant coral-hued gauze jumping on pogo-sticks, more or less in time to the music. A six-foot-tall scarab beetle (
what
an uncomfortable costume!) was deep in conversation with two blonde belly-dancers; three men in golden masks argued over the proper technique for taking a fox’s brush; and an ibis-god on stilts gazed down in solitary splendour at the activity going on around his knees.

And all this before dinner.

With that thought, perhaps forty minutes into my circumnavigation of the floor, a subtle shudder seemed to move through the mass, and it began to thin. At first it seemed the result of a distant earth-quake followed by the instinctive search for open space, but then I realised it was the rumour of food in the adjoining rooms. We were to dine buffet style, with a hundred tables set up for people to occupy with their filled plates, and there seemed little point in being among the first rush. I leant against a marble column that was dressed as a palm tree, and took a swallow of the warm liquid in my glass.

“Drinking heavily, are we, Russell?” said a voice in my ear. If I hadn’t been so fatigued, I might have thrown my arms around him; as it was, I gave him a tired smile.

“Hello, Holmes. Where have you been?”

“Here, for much of the time. I saw you a few times across the room, but by the time I reached your place, you were gone.”

“You look remarkably fresh. And terribly Bedouin.”

“Better than being dressed as a Caesar.”

“Or Rudolph Valentino, although you have applied the kohl, I see.”

“Marsh told you the plan?”

“I’m not certain if it was Marsh or Mahmoud, but yes. Did he tell you—”

“—about the papers?” he interrupted, speaking in a voice so low I could barely hear it myself. “He did. He’s got them squirrelled away now, and wrapped some newspaper inside the piece of oil-cloth to put back in the chest.”

“Any number of people could have hid those papers in the chest,” I noted.

“Anyone who knows Justice Hall,” he agreed.

“Ali will take up his position in the Armoury after Marsh has spoken?”

“Once he’s introduced Marsh, he’ll slip away. While Marsh is talking to the guests.”

“Ought we to keep an eye on the two men anyway?”

“You know my methods, Russell.”

By this time in my life, his methods were mine.

Dinner was an odd assortment of the familiar and the conscientiously foreign, crab puffs next to bits of bright yellow lamb on skewers, tiny marinated aubergines nestled amongst the iced oysters. This time, there was sufficient quantity to satisfy the mob, even though by the time I surveyed the table of offerings, the most popular items (those of recognisably English heritage) were rather sparsely represented. Holmes had gone off again, and I settled into a corner table. Halfway through my pomegranate-stuffed pigeon, I glanced up, and confronted a vision.

Mahmoud and Ali Hazr stood in the doorway. Mahmoud entered first, dressed in dramatic black and gold, on his face the customary all-seeing expression I had once known. Ali stood at his shoulder, glowering and clothed in all the colours of the rainbow. His hand was resting on a close facsimile of the knife he had used to such lethal purpose, and when he spoke briefly in Mahmoud’s ear, I could see that his front teeth were again missing. I choked on my mouthful and stood up; Mahmoud’s eyes caught the movement, and he gazed at me across the crowded dining room. His mouth quirked, briefly, at my reaction, and then something behind him called for his attention: I saw, as I pushed my way to them, that that something was five-year-old Gabe Hughenfort, his pale face slightly dubious and his hand clinging tightly to his mother’s, but his green eyes glowing with wonder at the sights and sounds of Justice Hall in its festivities. He was dressed—how else?—as the young son of a sheikh, with gold
agahl
holding his snowy
abayya
over those dark Hughenfort curls, his white robes gleaming against the pool of Mahmoud’s black. Yes, by God he was a Hughenfort; it was a wonder the entire room of revellers did not rise as one and proclaim it.

And he was more than just a Hughenfort, I decided as he moved into the room: The title had already begun to settle down onto the child, the awareness of responsibility and eight centuries of tradition—unconscious still, but felt in the glances and the voices of the adults closest to him. The responsibility of the title had nearly smothered Marsh, but on this boy it seemed to be having the opposite effect, giving him stature, adding authority to his open good nature and obvious intelligence. In reflecting back the respect others had for the name and the title, this five-year-old had already begun to take into himself those qualities which justified the respect. On this Hughenfort, the weight of the title looked as if it might ride in his bones, not on his back.

Helen leant down and said something to her son; at his nod, they went forward to the buffet, where she helped him choose the only familiar item in sight, a crustless sandwich. I glanced at Mahmoud and Ali: Mahmoud was watching the boy, Ali the crowd. Then Ali’s crimson-gold-and-lapis-embroidered elbow jabbed into the black arm beside it, and both dark gazes were drilling the room opposite. I moved, and saw Sidney Darling, his long, slim figure evoking a Hollywood sheikh, his turban nonchalantly tilted on his blond hair. I looked back, Mahmoud caught my eye and jerked his head minutely towards the Hall, and then the Hughenforts were gone, child and all.

I hastened to follow them, looking around for Holmes, who materialised at my side as soon as I came through the doorway. “I have Ivo Hughenfort,” he murmured in my ear.

“I’ll take Darling,” I responded. Holmes faded off into the gathering crowd.

It took some time for the guests to realise that it was time to toast their new duke, but gradually, in groups of two or twelve, they trickled back into the Great Hall, drinks in hand at the ready, not silent but prepared to fall so. I could see Ivo Hughenfort towards the bottom of the stairway, which would be the front of the crowd when Mahmoud began to speak. Holmes was behind him, but with his height, he had no trouble watching Ivo. One of the imported servants—he of the crooked nose—came up to speak into Hughenfort’s ear; he listened, nodded, spoke for a moment in response, and the servant went away.

Then Marsh was mounting the stairs, a swirl of midnight black against the pale stone, his right hand holding that of the white-garbed child. Alistair, Helen, Ben, and Iris stayed at the opposite side of the stairs from Ivo Hughenfort, along with a middle-aged woman who would, I thought, meet the description of Mycroft’s kindly, deceptive, and competent attendant. I looked again for Darling’s insouciant turban, found it unmoved a dozen feet away, and looked back at Marsh. At Mahmoud.

Halfway up the stairs, the black figure turned and stood, waiting for silence. The voices fell to a murmur, and still he waited, until all was silence, and every ear could hear his words.

“Thank you for coming to Justice Hall this evening. You honour my family with your presence.” There was a mild murmur of amusement at that un-English sentiment, and he paused for a moment until the hush returned.

“My sister Phillida made this festivity for the express purpose of welcoming the seventh Duke of Beauville. At the time, she, along with everyone else, assumed that man to be myself.” He held up his left hand to cut off any reaction. “You may be aware that my brother Henry, the sixth Duke, had a son. His name was Gabriel, and he was killed in the War as so many others were. Only in recent weeks have we begun to suspect that before his death, Gabriel provided himself with an heir. A legal heir, contingent only on locating the certificate, either through a close search of the house, or by means of the church records of the village in France where Gabriel and his bride were secretly wed. A delegation will set out on Monday to locate that legal record, but I thought it best to anticipate their success by allowing my sister’s festivities to go on, albeit with the minor change of its honoree. I should like to introduce to you Gabriel Michael Maurice Hughenfort, seventh Duke of Beauville, fourteenth Earl of Calminster, seventh Earl of Darlescote, formerly of Toronto, Canada.”

He picked the boy up and held him, less to reveal him to the people than to comfort him against the applause that would ensue. And after a long, shocked moment, it did: a huge wave of clapping and a Babel of voices, amazed, gratified, and well aware of the social coup each one had garnered by being present at such an event. All of London—half the world!—would be talking about this in the coming days, the voices were exclaiming to themselves, and we were there, with those two dramatic Arab costumes on the formal staircase of Justice Hall.

I looked for the white Darling turban, as I had approximately every five seconds since it had come into the Great Hall, and found it moved slightly to one side. I started to push towards it, but it came to a halt again, so I contented myself with watching it with one eye and looking up at the stairs with the other. The boy had been startled at the sudden volume of noise, but Mahmoud spoke quietly to him, and whatever he said had the desired effect. Little Gabe allowed himself to be held there for a minute, and then his mother came up the stairs and gathered him into her arms. Iris was there too, and the deceptive matron, and all three ascended the stairs to escape the acclaim.