Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [100]
They never spotted us, not even the boy, who had a bright eye. We stayed with them up to the door of the restaurant where they would take luncheon with their unknown in-laws. The door shut. As we stood on the other side of the street, watching Terèse Hughenfort hand her parcels over and straighten her son’s collar and hair, Holmes asked me, “Well?”
“He’s not a Hughenfort. Wrong chin, wrong eyebrows, the eyes—everything.”
“The hair dye she used isn’t even very good,” he agreed.
We took a quick lunch of our own, returned to the grand entrance well before five Hughenforts came out and then parted, and followed her back to the hotel.
Mme Hughenfort did not look terribly happy.
And she had not reappeared before Alistair and Iris came to compare notes, having seen Phillida safely back onto the train to Arley Holt. Alistair’s hand was free of its gauze wrapping, although the arm seemed tender to movement. I assembled four chairs in front of the fire, and while Holmes perused the drinks tray, I telephoned down for tea. When I had finished with the instrument, Iris took it up and asked for a trunk call to Justice, in order to check on Marsh’s condition.
“How was your luncheon?” I asked Alistair.
“The woman drank three gin fizzes,” he said with a shudder.
“Poor thing,” Iris said, modifying the condemnation. “She was terrified.”
“She had a right to be,” Alistair growled, as ferocious a noise as ever Ali had come out with. “She was trying to commit a fraud.”
“So you would agree?” Holmes asked. “The boy was not fathered by Lionel Hughenfort?”
“Never,” Alistair declared.
“Lionel was built like Marsh,” Iris explained. “Shorter even, dark, a muscular build even though he never took exercise and had a sickly childhood. Were it not for his hair, the child would look almost Scandinavian—his eyes are even blue.”
“The hair is dyed,” Holmes and Alistair said simultaneously. Iris looked at them, and frowned.
“You mean to say the child is in on the deception as well?”
I for one was not willing to go quite that far. “He may regard it as a game. And I will say that he seems a keen enough lad, bright and well mannered, genuinely fond of his mother—and she of him.”
“So,” Alistair said, his voice dry. “You are suggesting that the boy would make a suitable heir, were Marsh willing to overlook the small problem of the boy’s paternity.”
Put like that, it was an unlikely scenario. Still, I registered a mild complaint. “It really is a bit ridiculous, this whole business of preserving the male line, don’t you think? And I’m sure that if you studied family portraits closely enough, you’d find anomalies in the noblest of families. Marsh needs an heir in order to feel that he can leave Justice: He could do worse than that child.”
I did not expect to convince them; I couldn’t even convince myself, since I knew that Marsh’s determination to have the truth was all that counted.
“What did Lady Phillida make of them?” Holmes asked.
“That was interesting, didn’t you think, Ali?” Iris answered. “She seemed quite willing to clasp the child, if not his mother, to her breast. Started to talk about having them up to Justice until Ali cut her off.”
“Was she predisposed to accept the lad, would you say? Or did it only come about gradually?”
“The instant she laid eyes on him, she exclaimed how like Lionel he was. But here—Phillida brought these to show them, and Ali snagged