Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [103]
Concealing my amusement, I explained to him that “Christian” meant a follower of Jesus Christ, and that therefore the man himself could not, strictly speaking, have been one. “In fact,” I added, “Jesus himself was born into a Jewish family, worshipped in the Jewish temple, thought of himself as a Jew. It was only later that his followers decided that what he represented was a new thing.”
The boy’s mind was supple and inquisitive, which I thought a remarkable paedagogic achievement for the son of a woman with no great intellect, and we talked for a time about the Old and New Testaments, about the kinds of stories each contained, about the differences between God and Jesus Christ. I could see him floundering at this last morass—no surprise, since many adult minds did the same—and turned him away with a question about his preferences in school.
I had to wonder who his actual father might have been.
On the outskirts of Paris it transpired—oh how astounding and blessed a coincidence!—that we, too, were heading to Lyons, and we, too, not until tomorrow, in the afternoon! It was unlikely, of course, that we would again be moved up into first class by a devout conductor, but perhaps we would see Mme and the young scholar while boarding our respective cars? And perhaps, Holmes ventured piously, as we were to pass several days in that city, we might one afternoon call upon her? When the boy was home from his studies, say, and free to join us for a visit to the seller of ices?
Mme Hughenfort was a woman easily reached through an appreciation of her son. With no whisper of hesitation, she gave Holmes the address that no Hughenfort had been able to discover. He noted it down in a fussy hand, closed and tucked away his miniature note-book, and thanked her.
At the station, we retained our small, battered valises but assisted Madame in transferring her bags to the hands of a porter, and we stayed with our new friends, chatting amiably, until both were safely within a taxi. There we paused, ever polite, until she had given the driver her destination.
Her voice reached us clearly through the glass.
Holmes kept no bolt-hole in Paris, but he knew the city well enough to give our own taxi driver the name of a large, busy hotel frequented by commercial travellers, across the street from Mme Hughenfort’s chosen accommodation. Our hotel occupied nearly half of a city block, and had entrances on three streets; no-one would notice a couple of suddenly defrocked priests passing through the lobby, and no maid would unpack the younger priest’s highly irregular female garments from the larger valise.
We took adjoining rooms, shed our identifying black garments, changed into more usual attire, and passed through the lobby separately to meet in a nearby brasserie, whose front windows just happened to overlook the front door of Mme Hughenfort’s hotel.
We did not expect to see her. Digging up information on the woman’s personal life was the purpose of accompanying her to Lyons, where there would be neighbours and shopkeepers to be questioned. However, less than twenty minutes later I glanced up from my soupe à l’oignon and nearly tipped the rising spoonful onto my shirt-front.
“Holmes—look!”
Strolling in our direction, looking the very essence of a French provincial family in the big city, came Mme and Thomas Hughenfort, accompanied by a swarthy man not much taller than she and equally stout. She did not look coquettish enough for it to be a recent friendship, and for a moment I thought the man might be a brother, come to fetch his sister and nephew home safely from the capital city. Certainly the boy seemed, if not overjoyed to see him, at least accepting of his presence, and even responded to one jovial folly with a grudging smile. But then the fingers of the two adults intertwined surreptitiously, in an exploration that was more foreplay than greeting, and I knew this was no brother.
“Russell,” Holmes said with an urgent note in his voice, “I believe they are coming this way. The two of us might trigger a memory; I suggest