Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [109]
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.