Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [110]
“That may be for the best,” he replied as he carried the box back to the cupboard.
I could see what he meant: that Terèse Hughenfort would take the missing objects as a declaration that the family was on to her scheme. However, when the monies continued to come (as I assumed they would, knowing Marsh), their arrival would send the further message that support would continue, so long as she did not attempt to foist her cuckoo’s child into the family nest.
Out on the street again, doors locked behind us and dogs safely passed, I brought out the only real disappointment of the evening’s excursion.
“It would have been nice to have some hard evidence of Sidney Darling’s involvement in the attempt to place the boy in Justice.”
Holmes was shaking his head before I had finished. “I believe you’d find that one of those occasions when the truth does more damage than a convenient lie, Russell. We still can’t be certain if Darling was planning actual fraud, or if he was simply aiming at the easiest path for everyone: giving the duke an acceptable heir, a boy with the potential of being shaped to make a master for Justice when his time comes. Darling no doubt believes that such a situation would set Marsh’s mind at rest, allowing a return to the status quo: Marsh and Alistair back to wherever they’ve been for the last twenty years, the Darlings back in charge of Justice. Nothing criminal there.”
He was right. The peculiar thing was, Darling’s goal and ours were proving to be more or less the same thing. And as I’d said before, if I had to choose a commoner to train up as a duke, Thomas Hughenfort would be an ideal candidate: a supple mind, good manners, and an unspoilt upbringing by a caring mother.
Alistair’s response to that, unfortunately, would dominate: The boy’s blood was simply not that of the Hughenforts.
There was little more to be done in Lyons, short of confronting Mme Hughenfort, which was most definitely not in our brief. We spent an hour in the morning uncovering the owner of the flat to which the mother and son had fled, finding to our utter lack of surprise that the name was that of her long-time accountant to whom cheques were sent.
We were on the next train to Paris, where we spent the night, and arrived in London to the sound of church bells.
Holmes went into the first telegraph office we could find that was open on a Sunday, to dispatch a brief message to Justice Hall saying that we were back in the country and would report soon. Then we took ourselves to a small and inordinately luxurious hotel, where we were fed and pampered and could talk the whole matter through without being overheard.
In most investigations, Holmes aimed for the truth—no less, no more. In this case, we sought the truth, but perhaps not too much of it, and preferably truth of the right sort. Marsh was both client and brother, and his fate was in our hands.
Put simply, if we loved Mahmoud, we would lie to him. A simple declaration that, yes, the boy is your brother’s son, and the huge weight of Justice would be lifted from Marsh’s shoulders, allowing him and Ali to slip out from under that estate, those walls, that role of self-mutilating service, and resume the light existence of nomads. Marsh wished to trade stone walls for those of goat’s hair as badly as his cousin did—of that we were both certain. All it would take was one word, a simple, unadorned “yes,” and our brothers would be free.
“I have, on occasion, lied to a client,” Holmes mused, addressing rather owlishly his several-times-emptied glass. “It goes against my grain, rather, but particularly in my youth I hesitated not to play God.”
“But—with Marsh?”
“There’s the rub,” he agreed. “If it were merely a matter of backing Marsh up, I should happily lie to the prime minister himself, perhaps even the king. But to keep the facts from him, to make his decision for him? That is a far different matter.”
My initial objection had been founded more on the impossibility of deceiving the man than on the immorality of doing so, but I had to agree with this argument as well.