Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [13]
Under the warmth of the room (and the fumes of the drink, perhaps) our host’s social instincts were aroused, and when the housekeeper had left, he came out with an unexpectedly chatty explanation of the substance in our bowls. “This is Mrs Algernon’s patented cure-all. For all the years I’ve known her, she’s kept a pot on the back of the cookstove and tosses in whatever she has at hand. It never goes cold, never goes empty. Somewhere in here are atomic particles of the beef from my twenty-first birthday, and the carrot I brought my mother in a bouquet when I was four, and for all I know, the duck served at my parents’ wedding breakfast.”
“My grandmother did the same thing,” I told him with a smile. “Her pot was always bubbling away—she’d give a bowl to tramps who came to the door, to workmen, to us when we were hungry.” Which explained why the room’s odour had reminded me of childhood comforts.
“I could never figure out why it doesn’t taste like the bottom of a dust bin,” he remarked, sipping from his spoon. “Mrs Algernon says it’s because she seasons it with love. I suspect her of using brandy. It is, I have no doubt, massively unhygienic. If we all die in our beds tonight, you will know who is to blame.”
Holmes and I glanced at each other over our unhygienic but satisfying soup, and I could see the same thought in his mind: In removing himself from Palestine, our host had discovered not only a streak of garrulousness, but a sense of mild social humour as well; Ali’s Bedouin humour had tended to involve either bloodshed or heavy burlesque.
Mrs Algernon’s dinner was, as Alistair had said, simple but substantial, if showing signs of a hasty preparation. By the time the pudding course had been cleared, however, the remarkably genial man at the end of the table was fading fast, exhausted by his efforts at sociability. When he attempted to rise, intending to lead the way back into the hall for coffee, he leant hard on the table, then sat down again abruptly. Holmes leapt to his aid while I hurried to fetch Mrs Algernon; we caught up with the two men on the curving stone staircase, Holmes half carrying the younger man upwards. I took Alistair’s other arm, expecting him to throw off, but he did not.
Mrs Algernon directed us into a wood-panelled chamber with a fire in the grate, a room lifted straight out of a Mediaeval manuscript. We deposited him on a bed not much younger than the house and left him to the scolding ministrations of his housekeeper.
Back downstairs, with fresh logs on the fire, fresh coffee warming in front of it, and a dusty bottle of far-from-fresh brandy standing to one side, I studied my surroundings again, looking for I knew not what clue.
“What are we seeing here, Holmes?” I asked. “If you’d told me that Ali’s past was . . . this, I’d never have believed you. How do you explain the complete shift in the man—not just his speech patterns and how he moves, but his basic personality? The Ali we knew was short-tempered and as stand-offish as a cat. He’d have been at death’s door before he allowed us to carry him up a flight of stairs—or for that matter, before he’d have come to us for help in the first place. This is a completely different man.”
Holmes nodded. “One can only assume that when he went to Palestine, Alistair Hughenfort created the image of an entirely new person, and then stepped into that image. Now he is home, his original persona has taken over again. You’ve done it yourself, Russell, when you are in disguise. It is akin to complete fluency in two languages; one moves from one to another with no pause to consider the changes.”
“Holmes, I realise that clothing makes the man, but this is a bit . . . extreme. To assume a disguise