Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [133]
“I’d like a drink, actually. A good old English gin and tonic. Do you have such a thing, or need we call for it?”
“There should be a drinks cabinet somewhere.”
There was, and although I would have preferred hot tea, I joined her in a g-and-t. She swallowed, and exhaled in appreciation.
“Yes,” she said, picking up on my last statement. “Justice Hall is a house divided. Phillida is going berserk. She’s got this elaborate ball planned for the fifteenth, absolutely refuses to shift it to the London house; I can see her point—she’d be better to cancel it. At the same time, Alistair won’t let anyone but Ogilby into the part of the house where Marsh is, which means the entire wing is effectively cut off from the main block. Sidney is irate, because that means the billiards room and the library are in No-Man’s-Land, and they had planned to have a few friends up for the week-end. Alistair won’t budge, swears he’ll empty a load of bird shot into the billiards room if he hears any movement down there. They believe him.”
As would I, I thought, but only commented, “Sounds like a fine game of Happy Families.”
“An interesting family, no doubt of that. But, Ali told me your husband was attacked on Tuesday. Was it serious? Was it connected with everything else that’s going on?”
“Who knows?” Who knew, in fact, what was going on? “He was fortunate—a constable happened on them before it got past the bruises-and-cracked-ribs stage.”
She pulled a face. “Still, at his age, even that’s no small matter.”
I paused, taken somewhat aback. I rarely thought of Holmes as being of any particular age, much less a great one, but it was true: A beating at twenty is not the same as one at sixty. I wondered if I should have insisted he see a doctor, then dismissed the idea immediately. If he’d needed medical attention, he’d have sought it.
We applied ourselves to our glasses and chatted of nothing in particular—flying lessons, as I recall, with Iris asserting that in a few years we’d be criss-crossing the world’s oceans in passenger aeroplanes, g-and-t in hand, and think nothing of it—and I waited for her to ask me for the information Holmes and I had collected since we had last seen each other a week earlier. She did not ask. Once she started me off, of course, the painful flow of facts and images would wash over her in a flood. She knew that, knew there was no comfortable way to ease into the past, and so she hesitated to ask.
In the end, I simply gave her Gabriel’s journal. I had brought it with me to search it more closely with an eye to the tall Canadian Hélène whom I would soon be confronting, but it appeared to me more important that Iris read it first. I took it from my locked case, and placed it in her hands.
“This is Gabriel’s diary,” I told her. “Your son’s war journal. When you’ve read it, I’ll tell you how we found it.”
She received the battered object with the attitude of a believer accepting the communion host. She bent over it for a moment, then left the cabin without a word.
I did not see her for two days.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
(SELECTED ENTRIES FROM THE JOURNAL
OF GABRIEL HUGHENFORT)
10 August, 1917
I begin this fresh journal on the train back to Arley Holt, where I shall disembark a different man from the one who climbed on board early this morning. Today I turned eighteen, and my first act as a man was to enlist. I am now a soldier, returning home to break the news.
I have decided to take this slim volume with me to war, an ornate object that will cheer my drab quarters with its gaudy colour and its reminder of exotic places. My uncle Marsh sent it me, some weeks ago, and I decided immediately I set eyes on it that it would take its place in my soldier’s pack.
For to war I shall be going, and to ensure honest service I have used a false name. I am proud of my true name, but there is no doubt that its syllables make it difficult for people