Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [27]
“You two have been busy?” Marsh asked us.
“Reasonably so,” Holmes replied. “We have just returned from Dartmoor, a somewhat interesting case involving land fraud and family inheritance. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. You look tired, is all.”
“Nonsense. You, on the other hand, look distinctly unwell.”
“I have put on nearly a stone and taught myself to sleep in a feather bed again. How could I be unwell?”
“Mahmoud, we—”
“Do not use that name here.”
Holmes caught his arm and forced him to stand still. Deliberately, he said again, “Mahmoud,” and followed it with an Arabic quotation: “A man feels shame at the mistreatment of his brother.”
He might have been speaking Mandarin Chinese; Marsh reacted not at all to the guttural syllables. He merely said, “In Palestine, you may have known a man of that name. You may even have considered yourself to be his brother. Here, there is no such man.”
“Whatever the trouble, it would be best if you were to permit us to help.”
“Trouble? What trouble can I possibly have? I own more land than a man can walk in a day, possess more works of timeless art than many museums, occupy a position at the right ear of the nation’s power. I have men to cook my food and polish my shoes, women to lay my fire and starch my collars. Nine hundred years of British authority is in my bones, and I have returned to the land of my family. How could that possibly be construed as ‘trouble’?”
I tried to hear a bitterness in his voice that would match the worn expression on his face, but I heard only a mild, inescapable litany of fact. I could not bear it.
“You once said to me,” I told him, “after we were ambushed on the road to Jericho and Holmes taken captive, that trouble came because you neglected your rightful state. That you were a man who went about on foot, and permitting yourself to ride in a ruler’s motorcar was a foolish thing. You do not belong here, with your mouth at the ear of power. You are a scribe, and belong in Palestine, with your ear to the mouths of others. That is where you are happy.”
“Happiness is nothing. And another man said those words” was his implacable reply.
Holmes tried again. “Mahmoud—”
Before any of us could react, Holmes was sprawled on the ground with a furious English duke standing over him, right arm drawn back for a second blow. “You will not use that name!” he roared.
“Then tell me why!” Holmes bellowed back. He clambered to his feet and stuck his face into Marsh’s. “Explain to me why . . . that man has ceased to exist!”
Marsh teetered on the edge of his fury, and I made ready to leap on his shoulders and pull him off Holmes. Then, in the blink of an eye, the shutters slammed down, the homicidal rage was folded back into its cage; control was regained. In that brief instant of transition, Mahmoud looked out from those dark eyes, but he was gone in a flash, and a middle-aged Englishman was studying the reddening jaw of the man before him. His own flush faded, and he nodded.
“It is true, I owe you that much. The man you speak of is not here, but his debts remain. I will explain, and then you and Mary can pack your bags and be safely home in Sussex before my sister’s friends begin to arrive.”
The two dogs that had skittered away in a panic at his outburst were now back, shrinking at his knees and grinning nervously until he thumped their ribs and sent them off in search of throwing sticks. We drifted after the dogs, and Marsh began to explain.
“One cannot begin to speak of the seventh Duke of Beauville and the state of his affairs without looking first at how the family’s history