Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [44]
I escaped the beautiful room wondering how many more priceless works of art and exquisite vistas were going to sear themselves onto my soul before the tour was over. We entered a state bedroom hung with silk hand-painted chinoiserie wall covering and the matching silk bed hangings; from the door came the brief sound of footsteps crossing the bare boards at the side of the carpet down the centre of the long gallery. Alistair came to a halt and raised his voice.
“Were a person to wish to follow another without being noticed, he might do well to remove his shoes.”
Utter silence radiated from the long gallery. Then a small voice called back, “We’re not allowed to remove our shoes. It makes Miss Paul quite cross.”
“Life is full of decisions,” Alistair commented. Having delivered himself of this philosophical dictum, he went cheerfully on into the next room.
The sound of footsteps ceased to dog our heels.
CHAPTER NINE
The skirmish with the two children had restored Alistair to something approaching good humour. As we wended our way through the state bedrooms of the central block he would pause for a moment, then continue with a look of amused satisfaction. It came back to me that one of the man’s quirks had been the occasional pleasure he took at being bested, especially in the areas of his own expertise. He had once laughed aloud when my thrown knife had nearly taken him in the throat—a reaction I attributed at the time to astonishment, but which was now looking like a sort of generosity of spirit that I had not suspected.
At the turn of the corridor that led into the east wing, he stopped. “These are the family’s rooms. Nothing of interest.”
I could hardly insist on poking my nose into private bedrooms, although I should have been interested to look at Lady Phillida’s dressing room. One can learn a great deal by studying a woman’s cosmetics and medicine cabinet.
Instead, we doubled back (causing a short flurry of panicked whispers and hasty movement) to retrace our steps through the gallery (ostentatiously ignoring the unnatural bulge of the curtains in one room) and past the genial ancestors to a door at the other end. This opened into the room Marsh had referred to as the “green library,” although there was nothing particularly green about it.
But it was certainly a library, rather than a room with decorative books and well-used sofas. Shelves lined the walls, unbroken but for five windows, two doors, and a fireplace with a portrait above it. Free-standing bookshelves of a subtly newer appearance extended into one end of the room, creating three bays that filled a third of the library’s floor space. On the other end, under the windows, were two long mahogany worktables and a trio of leather armchairs, all of which were equipped with reading lamps.
I felt instantly at home, and wanted only to dismiss Alistair, along with the rest of Justice Hall, that I might have a closer look at the shelves. I had to content myself instead with a strolling perusal, my hands locked together behind my back to keep them from reaching out for Le Morte d’Arthur, Caxton 1485 or the delicious little red-and-gilt Bestiary, MS Circa 1250 or . . . If I took one down, I should be lost. So I looked, like a hungry child in a sweet shop, and trailed out on my guide’s heels with one longing backward glance.
A boudoir, a school-room with battered ink-stained tables and a lot of out-of-date equipment, a similarly disused nursery (explaining the children’s lack of enthusiasm), then the suite of rooms Holmes and I had been given, followed by a smaller, unoccupied suite. Marsh’s rooms were at the end of the wing, overlooking the terraces and the end of the long, curving Justice Pond; then we were at the carved stairway again, with Alistair leading the way down.
Back on the ground floor we passed through the strung-together salons and dining rooms behind the