Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [51]
“How do you do?” I managed.
“Quite well, thank you. Despite the foul weather. It wasn’t raining in Paris; it began halfway across the Channel, like walking through a curtain. Alistair, you look marvelous.”
She was English, but had lived long enough in France to have a fairly pronounced accent, and she presented her cheek for Alistair to salute as a European would have done. She then noticed a damp but formal presence lingering in the background.
“Ogilby, that is you, isn’t it? Good heavens, you haven’t changed a whit since I was in pig-tails! What is your secret? I’ll sell it and make us a fortune.”
Torn between pleasure and professional dignity, Ogilby allowed himself a personal response, inadvertently revealing a great deal about Iris Sutherland’s one-time popularity in the house. “No secret, Your Grace, just clean living.”
She shook her head sadly. “Oh, dear, that will never catch on, not in Paris. But, you want to know what to do with my machine, yes? I wonder, Marsh, if you might put me up for a couple of days?”
“Of course—there’s always a place for you at Justice, you know that. But I should warn you that Phillida and Sidney are here, and there’s to be a week-end party.”
“Oh how very jolly,” she said, not sounding jolly in the least. “Birds, drink, dancing to the gramophone, and a lot of terribly British conversation. If I’m very lucky, we’ll even have charades. Ah well, if I’d wished for civilisation, I’d have stayed in France. So yes, Ogilby, if you’d be so good as to store my machine under cover. My bags are in the boot, keys are in the ignition. It’s a self-starter,” she added. “You shouldn’t need the handle.”
Ogilby headed off to summon motorcar-movers and luggage-carriers. The woman’s blue gaze watched his retreat, and she leant close to murmur, “Marsh, that man is ancient—he was old when I knew him; he must be a hundred by now. Why haven’t you let the poor thing retire?”
“I offered, he refused. And he’s not even seventy. Give me your coat.” He transferred the garment to the arms of a handy house-maid, added gloves and hat, and offered the newcomer his arm for the stroll to the so-called library. “What will it be?” he asked her. “Something hot or something strong, or both?”
“Oh, both would be a life-saver. One can either drive a motor or be warm in it, not the two at once.” Inside the warmth, she went straight to the fire, standing practically in it and moving not at all as Marsh bent to throw more logs onto the low-burning flames.
He had to brush past her silk-stockinged legs to do so; it came to me that I had never seen him as comfortable with a woman, not even his sister. It also came to me, more or less simultaneously, that the framed pictures on the right end of the mantelpiece had been rearranged, that the handsome young second lieutenant was missing, and that a younger version of this woman was in the family group that remained.
Marsh told the maid—Emma, the young woman I had encountered on the stairway—to bring hot coffee made strong in the French manner. Iris gave her hands a last brisk rub over the flames and said she’d be back in a moment, then marched out of the warm library. No-one had to tell her where the cloak-room was, I noticed.
Marsh dropped into a chair and lit a thoughtful cigarette. His first reaction to her appearance on the Justice front steps had been surprise and the pleasure of greeting an old friend. Now that reaction was retreating, to be replaced by a sort of concern over what her arrival meant.
It was nothing to the speculation that was racing through my own mind. His wife, clearly long estranged, yet welcomed back as a comfortable, long-time companion? Alistair, as ferocious in his protection of Marsh as he had been of Mahmoud, without a trace of jealousy? (And I was watching for it, you can be sure.) And Ogilby—in my experience, a man’s servants were often more vigorous in their efforts to safeguard their master than even