Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [70]
“This is an interesting group of professional men my brother-in-law has brought together. I should be interested to know if you perceive a particular . . . link between any two or three.”
“You think this may be a business meeting, then?” I had thought the same myself, the night before.
“I do not know. You and Holmes, you are perceptive. I should like to hear your thoughts when the guests have left on Monday.”
“They won’t speak freely in front of me.”
“Neither would they before Holmes. I wish the wisdom of your eyes, from the distance that will be placed upon you.”
“Very well. I will watch.”
“Thank you. You are good with that gun?”
“I am an adequate shot.”
“Better if you would be allowed to bring the birds down with a knife, I think?” There was a smile deep in the back of his eyes, but he turned away before it could reach his mouth. I, however, laughed aloud.
“What did that last comment mean?” Iris asked curiously, when he had left us alone.
“He’s referring to this odd skill I have with a throwing knife,” I told her—clear indication of how I had come to trust her in the few hours I had known her: This was not an admission one would make to a casual acquaintance.
“When did he witness this skill?”
I met her eyes. “In Palestine.”
“Do you know,” she said, shifting her gaze to Marsh’s retreating back, “that’s the first time I’ve heard him refer to his time there, even obliquely, since I came. In France he would talk about it freely, the handful of times he came to visit me, but every time I say anything about it here, he just looks blank. He said that Phillida isn’t to know, but even when we’re out of hearing of the house, he won’t talk.”
And to think that I had speculated that he might actually have wanted to return home from Palestine, I thought wryly. “I believe,” I said slowly, “that the possibility of having to remain here permanently is so painful, the only way he can accept it is to cut himself off completely from that life.”
“He calls Ali ‘my cousin,’ ” she agreed ruefully.
“Yes, and he punched Holmes—my husband—for using the name Mahmoud.”
“Good heavens.”
“Yes. Of course, he’d been drinking at the time.”
“Who? Marsh? Marsh?”
“He seemed to be drinking more or less continuously until you arrived.”
She stared at me, disbelief struggling with the unlikelihood of my being mistaken, until acceptance asserted itself.
While we had been talking, we were following the others without paying much attention to them, other than making sure to keep a safe distance from other ears. Now we found that we had come to a halt on a rough patch of open ground between two long fingers of woodlands. The coppice to the right was alive with untoward sounds, the cries of alarmed birds punctuating the approaching racket of the beaters: their whistles and calls, the crackle of their boots, and the thwack of sticks against tree-trunks. Anticipation mounted; cartridges slid into place; dogs quivered on their haunches; shoulders grew ready for guns.
Twelve guns seemed to me an unwieldy number; at any rate, it was more than I’d ever shot with before. I had been on organised drives any number of times, although I preferred the informal method of flushing birds out one or two at a time; I braced myself for the noise, and glanced down the line at the others. Twelve in all: Freiburg and Stein had been placed nearest the wood, followed by Iris and myself, then Sidney Darling with Alistair’s cousin, Ivo, on his left. The banker Matheson and the industrialist Radley came next, then Sir James and the Marquis; on the far end, nearly a third of a mile from Freiburg, stood a cluster consisting of Marsh and Alistair with Sir Victor and his two boys. The twins were taking turns under their father’s tutelage, while Marsh looked as if he had little intention of pulling a trigger. Yes, twelve was a lot of guns; I couldn’t help wondering if the head-keeper Bloom had been given any say in the matter.
The first pheasant of the day broke from the woods, taking off high in an effort to escape