Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [82]
“And the precise sequence of the shooters at the final drive?”
“I was in the middle, with the twins and their father to my left, followed by Darling, Alistair’s cousin Ivo, the Marquis, and I think Sir James bringing up the end. Iris was directly to my right, with Matheson, Radley, Stein, and then Freiburg at that end. Twelve guns in all, with Alistair and Marsh just there for the company.”
“A long line of guns.”
“Bloom is a first-rate gamekeeper. What a man with his talent for presenting birds is doing here, I can’t think. He’d be taken on at Sandringham in an instant.”
He was about to ask me something else, and I was positively simmering with eagerness to know what he’d come up with in London, but we were out of time. With a knock on the door, the obligations of society took over. He slipped out to tell Marsh that he was back; Emma devoted herself to my hair for a feverish seven minutes; Holmes was back in time to clasp my mother’s emeralds around my throat; we were gathered downstairs before the gong had ceased to vibrate.
Not that anyone could have heard it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The long day had left me tired, troubled, and none too pleased with the prospects of an extended evening of merrymaking; at least, I thought as I walked down the formal Justice stairway on Holmes’ elegant arm, my dress was up to the occasion. The grey silk had a faint green thread shimmering through it, and the heavy bead-work that wrapped my upper body also glinted with that occasional reference to the stones around my neck. Clothes might not make the woman, but they certainly can add starch to her spine.
Not until we were in the doorway to the drawing room did I realise that I needn’t have bothered.
Oh, some of the party were dressed for dinner. The Darlings shone, and those of the shooting party who had stayed on, but the impromptu gate-crashers had come-as-they-were from their day’s events. And a mixed lot of events those seemed to have been, since the participants were wearing everything from banker’s black to a silk smoking costume with fur trim, belted with a string of carnelian and lapis lazuli stones and topped by a brilliant swatch of lapis-blue silk, a sort of cross between a bow and a turban. One woman had come in a riding outfit, although on closer look her jodhpurs were of velvet and her crop studded with seed pearls; another, who spoke a studied artificial Cockney and whom I mistook from the back for a maid, wore what appeared to be the uniform of a Lyons restaurant waitress, with the addition of bloodred lipstick, ivory cigarette holder, and immense diamonds at her throat and ears.
I turned to speak in my companion’s ear. “Holmes, do you truly expect to learn anything in this bean-feast? Half the men at the shoot appear to have gone home.”
“Who is here?”
“It’s hard to be sure. That bewildered quartet in the corner is made up of Freiburg and Stein with their wives. The small gentleman at the punch-bowl is the Marquis. I don’t see the Londoners—no, there’s Radley, although I don’t know the person with him. Sir Victor and his family have probably left, for various reasons. I don’t see Alistair’s cousin Ivo either. I say!—Look, over by the windows; isn’t that—Christ!”
My question concerning the identity of a famous face on the other side of the room was cut off when a small, cool, leathery hand insinuated itself into the hollow of my throat and wrapped its diminutive fingers around the necklace. I jerked away, dislodging the spider monkey from its shoulder perch and nearly throttling it on its own jewelled collar. It shrieked hideously, the owner cursed freely, and all hopes of a quiet entrance fled.
Three of the party greeted the introduction to Holmes with coy remarks about the unfortunate resemblance he bore to the Conan Doyle detective; one man heard the name and slunk rapidly away, never to appear again; one woman (she of the silk smoking costume) enquired earnestly if I thought it a fixation or a phobia that had