Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [93]
“A degree of certainty in any of this would be a pleasant surprise,” Holmes complained, as if the Hughenfort family had conspired against the solution of his case. If, indeed, it could be considered a case.
“My brother began enquiries into his whereabouts after the War, but had not much luck,” Marsh told him.
“Another pair of assignments for my brother,” Holmes said darkly. “And now, I should like to see Gabriel’s final letter, if you don’t mind. And what diaries you may have.”
At Marsh’s nod, Alistair went over to a third-rate nineteenth-century portrait on the wall, pulled it back, manipulated the dial behind it, and handed Holmes the packet that I had returned on Thursday afternoon.
Holmes glanced at the field post-cards, then read all four letters, the three from Gabriel and the sympathy note from the Reverend Mr Hastings. When he was finished, he folded them into their envelopes and handed them back to Alistair; the leather-bound journals he retained. We watched Alistair lock the safe again as if he was performing some rite, and when he was back in his seat, Holmes asked Marsh, “Very well; what can you tell me about your brother Lionel and his wife?”
Not much, it seemed. After Lionel had fled scandal to Paris, the only news Marsh had received was the occasional curt fact from their elder brother Henry or third-hand scandal through scandalised family friends. Marsh had seen Lionel once in Paris, finding him self-consciously aesthetic and deliberately dissipated; he had a flock of beautiful young men. Marsh’s voice showed how distasteful he had found the meeting. He had not tried to see Lionel again.
Of the woman, again he knew only what Henry had written, that she appeared a middle-aged whore. I wanted to ask how the sixth Duke could have believed the child to be Lionel’s, if Lionel was known to prefer pretty young boys to aging women, but in the present company, I thought the undercurrents quite complex enough already. And considering the variations in human relations, I supposed anything was possible.
We had been in Marsh’s quarters little more than an hour and a half, but it was becoming obvious that the master of Justice was an ill man, increasingly feverish and unable to concentrate on the business at hand. There was nothing that could not wait until Marsh’s head cleared, so we left him with Alistair. At the door to her room, Iris hesitated, then asked, “I don’t suppose you’d care to join me for Evensong? The rector remembered that I loved the service, and offered to say it for me.”
“Actually,” I said, “I’d enjoy that. If he doesn’t mind having an unbeliever in the congregation.”
“That would make two,” she said cheerfully, to my confusion. “I’ll meet you in the chapel in a quarter of an hour.”
I went to my room, meditating on the oddity of a self-described nonbeliever attending church services not once, but twice in a day.
The air in the ornate little chapel was as frigid as its marble walls and smelt of incense, but the rector possessed a pleasing sensitivity for the magnificent rhythms of the Evensong liturgy, and seemed to bring the three of us together as a congregation, along with the memorial plaques and statues that cluttered the walls. Iris had taken a seat near the naked feet of the ice-white alabaster boy who, I saw by the plaque, represented young Gabriel. The sculptor had swathed the sentimental figure in Roman toga, and caused the ethereal face to gaze down at the viewer in a disturbingly Christlike manner, the calm blank eyes seeming to focus on the pew where we were seated.
The rector chanted portions of the liturgy, said others, and at the end thanked us for permitting him to do the service there. Then he quietly departed, leaving us to the family ghosts.
Silence settled over the stones, the wood, the drapes and brasses. Without a fresh dose of incense, I now caught the honey smell of the beeswax, which transported me back to the Holy Land, and Holmes the beekeeper tracking down our foe by a fragrant stub of stolen candle.
I found myself smiling at