He leaned toward me, grinning. Over the sound of his own clapping, he said, “It is the show business, Phil!”
He had been the first to start clapping and he was the last to stop.
“Gentlemen?” said Doyle, and waved Sir David and me into the ring. “Shake hands, please.”
Sir David offered his hand. I took it. He showed off his grip, but I’d been expecting that. He smiled at me. Blandly. “Any last words, Beaumont?” he asked me.
“I hear Miss Turner turned you down yesterday. Too bad.”
He didn’t stop smiling, but the skin at the corners of his eyes tightened up. He didn’t look at Miss Turner either, but I think he wanted to.
“Back to your corners, gentlemen,” said Doyle. “When the bell rings, come out fighting.”
I went back to my corner. The Great Man grinned and pounded me on the shoulder.
Overhead, the sky was pale blue, not a cloud anywhere. The bright clear air smelled of warming earth. Far off across the broad green lawn, one red squirrel went bounding after another.
Doyle had moved to the north side of the ring, close to Lord Bob and Lady Purleigh. I glanced around the crowd. Mrs. Corneille was watching me. So was Miss Turner. So was Cecily.
Cecily looked away.
Lady Purleigh raised the cowbell and struck it with the hammer.
I stepped out into the ring.
Sir David held himself upright, his handsome head and his broad shoulders thrown back, his arms up, the left arm forward, the left fist making small, tight, controlled circles. His right fist was cocked back under his chin. He advanced on his left foot, his right foot perpendicular to it, his weight balanced. He moved flatfooted but he still moved well. He had done this before.
I went to him in a crouch, shoulders down. We circled each other slowly. I smiled at him. Keeping my voice low, I said, “She must’ve hurt your feelings, hey, Davey?”
He jabbed his left at me and I slipped it. He followed me and jabbed again, off balance. I weaved right, faked a left at his jaw, hooked a right to his heart. He was backing off but I connected. He swung a right at my head. I caught it on my left forearm, and he pitched a left and I caught that on my right forearm and I jabbed two quick lefts at his nose. He brought up his arms and I got him with a combination, left, right, left, in the stomach. His nose was bleeding. He opened his mouth and dropped his arms and I went over them and I hooked another left at the nose. His head jerked back and his chin stuck out and I brought up my right with everything I had, brought it up at an angle from my hip, going for the ridge at the back of his jaw. I hit it and I felt a knuckle pop in my hand.
Staring up at the sky, Sir David took a step back and then his legs buckled beneath him and he dropped. He landed heavily on his back, his arms flopping out along the grass. His head rolled to the side.
I stood over him beneath that blue sky in the center of a huge silence. Nothing moved.
Suddenly Doyle was there and I eased back. He glanced at me, his expression unreadable, and then he turned to Sir David and bent slightly forward and started counting aloud, swinging his arm down through the air to mark time. “ One,” he said. “ Two.”
I snapped my knuckle back into place. If you wait too long, the swelling starts and then you’re stuck.
“ Five. Six.” Doyle was calling out the numbers louder now, maybe hoping that if he shouted, Sir David would hear them. And maybe Sir David did. His leg moved slightly. But he didn’t get up.
No one in the crowd had said anything. Not even the Great Man. I looked out there. Mrs. Corneille glanced away. Miss Turner was staring at me with the corners of her mouth turned down.
“ Nine,” said Doyle. “And ten.” Sir David hadn’t moved again. “And the winner is Mr. Beaumont.” Grimly, Doyle wrapped his big hand around my wrist and raised my arm over my head. I had the feeling that if he wanted to, he could’ve plucked me from the ground like a dandelion.
Suddenly the Great Man was at my side, jumping from foot to foot, slamming gleefully at my shoulder. “ Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray! ”
The others were less enthusiastic. They applauded, but briefly and lightly. Some of their hands, probably, never made contact with each other. Even Lord Bob, who had just won five pounds, looked like a man who would rather be somewhere else. Cecily turned to her mother and said very clearly, “But is it over?” Her mother leaned toward her.
Doyle dropped my hand and slowly went down onto his knees beside Sir David. I could hear him exhaling with the effort.
Cecily backed away from her whispering mother and complained, “But there were supposed to be ten of those things. And he said they were supposed to last three minutes.”
On the ground, Sir David moved his leg again. Doyle looked up at me. “He’s coming around. I believe he'll be all right.”
I nodded. “Good.”
“Excuse me,” said an unfamiliar voice behind me.
I turned. So did Doyle and the Great Man.
There were three people standing on the flagstone patio. One of them was Briggs, and he was wearing his black uniform. Beside him stood two men wearing suits. One of the men was bulky in the shoulders and taller than I was. The other was shorter, and he was the one who smiled pleasantly. “Good morning to you all, he said. “And it is a lovely morning, isn’t it? Jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.” He smiled again. “Allow me to introduce myself and my associate. I’m Inspector Marsh. This is Sergeant Meadows. We’re from London. The C.I.D.”
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-nine
'Well now, MR. Beaumont,” said Inspector Marsh. “You’ve been at Maplewhite for a while now. A houseguest since Friday evening, I take it. And you’re a Pinkerton, a trained investigator, hmmm?” He smiled. “Really a stroke of luck for us, our having you here.”
I wondered if he were pulling my leg. It was something I wondered the entire time I talked to him.
He turned to Sergeant Meadows. “ ’ Tis a lucky day, boy, and we’ll do good deeds on’t. ” Sergeant Meadows nodded, without taking his eyes off me. Marsh turned back to me. “The Winter’s Tale. You know Shakespeare, do you, Mr. Beaumont?”
“Not personally.”
He chuckled. “Lovely. We’ll get along famously, you and I.” He smiled. “So you’ve been rattling about the manor house for two days now, in the very midst of all these mysterious goings-on. And no doubt you’ve kept your eyes open? Asked a question or two, have you? Confess now.” He smiled slyly, narrowing his eyes, and he waved a slender finger at me. “I see a strange confession in thine eye, do I not?”
I smiled. “Yeah. A question or two.”
“Well of course you have. Leopards and spots, eh? I couldn’t expect anything else.” He sat back comfortably, adjusted his pants legs to spare the crease, and he crossed his legs, right over left. “Well then, if you don’t mind, why not put the good sergeant and me into the picture.”
The three of us were in the library. Marsh and Sergeant Meadows sat on the sofa, across from my chair. The sergeant sat on Marsh’s left, a small notebook in his ample lap. In his late thirties, wearing a black suit, he was a big man, nearly as tall and as broad as Doyle. From a sharp widow’s peak, his black hair ran slick as a coat of lacquer back along his wide rectangular skull. His heavy jaw was sheened with blue-he had the kind of beard that probably grew back while he was rinsing the soap from his razor. There was a small scar, shaped like a comma, running vertically through the center of his thick left eyebrow, and his nose had been broken at least once and then badly reset. Police sergeants in England, it looked like, didn’t have any easier a life than police sergeants in the U.S.
Inspector Marsh was in his forties. His nose had never been broken. It was a narrow, aristocratic nose in a narrow, aristocratic, mobile face. The nose was delicate, like almost everything else about him-his fine brown hair,
