“This time of year, we are a busy house.”
“Makes for a lot of work.”
“It is satisfying to see the house full,” he explained, formal but I thought honest.
“Not as full as some of the week-ends before the War,” I said. “I saw the photographs.”
“The sixth Duke and his wife were great entertainers,” the butler agreed, sounding proud of the fact. “The gun room,” he announced, and opened the door.
“Ah, Mary,” said Iris, lowering a gun from her shoulder. “What kind of weapon do you fancy?”
“The one I use at home is an American make, my father’s old gun. What do you recommend?”
“How good a shot are you?”
“Passable.”
“Is that modesty or honest judgment?”
“Well, better than passable, I suppose.”
“Thought so.”
“Not quite in the formidable class, though.”
She grinned at me. “Men take pride in such odd things, don’t they?” She held out the gun she’d been examining, and suggested, “Let’s see how this one suits you.”
I automatically broke it and checked that it was unloaded, then set it to my shoulder while she watched critically.
“You’re left-handed, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but I shoot the usual way. I don’t seem to have a dominant eye.”
“That one’s too short for you. Try this.”
She took back the first one and exchanged it for one slightly longer in the stock, squinted at my technique with that one, and reached for a third.
At the fifth gun, I had to ask about the size of this arsenal, which was nowhere near depletion. “Who was the gun collector here?”
“Oh, there’s always been a big collection. Marsh’s father and brother were both fine shots.”
“But some of these are new.”
“Sidney,” she said succinctly. “Look, I don’t suppose you can shoot without the glasses?”
“Not unless we place everyone else behind me.”
“Right. Well, try this one; it tucks under a bit closer.”
I tried that one, and then another, a sweetly balanced Purdey that nestled into my shoulder like an infant’s head.
“Sidney seems very much at home here,” I commented as I dry-fired at the various stuffed heads poking out of the walls.
“Marsh’s brother turned a lot over to him, especially after the War.”
“Alistair showed me Sidney’s future stud farm.”
“He’s done some good work around here,” she said, meaning Sidney and sounding reluctantly approving. “He’s a hard man to like, but I’ll admit that without Phillida and Sidney, Justice Hall would be in sad condition. Is that one all right, then?”
“It’s a beauty. You’re sure you don’t want it?”
“I’ve got my gun. Marsh wanted to know if we want two loaders each, or one, or none.”
“What do you like?”
“Truthfully? I prefer to be on my own. It means I only get a handful of birds at each stand, but I’m not out to feed the district. I let the men do rapid-fire volleys and get the high count.”
“That sounds good to me.”
“Are you sure? We’ll end up fetching a fair number of our own birds.”
“All in a day’s exercise,” I told her cheerfully. Apart from which, servants at one’s shoulders did inhibit conversation so.
We joined the others in the terraced front drive. I was apprehensive that they might have been waiting for us, but it appeared that although Sidney Darling was there, Marsh and Alistair were not. We did receive a couple of disapproving glares from the older guests, either because of our clothing or our mere presence, but Iris blithely ignored them, and set about the introductions like one who had been participating in these events for years. As indeed, in a way, she had.
The oldest gun was a judge and former member of Parliament in his early sixties, Sir James Carmichael (grey hair, pale blue eyes, and a rigid posture that spoke of spinal problems rather than discipline). He was paired with Peebles, who indeed turned out to be the Marquis of Purbeck; both men had brought their own loaders and dogs. There was a cousin of Alistair’s named Ivo Hughenfort (thirty-five, intense, dismissive of introductions and interested only in getting the day started), and two young men, boys really, who turned out to be nonidentical twins out for their first day’s shoot. They were with their father, Sir Victor Gerard, another business acquaintance of Sidney Darling’s, who walked with a limp that would grow worse as the day went on.
Iris even included a few of the hired men in her greetings, men she had known when they had headsful of hair not yet grey. “Webster—I’d know you anywhere. How have the years treated you? That can’t be your son? He’s changed a bit since he was two. And you’re . . . no, no, don’t tell me, you caught us damming up the trout stream one time, I thought I’d die of terror: Doyle? No—Dayle, that’s right. You still raise ferrets?”
Childhood knowledge of the country and its people, intimate and too deeply implanted to be worn away by twenty years of living abroad. The men looked at her sideways—they could not help being aware that her marriage to the current duke was somehow irregular, even if they didn’t know the details—but they responded to her as to one of their own, going so far as to venture a joke or two. It was a thing they would not do with Sidney Darling.
Marsh finally appeared, carrying a gun, with an unarmed Alistair trailing behind and looking resolute. Shooting, I guessed, was not a favourite with Alistair. We were twelve guns in all, it would seem, with the twins and their father holding one gun between them, and Alistair just out for the air. Iris and I were the only women. Twelve guns, plus loaders and dogs and however many men had been hired to drive the birds to us.
The drivers were, of course, already deployed in the fields and woods. A day such as this was a carefully choreographed affair; a well-conducted shoot was a work of art, balancing the timing and presentation of the birds with the number and abilities of the guns. I knew within seconds of Marsh’s appearance on the steps that the day’s planning was not his, but that of Darling in conjunction with the head gamekeeper, a short, taciturn countryman by the name of Bloom. After a brief consultation, Bloom gathered together his loaders and their dogs, and in two groups, the well-dressed and the working man, we moved out into the parkland.
In addition to the men introduced by Iris, our party included Sidney’s four business partners from the night before. The two Germans were called Freiburg and Stein, and were looked upon with mistrust by the others: They might dress like Englishmen and speak the language fluently, but the War was too fresh for easy acceptance of the enemy, even when he had lived here long enough to smooth out everything but his Rs and Vs. The Londoners Johnny and Richard were more formally a banker named Matheson and an industrialist by the name of Radley, who had made a major fortune on armaments during the War. These two were as thick as the proverbial thieves they probably in fact were, and spent most of their time talking about the American stock market.
Iris talked with Dayle for a while about ferrets; when he was called away by the chief gamekeeper, I turned to her.
“I was led to understand that the Darlings moved inside the London social whirl. These guests of theirs seem fairly staid.”
“Apparently they alternate their social circles. After one week-end when a trio of experimental artists sabotaged the shoot, got roaring drunk, and offended a magistrate, Phillida decided the two sorts were best kept apart.”
“Pity,” I said. The party looked as if it could use a bit of livening up.
“I don’t know. The Marquis and the twins look as if they might have some fun in them.”
I gave a snort of laughter, then nearly leapt out of my boots as a figure appeared at my shoulder—but it was only Marsh, silent as always in his approach.
“You found a gun to your satisfaction?” he asked.
“Iris found one for me, yes. Will you tell me why you wanted me to come shooting today?”
