His answer was oblique to an extreme. “You have not heard from your Holmes?”
In a house crawling with servants, one could hardly expect that a message from London would go unnoted. I took his answer to indicate that my presence was required in Holmes’ absence.
“If I do not hear from him by tomorrow, I shall make enquiries. What is it you want?”
“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?
“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
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 the pressure of the strange noises closing in so inexorably. It took me by surprise, but Iris had her gun up and fired, and the bird dropped to the ground with a soft thud. She took the next one too, then I got one, and then the sky was full of fleeing birds and deadly lead shot. The roar of the pair at our left was nearly continuous, since Darling and Ivo Hughenfort had two loaders each and both were aggressive shots. Unnecessarily so, I thought, on the part of Darling, who was for all intents and purposes the host here. Iris and I plucked birds from their flight selectively; Darling and Hughenfort sent a killing cloud of pellets out before them; the rest did as best they could with the birds that got through. The doctrine of Ladies First was acceptable, particularly when the ladies loaded for themselves, but I could not see that the boys on the far end would get much practice today with this arrangement. Rabbits, perhaps: They’d got two already.
The pale smocks of the beaters began to be visible through the final trees; the last wily birds launched themselves into the air; the guns fell silent. The first drive of the day was over, with forty-seven limp bodies to hang on the game-cart. Three of them were mine, six Iris’s, a round dozen went to Darling, and ten to his partner. I reckoned six for a one-woman show counted as top score, and going by Darling’s dark looks, he was aware of her superiority as well. Iris seemed oblivious, merely collecting her bag with her own hands, but on the way back to the cart she gave me a wink, making it clear how conscious she was of offended male pride. I stifled a smile, and wondered if Darling would move us down the line a bit for the next drive.
Sure enough, at the next stand, which was a lightly wooded area through which a stream wandered, Darling suggested positions in a slightly different order. My inexperienced eye could see no difference between our deciduous copse and that of Freiburg and Stein fifty yards away, but either the drive or the location meant that our birds came high and fast. I pruned any number of high branches, but only brought down two birds, despite the overall superiority of numbers: fifty-three this time, two of them woodcock. Darling and Ivo Hughenfort were engaged in a mild rivalry, with fourteen each—until, that is, Iris came happily up and thanked Darling for suggesting that she stand where she had.
He looked confused, and blurted out, “But you only got five.”
“And all of them deliciously tricky,” she responded, all enthusiasm. “One of them straight overhead—I have bits of shot in my hair. No, five birds like those are worth twenty in the open. I shall thank Bloom for them.”
Darling watched her troop off to fetch another pair of birds, frowning in an attempt to decide if she was serious. I nearly laughed aloud, and when our paths coincided, I said to her, “You’re being wicked to that poor man.”
“That poor man is stacking the decks.”
“Shall I load for you on the next drive, get your numbers up a bit?”
“You don’t need to do that—if I wanted loaders, I’d have asked for them.”
“Just one drive?”
“Well, all right. It’s very naughty, though.”
“What, to stack our own deck?”
She shot me a grin of pure mischief. “I shall have a word with Bloom.”
Our third stand, near to midday, was in open ground again. We spread ourselves out across the rolling hillside, each of us backed by one or two loaders and their dogs. Except Iris and me. She took my gun and snapped it to her shoulder two or three times. She would have to compensate each time to the differences in make, length, and weight, hardly an ideal situation when the goal was a quick fire. At least hers took the same cartridge as the Purdey—I wouldn’t have to fumble too much in my loading.
The others, naturally, saw the change. Alistair abandoned Marsh and his family group to stroll back the line in our direction.
“Do you wish me to assist?” he asked.
“No,” said Iris briskly. “Thanks, old boy, but we’re fine.”
