“May I enter?” I asked.
“Come in,” Iris answered.
The tableau that greeted my eyes was like some dramatic canvas depicting the aftermath of battle: doctor in rolled-up shirt-sleeves with blood to his elbows, his assistant (Alistair) holding up a lamp to throw strong light on the victim, a worried nurse (played by Iris) clasping her hands. Except that none of them were dressed for the part, the victim was more furious than suffering, the surgical table was a vast high bed covered in velvet, and the worried nurse on closer examination seemed rather to be clasping her hands to keep back laughter as the grizzled Scots doctor mumbled on and on about the foolishness of walking out in front of bairns with guns. I shook my head to dispel the images of paint on canvas (Justice Hall was having a powerful influence on my imagination, I thought in irritation) and stepped forward to offer succour to the wounded. Or distraction, at the least.
With the blood cleaned away, the injury became a matter less of gore and carnage than of a myriad of oozing punctures gone angry with reaction. The doctor, working his way methodically from cheek to thigh, was currently prodding away at the upper arm. A small saucer of dug-out shot lay to one side, and Iris reached out with the sticking-plaster to cover one trickling but empty hole in her husband’s shoulder.
The doctor’s digging produced another tiny lump, which he dropped into the saucer with a wet
“You’re certain you won’t have a wee bit of morphia, are ye?” he asked. “You’ll find it goes ever so much easier.”
“No morphia,” Marsh grunted.
“Very well,” the doctor said in an It’s-your-funeral sort of voice, and picked up his probe.
Sweat was running freely down Marsh’s taut face, the only indication of what had to have been agony.
“Can I get you a drink?” I asked him. “Water? Whisky?”
His answer was a flicker of the eyes in the direction of the bedside jug near the doctor’s elbows. I took the glass to the lavatory and filled it with water from the tap. When the next piece of shot was in the saucer, he propped himself on his right elbow and drank thirstily.
A rat-a-tat of knuckles on wood interrupted us, and a sudden increase of noise indicated the door being opened.
“Yoo-hoo,” came Phillida’s voice. “Anyone here? There you are—Marsh, you poor boy, are you all right? How terribly awful for you—er.” Her cheerful air did not survive the sight of the doctor’s bloody hands or the small plate of gory lead pellets, but she did not flee. “Marsh, dear. You must hurt like the blazes. Do you want me to put my friends back on the road so we won’t disturb you?”
“That won’t be necessary,” he told her, his eyes narrowed against the probe in his ribs. “Just keep them in the centre block and I won’t hear you.”
“Are you sure, my dear? I don’t mind if you—”
“Phillida, please. Go back to your party.” She started to say something, but in the end just turned and left the room.
After a while, I told Marsh, for distraction more than anything, “The boy—not Roger, but the other one—is devastated. He thought he’d killed you.”
“I thought he had too, for a moment,” he said with a glimmer of dark humour. “I’ll see him when this butcher is finished.”
The doctor seemed unoffended. Perhaps he actually was deaf, I speculated, but his next words proved he was not. “When I’m finished, you will rest. No interviews with guilt-ridden laddies.”
Marsh acted as if the medical man had not spoken. “Would you also ask Ogilby to send trays up for us? I don’t imagine either Iris or my cousin will much care for a formal dinner. Have yours sent up too, if you like.”
The annoyed doctor bent to his task again, and Marsh withdrew into himself. Distraction, I saw, was clearly impossible; I might as well go and try the hot water supply for a bath. Even if I succumbed to the temptation of dinner on a tray, I should prefer to be clean for it.
First, though, a responsibility: I tapped Alistair on the arm and gestured with my head towards the door. He handed the bright light to Iris, and followed.
I spoke in a low murmur, for his ears only. “This looks like an accident.”
He looked back steadily. “That is how it appears.”
“Still, it might be good for you to remain in this room tonight. And, if a tray comes with food for him alone . . .”
There was no need to finish the sentence, I saw. However: “It would also be as well for you to watch your own back, too. You and he were standing side by side, after all.”
He did not appear even to have heard what I was trying to say, but I did not push the issue. I could only trust that his protective alertness would extend out from Marsh’s person to cover his own.
“I will see you in a little while,” I told him. “I’ll be in my room, if you need anything.”
Just before I left, a voice followed me. “Peter,” Marsh said. “The boy’s name is Peter. Tell him to come and see me later.”
So before I retreated to hot water and privacy, I hunted down one worried boy to reassure him that his victim was well and had asked to see him after dinner. Both parents looked grateful, and I climbed the steps again, meditating on the powerful, potentially devastating commitment to the future made by parents.
Until I had my hand on the door-knob of my room, I had forgotten about my letter to Mrs Hudson concerning the appropriate wear for a formal country house dinner. For about half a second, I thought about finding someone who might know whether she’d sent it, and whether in the confusion anyone had fetched it from the station, but then I decided not to bother. A tray would do me fine. I turned the knob and walked in.
And there the dress lay, tossed on the bed by a remarkably careless house-maid. I looked at the heap of crumpled grey silk, and knew in an instant that no Justice Hall house-maid could ever have abandoned such a dress in such a state. Which left only one possible culprit.
“Holmes?” I called.
“Russell,” answered the voice through the connecting door to the shared bath-room. “What on earth is going on out there? The place sounds like an overturned beehive.”
I followed the voice through the steam-filled bath-room and found my partner and husband seated on the edge of the dressing-table bench, threading studs through his shirt. I went and sat beside him, leaning into his shoulder with affection.
“Oh, Holmes, it’s so very, very good to see you.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Does something need to have happened for me to be glad to see you?”
“When it is said in that tone of voice, yes. You sound like a besieged subaltern seeing his lieutenant heave into view.”
“You’re right. It is relief as well as pleasure. Someone shot Mah—Marsh.”
“
“Peppered him with bird shot. If he’d been ten feet closer or had his face turned towards the gun, it could have been serious. One of the inexperienced guns—a boy of fifteen—looks to be responsible. An accident.”
“But also not an accident?”
“It feels slightly wrong. Here—let me show you.” I went to paw through his writing desk for a sheet of the elegant Justice stationery and a pen, then began drawing, Holmes bent over my shoulder. “We were here, strung out along the side of a hill lightly covered with bare trees and the odd clump of evergreens. The beaters were working their way towards us along this line.” The uneven row of twelve Xs was joined by a long squiggle indicating the front of the drivers. I drew in a couple of star bursts to show the clumps of evergreens. “The two boys and their father, Sir Victor, were here. The boys each had guns—they started the day sharing one, with their father unarmed and coaching them, but Marsh gave his gun to one of the boys after lunch, so they could both shoot. Sir Victor must have been a front-line soldier,” I reflected aloud. “And he must have been wounded at some point—he limps, and twitched at every shot.”
It was, in fact, proof of the man’s will-power that his body hadn’t taken command and dived for cover at some of the louder volleys. I’d seen soldiers on the street do just that, leaping for doorways at the back-fire of a lorry.
“This drive was to be the last,” I went on, “since the mist was coming in and it was getting dark. In fact, the
