head-keeper and Marsh’s brother-in-law had a disagreement over whether we had time to do one more drive. Darling insisted, but it meant that there was a bit of a rush on.” I described in some detail the ground, the placement of the guns, the movement of the beaters approaching, and the presence of a person or persons behind me. Holmes leant over the desk, propped on the heel of his right hand, studs forgotten, all his attention on the rough sketch taking shape under my pen.
“The drive was probably more than half over—the thickest body of birds already out of the woods—when Peter Gerard heard movement in the shrubs to his left and turned his gun in that direction. It sounds as if his movements were sensible, to a point: He waited until the bird broke, followed it for a quick count of two before firing. Only, Alistair and Marsh were here behind him, moving up the line in the same direction the bird flew. Marsh had just stepped in front of Alistair when the gun went off.”
“What are the distances here?” He pointed to the marks for Peter Gerard and the two evergreen clumps.
I estimated as best I could, not having had a measuring tape with me in the field. The three marks—gun, bird, and Marsh—formed a lopsided triangle, the line between gun and victim being slightly the longest.
“And the bird—did you see where it lay?”
I drew a small X approximately halfway between the clumps, then turned the pen upside-down and used the end to trace the creature’s path from its emergence at the clump to the point at which I had found it. As I moved the pen, I recited, “One. Two. Bang.” The pen end halted at the small X.
Far short of the holly bush into which Marsh and Alistair had fallen.
“Could the boy be wrong?”
“Wrong, yes, but not, I think, deliberately lying.”
“I must speak with Marsh.”
“Not for at least another hour. The doctor is with him,” I explained.
He grunted his frustration, then returned to the drawing. “All the guns will be here to dinner?”
Damn, I said to myself. “As far as I know, dinner will go ahead without Marsh. Alistair and Iris will stay with him.”
“Who is Iris?” he asked absently, and the last two days suddenly flooded in on me.
“You did not interrogate the servants upon your arrival? That isn’t like you.”
“I found a taxi at the station, and when I came in the servants were all frantically occupied. Why?”
“Iris, my dear Holmes, is the wife of Lord Maurice, the seventh Duke of Beauville. Mahmoud is married.”
His astonishment was instantly gratifying. He lowered himself onto the dressing-table bench. “I appear to be lacking some fairly vital information,” he remarked.
“They kept it from Debrett’s,” I told him.
“They kept it from Mycroft,” he said, and I had to agree that was the feat truly worthy of note.
“They were married—”
“Wait,” he interrupted. “Tell me while you are getting ready for dinner.”
“Oh, Holmes, must we? It’s chaos down there, they’re all the most eccentric friends of the Darlings, and I’ve spent a full twenty-four hours being sociable. Marsh suggested a tray.”
“Sympathetic as I am to your plight, my dear Russell, I think dinner is potentially too rich a mine for data for us to miss. I shall draw you a bath while you shed your hunting gear.”
I first hung the crumpled silk dress above the steaming bath to relax it, then slid gratefully into the scented water.
Holmes drew up a stool. “Now: Tell.”
I told.
No reason to dwell lovingly on the glories of Justice Hall: Holmes could see those for himself. The hidden stairway was worth a bit of detail, and I could see his interest rise at the hidden Roman floor (this from the man who had once told his friend Watson that he was not interested in useless knowledge!) before he deliberately pushed it aside as peripheral. The contents of the Greene Library pulled even more strongly at his imagination; that too was set aside. The Circles, the deep relationship shared by the three principals, the painful reading of the Gabriel Hughenfort documents, I summarised those and moved on.
The water in the bath was growing cool and the hour of the gong fast approaching when I finished with the previous evening’s dinner party. That episode had demanded considerably more detail in the telling, and evoked a long, thoughtful silence while Holmes fiddled with the bath-brush.
“Berlin is the centre of Darling’s activities, you would judge?” he asked me.
“He spends a great deal of time there, and he knew of this escape by Mr Hitler before it was in the papers. He claims altruism as his chief interest in the rebuilding process, but at the same time, what industry starts up in the post-war years, he intends to have his hands on the controls.”
“A man worthy of Mycroft’s attentions.”
“If Mycroft hasn’t noticed him already.”
“It must be said, there is nothing criminal in foreign investments. If there were, we would all be in gaol. Not in the least my good wife. I should like to be able to give Mycroft more than a mere name, however. Did Darling give out the title of his company, or even precisely where it is?”
“No. I’m not even sure just
“Of course, a man in his position would not wish to appear too knowledgeable about his investments, too eager for them to succeed, lest his fellow club-members suspect him of ungentlemanly pas-times. I wonder if his business papers—”
“Holmes, we couldn’t very well burgle our host’s rooms. At least, not unless we get Marsh’s permission.”
“It might be perceived as ungracious,” he agreed.
“And with all the servants around, we’d need spectacular luck not to have a maid walk in at the wrong moment. Or one of the children.”
“The children, yes,” he mused, a faraway look in his eye. “Your Justice Hall Irregulars. Do you suppose . . . ?”
“Holmes! Absolutely not! One cannot use children to spy against their own parents—it would be—the ethics of the situation would demand—”
“I suppose it does go against the Rules of War,” he admitted reluctantly.
“Freiburg and Stein, on the other hand,” I had begun when we were interrupted by a knock at the door to my bedroom. I raised my voice to call permission to enter: It was Emma, maid of many talents, enquiring through the bath-room door if I wished assistance with my hair. I was impressed that anyone had thought to send her, considering the circumstances. I also wondered that anyone was bothering to dress. Perhaps Roumanian peasant- dresses and monkey-capped lounge suits were considered formal dinner attire by that set.
“If you could return in ten minutes?” I called back. Emma gave me a “Very well, madam” and the outer door closed again. I hurried to finish with the rest of the Friday and then the events of Saturday; Holmes did up my buttons as I finished.
“And the precise sequence of the shooters at the final drive?”
“I was in the middle, with the twins and their father to my left, followed by Darling, Alistair’s cousin Ivo, the Marquis, and I think Sir James bringing up the end. Iris was directly to my right, with Matheson, Radley, Stein, and then Freiburg at that end. Twelve guns in all, with Alistair and Marsh just there for the company.”
“A long line of guns.”
“Bloom is a first-rate gamekeeper. What a man with his talent for presenting birds is doing here, I can’t think. He’d be taken on at Sandringham in an instant.”
He was about to ask me something else, and I was positively simmering with eagerness to know what he’d come up with in London, but we were out of time. With a knock on the door, the obligations of society took over. He slipped out to tell Marsh that he was back; Emma devoted herself to my hair for a feverish seven minutes; Holmes was back in time to clasp my mother’s emeralds around my throat; we were gathered downstairs before the gong had ceased to vibrate.
Not that anyone could have heard it.
