I knocked lightly on Marsh’s door and then opened it, following the call of “We’re in here” through to the sitting room, where we stepped into an utterly unexpected cosy domestic scene: Iris before the fire with a book on her knees, Alistair across from her, Marsh stretched out on his right side on a leather sofa. They had been listening to her read—from, I was amazed to see,
Alistair came over to shake Holmes’ hand and to pull us up a couple of chairs. He had been out of the room earlier when Holmes stopped in and was, he said, glad to see him. Earlier, Alistair had still been too covered with Marsh’s blood to determine if he’d been injured himself, but now I could see that some of the gore had indeed been his own. What he had dismissed as “a few pellets” looked to have been closer to a score; one pellet had gouged a line across his forehead, missing both the eye and the soft temple by mere inches. His jaw had a pair of sticking- plasters, but his left hand and forearm had received the brunt of the spray. Hand and wrist were bound in gauze, and although he tried to act as though nothing was wrong, he could not help favouring the arm. Holmes took the chair from him and set it in the circle; we all sat down. Holmes was, I knew, wary of the extra woman in our midst, and uncertain as to the extent to which we would include her in our knowledge and our discussions.
Marsh took care of that question right off. “Iris is to be trusted,” he said bluntly. “Anything you have to say, she may hear as well.”
Holmes dived in with equal bluntness. “You are aware that this was no accident,” dipping his chin at Marsh’s state—a curiously Bedouin gesture.
“I thought it unlikely. The boy is not a careless child, and two shots went off on top of each other. Even with the shock of being hit, it seemed wrong. Then when I saw the shot the butcher dug out of me, I was certain. Assuming that Peter was still using my gun.”
“It was in his hand when I saw him,” I answered. “How is the shot different?”
“I always load my own cartridges for that gun. Its pellets are larger and smoother than those the doctor took out.”
“So. A gun, aimed at you, ready to go off as soon as the boy could be brought to shoot behind him,” Holmes said. “Too far away, as it turned out, most fortunately. An opportunistic crime, not a meticulously planned one, and it went awry. Who could it have been? Two men, I think. Or one very quick one.”
“Well, it wasn’t Iris, at any rate,” I joked. “I could see her the whole time.”
“I had already assumed that,” Marsh replied.
“I should hope so,” Iris retorted.
“Had you been intending to murder me, you would not have missed,” he clarified, on his face a faint but welcome smile.
“And it wasn’t Sir Victor—he had no gun, and I could hear him talking to his sons,” I went on more seriously. “It could have been any of the four on the far side of the clump of trees. Then again, I heard someone moving behind the line, which could have been any of the four to my right, or the women who’d stayed on to watch, or any of a hundred men. Sorry, but between the distractions and the fog, it’s an open field.”
Holmes brought out his pipe and assembled a contemplative smoke. “What do we know about the two Germans?” he asked.
“They’re Sidney’s connexion in the City,” Alistair answered. “Sidney made a young mint during the war— profiteering, I’d call it, although nothing was proved. Freiburg and Stein did the same, smuggling black market goods into Germany. Luxury goods and foodstuffs, rumour has it, not guns. No-one was much interested in prosecuting them, particularly as they had a certain amount of loot to offer in return. Small, portable works of art that were formerly in museums within Germany are now to be found on mantels across England.”
“And the others?”
“I don’t know the Marquis; he’s a newcomer. Sir Victor was a front-line soldier until ’16, seconded to London after he lost some toes and got shell-shocked. He has at least two medals. Of the two Londoners, Matheson seems a good sort. I don’t know Radley.”
“And Ivo Hughenfort?”
“My cousin?” Alistair said. “He lives five miles from here, has always considered Justice his second home. His friendship with Darling does not recommend him, but it’s hardly a criminal offence. I don’t know him all that well— he’s eleven or twelve years younger, and lives just beyond easy horse range from Badger. I do know he was a staff officer during the War, in northern France.”
“You don’t say,” said Holmes thoughtfully.
“What do you mean by that?” Alistair demanded, but Holmes continued as if he had not spoken.
“We are agreed, then, that someone took a shot at the two of you, a more or less impulsive shot that took advantage of the mist, the concealing shrubbery, and the possibly wounded bird?”
We were all in agreement.
“It would be nice to know for certain who the target was,” Holmes mused.
“What do you mean?” Alistair said, sounding indignant. “The gun was aimed at Marsh.”
“Who was moving across the line of fire at the time, and who could therefore have been the inadvertent recipient of a load of shot meant for you.”
This time Alistair could not miss the suggestion, but the very idea that someone would place him over Marsh, even as a candidate for murder, offended his yeoman’s soul so deeply that he did not even deign to answer, merely moving off to rummage through Marsh’s desk for a packet of cigarettes. Iris watched him; Marsh did not.
“You have information for us, I think,” Marsh said. His voice was a bit slurred, either by the effort of keeping the pain at bay or else from some drug one of the others had forced upon him. Holmes studied him closely, and I knew that this would be a long and demanding tale, since he was wondering if the telling had not better wait until the morning.
Marsh saw the look, too, and responded with the ghost of a smile. “I’ll not sleep for hours yet, Holmes; you may as well provide me with distraction.”
His lips pursed, Holmes slapped the still-burning contents of his pipe into the fire and dug the bowl into his tobacco pouch. “You were correct in your suspicions,” he told Marsh. “Your nephew was indeed executed.” Alistair grunted in pain, Iris closed her eyes, but Marsh sat, mutely braced for the rest. “For refusing an order.”
Seeing that lack of reaction on the part of the wounded man, Holmes nodded, and began the tale of his time in London.
“You did not give me much to work with. I’m not complaining, you understand, merely making note of the fact that in general, a case begins with some starting point, be it a body or a missing necklace. Here, all we have is an untenable situation that wants straightening up. And as my housekeeper could tell you, straightening up is hardly my strong point. Therefore I resolved to approach the situation as if there was an actual case, knowing that sooner or later, a thread would appear and ask to be followed.
“The thread I chose, to fill the time until Wednesday’s meeting in London with the heir apparent, was that of Gabriel Hughenfort.” Holmes paused to set a match to his pipe, then settled back into his chair.
“I began my search for your nephew’s war record, logically enough, at the War Records Offices.”
“Under what name?” Iris asked.
The question rather confused me—how would she know that Holmes had been in disguise?—but Holmes shot her a sharp glance.
“Ah,” he said. “You knew.”
“That Gabriel had enlisted under a pseudonym? He told me, yes.”
Holmes looked at Marsh. “But you did not know this?”
“I had no idea. Why would he use a false name?”
“Because he wanted to be a soldier,” Iris told him simply. “Not a Hughenfort.”
Marsh nodded, understanding. “When I wrote him, I sent the letters through my brother,” he explained. “My knowledge of his whereabouts was likely to be out of date. They never mentioned it. What name did he use, then?”
“Gabriel Hewetson,” Holmes answered.
“Hewetson?” I repeated. “As in Christopher? Irish sculptor, eighteenth century?”
“You saw the Hewetson bust of the third Duke in the Hall?” Iris asked. “It was one of Gabriel’s favourites, looked a bit like him. He may have chosen the name because it hits the ear rather like ‘Hughenfort.’?”
