“Most of them.”
“Very well. You say the boy Peter and his father were here?”
“So the boy said. The other twin, Roger, was a little closer to me.”
Holmes squatted to examine the ground, tracing boot-marks with his long gloved fingers. He shifted, lowered his head to gain a more extreme angle, and then stood up.
“And Marsh—if you would take up his position, Russell?”
I went to the holly clump where the two cousins had fallen, and faced Holmes. He settled his walking-stick into his shoulder and sighted down it to the first stand of mixed evergreen shrubs.
“The bird breaks,” he said. “One. Two. Bang.”
As my rough sketch the night before had suggested, he was now facing a point about halfway between the two evergreens. He repeated his motion, only this time faster, continuing until he was aiming at me. “One-two- three-four-five-bang,” he got out, and nearly fell over as his feet corkscrewed around themselves.
“Unfortunately, Holmes, the bird was over there. In fact,” I said in surprise, “the bird is still over there.”
We converged on the spot and looked at the twice-shot fowl.
“Why do you suppose they left this here?” I wondered.
“Overlooked in the dusk, or perhaps squeamishness. The bird was nearly the death of their duke, after all. However, I think it worth performing a cursory necropsy on the creature. Just to confirm a theory. How are you at plucking birds?”
I put my hands together behind my back. “It takes me an hour and rips my fingers to bits,” I told him.
To my surprise, he sat down on a nearby log, removed his gloves, and proceeded to strip the bird of its feathers, with a practiced jerk of the wrist such as I had seen Mrs Hudson perform. In a brief time a cloud of feathers spilt across his boots. I sat down—clear of the feathers—to observe.
Two distinct patches of shot were embedded in the rubbery skin. One followed the upper edge and tip of the right wing; the other, the shot that actually killed it, formed a cluster along the left side of the head and body.
“The bird could conceivably have got those two injuries at the same time,” I suggested, “if the right wing was up in flight.”
“Russell, Russell,” he scolded, plopping the disgusting object into my lap and tugging at the half-frozen body until its wings were outstretched. “Which way is the shot on the left side buried?”
I poked at the clammy skin, and hazarded an opinion that was half guess. “As the bird flew, almost immediately below.”
“And the right wing?”
“Harder to tell.” Plucking a bird leaves it looking comprehensively raw.
“What about this?” His naked finger traced a half-inch welt along the wing that ended at a tiny hole in the body.
“That came from in front of the bird, level, and at a forty-five-degree angle.”
“I agree. Two shots, then.” Reaching into a pocket, he pulled out a folding knife and two wadded-up sheets of writing paper. He dug half a dozen small, rough pellets from the bird’s wing, folding them into one sheet, then did the same with those in the body. I looked at the resulting large, smooth shot, and was glad: Peter Gerard had brought down a bird, not a duke. Holmes cleaned his knife on some moss and folded it away, then rose and looked down dubiously at the mutilated pheasant.
“We can’t very well carry it back with us, Holmes.”
“Pity. I’ve grown rather fond of it. Without that bird’s testimony, a degree of uncertainty would remain.”
“Leave it here for the foxes, Holmes.”
“I suppose so.”
We arrived back at Justice in time for tea, to find the house guests still in residence and embarked on various pursuits of childhood, the two children returned from their week-end banishment looking on in adult disdain, and Marsh ill but demanding that we continue our consultation.
He was ensconced on an elaborately ornate brocade divan with fringes along its lower edge, propped into a great number of pillows in a room of tropical heat. Holmes and I stripped off as many layers as we could without impropriety, and fell on the tray of tea and sandwiches with enthusiasm.
Marsh waited with growing impatience, his face flushed with heat both internal and external, his eyes feverish but focussed. Alistair did not look much better; between Monday’s head injury and the scatter of shot in his own arm, I thought he wanted nursing himself. Holmes drank his tea, but when he reached for the pot, Marsh spoke up impatiently.
“You must have found out more, about Gabriel. What else did your four soldiers say?”
“Those four, and three more Saturday morning. Do you object to a composite—the statements of the men and what there is of an official record?”
“By all means,” Marsh growled. Holmes claimed an armchair with a nearby perch for his cup, and drew out his pipe.
“Gabriel Hughenfort sailed to France in December 1917, following a scant five months’ training, and joined his regiment on the twentieth. They were occupying a supporting position, behind the lines, and moved back up to the Front in early January. By the time he first stood in the trenches, the young man had picked up enough common- sense knowledge to keep his head down. He acquitted himself honourably, and without mishap, during that period on the Front, then through the cycle behind the lines.
“His second front-line duty, he was not as lucky. His section of trench took a direct mortar hit, and he was buried—in, as one of my informants picturesquely described it, ‘a blast of mud that was thinner than some soups I’ve et, and a lot richer in meat.’
“His fellows waded in and dug him out, scraped out his mouth and pummelled the breath back into him, then sent him to the rear—unconscious—with the next stretcher party. He spent three weeks in hospital, took a brief leave in Paris, then was sent to a new regiment farther up the line. Just in time to catch the March push.
“After that, the lad’s story becomes more vague. The official records of his second regiment from that period are extremely spotty—some of them went down in the Channel, according to Mycroft’s informant—and the evidence of his companions not much better. There was general agreement that the boy stood with them throughout March, including a period when they were fifteen straight days under fire in their waterlogged pits, unbathed, under-fed, and rotting inside their boots, but holding their ground as they’d been ordered. You’ll recall General Haig’s ‘back against the wall’ speech: ‘Every position must be held to the last man; each of us must fight on to the end.’ His fellows remembered Gabriel’s presence during that time.”
The details of the boy’s last weeks were not helping his uncle’s state of mind. Iris, keeping an eye on Marsh’s face, finally had to interrupt.
“Why does this matter?” she demanded. “Of what earthly importance could it be where he was transferred and what the men knew about him?”
Holmes did not react to this heresy against the supremacy of knowledge; at least, he did not reveal a reaction. He also did not reveal in so many words the original assignment: to find a means of freeing the seventh Duke from his obligations. Instead, his answer walked a line between caution and clarity.
“We were asked to come here and assist Marsh in the decisions he has to make. One of those decisions, concerning the paternity of the boy Thomas, will come into our ken on Wednesday. But, it appeared to me that there were other areas of uncertainty that cried out for clarification. The death of the sixth Duke’s heir was one of those. The business practices of Sidney Darling may prove to be another. This shooting, particularly in view of Alistair’s injury earlier in the week, may prove to be a third. I would not go so far as Schiller in asserting that there is no such thing as chance, but I would agree that what seems mere accident often springs from the deepest sources of cupidity.”
Alistair puffed up and began to protest that his had been a stupid accident, but Holmes merely put up a hand to stop him, and went on.
“The chaos of battle can hide many things. Rivalries explode; guns may find a mark short of the enemy. Without knowing Gabriel, I cannot know the likelihood that he was caught up in such a rivalry or resentment, but
