even before I began to investigate his life, I knew one thing: Had he survived, the boy would have become an extremely wealthy and influential man.”
“And if you didn’t know Marsh as well as you do, you might be investigating him,” Iris interjected. By her expression, the thought worried her not in the least; seemed to amuse her, almost. And Holmes smiled as he nodded.
“If I did not know him, then yes, I would be looking closely at his whereabouts during July 1918.
“However, I do not think that will be necessary. On the other hand, I should very much like to know if the fifth Duke’s brother, Philip Peter, had a son, and similarly Ralph Hughenfort.”
“Uncle Philip?” Marsh said, simultaneously with Alistair’s “My brother Ralph, do you mean?”
“Yes,” Holmes said. “To both.”
“Philip died a few years ago, in South Africa. He was a monk of some sort—not Catholic, but I’ve never heard of a marriage.”
“I can’t imagine anyone marrying Ralph,” Alistair told us, pronouncing the name “Rafe.” He went on, “My brother had a fever when he was small; it left him uncontrollable. He ran away when he was nineteen, first to India and then Australia. Rose, our sister, used to get long, sorrowful letters from him, with requests for money, but they stopped during the War. His last one said he was thinking of joining the Anzacs. He probably lies in Gallipoli with all the others.”
“A degree of certainty in any of this would be a pleasant surprise,” Holmes complained, as if the Hughenfort family had conspired against the solution of his case. If, indeed, it could be considered a case.
“My brother began enquiries into his whereabouts after the War, but had not much luck,” Marsh told him.
“Another pair of assignments for my brother,” Holmes said darkly. “And now, I should like to see Gabriel’s final letter, if you don’t mind. And what diaries you may have.”
At Marsh’s nod, Alistair went over to a third-rate nineteenth-century portrait on the wall, pulled it back, manipulated the dial behind it, and handed Holmes the packet that I had returned on Thursday afternoon.
Holmes glanced at the field post-cards, then read all four letters, the three from Gabriel and the sympathy note from the Reverend Mr Hastings. When he was finished, he folded them into their envelopes and handed them back to Alistair; the leather-bound journals he retained. We watched Alistair lock the safe again as if he was performing some rite, and when he was back in his seat, Holmes asked Marsh, “Very well; what can you tell me about your brother Lionel and his wife?”
Not much, it seemed. After Lionel had fled scandal to Paris, the only news Marsh had received was the occasional curt fact from their elder brother Henry or third-hand scandal through scandalised family friends. Marsh had seen Lionel once in Paris, finding him self-consciously aesthetic and deliberately dissipated; he had a flock of beautiful young men. Marsh’s voice showed how distasteful he had found the meeting. He had not tried to see Lionel again.
Of the woman, again he knew only what Henry had written, that she appeared a middle-aged whore. I wanted to ask how the sixth Duke could have believed the child to be Lionel’s, if Lionel was known to prefer pretty young boys to aging women, but in the present company, I thought the undercurrents quite complex enough already. And considering the variations in human relations, I supposed anything was possible.
We had been in Marsh’s quarters little more than an hour and a half, but it was becoming obvious that the master of Justice was an ill man, increasingly feverish and unable to concentrate on the business at hand. There was nothing that could not wait until Marsh’s head cleared, so we left him with Alistair. At the door to her room, Iris hesitated, then asked, “I don’t suppose you’d care to join me for Evensong? The rector remembered that I loved the service, and offered to say it for me.”
“Actually,” I said, “I’d enjoy that. If he doesn’t mind having an unbeliever in the congregation.”
“That would make two,” she said cheerfully, to my confusion. “I’ll meet you in the chapel in a quarter of an hour.”
I went to my room, meditating on the oddity of a self-described nonbeliever attending church services not once, but twice in a day.
The air in the ornate little chapel was as frigid as its marble walls and smelt of incense, but the rector possessed a pleasing sensitivity for the magnificent rhythms of the Evensong liturgy, and seemed to bring the three of us together as a congregation, along with the memorial plaques and statues that cluttered the walls. Iris had taken a seat near the naked feet of the ice-white alabaster boy who, I saw by the plaque, represented young Gabriel. The sculptor had swathed the sentimental figure in Roman toga, and caused the ethereal face to gaze down at the viewer in a disturbingly Christlike manner, the calm blank eyes seeming to focus on the pew where we were seated.
The rector chanted portions of the liturgy, said others, and at the end thanked us for permitting him to do the service there. Then he quietly departed, leaving us to the family ghosts.
Silence settled over the stones, the wood, the drapes and brasses. Without a fresh dose of incense, I now caught the honey smell of the beeswax, which transported me back to the Holy Land, and Holmes the beekeeper tracking down our foe by a fragrant stub of stolen candle.
I found myself smiling at the unlikely memory, linked to this distant spot by a pair of cousins. I turned slightly to say something to Iris about it, and saw on her features the same tragic expression that I had glimpsed the previous night, when Holmes had described the sorrow of the battle-hardened soldiers.
She was looking up at the memorial to Gabriel with that very expression—naked loss and grief. In a burst of revelation that shook me to my bones, I comprehended why: The boy’s foreign birth and its date; the regular letters Iris sent to a young soldier she scarcely knew; Marsh’s near-tears and Iris’s compulsive church-going at the effigy’s feet; the devastation wrought on the family. And I understood why Marsh was not able to leave this place.
“My God!” I exclaimed, then caught myself and glanced over my shoulder to be sure we were alone before I continued in a lower voice. “Henry wasn’t Gabriel’s father, was he? You and Marsh—Iris, you weren’t the boy’s aunt. You were his mother!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The woman on the bench beside me went as white as the marble boy above. I nearly seized her shoulders to keep her from collapsing to the floor, but then the blood swept back into her face with a flush. She turned to face the altar, showing me her ear and jaw-line.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Iris, please.” She stared at the altar, unresponsive. “I won’t tell a soul. Not even Holmes, if you insist, although I suspect he’ll figure it out on his own in another day or two. Just tell me the truth.”
I thought she would remain silent; after a few moments, however, her eyes were drawn to those of the alabaster boy, and she moaned. “Oh, Lord. I was afraid this might happen. Well, I suppose you’ll have to hear it— but not here, not with the children back and servants going past outside the door. Come, the garden.”
It was not a great deal colder out of doors than it had been in the chapel, although it was by now fully dark. I did not see that standing in the darkness for the conversation would offer any more security than would a warm room of the house—the dark hides listeners as well as walls do—but I had not reckoned with Iris’s intimate knowledge of Justice. She strode down the paths as if she possessed a cat’s vision, warning me of steps and turns. After a minute we crossed an expanse of crunchy gravel, took two steps up onto a wooden platform, and patted our way to seats on the bench that ran along the sides. We were in the Palladian music house I had noticed in the garden, set in a sea of pale gravel. If we kept our voices low, no-one could approach close enough to hear us without warning, and there was no space in which two children might be hiding.
Besides, I thought: Some conversations are best held in the dark.
“Yes,” she began. “You’re right. Gabriel was my son, although I don’t see how you could have known.”
“Your voice, when you speak of him as much as I’ve made you the last couple of days. It’s not the voice of an aunt.”
