no means astonished, and I felt again that he’d have put it together as soon as he knew Iris better. He tapped his teeth with his pipe. “An ideal solution, I agree, and not even much of a circumvention of the line of inheritance, since without a son Henry would have handed it over to Marsh in any case, and thence to Gabriel. Of course, had Henry had a son of his own after Gabriel, an ethical problem might have reared up. But he did not, and snipping Marsh out of the succession was neat indeed.”
“It is, however, by no means common knowledge.”
“Obviously not. My lips are sealed, Russell.”
“Other than the romance of philosophy, what do you make of the journals?”
He looked down at the volume he had held on to, lying across his knee, then picked it up and laid it on top of the others. “A son any man could be proud of,” he said painfully, and went to dress for dinner.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In January 1914, Marsh’s brother Lionel Hughenfort had married a woman named Terese, who was at least five years older than he, and six months pregnant when they married. She gave birth in early April, and christened the boy Thomas. Lionel died of pneumonia in late May. For the past nine and a half years, the family bank in London had issued cheques twice each month to an accountant in Lyons. He in turn dealt with the distribution of funds to Mme Hughenfort, who moved house a great deal. Once a year, representatives of the London bank travelled to Paris to meet with Terese and Thomas, in order to reassure themselves—and the family—that the boy and his mother were still alive and receiving their monies.
That was, according to what Alistair and Iris told us Sunday evening and Monday morning, the only contact the boy’s mother would permit. No living Hughenfort had ever seen either member of this truncated branch of the family. This vacuum, inevitably, had been filled over the years by rumour and speculation, with the result that Terese Hughenfort had become, in the collective mind of the English side, a raddled, aged harlot with bad teeth, hennaed hair, the wrong kind of lace on her garments, and a death-grip on her source of income, young Thomas. While the sixth Duke was alive, nothing further had been done about the boy, apart from an increase in the monies sent to cover the cost of schooling a duke’s nephew. I had the impression that the boy, and Lionel before him, had been sore spots in Henry’s mind, the less prodded the better.
When the title had passed to Marsh during the summer, locating the boy was one of his first tasks. Messages accompanied the next two cheques, and then a stern letter with the third. All three fell into the hole in Lyons. Finally, a bank employee was dispatched with the fourth cheque in hand, and an ultimatum to the Lyons accountant: There would be no further monies if the family did not hear from Mme Hughenfort herself with a suggestion for when and where the family might meet the boy.
She managed to drag the affair out several weeks, claiming a minor ailment, and the boy’s schooling, until the threat was made good, and no cheque was sent on the first of October. She capitulated, but declared that she and the boy would come to London. The Hughenforts would foot the bill, naturally—and (her letter ended, on a spirited note) she expected both tickets and hotel to be first-class; the heir deserved no less.
Phillida was piqued at the effrontery, and would have dumped mother and son in some second-rate establishment near Charing Cross, but Sidney, continuing his amiable support for the boy, had professed himself amused by Mme Hughenfort’s transparent desire for a luxurious holiday, and suggested they grant it. In the end Marsh agreed. He would not, however, place them in one of the very top establishments: That would be a cruelty, to turn the raised eyebrows of staff on a woman with pretensions and a budget. The bank was directed to locate an hotel with ornate decorations and a heavy trade in foreigners who did not know any better, and to reserve a suite for the visitors there.
Terese and Thomas Hughenfort were to arrive Tuesday, and meet their family for luncheon on Wednesday. Train tickets were sent, a letter of introduction for the hotel—and a supplemental cheque, for “incidental expenses” such as a warm coat for the boy, or (more likely) a new dress for the mother.
We intended to be there when they arrived; in fact, we would be with them long before they arrived: Holmes and I planned to join their small party at the earliest possible moment, namely, when mother and son arrived at the Gare de Lyons in Paris to board the train for London.
The amount of organisation such an operation would require was not going to be possible within the well- populated walls of Justice Hall. Thus, early on Monday morning, Holmes, Iris (who was looking her age today, having ordered Alistair home and spent the night nursing her husband unaided), and I took our leave of Marsh, the Darlings, the remaining house guests, and the servants in the person of their representative, Ogilby.
We rode in demure silence to the station, allowed our bags to be carried inside, and watched the Justice Hall car slide away. Three minutes later, Algernon drove up; we loaded our bags into the car, and set off for Badger. This minor ruse merely saved explanation; the Darlings might hear that we had failed to board the train, but it hardly mattered. Why should we not choose to visit Alistair’s home?
Badger Old Place welcomed us with all its run-down, shaggy magnificence, like an old friend shifting to make room on a bench. Iris was as at home here as she had been at Justice, and greeted Mrs Algernon with cries of delight. When Alistair had extricated his cousin’s wife from the conversational clutches of his housekeeper, he issued us upstairs to the solar, the Mediaeval sitting room located above the Great Hall for warmth, light, and privacy.
The solar was still, after three hundred years, a warm, light, private chamber. The furniture reflected the fashions of generations—spindly legs and thick, decorated and utilitarian, silk and linen and leather. All looked comfortable, the colours and shapes grown together in an unlikely but successful marriage of the ages. Alistair himself fit in nicely, dressed in another frumpy suit that had been the height of undergraduate fashion in 1900, decorated by a flamboyant crimson-and-emerald waistcoat. We settled into the circle of chairs and sofas clustered around the stone fireplace, with a tray of coffee and biscuits provided by Mrs Algernon.
“How are we going to work this?” Iris asked, when she had her coffee. “Do I get to dress up in disguise and follow Terese across London?”
Holmes and I did not comment on the difficulties in changing the face and posture of a woman such as she. He merely replied, “I think it best if you and Alistair, in Marsh’s absence, meet Mme Hughenfort and her son face to face. Along with Lady Phillida, of course. This means that most of the actual tailing exercise will fall to Russell and myself.”
Neither of them liked this division of labour, but both knew that if they were to dine with Mme Hughenfort, they could not be following her through the streets.
“We can take the night hours,” Alistair decreed.
Watching and, if necessary, following a person at night was a riskier proposition than loitering about a busy daytime street, since people in general are more wary in the dark. However, Holmes and I would have to sleep some time, and even if Madame were to encounter one of them, she would not as easily recognise her relatives when they later met by daylight. Holmes nodded his agreement.
And so it went through the morning, offers and counter-offers, criticism and suggestions, the four of us working out a plan by which we could keep a tight watch on the woman without being seen. If she had a confederate or a gentleman, we wanted to see any contact between the two.
We took an early luncheon beneath the solar’s oriel window, then Holmes, Iris, and I caught the noon train to London, while Alistair returned to Justice Hall to sit with his feverish cousin.
The adventure of the duke’s nephew—or purported nephew—looked to be one of those parts of an investigation that are necessary, but tedious. It was not entirely fair that Holmes and I were saddled with it, but still, it had to be done, and one cannot always choose for one’s self the interesting, or even the comfortable, parts of a case. Or of life itself, for that matter. Thus in London we abandoned some of our bags to the left-luggage office and boarded the boat-train to Paris.
Mme Hughenfort had been sent tickets for a train that departed Paris just after nine o’clock on Tuesday morning. We bumped and splashed and rattled our way down to intercept her path, taking an hotel room late Monday night. We dined too well, slept ill, and returned to the Gare de Lyons to take up positions overlooking the
