as I thought necessary—the delivery boy who thought Phillida resembled a woman who’d lived in the next street, the old man who believed Terese Hughenfort a bad mother because the boy had once talked back to him, and a string of other statements that most likely meant nothing, but might potentially have some frail significance. The next course came and my duck was but a collection of bones and sauce by the time I came to the really interesting part.
“By this stage I was showing the pictures to anyone who would pause long enough to look. One mother in the fruiterer’s took pity on me and glanced through them, told me sorry, and then her young son and his friend wanted to see what she’d been looking at. They recognised the house.”
“What, Justice Hall?”
“None other. It would seem that young master Thomas has a photograph of Justice Hall that he hides from his mother. The boys couldn’t mistake that fountain.”
“He hides it from his mother?”
“A man gave it to him, they said, a month or two ago, along with a story that his father lived there, and some day would come and claim Thomas.”
“Which could be nothing more than the phantasy of a fatherless boy, but for the picture, which had to come from somewhere.”
“I thought you’d find that provocative. Particularly considering that shortly after that, Thomas’s hair went dark. But half an hour after that interview, I found a man who could identify Sidney Darling.”
It was a night for being demonstrative: Holmes was seized by such glee that he snatched my hand from its resting place on the table and kissed it briefly, startling the waiter who was overseeing the respectful entrance of four noble cheeses.
“Tell me,” Holmes commanded, when the cheeses’ trio of escorts had left us.
“It was about six weeks ago. He had purchased a piece of furniture from Mme Hughenfort—a cabinet or trunk of some sort, although the word he used was unfamiliar to me. Whatever it was, it was massive, such that he could not move it down the stairs on his own—that he made clear. One evening his wife’s brother arrived, and the two men decided to go and fetch the thing. They went upstairs and knocked at her door. There were voices on the other side, and the woman’s voice, which the customer recognised as that of Terese Hughenfort, continued speaking as she came to the door.
“My informant gained the impression that she was expecting someone, possibly her son, who came up the stairs as they were going down again, so that she opened the door without asking who was there. She seemed startled at seeing her visitors, and turned to look over her shoulder at the man in the room, but he was standing in plain view, so Madame merely allowed them to take the object and leave.
“The man was quite definite. He even thought the visitor was English, although he couldn’t decide if the man had just looked that way, being tall, blond, and aloof, or if he’d said something and had an accent. He looked at the photograph of Sidney, and said it could have been him, although he wouldn’t swear on his son’s head that it was. All Englishmen look rather alike to him, it would seem.”
Our pleasure in the delicate cheeses was surpassed only by the savour of being able to tie Darling in with Mme Hughenfort. Still . . .
“It doesn’t actually prove anything, though, does it?” I asked. “Darling could easily say that he wanted to see the boy for himself, to try to save Marsh the trouble. There’s no evidence that it was Darling who suggested that Madame dye the boy’s hair, or that she insist on going to London rather than invite the family to her home ground. That is to say, if Darling was out to present Marsh with an adequate heir so that Marsh would clear out of Justice and leave it to the Darlings to run for him, he’d hardly have sent her a signed letter of instruction, would he?”
Holmes, looking ever more pleased, folded his table napkin and drained his glass. “There is but one way of knowing.”
“Oh, Holmes. You don’t intend—”
“A spot of burglary? But of course.” He looked over to catch the eye of the attentive waiter, and smiled.
We made a detour to our rooms so I might assume a more practical outfit for the role of burglar. When eleven o’clock had rung, we slipped out of the service entrance into the dark streets. A light rain had begun, all the better for our purposes since it sent passers-by scurrying for shelter with their heads tucked down. I led Holmes up to my friendly brasserie, and nodded down the street at the house.
“The door between the florist’s and the ironmonger’s,” I told him. “Their
“I propose we find out,” Holmes said, and launched himself out across the street. Rather wishing that we’d remained disguised by the priests’ robes, which might stay the gendarmes from actual assault, I followed.
I had been inside the building earlier that day, so I already knew which flats were inhabited by nervous dogs and which by deaf old ladies. The central vestibule was not locked, and we encountered no-one on the stairs, although twice dogs began to yap frantically inside their doors and caused us to quicken our steps. Outside the Hughenfort door, Holmes took out his pick-locks and bent to work.
The lock was old and simple, a matter of a few moments’ nudging before we were inside. The curtains were shut tight, which made matters easier yet, and we divided up our attention, beginning at opposite ends of the flat.
This is what we learnt about Mme Hughenfort: She was an untidy housekeeper, although the rooms were clean beneath a layer of dust and clutter, and she had a frugal taste in foodstuffs and alcohol. Her furniture and clothing were serviceable but cheap, with the exception of a few items that might easily have been gifts. The boy’s room reflected more care than hers, his coats and shoes newer, his bedclothes thicker than hers.
We found no picture of Justice Hall among his things, although there was a dust-free gap on a shelf that might have held the sort of treasure-box valued even by boys who are not required to move house every few months: He might well have seized it to take into exile. The walls held awards from school, a letter of commendation from a teacher, and some drawings he had made, spare and surprisingly sophisticated. I spotted an essay the boy had been writing, glanced through it, and found that it too demonstrated an unexpected maturity in its language and its grasp of history. I put it back, thoughtful.
In her room we found nothing incriminating, until we reached the upper shelf of a built-in cupboard and saw an ornate enamelled music box, about four inches by nine, with a scene of some Bavarian village in the snow. The box was locked.
Holmes drew out his pick-locks again.
She did not keep her legal papers in the box, but for our purposes something far better. Holmes slid his fingernail over the catch to keep the box from playing, and with his other hand took out the contents.
Love letters from three different men over a twenty-year period, none of which was signed “Lionel” or written in an English hand. Snapshots of a younger, slimmer Terese, mostly with friends, including one showing her dressed in a heavy winter coat, arm in arm with a tall Nordic-looking blond man. The dates had been pencilled onto the back of each in French schoolgirl writing; the one with the blond said, “
One of the letters was signed with that name, the one that contained, along with a number of romantic lines I had just as soon not have read, the following admission (in French):
The letter bore the date of early December 1913. A month before Terese had married Lionel Hughenfort.
Did she snag him, or was she simply an old friend who needed a great favour? I thought the latter, that she was desperate, pregnant and abandoned; he was ill, in need of a housekeeper, generous with his family’s money, and not unwilling to do his judgemental family in the eye by dragging in this unsuitable match.
There may even, I reflected, have been a degree of affection between them. The photograph of the pregnant Terese and the worn-looking Lionel that occupied a place among the debris of her dressing-table was an obligatory presence, since the man was her son’s declared father, but it might also have a sentimental value to her. The pose,
