apologetically that a mistake’s been made, that my room is a nice cosy broom closet, seventeen levels below the water-line.”
“That’s all right, then,” she said, gesturing towards the adjoining room. “We’ll make you up a bed on the sofa.”
“How is Marsh?”
“Spitting mad that the doctor and Ali won’t let him out of his bed.”
“I didn’t even know until yesterday that he’d taken a turn for the worse.”
“He nearly lost his arm.”
“Iris!”
“They couldn’t get the infection down. The doctor wanted to amputate—blood-thirsty idiot—but Ali wouldn’t let him. Threatened to amputate the
“I can imagine.” Particularly if the threat had been accompanied by a blade and one of Ali’s patent glares.
“All it wanted was round-the-clock compresses. Ali and I took turns; the infection centralised and could be lanced after a couple of days. Marsh is weak, but he’ll be fine.”
“Holmes said he was going down to see them today or tomorrow. I suppose—” I caught myself: We were still standing, as we had been since I let her in. “Do you want some tea or coffee or something?”
“I’d like a drink, actually. A good old English gin and tonic. Do you have such a thing, or need we call for it?”
“There should be a drinks cabinet somewhere.”
There was, and although I would have preferred hot tea, I joined her in a g-and-t. She swallowed, and exhaled in appreciation.
“Yes,” she said, picking up on my last statement. “Justice Hall is a house divided. Phillida is going berserk. She’s got this elaborate ball planned for the fifteenth, absolutely refuses to shift it to the London house; I can see her point—she’d be better to cancel it. At the same time, Alistair won’t let anyone but Ogilby into the part of the house where Marsh is, which means the entire wing is effectively cut off from the main block. Sidney is irate, because that means the billiards room and the library are in No-Man’s-Land, and they had planned to have a few friends up for the week-end. Alistair won’t budge, swears he’ll empty a load of bird shot into the billiards room if he hears any movement down there. They believe him.”
As would I, I thought, but only commented, “Sounds like a fine game of Happy Families.”
“An interesting family, no doubt of that. But, Ali told me your husband was attacked on Tuesday. Was it serious? Was it connected with everything else that’s going on?”
“Who knows?” Who knew, in fact, what
She pulled a face. “Still, at his age, even that’s no small matter.”
I paused, taken somewhat aback. I rarely thought of Holmes as being of any particular age, much less a great one, but it was true: A beating at twenty is not the same as one at sixty. I wondered if I should have insisted he see a doctor, then dismissed the idea immediately. If he’d needed medical attention, he’d have sought it.
We applied ourselves to our glasses and chatted of nothing in particular—flying lessons, as I recall, with Iris asserting that in a few years we’d be criss-crossing the world’s oceans in passenger aeroplanes, g-and-t in hand, and think nothing of it—and I waited for her to ask me for the information Holmes and I had collected since we had last seen each other a week earlier. She did not ask. Once she started me off, of course, the painful flow of facts and images would wash over her in a flood. She knew that, knew there was no comfortable way to ease into the past, and so she hesitated to ask.
In the end, I simply gave her Gabriel’s journal. I had brought it with me to search it more closely with an eye to the tall Canadian Helene whom I would soon be confronting, but it appeared to me more important that Iris read it first. I took it from my locked case, and placed it in her hands.
“This is Gabriel’s diary,” I told her. “Your son’s war journal. When you’ve read it, I’ll tell you how we found it.”
She received the battered object with the attitude of a believer accepting the communion host. She bent over it for a moment, then left the cabin without a word.
I did not see her for two days.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
(SELECTED ENTRIES FROM THE JOURNAL
OF GABRIEL HUGHENFORT)
