“I need hardly add, I think, that careful searches were conducted of the houses and grounds of both men. Four safes in total between them,” he noted, the tedium of extended safe-cracking clear in his voice, “and not a cache of letters to be found. A variety of illegal activities, particularly on the part of Mr Darling, but nothing to connect either with Gabriel Hughenfort.”
“The letters may have been destroyed.”
“It is always possible, although it is my experience that the criminal mind is generally loth to destroy an object which might be of future use.”
“So what do you propose?” I asked, although I thought I knew.
“A trap,” he replied. Marsh, Alistair, and Iris looked interested.
“Something to send him to his hiding place?”
“Precisely. It is a method I have used before—with, I will admit, varying degrees of success—but more often to bring an object to light than to confirm its existence. Success will require a minimum of four people, two on each suspect. I do not usually possess such riches.”
“What about me?” Iris objected.
“Have you any experience in what they call ‘tailing’ a suspect?” Holmes asked her.
“No, but how difficult—”
“Then you shall be our support staff. We are dealing with a clever man here, and it can not be expected that he will break immediately from cover. The more caution he possesses, the longer the process will take. You shall be in a central position near a telephone, with a motor and driver to hand, in order to bring whatever equipment or assistance we might require.”
“Such as what?” she demanded, certain she was merely being humoured.
“Anything from a change of disguise to a stick of dynamite.”
“Oh, very well. Although I had rather be of more use.”
“Your position, should it come into play, requires resourcefulness, steady nerves, and the ability to move quickly. I was under the impression that you possessed these characteristics.”
That cheered her. “I’ll do my best.”
“The bait for the trap?” Alistair enquired.
“I should think the marriage certificate would be the best. A witness to the document, perhaps, has come to light.”
“What about the priest who performed it?” I suggested. “We could say that Marsh has heard a rumour that Gabriel married a French girl, so he’s going to France next week to see—”
“No.” It was Marsh, looking unmovable. “The ball is intended to welcome the seventh Duke to Justice. It will do that.”
“Oh, Marsh,” Iris exclaimed. “You can’t put the boy in harm’s way!”
“I must. He will be removed immediately thereafter, and he and his mother will be sheltered until the matter is resolved.” I did not much care for the grim way in which he pronounced the word
CHAPTER THIRTY
Saturday’s ball was to be fancy-dress, its theme Tutankhamen’s Tomb, which had been opened the previous winter and instantly plunged the world into a state of raving Tutmania. While I was away in Canada, Justice Hall had been transported to the Valley of the Kings. With the minor complication of weather most unsuited to the Egyptian desert, in a dim light one might suspect one was in the archaeological dig that had just resumed for the season in Luxor, three thousand miles away. The final doors of Tutankhamen’s inner tomb lay ripe for the opening, but Phillida Darling had anticipated the event.
Wire and papier-mache palm trees now lined the drive; the pelicans of the fountain had somehow become ibises; crocodiles made of wood and rubber inhabited Justice Stream and its new forest of reeds and papyrus at the shallow beginning of the pond. Huge sheets of painted canvas had been suspended from the battlements, obscuring the house’s front facade with row after row of enlarged Egyptian tomb paintings. A trio of stuffed camels sheltered under the portico of the stable wing; an enormous cage, its wire cunningly disguised under vines, occupied the portico on the side of the kitchen block. A closer look at the cage revealed two depressed-looking apes huddling in one corner. The lawn and terraces had either been dug up or had temporary mounds of soil heaped on top, with the odd shovel and barrow sticking out of the caps of melting snow to indicate work in progress. Three men were working up at the roof-top, fixing what looked to be torches along the battlements. Down below, the big double doors of Justice now resembled the entrance to a royal tomb, guarded by two enormous stuffed crocodiles, rearing up on their hind feet and tails. Blood-curdling shrieks came from within, either some terrible human sacrifice or a flock of parrots.
I could only stand in awe near the newly ibised fountain, wondering that Justice Hall did not collapse in mortification.
Iris had either been looking out for me or happened to be passing near one of the few unobscured windows, because she came out of the tomb door, dressed in reassuringly normal trousers, and grinned at my slack-jawed state.
“Quite an effect, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Words fail me.”
“Wait ’til you see the Hall.”
“I don’t know that I’m strong enough.”
“Well, I shouldn’t recommend standing out here too long. Phillida’s animal man seems to have lost one of his crocodiles; it’s walking around loose, or crawling, or whatever it is crocodiles do.”
“Probably lurking under the bridge, hoping for a deer. Or one of the dogs.” Still, I thought I might go inside, away from concealing shrubbery. As we passed through the tomb-painted drapes, I asked, “Do you know if Phillida has asked any stray scholars of ancient Egyptian to this bean-feast?”
“Haven’t any idea.”
“It’s just, I believe that string of hieroglyphs there says something extraordinarily rude about the reader’s mother.”
Ogilby held the door for us, dressed, I was relieved to see, in his usual butler’s black formality. At least he had not had an Anubis mask placed on his head or been stripped down to the loin-cloth of Egyptian servants.
The Great Hall, on the other hand . . .
The cavernous stone expanse had undergone a complete metamorphosis; I was now standing within a vast tropical grotto, moist-aired and with no hint of an echo. Every corner was thick with head-high reeds and ponds filled with flowering water-lilies; the upper galley was a jungle of vines that neared the floor; every accessible surface was a riot of lapis, gold, carmine, and emerald scarabs, hieroglyphs, and lotus flowers. A family of disturbingly realistic mummies guarded the inner door. (They had to be papier-mache; surely Phillida couldn’t have persuaded the British Museum . . . ?) Three parrots on high perches screamed their fury, frightening the ape a man was attempting to coax onto an artificial tree. A crew was moving half a dozen monumental statues into place, with a fifteen-foot-high cat-headed god the current object of their attentions. A flock of seven flying ibises had been suspended from the dome. One of their stuffed companions had settled onto the outstretched arm of the classical athlete.
It was absolutely breathtaking.
“How on earth did she do this?” I wondered aloud. “Look—those lotus are actually blooming. Shouldn’t they be dormant this time of year?”
“Some of them are silk—all the vines are—but she did have two or three dozen pots forced in a hot-house. And Marsh wouldn’t let her paint directly onto the marble, so all the columns are covered in canvas.”
“It’s even warm in here.”
