“The radiators and fireplaces have been blasting away for three days to get it to this point.”
“Extraordinary. I shudder to think what this must be costing them.”
“Justice hasn’t had a new duke in twenty-one years. Phillida thought it only right to welcome him in a style worthy of the title.”
I met Iris’s eyes, and found them dancing with the same secret pleasure I felt in my own. I glanced around to be sure we weren’t overheard, then said, “I wonder if she will appreciate the surprise we have in store for her?”
“It will be a shock, but in the end the additional news value will make up for it. Justice and the Darlings will be the talk of all Europe for weeks.”
“How many guests are expected?”
“No-one seems exactly sure, but the special train they’re running from Town holds around two hundred. That’s probably more than half of them.”
The logistics were appalling. “Where on earth are they all going to sleep?”
“Oh heavens, they won’t sleep. It’s dancing ’til dawn, a breakfast of eggs and champagne, then back on the train, or however they got here.”
“I’m exhausted already.”
Iris looked surprised. “Surely you’ve been to a fancy-dress ball before?”
My entire life, at times, seemed to be fancy-dress. “Since the end of the War, I’ve been rather occupied with other things.”
“Well, as parties, they tend to be somewhat . . . uninhibited. There’s a freedom in wearing costume. Normal mores and attitudes are set aside.”
“Three hundred uninhibited Young Things. I hope Phillida’s hidden away all the breakables.”
“More to the point, she’s borrowed strong young manservants from every house in the county, to keep things from getting too out of hand.”
“I can only hope she gives the servants a week off when they’ve survived this.”
“Oh, Ogilby is in heaven, and Mrs Butter is having the time of her life. Not a one of them would miss this for the world.”
With a last glance at the fifteen-foot-high statue of Bast (plaster, I guessed, by the ease with which two men were carrying it up the stairs), I followed Iris past a trio of stuffed flamingos and through the corridor of outraged marble busts wearing gauze head-dresses, ending up at the library, which was miraculously free of Egyptian fetters.
Marsh Hughenfort looked like a man whose fever has broken, leaving him clear-eyed and clear of purpose for the first time. He greeted me casually, but with Mahmoud’s hidden meaning behind his eyes, speaking of appreciation and the anticipation of action. He sat in his chair, completely relaxed in the way he had once been when reclining by a camp-fire, and it came to me that he looked more a duke now that he had been supplanted than ever he had when that title had actually ridden his shoulders. Seeing his dark eyes full of life again made my heart glad.
“My brother’s guests, they are well?” he asked me.
And Alistair had been restored to “brotherhood,” I noted. “They slept well, and were fed to repletion by Mrs Algernon. When I left them, the boy was being led off into the meadow on a disgustingly fat pony by Mr Algernon. They seemed to be plotting out the most effective spot for a snowman, if the snow comes back.”
“Mary, I . . . Thank you. My entire family is in your debt.” There was a lot of weight behind that statement— the entire weight of the Hughenfort name, in fact. It was a concept both English and Bedouin.
“I was pleased I could be of service.”
“And yet, I find that I must now ask a further service of you and Holmes.”
“You are my brother,” I told him. In Arabic.
He inclined his head, acknowledging not only that he understood the statement, but that he saw the truth of it. “I wish to make the announcement tonight, during the dance. I wish to introduce the rightful duke before matters become any more complex.”
“What does Helen think?”
“My s—my nephew’s wife is a woman worthy of him. She understands that there is no safety in Canada that is not to be found here. She regrets you ever found her, she is angry with herself that she did not have the foresight to conceal the boy from us, she detests the idea of revealing him to public scrutiny and the inevitable acclaim and uproar that will follow, but she also sees that it is the best way. The boy cannot hide forever. Best it is dealt with here and now.”
“By ‘dealt with’ you mean . . . ?”
He met my gaze evenly. “I mean that I am no longer a duke. I am a commoner, with different rules of behaviour. I mean that I may be required to take brutal action in order to protect my duke. My five-year-old liege lord. I believe you take my meaning.”
“And the service you require?”
“Not to stand in my way.”
The eyes opposite me were dark with warning and with purpose. I had seen those eyes before, and I did not really want to know precisely what he had in mind to wrest the truth of the matter out of its participants. I knew him well enough to be certain that if atrocity could be avoided, he would do so; but I also knew that if brutality was the only way to protect the boy, he would not hesitate for an instant. I nearly opened my mouth to say,
Unless it proved necessary.
I felt that in the brief minutes I’d been in the library, we had carried on a lengthy discussion. Holmes and I often communicated in such a manner, to all intents and purposes reading the other’s mind, but it happened rarely with anyone else. I could only nod, to show that the discussion was over and that we were, however unhappily, in agreement.
“So when do you propose to tell Lady Phillida that she is giving a party for the wrong person?” I asked.
“Not until the last minute. However, strictly speaking, the invitations say merely that we are to honour Justice Hall’s seventh Duke. That is precisely what we shall be doing.”
“Even though the menu would more appropriately be fizzy lemonade and sausage rolls, followed by an eight o’clock bed-time. You’ll bring him to the dance?”
“My brother Ali will do so, when the evening is under way. In the meantime, the boy is safe with him.”
“And afterwards?”
“I will make the announcement. I will tell the entire room that this boy appears to be the legal heir, even though the actual marriage papers have yet to be found. I will say that on Monday morning a delegation from Justice Hall will leave for France, to seek out the village where Gabriel and Helen were married, and there they will make enquiries from the priest as to the ceremony. That will cause one of two things to happen. If our culprit has already destroyed the copy of the marriage certificate he took from Gabriel—which any sensible person would have done in those circumstances—then he will depart for France with all due haste, there to remove any register in which the priest might have entered the ceremony. And possibly to remove the priest himself. If, however, he is stupid enough to have kept the stolen paper—or overly confident, which amounts to the same thing—then he will make haste to retrieve his copy, either to destroy it or to be absolutely certain that it remains where he hid it. In either case, we shall be at his heels, to see which way our man breaks from cover.”
“This sounds like one of Holmes’ plans,” I said uneasily.
“We collaborated.”
“I thought so. He’s used it before, this idea that when threatened with destruction, a person retrieves what is most valuable first, be it baby or the instrument of blackmail. I have to say, however, that isn’t always the case. A person in a panic is as likely to grab a toothbrush as a diamond necklace, just as a cold-blooded person will control the immediate reaction to fly to the object of desire. The cases Holmes has tried this on haven’t invariably turned out quite as he would have wished.”
“I see. Well, failure lurks outside every gate. If this does not succeed, we shall be forced to try . . . harsher methods. In any case, if we do not have our man by Monday night, the boy and his mother will leave the country. Our friend Mycroft Holmes has some plan for them. It involves an air field, so they will feel at home.”
