less forever. Seven generations of my ancestors have been born in the bed where now I sleep. I myself was born there. Half of them have died in that same bed. My people lived right here when the Domesday Book was compiled, not under the name Hughenfort—that came in by marriage during the last century—but the same family. Generation after generation farmed the land, reared their children, served the king, came home from the wars, and died in the bed where they were born.”
He seemed suddenly to notice the ever-so-faint air of wistfulness in his answer and the intensity of his gaze, because he blinked, then turned to me and added unexpectedly, “My sister’s son lives in the next valley. He farms this land; he will inherit it. He will move into the house, and die in that bed an old and happy man.”
“While Mrs Algernon’s pot of soup simmers away on the back of the stove.”
He granted me a quick smile, which made years fall away from him. “That I do not know. The old ways are disappearing. I have been away for twenty years, and the only thing I recognise is the land. The old order is gone. My nephew will not have a Mrs Algernon in his life.” He gave a last glance at his ancestral home, black and white and golden in the sun, then slapped the soft cap against his leg again and tugged it cautiously over his bandaged head. “However, if we don’t present ourselves to be fed, I may not have a Mrs Algernon for long, either.”
He gathered up the tray and led the way down the hill. I followed, thoughtful. Had he merely come to fetch me? Or to tell me that he trusted in the skills of the partnership Holmes and Russell? Or—odd thought—had he seen me sitting on the hilltop bench and been struck by a sudden desire for companionship?
Mahmoud—Marsh—at Justice Hall, Alistair here; it could not, I reflected, be an easy thing to be set apart from the day-to-day companion of two decades.
Breakfast was fortifying, the fuel of labourers. Afterwards, Holmes and Mrs Algernon bent over the scalp of an encouragingly irritable Alistair, pronounced themselves well pleased with the healing process, and replaced the bandage with a smaller plaster. Their patient stalked away, and Holmes and I went up to our rooms.
“We are to stay with Mah—with our old friend Marsh, then?”
“So it would appear. If nothing else, Alistair seems to have a minimum of servants at his disposal here.”
“He walked up the hill to tell me that Marsh was impressed by our skills, and that he might listen to us telling him to go back to Palestine.”
“So that is what Ali wants?”
“It sounded like it.”
“Should be a brief visit, then.”
So, our sojourn in the land of the gentry was to be a brief one. The thought cheered me considerably.
With the sun actually generating a trace of warmth, the motorcar’s bear-skin remained in hibernation. Alistair sat in the front beside Algernon, although there was none of the easy banter of the night before. Our host had also shed his colourful pull-over, although around his neck was draped a brilliant purple scarf with lemon-yellow fringes, topping the handsome grey suit he wore beneath a trim alpaca overcoat. Both of the latter garments were considerably newer in cut than the formal garb he’d worn to Sussex. On his head was an equally stylish soft felt hat, although he did not appear to have bothered having new shoes made during the four months he’d been in the country. His cheeks were smooth, his hair combed over the plaster, and from where I sat I could see his right leg jogging continuously up and down, the body’s attempt to release the tension that clenched his jaw and held his shoulders rigid. When threatened in Palestine, Ali had generally responded with a drawn knife; I couldn’t help speculating what the country house equivalent might be. Cutting insults at forty paces? Charades to the death?
We moved along the unmetalled road in the glorious autumnal morning, keeping straight when we reached the sign-post of the night before. “Justice Hall” was an interesting name for a ducal seat, I thought, and made a mental note to ask for an explanation.
The roads improved as we went on. Soon we were running alongside a stone wall far too high to see or even climb over; it went for what seemed like miles, high, secure, and blank. I was beginning to wonder if we were circling the estate rather than following one side when Algernon slowed and the wall dropped away towards a gate.
This was a very grand gate indeed, ornately worked iron hanging from twin stone pillars on which coats of arms melted into obscurity and atop which unidentifiable creatures perched. There was a snug, tidy lodge house at one side, from which a boy of about twelve scrambled, pulling on a cap as he ran, to throw himself hard against the weight of all that iron to get it open. He came to attention as we drove past, tugging briefly at his cap brim. Alistair raised a hand to him, but Algernon said loudly, “Thank you, young Tom,” receiving a gap-toothed grin in return.
The wide, straight drive that rose gently from the gate was flanked by fifty feet of close-cropped lawn on either side, behind which stood twin walls of vegetation—huge rhododendrons, for the most part; the entrance drive would be a pageant come spring. Taller trees, most of them deciduous, grew above the shrubs, to protect them from the summer sun.
We travelled steadily towards an open summit; as we neared the top, Alistair instructed Algernon, “Stop for a moment when we’ve cleared the hill.”
Obediently, the driver slowed, timing it so that as we reached the highest point we were nearly at a stop already. The bonnet tipped a fraction, and then Algy set the brake and turned off the engine.
Alistair climbed out; Holmes and I did not hesitate to join him at the front of the car. The view was, quite simply and literally, stunning.
As far as the eye could see, Paradise as a cultivated garden. A vast sweep of greensward, undulating with delicate dips and rises, dropping to the long curve of a lake with a glorious jet of fountain spouting to the heavens, the whole set with centuries-old trees as a ring is set with diamonds. It was far too perfect to be natural, but so achingly lovely that the eye did not care.
“One can say this for Capability Brown,” Holmes drawled. “He knew how to think on a grand scale.”
“Mostly Humphry Repton, actually,” Alistair told him. “Not that it matters, except down near the water.”
But the house; oh, the house.
I was, truth to tell, quite set to detest the place. Whatever its age, no matter its architectural or historical importance, Justice Hall was keeping Mahmoud Hazr from his rightful and chosen place in the world. No pile of stones or family tree justified the disruption of a man’s life—of the lives of two men. Two good, righteous, valuable men who had been happy doing hard and important work, until a brother had died and a title descended on one. I had no illusions that anything Holmes and I could say might prise Mahmoud from his perceived duty, but I had come here intending to try my damnedest.
But oh, the house.
I had thought Alistair’s small mansion near to perfection, had found its human scale and diversity deeply satisfying. Justice Hall was another measure of human endeavour entirely.
The house was composed of three main blocks, with the largest, central portion set back between the two wings like a lion welcoming visitors between its enormous outstretched paws. Or like a sphinx; yes, there was something distinctly feminine about the Hall, its strength delicate rather than muscular. The drive crossed a stream that merged with the beautifully curved pond, and came to its end in a circle between the two paws; from where we stood, the drive looked remarkably like a ball of yarn stretched taut, awaiting the great feline’s attention and amusement.
Too symmetrical and unadorned to be called Baroque, too richly varied for a Palladian label, its stone some indeterminate shade between warm gold and cool pewter, with crenellations and domes and a wealth of windows that hovered just on the safe edge of excessive, Justice Hall was unlike any building I had ever seen. Rather, I corrected myself, it resembled other grand houses of the nobility, but in the way that a woman of strikingly original beauty resembles her inevitable crowd of imitators—the similarity is in one direction only. I felt I had never truly seen a country house before. It was almost improper to think of it as a mere “building”; this was an entity whose signal characteristic was its unearthly perfection.
The sun did not shine on Justice Hall so much as Justice Hall called forth the sun’s rays to fall at such and such an angle. We did not look upon it; rather, it invited our eyes to admire. It sat in its exquisitely shaped bowl and smiled gently on the careful arrangement of dappled deer on its slopes, the fall of shadows from its trees, the play of the breeze on the water at its base. In the summer it would glow; in the rain, its face would appear pensive; under a blanket of snow it would be a fairy-tale castle; in the moonlight, this would be the dwelling place of the
