Justice Hall (51 page)

Afterwards, Iris settled with a book while Holmes went to wheedle the crypt key from Ogilby (a very hang-dog butler, who had taken the treachery of the maid Emma personally). I knew that if I went down with him, I should find myself pulling up Mediaeval tiles with my bare fingers, so instead I wandered the room, looking closely at the collections of artefacts assembled from the house and grounds: Roman coins, Saxon axe-head, a clot of woven reeds that I decided had been a sandal. Twice servants came in to ask if we needed anything, and we sent them away. With the police gone, the excitement over, the house clear of Egypt, and the family gone to the London house for the Christmas festivities, the remaining Justice staff was sleepy and bored.

The Darlings had packed up and driven away the day after the ball, prematurely scattering the guests and taking with them Helen, Ben, Gabe, and most of the servants. Marsh and Alistair went with the family to see them settled in, and had then mysteriously vanished.

Iris abandoned her book to stare into the flames. After a while, she asked, “What do you think are the chances of Ivo’s trial?”

I sighed deeply, and returned a scrap of elegant Samian ware back to its shelf. “He’s claiming that he was rescuing the boy from falling off the roof. That the children were playing hide-and-seek, that he saw Gabe dash through the door that opened onto those stairs, that he went after him to bring him back to safety, and that his holding a gun on Mah—on Marsh was the same thing: that he believed the child was being attacked by a robed stranger.”

Iris knew most of this already, but it made her freshly angry each time the topic came up. “Complete nonsense. He hasn’t a chance of getting away with it. Has he?”

I did not wish to answer, saying merely, “His manservant may be convicted of attacking Holmes, because of that fingerprint he left on the button Holmes pulled off of his assailant’s overcoat.” The coat had proved to be a cast-off from the late duke’s wardrobe, given to Ivo’s servant, found by the police in the man’s room, still missing its button. “The maid Emma is willing to tell all, although what she knows isn’t enough to convict anyone but herself. And I’m afraid that the attack on Holmes will be difficult to tie in with the attack on young Gabe.” As for persuading the Crown prosecutors to try Ivo Hughenfort for the death by firing squad of Gabriel Hughenfort, considering that most of the records were missing, I thought the chances minuscule. In fact, Ivo looked to be a frustrating and potentially dangerous loose end, dangling and threatening to trip us up. Mycroft’s influence in the legal system, I reflected, might have to be summoned. Still, I tried to give Iris some encouragement. “Ivo will be tried, and the evidence is fairly strong. He is not behind bars at the moment because of his name, but that won’t save him at trial.”

“It had better not.”

“Let’s go to bed,” I suggested. “We’ll need to be up early.”

The sky overhead was pitch black when we three left the house the next morning, hours before dawn. Fitful clouds trailed their skirts over the big white moon and ten thousand stars beat down at us, while ice-crisp blades of grass crackled beneath our boots. I was dressed in my heaviest clothing, but I did not feel warm until we had topped the first long hill out of the Justice valley.

“Any news of Marsh?” Iris asked, breaking the silence for the first time.

“Nothing,” Holmes grunted.

“He and Ali must be back in Palestine by now.”

“If not yet, they soon will be.”

“I wish I’d had the chance to say good-bye,” she said. “I don’t know why he had to race off like that, without a word to anyone other than Gabe.”

Marsh and Ali had entered the London house late on the Monday following the costume ball, in order to say good-bye to young Gabe. No-one knew about it until Wednesday morning, when the boy happened to overhear his mother talking about the odd disappearance, and he had told her that “Uncle Marsh” had come to his bedside, wakened him, and they had talked for a while about England and Canada, and the life that awaited Gabe here. “Uncle Ali” had been with him, but had stayed near the door, saying nothing. When Gabe had begun to feel sleepy again, Marsh had bent down to kiss the boy’s forehead, and told him to take care of his mother and Justice Hall, in that order. He then gave Gabe Hughenfort two objects: one, a cleverly carved wooden bird with a long beak tucked against its breast; the other, an old silver pocket-watch inscribed with the phrase
Justitia fortitudo mea est
.

Both uncles, Gabe said, had been wearing costumes like those they wore to the ball.

The stars faded, objects assumed shape around us, and then we had cleared the last rise above the dim outlines of the overgrown, lichen-encrusted stubs of granite that were The Circles. We took up our places on the trio of smooth boulders, digging into our rucksacks for the thermal flasks and bread rolls we had brought with us, and sipped our steaming beakers of coffee while we waited.

The sky grew light, then pale blue, the wisps of high clouds assuming a tinge of pink. The hill to the east of us glowed, and we emptied our beakers and walked around the stones to the eastern side of The Circles, taking care that we should not block the light. There we hunkered down. The line of sunlight curved onto the hillside above the three boulders and started to flow down the frost-rimed grass, turning it first white, then gradually dark as the ice melted. It hesitated over the hollow that held The Circles, seeming to hold itself back, and then with a great flash the sun shot through the two easternmost stones to hit the tallest standing stone on the west, turning it to flame. It also, just for an instant, brushed the stone that held the remains of our picnic, the central smooth boulder. Marsh Hughenfort’s stone.

Then the sun filled the hollow, and The Circles were just a double round of worn rocks sitting beneath an English dawn, as they had done three-quarters of a million times before.

We finished our coffee, ate our bread rolls in a feeling of communion, and walked back across the sun-warmed hills to Justice Hall.

Iris and I paused on the last hill, as we had the time before, to examine the Hall while Holmes walked slowly on, deep in his own thoughts. Justice Hall was a sad building today, despite the sunshine, lonesome and a little embarrassed: The groundsmen had taken advantage of the family’s absence to drain the Pond. Ogilby had informed us, abjectly apologetic, that this procedure was done every other winter in order to clean the bottom and service the fountain and dam at the far end. The house’s dignity was severely challenged by its current setting overlooking a mud-hole.

“The place looks bereft, without the water,” Iris said.

“You think she’d rather we didn’t see her like this?” I asked.

Iris giggled unexpectedly. “Like a very grand lady whose knickers’ elastic has given way.”

I joined in her laughter. “Repeating to herself, ‘One must not look down!’?”

Iris stood for a while with this imaginary conversation going through her mind, and then her smile grew sad. “I have a cousin who’s just had to tear down his country house. It was such a lovely place, but with death taxes, it had to go. I’ll admit, I hope Justice can survive. She’s a pompous old thing, but she is very beautiful.”

“When she’s got a lake at her feet,” I added.

Iris chuckled, and moved off down the hill. I started to follow her, then looked up sharply: There had been movement behind the Justice Hall battlements. I strained to see. At first I thought it might be Mahmoud looking down; then my eyes caught the shape and drab colour of the man’s clothing, and for a brief instant I imagined a youthful second lieutenant, honour restored, come home to his beloved Justice to find his wife and young son. I blinked, and it was neither Gabriel’s shade nor his unacknowledged father’s figure, merely a workman clearing the remains of Egypt from the Hall roofs.

We left Justice two hours later, none of us knowing if we should ever return. Holmes had gone off to look at something while I went to take my wistful leave of Mr Greene’s riches; when I came down again I found Iris in the Great Hall, saying a long good-bye to Ogilby and Mrs Butter. Holmes swept in from the western wing, his eyes sparkling as if someone had just told him a great joke. He took my coat from Ogilby; as he was settling it onto my shoulders, he leant forward to whisper in my ear.

“Go take a look in the Armoury.”

Puzzled, I made my way out of the Great Hall, past Christopher Hewetson’s bust of the third Duke and the heavy-laden porcelain cabinets and assorted grim Hughenfort ancestors, to the room that had been the centre of the house for generations of Hughenforts, and for the monks before them. I walked into the thick-walled museum of arms, and looked around for what had so amused Holmes.

I spotted it immediately I faced the door: The sunburst of Saracen blades arranged against the wall was missing the small, decorative element in its hub. Mahmoud’s knife was gone from Justice Hall.

   The following week, the day after Christmas, Holmes and I read in
The Times
that a body had been found on Saturday in the lake at Justice Hall, the day after we had walked with Iris to The Circles. The corpse had been identified as Mr Ivo Hughenfort, recently implicated in a disturbance at the Hall. Police were speculating that Mr Hughenfort had wandered in (without, unfortunately, having notified the Hall staff of his presence) to explore the temporarily drained bottom of Justice Pond, unaware that the repairs had only that morning been completed. He appeared to have become trapped in the sticky mud; when the Justice waters rolled down and flooded back into their bed, they had swept him away, drowning him.

There was,
The Times
reported, no suspicion of foul play.

Justice Stream continued on, ever-flowing.

And in England, no more was seen of Mahmoud Hazr and his cousin Ali.

   On June 21, 2001, the Shot at Dawn memorial was unveiled at the Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, England. It depicts a seventeen-year-old private who was condemned to death, without defence, in the summer of 1915. Behind the blindfolded figure stands a forest of 306 wooden stakes, each representing an executed Commonwealth soldier.

The death penalty for desertion and cowardice was abolished in 1930. In 1997 a review of the cases of the 306 Great War condemned men was begun. In 1998 it was suggested that the names of the executed soldiers might now be added to the country’s war memorials. On Remembrance Day 2000, relatives and supporters of the executed soldiers joined the march and the two minutes’ silence at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. However, the Secretary of State for Defence later stated that there would be no posthumous pardons for the men and boys who were shot at dawn.

Laurie R. King
Freedom, California

   With her debut,
A Grave Talent,
Laurie R. King became the first novelist since Patricia Cornwell to win prizes for Best First Crime Novel on both sides of the Atlantic. She is the author of four contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli, five previous Mary Russell mysteries, and the bestselling novels
A Darker Place
and
Folly
. She lives in northern California, where she is at work on her next novel.