Free Justice Hall by Laurie R. King Page A

speech reflected this, wavering as it did between the lady’s compulsory “one” and the blunt and egalitarian “I”; she had even used the vulgar term “week-end” without a hint of coyness.
    Eventually, at the conclusion of one long recitation of the personal history of a prized shotgun, it registered on Darling that the rest of the table was not participating in the narrative with any degree of enthusiasm. He dabbed at his thin moustache and turned dutifully to Holmes.
    “Tell me, Mr Holmes, what do you do?”
    “I raise bees.”
    The slightly pop blue eyes blinked. “Ah. How int’resting.”
    “Very.”
    Seeing her husband foundering on the rock of Holmes’ avocation, Lady Phillida decided to give me a try.
    “And you, Miss Russell. Do you also keep bees?”
    “I read theology. At Oxford.”
    “Oh. Well. That’s rather… interesting as well,” she replied dubiously, her mind, no doubt, filled with furious speculation concerning the private dinner conversations that took place between the spectacularly mismatched married couple which her brother had inflicted on her for the week-end.
    Alistair gave a small choking sound and reached to retrieve a hastily dropped table napkin. For the rest of the meal, we spoke about gardens.
     
     
     

CHAPTER SIX

     
       Six people escaped with gratitude from the lunch table, scattering in all directions to marshal thoughts, and energies, before the dinner hour would bring us inexorably back together. Holmes and I went up to the rooms we had been given, which were in the oldest, western wing of the house but which had been made comfortable by efficient fires and an actual modern bath-room between them. My own room was a festivity of blue and gold, with a froth of silken drapes on its four posters, a counterpane of delicately embroidered silk, and terrifyingly pale carpets on the floor. Mahmoud would have given it me as a joke; of Marsh, or his sister, I could not be sure. Holmes was given the King’s room, all heavy red velvet and massive carved bed; the king had been George I, whose visit had no doubt precipitated a large part of the grand rebuilding and propelled the Hughenforts to the brink of penury.
    Marsh’s suite was down the corridor in the same wing, we had been informed by Ogilby, although I thought it had pained him to admit that the new duke was sleeping down here rather than taking up rooms in the grander central block. I thought Marsh had probably kept rooms he’d occupied as a schoolboy, and decided to interpret that as an encouraging sign: Making a large space over to his taste would have been a declaration of permanence.
    When we had boots on our feet and coats over our arms, we descended the noble stairway into the Great Hall, beneath the dome where the waters of Justice were poised to spill. A young house-maid broke off polishing a spotless display cabinet to accompany us to the so-called library. It was empty, but we followed the crack of billiards to the next room.
    The library might be neutral ground for the family, but this was a male enclave, heavily masculine with dim Victorian colours, a smattering of animal heads, and the patina of ten thousand cigars over the velvet drapes and leather sofas. And dark: Other than the lamp-lit table itself, the brightest spots in the room were the areas of pink female flesh in the paintings decorating the walls and the unusually luminous ceiling, where light seemed to shift and play. Over the elephantine fringed table I glimpsed the waters of Justice Pond, the low, wintry sunlight sparkling off its fountain-stirred surface onto the plaster and beams above us.
    How, I wondered, could I ever have mistaken Alistair for an Englishman? Dressed in plus-fours and boots he might be, with a Norwich jacket belted around his stocky frame and a soft cap on the sofa waiting to go onto his head; nonetheless, everything about him shouted “foreigner.” His stance, his scowl, the way his fingers tugged at his lower