Laurie King Mary Russel 06 Justice Hall (v1.0) [lit]

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voice that we re headed back to France, and so I think I ought to replenish my
wardrobe first.
You re right.
I should be back in a couple of hours, I began, but he overrode me.
I have a bolt-hole not far from this hotel, he said. We ll find what we
need there.
I gave in. For one thing, he would have more makeup in one of his secret
apartments than at my own London pied-�-terre, and with the right makeup, one
person can be several.
We arranged with Iris and Alistair to stay behind in case Ter�se and her son
left the hotel. The manager would telephone to the room if the Hughenforts
passed through the lobby, and Alistair would pursue them.
Come, Russell, my husband ordered.
I came.
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To return two hours later, one of a pair of French priests.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In London we would be noticeable; in France, invisible. We carried with us
the odds and ends that would transform us into more ordinary citizens, since I
had no intention of inhabiting the itchy cassock longer than necessary, but it
was as priests that we left the hotel the next morning, as priests we boarded
the train. We occupied our hard third-class benches as far as the French
shore, when the newly boarded French conductor spotted us and led us up the
train to first class and told us to be welcome. Properly speaking, we ought to
have crouched with all humility in our luxurious seats. Holmes, however, had
other ideas, and before I knew it he had found the Hughenforts, manoeuvred a
change of seats, and was greeting Mme Ter�se, bending forward to squint at her
son through the thick glasses he wore, making admiring noises.
Thus we spent the last portion of the trip, with the rich French countryside
passing our windows, in conversation with our quarry herself.
Holmes, at least, was in conversation with her, his fluent French with the
accents of the south tumbling out like that of a priest on holiday, far from
his parishioners and made free by the knowledge. I sat to one side, glumly
reading my Testament and wafting a general air of disapproving youth over my
elders.
And elder she was. Lionel Hughenfort had been born in 1882, and married when
he was thirty-two. This woman must have been pushing forty then, if not
actually past it I could not help wondering how many other children she d had
before Thomas. She was now a buxom, comfortable fifty-year-old woman, well
preserved but showing signs that her life had not been one of contemplation
and ease. In her relief at escaping the judgmental English relations, she
rattled on in garrulous abandon, proving not at all difficult to steer. She
was unread but with a shrewd native intelligence, and hugely proud of her
clever schoolboy of a son although she made an effort not to gush, so as to
save the child from embarrassment. She proved darkly suspicious of all things
English, and revealed once a brief flash of Gallic pride at some unnamed but
recent triumph over the citizens of that country, who were all of them most of
them, she corrected herself sly behind their beefy grins. Had not her own
husband been forced to flee to Paris, to escape his own family? And had not
that same husband s brother come screaming and scheming to pull asunder what
God Himself had joined? Oh, some Englishmen were true gentlemen, she would
give us that, generous and fair her poor dead husband s relation, for example,
who had come to see her during the War to give her money for a new suit of
clothes for the boy and sent gifts from time to time, nowhe was a true
gentleman but even they had their plans, and it would not do to put one s self
too firmly into their hands, would it, Father?
And as for a mother s responsibility to her son, the sooner half of France
lay between Those People and the boy, the better.
No, she would have nothing to do with British soil, not until her boy was old
enough to view glitter and pomp with a certain detachment. Although their
pounds, when translated into good clean francs, those were acceptable,
wouldn t you agree, Father?
At this point, the child Thomas moved over from his mother s side to mine,
either because he d heard her opinions on the subject before, or because he
had just got up his nerve to approach me. In either case, he decided to try
for a conversation with the younger priest.
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His Bonjour was friendly and not in the least tentative. I returned it, and
then he asked what I was reading. I told him. He said it did not look like
French, and I agreed that it was Latin. The ice being broken, it then appeared
that he had a question.
Father, someone told me that Jesus was not a Christian. Can this be true?
Concealing my amusement, I explained to him that Christian meant a follower
of Jesus Christ, and that therefore the man himself could not, strictly
speaking, have been one. In fact, I added, Jesus himself was born into a
Jewish family, worshipped in the Jewish temple, thought of himself as a Jew.
It was only later that his followers decided that what he represented was a
new thing.
The boy s mind was supple and inquisitive, which I thought a remarkable
paedagogic achievement for the son of a woman with no great intellect, and we
talked for a time about the Old and New Testaments, about the kinds of stories
each contained, about the differences between God and Jesus Christ. I could
see him floundering at this last morass no surprise, since many adult minds
did the same and turned him away with a question about his preferences in
school.
I had to wonder who his actual father might have been.
On the outskirts of Paris it transpired oh how astounding and blessed a
coincidence! that we, too, were heading to Lyons, and we, too, not until
tomorrow, in the afternoon! It was unlikely, of course, that we would again be
moved up into first class by a devout conductor, but perhaps we would see Mme
and the young scholar while boarding our respective cars? And perhaps, Holmes
ventured piously, as we were to pass several days in that city, we might one
afternoon call upon her? When the boy was home from his studies, say, and free
to join us for a visit to the seller of ices?
Mme Hughenfort was a woman easily reached through an appreciation of her son.
With no whisper of hesitation, she gave Holmes the address that no Hughenfort
had been able to discover. He noted it down in a fussy hand, closed and tucked
away his miniature note-book, and thanked her.
At the station, we retained our small, battered valises but assisted Madame
in transferring her bags to the hands of a porter, and we stayed with our new
friends, chatting amiably, until both were safely within a taxi. There we
paused, ever polite, until she had given the driver her destination.
Her voice reached us clearly through the glass.
Holmes kept no bolt-hole in Paris, but he knew the city well enough to give
our own taxi driver the name of a large, busy hotel frequented by commercial
travellers, across the street from Mme Hughenfort s chosen accommodation. Our
hotel occupied nearly half of a city block, and had entrances on three
streets; no-one would notice a couple of suddenly defrocked priests passing
through the lobby, and no maid would unpack the younger priest s highly
irregular female garments from the larger valise.
We took adjoining rooms, shed our identifying black garments, changed into
more usual attire, and passed through the lobby separately to meet in a nearby [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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