Justice Hall by Laurie R. King

despair.
    “You see?” he said.
    I do not know why it took me so long to consider that Alistair’s motives in seeking us out might not be purely philanthropic, but it was only at that moment that I perceived the stain of jealousy beneath his philadelphic goals.
    Maybe, I thought, just maybe we will find that Marsh Hughenfort actually wanted to come home. Perhaps his eyes viewed the panorama before us with all the love and devotion of his Norman ancestors. His blood and bones, after all, were bred here; more than eight centuries of his people had devoted their lives to holding the land against all comers. Mahmoud must be nearing fifty, the time when a man’s eyes might well begin to tire of the dry, grey, comfortless, and infinitely treacherous desert and to seek the relief of green hills and childhood shapes. Perhaps Justice Hall’s seventh Duke had chosen to come home from the wars, to die as an old man in the bed where he had been born.
    With that, I was no longer so sure of the coming discussion with the man I had called Mahmoud Hazr. I was bound by loyalty, without question; but there were two of my brothers here, and what suited the one might not, I now saw, suit the other.
    Silent and thoughtful, I followed Holmes into the back of the motorcar, to continue our short journey into the glittering heart of perfection.
     
     
     

CHAPTER FIVE

     
       The drive up from the main road had been perfectly straight, but once the summit was reached, its path began to curve with the contour of the hillside, less from necessity, since the descent was a gradual one, than to present a more dramatic approach. The track curved at the base of the hill, then dropped a fraction, so that for the last half mile one not only faced the house straight on, but felt as if the house lay above. I could not help speculating on the quantity of soil Humphry Repton had caused to be moved in order to create that subtly humbling approach.
    As it was, Justice Hall waited foursquare at the head of her drive, occupying her terraces with the patient air of a queen awaiting obeisance. A wide bridge crossed the artificial lake that separated the house from the world outside the gates; as we drove over it, I happened to glance up at the roof line. A flag flew above the front portico, and below its gently undulating colours stood a figure, nearly hidden by the crenellations. A man, I thought, briefly glimpsed, and then we were circling around and coming to a halt before the house.
    One clear indicator of an establishment’s degree of affluence, in 1923 as in 1723, was the number of unnecessary individuals it maintained. Messengers and footmen, rendered all but superfluous by modern methods of communication and transport, were nonetheless kept on by the grandest houses, for show more than any actual convenience they might provide. So I was curious to see how many persons would be required to recognise our arrival.
    Two, it seemed (in addition to young Tom at the entrance gates). Before I could make a move towards the car door, it opened, held for me by a rigid-spined young man who stared off with proper fixity at the distant hillside. On the other side of the car an older man in a formal cutaway coat was aiding Alistair and Holmes. Alistair greeted him as Ogilby; this would be the butler.
    When I was safely freed from the motorcar, I half expected the discreet young man to climb into the motor and direct Algernon in an entire circuit of the house in order to off-load our bags at the service entrance, but instead Algernon merely handed them over, and the footman disappeared promptly in the direction of the house.
    While Alistair was telling Algernon that he’d ring to Badger Old Place when he wanted to go home, I looked over the top of the motorcar at the ornate fountain that formed the centre of the circle. It had not yet been drained for the winter, and the low sun collected in a million diamonds, the water playing and dripping off the bronze figures.