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visit Alistair s home?
Badger Old Place welcomed us with all its run-down, shaggy magnificence, like
an old friend shifting to make room on a bench. Iris was as at home here as
she had been at Justice, and greeted Mrs Algernon with cries of delight. When
Alistair had extricated his cousin s wife from the conversational clutches of
his housekeeper, he issued us upstairs to the solar, the Mediaeval sitting
room located above the Great Hall for warmth, light, and privacy.
The solar was still, after three hundred years, a warm, light, private
chamber. The furniture reflected the fashions of generations spindly legs and
thick, decorated and utilitarian, silk and linen and leather. All looked
comfortable, the colours and shapes grown together in an unlikely but
successful marriage of the ages. Alistair himself fit in nicely, dressed in
another frumpy suit that had been the height of undergraduate fashion in 1900,
decorated by a flamboyant crimson-and-emerald waistcoat. We settled into the
circle of chairs and sofas clustered around the stone fireplace, with a tray
of coffee and biscuits provided by Mrs Algernon.
 How are we going to work this? Iris asked, when she had her coffee.  Do I
get to dress up in disguise and follow Terèse across London?
Holmes and I did not comment on the difficulties in changing the face and
posture of a woman such as she. He merely replied,  I think it best if you and
Alistair, in Marsh s absence, meet Mme Hughenfort and her son face to face.
Along with Lady Phillida, of course. This means that most of the actual
tailing exercise will fall to Russell and myself.
Neither of them liked this division of labour, but both knew that if they
were to dine with Mme Hughenfort, they could not be following her through the
streets.
 We can take the night hours, Alistair decreed.
Watching and, if necessary, following a person at night was a riskier
proposition than loitering about a busy daytime street, since people in
general are more wary in the dark. However, Holmes and I would have to sleep
some time, and even if Madame were to encounter one of them, she would not as
easily recognise her relatives when they later met by daylight. Holmes nodded
his agreement.
And so it went through the morning, offers and counter-offers, criticism and
suggestions, the four of us working out a plan by which we could keep a tight
watch on the woman without being seen. If she had a confederate or a
gentleman, we wanted to see any contact between the two.
We took an early luncheon beneath the solar s oriel window, then Holmes,
Iris, and I caught the noon train to London, while Alistair returned to
Justice Hall to sit with his feverish cousin.
The adventure of the duke s nephew or purported nephew looked to be one of
those parts of an investigation that are necessary, but tedious. It was not
entirely fair that Holmes and I were saddled with it, but still, it had to be
done, and one cannot always choose for one s self the interesting, or even the
comfortable, parts of a case. Or of life itself, for that matter. Thus in
London we abandoned some of our bags to the left-luggage office and boarded
the boat-train to Paris.
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Mme Hughenfort had been sent tickets for a train that departed Paris just
after nine o clock on Tuesday morning. We bumped and splashed and rattled our
way down to intercept her path, taking an hotel room late Monday night. We
dined too well, slept ill, and returned to the Gare de Lyons to take up
positions overlooking the entrance.
The family possessed no photograph of mother or son, and only the most
general of physical descriptions of Lionel s widow. Still, we thought, surely
there would not be an overabundance of women in their late forties travelling
with nine-year-old boys. All we needed do was make note of the motor that left
any such pair at thegare , and track down car and driver at our leisure.
Our optimism was unjustified: The taxi-stand seemed filled with women of that
description, as if Paris were about to hold a huge conference of mothers and
sons. Here a blonde, there a redhead, there one brunette after another,
following on the heels of a third.
I spied three who might be she, each with a black-haired boy at her side. I
noted the numbers on each taxi, that the drivers might be interviewed later if
need be, and waited until the last moment to climb onto the train. Holmes was
even later than I, tumbling aboard as the doors were being shut. We went to
our own first-class compartment to compare notes. He had seen four possible
candidates, two arriving on foot, two in private motors. One of those had
kissed her driver a passionate farewell.
When the train was under way, Holmes and I strolled in opposite directions to
work our way through the first-class cars. I saw only one of my possibilities;
he saw two of his, one of those the woman of the ardent good-bye. We kept all
the women under sporadic watch, but none that we saw was approached by any
person other than the ticket collector or other women with children.
It was on the boat that our vigilance paid off. We had narrowed our
candidates down to two: a thin, sharp-eyed woman with a Parisian accent and a
worn collar, or a short, round, brown-haired woman in a new, expensive, but
subtly unfashionable frock. Both wore wedding rings and nervous expressions,
but only the plump woman addressed her child as  Thomas.
We took turns in her vicinity, gathering impressions more than information.
She grew more tense as England drew near, picking at her fingernails and
pulling at her lips with her sharp yellow teeth but I noticed that unlike many
tense mothers I had seen, she did not take her vexation out on her boy. With
him she was patient and attentive, occasionally reaching out to brush back a
wayward lock of hair or to pat his arm for their mutual reassurance.
I was unreasonably pleased that she was not the one who had kissed the
driver.
In London, I stayed close behind her while Holmes collected our bags. She
gave the taxi driver the name of the hotel that had been arranged for her; I
gave my driver the same, and rode on her heels to the door. There I took my
time counting out the fare, lest she notice that the woman who d been behind
her at the station had also climbed out of a taxi behind her. When she was
safely inside, I disembarked, then took up a position behind a potted palm
until she had received her key and was being escorted to the lift.
In varying guises, alone and as a pair, Holmes and I kept the woman in view,
from the moment when, rested and bathed, mother and son emerged to explore the
park across from the hotel, until they took an early dinner at a café and then
returned to their rooms. At ten o clock, Holmes donned a uniform lent him by
the management (between his name and that of Hughenfort, all things were made
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possible) and knocked on her door with  a small welcome from her husband s
family, namely, an enormous box of chocolates in gaudy wrapping. He found her
with her hair down, preparing for bed, and speaking in a low whisper so as not
to disturb her sleeping son.
Satisfied that Mme Hughenfort was not about to leave for a night amongst
London s wilder clubs, we took ourselves to bed on the floor below hers. It
was silent, all the night.
In the morning, Madame took breakfast in her room. By late morning, she could
remain still no longer. At a quarter to eleven, Holmes, seated behind theTimes [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]