Justice Hall by Laurie R. King Page B

only because my two-year-old walking skirt was so severely below the standards of the room, and our dinner companions so out of sorts: The room was also physically chill, without a few dozen warm companions to supplement the fires, and it was probably just as well that I was wearing wool and not silk.
    After several false starts, and eschewing both beekeeping and theology as unpromising, we embarked on a conversation concerning Opera. Darling with relief seized on the stage as a point of communication with the guests—or half of them, at any rate, since my passion for warbling sopranos is fairly cool. Holmes, however, admitted to an interest, and so the two men kept the conversational ball in motion, aided by the occasional remark from Lady Phillida or myself.
    Marsh drank steadily.
    Tenors and librettos, set design and the acoustics of various halls kept the silence at bay, although after ninety minutes of it, Darling was beginning to repeat himself and any real interest was long since exhausted. Lady Phillida and I had a chatty moment over the meat course about fashion, when she asked where my skirt had come from. I was tempted to tell her that Gordon Selfridge’s had a good selection of them on the rack, but instead gave her the truth, and the name of the married couple who made most of my clothes. She raised an eyebrow, but not, it transpired, a disapproving one.
    “They’re quite well known,” she told me, as if I might be unaware of this fact.
    “Yes, they do beautiful work. And she has an extraordinary eye for fabric.”
    “It’s rather surprising,” she said, then hastened to explain. “That they would take you on, I mean. I understand they have quite a long waiting list of clients.”
    And I, clearly, was not quite up to snuff. The extraordinary thing was, I reflected, she had not intended an insult. “They were my mother’s tailors,” I told her. “And relatives of hers. Cousins or something.”
    I could feel Lady Phillida’s shock from across the table, although she was too well bred to allow it onto her face. That one would admit to blood ties with tailors was perhaps forgivable, but—
Jewish
tailors? She gaped at me for a moment as if I’d demonstrated an unsavoury habit, and then pulled herself together.
Funny,
I thought, taking up my fork again,
she doesn’t look Jewish
.
    Oh, this was going to be a long week-end.
     
     
       I
n vino veritas,
or so it is said. I did not expect to prise a great deal of
veritas
out of our host while he was in his cups, but it was worth listening to whatever flotsam might wash up from the depths of his ducal mind on the flood of whisky, ale, and claret he was consuming.
    Unless he simply passed out on the hearth.
    However, he continued to hold his various liquors well, simply becoming ever more taciturn as the meal wound to its close. With such a small gathering, I hoped we might overlook the ritualistic segregation of women and the subsequent reassembly in the drawing room, and to my relief it was so. In fact, Lady Phillida excused herself with a head-ache, and although her husband hesitated, in the end he came down on the side of joining her and leaving us three to finish the evening.
    The library was cosy. A pair of decanters stood on a tray with the appropriate glasses for port and brandy. Marsh picked up the nearest decanter, which happened to be the port, splashed some in three of the glasses, and handed us each one without asking if we wanted it. He sank into an armchair and stared into the flames; I thought he had forgotten we were there until he spoke.
    “I’ve never been shot, myself,” he informed us, sounding reflective. “Stabbed, yes; cut by a broken bottle, run down by a lorry, beaten, burnt, even trampled by an enraged camel once, but never shot. I wonder how it feels.”
    “It doesn’t feel,” I responded. “The body ceases to communicate with the mind; all the person registers is a profound sense of shock. That was my experience, at