Justice Hall Read Online Free PDF Page A

been the last passengers on the entire train.
    Nonetheless, a figure trotted out from the warmth of the station to meet us, bowling along on legs too small for his stocky body and talking a streak from out of his bristling ginger whiskers, his gravelly voice comprising a delicious admixture of highland Scots, East End London, and Berkshire.
    “There you are, Master Alistair, I was just going to spread my car rug out on a bench and stop the night here, meet the first train in the morning. Had a good trip did you—I see you found your friends—no, miss, I’ll carry those, the good Lord blessed me with strong shoulders and I’m happy to use them—watch your step here, should’ve brought a torch I should’ve, daft of me—oi, stop a mo’,” he cautioned sharply, realising in the darkness that one of us was moving very slowly indeed. “What’ve you done to yourself, young master? You’re hurt!”
    I expected Alistair to dismiss the servant’s concern with a curt phrase—as Ali, he certainly would have—but he surprised me. “It’s nothing, Algy. I got bashed in Town yesterday and I’ve gone all stiff on the train. I’ll be fine after a night’s sleep.”
    “Blimey,” Algy muttered. “Let you out of me sight and you get yoursel’ bashed, what will the Missus say, I can’t think. Here now, you pack yourselves good and snug in the back, that’ll warm you.” He wrestled from the boot an enormous bear-skin rug that swallowed Alistair, with plenty left to cover the passengers on either side of him.
    Holmes, without asking, went around to the front of the old motor and yanked the starter handle for the driver. When the engine had coughed and sputtered its way to life and Holmes was back inside (where “snug” was indeed the word, as well as being redolent of large carnivores), the driver turned in his seat.
    “Much obliged, sir, I’d’ve had a time getting ’er going in the cold. Name’s Algernon, Edmund Algernon.” Ali roused himself enough to give the driver our names; Algernon touched his cap in response, then turned to shift the motorcar into motion.
    The village died away in less than a minute; the night closed in. The tunnel of our head-lamps revealed a well-kept track with hedgerows high on either side, so close that if I’d dropped the window I could have touched them without stretching, although our vehicle was narrow. Algernon kept up a running commentary, directed at his employer but with the occasional aside of explanation to us, concerning a flock of sheep, a neighbour’s rick fire, another neighbour’s newborn son, the relief when a villager’s illness was deemed not after all to be the dread influenza, and half a dozen other topics, all of them rural and thus commonplace to me—although again, not the sort of thing I would have associated with the silent figure at my side.
    After what seemed a long time, our head-lamps illuminated a crossroads. Algernon prepared to go to the left. Alistair spoke up.
    “Justice Hall, if you would, Algy.”
    “Ah,” said our driver, allowing the motor to drift to a halt. “Well, you see, sir, Lady Phillida arrived today.”
    The normally effusive Algy let the flat statement stand with no further embroidery; indeed, from his master’s reaction, none was needed.
    “Damn. She wasn’t due until Thursday. All right, home then.”
    “Home” lay to the left. After a few minutes the hedgerows fell away, replaced by a brief stretch of wire fence, then stone walls, and finally a gate—not a grand ceremonial entrance, just something to keep out livestock. This was followed by half a mile of freshly laid gravel with centuries-old trees on either side, then another stone wall, with farm buildings, a heavily mulched herbaceous border, and a passage tunnelled through the ground floor of a long stone building. When we emerged, the head-lamps played across a clear expanse of tidy, weed-free gravel as Algy pulled up to a stone building with high windows of