The God of the Hive

by Laurie R. King

  He could only pray he was a step ahead of them.

  First he would make Damian safe. Then he would set his face to London, where all desires are known, from whom no secrets are hid.

  He took out his pocket-watch: twenty-three minutes to waste before leaving for the station. He got up to twitch the curtains shut, then turned on the light and picked up the paper.

  He read with care every mention of criminal activity, but he could discern no pattern, and found none of the expected indications of a powerful gang pushing for dominance.

  Again he took out his pocket-watch to check the time: four minutes. He put it away, turned the next page, and felt his heart stop:

  Mycroft Holmes, OBE

  Chapter 30

  Inspector Lestrade turned the page, hiding the obituaries. He felt sick, as if the king himself had died. Worse, died on Lestrade’s watch.

  It was not his fault—of course it was not. He’d been more than fair to both Holmes brothers all his career, but just because he’d respected the two men did not mean that he should change the law of the land for their convenience.

  When Mycroft Holmes had vanished last week, he’d given the man until Monday, because any man had the right to a week-end away. But when Lestrade had telephoned to Whitehall again early Monday morning and been told Holmes was still missing, he’d put out a bulletin about the disappearance.

  Now the man was dead, and Lestrade did not know why. Or even how. Nor would he—or apparently any other member of the Metropolitan Police—be permitted to find out: When the body was discovered, His Majesty had ordered it seized before it could undergo the usual examinations. Word was, the petty meddling of one of the Yard’s detectives was the reason.

  Thursday had been the most hellish day in his career. It had begun with a ridiculous incident involving a missing person in Mayfair, some middle-aged Mama’s boy who hadn’t come home, and Mama knew the sorts of high-ranking officials who could demand that a chief inspector of New Scotland Yard turn out to do a constable’s job. Then the minute he’d walked into his office—ten minutes late because he’d had to stop in Mayfair—Lestrade had been called upstairs. There, he’d been unofficially reprimanded for searching Mycroft’s flat the week before and taking the man—albeit briefly—into custody. His protests that it had not been an arrest, and that he had been more or less ordered to carry through with it, had fallen on deaf ears. Mycroft Holmes had held a high position in the shadowy world of Intelligence, far above the reach of a lowly Scotland Yard inspector, and Lestrade was lucky the victim’s employers might be willing to forgo an official enquiry into the matter.

  The underlying message being: Your job would be at risk if Whitehall didn’t want to avoid drawing further attention to the matter.

  Then to top it off, he’d crept back to his desk like a caned schoolboy, and the first telephone call he’d had was from the biddy in Mayfair, blithely saying that her boy had come home and not to worry.

  A note of farce to end the morning, leaving him to sit and stare impotently at the obituary.

  He did not know where Mycroft Holmes had been for six days, or what he wanted to tell Lestrade that he could not have said in the office.

  He did not know where Sherlock Holmes or his wife was.

  He did not have any idea where Damian Adler or the other principals in the Brothers case were.

  He had not even been able to prove that Damian Adler the painter was in any way related to Irene Adler the singer.

  What he did know was, Mycroft Holmes was dead, and the last person known to have talked to him, a week ago, was Chief Inspector John Lestrade.

  Chapter 31

  Peter James West re-read the obituary with a smile:

  Mycroft Holmes, OBE

  Mycroft Holmes, long-time employee of His Majesty’s Accounting Office, was found dead late on Wednesday evening outside of a club that had been the subject of numerous recent police raids. Scotland Yard report that he died of knife wounds, and ask for help from anyone who may have been in the vicinity of The Pink Pagoda late on Wednesday evening. His Majesty’s Government have issued no comment regarding the site of Mr Holmes’ death, but private statements indicate that Holmes had been unwell in recent months, and evinced a number of changes in his interests and way of life. Mr Holmes was presented the OBE in 1903 for his long service in uncovering incidents of fraud and corruption. Private services will be held Sunday afternoon at St Columba’s cemetery, London.

  A neat piece of fiction, West thought with satisfaction. Poor Mycroft, getting on in years and suddenly discovering the wilder things in life (and the things for which The Pink Pagoda was known could be extremely wild). Reading between the lines (his lines, in fact), Mycroft was something of an embarrassment to his government, a busybody (“incidents of corruption”) on the surface and something more distasteful below.

  Yes, Gunderson had done a neat job of it, disposing of the meddler while Peter James West was in clear public view, all that day and into the night. It had made for a fraught fifteen hours, every moment of it spent tensed for news that his plan had gone awry, but the new day had come and all was well. Holmes was dead, Gunderson had placed him for display and then spirited him off, and was now on the train north to deal with the stray ends in Orkney. And when the brother and his American wife appeared at the funeral, if Gunderson hadn’t returned, he and Buckner would manage.

  Then, Peter West could get on with his work.

  He closed the morning paper and gazed at the adverts and notices, a bleating chorus of the city’s personal concerns.

  Bees and beekeeping, indeed.

  BOOK THREE

  Thursday, 4 September–

  Sunday, 7 September

  1924

  Chapter 32

  You don’t understand,” I said to the two men. It was dark outside, had been dark for a while, although I had no idea what time it was. The hours between reading Mycroft’s obituary and walking back into Goodman’s cabin were already lost, a time spent on the fallen tree at the far side of the clearing, watching the sky go from robin’s egg to indigo to black.

  It was impossible. Unimaginable. Mycroft was a force of nature, not a man to be killed at whim. Why couldn’t these two grasp that? And why could they not see that I had to be on the first train south in the morning? Alone.

  I struggled to gather my thoughts. “Mycroft Holmes is—was—enormously important in the government. In some ways, he has—had—more power than a Prime Minister, who comes and goes at the whim of the voters.”

  “But this obituary says he was an accountant,” Javitz protested.

  “That’s somewhere between a joke and a figure of speech. He was an accountant in the sense that it was his responsibility to account for—” I broke off: I had no right to divulge what I knew of the nation’s Intelligence machinery, nor could I reveal that one of its key members answered to no authority beneath His Majesty. What Mycroft accounted for went far beyond guineas and pence. And anyway, telling them who I was married to and getting them past their disbelief had already eaten up far too much time.

  “It doesn’t matter. Mycroft was powerful and he was family, and I must return to London immediately. I cannot take you and Estelle with me; I am forced to ask you to watch over her; so we have to decide where would be a safe place for you both.”

  “I thought you said we wouldn’t be safe until we had that maniac behind bars?”

  I felt as if someone fleeing Vesuvius with me had stopped to fret about the carpets. The obituary had buried any lesser consideration: To my mind, the Brothers case was in a box and temporarily closed away. Who would worry about a mere killer when the world was being engulfed?

  Still, Javitz was right. In my concern over having freedom of movement once in London, I could not overlook the lesser dangers, such as the one that had brought us from the sky. Even if that had not been Brothers, there was no doubt that, if he could find us, he would attempt to seize the child. I could not overlook the one responsi
bility in the interest of the other. God, I wanted Holmes by my side!

  “Exactly,” I agreed, to simplify things. “Brothers wants the child. One of his passports had her on it.”

  “You don’t think it was Brothers who killed your brother-in-law?”

  The question stopped me dead. “I don’t—no, I shouldn’t think so. How would he have made any connexion between Damian and Mycroft? No-one knows.” I was thinking aloud. “Except now you two. Plus that, he was wounded just five days ago—could he have made it to London, found Mycroft, and got close enough to kill him with a knife after being shot? No, it wasn’t Brothers.”

  “This happened last night?” Javitz said, and reached for the newspaper to re-read the obituary. “Very quick reporting.”

  “He was an important man,” I said. Why didn’t they understand that? I wanted to shout at them, except that would have awakened the sleeping child.

  “Estelle and Javitz will be safe here,” Goodman said, for the third time.

  “No offence,” the pilot said, “but if I stay cooped up here much longer, I’ll go stir-crazy.”

  “So where—” I took hold of my irritation, and lowered my voice. “So where can you go?”

  “Someplace that no-one would think to look for me, you said? That pretty much rules out old friends and the couple of cousins I have.”

  He, too, was thinking out loud, and since we had already been over this ground twice, I did not hold much hope for an answer from him. I was considering two or three places, but that decision would have to wait until I could lay hands on a telephone.

  I pushed back my chair and started to stand, but a sharp, urgent hiss cut my motion. Goodman had turned towards the window, half-open to the night; one hand was raised and outstretched. I froze, straining to hear whatever had attracted him. I heard nothing at all.

  Our host did, however. He snapped into motion, twisting the controls of the lamp into darkness and bolting across the room to the door.

  “What—” I started, but the door closed and there was only stillness.

  Javitz whispered, “Have you any idea what is going on?”

  “He heard something. You stay here. I’m going to see if I can tell what it was.”

  I felt my way towards the faint rectangle that was the doorway, wishing that the moon were more than five days old, and eased my boots down the two stone steps. When I was away from the house a few feet I stopped, head cocked: nothing.

  I stood for five minutes, then six, but all I heard were a series of thumps from Javitz’s crutch moving across the floor and the cry of a fox. I was about to turn back when a faraway crackle of brush was joined by a sharp yell.

  “What was that?” came Javitz’s voice behind me.

  I grinned. “That was Mr Goodman ‘misleading night-wanderers and laughing at their harm.’ One of our host’s booby-traps.” I had to assume there was more than one man, and that they did not mean us well.

  “Someone’s coming?” he asked.

  “It may be nothing, but I think we should move back among the trees. Can you see without a light?”

  “A little,” he said. “You?”

  “My night vision is not great,” I admitted, “but I’ll manage. You go around the back of the house. I’ll bring Estelle.”

  He started to protest, but immediately realised that a man with a crutch was not the best candidate for carrying a child. Without another word, he felt around for his coat on the rack, and went with caution down the steps.

  I, too, retrieved my coat, checking to make sure the revolver was in its pocket, then patted my way inside the bedroom. The child gave a sleepy protest when I lifted her, but I murmured assurances and she nestled into my arms, bringing yet again that peculiar blend of animal pleasure coupled with the dread of responsibility.

  I held her in close embrace, through the cabin, down the steps, across the uneven ground. Halfway to the trees, my whispered name drew me towards Javitz. Nearly blind once the depth of the forest sucked up all light, I felt out with each toe before setting down weight; I was first startled, then grateful, when his hand touched the back of my arm.

  “Sit down,” I breathed at him.

  “Don’t you think we should move back some more?”

  Oh, for a man who did not have to discuss everything! “I need to fetch our things and I don’t want to lay Estelle on the ground.”

  “I’ll go—”

  “Javitz! If she wakes, she’ll cry, and you can’t hold her for long if you’re standing. I know it’s uncomfortable, but—sit!”

  Gingerly, radiating humiliation, he sat. I transferred the child into his arms, then took the revolver from my pocket and pressed it into his hand.

  I left before he could protest.

  Back inside, I stood for a moment, pulling together a memory of where our few things lay. Money; clothing; Estelle’s shoes; and the books I had bought her. In the kitchen, I remembered the wooden creatures Goodman had made for her and gathered them into the rucksack, adding bread, apples, and cheese, slinging it and the now-disgusting fur coat across my shoulder.

  Javitz and I sat shoulder to shoulder in the darkness and waited. Only minutes passed before my eyes reported some vague motion, followed by a deliberate scuff of a boot against soil.

  I clicked my tongue against my teeth and the woodman was there, panting lightly and smelling of fresh sweat. He’d been running, I thought in astonishment—how could anyone run through a pitch-black forest?

  “Who are they?” I murmured.

  “Strangers, five or six of them,” he snarled, “with a local boy who knows the woods. They’ll be here in ten minutes. Longer, depending on how many more trees they walk into.” His voice put a twist of vicious pleasure on the last prospect, and it occurred to me that his panting might be due not to exertion, but to fury.

  That many strangers at this time of night could only be here for one reason: us. And with Javitz on crutches, and a child as well, this was no place to make a stand.

  “We’re ready, let’s get farther back into the woods.”

  Goodman did not respond. I put out a hand to his arm, and found it taut and trembling. “Goodman, believe me, I understand how you’re feeling. I really, really want to know who they are. But do we want Estelle in the middle of a potential battleground?”

  “T-take her,” he ordered, stammering with fury.

  “I wouldn’t make it a mile in these woods.”

  He stood, torn between the choices I had given him. It might be nothing. A charabanc of travellers benighted and looking for help. A band of Wordsworth fanatics looking for a host of golden daffodils by moonlight. Even some of Mycroft’s men coming to our assistance—that last made for a lovely thought. But until I knew for certain, we had to treat this as an invasion, and I hated the idea that this damaged man’s generosity of spirit had brought an abrupt loss of his hard-won peace. I felt him wrestle with the decision, then his muscles went slack.

  “Very well. I’ll take you out.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and let go of him.

  But when I bent to take Estelle from Javitz, she woke, and cried aloud at the dark strangeness. I shushed her, pulled her to my chest to muffle her wails, and tried to quiet her with what had worked with this odd child up to now: a rational explanation.

  This time, however, she was having none of it. She heard my words but only shook her head at the need to leave, at the arrival of yet another threat, at yet another demand for silence. “No!” she repeated in sleepy fury, until I was forced to contemplate a physical stifling of her noise.

  Then she shifted to, “Want my dolly.”

  “Your dolly? It’s right—oh.” Books, shoes, the carved menagerie, even the tatty coat she’d become so attached to, but the doll that Goodman had bought for her was left behind in the tangle of bed-clothes.

  “I’m so sorry, honey, but—wait, stop—please, just hush!”

  “Want Dolly!”

  I couldn’t throttle her, couldn�
��t even threaten her as I might an adult, so what—ah: bribery. “Estelle,” I said in quiet tones, “if I get Dolly for you, do you promise to be quiet? Absolutely quiet?”

  Her thumb crept up to her mouth, and she nodded.

  I sighed. I doubted Sherlock Holmes had ever faced such a maddening comedy of errors in one of his adventures. “I promise, Estelle, I will get you your dolly.”

  “I’ll get it,” Goodman told me.

  “Wait,” I said as an idea blossomed. “What if—would you mind awfully taking Estelle and Javitz away now, then coming back for me? It would be enormously helpful to know who these people are.”

  “Give me an hour and I’ll hand you their heads.”

  It was temporary outrage speaking, not serious proposition—a man who had driven ambulances during the War and who lived in the woods without so much as a shotgun was not about to commit mass homicide.

  “Please, Goodman—Robert: Take these two to safety. I will be perfectly safe here until you return.”

  Javitz, hearing the decision being made, tried to give me back the revolver. “No,” I said. “You may need it to protect her.”

  Putting him in charge of protection may have restored a modicum of his masculine dignity. He put the gun back into his belt, and struggled to his feet.

  In thirty seconds, I was alone.

  Chapter 33

  I tripped once on an unseen obstacle in the clearing, and once inside, gave my hip an agonizing gouge on the unexpected corner of a table. Long minutes later my fingers located the texture of firm stuffing amidst the soft bed-clothes; I stuck the doll in my waistband and turned to go.

  A brief flash of light shot across the clearing from the east, the direction we’d come from the first night. I leapt into the bedroom, pulled up the window, and dropped to the ground outside.

  The smell of fermentation led me to the apple tree, halfway between the house and the out-building and wide enough to conceal me from a casual inspection. From there I could see something of the meadow, where brief flickers of light drove away all thought of friends or poetry fanatics. The approaching men were experienced, using their lights sparingly as they spread out in near-complete silence around the dark buildings. The circle grew tight, and tighter, until a voice called, “The door’s standing open.”