The Language of Bees

by Laurie R. King

  Huge relief, that Mycroft saw firm foundations beneath my judgment. “However, I don't entirely understand the link between Brothers and Damian. Brothers hired Gunderson in October and started setting up the Children of Lights soon afterwards. Brothers is British—I heard him speak—but Gunderson thinks he was recently arrived, that he knew London a little but hadn't been here for some long time, certainly not since the War.

  “Millicent Dunworthy was hired in December, to do a few hours of secretarial work—I didn't know that because her ledger only went back to January, and she seems to have become a convert to the Children by then. With both her and Gunderson, I should say their chief job was to function as Brothers' face. He hid behind one or the other of them for most of his transactions, from constructing a false identity to hiring a meeting hall.”

  “Purchasing clothing for Yolanda Adler,” Mycroft suggested.

  “Yes—someone will have to question Millicent Dunworthy. Now, Damian didn't get here until January, when—”

  “December. They were here before Christmas.”

  “Really? He claimed they passed us off the coast of France.”

  “He told me that as well, but in fact, their ship docked on the twentieth of December. I check such things, as a matter of course.”

  “You knew he was lying from the beginning?”

  “A man may have any number of reasons for telling a lie. In this case, I assumed it took him some time to muster his courage and approach his father. Later, when it turned out he had delayed too long, he was embarrassed to admit it.”

  “I suppose so.” I drank more coffee, and realised that although the morning was overcast, my mood was sunny. The relief of thinking that Holmes was right and Damian was an innocent made for a rising bubble of optimism.

  “Do you not wish to talk to Lestrade about this?” Mycroft asked me.

  I sighed. “What do you think Holmes would want?”

  “My brother would give nothing to Scotland Yard until he felt his case to be safe from their meddling.”

  “I was afraid you'd say that.”

  “However, in his absence—”

  “No, we'll go along with that until he deigns to raise his head. In which case, I think I had better change my plan for today and go to Sussex.”

  “Is there something I can do for you here, Mary?”

  “Well, we need to find Brothers' home. He didn't live in that mausoleum of a place behind walls. He and Gunderson used to meet on Chalton Street, between Euston and Phoenix roads.”

  He gave me a look.

  “I know,” I said. “Three train stations and six lines of the Underground to be had in five minutes' walk. Still—”

  “—it has to be done,” he finished my sentence. “I shall put a man on it.”

  “He has to be discreet.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry, of course you know that. Thank you. Tell Mrs Cowper I'm not sure if I'll make it back in time for dinner.”

  When I was ready, Mycroft let me out through the pivoting bookcase in his study, showed me where the candles and matches were, and told me how to work the locking mechanism from the other end. The odour of honey from the bees-wax carried me through a dim, narrow labyrinth; I came out well clear of any of Lestrade's men.

  Many long hours later, I extinguished the candles and stepped back through the bookcase into the study. Mycroft spoke when I entered the sitting room, although he sat with his back to me.

  “I should think you need a glass of wine. I opened one of Sherlock's bottles, if that appeals.”

  “No,” I said, then modified the sharp response to, “I feel I've had a surfeit of honey, between one thing and another.”

  “A nice Bordeaux, then,” he said mildly and handed me a full glass. I dropped the parcel I carried onto the table, and looked without enthusiasm at the plate he set in front of me: Mrs Cowper's cooking was not improved by two hours in a warming oven.

  “Not just now, thanks,” I told him. “But, in case Lestrade decides to raid your flat looking for me, perhaps you should lock up that envelope. It contains everything I could find at home that might suggest a link between Holmes and Damian.”

  When I'd got to Sussex that morning, I found that the police had been to our house, and been stoutly repelled by Mrs Hudson. However, if this went on for much longer, they would return, this time with the authority to conduct a search. Now, they were welcome to do so.

  Mycroft picked up the parcel to take it away, but I said, “There is a biscuit wrapper in there. It might be best to give that to a laboratory, for the finger-prints.”

  Mycroft nodded, and took the evidence to his study, coming back empty-handed.

  “Anything from Holmes?”

  He scooped up a letter from the side-board as he passed. It was addressed to him, in Holmes' writing, but opened without salutation and in an almost telegraphic brevity.

  Wednesday, 21st

  The death of Fiona Cartwright at Cerne Abbas was murder, not suicide. Details when I see you.

  Poole employment agency describes Smythe as a middle-aged man wearing a good suit, dark hair and eyes, well spoken, a scar beside his left eye. No record of the company he claimed to represent.

  Tourist charabanc to Salisbury and Stonehenge leaves in two minutes, I have bribed the conductor to begin with the latter. Have already been informed twice that I look like Sherlock Holmes. Kindly pray I do not have to ask you to stand me bail for murdering a visitor to Olde England.

  S

  When I had finished laughing, Mycroft handed me an actual telegram:

  TO CUMBRIA AFTER DEAD RAM STOP WILL NEED INFORMATION REGARDING ALBERT SEAFORTH OF YORK FOUND DEAD THURSDAY LAST STOP

  “How does Holmes intend to get this information from us?” I wondered.

  “I took the otherwise unnecessary ‘will’ in the telegram to indicate that he would need it at some point, although not immediately.”

  “You're probably right. Still, it would be nice to let him know that Lestrade's on the war-path, so he can keep his head down.”

  “Sherlock tends to keep his head down in any event. I was pleased to find that you made it through the day without having hand-cuffs dropped around your wrists. Lestrade has telephoned twice more today. He sounded increasingly vexed.”

  “I'll ring him from a public box tomorrow, and see if I can placate him. I take it your man didn't locate Brothers, or Smythe, or whoever he is?”

  “Several shop-keepers and residents thought the description sounded familiar, but without a photograph, or even a drawing, there is little to trigger memory. He will continue tomorrow, further afield.”

  “I had no better luck today.”

  I had gone immediately home, where I had offended Mrs Hudson for a third time by being unwilling to settle to a conversation or take a meal. I got what I needed and left, but no taxi driver or railway employee recognised either my photograph of Yolanda Adler or the vague description of a black-haired man with a scar next to his eye.

  “However, I'm interpreting the lack of response as a positive negative: If Yolanda Adler took a train to Sussex last week, someone would have remembered her,” I told Mycroft. “And Gunderson said his boss had driven the motor some time between Thursday night and Monday morning. He didn't notice the mileage, but he said it was nothing unusual for The Reverend to drive himself. I wonder if Lestrade has got any more out of him than I did?”

  “The ears I have within Scotland Yard tell me no, that Gunderson is just a hireling. If he knew where Brothers and Damian had gone, he would give them up in hopes of winning some points for himself.”

  “They're not letting Gunderson go, are they?”

  “Indications are that they will hold him, if for nothing else than the gun. Scotland Yard does not approve of felons with guns. I imagine, however, that he will have given Lestrade an adequate description of the Amazon who trussed him and poked holes in his epidermis.”

  “Lestrade will be steaming,” I said with reg
ret. “Apart from the search for Brothers' house, have you had any results?”

  He had, clearly, been waiting for me to ask: He had been busy that day, and between what his “ears” at Scotland Yard had passed on, and what his own operative had been set to find, he had quite a bit. Reverend Thomas Brothers, newly born in November 1923, had a British passport under that name, issued four weeks later, and a sizeable bank account. His man was tracing the deposits and cheques written, but the preliminary report was that Brothers was inordinately fond of cash, even when it came to large amounts. Brothers either had a laden safe, or another account that received systematic deposits of bank notes.

  However, as Gunderson had intimated, there was no record of a man named Thomas Brothers entering the country—or purchasing a house, or buying a motor-car. Mycroft had set into motion a close search through the records, looking at any middle-aged male who had come into Britain during the two months before Gunderson was hired, but that would take many days.

  “I also,” Mycroft told me, “took a look at our file for Aleister Crowley. Not, as you have said, that Crowley is directly related to this case, but I hoped it might suggest other avenues of investigation.

  “There are certain points of similarity to Testimony, but I imagine those would exist between any two belief systems built around individuals who think themselves gods. One thing did come to my attention: Crowley was in Shanghai for a brief time, in 1906. He tells a story concerning a delay there that kept him from arriving in San Francisco, in April of that year.”

  I looked up, startled. “The earthquake and fire?”

  “He claimed that but for the Shanghai delay, he would have been there at the time.”

  “You're suggesting that when Testimony says the narrator ‘preserved the mortal life of the Guide from flames and the turmoil of an angry earth,’ he is talking about Crowley and San Francisco?”

  “It is one possibility. The other item of interest concerns the man's claim of a simultaneous meteor and comet. My informant at the Royal Astronomical Society suggests that, if we are looking for the birth date of a middle-aged man, the closest one may come is August and September of 1882. The Perseids were over by the time the Great September Comet was noticed on the first of September, but it reached its maximum brightness so quickly, it requires no great stretch of the imagination to claim that it was in the sky earlier.”

  “So we could be looking for an Englishman of forty-two, who was in Shanghai in 1906. Perhaps you could—”

  “—ask my colleagues in Shanghai to factor that description into their search.”

  I was on the edge of asking when we might expect to hear from them, but bit back the question: Mycroft would be as attentive as I to the problem.

  “One thing more,” he said. “Damian's finger-prints are not on the biscuit packet.”

  “You had them? To compare?”

  “Enough of them. If he touched it, he wiped it thoroughly before it was handled by at least three others. I am having the workers at Fortnum and Mason volunteer their prints, for comparison. One of the hands was small; I suggest it will match Yolanda's when we receive those prints. I will also see if I can get the prints from the walled house, for comparison.”

  “Not Damian's,” I said. “Thank God for small blessings.”

  I hugged to me that minor confirmation of innocence as I went to bed that night, and it helped me to sleep.

  Magic (2): What does this mean, to summon, free, and

  take into one's self? When a word is spoken, writ, burnt,

  and stirred into water, this is simple Power, a child's

  magic. But it contains a grain of the Truth.

  Testimony, III:5

  FRIDAY OPENED WITH A TELEPHONE CALL FROM Lestrade. Mycroft answered the ring at a quarter to seven in the morning, and I knew instantly who it was when his eyes sought mine. I went back to his study, and eased up the earpiece of the second instrument.

  “—not believe that you have no idea where your brother and his wife are, Mr Holmes.”

  “Chief Inspector, I am shocked that you would accuse me of lying to you.”

  “I'll just bet you are. I want to know what Miss Russell was doing rolling a villain like Gunderson up in a carpet, and then running off before we got there. I want to know what connexion your brother has with Yolanda Adler. And I'd really like to ask how he knew we'd find grains of Veronal in Yolanda Adler's stomach?”

  “Did you?”

  “We did. Along with some nut pâté and biscuits washed down by wine.”

  “Clever you. Have you had any luck in finding the men who left the house before Gunderson?”

  “They abandoned their car in—wait a minute, how do you know about them if your brother isn't there telling you?”

  “I have not seen my brother since Tuesday, Chief Inspector. I merely speak from what is already general knowledge.”

  “I don't think so. Maybe I ought to bring you in for questioning.”

  “Do you seriously think you have the authority to do that, Chief Inspector?” Mycroft sounded more amused than threatened.

  Lestrade was silent, no doubt reflecting on the possibility of asserting any kind of authority over Mycroft Holmes. However, it is not always a good idea to point out a man's limitations.

  “I may not. But I'm putting out a warrant for the arrest of your brother and his wife. They're concealing vital information, and I won't have it.”

  He banged down the phone. When I went back into Mycroft's sitting room, he was looking at the telephone, abashed.

  “A new experience for me,” I remarked, “being wanted by the police.”

  “I'm sorry, Mary. I should have known that remark would tip him into spite.”

  “I'm not sure it will make a lot of difference; he was looking for us already.”

  “If Sherlock is arrested on his way home, I shall have some explaining to do.”

  “Holmes will manage.”

  “If he does not manage to evade them, I shall have the dogs of the press on my door-step.”

  My first stop that morning was at the Save the Soul Prison Reform group, to look at their list of would-be reformed criminals. The police had not been there yet, which made my job easier, even as it convinced me that they were interested only in Damian Adler. The group's director was a thin, pale man with trembling hands and a wide clerical collar; I gave him a description of the black-haired man with the scar.

  “Oh yes,” he fluttered. “Reverend Smythe, I remember him well, he was so eager to help, made a most generous contribution, and met with a number of our former prisoners with an eye to employing one of them.”

  “And did he?”

  “I believe so. Yes, I recall, it was Gunderson. Not the first time we've seen that poor man through here,” he confided sadly, then brightened. “But then I haven't seen him since then, so perhaps he has found his way at last into the light of reason, pray God.”

  I didn't have the heart to tell him.

  Nor did I let him know that there was no record of a Reverend Smythe on the books of any British church body.

  Friday afternoon, a positive storm of information battered the door of Mycroft's flat.

  Albert Seaforth, subject of Holmes' telegram, turned out to be an unemployed schoolteacher from York, fired in late May when one of his students told her parents that her Latin teacher had made advances. He had been found the previous Thursday morning, sitting upright against a standing stone, looking out over a desolate portion of the Yorkshire moors. His wrists had been slit; the knife was still in his hand.

  “When did he die?” I asked Mycroft, who rang me from his office with the information.

  “Approximately a day before.”

  “He'd been there for a day and no-one noticed?”

  “The only neighbours are sheep.”

  I looked at the notes I had made while on the telephone: Seaforth. Fired 19 May. Knife in hand. If this man was another victim, it confirmed a pattern of marginally employ
ed individuals.

  An hour later, Mycroft rang again to say that his pet laboratory had analysed the mixture that the Circle had been drinking: mead, spices, Chartreuse (hence the colour), hashish (which I had expected), and mushrooms (which I had not).

  “Mushrooms. As in toadstools?”

  “As you know, the distinction is imprecise, and the samples deteriorated. The mycologist is continuing to work on it.”

  When I had rung off, I scratched my head for a bit and then gathered my things to leave, nearly overlooking, in my distraction, the danger of going out of the front door. I caught myself and changed direction, emerging five minutes later in St James's Square. This time I aimed my research enquiries at the Reading Room of the British Museum. I had a moment's qualm as I handed my ticket to the guard at the door, but either Lestrade hadn't thought to notify them, or they were above the fray, because the man waved me in without hesitation.

  I found what I needed before closing time, although I nearly walked into the arms of one of Lestrade's men on Jermyn Street as I made my way to the Angel Court entrance. Fortunately, I saw him first, and made haste to evade him.

  Mycroft was walking down his hallway, just returned from his walk, when I emerged from the odour of burning honey.

  “Ah, Mary,” he said, unsurprised at my appearance. “I have something for you.”

  “And I you.”

  We met in the sitting room over drinks, and exchanged our papers: I sat and read the results of the agricultural colleague's report, giving minute details of six months of dead livestock, while he frowned over my scribbled notes on the meal eaten by the dead warriors of Valhalla, preparatory to working themselves into their Berserker frenzy: mead and toadstools.

  I set his report aside, all thirty pages of it, until I had pencil in hand and the other list of full-moon events beside it.

  “Sherlock came through on the telephone this afternoon,” he said. “Shockingly bad connexion, from Newcastle upon Tyne, but I managed to convey the need to keep his head down around the police.”

  “What is he doing?”

  “He'd only got as far as telling me that he was headed to the Yorkshire Moors when we were cut off.”