The Detective, The Woman and The Silent Hive: A Novel of Sherlock Holmes

by Amy Thomas

  Title Page

  THE DETECTIVE, THE WOMAN AND THE SILENT HIVE:

  A NOVEL OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

  Amy Thomas

  Publisher Information

  First edition published in 2014

  © Copyright 2014Amy Thomas

  Digital conversion by Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  The right of Amy Thomas to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.

  Published in the UK by MX Publishing

  335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive, London, N11 3GX

  www.mxpublishing.com

  Cover by Mary Smiecinski

  Dedication

  For my sister, who is as lovely as Irene Adler and as hospitable as Mrs Hudson

  Acknowledgements

  This book could not have happened without the amazing editorial skills of Chris and Ashley Thomas, who sacrificed their time and professional skill to make it the best it could possibly be. In addition to their practical help, I am forever grateful for the support of David Thomas, my one-man cheerleading section.

  Cover designer Mary Smiecinski is a continual inspiration. Her artistic interpretations of my work help me to understand it in new ways, and I cannot thank her enough for lending her expertise to this book.

  Additional thanks are due to Christy McDougall and Megan Hendrix, writing partners who constantly encourage my writing and help to perfect it with their insights. Their friendship is invaluable.

  My fellow Baker Street Babes also helped me through this journey and many others with their sense of humour, joy in all things Sherlockian, and brilliant intellectual insights. I am blessed to be one of them.

  I am also endlessly grateful to Steve Emecz and the MX Publishing team for all of their kindness and support. They are the reason this book exists as more than an idea in my head.

  Introduction

  I have been beaten four times -- three times by men, and once by a woman.

  - The Five Orange Pips

  The Beginning

  “The bees are dead,” I said. That was hardly the way I’d planned to greet my friends, but I could find no other words when I had finally reached Baker Street.

  “Please sit down,” said Dr Watson kindly, putting a solid hand under my elbow and guiding me to a chair near the cheerful evening fire. It seemed to me the flat looked just as it had when I’d impersonated a maid to gain entry to it years before, though my own recollections had been dimmed by time and were inextricably entwined with the doctor’s descriptions of it in his stories.

  Holmes had stood upon my admittance by Mrs Hudson, but he immediately took his place in his chair opposite me, his eyes taking in every detail of my appearance and expression. I knew that he was deducing me, learning where I had been, how I had travelled, and probably even the frayed state of my nerves. I was used to his ways by then, and I did not speak until he closed his eyes and leaned back, his assessment complete.

  “My bees are dead,” I reiterated.

  “How?” One word, one question from the lips of my friend, but it was like a candle at midnight. I knew that if Holmes was listening, all could not be lost.

  “Foulbrood,” I said, spitting out the word like a bad taste.

  “That’s certainly distressing,” Dr Watson said kindly, though I could tell that the disease was unfamiliar to him. Holmes did not appear to share his confusion.

  “I know why you’re here,” he said. It was my turn to be perplexed.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. In my defence, I was weary and unhappy, and the speed of my thoughts was somewhat inhibited.

  “You know the cause of the malady. That means you’ve already consulted an expert in beekeeping. If the disease had a likely origin on the Downs, you’d have no reason to be here. Therefore, I gather that you cannot divine the origin of the disease and have come to seek my advice.” Holmes rattled off his deductions without a pause, but his tone was not unkind.

  Hearing my reason put in such simple terms, I began to feel as if my errand was foolish. “I - was, perhaps, impulsive in my decision to travel here,” I said, “but I confess that I was somewhat emotionally affected upon seeing the demise of my hives and did not wish to wait for a letter to reach you and its subsequent response to reach me. A telegram seemed insufficient to convey the peculiarity of the situation.”

  ***

  Sherlock Holmes looked at the woman in front of him as he looked at everyone - with eyes that took in the physical details of her muddied green skirt and haphazardly arranged hair, as well as the desperate tone of her voice and downcast expression. Clearly, the length of the entire journey from Fulworth to London had not been sufficient to relieve her distress.

  Those who did not know her might have thought Irene Adler’s grief strange or misplaced, but the detective understood it instantly. Ever since her retirement from the world, The Woman’s life work had been her bees. Their order was her order, and the systematic patterns of their lives had become her own. In her eyes, he saw grief for the death of innocent creatures, but there was something more, a deep agitation, as if the failure of the hives indicated her own failure to exert control over the chaotic forces of the world.

  “I will take your case,” he said. He saw instant relief on her face, and it pleased him.

  We heard of you as living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books in a small farm upon the South Downs.

  - His Last Bow

  Chapter 1: Irene

  I knew I must give an appearance of being woefully bedraggled, judging by the pitying look on Dr Watson’s face, the force with which Mrs Hudson pressed tea upon me, and, most tellingly, Holmes’s concerned expression. I grieved, to be sure, but some of my dishevellment was simply a result of the unplanned nature of my journey.

  I would have liked to remain where I sat as afternoon turned to dusk, but even my low esteem of propriety did not quite admit for a night spent in the flat of two bachelors. Besides, I’d heard that the Savoy Hotel, which had been completed during my absence from London, was a marvel to behold. My preoccupation did not prevent me from wanting to see it.

  Dr Watson offered to arrange transportation, but my feet itched to walk the London streets once again. The doctor and Mrs Hudson were slightly horrified at this, but Holmes understood and walked me to the door without a word.

  “Good night,” I said. “I promise to return tomorrow with a clearer head for details.”

  “I have business with my brother,” he said, “but Dr Watson will receive you if I am absent.” We parted ways, and I had the satisfaction of knowing that as Holmes watched me disappear down the street, he experienced not one instant of worry for my safety.

&nb
sp; I had forgotten what it was like to step into a morass of people. We didn’t have morasses of people on the Downs - more like trickles of people, or, oftener than not, one odd person here and there. My body no longer recalled the feeling of being whisked into the world of London, that seductive, beautiful, grimy place. I passed beyond Baker Street, and a surge of nostalgia filled me. I’d never intended to return, but since I had, I couldn’t claim to be unaffected by excitement. My bad memories were mostly tied to other places, and the city was like an alluring dream.

  When I finally reached my objective on the Strand, I was quite satisfied with myself and with the fact that my long walks on the coast had made me more than equal to a lengthy city stroll. I was particularly grateful that I had escaped having a load of cabbages dropped on me or a bucket of sewer water splashed across my clothing, both imminent dangers I had avoided with great effort.

  If my walk had reminded me of my previous life, the Savoy Hotel reminded me that London never stays the same for two days together, let alone decades. In previous years, I had visited the Savoy Theatre many times and admired its electric lights, but the hotel that now stood next to it eclipsed it in size and grandeur, a white edifice with twinkling lights peeking out of over a hundred rooms.

  I stood still in front of it for some time, one woman against a backdrop of carriages and grand personages in brightly-coloured clothing and gleaming jewellery leaving for evening engagements. I had been one of them, once, but as the half-light of evening gradually diminished, I felt as though everything around me was an elaborate theatrical production with me as the lone member of the audience. Or perhaps it was the opposite; I was the play, and the world my audience. I only know that I would not have been surprised to see the Irene Adler I had once been emerge from the immense doorway on the arm of a stylish gentleman. I felt far enough removed from her that the idea of her as a separate being still living a mad, whirling, city life was almost believable.

  “Do you need help, Miss?” The man at my elbow was under twenty, with short, shiny hair and a crisply starched porter’s uniform. His determined cheerfulness recalled me to the literal world.

  “I need lodging,” I said, as sweetly as I could, handing my suitcase to him. I was aware that my position as a female travelling alone would seem unusual, but I was also well aware that liberal quantities of money tend to lower raised eyebrows and engender cooperation.

  The porter led me between the tall columns that framed each entrance, and I looked around me in amazement at the blindingly white ceiling, gold chandeliers, and plush carpeted floor that adorned the huge room.

  “Are you all right, Miss?” I realised after a moment that I had inadvertently stopped to admire my surroundings and been left behind by the porter, who’d doubled back to fetch me.

  “Forgive me,” I said, handing him a coin. “It’s been quite a while since I’ve been inside a hotel.”

  Unexpectedly, he broke into a smile. “Between us, Miss,” he said, “it’s my first week here.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Billy,” he answered.

  ***

  Billy proved as useful as I could have hoped, and he deposited me in a room on the hotel’s second floor in under a quarter of an hour, using one of the establishment’s ascending rooms that carried one from the ground floor to the higher levels. I had never seen such a thing.

  My suite itself was large, inviting, and beautiful in every way. A floral sofa sat beside a large window, and the bed was covered with blue satin. I was most shocked by the private bathing room, a tiny marble palace with water that ran hot and cold at all times.

  As soon as Billy had left me, I was joined by a maid, who offered to unpack my suitcase. I thought of declining, but I was tired, and I liked the prospect of stretching out on the bed and gathering my thoughts.

  The girl was young but diligent, and she had my clothes put into drawers and closet within ten minutes. “Here, Miss,” she said, showing me a metal tube situated in the wall above the ornate side table. “If you speak into this, the floor waiter or I will fetch you anything you need.”

  “Thank you,” I answered, possessed of a sudden desire to use the contraption just to see if it worked, which I did as soon as she’d left the room. “Excuse me,” I said, feeling foolish as I held the tube close to my mouth and inhaled the aroma of tarnished metal, “is the waiter there?”

  “Here, Miss,” said a voice with a Cockney accent.

  “May I - I’d like a poached egg and perhaps a few slices of toast,” I said, rather weakly, realising I wasn’t entirely sure of the etiquette of how to communicate using a metal speaking contraption.

  “And a pot of tea, Miss?”

  “Certainly,” I answered.

  “I’ll be up in a moment, Miss,” the voice finished, and I returned the tube to its place in the wall. I began to think I would go mad if anyone else called me Miss.

  Left alone, with only my thoughts to accompany me, I opened the lace curtains and looked out at the Thames. I felt less displaced than I expected. London’s pulse was the same as ever, even if her face was made up differently.

  Within fifteen minutes, the floor waiter appeared. He was a man of middle age, with a round, red, smiling face, wearing a grand uniform that seemed to suit him not at all. “Here you are,” he said, bringing in a tray with china dishes and a silver tea service upon it. I watched as he placed everything upon the room’s larger table, which also doubled as a desk. Before I was allowed access to anything, it must be opened, approved, and placed in what the hotel considered to be the most convenient arrangement possible for my dining pleasure. Woe betide the waiter who made his guest take any extra movements in the service of her own comfort.

  The smell of food in my nostrils had me practically starving by the time the man finished. “Thank you,” I said hastily, handing him a mess of coins that was probably excessive compensation for his pains, but which I hoped would hurry him out of the room. He was far too well trained to betray surprise, but I thought I detected a gleam of satisfaction in his blue eyes.

  Once blessed solitude had finally descended again, I let my hair down. I divested myself of each hairpin one by one, sighing as my heavy locks fell down my back and gave my aching head the relief it desired. I would have liked to undress and bathe, but the piping hot egg beckoned, and I could bear to wait no longer. I ate, savouring each bite as if it were the first I’d ever taken. Indeed, the Savoy’s toast was crisped to such perfection that I began to wonder if I could ask for the secret of it. I’ve never laid claim to any measure of asceticism, and the reason for my journey did not inhibit my enjoyment of sensory comforts.

  By the time I had finished eating, it was completely dark, and I turned on the gold electric lamp that stood on the bedside table. I had been in the presence of electric light before, but I had not experienced the power of a lone electric bulb against the falling night of London. It was grand. I was never one to feel sentimental attachments to the obsolete past. As far as I was concerned, electric lights could not take their rightful place in the world soon enough.

  I drew a bath, marvelling at the warm water that instantly filled it. Even in the bathroom, electric lights brightened the gleaming white marble, and I contemplated the possibility of reading a book whilst soaking in white bubbles. In the end, I decided to force myself to arrange my thoughts, knowing that when I encountered Holmes again, I must have a far more coherent narrative to recount than I had already given.

  Until a month prior to my visit, I had experienced no serious threats to my hives or problems with my beekeeping, save a few lost larvae here and there. I’d come into the practice gradually, first vicariously, as a reader of beekeeping journals, then, once my curiosity had got the best of me, as a literal keeper of hives - one, then three more had joined it.

  I had not realised, when I began, how consumin
g beekeeping could become. I’d had very little to demand my time during my first days in Sussex, and I had welcomed a hobby that required regular attention. As the years had progressed, my musical engagements in the village had grown in frequency, but they did not encroach on my day-to-day freedom. The bees continued to be my favourite responsibility.

  I let my body sink deeper into the warm water and my thoughts sink with it. The bees, truthfully, had become more than a hobby. They had become my refuge when darker memories of my life insisted on asserting themselves. Time after time, I had found satisfaction and relief by rushing to the hives and finding them as calm and productive as ever. The disordered thoughts in my mind had found clarity there. The determination of each worker to complete her tasks, each queen to rule her kingdom, returned to me a sense that order exists in this strange world. That was why my horror had been so great the day I’d gone to check the hives four weeks previously and found many darkened, dying larvae, as if all the love and care I’d given the hives had turned to death and decay.

  I’d forced myself to rein in the violence of my first reaction. After all, I had been a beekeeper for some time, and I knew that hive maladies were not uncommon. I consulted books and journals, and I sent for the remedies they suggested, but nothing worked. Finally, I consulted the village veterinarian, who recommended an associate who was also a beekeeper. By this time, three of my four hives were affected, and I was frantic. The man diagnosed foulbrood, a bacterial malady, and assured me that since the hives had been previously healthy, they would survive. He was wrong; within weeks, my hives were nearly dead. The man returned, perplexed. He had never seen foulbrood that severe. The morning after his second visit, I went to the hives alone. Instead of the joyful buzzing of health, there was only silence. A few remaining bees went about their tasks, and I wept for them.