The God of the Hive: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

by King, Laurie R.

  “Where is the Green—Mr Goodman?” I asked her.

  “Mr Robert went out. And he left me these,” she said, holding her two fists half an inch from my nose. I pushed them back until a pair of carved deer came into focus, a doe and a buck with small antlers.

  “Very nice,” I said. “But you shouldn’t call a grown man by his given name. Call him Mr Goodman.”

  “But he told me to call him—”

  “I know. But let’s be polite and call him Mr Goodman.”

  “Should I be polite and call you Missus Russell?” she said, sounding sulky.

  “I—oh, never mind, Mr Robert is fine.”

  I had to agree, the usual formality did not fall naturally from the tongue when it came to Robert Goodman. She repeated her demand to be fed.

  It occurred to me that perhaps I should be concerned by Goodman’s absence, but really, if the man wished to turn us over to the police, he could have done so the day before and spent the night in his own bed. I did not know where he had slept, but a glance at the table showed that he’d been in, leaving a basket of eggs. Odd, that I had not heard him stir about.

  Estelle withdrew her hovering self far enough for me to struggle more or less upright. My skull gave a warning throb, but eventually I was standing. I tottered to the bedroom, propping a shoulder against the frame as I studied my pilot. He appeared to be sleeping as comfortably as could be expected, so I closed the door and went to search out the means by which to feed a small child.

  I managed toast, although her efforts with the toasting fork were more successful than mine. I then had to scale a foot-stool to reach the pot of honey I could see but not stretch my arm for, then ascended the stool a second time when Estelle informed me that she and her two deer preferred the strawberry preserves. I was interested to see that much of the contents of the hermit’s cupboards were not willow baskets heaped with gathered nuts, dried berries and wild honeycomb, but ordinary store-bought jars and packets.

  There was even a tin of aspirin tablets from the chemist, for which I was grateful.

  By the time Goodman returned, three hours later, my headache had retreated and I was able to stand with something of my usual ease, walking over to help him unload his rucksack.

  He had brought a large bundle of sausages wrapped not in butcher’s paper, but in the week-old news. I looked at it askance, but he mistook my doubt.

  “A child needs meat, and your pilot, if he is to heal,” he said. “A neighbour killed a pig two days back. I knew he’d have extras.”

  He was right: We had to eat, and last night’s bean soup would only go so far in building the injured American’s strength. Still: “You and I need to have a talk,” I told him.

  “Very well,” he replied, taking a large black skillet from beneath the work-table.

  I glanced at Estelle, underfoot as usual. “Later.”

  “She wants to talk to you without me hearing,” the child explained to him.

  Goodman let a rope of sausages spill into the pan, and asked her, “Is that rude, do you think?”

  She thought for a moment. “Not very.”

  He gave me a green twinkle. “You and I shall go for a walk after we eat,” he said.

  We propped Javitz before the fire with Estelle, and I followed Goodman outside. He went to the shed that stood at a little distance, coming out with a hatchet stuck through his belt. He set off briskly across the meadow, to slip into one of the larger pathways that led to the outer world—this one distinct enough that a deer might be able to follow it. I followed. Twenty minutes later, his hand came out to stop me.

  “Do you see?” he asked.

  I looked at the trail ahead, circling past a rocky outcrop. “See—oh. The branch?”

  One branch of a low-growing tree was tied back against the next tree with a piece of strong twine. Careful not to touch, I stepped around Goodman, searching the ground until I saw the fine, dirt-coloured twine: a trip-wire.

  It was a booby-trap, not deadly but powerful enough to swat a person backwards down the path, breaking a nose or arm in the process. I looked up from where I was squatting to ask, “Do you have many of these?”

  “It is a private estate. This helps keep away visitors.”

  “So I should imagine.”

  Satisfied that his warning had got through to me, he walked on.

  After a time, Goodman slowed, and began to peer at the undergrowth. I decided this was as good a time as any to have our conversation, so I started by expressing my immense gratitude that he had not only saved our lives, but given us shelter as well. He grunted, then pulled out the little axe and laid it to the base of a young sapling, twelve feet tall with an odd bifurcation halfway up, as if something had bitten off its growing tip and driven it to generate twin alternatives.

  I raised my voice. “I ought to take my companions away as soon as I can.”

  “His leg should rest.”

  “Well, at least let me move the others into the main room with me, so you can sleep at night.”

  “The shed is comfortable,” he said.

  I studied what I could see of his face, wondering at the thoughts underneath all that hair. The precipitate arrival of three demanding strangers into his quiet retreat seemed to trouble him not in the least—apart from a few mild comments, he had been remarkably incurious about our situation, our history, or our plans. One might almost imagine that the dreamy, fairy-tale quality of his surroundings had permeated his mental processes, as well, leaving him incapable of questioning even the most unlikely events.

  That approach did not much help me, however. Even if we were welcome to stay here until Javitz could walk, my own mind was by no means dreamy, and worries pressed in on me: What was Brothers up to? Where were Holmes and Damian? What about Mycroft in London? Where could I find safe hiding for Javitz and Estelle near here?

  Wherever here was.

  “Where are we, exactly?” I asked.

  The sapling fell. Goodman chopped off the twin tops, then exchanged the hand-axe for the thick knife he wore, stripping away the branches as he answered.

  Exactly, it would seem, was not a term that applied to this location, although it was well short of the Forest of Arden setting I had begun to suspect. We were, as I’d thought, in the Lake District, approximately midway between two villages I’d never heard of. But if one drew a line between Grasmere (the bustling centre of the Wordsworth industry) and Ravenglass (on the Irish Sea), we should be halfway along that. Or perhaps a bit closer to the east. And south, he thought.

  “Where do you shop?” I asked him. “When you’re not buying sausages from a neighbour?”

  He named a village, adding, “I give the shopkeeper a list of requirements, then pick them up when next I go. I gave him one this morning.”

  “What, on a Sunday?”

  “He was at home, of course, preparing for church. I told him I’d be back tomorrow.”

  I looked at him uneasily. “I wish you’d consulted with me first. It’s not a good idea to have it be known that you are sheltering three strangers. Someone’s sure to have found the wreck by now, even out here.”

  He finished reducing the branches to stubs, slid the knife into its scabbard, and sighed. “Very well. Tell me your story.”

  “It started when Estelle’s father came to our door in Sussex,” I began. We walked, he listened, with little response apart from a noise of pain when I told him that Estelle’s mother was dead.

  “She doesn’t know,” I said.

  He gave me a look over his shoulder.

  “I haven’t had a great deal of free time in the past thirty-six hours,” I protested. “In any event, I can’t decide if I should tell her, or wait for her father to do so. I rather think it should be him.”

  “Yes,” he said. I waited for any further response, but there was none, so I went on. I told him our problem, or enough of it to make him understand the danger: serious enemies with unknown but potentially considerable resources; scattere
d companions whose situation was unknown; a mad religious fanatic and his acolytes; the remaining threat against us. “We thought Brothers was dead, but by the time I got back to the hotel, it was pretty clear that he had escaped,” I told Goodman. “And, he somehow managed to alert a subordinate in Thurso that we were coming.”

  “And that subordinate took a shot at your aeroplane.”

  “I do not know who else it might have been.”

  “It could not have been an accident?”

  “I’d like to think so, but it beggars the imagination to picture a stray bullet cleanly puncturing the centre of an aeroplane two hundred feet overhead. Nor can I accept that the northern reaches of Scotland is so rife with madmen that we could find a religious fanatic and a man who takes pot-shots at passing targets within twenty miles of each other.”

  He nodded, conceding my point.

  “I have to assume that Brothers is somehow related to the sharpshooter. And if he has two assistants—one on Orkney, one in Thurso—he could have more.”

  “Which requires that you keep your heads down for a time.”

  “Until I meet up with my companions and we pool information, I cannot know who, or why. Or, I will admit, even if.”

  Goodman walked, head-down with the stick across his shoulders, leading me in a wide circle through the untouched woodland as I told my tale—although since I was forced to leave out many of the details so as not to enmesh him in danger, I found it was a story I would mistrust myself, were I to hear it.

  At the end, I described the rapid disintegration of the aeroplane mid-flight, and said, “Captain Javitz brought it down in the clearest patch he could see, although it proved not quite clear enough. And you know the rest.”

  Back now where we had started, Goodman sat down on a fallen tree, studying the rambling structure on the far side of the clearing: tree in front, shed behind, a glimpse of orchard at the back. After a minute, I sat beside him. Even with a clear head, the meadow resembled the dwelling-place of some mythic creature. Could there possibly be a deed somewhere with Robert Goodman’s name on it? I thought it more likely that the aeroplane had delivered us to another world, one in which official land deeds and telegraph lines did not exist.

  “The whole story sounds terribly alarmist and melodramatic, I know. But short of giving you all the details, and the names”—which would absolutely guarantee that you did not believe me, I mentally added—“it’s the bald truth.”

  “Good. So you won’t be leaving momentarily?”

  “Not if you don’t mind having us, for two or three more days.” If nothing else, I owed it to Javitz to let his leg heal before moving him.

  “Good,” he repeated, adding, “‘Dull would he be of a soul who could pass by/A sight so touching in its majesty.’” I stared, then followed the line of his gaze: A hundred feet away stood a magnificent stag, its antlers each showing six or seven points. The creature’s liquid eyes studied us with as much interest as we studied him. Majesty was the word.

  Which was, again, that of Wordsworth. “‘Westminster Bridge’?” I asked.

  He looked at me as if I were mad. “No, red deer.”

  And so saying, the little blond man set out across his meadow, causing the stag to leap away and me to grin at my companion’s retreating back. The stripped sapling rested across his shoulder like a rifle barrel. Or the first support for a child’s swing.

  I thought it safe to leave the two men with the child for a bit longer—indeed, Estelle seemed happier with either of them than she did with me—and the walk had begun to loosen my sore muscles, so I skirted the edge of the meadow and followed what looked like an overgrown horse-track to the west. In twenty minutes, I came to the house that explained the estate.

  A square, unfussy Georgian box of a house in the middle of an abandoned garden, weeds growing through the gravel of its drive. The boards across all the ground-floor windows and some of the upper storeys suggested that it was vacant. I circled it, seeing no sign of life.

  A broken gutter-pipe had been recently repaired, although not painted—and I thought this might explain Goodman’s presence. A country estate whose family did not wish it to deteriorate entirely would want it cared for; permitting this odd sort of man with a love for simple things to make a home nearby was a sensible precaution.

  Although he was an unusual sort of caretaker, I reflected as I turned back towards the meadow. His accent and education spoke of the officer class, but his skills confirmed his claims of ambulance service. One might assume that some physical shortcoming had disqualified him from active service, but he showed no signs of infirmity now.

  One of the small objects on Goodman’s wall of decoration was a bronze Croix de Guerre. It could have belonged to anyone, of course—he had not personally worn any of the twenty-three horse-shoes on the wall either—but I suspected it was his, even though governments did not often give medals to lowly ambulance drivers.

  In any case, a man living in the deep woods six years after Armistice had probably not had an easy War. But then, I had known that since the moment I saw those old eyes in the young face.

  Back on the dead tree, I sat massaging my neck, stiff from yesterday’s violence and the source of my persistent headache. It was just as well he hadn’t agreed that we should leave, I thought: I’d have collapsed before we reached the crash site.

  Goodman came down the front steps and went over to the enormous tree, retrieving a garden fork that he had left leaning against its trunk. He absently patted the trunk, a gesture remarkably similar to my mother’s touch on the mezuzah at our door, then headed towards his little walled vegetable garden beside the shed.

  My eyes went back to the tree. I had seen no sign of fairies. Perhaps it was instead Yggdrasil, the World Tree where the gods hold court. Although that was an ash, and this an oak. And the dark preoccupation with Norse mythology belonged to Reverend Thomas Brothers, not Robert Goodman.

  The name opened a door in my mind and out flowed all the anxiety and speculation that I had kept dammed up when talking to our rescuer. If Brothers was not dead, where had he gone, and who was helping him? Should I have directed a telegram to Chief Inspector Lestrade, to inform him that Holmes’ suspect was at large in the wilds of Scotland? Or would that simply further endanger the child?

  Thoughts chased around my head, making my skull ache again, and I was glad when Goodman reappeared around the side of his motley construction with a full bushel basket. I climbed from my perch and went to the house, where I found Estelle setting out another dollies’ tea-party, this time with Javitz, the two deer Goodman had given her, and a two-inch-tall rabbit, crude but rich in personality. She had given the American the porcelain cup of honour, making do herself with an acorn, and was chattering happily about a doll she had at home. I could only wonder at the indomitability of the very young.

  I settled to the tangle of dried beans in want of shelling, and she instantly trotted over with two acorn cups, giving me one. I thanked her, and she presented the other to Goodman, watching in anticipation for his reaction. Javitz shot me a father’s amused grin, while I wondered how one was to play the game, but Goodman did not hesitate. He raised his cup to his lips, took a noisy sip, and swallowed, the very picture of satisfaction. The verisimilitude of his act made me glance involuntarily at my own tiny woodland cup and to wonder, for an instant, if his might not contain actual tea.

  Chapter 21

  a ÷ (b+c+d) + e − (½ c)

  Mycroft decided on Monday that the election of the Labour government might have a larger role in his current predicament than he had originally allowed; however, because it was not entirely to blame, he only deducted half of it.

  He thought it was Monday, although it was difficult to be certain. Distressingly difficult. He had the impression that some of his food and drink contained sedatives—not a lot, just enough to make him drowsy. He hoped so. Humiliating to think that mere solitude might affect the control of his mind.

  The r
oom provided only two sources of external stimulation: the window overhead, and the gaolers.

  In the roof a dozen feet over his standing head was a sky-light, four feet square, of translucent glass—or rather, regular glass that had been whitewashed at some time in its history, now darkened by decades of grime and generations of passing birds. He rather wished that the man wielding the brush had been less diligent, and thus provide a prisoner with a tiny glimpse of the sky. Instead, he had a featureless square that became visible at dawn then faded at dusk, propelling a diffuse patch across floor and walls in the hours between. (Logically, this prison might be constructed with an outer roof and fitted with an artificial light that rose and fell, confusing his time sense and rending the regularity of his meals false—but that would be elaborate and to what purpose? The very idea was diabolical and intolerable, and in that direction lay a path to madness.)

  Yesterday (was it yesterday?) a faint scratching from above had caused his heart to race, but it had only been pigeons. And every so often, if he lay staring up for long enough, a quick shadow would pass across the whitened glass; once it had been an entire flock of birds, which played across his internal vision for a long time.

  As for the gaolers, there were two. The younger one with the City shoes came in the mornings. His athletic stride sent brisk echoes down the corridor outside, hard heels making impact on the worn surface. The older, heavier, slower man who wore scuffed boots and had a slight hitch in his stride was in charge of the afternoons and most late-night visits.

  In either case, food and drink were placed in a tiny pass-through that was walled about on the corridor side. Mycroft pictured a sturdy metal-lined box fastened against a hole cut in the wall, its top unlatching to deposit the food and refill the cup. One morning he’d kept the cup to see what would happen, and his gaoler—the younger man—had simply poured the water onto the floor of the pass-through and left.

  The younger man, twice at the beginning, had trailed a faint aroma of bay rum after-shave. The older man smelt of gaspers and had the phlegmy cough that went with them. Neither responded to his questions, although the younger man would pause to listen.