Beekeeping for Beginners (Short Story)

by Laurie R. King

  I was, to put it mildly, apprehensive. I pushed forward, so close that Russell could not have failed to recognise me, had she turned. Anyone at all could come up to the child, then be away in an instant, leaving her bleeding into the paving stones.

  In addition to the open west side, the market hall had five entrances—one each through the three-storey buildings on the north and south, and three on the long eastern face. At the northern, Lamb Street entrance, Russell paused to speak to a constable whose ash-streaked face made it clear where he had spent the night. He ducked his head to hear against the din, then straightened to point forward, directly across the market hall. What on earth had brought her here? What did she imagine she was going to find, two streets from a bombing site?

  I made up my mind: No matter the repercussions, I could not risk her further freedom. I should have to elbow my way forward and take her under my wing. I braced my shoulders, permitted my spine to straighten to my full height—and saw over the heads the familiar visage of Miss White, searching the crowd from atop a box on the southernmost Brushfield Street side. The passageway leading to that entrance was partially blocked by a piece of what appeared to be fire brigade equipment, and a hand-written sign, illegible at this distance, had been put up where the passage opened onto the hall itself. My sight of the Irregular was blocked for a moment by a porter threading his way through the crowd with a load of baskets on his head, then she was back.

  Russell had worked her way halfway across the hall, and was now closer to Miss White than she was to me. I rose up on a display of potatoes (ignoring the protests of the vegetables’ owner) and waved my arm widely. The young agent saw my gesture, and lifted a hand by way of response. I jabbed my forefinger at Russell, then swept my arm forcibly to the side, stating a clear order to remove Russell from this place, immediately, by whatever means necessary.

  Miss White craned for a moment until she spotted the brown hat coming towards her, and gave me a quick nod before hopping down from her perch.

  It was then that I saw the shadowy figure.

  12

  A person stood among the shadows atop the framework of a closed stall, half-hidden by one of the iron stanchions, under a dark portion of the glass roof that had been covered by tarpaulins, a stone’s throw from the Brushfield entrance. The stall beneath him was one of the more rag-tag structures, appearing little more than drapes and wood scraps, although clearly it was substantial enough to hold his weight.

  I did not need to see the figure’s face to know it would match the framed photographs on the aunt’s desk; nor did I need to examine more closely what he held between both of his hands to know that it mustn’t land upon the head of a passer-by, particularly one who was of value to me. He was forty feet away and ten feet from the ground; Miss White was twenty feet on the other side and had not seen him; Russell was working her way around the less-crowded edges of the hall, closing inexorably on the waiting trap.

  I jumped from my perch and leapt beneath the beefy arm of a drayman hauling at his horse’s bridle, then scrambled around three sight-seeing shop-girls and a messengerboy pushing his bicycle, knocked into a vendor of roasted pea-nuts, and aimed myself at my goal: a market porter with a stack of nine fully laden wicker baskets balanced atop his cloth cap.

  I hit the poor fellow with the sort of rugby tackle I hadn’t attempted in forty years. Baskets exploded in all directions, raining the market with fresh spring peas ripe for shelling. Women shrieked, men shouted, horses shied, constables whistled, the local wags that afternoon jested that peas had broken out in Spitalfields—and more to the point, Mary Russell jumped back in surprise, stopping with her back against a wall.

  I tucked my head down and scuttled like an orang-utan through and around the turmoil, dodging legs and skirts, hooves and wheels.

  I knew precisely where I was going: the markets of London had not changed appreciably in my life-time, and Spitalfields had the same shape (and, for all I could see, the same personnel) it had when Robert Horner built it three decades before. I rounded the stall of a seller of lettuces and passed through a tidy booth mixing blooms and strawberries before leaping over a pyramid of new potatoes, throwing myself at the rough ladder that had been wired to this particular stanchion since 1901.

  His back was to me. At his side was a boxful of some dark round objects the size of doubled fists: cocoa-nuts. He was holding one between his hands, poised at the edge of the makeshift booth. The rugby tackle would not do—I did not wish to send us both tumbling in front of Russell’s boots—but the hall was so noisy, the sound of my approaching feet was swallowed up. His first hint that I was there was my hand in his collar, yanking him backwards.

  The cocoa-nut flew, cracking harmlessly on the ground but attracting the attention of Miss White. She stared up at me, then glanced at the crowd before looking back with an urgent question writ large on her face.

  I shook my head and made a gesture of pushing her away, a signal that she was to stand down from the need to evacuate Russell, then returned my attention to the young man at my feet. He was cursing and beginning to rise, so I gave his supporting wrist a gentle kick and he collapsed again. This time, I seized his wrist and put it into a hold in the Oriental martial art I had long practiced, which froze him into place, if not into silence.

  I peered over the edge of the stall, and saw Russell walk up, read the shop signs in the passageway, and stop beneath one. She pulled back the sleeve of her coat to glance at her watch. I dropped my head to speak into my captive’s ear.

  “If you wish a chance to avoid a charge of attempted murder, you will lie absolutely still until your cousin leaves the market.” He struggled, so I moved his wrist to a position of both pain and incipient damage. I changed my threat. “If you wish your cousin not to know that you were trying to kill her, you will lie still.”

  He lay still.

  “Why here?” I said into his ear, too low to be heard past the top of the stall. “Why did you arrange for her to come here?”

  There was no response, but then, I had not expected one. I used often to conduct with Watson what appeared to be discussions but were, in fact, monologues to assist the thought process. I had been known to do the same with villains.

  “You knew where she was staying. You must know where her solicitor’s office is, and the time of their appointment. You could have come after her in either of those places, and yet you go to the effort of bringing her across town. With your Jewish heritage, you may have relations in this parish, but I cannot believe you feel at home in this market, not a person of your background. Which means some quality other than sheer familiarity brought you here.”

  He tested my grip, until I moved his arm half an inch; he subsided.

  “I am not the police,” I told him. “I have no interest in prosecuting you.”

  “I was up here minding my own business, and you attacked me,” he blustered—but keeping his voice low enough that he might as well have made an admission.

  “True. Why bring her here? Has it to do with last night’s aerial attack?”

  His twitch was a yes. I removed my hat and raised my head far enough to see Russell. Her new lenses flashed as she studied the shop-fronts, the passers-by, the fire brigade equipment half-blocking the end of the passage. When she looked back into the market hall, I suppressed the urge to duck: I was in a dark place and would appear as nothing but a round shape, and in any event, her vision would be dazzled after looking at the light. She checked her wrist-watch again. If her appointment with the solicitor was the first of his day—which would be the most convenient choice for a girl needing to make her way back to Sussex by dark—she would need to leave soon.

  If the cocoa-nut had come down on that brown hat, two pounds propelled by both gravity and muscle, what would have happened? Even a glancing blow would have stunned her; a direct hit might well have fractured her skull. One way or the other, she would have collapsed, beside this empty stall that was mostly tarpaulin, in the only s
parsely inhabited corner of a crowded marketplace. In Spitalfields. Think, Holmes! Spital Field; one-time Roman cemetery; site of St Mary’s Hospital Without Bishopsgate; a centre of the silk industry, and later for Jewish refugees, tailors, and weavers. A parish with one of the darkest histories in London: 300 feet from where Russell stood, checking her wrist-watch, Mary Kelly had died, fifth victim of the Ripper. Twenty-seven years later, a site containing smoking devastation.

  Smoke. Incendiary bombs. Market.

  And tarpaulins.

  “Your original plan was an attack on the streets between her club and the solicitor’s office. Since I am forced to assume that you have some iota of the family intelligence about you, I shall take it as given that you arranged an alibi to cover the time. But last night you heard news of the aerial bombing—perhaps you even have relations here in Spitalfields, from the days when the Jewish community took their refuge here—and it occurred to you that here was an ideal alternative: far enough from the solicitor’s office that the death and the change of her will would be separated by half the city, yet in a neighbourhood about which you had some knowledge. If you could entice her out to the East End, conceal her body, then arrange for her to be found amongst the rubble, she would appear to be one of the victims. And even if she were discovered today in the market, to all appearances she would be the victim of a freak accident, a falling cocoa-nut.

  “Am I correct?”

  The silence he gave me was answer enough.

  I fished a length of twine from my pocket—I always carry twine, it is the most useful substance in the world—and bound his wrists. Then I turned him onto his back.

  He was older than I’d anticipated, perhaps twenty-three or -four, and with the softness that suggests obesity by fifty. The struggle and tension brought no symptoms of weak heart or lungs to the fore. His eyes were angry, but behind the anger was fear.

  I considered the tools available to me. He was half my age, and a coward—a dangerous coward, but not an uncontrollable one.

  “You know who I am.”

  “You’re the man who attacked me.”

  “The name is Sherlock Holmes.”

  His eyes went wide. “I thought …”

  “You thought the rumours were a rural Sussex myth. No.”

  Before he could consider the wider meaning in being confronted by a legend, I put to him the key question in the future safety of my apprentice.

  “How much did your mother have to do with this?”

  I could see him begin to speculate: better to lay the blame elsewhere, or to protest her innocence?

  “What did your cousin ingest on Friday night that made her ill?”

  “Oh, that? That was just a joke. To teach her a lesson—she sneaks down and steals food from the pantry. I mixed something in with the leftover soup.”

  “It is Miss Russell’s food, Miss Russell’s pantry, and you would poison her for making use of it?”

  “Not poison! Well, not really.”

  “And the sprained wrist, and the fall on the stairs, and the split lip?”

  “Those, it was only—the child is so irritating, so … condescending! To both of us, even Mother, who has given over her life to Mary.”

  “Do not speak her name.”

  The command, which slipped out of me without thought, silenced him. Half my age, and a coward, I reminded myself: very well.

  “Your mother had nothing to do with the outright attacks on Miss Russell?”

  Slowly, his head went back and forth. Still, I should have to have this same conversation with the aunt, and soon.

  “I shall for the moment believe you. And since I do not wish the young lady to be aware that you tried to murder her—” Or, indeed, to know how I had come to stand guard over her. “—I will not turn you over to the police. Inside of two hours, her new will shall go into effect, and her inheritance will be beyond your reach. You may be tempted to take a petty revenge upon her, but let us be clear: If anything happens to her, anything at all, I will find you and I will punish you. Do you understand?”

  He swallowed, and the sweat on his forehead declared his belief.

  “You will not go to Sussex again. Instead, before today is out, you will go to a recruiter’s office and you will enlist in the Army. You will go into uniform, and you will serve your country, and you will be grateful that I do not leave your body here, atop a deserted stall in the Spitalfields Market.” And because he was the sort of blustering young man who requires an illustration to make a threat real, I drew out my folding knife, opened it, and let him look at it for a time.

  Then I folded it away.

  “Now, you will lie quietly until she leaves,” I told him. I moved away, to a place where I could watch my apprentice, and closed my mind to the loathsome creature at my feet.

  Rule One: Remain calm. I had done so, and solved the problem while preserving the naiveté—that charming and fragile virtue—of my young client. I hadn’t even needed to kill a man to do it.

  Rule Two: One must occasionally be cruel to be kind. To force this young man into uniform might, possibly, give him some backbone, turning him from the path of greed and cowardice. If nothing else, it would provide another rifle-bearer for the King.

  Rule Four: Success often rests on the imperceptibility of one’s meddling. If that was so, I might judge myself successful, indeed, for the head beneath the brown hat consulted the watch yet again, gave a small shake, and turned towards the street outside.

  But not without first giving a quick glance in the direction of Miss White, whose out-of-place clothing and too-casual loitering had raised the suspicions of an untutored, inexperienced girl ten years her junior.

  I watched my apprentice move towards Brushfield Street, the very slight tilt to her head telegraphing a roused awareness, making it clear—to me, at least—that no one else would follow her unawares this day. I felt my face relax into a smile of distinct pleasure—nay, call it by name: pure joy.

  For of all the rules of beekeeping, Rule Three is prime: Never, ever, cease to feel wonder.

  The following is a transcript of a conversation conducted via Twitter between Leslie S. Klinger (whose Twitter address is @lklinger) and Mary Russell (@mary_russell) in the spring of 2011. Klinger is the editor of the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Russell is a theologian and investigator, who married Mr. Sherlock Holmes in 1921 (The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, etcetera).

  (Les Klinger)@mary_russell Am editing w/LRKing “stories inspired by SH” & wd love an interview w/him or you. OK 4 LRK 2 giv me yr contact info?

  (Mary Russell)@lklinger No, my literary agent Ms King does not have permission to give you my private contact information.

  (LK)@mary_russell But wouldn’t u prefer to talk in private?

  (MR)@lklinger “Private” conversations undergo changes in the mind of the interviewer. I prefer that such exchanges be on public record.

  (LK)@mary_russell U want me 2 interview u on Twitter?

  (MR)@lklinger I do not wish you to interview me at all, but clearly that is not an option.

  (LK)@mary_russell We could call it a Twinterview.

  (MR)@lklinger Mr Klinger, if you wish my participation, I must ask that you refrain from whimsy. And excessive abbreviations.

  (LK)@mary_russell Sorry, Ms Russell. Okay, no whimsy, & I’ll keep the questions suitable for all eyes.

  (MR)@lklinger I should hope so. And I prefer “Miss.” Now, may we proceed with this conversation? I have an experiment awaiting me.

  (LK)@mary_russell First, how does Mr Holmes feels about having inspired the creativity of more than a century of crime writers?

  (MR)@lklinger My husband does not care to discuss his feelings.

  (LK)@mary_russell OK, how do YOU feel re his having inspired 100 yrs of crime writers? People other than (sorry must make this 2 Tweets)

  (LK)@mary_russell —than Dr Watson were telling Holmes stories even as the originals were coming out. Why do u think they felt that urge?

&n
bsp; (MR)@lklinger They admired Holmes. They wished to speculate about him. So they made up stories.

  (LK)@mary_russell That’s it? Just a desire for more?

  (MR)@lklinger Nicholas Meyer (your friend?) claimed that Dr Watson was such a great writer, others saw the stories as a challenge.

  (LK)@mary_russell But NM was explaining why he wrote his books & doesn’t speak for others. I’m not even sure I believe his excuse.

  (MR)@lklinger I said claimed. I met Meyer when he was young. I think he wrote them through frustration with a mere 60 published tales.

  (LK)@mary_russell Does it bother u that writers make up fictions about your husband? Some of their stories are pretty outrageous.

  (MR)@lklinger I was young when I realised that since Holmes was seen as fictional, by contagion I would be so viewed as well.

  (MR)@lklinger Thus I have lived a long life with one foot in the real world and the other in the world of being perceived as a fiction.

  (MR)@lklinger My own literary agent, Laurie King, claims that it is necessary to categorise my memoirs—mine—as novels.

  (MR)@lklinger And since I expect that you will now ask how that makes me “feel,” I will admit that the sensation of being fictional, is—

  (MR)@lklinger —is indeed peculiar. What our—Holmes and my—friend Neil Gaiman calls the sensation of being “the idea of a person.”

  (LK)@mary_russell Neil is one of those contributing to this current volume—which we’re calling A Study in Sherlock.