The Language of Bees

  The garret she worked in, four sagging flights up from street level, was intended to house servants, not to support a ton and a half of scrap iron. I started to follow the two inside, then spotted the object in the middle of the floor and stopped dead. Surely it was my imagination that put such a dip to the floorboards?

  “I call it ‘Freedom,’” Alice told me with pride. The sculpture appeared to have some vague representational basis, but whether the extremities were the arms of a number of women strewing chicken feed, or the legs of war horses, I could not tell.

  “It's autobiographical,” Ronnie added. “Where's the corkscrew?” Since he was pawing through a drawer at the question, I thought he was not asking about a component of the sculpture.

  “Bunny was using it this morning to score the pots before she put them in the kiln.”

  Lord, a kiln as well? “Are there people underneath us?” I asked.

  “Just Bunny, and she won't hear us,” Alice assured me, which hadn't at all been what I was asking.

  “How …” I stopped, at a loss for words.

  “How am I going to get it out? The back wall is merely brick and tin, I'll invite a bunch of friends over to bash out a hole and help lower it down.” She seemed proud that she had already solved that problem.

  “Honestly, are there people living below? Because I really don't think the floorboards are sturdy enough to support your … vision.”

  This struck the two as funny, and they began to giggle. Ronnie set off across the room, aiming for a bottle that sat on a long, high work-table, only to have his orbit pulled towards the monumental piece of art—no, the dip in the boards had not been my imagination.

  “We're the only ones here, us and Bunny,” Alice finally answered. “She owns the building, in fact, although her father is taking her to court to force her to sell it to cover some bills. But if the old man succeeds, we've told him he'll have to knock it down with us inside.”

  It didn't look to me as if he'd have to wait for the end of a court case to see the demolition of the building, but I was relieved that there were no families sleeping beneath us.

  “I'm not altogether certain I don't own the building,” Ronnie said, addressing the bottle with whose cork he had begun to wrestle.

  “The law is so patriarchal,” Alice commented to me.

  “Er,” I said.

  “The husband has rights to his wife's possessions,” she explained.

  “So, Ronnie is married to Bunny?”

  “Bunny isn't her name, of course,” Alice said blithely. “We called her that after she proved so enthusiastic about—”

  “Alice!” Ronnie chided.

  She giggled again, and finished the sentence. “—about reproducing. Three children in four years indicates a certain enthusiasm, don't you think? But yes, she and Ronnie and I are married. Does that shock you?”

  I was not about to confess to any shock at the doctrines of free love, but I did go back to my initial concern with renewed urgency.

  “Are the children living here?”

  “Not at the moment. Bunny's mother wouldn't have it, and came to take them away.”

  I breathed more easily; at least I didn't have the safety of innocents on my hands.

  Ronnie cursed at the bottle; Alice propped her elbows on the high table to observe his struggles. I followed gingerly, keeping to the very edges of the room. The cork had come apart, so Ronnie jammed the remnants inside with a carving tool, then picked up the nearest glass, which bore both lipstick and food around its rim. He splashed some wine and cork bits into the glass and set it down in front of me. I raised it gingerly to the vicinity of my lips—although, from the raw smell rising out of the glass, any contamination would be well and truly sterilised.

  “When did you meet the Adlers?” I asked bluntly. It had been a long day, and I figured these two were in no condition to require subtlety.

  “The winter sometime.”

  “It was at the Epsteins' Christmas party, remember?” Ronnie said.

  “Jacob Epstein gave a Christmas party?” I asked.

  “It wasn't so much a Christmas party as a party at Christmas,” Alice explained helpfully. “His wife gave it to show that she wasn't still angry at Kathleen. You know Jacob's wife, Margaret? She took a shot at one of Jacob's lovers last year, when she found out Kathleen was pregnant, although she'd been perfectly willing to raise the little girl he had by someone else five or six years before. She's usually perfectly content to let Jacob's lovers live with them, but for some reason she took against Kathleen. Anyway, that's settled now.”

  Heavens, my life was dull. “So that was when you met Damian and Yolanda?”

  “Yolanda wasn't there, was she, Ronnie?”

  “Wasn't she?”

  “No, I remember because Damian couldn't come out with us to the country after the party, he had to be home because Yolanda would murder him if she heard he'd left the child by itself. It must have been when they first got here—that's right, there was some nonsense about finding a nanny. Children are so tedious, aren't they? Why can't one just leave them to their own devices?”

  “Was Yolanda away, then?”

  “Something religious, wasn't it?” he said, remembering.

  “Probably,” she agreed.

  “I do remember now. You wanted him to come along because you hoped you could get him into bed.”

  Alice laughed and shot me a glance; I braced myself for further naughtiness. “Really, it was Ronnie who wanted to have a fling with him, and was hoping I'd join in. I would have, too.”

  “I don't blame you,” I said evenly. “Damian is very attractive.”

  “Have you—”

  “No,” I said, my response a shade too quick. “No, I have not. Nor with Yolanda,” I added, to restore my Bohemian bona fides.

  “Neither have we. He turned us down, first one, then the other. Not that I've given up on him—he has a dark side one can practically taste.”

  “Er, what do you mean by dark side, exactly?”

  “Oh, Damian comes across as the wholesome boy, married to one woman, a daddy even, but when one comes to know him, the darker impulses are there. I mean to say, just look at his paintings.”

  I had to agree that wholesome was not the first word one would choose to describe The Addler's paintings, but I couldn't tell if Alice actually knew something about Damian's “dark” side, or if this was merely romantic twaddle from a spurned woman.

  “He keeps his temper under control,” I ventured.

  “One would hardly know he has one, most of the time,” she agreed, which exchange got me no further.

  I had taken but a single sip from the glass in my hand, but either the alcohol was strong or the conversation itself was dizzying. I put the glass down, caught it as it tipped, and moved it to a flatter place on the edge of a sheet of gravy-smeared newspaper, the remains of someone's lunch. Perhaps several days' lunches. Ronnie stretched out a hand and absently broke off a bit of crust from a dried-up stub of beef pie, ignoring the mouse droppings scattered around it. I shuddered, and would have averted my eyes except they were caught by a word on the gravy-smeared newsprint: Sussex.

  Alice asked if Ronnie had picked up the eggs and bread she'd asked him to get, and he declared that it wasn't his job, causing her to retort that she was hungry, and they fell to wrangling about whose responsibility it had been to stock the pantry. Since I had no intention of putting any morsel of this household's food into my mouth, I idly nudged the wad of crust to one side, the better to see what event in the nation's placid southland had caught the attention of the afternoon paper. I read:

  MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN SUSSEX

  The body of a young Oriental woman in city dress has been found at the feet of the Wilmington Giant on the South Downs, near the busy seaside resort of Eastbourne.

  Although the Giant is a popular landmark for country ramblers, Police say that the woman was wearing a summer frock and light shoes, inadequate for the footpaths
that lead into the prehistoric si

  This is the second death to

  following the suicide at Cerne A

  The rest of the article was glued to obscurity by brown gravy.

  I ripped the page from the table and held it out to my companions. They fell silent.

  “I must go,” I said. “May I have this?”

  Alice looked at the torn, grease-spotted sheet in my hand and made a gesture to indicate I should help myself.

  I turned for the door, felt as much as heard the beams creak from below, and hastily veered back to the walls. At the doorway I paused to look at the two, staring after me in bewilderment and, perhaps, disappointment.

  “You really mustn't put any more weight onto those floorboards,” I urged them. “It's an awfully long way to the ground.”

  Silence followed me all the way down the stairs.

  The Spark (1): The ancients spoke of a divine spark

  within every individual, no matter how mean, a spark

  that might be nurtured, fed, and coaxed into open flame.

  Testimony, II:3

  BY DINT OF PLANTING MYSELF IN FRONT OF A PASSING taxicab with another of Holmes' guinea coins gleaming in my outstretched palm, I reached Victoria and was sprinting across the platform—folding up the sagging waist of Holmes' trousers as I ran—just as the last southbound train of the night was gathering itself for departure. The conductor glared in disapproval, but I was hardly the first dishevelled latecomer to crash through his doors on a Saturday night, and since my lip colour had long since worn off, he no doubt thought I was just another young man in fancy dress.

  I subsided into my seat, plucking sadly at my costume, and remembered the parcel of nondescript ladies' wear in which I had begun this extraordinarily long day. Would I ever see it again, I wondered, or would it be buried under a mountain of rubble and brick? Or become nesting material for the mice?

  And with that profound thought, I fell asleep. However, twenty minutes later, I was wide awake again, staring out of the window as I considered the implications of this southward flight.

  I was being absurd. I had no reason to think what I was thinking. On Friday night I had been visited by an irrational, groundless fear born of solitude and dark thoughts and—yes, admit it—envy. My husband's son, that handsome, magnetic, hugely talented, and utterly fascinating young man, had walked into our lives and effortlessly spirited Holmes away. I had read his dossier and pictured him as a killer; my mind was too ready to build a gallows out of smoke.

  But this was Holmes, after all. Sherlock Holmes did not fall for the easy patter of a confidence man. He did not mistake plausibility for truth, loyalty for moral rectitude, or need for necessity. He would see that we had to question Damian, and we would do so, and when we had established that he had an acceptable alibi, we would proceed with the investigation.

  Assuming, that is, that this dead woman at the Wilmington Giant proved to be Yolanda. Which no doubt it would not.

  I stared at the passing countryside as the train covered the slow miles south, pausing at every small town before jerking back into life. I thought about getting off in Polegate, the station nearest the Giant, but there would be little benefit to shivering out the hours until dawn in the open instead of in my own bed. So I stayed on the train to its terminus of Eastbourne, where I was fortunate enough to find a taxi-cab with the driver snoring behind the wheel. Two other passengers and I looked at each other, and in the end, the driver looped through the suburban villas to drop them at their doors before turning for the Downs, and home.

  I had him leave me at the end of the drive, not wanting to wake Mrs Hudson with the sound of wheels on gravel in the wee hours of the morning. I walked along the verge in the bright moonlight, listening to the engine noise fade and the ceaseless downland breeze rise to take its place.

  The house was locked, as I expected. I used my key and stepped inside—then my head came up in surprise: The odour of tobacco was considerably fresher than five days old. A small creak of descending weight on the stairs confirmed it: Holmes was home.

  He stood on the landing, his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown; the touch of his eyes, running with amusement across my person, was an almost physical thing.

  “A pity,” he remarked in a mild voice. “I was rather fond of that suit.”

  I gazed ruefully down at the sagging trousers with their well-scuffed hems. “I'll buy you another one. Holmes, where have you been?”

  “I might ask the same of you.”

  “Is Damian with you?”

  “I have not seen him since Friday. You've come from London?”

  “The last train.”

  “I thought I recognised the sound of the motor. Harry Weller's cab, was it?”

  “Yes, although his brother was driving tonight. Holmes, did you—”

  He put up one hand, and came the rest of the way down the stairs. “I suggest you go up and draw a bath. I shall bring you tea and a slice of Mrs Hudson's unparalleled squab pie. We can talk afterwards.”

  I was abruptly aware of how simultaneously ravenous, parched, and filthy I was. “Holmes, you're a genius.”

  “So I have been told.”

  The water was hot and plentiful; the tea was the same; the pie, although it gave me a brief frisson of unease at its evocation of mouse-gnawed scraps on a newspaper, was of sufficient excellence to make the comparison fade away. Replete and cleansed if not exactly easy, I wrapped myself in a robe and went into the bedroom. There I found Holmes gazing out of the bedroom window, pipe in hand.

  I walked over to lean against his shoulders.

  “I see you fastened your mother's mezuzah on the door,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He allowed his weight to push back, to the balance point where we held each other upright.

  “You heard of the body at the Giant?” I asked after a while.

  “I did.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “They took it to Lewes. When I rang there, it proved too late to reach the coroner's offices. Why do you ask?”

  Why indeed?

  If any question was heavy with unvoiced consequences, it was that one. On the surface, it was obvious why I should wonder if this particular dead Oriental woman might not be the missing Yolanda Adler. Below that, the responses waited to pour forth like the plagues from Pandora's box: Why should a dead Yolanda Adler be found virtually at our doorstep, if it weren't her husband who left her there? Why had Holmes not given me a full answer, but side-stepped the key detail of what time on Friday Damian had left him? And why had I not immediately asked him what time? Why was Holmes not treating the husband as suspect, unless that possibility was one he could not bear to consider?

  I found that I had detached myself from his comforting shoulders; to cover my involuntary retreat, I went to the dressing-table and took up my brush, passing it through my damp hair, unwilling to voice my thoughts. What were my thoughts, anyway, other than the stark awareness that, if Holmes were able to give his son an alibi, it would have been the first words out of his mouth?

  “The newspaper described the woman as ‘Oriental,’” I began.

  “Which is precisely why I intend to see her, at the earliest possible moment.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I was told the coroner would make himself available at ten o'clock. It's Huxtable; I've met him once, was not hugely impressed.”

  “I'm sorry to hear that. Could we also look at where they found her? It's been a while since I last visited the Giant.”

  “Do you wish to take the motor-car?”

  “It would be easiest.”

  “The quickest, certainly.” Holmes had resigned himself to my driving, over the years, but he had never developed an affection for it.

  “Good. Now tell me, what were you doing in London this past week?”

  “Crawling through the sewers.”

  “Literally?”

  “Figuratively,?
?? he answered, which was something of a relief. “Tuesday we searched the hospitals, morgues, and clinics, and started on her known friends. Wednesday we made the rounds of all the churches that Damian could recall her mentioning—an exhausting number, as it proved. Thursday… Thursday we visited bawdy houses.”

  “Bawdy—houses of prostitution, you mean?”

  “Starting at the top and working our way down.”

  “Why should she have gone there?”

  “Russell,” he chided.

  “Oh, yes, I realised from the start that she'd probably been a … professional herself, but I shouldn't have thought anyone would wish to return to that life once they got out.”

  “Not the life itself, but certain elements. Money—”

  “But Damian was making money.”

  “—drugs.”

  “Yes,” I said reluctantly. “But she had the child with her.”

  “That being precisely why I did not investigate those houses that specialise in children until Damian was no longer with me, on Friday.”

  “Oh, Holmes. You can't imagine …” I found myself unable to complete the sentence.

  “At this point, I know so little about Yolanda Adler, I may as well be working blind.”

  “Holmes, no mother would—”

  “Damian thought it possible that his wife had left the child with a friend while she went away, and although a woman would be mad to hand a small child over to a stranger while there was a loving father at home, I pretended to agree with him that it was a possible scenario. I don't think I need to tell you that mothers have been known to … act irresponsibly.”

  Of course they did. If Yolanda had grown tired of the child, or been led astray by a seducer, or tempted by money, or … My stomach went suddenly queasy around Mrs Hudson's cooking, and the air from the open window felt cold.