The Language of Bees

  He dropped a roughly-bound parcel on the table beside the door, tossed his hat in the direction of a chair, draped his overcoat on the nearest sofa-back, and sat. Silently, I handed him a large brandy. When he had drunk that, I exchanged it for a plate of cold meat and tired salad. I thought he would refuse it, as I had, but he forced himself to take one bite, and soon was head down over the plate, tearing at the stale rolls with his teeth.

  I retreated into Mycroft's kitchen to make coffee, which took no little time since he'd got a new and highly elaborate machine for the purpose, a thing of glass and silver that looked as if it belonged in a laboratory. But I managed, without blowing anything up, and when I carried the tray out, Holmes looked less grey around the edges.

  I gave him coffee, with brandy in it, and sat down with my own.

  “When I was searching the house early Saturday,” he told me, “I noticed a package addressed to me, on a shelf in Damian's dressing room. At the time, I had no reason to remove it: Damian could give it to me when he chose. However, if Lestrade had come across it—and he would have, within minutes—the link between Damian and me would have made things exceedingly complicated. Without it, Lestrade will have to follow his usual channels of enquiry.”

  “But he'll trace Damian Adler to Irene Adler eventually.”

  “Not if Mycroft interferes.”

  “Oh, Holmes. A formal intervention will be a red flag to a bull. If Lestrade finds out you blocked his investigation, he'll never speak with you again.”

  “If Lestrade finds that I have a personal interest in this case, he will not only cut me off, he will actively harass me and dog my every step. Worse, he will pour all his efforts into Damian, and dismiss outright any information or suspects we may uncover. An invisible intervention means that the name Adler may catch his eye, but what does that matter? Irene's married name was Norton, and Adler is a common enough surname. If Lestrade sees no link, then I appear to be merely looking into the death of a woman, and he will see no reason to hamper my investigation. No, it's best if the information simply ceases to exist.”

  I studied him. I had known Holmes to be unscrupulous, even cold-hearted when it came to manipulating others for the sake of an investigation, but this was personal. Frankly, I hadn't thought him capable of that.

  Except, perhaps, to protect me.

  And now, Damian.

  I did not like it: Holmes had been known to act as judge, jury, and very nearly executioner, but never had he done so without cost to himself.

  He put down his half-empty cup and examined it minutely. “He has nightmares. Damian. Night after night he wakes, drenched in sweat, shivering. He must have the lights on, needs the windows open wide, even in the winter. From his words, and from his art, I believe he dreams of trenches whose walls are crumbling in on him. Of being at the bottom of a well, looking up at a circle of stars. Of being in the hold of a ship and hearing the scrape of collision. Of being buried alive in a casket.

  “The key element is enclosure. A horror of being closed in, locked up, kept from the sky. I believe it may be why he so often paints the sky.” He sighed, and dry-scrubbed his face. “Russell, Damian Adler is a damaged man on a solid foundation. His wife's death will threaten everything he has built. If his daughter is gone as well, I do not know if he will recover. Locking him away would guarantee that he does not. If he is arrested, I fear for his sanity. And they will arrest him, if they find him. I must maintain open communication with Lestrade so I know what they are doing, and so I can find Yolanda's murderer for them. Because you know that Scotland Yard will not look beyond Damian.”

  I said nothing; he raised his eyes to mine. They were set with unwavering intent.

  “Damian did not kill his wife,” he said flatly.

  “Holmes, you can't—”

  “I must. He did not kill her. Yes, he is capable of killing—which of us is not?—but not this murder. Not a cold-blooded slaughtering of his wife and his child.”

  I looked into his grey eyes, and slowly nodded. “All right.”

  The tension seeped out of him, and he got up to retrieve the parcel he had left beside the door. As I watched him cross the room, I reflected that in any other man, the relaxation would have been from relief, that he had talked his wife into agreement.

  I knew him too well to think that. Tension in Holmes was not the sign of a disagreement with others—even me—but with himself. I must, he'd said. He had to believe that his son did not do this dreadful thing, and I, for the moment, had to go along with that decision.

  But that did not mean I had to believe it as well.

  He put the flat package on the table in front of me. “I hadn't time to fetch the book you wanted. We'll go back, when the police are no longer in possession.”

  This, too, was a book, wrapped in brown paper and bound in twine. The twine had been cut and re-tied, the paper inattentively wrapped; faint indentations on the paper suggested that it had sat for weeks, if not months.

  It was a beautiful volume, leather-bound and tooled with gilt with the name Damian Adler on the front.

  When I opened the book and saw what it contained, I knew why it had taken Holmes so long to return to Mycroft's this evening.

  “Did he tell you about this?” I asked.

  “He never mentioned it. I expect he had it made some time ago, intending to send it to me when we returned.”

  “And he would hardly bring it with him to Sussex, considering why he came.”

  “No.”

  It was a book of Damian's sketches and watercolour paintings, mounted and magnificently bound. None was larger than eight inches by six; some were intricate pen-and-ink drawings, others leisurely pencil outlines. The watercolours had a wistful, autumnal air to them, even those clearly showing spring. None of the pieces had moons or trenches; none of them was done in the style he used now. One watercolour of Irene Adler in a garden chair was stunning.

  “What is this cottage he's done several times, the one with the pond in the garden?”

  “His mother's house, outside of Paris in Ste Chapelle.”

  “Where he was born.”

  “Yes. I went to see it that day, after we'd seen him in gaol.”

  I turned the page, and recognised the ivy-draped face of the Ste Chapelle gaol. A tall, thin, middle-aged Englishman filled the doorway, his face in the shadows.

  I reached the end, and turned back to the first page, considering. On the surface, the book was a son's demonstration to his father of skill and personal history. But there was more to it than that.

  Take this first drawing: a portrait of Irene Adler. Holmes' other album also began with her, as a woman beautiful and filled with life; here, she was still lovely, but it was the ethereal beauty of a woman ground down by troubles. She seemed to be contemplating a deep well of sadness within. Had that particular woman ever borne that expression? Had Irene Adler ever been ethereal?

  The next sketch, showing a dark-haired little boy on a deserted beach, had a similar air of loneliness to it.

  And, looking more closely, the man in the doorway of the gaol was unnaturally rigid, cold amidst the warmth of old stone and luxurious vines.

  No: This was not a collection of work brought together to please a father. The paper was the same, beginning to end: Each piece had been done expressly for the purpose of this book.

  For what? So that Damian could come home to lay his accomplishment at the feet of a father he hoped to know? Or so he could shove his hard life and his current success into his father's face? The overkill of the book, so ornate the binding nearly overshadowed the art within, made one aware of anger in its beauty.

  The book had been designed to make Holmes wince.

  I closed the cover and looked at Holmes. He was slumped into the chair, outstretched ankles crossed, eyes shut. This was not the moment to address the question of filial affection.

  “Do you really—” I started, but he cut me off.

  “He did not anticipate liking
me,” he said. “It galled him, to ask for my help, but he put his feelings aside because he loved his wife. Three days in my company changed him. I'm not certain he would have given me that book, in the end.”

  “Do you think you can keep Lestrade from finding out that Damian is your son?”

  “All it requires is inefficiency and misfiled information. Mycroft can arrange that.”

  “I hope you know what you're doing, Holmes.”

  One grey eye came open. “My dear Russell,” he said lightly, “I have been deceiving the official police since before you were born. At that art, I am the expert.”

  The Elements (2): The man learned to manipulate

  the Elements. As his Guide had taught him to control the

  weak, now his inner Guide led him in turning the

  Elements to his divine will.

  Testimony, II:6

  WE TOOK OUR INNOCENT FACES TO NEW SCOTLAND Yard bright and early on Monday morning, and were only kept cooling our heels for half an hour before Lestrade came to lead us into his office.

  The newspaper headlines that morning had read: Third Outrage in Prehistoric Monuments, with details of Yolanda's death, but not yet her name.

  “Mr Holmes,” Lestrade said, his joviality forced, but still a relief: He did not suspect that there might be a link between our presence and the young woman whose search for Yolanda Adler on Saturday had led to his presence on Burton Place last night. “Sorry to have missed you yesterday, I was told you had been by. Did you get the message I left with your brother?”

  “I did, although not until late. Has the dead woman in fact been identified?”

  “Oh yes,” he said over his shoulder, “there's no doubt. Her husband is missing, and their child.”

  “A child as well? How unfortunate. Do you expect to find all three dead?”

  “I expect to find that he killed her and fled the country with the child. He's foreign, you know—or anyway, only English on paper.”

  “Of course, it is so often the husband, particularly with foreigners. I don't suppose you have such a thing as a motive?”

  “He's an artist, Mr Holmes, a dyed-in-the-wool Bohemian. Probably a Bolshevik as well, most of them are.”

  “Yes, that certainly explains it. You are doing an autopsy?”

  “Later today, yes, although there's little question as to the cause of death.” We'd reached his office; he held the door.

  “So I understand, however, the possibility of drugs …?”

  “Was she involved in drugs?”

  “How should I know that?” Holmes said in surprise. “I don't even know who she is, merely that she was found near the Long Man.”

  “She doesn't look much like a drugs user.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of sleeping-tablets.”

  Lestrade's suspicion faded. “But even if we find that she was up to her pretty eyebrows in cocaine, it makes no difference in the investigation.”

  “It might point you to suspects other than the husband,” I interjected before Holmes could bristle.

  “Ah, Mrs—er, Miss Russell, you're looking well. I see you have joined the smart set. The hair-cut,” he explained.

  “Chief Inspector Lestrade,” I replied, holding out my hand.

  “Er, do sit down. Now, Mr Holmes, explain again your interest in this woman?”

  “In fact, it is the pattern I am investigating.”

  “Yes, I wondered if that might not be the case. The ‘pattern’ is a figment of a newsman's imagination. Evidence suggests that the suicide at Cerne Abbas was just that, and Stonehenge was random violence among a group of religious nut-cases. Next you know, they'll be mounting a campaign to set guards over that white horse up in Oxfordshire and along the length of Hadrian's Wall. Anything to sell papers.”

  “And yet I see you have the two files out on your desk. Shall I look them over, and let you know if anything in particular catches my eye?”

  From Lestrade's expression, he was remembering Holmes' habit of taking over his investigations, if not his life. No doubt he would have preferred us to stay in America.

  “I don't know that I should permit that,” he began.

  Holmes studied his finger-nails. “I can, if you wish, summon recommendations from your chief, or the Lord Mayor, or the Prime Minister, or even—”

  The Chief Inspector gave a sigh of resignation. “That won't be necessary, Mr Holmes. I need not remind you not to remove anything from either of these files, and not to speak of the cases to others.”

  “Of course. But, may I ask, was there in fact a ram found, in Cumbria?”

  We both stared at him. “A ram?” Lestrade demanded.

  “Yes, there was a—”

  “You think Scotland Yard investigates dead livestock?”

  “Only if there is—”

  “Mr Holmes, I have never lived outside of London, but even I know that sheep die sometimes, and that foxes and dogs eat them. No ram was slaughtered.” Lestrade's chair squealed back. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have an investigation to run, and I'd like to keep one step ahead of the papers. Artists,” he declared, shaking his head as he put on his hat. “Interviewing artists makes me bilious.”

  Rather to my surprise, he did not plant a uniformed constable over us, to ensure that we did no mischief to his office.

  “How long before he suspects, do you suppose?” I asked Holmes in a low voice.

  “That you and I were both looking for Yolanda Adler long before she died? He will know by the time he has interviewed the neighbours.”

  “What do you suggest we tell him then?”

  “I suggest we keep out of his way until he is no longer interested in the question,” he replied, and opened the older, thicker file. But first, I had to know:

  “What was that about a ram, Holmes?”

  “Found last spring, at a stone circle in Cumbria called Long Meg and her Daughters.”

  “Was that in the paper this morning? I didn't see it.”

  “You did not read the letters.”

  “Oh, Holmes, not another outraged farmer?”

  He did not answer me. There were times I had some sympathy for Lestrade's opinion of Holmes' techniques. I pulled towards me the crisp, new folder labelled with the name of Yolanda Adler, and gingerly opened the cover.

  I was grateful that it did not yet contain the details or photographs of the autopsy, although it did have a sheaf of photographs from the hillside where she had been found. Her frock was indeed beyond repair, and I supposed that if I were faced with that garment, I might be tempted to rid myself of its unfortunate juxtaposition of sprigged lawn and dried gore.

  When I had finished with the thin offering, Holmes pushed across the section of the Fiona Cartwright file that he had read. I picked up the pages with interest.

  Fiona Cartwright was a forty-two-year-old, unmarried secretary and type-writer, originally from Manchester. She had moved to Poole shortly after the War when her employer, Fast Shipping, opened a branch there. When the owner, Gordon Fast, died in 1921, the business was sold and Miss Cartwright was replaced by a younger woman.

  Since then, she had worked at a series of secretarial jobs, and the previous summer had registered with an employment agency that had placed her in eight temporary positions during the autumn and winter months. The agency had arranged an appointment for Miss Cartwright with a new client, Mr Henry Smythe, on Monday, 16 June, but never heard back from Miss Cartwright to say whether or not she had taken the position.

  Mr Smythe was a salesman travelling in paper goods, from “somewhere in the north” (according to the agency), who telephoned from an hotel in Poole requesting secretarial assistance for the two or three days he was in town, specifying (again, the agency) “a lady who was not too young and flighty.”

  Mr Smythe had not been heard from again: A note at the bottom, dated that morning, indicated that Lestrade had ordered an enquiry into Smythe's company and his whereabouts.

  Miss
Cartwright's brother, still living in Manchester, described his sister as “down” over the lack of permanent employment and “troubled” by her dull future, although very recently she'd written a rather odd letter home about the importance of heavenly influence on human life. “She liked funny old religious things,” he said. “I thought she meant that the tides of fate were turning, and that she'd get a job soon.”

  Reading between the lines, even Fiona Cartwright's brother believed it was a suicide.

  The description of the autopsy was cursory, spending less time on describing the path of the single bullet than it did the presence of the weapon beside her, and agreeing that the verdict should be suicide. Stomach contents were dismissed as “normal,” whatever that meant, and the state of her epidermis was similarly categorised with the incongruous phrase “no signs of violence.” There was, however, one oddity: She had a deep cut in the palm of her left hand, unbandaged and fresh.

  Holmes flipped over the covers of Yolanda Adler's file.

  “What do you make of that cut on Fiona Cartwright's hand?” I asked him.

  “The coroner seems to think she received it in a fall climbing to the place where she died. With no photographs, no details of the scene, not even the question of whether her clothes were blood-stained from the cut, all we can conclude about her death is that the coroner is incompetent. Shall we go?”

  I put the Cartwright file together, then glanced at my watch. “I'd like to see about the shoes Yolanda wore, before Lestrade gets around to it. The shop should be open.”

  “And I must compose an anonymous letter to Damian's lawyer in Paris, advising him that the police may call. Shall we meet back at my brother's?”

  “How about the Café Royal instead?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “We shall have our passports stamped for Bohemia. At one o'clock, then, Russell.”

  On foot and by sardine-tin omnibus, my steps took me out of Westminster and past the Palace to the Brompton Road again, although not as far down as the meeting room for the Children of Lights.