The Language of Bees

  Husband and wife seemed to be on friendly terms (“I don't mean to say otherwise, if you see what I mean?”), although there was the occasional disagreement and some shouting, and from time to time the missus would pick something up and throw it at the wall—or at Damian—but he'd never respond in type. She'd never seen Damian hit or even threaten his wife, he just would look tired—“resigned, like, you know what I mean?”—and return to his studio.

  Judging by how the young woman talked about her employers, Yolanda was unaccustomed to servants, and thus alternated between overbearing and over-solicitous. Damian was more natural—“ever so nice, like”—but drew clear lines, not permitting Sally to set foot into his studio, for example, and remonstrating with her when she became distracted by a gentleman friend in the park one day, and let Estelle wander. Another man would have fired her outright, and she and I both knew it.

  She had spoken with the police, and told me what she had already told them, which was essentially the same tale Damian had given us: Friday's missing wife and Saturday's discovered letter. Sally had not been to the house since the police had taken possession on Sunday, so she could not say if her employers had returned.

  When I left, she asked if I thought she should be looking for another position. I could only say that I did not know.

  The chemist was less forthcoming. He did not think he ought to talk about prescriptions he had filled for others, not without their permission. So I took out the letter I'd written that morning, in a hand that resembled the writing in Millicent Dunworthy's desk, and repeated my tale: Aunt Millicent's accident, upending the “Mixture” into a basin of soapy water; her need for the prescription before she left with the church group to Bognor tomorrow, but her inability to get free from work; hence the letter.

  If he had her telephone number at work, I should have to make a quick escape, but he did not, and clearly, he did not know her handwriting well enough to tell it from mine.

  Grumbling, he filled and labelled a bottle, took my money, and declared that this would not be permitted again.

  Nodding meekly, I committed a criminal act in his ledger and left. On the street, I took the box of cachets from the brown paper wrapper: Veronal, a powerful barbiturate. There had been none in her medicine cabinet; however, ten or fifteen grains of this would be just the thing to knock out a woman, preparatory to murder.

  The hardest challenge would be Fortnum and Mason, where the customer is king and information is never freely bandied. If I could not prise what I needed out of them, I should have to pass the task to a certain friend, whose title would have the staff scraping the floor in their eagerness to serve. I wanted to avoid bringing him in, if I could manage on my own—the fewer who knew of the tie between Holmes and The Addler, the better, and this particular amateur sleuth would put the whole picture together in a flash.

  So I presented myself before the desk where picnic baskets might be ordered, and began talking in my most breathless and aristocratic manner.

  “There's this garden party, early next month, you see? And we could have the usual fizz and caviar, but really, where's the fun in that?” I blinked my wide blue eyes, and the gentleman could only agree. “So a friend, well, I suppose the secretary of a friend, but what does that matter? This friend's secretary—her name is Millicent, Millicent Dunworthy, isn't that extraordinary—she happened to order a picnic basket and then the two people it was originally intended for, something came up, who knows, and so she had the basket out on the desk, you see, for people to help themselves, because why let good food spoil? And I'd been out all night with Poppy—you know Poppy, you help with all her parties—and we stopped off to see my friend on the way home, and here was this open basket and I was famished, absolutely raving famished, so I had this little crusty thingmabob that was really quite, quite nice, and later when I was thinking about this garden party I'm doing I said to myself, Ivy—that's my name, you see-Ivy, that crusty whatsit would be just the thing. So I doddled along to talk to you about the chance of finding out what that thingmabob was, and can we maybe order two hundred or so of them? And the rest of the baskets, of course, one for each. And if you could put some nice things like peaches and a really good fizz and perhaps quails' eggs or something?”

  I blinked, waiting for him to pick his way through the fusillade of words, but he caught the idea of two hundred very expensive picnic baskets the moment it flew past him, and he smiled.

  He brought out the order book, located the name Dunworthy on the Monday previous, and produced a brochure which would tell me precisely what had been in the basket: The Vegetarian Epicure, it was called.

  My eye ran down the description, searching for anything that might qualify as the desired morsel, when near the bottom it caught on an item that made me blink.

  “Good heavens,” I said involuntarily.

  “Pardon?”

  “Oh, nothing, I just…” I pulled myself together and manufactured a frown. “You know, it wasn't Monday I saw the basket and tasted the crusty widgets, I'm sure it wasn't.”

  “No, madam, it was probably on Friday. The order was made on the Monday, but the lady specified that it would be picked up by her brother on the Friday.”

  I looked up, startled. “Her brother?”

  “Well, I assumed so. The name was Dunworthy. Perhaps I was mistaken. I thought she was considerably older than he, but then of course—”

  “Oh, her brother, yes. Tall young fellow, long hair—an artistic type?”

  “No,” he said slowly. “He was in his early forties, with ordinary hair. Not at all what I should call ‘artistic’ He had a scar near his eye,” he volunteered, laying a finger next to his left eye.

  “Oh, him,” I said. “Her other brother. I always forget about him, I've only met him the once. Did he have his wife with him? Pretty little Chinese woman?”

  “I didn't see anyone answering that description. Might I—”

  But before he could ask me why I was so interested in the brothers of a friend's secretary, I said, “But if they had that basket, then what could it have been I tasted?”

  He perused the list of contents before asking tentatively if it might not have been the strawberry tartlets, although clearly he'd been looking for something rather more exotic that had attracted my palate.

  “Oh, exactly! You clever man, it must have been those! Thank you for reading my mind, you have saved my entire party from the touch of the bourgeois. Shall I have my secretary telephone to you with the details? Yes, that's what I'll do, she's so much better than I, and now that I know what it was that put you in mind …” To his confusion, I was still talking as I went out of the door, the brochure firmly in hand.

  He might have been even more confused had he seen me come to a halt on the street outside, to look again at the brochure. Yes, I had read it aright: Included with the nut pâté and three flavours of cheese for afters was a packet of almond-and-oat biscuits, from Italy.

  A biscuit packet that currently lay on the work-table in Holmes' laboratory in Sussex, awaiting his attentions.

  So: A clean-cut man in his forties, with a scar beside his left eye, whose name was almost certainly not Dunworthy. Not only did this description in no way fit Damian Adler, it sounded like the man seen walking with Damian up Regent Street, the last time Damian was seen.

  Some day, I reflected, we should have to invent a means of actually locating a person based on a finger-print, as photographs were circulated to police departments now. Until that day, the prints a villain left behind were useful primarily in court, a nail of absolute proof in his coffin.

  The biscuit wrapper would have to wait in Sussex, until we had a print to compare to it.

  The Gods (1): Man teaches by story, the distillation of

  his wisdom and knowledge. The earliest stories are about

  the Gods, beings of inhuman strength and morality,

  yet also stupid, gullible, and greedy. The extremes of the

  Gods are where the
lessons lie, whether it be

  Greek heroism or Norse trickery.

  Testimony, III:3

  BEFORE LEAVING MYCROFT'S FLAT THAT MORNING, I had assembled a burglar's kit ranging from sandwiches to steel jemmy, wrapping the tools inside a dark shirt and trousers and tucking in a pair of head-scarfs—one bright red-and-white checked cotton, the other the sheerest silk in a subdued blue-green design-then placing the whole in an ordinary shopping bag. I had deposited the bag with the Left Luggage office at Paddington, knowing that dragging it around all day would tempt me to jettison some if not all of its weight.

  I went to Paddington now to retrieve it, then crossed town on the Underground to the accountants' office that had filled the “income” column of Millicent Dunworthy's personal ledger during recent months. It was a street that had, once upon a time, been a high street, in a building that began its life, three centuries earlier, as a coaching inn.

  The income listed in the ledger indicated a full working week. Since she had taken off most of the previous week's Monday to buy a frock, shoes, and picnic basket for Yolanda's rendezvous with death, I thought it unlikely that she would miss another day this soon.

  And I was right, she was there, her desk clearly visible from the front window. I found a café and had a coffee, then went into the booksellers' next door and spent some time with the new fiction at the front window. A book called A Passage to India so caught my attention that I nearly missed Miss Dunworthy's exit from the office across the way; when I looked up from the page, she was down the street and walking fast. I dropped the book and hurried after her, the checked scarf wrapped prominently around the brim of my hat.

  But she was merely going to the nearest bus stop. I slowed to a more casual gait and followed, head averted, trying to decide if she was the sort of woman who would climb to the upper level of the bus. If so, it would be difficult to hide from her. If not, I might manage to duck quickly up the stairs without her seeing me.

  And then what—leap from an upper window, when I saw her get off?

  Yes, if it came to that.

  Or I could engage a taxi now, and manufacture some story that justified following a city bus as it made its halting way through the town.

  A bus approached, its number identifying it as a route that meandered far out into the suburbs. Millicent Dunworthy stepped forward, and I pressed closer in her direction, slumping to reduce my height beneath the level of the gentlemen's hats and taking care to keep a lamp-post between us.

  She got on, and moved towards the front. I wormed my way into the queue, bought my ticket, and trotted up the stairs.

  It took several stops before I could claim a window seat with a view of the disembarking passengers, but by employing sharp elbows and a winsome smile, I beat an old woman out of her choice. Ignoring her glare, I removed the bright scarf from my hat and pushed it into the shopping bag on my lap.

  We travelled through endless London suburbs, with scores of stops and a constant flux of passengers, and still Miss Dunworthy did not appear below. I started to wonder if perhaps she had removed her hat—or changed her garments entirely, as I was equipped to do? Had she spotted me, and slipped past when I was trapped away from the windows?

  The bus churned on, with ever fewer passengers. Solid terraces gave way to groups of houses, then individual semi-detached dwellings. The first field appeared, and another cluster of houses, and finally, when I was the only person on the top of the bus, we stopped again, and Millicent Dunworthy climbed down. She turned to exchange a greeting with the conductor—they sounded like old friends—and I ducked down. Had she seen my head so quickly vanish from sight? When the bus started up again, I risked a glance: To my relief, she was not staring after us in puzzlement, but had set off in the other direction, beside a high brick wall with heavy vegetation inside. The wall was not a perfect rectangle, but left the road at odd angles to encircle an isolated country house that had no-one overlooking it.

  Just what I should want, were I up to no good.

  I wound down the stairs and told the conductor that I would get off at his next stop, which proved to be the village centre, half a mile down the road. I strode up the row of shops as if certain of my destination, but in fact trying to decide: linger here until dusk and risk missing something at the house, or go back and chance being seen?

  A sign on the other side of the high street decided me: Estate Agent, it offered; Properties to Let.

  The office was about to close, it being ten minutes to six, but I slipped in, unobtrusively deposited my bag on a chair near the doorway, and walked up to the man behind the desk, my hand already out.

  “I'm sorry, miss—” he began, but he got no further.

  Really, what could he do, faced with an enthusiastic young lady who pumped his hand and declared that he was just what she'd been looking for, she was the secretary to Lady Radston-Pompffrey who was looking for a large house to let for her American niece and family, who for some odd Colonial reason wished a place that felt as if it were in the country whilst at the same time they could be in Town without bother, and this appeared to be precisely the sort of area Lady R-P would approve.

  At the thought of what finding a large house for me could do to his monthly income, the gentleman settled back into his chair, apologised that he couldn't offer me a cup of tea but his assistant had already gone home, and took out his pencil to note the details of what the good Lady wanted for her American niece.

  Interestingly enough, what this fictional aristocrat wished matched quite closely what I had seen of the house behind the tall brick walls. His face fell.

  “Ah, well, I'm sorry you didn't come in last summer, we could have helped you there. Yes, I know the house you mean, and in point of fact, I acted as agent for it—the house is now under a two-year lease, not due to expire until November of 'twenty-five. However, I'm sure we can find—”

  “November, you say? Do you suppose the tenants might have tired of it by now? Perhaps I should pop in and ask them.”

  “No. I mean to say, I wouldn't recommend that, they made it quite clear that they were looking for privacy.”

  “Ooh, how mysterious. Local folk?”

  “A gentleman from overseas, I understand, although his agent was local. They hold meetings there, I think it's one of these new-fangled religious groups.”

  “Or perhaps they're Naturists, you know, prancing about the garden in the nude.” That served to distract him. “Have you met the man? I wonder if I know him? Lady R-P dabbles in Tarot and Spiritualism,” I confided.

  “Er, sorry? Met him, no—saw him once, nice-looking fellow, but I shouldn't think …”

  “Do you have his agent's name?” I asked, thinking, Please don't make me break in and go through your books.

  “Gunderson,” he answered absently. “Shady character, that one. Look, I've noticed ladies going into the property from time to time. You don't actually suppose they—”

  “I can certainly find out for you, through Lady R-P's friends. Gunderson, you say?”

  “That's right. I can't remember his first name, offhand. …”

  “Perhaps there's a file?” I suggested.

  He instantly stood up and went to his cabinets, coming back with a thin file that he opened on the desk—the poor man did not at all care for the idea of nude orgies taking place on a property for which he was responsible.

  “There, Marcus Gunderson, although the address he had is that of an hotel.”

  I looked over the paper. “You didn't ask for any personal recommendations?”

  “He said his employer was from overseas, and didn't want to wait for an exchange of letters. But the bank draught he gave me for the first year's hire cleared with no problem, and the house had stood empty far too long, the furnishings were suffering. So I let him have it.”

  “It was furnished, then?”

  “Completely. Well, such as it was. The old lady who owned it died and there's a question about inheritance, so I was ordered to
find a tenant until they can settle things legally.”

  I wrote down the names and the details of hotel and bank, but there was little to go on.

  Not expecting anything more, I said, “Can you tell me anything about the man you think might be behind this Gunderson chap? For Lady R-P's friends, that is—perhaps they'll know what he's up to.”

  “As I said, I never met him properly, but I've seen him driving through the village once or twice with Mr Gunderson. He's a tidy-looking gentleman of perhaps forty, dark hair, clean shaven.”

  “Well, thank—”

  “Oh, and he may have a scar on his face.”

  I looked at him, then raised my left hand and drew a line down from the outer corner of my eye. “Here?”

  “That's right—so you do know him?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “But you know of him—so tell me, is there anything—”

  “Absolutely not,” I said. The last thing I needed was for this earnest estate agent to thrust his nose into things. “He's absolutely straight, but as you know, very private, extremely shy, in fact. He's a—an inventor, and you can imagine how they are—he's been known to move out of a house overnight if strangers poke into his business.”

  The relieved estate agent, not questioning that my aristocratic employer should know a reclusive inventor, hastened to assure me that he wouldn't dream of disturbing the gentleman.

  I thanked him and said that, if he wanted to put together a list of appropriate residences, I should be by in a day or two to look at them. I retrieved my bag of burglary tools, and left.

  It was just after six; the brick wall around the house was too exposed for me to risk lurking there by daylight, with bare fields on three sides and a house with brutally manicured hedges across the way.