A Taste for Honey (18 page)

“Good night, Mr. Mycroft,” I said, sharply. I left him standing, slammed my gate, got into my house, went straight upstairs, and was safe in my bedroom before the energy given me by my outburst and the relief of being rude had worn off and I felt even worse.

I remembered that I had had no supper and it was quite time for it. But I couldn't even face going down to the larder. I felt that I should see Heregrove's face peering at me through the wire-gauze window. I took a warm bath, but the rushing of the taps made me dread I should not hear if there should come a step on the stairs. At last I was in bed, but if I have ever had a worse night I don't remember it.

When the light came, however, as so often happens, so provokingly, I did fall asleep. I woke, therefore, late, exhausted and vexed at hearing the disturbing noise Alice was making below. She might realize that this morning of all mornings, I reflected, I might be left, as she would say, to sleep it out. And then I realized that she could never know, must never know, must never have a suggestion of a suspicion. I must always be bright and cheerful and on time, for fear she and then others might begin to remark on how changed I was, how moping now: “Looks like he never slept a wink”; “And all since those days when he was all about with that queer Mr. Mycroft”; “Well, birds of a feather …”; “An you know that was exactly the time when he fancied himself into a fit over bees!”

I flung myself out of bed, pounding down heavily on the floor. Alice would thus know I was up and full of energy. I splashed about in the bath—that, too, would show vitality and also give her plenty to do mopping up and polishing down—lack of work makes gossips. Then downstairs, making, I thought, a pretty good entry as an active, rested man, ready to take up his own interests and business and able to tell others to mind theirs.

But Alice was evidently not impressed. In fact, she didn't seem to notice my carefully prepared carriage and poise. She was full of something else and, alas, I knew it, before she began: “Pore”—I must own the “dear” was omitted, but the “pore,” like a code-word, told me all. Yes, the milkman, she'd seen him herself as she'd been coming along and it was he who had found Heregrove. Stiff already, halfway up the garden path. Had called “Milk, O,” and Mr. Heregrove (disaster, I could not help noticing, had given him a “Mister”), who was always early, hadn't answered. So Alf had thrown a glance up the garden path. Couldn't b'lieve his eyes; why, black he was as the earth he lay on.

“Alice,” I said, “would you please make my bedroom now? I may have caught a chill and will probably go back to bed after breakfast.”

She left the room with that stiff rapidity which indicates deep offense. I had cut her off retailing first-class news. She, the semi-sacred bearer of almost first-hand evil tidings, was silenced. Well, at least she did not suspect how horribly prepared I had been for her news. I did go back to bed after breakfast. I wanted to lie and think undisturbed. It was clear that Heregrove was dead. I was safe. But the clearer it became that he was gone, the more tenuous seemed the risk which I had run while he was alive and the darker loomed the possible danger which I must now watch rise and hang over me—perhaps never to be dissipated—certainly beyond the power of any private, well-meaning, but really busybodying old gentleman to deliver me from.

About noon there was a ring at the bell. Alice knocked and entered with a look of muted triumph which at once added to my misgivings.

“Please, sir, Bob Withers, the policeman, would like to see you for a moment.”

I went downstairs, my heart sinking at every step. The village constable is not an awe-inspiring functionary. This one was as nervous as I, which was saying a great deal then. He had taken off his helmet and was passing it from one hand to the other, as though it were hot. He certainly was. After our mumbled good-mornings, he broke his message. It was about that there Mr. Heregrove. Perhaps I'd heard, perhaps not, but he was in the mortuary and as (here was the point) I had last been seen with him, it was wondered whether I could 'elp showing 'ow 'e came to his Hend.

It was preposterous that they should come to me when Mr. Mycroft had actually planned the visit and—but I must not ever even let my mind finish that sentence! Anyhow, I simply could not go through this alone. Only a little while ago in this abominable affair, I had foreseen myself driven into the lunatic asylum for life; now even such an end seemed an escape, a refuge, considering the alternative place where it seemed that a single slip of the tongue, a single thought aloud, would land me with—the best I could hope for—a life sentence!

My mind moved quickly, but I think my tongue was even quicker, for I heard myself saying, “Mr. Mycroft, of Waller's Lane, and I did visit Mr. Heregrove last evening. He had supplied us with honey. We spent a few minutes with him in his garden. He seemed quite well then.”

“Oh, if Mr. Mycroft was with you, sir, perhaps you'd come along of me while I get is statement, too.”

I saw that was quite the best thing in the bad circumstances and agreed. However much I did not want to see the old man, a time had come when he must carry us out of our common difficulty. It was his, really, more than mine, and anything which that cunning old brain planned to cover its own self and tracks would cover mine too.

On reaching his house we found him on his lawn. I felt as though he had been expecting us. He certainly showed no surprise, and nodded silently when Bob Withers told him that Heregrove had been discovered dead. We did not know whether he had heard the news before or not, and when asked for a statement, he simply remarked that he had seen the deceased the evening before and thought he seemed well.

Then he added, “I know, constable, you would like us to go with you to the magistrate to whom this case has been reported. Is it Colonel Treaves? Yes, I thought it was likely. He is generally on the spot. I can come along now.”

He picked up his hat which was lying on a chair near him and without a word to me walked along with Withers, I at the constable's other side.

Ten minutes took us to the magistrate's house. We were shown in at once to his study. A lean, athletic man of about sixty, I judged, he rose from his chair as we entered and put out his hand to Mr. Mycroft—he only nodded to me—saying, “It is kind of you to come over so promptly, sir. Always better to have a direct talk than get statements. But didn't want to trouble you, were you busy at the moment. I was informed that Mr. Silchester here and someone who accompanied him—and I suppose you were that person—last saw this man Heregrove alive?”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Mycroft. “We visited him, for he had supplied both Mr. Silchester and myself with honey.”

“Well, you probably know,” remarked Colonel Treaves, “his bees caught him—like Acteon, wasn't it, and his hounds, what?”

“Do you mean to say that he was attacked by his own hives?” asked Mr. Mycroft, with convincing interest.

“Well, I don't think there can be a shadow of doubt on that point. You may not know—think it was before you came to the village—but his wretched wife died the same way and the coroner then told him to have the bees destroyed. He said he would, too. He either disobeyed the court's order or the Heregroves must have had something about them that bees can't stand. Never liked either of them myself—and the man! Well,
nisi bonum
. He was certainly stung to death; the body is swollen and black as a ripe mulberry.”

That made me feel quite sick.

“All I would like to ask you gentlemen,” he continued, “is whether, when you called on him, he seemed well and in a normal frame of mind?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Mr. Mycroft. “I thought he was a queer customer and he was obviously a bit of a recluse, but he was certainly sane and healthy when we saw him, wasn't he, Mr. Silchester?”

“Oh, quite, quite,” was all I could say, and all it seemed that I was expected to say.

“We took a turn or two with him in his garden,” went on Mr. Mycroft. “It was impossible to judge on what terms he was with his bees, for they had retired for the evening. Perhaps we ran more of a risk than seemed apparent by calling on a man who was in such peril.”

“Perhaps so, perhaps so,” answered the colonel. “You never can tell. Bees are certainly queer beasts. In India I have known fifty people going down a lane. Suddenly from the sky will drop what seems a cloud of dust. It's a swarm of small, savage, forest bees. The swarm'll slump on one poor fellow, leaving unvisited everyone else. If there isn't a pool handy for him to be flung into, he may be dead in a few minutes and swollen like Heregrove's body. Some people say it's smell, but I don't believe anyone really knows. In India we say Bismillah—Allah's Will, and, after all, everything ends there finally.”

Chapter X

AS WE WERE?

And there, to my surprise, our fantastic mixture of adventure and persecution, of gratuitous attack and undetected counterattack, of scientific planning and Wild-West justice, came to an end. As suddenly as this typhoon had blown across the quiet track of my life, as suddenly it dropped. I live now in what I can only call a suspicious hush. We attended, more as honored guests than as summoned witnesses, the coroner's court. The coroner took the same view as the magistrate, with the added animus of, “Serve him right, disobeying my instructions.” He also ordered, with the pointless pleasure to himself of just exercising authority, but to my keen though concealed delight, the destruction of the Heregrove hives.

As we left the court, Mr. Mycroft, who had, till now, abstained from speaking to me, strolled along at my side until the small crowd had dissipated itself. Then he remarked quietly, “Unpleasant associations are not the best foundation for an acquaintance, but an adventure shared sometimes is. I realize that you have had many shocks during these days and that once or twice I had to push you harder than you found agreeable, if we were not to be caught in the Caudine Forks, with results which would have been disastrous. I think now, however, you will realize that the wood is behind, the pursuers are scattered.”

He seemed complacently assured. Perhaps it was the wish to find some adequate excuse for resenting his complacency and coolness, neither of which I could myself feel, that made me reply, “But what about our actual position? After all, whether we were really in such grave danger as we thought we can never be certain.”

He looked as though he were going to interrupt, but I was determined to have my say out. Not only had I been treated like a child throughout this whole affair, as though I could not be expected to have a clear judgment on matters which did concern me more than anyone else, but when we went to see Colonel Treaves I had been hurt at the way both men had behaved, again, as though I were a child. Now I would assert my rights and he should hear my considered opinion.

“What we can be sure of,” I continued, “is that we threw off what we took to be our pursuer by throwing him to his death. He may, at the worst, have intended to do no more than scare us. We certainly killed him. It is, I know, a nasty word, but it is better out and off my mind.”

Mr. Mycroft allowed himself a short sigh.

“No law in any country,” he said, slowly, “and I know something of the rules which men have made in attempting to save the innocent and helpless from the ruthless strong—no law would have given a cruel and calculating murderer the chances I gave him or would authorize the running of those risks which I took in order that he should have every opportunity, in fact, even a bribe, to turn him from his course. He was, you will remember, already a murderer and I was prepared, rather than take the line which all human justice has decreed, to treat his horrible, patiently-worked-out crime as a slip, as a bygone to be treated as something which had not taken place and not—as, alas, mankind is right in judging—as the fruit, and only the first fruit, of a long-nourished and now richly yielding root of evil.

The Romans with their legal minds were correct. I quoted the Latin judgment that day when we were discussing the evolution of venom in animals. It is certainly as true of us:
Nemo repente fuit turpissimus
, the murderer ripens more slowly than the saint—both are not accidents but achievements. Heregrove could not turn from his way, at the point where he crossed our path, even if the past were to be blotted out and the present to offer him a prize if he would only abstain from turning bloodshed into a business. He needed someone to bring home his crime to him, and that we could not do. We could only offer to deflect him. He would have gone on the same way in other fields.”

I broke in there. “But your offer was a sham!” I exclaimed.

It was the only time I saw Mr. Mycroft nearly angry. His face didn't change color or the expression alter, but I caught sight of some slight alteration in his eyes which I own made me positively scared. Somehow I had never thought of him as someone who might be fearsome. Helpful, amusing, irritating, managing, boring—yes, all these things, but never formidable. Yet that gleam—I can't call it a flash—was certainly very disconcerting. It seemed not so much as though one were looking at a man whom I was trying to provoke and who I suddenly realized, might strike back at me, but rather that I was suddenly looking through a porthole, through the eyeholes of a mask out onto something as cold, impersonal, and indifferent as an iceberg emerging from a mist and seen bearing down on my ship.

“I mean,” I rather stammered, “the letter was a fake. There was no offer for Heregrove, as a matter of fact, to accept?”

“You think then, that I did not really plead with that wretched man, caught in the toils of his own evil thought which had set until it became evil deed? Did not seek to make it possible, if it might be, that he should break out of his self-made trap? That I simply mocked him, pretending to hold out a helping hand and point a way out of the false dilemma he had caught and impaled his conscience on: ‘Murder or starve'? That I put on a piece of play-acting the better to amuse myself and you with an exposition of the skill with which I had trapped and deluded a fellow creature, even though he was our enemy and mankind's?”