The God of the Hive (13 page)

BEEKEEPING is enjoyed by thousands, a reliable and safe hobby, practiced on week-ends alone from Oxford Street to Regent’s Park
.

A telegram was a more complicated proposition. I had not yet decided if the risk of a telegram to Lestrade was worth the slim chance that he
would actually issue a warrant for Brothers. Or if one to Mycroft would be the same as one directed to Scotland Yard.

Goodman returned bearing an enormous parcel, which he set with a resounding thump onto the kitchen table. Estelle hopped up and down as our resident St Nicholas unpacked the load: A change of stockings and shirts all around were, I supposed, required, as were the trousers and boots for Javitz, since he’d lost everything in the wreck, but my own pullover was far from unwearable (although the back of it was rather the worse for wear—the blood had washed out, but the darning was clumsy). Certainly I did not require a skirt, particularly one three inches too wide and two inches too short. And for a hermit to purchase not one, but two frocks for a small child was not only unnecessary, but foolish.

He saw my disapproval, and knew the reason. “The village is fifty miles from nowhere.”

“You don’t think the ’plane has been found by now?”

“You needed clothing,” he said firmly. “And here’s your
Times.”

He no doubt thought to distract me from the purchases at the bottom of the pack: a set of jackstones, collected in a red cotton bag, and a small soft doll that he slipped into Estelle’s hand. I’d have had to be considerably farther away than the clearing to miss her squeals of pleasure.

I gave up and carried the newspaper outside.

Monday, 1 September. I ran my eyes methodically down what Holmes called the agony columns of small adverts and messages. Two or three posts attracted my attention—one for the health benefits of honey, the other a notice for a ladies’ motoring school, since my skills at the wheel were a longtime source of criticism from my partner—but in the end I decided that neither held hidden meaning.

For lack of better entertainment, I read the paper all the way to the shipping news, paying particular attention to reports of a terrible earthquake in Japan—I hoped the friends we had made there in the spring were safe. I folded it neatly to give to Javitz, thinking that he, too, might appreciate a reminder that the outer world had not faded away.

But when I had finished, there was nothing for it but to go back inside and join my granddaughter’s dollies’ tea-party.

Complete with iced biscuits, bought for the purpose by an unrepentant wild man of the woods.

Tuesday morning, my head was clear and my bruises healing. Goodman was gone when we woke, but returned while the morning was young. Later, he and I set out together in the opposite direction from his previous day’s trek, leaving Estelle in the care of Javitz—or perhaps viceversa. I had spent the evening making adjustments to the skirt, thinking it might render me less noticeable than a pair of trousers with a ripped knee and ground-in soil, but it was not a garment readily suited for a rough walk through the woods, and I was forced to stop every few minutes to disentangle the tweed from a snagging bramble or branch.

I also noticed two more of the bent-branch booby-traps. Robin Goodfellow he might be, but this hermit had no intention of permitting others to come upon him unawares.

After five miles, we came to a high wall with a narrow metal gate. The gate was speckled with rust; the sturdy padlock was not.

“I need to go into the village alone,” I told him, brushing my skirt and checking that my boots were not too caked with mud.

“A woman by herself would stand out almost as much as a woman with me,” he said, pocketing the key and pushing open the gate.

I glanced at him, surprised at this perceptive remark from a man who showed less sign of interest in the mores and customs of the outer world than the hedgehog might have done. “By myself I can invent a reason for being there. With you, there’s no chance.”

“As you wish. How long will you be?”

“An hour at most. You’re certain there’s a telegraph office?”

“There’s a post office,” he replied. “It has a telegraph.”

“If the telegraphist isn’t off fishing or caring for his aged mother, you mean?”

“Buy some milk, for the child. And I think she needs another warm garment—”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” I said. “Look, you will be here when I return, right?”

“Or in the village.”

“Well, just wait half an hour before you come in. And if you see me, don’t give on that we know each other.”

I stepped out onto the road and marched into the village.

I was, I realised, in luck: The village was on a lake, and the lake was on the Picturesque Sites of Olde England tours. A steamer had recently deposited a load of earnest sight-seers, all of them wearing sensible shoes and clutching guide-books and pamphlets. I did not fit in, precisely, lacking hat, book, and earnest expression, but being one stranger in the vicinity of a dozen others made invisibility easier.

In the village shop, I gathered up three post-cards, a copy of the day’s
Times
, and a tin of travelling sweets, then stood in the queue to buy stamps. Once there, I enquired about sending a telegram. The rather befuddled but undeniably picturesque woman in charge of the village’s postal service admitted that there was a telegraphic device fitted to the shop’s post office, but suggested that I should be much better off to return across the lake to the town and use their service, because her husband, the man in charge of this daunting machine, had taken to his bed with a touch of the ague and was not to be disturbed.

This message was profusely illustrated with woe and took six long minutes to deliver. The queue behind me was now to the door. I was sorely tempted to clamber over the counter and tap out the message myself, but knew that this would not help my aim of invisibility. Besides which, the sharp sniff coming from her young assistant at the mention of
ague
suggested that the cause might be something other than germs.

So I waited until the postmistress had dithered to an end of her story, then batted my eyes at her and told her that I truly needed to send a telegram, now please, and it would be such a pity if I found I could not, because I should then have to speak to my uncle in the telegraphs office down in London and let him know that the village wanted attention.

She put up her window and fetched her husband.

I gave them both a sweet smile and let myself into the crowded back of the shop.

The man moved in a cloud of gin, freshly swigged in an (unsuccessful) attempt to steady his hands. I permitted him to run the first part of
the message, but in a short time he found himself eased to one side while this chipper female, twittering all the while about how her uncle had been amused to teach her Morse when she was a tiny thing, finished the dots and dashes.

This is the telegram I had decided to send, addressed to Mycroft:

ALL WELL COMING HOME SOON BUT ORKNEY BROTHERS REQUIRE URGENT ATTENTION STOP MESSAGES IN THE USUAL WAY WILL REACH ME STOP RUSSELL

It was a risk, but almost as much as the message about Brothers, I wanted to reassure him (and possibly, through him, Holmes) that we were safe. Besides, it gave nothing away other than its place of origin, and with any luck, we would be far away by the time Scotland Yard came looking.

I thanked the gentleman (who was now looking quite ill indeed) and went to pay his good wife. As I opened my purse, motion out of the corner of my eye had me looking out of the window, at Robert Goodman.

The shopkeeper noticed the direction of my gaze and hastened to reassure her dangerous customer with the powerful London relations. “Don’t worry about him, dearie, that’s just the local loonie. Perfectly harmless.”

One green eye winked at me through the glass. “You’re certain?” I asked.

“Absolutely. Mad as a rabbit, that one, but he pays his bills.”

I did the same, and left, but all I saw of Goodman was the brush of his coat as he went into the next shop.

Well, with Robert Goodman in the village, the residents would take no notice of me.

We met again where we had parted. Over his shoulder was slung another load of foodstuffs and fancies with which to ply his guests. I had
The Times
—which again had failed to yield a message from Holmes, or even Mycroft—and the post-cards and tin of sweets, bought for disguise.

Also, two small Beatrix Potter picture-books.

Chapter 23

B
y Tuesday, Sherlock Holmes was beginning to feel that a nice cosy gaol might be preferable to his current situation.

On Sunday afternoon, he’d been glad just to reach Holland, having spent the day on deck as Gordon’s crew, a sustained physical effort that made him all too aware of his age. He’d had little conversation with Dr Henning, once the decision was made to take refuge with the man she described as a second cousin, twice-removed. He’d had even less with Damian, who slept.

Their goal was a small fishing village roughly a third of the way from Amsterdam to the Hook of Holland. The place appeared, he had to admit, eminently suited as a hideaway—no one in his right mind would look for Sherlock Holmes there. Rumour of their presence might take months to reach England.

As they neared the coast-line, the doctor had come on deck to direct Gordon. She also informed Holmes that Damian was running a fever.

“Not much of one, yet, but it is essential that we get him to a place of quiet and stillness.”

“I have been trying to do that for two days.”

“I am not criticising, merely saying, he needs quiet.”

“And this cousin of yours can offer that?”

“Well, stillness certainly. Although now that I think of it, the quiet will depend on how many guests are in residence.”

He turned on her a raised eyebrow. “Guests?”

“Never mind. If the main house is full, he’ll put us in one of the cabins.”

“Dr Henning, it is not too late to—”

“No no, it’ll be fine, don’t worry. Eric regards himself as a patron of the arts. He’s very wealthy and quite a character. He’s also an expert on the American Civil War, and he occasionally stages re-enactments of the major battles. However, they never last more than a day or two. Of course, there’s also the artists. When Eric retired ten years ago, he decided the best way he might serve the arts was to provide a congenial place in which they might concentrate. So he bought up half this village, and invites painters and sculptors to live here while they are working.”

“This is most unfortunate.”

It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. “You object to artists?”

“By no means. But have you not discovered in the course of conversation with your patient that Damian is an artist?”

“Half the people in London regard themselves as artists,” she said dismissively. “Those that aren’t poets or playwrights.”

“Damian Adler is the real thing. He is, in fact, rather a well-known painter, among certain circles. A collective of artists is not an ideal place in which to keep him under wraps.”

“I see,” she said.

Holmes rubbed his face in self-disgust. When he was young, lack of sleep had only sharpened his faculties. Now, it only took two or three sleepless nights to turn his brains to cold porridge. He was soft, old and soft, and easily distracted by thoughts of bed and bath and how much he disliked this beard under his finger-nails.

Holland. What other choices were there? He had a colleague in Amsterdam—or not precisely a colleague: The man was a criminal who ran a series of illegal gambling establishments, but he had proved useful once or twice.

But trust the fellow? The temptation to sell Damian to the police might prove too great.

“We’ll have to keep Damian closeted, and avoid using his name,” he told the doctor. “As soon as he can be moved, we’ll be on our way.”

“I am sorry, I didn’t think to mention it.”

“The fault is mine,” he said in a tired voice, and went down to explain the situation to the patient.

Two hours later, they were nearing the mouth of a small bay. Holmes stood at the rail beside the doctor, watching the approach of a noble white house with several acres of lawn spreading down to the water and six small white cottages back among the trees. The whole resembled a plantation mansion, complete with slaves’ quarters, more at home in colonial Virginia than on the coast of Holland.

“That’s it. We can put in at the boat-house,” she said, and turned to call instructions to Gordon. That was something, at any rate: A boat-house would reduce their chances of being spotted, and of being asked inconvenient questions as to passports and permissions to dock.

When they had tied up, Henning stepped lightly to the boards and trotted off to the big house. When she was halfway across the lawn, a round man in a brilliant white suit came down the steps to greet her. She disappeared inside his embrace, then freed herself, straightening her hat as she gazed up at him. Explanations took but a moment before the man turned to the figures on the terrace behind him to wave orders. Three of the figures turned instantly away to the house, two of them returning with an object that, as they drew nearer, became a rolled-up Army stretcher.

Getting Damian up the boat’s tight companionway was tricky, but the servants managed. They marched away in the direction of the farthest white cottage, the doctor scurrying after.

Holmes, Gordon, and the second-cousin-twice-removed studied each other in bemusement. Holmes put out his hand. “Terribly sorry about this, we had a bit of an accident on this boat we’d hired, and your … Dr Henning said the best thing for it would be to inflict ourselves on you for a day or two, while the lad mends. Our good captain,” he continued, warming to the tale he was constructing—

However, the would-be plantation owner was not interested in the details of their presence. The rotund gentleman, who had been introduced as Eric VanderLowe, cut in, “Would you two mind posing for us?”

“Posing? As in, for drawing?”