The Language of Bees (27 page)

“Not in so many words, no. Although he did agree that it was possible the lack of proximity to another hive might have contributed to its extinction.”

“Loneliness alone does not drive a creature mad, Russell. However, I freely admit that an excess of royal benevolence is not a diagnosis that would have occurred to me. One can hope that Miranker’s replacement queen proves sufficiently ruthless. Do you suppose Lestrade will be at the Yard today, or ought we to hunt him down at his home?”

“He might be at work, although you’d have to conceal your identity to have him admit it over the telephone.”

“True, the cases which have brought me into his purview have tended to demand much of his time. The same, now that I think of it, might be said of his father before him.”

The younger Lestrade had followed his father into the police, then New Scotland Yard, and thus inevitably into contact with Sherlock
Holmes. I had seen a considerable amount of Lestrade the previous summer, during a complicated and ultimately uncomfortable case involving an ancient manuscript and modern inheritances. I doubted he would relish the opportunity of working with either of us again this soon.

“Do you suppose they will look into the meaning of her blisters?” I asked him.

“I should doubt it.”

“But you don’t wish to tell them who she is?”

“I intend merely to say that this is a Sussex crime I have been asked to investigate by an anonymous party, no more.”

“Holmes, if you—”

“I will not come to their aid in this matter,” he snarled. “There is too much here I do not yet understand.”

“Well,” I said, “if I can find where the shoes came from, I might find who bought them for her.”

“Is that a line of enquiry you can begin today?”

“I can start, but the shops themselves will not be open.”

“Do what you can. In the meantime, I shall hunt down Lestrade and see what I can prise out of him.”

“I’d also like a copy of that photograph you have.”

He slid his hand into his breast pocket and drew out a note-case, handing me a freshly printed reproduction of the photograph Damian had given him. The facial details were not as crisp as the original, but would be sufficient for my purposes.

I studied it, as I hadn’t before. Yolanda was not, in fact, as pretty as I had remembered. Her face was a touch too square, the eyes too small, but the face beneath the dowdy hat was alive and sparkling with intelligence, which made her far more attractive than any surface arrangement of features. The child in her arms was blurred and turning to the side, but the corner of her eye suggested an Asian fold, even though the child’s glossy hair lacked the thick, straight texture of the mother’s.

Beside them, Damian’s right hand rested on Yolanda’s shoulder, giving that half of his image the air of a Victorian paterfamilias; the
other half with its encircling arm suggested a person more relaxed and modern. He looked happy, prosperous, proud, and amused at that incongruous frock suit.

Yolanda’s skirt was not, I noted, flowered. Its cut and hem-line seemed out of date to me, although not as archaic as his coat. No doubt one should not expect the latest in fashion from a Bohemian matron—here in London, Bohemians tended to resemble gipsies or pipe-fitters. “I wonder why they chose such conventional dress and setting for a portrait? It’s almost as if they were in disguise.”

“Or fancy-dress,” Holmes said.

“Yes. Especially when you look at the expressions on their faces.” Perhaps Yolanda’s face was sparkling with humour rather than intelligence. It made her more sympathetic, somehow.

I was about to put the photograph into my pocket, but Holmes took it from me, laid it face-to against the window, and folded the top down at the line of Damian’s shoulders. He ran his thumb-nail hard against the fold; when he handed it back, Damian had been reduced to little more than a black back-drop and a hand on the child’s torso. “If you’re looking for her, his image will only confuse matters,” he told me.

It was true, the eye focused on a lone woman more easily than with a bearded man looming above her. Still, I couldn’t help being aware of the symbolic aspect of the fold as well: Holmes wanted Damian left out of this enquiry.

When we reached Victoria, Holmes, impatient to be about his business, set off on foot towards Westminster and Scotland Yard while I took my place in the taxi queue. I frowned at his back until it disappeared around the corner, then took out the photograph and studied it.

Was it conviction, or apprehension, that made him so determined to exclude Damian?

My club, the Vicissitude, was not an ideal beginning for a hunt into the world of fashion—one was more likely to find expertise on Attic
Greek or the missions of China than on expensive clothing—but as it happened, I drew a lucky straw, and some time later sat down to tea with a cousin of the sister-in-law of the Vicissitude’s manager, a dangerously thin individual wearing a Chanel dress that was too large for her. She had, until her recent illness, supervised the millinery section of one of London’s large department stores.

“I am trying to trace a pair of shoes. The woman who wore them is dead,” I added, before she could suggest I ask their owner. I described the shoes closely—the shape, the quality of the leather, the tiny bow on the heel. “They didn’t look like ready-made shoes, but if they were bespoke, they were for someone other than the woman wearing them. They didn’t fit her.”

The thin face made a moue of disapproval. “You would have mentioned if there were an identifying name in them,” she said. I agreed, I would have. “The bow suggests a recent line of quality footwear out of Cardiff, of all places. Harrods carries them, in several styles and colours, although I believe Selfridges is trying one or two lines as well.”

“The woman’s frock was from Selfridges,” I reflected.

“Then perhaps you should begin there.”

“I shall, first thing in the morning.” I took care, in shaking her hand, not to bear down with any enthusiasm, lest I crush the bird-like bones.

I came out onto the street to the sound of bells from nearby Westminster cathedral. To my surprise, considering all that had happened that day, it was not yet half past four. The streets were dead, but then, even Oxford and Regent streets would be echoing and empty. On a Sunday in London, one could walk, worship, or improve oneself.

I chose the last option, making my way down to the Tate to spend an hour meandering among paintings that might have looked modern had I not been recently introduced to the work of one Damian Adler.

When I was thrown out at closing, I found a tiny café that offered a meal it called dinner, and dawdled the dusk away, strolling down the
river and through the by-ways into Chelsea, waiting until half past eight, when it would be nearly dark enough to break into the Adler house unseen.

Except that I ran into a slight problem.

The police were there first.

The Elements (1):
A word (which is air) written on a
piece of paper (which is earth) and burnt (thus, fire) with
the ashes stirred into a glass of water, awaits the throat of a
man. But the glass does not hold the word’s essence,
unless it has employed the keys of Time and Will
.
Testimony, II:6

I
T WAS A SHOCK TO CROSS THE ENTRANCE TO BURTON Place, expecting a quiet cul-de-sac with a dark house at its far end, and to see the road crowded with onlookers and official motorcars, and every light in number seven burning. I drifted into the street, coming to rest amidst a group of ogling neighbours, and primed the gossip pump with a few innocuous questions.

The police, according to one of the children, had been in residence for less than half an hour. They had brought a locksmith, a servant volunteered, who worked on the door for a good ten minutes before it had opened. The people in number eleven had ’phoned the police at tea-time, another maid was eager to say, after some woman had come asking about the Adlers the night before.

I watched for a few minutes, then faded away, to circle around the
back of the house through the service alley. I stood on tip-toes to peer over the wall, seeing with disgust the signs of a house being thoroughly searched: constables framed by the sitting room window off to the left, more constables in an upstairs bedroom, the noise of loud constabulary voices and heavy constabulary shoes.

I decided to wait for a while, but before five minutes had passed, I heard the sound of running feet behind me. I ducked behind a bush, one with an unfortunate number of prickles in it, then noticed that the person fast approaching not only lacked a torch, but was trying to run quietly on the dirt surface. As he darted past, I saw his silhouette, and hissed loudly.

His feet stopped instantly although the rest of him did not, and he slid along the loose surface for several feet, arms flailing. He did not fall, but whirled and came back to where I stood.

“Well done, Holmes,” I said in admiration. I was not at all sure that I could have performed the manoeuvre without going down.

“The police traced her,” he whispered.

“My fault, I’m afraid. One of the neighbours I talked to last ni—”

“I thought to have more time,” he cut in urgently. My own pulse quickened.

“Time for what?”

“There is an object I must remove from the house before the police find it.”

“What is it?”

“Later, Russell. Come.” He dragged me to the gate, raised his head to look over, then went up on his toes and stretched his arm down; I heard the click of a latch.

The house had two doors that opened onto the garden: one near the sitting room, the other to the kitchen at the right. The kitchen door stood open, light spilling out, but at the moment there was no constable outside of the house. We slipped into the garden, closing the gate, and Holmes pointed to the stairway one could see through a window above the kitchen.

“In five minutes, anyone in the upper storeys will come down those stairs. One minute afterwards, I will go up them; I will need no more
than three minutes, then I will come down again. If anyone starts up the stairs while I am still inside, you must create a diversion. Any diversion at all, I don’t care, just so you are not caught. An arrest would be disastrous.”

“Holmes—”

“Russell, we have no time. I will meet you at Mycroft’s later.”

“Fine, a diversion. Go.”

To my surprise, he headed not for the house, but back out of the gate into the alley-way. I patted through the soil at my feet and came up with soil, pebbles, some bits of bone, and a soft object that startled me until I decided it was a child’s doll. Finally my fingers encountered a solid chunk of rock, then a fist-sized corner of brick. From next door came a faint sound of breaking glass, muffled perhaps by cloth. Two minutes after that, the sound of a telephone, ringing in the Adler house.

Two uniformed constables in the sitting room turned and looked across the room, but neither moved to answer the machine. It rang again, and another constable appeared. He said something, but the others hesitated. I was aware of movement off to my right, as of someone scrambling over a wall; at the same moment, I saw a figure in brown scurry across the half-landing window, fast descending the stairs. It was Lestrade, with two more constables at his heels; I caught a glimpse of the men as they went down the hallway behind the kitchen, then saw them enter the sitting room. Lestrade snatched up the telephone receiver, and in a flash, Holmes bounded up the kitchen steps and into the house, disappearing in the direction of the stairway. I began to count: at five, his form darted past the half-landing window and continued up the stairs.

Lestrade spoke into the telephone, frowned, spoke again, then reached down to rattle the hook: twenty-three seconds. After another sixty-four seconds, the exchange gave the Chief Inspector the information he needed. He dropped the instrument back on its rest, and stood for seven seconds, deep in thought.

He then spoke to one of the men in uniform: that took thirty seconds. The man left the room, no doubt heading for the empty house
next door whence the call had come. Lestrade stayed where he was for another nineteen seconds, talking with the men, then went back to the door, and out.