by David Marcum
Finally, a flood of sunlight suddenly filled the cage and we found ourselves stepping out into what resembled a large, enclosed greenhouse that filled a quarter of the roof. For some reason, a constable stood guard at the closed glass doors on the far wall that led outside, while Lestrade, not having yet noticed our arrival, was in deep conversation with a tall, thin, distinguished looking man leaning against a walking stick. The latest invention to combat a warm climate hummed on a table nearby - a mechanical fan, seemingly powered by electricity. Its caged blades turned so powerfully that I could feel the slight relief from where we were standing. Previously, I’d seen them only in advertisements from the most expensive local retailers. This one certainly seemed to live up to the claims.
Against the north wall, a strange white suit made of some sort of heavy material hung on a coat rack, and next to it, on a long counter, sat a white hood with fine netting over the face and a pair of leather boots. Lined up on the long counter were rows and rows of sealed jars filled with pure honey, glowing like fresh amber in the afternoon sunlight. The label on the jars had a cartoonish illustration of a very happy bee flying over the words, “London’s Honey Health Harvest!”
There were other strange contraptions spread throughout the room that I assumed were related to apiculture. Holmes, with a vigorousness usually reserved for all things violin, pointed out a well-used honey spinner that sat in a corner, a tar-stained bee smoker, and a row of replacement sliding frames, upon which the bees use to build their combs when placed inside the hive box.
“Remarkable, Watson,” Holmes said. “We’re in an apiary on the roof of a building within London. A unique concept, I must say.”
To confirm my friend’s statement, at least two dozen, possibly more, white beehives, were stacked outside, beyond the glass door in a neat line along the three outer walls. Holmes explained to me that an apiary, or “bee yard”, was a location where bees were kept and harvested for their honey and the wax in their combs, which was used in candles.
“How do you know so much about beekeeping, Holmes?” I asked.
“The study of bees was an educational pastime for me when I was young, Watson. One I hope to continue in my later years. An amazing creature, the honeybee, and worthy of our respect. The hierarchy in a bee colony is among the most efficient in the insect world, rivaling even the ant, and they never need sleep. Their industriousness is unrivaled. In fact, the female worker bee has sometimes been known to work itself to death.”
I avoided the temptation to voice the obvious comparisons to my friend. I did, however, manage to voice my own negative opinion on the subject. “Nasty creatures in my experience, Holmes. I was stung once when I was a child, I’ll never forget the pain it caused me. I’ve been avoiding them ever since.”
“That’s quite an overreaction, my friend,” Holmes retorted. “For the most part, honeybees are a docile insect. I wonder, do you feel the same way about fleas, or have you forgotten about the havoc they caused during the middle ages by way of the Black Death?”
“Apples and oranges, Holmes,” I grumbled, realizing I had lost the argument.
“Come now, Watson,” Holmes continued, smiling victoriously. “Honeybees are our friends. They’re the only insect on the planet that supplies food for human beings. Do you hold that against them, too?”
Before I could answer, the constable guarding the glass doors moved away for some reason, and I saw that a man was lying on his back out on the roof, only feet from the doors, obviously recently rendered a corpse. He was barefoot and shirtless, wearing only a pair of brown slacks. It didn’t take an experienced medical doctor to see what the cause of his death was.
A thick, dark, throbbing mass of honeybees completely covered the man’s head and chest. They were packed together as they crawled around and on top of each other aimlessly, angrily, their wings buzzing, their bodies jerking in violent spasm. Swirling clouds of them hovered over the corpse, as if looking for an open space of skin to attack, of which there was plenty - below the chest. It was impossible to see what was happening underneath all that writhing and bubbling, but I was confident it wasn’t pleasant, and I was glad that the victim was long since deceased and no longer able to feel the pain or the horror of what was happening to him. The man’s arms were angled out from his sides in a grotesquely contorted death pose. His fingers were splayed, each finger bent crooked, frozen in what resembled pure, raging agony.
I could tell that the man had been so desperate for escape that his fingernails had left scratch impressions in the wood planks of the roof. His knees were up slightly, and the weight of the bees and their heated excitement jostled his legs almost imperceptively. Of all the deaths I’d seen over the years in my adventures with Holmes, this man’s was one of the most horrifying. Comparing it to my relatively tame stinging experience in the woods outside my home when I was a child, I imagined his final, dreadful moments, each sting piercing his skin, depositing poison in quick, relentless bursts, turning his body into an uncontrollable landscape of fire. I nearly fainted.
Holmes caught me by the arm. “Steady, old man,” he said.
I nodded. “Yes... yes, I’ll be all right.”
Holmes released me then, as his glare fell upon the glass doors, he stopped, clenched his jaw and squinted. I’d seen that look many times before and knew he’d seen some indelible clew. Perhaps the entire case might later hang upon it. He hurried forward, the guard watching him the whole time, then leaned forward, his magnifying glass already out of his coat pocket and pressed nearly against the doors.
I followed him, dabbing the sweat that had collected on my brow with a handkerchief.
“What is it, Holmes?” I asked.
“Smudges, Watson. Many smudges. On the outside of the glass.”
“Blood?”
“No. Palm prints, perhaps. I’ll need - ” Before Holmes could finish his thought, Lestrade came up to us, the tall, thin man with the walking stick beside him.
“Thank you for coming so quickly, Mr. Holmes,” the inspector said as he shook Holmes’s hand. He nodded to me then motioned to the stranger. “This is Thomas Bonnet, a friend of Gordon Dalley, the deceased. He discovered the body.”
The tall man limped forward and shook Holmes’s hand. I noticed the knuckles on his hand were grossly swollen, the telltale sign of advanced arthritis, which explained his use of the walking stick and the stiffness in which he walked. Yet, when he and I traded introductions, I saw a rather handsome, healthy, and robust middle-aged man looking back at me. He had green eyes set deeply under a pair of blonde, manicured eyebrows. His hair was short and thinning, blonde with streaks of silver, and parted on the left side. He had a rather long, fuzzy blonde beard covering only his chin that seemed to spill out of his thin, lipless mouth like a frozen waterfall. He wore a tightly fitting brown suitcoat, unwrinkled and heavy, over a white shirt and tie. Yet, there were no signs of perspiration anywhere on his brow. The benefit, I gathered, of standing in front of that mechanical fan for so long.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Holmes,” Bonnet said. “I’ve read, with great interest, of your adventures, and trust you will get to the bottom of this.”
“Thank you. Are you also an apiarist?” Holmes asked.
“Yes, Mr. Holmes, for fifteen years now. I own a wooded estate just outside of Richmond Park, only a mile or so from here, across the Thames. The acreage is large enough to hold ninety hives.”
“And how did you meet Mr. Dalley?”
“Being in the same field, our paths often crossed. Five years ago, he invited me up here to see his set-up. At first I considered him nothing more than an eccentric hobbyist with an outrageous idea, but later on, I was so impressed with the yearly production of his bees and the quality of their honey that I offered to buy in as a partner. We’ve been wildly successful ever since.”
Holmes shot a
quick glance out into the bee yard then back at Bonnet. “Successful, you say?” he asked. “How can that be with so few hives and so little foraging acreage within the city limits?”
“It’s for those exact reasons you noted, Mr. Holmes, that this small urban apiary is so successful. You see, city bees are actually much healthier than rural bees because of the lack of chemicals used on urban foraging plants to deter pests, and also due to the greater variety. In the city, people keep small, year-round gardens and constantly plant flowers that provide adequate nectar and pollen sources, creating uninterrupted blooms, which allows for greater bee colony reproduction. And because of this, urban bees’ honey is actually purer and healthier than rural bees’ honey. I came up with a marketing plan that exposes this truth and found that people are willing to pay much higher prices for a jar of honey from our urban apiary. As you can see on the table over there, our latest harvest is ready for distribution to all the markets in the city.”
Holmes kept focus on his questioning. “How is it that you were the one to find Mr. Dalley’s body, and not his wife?”
“Gordon and I had agreed to meet this morning at nine, to discuss expanding the business to other parts of the city. Purchasing additional roof space and ironing out other details. When I arrived, Mrs. Dalley and her son, Macintosh, weren’t here. As it’s the servant’s day off, I came up in the lift, as I’d done a hundred times before, and discovered the horrendous fate of my friend as soon as I stepped into the apiary. I sent for a constable immediately.”
“Where is Mrs. Dalley and her son now?” Holmes inquired of Lestrade.
“They’re down in the family’s living area on the second floor, along with a local busybody, a somewhat regular visitor named Charles Huber, whom I think you’ll find has some very interesting information for you,” Lestrade answered. “I have a constable guarding them.”
“And no one’s been out there to disturb the scene?”
“No one, Mr. Holmes. Just as you prefer it, though I suspect it was more the presence of the bees than anything else that kept everyone out.”
“Excellent,” Holmes said, scratching his chin in thought. Then his glance fell upon the poor victim. “Pray tell, Lestrade, why do you suspect foul play here?”
“Well, look at him, Mr. Holmes. He’s an experienced bee keeper... seems to me he knew enough not to end up like that. It struck me as suspicious. If it turns out to be an accident, please accept my apologies beforehand.”
“Very good,” Holmes remarked then turned his attention to the tall, thin man. “Now, if you’ll be good enough to help us, Mr. Bonnet, could you fire up that smoker and clear away the bees so that I can investigate the body further?”
The idea seemed to instill great fear in the man. After a moment of silent debate, he gave out a nervous cough into his deformed fist and nodded. “Of course, Mr. Holmes, of course.”
“Are you coming with me, Lestrade?”
The small, rodent-faced inspector flashed a serious glance out into the bee yard and shook his head. “I - I think I’d be of better use to you if I went down and prepared the others for your possible questioning.”
“Watson?”
I considered leaving with Lestrade but realized that Holmes may need to tap my expertise as a medical doctor in his investigation of the corpse, so I nodded silently.
“Capital!” Holmes cried. “The game, as they say, is afoot!”
With some difficulty, his arthritis paining him greatly, Mr. Bonnet took his coat off then inspected the smoker, making sure there was enough oiled burlap and pine needles inside to set alight. Once he lit a match and had it burning, he looked up at us.
“Does one of you care to wear the protective suit?”
“I can handle myself, Mr. Bonnet,” Holmes said then he turned to me. “Watson?”
I looked at the white suit hanging on the coat rack and decided I wouldn’t know where to begin on how to put the damned thing on, and knew it would stall Holmes’s entry into the bee yard. I could see he was impatient to get things started.
“I’ll rough it with you, Holmes,” I said, trying to hide my instinctual fear.
“Courageous as ever, my friend,” he said pleasantly, his mood much changed since we’d first arrived. Then he nodded to Bonnet, who opened one of the glass doors, quickly stepped out on to the roof, closed the door behind him, and then began his task.
Holmes and I watched in silence as the apiarist swiftly and skillfully set the smoking contents of the smoker down upon the layer of angry bees with the repeated squeezing of a trigger pump. Streams of thick white smoke smothered the bees and, after a few moments, they responded as, one by one, they took to the air and flew away.
“How is it that they aren’t stinging him?” I asked aloud.
“Smoke triggers a primitive protective instinct in a bee,” Holmes replied. “They think the hive is threatened with fire, so they immediately head back to protect the queen and the precious larva growing in the combs.”
In minutes, Dalley’s body was cleaned of bees, but what was left behind was no less horrifying. Bonnet waved us out into the bee yard, and I followed Holmes through the door.
Out in the air again, the heaviness of the day’s heat pressed down upon us like a giant boot, while the constant buzz coming from the hives surrounding us droned on incessantly. While Bonnet kept the bees at bay by continually pumping the smoker, Holmes knelt down over the victim and inspected the scene closely.
On the ground around Dalley’s head and shoulders lay hundreds, perhaps a thousand, dead or dying bees. The black stings they’d left behind were sticking up out of Dalley’s bald skull, face, shoulders, and chest in a curiously tight and distinctively bordered pattern - no stings were to be found anywhere below the chest. A closer inspection proved that some of the stings were still instinctively injecting poison into Dalley’s now-stilled bloodstream by means of a contracting muscle around the venom sac, boring the barbed sting deeper into the skin with every contraction.
“Ghastly!” I grumbled, shaking my head.
Holmes nodded. “Yes, I agree, Watson. What a waste of life, both human and insect.”
Dalley’s eyes were closed and, like his reddened face, swollen to near bursting. His mouth was open, and I could clearly see the tongue inside was also swollen, mercilessly peppered by stings. Mixed in with the gray beard that covered his chin and jowls were even more wounds. One poor bee hadn’t fully escaped from the melee and hung shriveled and dead by its guts near Dalley’s left ear.
Holmes lifted his head and began sniffing the air. “Do you smell that, Watson?” he asked.
I leaned over and sniffed deeply, a familiar scent struck my nostrils. “Why, yes, Holmes. Is that bananas?”
“Correct, my friend. I’ve heard something of this before, but little is known of it. There are tales of bees secreting some sort of substance that excites them to anger. Possibly it is related to defense. But we shouldn’t be able to smell it.”
“Perhaps because there are so many of them - ”
“Nonsense!” Holmes returned bluntly. “It shouldn’t matter how many of them there are. Normally, the human nose shouldn’t be able to discern that odor. And look at how the stings are confined to just the chest and above. I’ve never seen such strict concentration in a bee attack before.”
“You are familiar with bees, then, Mr. Holmes?” Bonnet asked.
“Quite, my good man. A childhood - ” Holmes answered then stopped, slipped his hand into his coat pocket, and drew out a pair of tweezers. He reached down, picked up a dead bee, and held it closely to his eyes, slowly turning it.
“Apis Mellifera,” he began. “Or rather, the western honey bee... a very docile creature. Unusual for it to act so aggressively.” After a moment of silent thought, Holmes gently placed the bee back on the floor of the roof then began
inspecting Dalley’s body more thoroughly, stopping at the hands. “Do you see anything missing, Watson?”
I gave the corpse a once over. “Other than the fact he’s missing his shirt and shoes, I confess my complete ignorance,” I said.
With an impatient sigh, he rolled the body over, finding nothing underneath. Then, on his hands and knees, he began crawling all over the roof. His glass was out now, magnifying everything he saw. He searched beneath each hive, sliding his hand under and sweeping it along with great effort, disregarding the possibility that he could end up like Dalley.
“What are you looking for, Holmes?” I called out, fearing for his safety. “Perhaps we could help.”
At a hive in the northwestern corner, he stopped suddenly. Then he pulled his hand out, stood up, dropped his glass back into his pocket, and approached us.
“No. I’m nearly finished, Watson,” he said. “I have but one more thing to investigate and we’ll be done here.”
Holmes pulled out his magnifying glass again and inspected the smudge marks on the glass door. “Just as I thought,” he said. “Palm prints, many of them.”
“But what would that prove?” Bonnet asked.
“It proves that Dalley was locked out here and desperately tried to pound his way back inside, or to summon help. A situation he, as an experienced apiarist, would never allow to happen. And a quick look at the door knob shows it could only be locked from the inside, and the mechanism has to be physically, purposely, turned. I’m familiar with that sort of lock, and the exposed bolt would have stopped the door from closing if it had been turned while the door was open.” To prove his point, Holmes opened the door, reached around, and turned the lock mechanism on the knob. Indeed, the bolt came out and wouldn’t allow the door to close. He unlocked the door and closed it, then continued. “A quicker look around proves there was nothing out here to help him smash the glass, so he desperately tried beating his way through,” Holmes glanced down at the corpse. “Unsuccessfully, of course.”