The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, Part VI

by David Marcum

  “You mean someone trapped Gordon out here - while the bees attacked him?” Bonnet asked in horror.

  Ignoring him, Holmes moved the glass down, peered into it, and stopped. “Halloa! What have we here?”

  I stood next to my friend and stared where he was pointing.

  “A tiny chink in the glass of the door?” I suggested.

  “Very good, Watson. There is hope for you after all.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It carries with it three logical explanations, only one of which I prefer.”

  Just then, Lestrade stepped out of the elevator and he waved at us. We hurriedly went back inside and met him.

  “You were right to call on me, Inspector,” Holmes said.

  “You mean - ?”

  “Yes. It’s murder. Cold, hard, and undeniable.”

  Holmes decided to interview the local man, Charles Huber, in the posh sitting room on the second floor. Holmes, for some reason, allowed Bonnet to go into the dining room to comfort Mrs. Dalley and her eighteen year-old son, Macintosh, while they waited for their turn to be questioned.

  When he saw us enter the room, Huber nervously jumped out of his chair and stood at attention. He was a short man with a round face, edged by closely cropped silver hair and sideburns. He had a pair of large, golden-brown eyes and a small, full-lipped mouth that hung in a frown when at rest. He was immaculately dressed, his brown suit freshly pressed, but fitting him a little too tightly around the waist. His black tie and gold pocket watch chain were perfectly set in their positions, as if by a man who’d had many years of practice in the art of dressing up for theater. Instead of a wedding ring on his finger, he wore a brightly jeweled Masonic ring. In his other hand was a balled-up kerchief that he repeatedly used to dab the sweat from his brow. Unfortunately, there was no sign of a mechanical fan anywhere in this room.

  After a round of polite introductions, Huber sat back down and Holmes went at the man with his questions.

  “Mr. Huber, what is your capacity?”

  “I’m something of an unofficial spokesmen for some of the nearby residents and businesses.” He dabbed at the sweat on his brow again, but it was difficult to tell if that was from the heat or nervousness.

  “I’m told you’ve had reason to visit this house in the past.”

  “Yes, Mr. Holmes... in a professional manner, on many occasions.”

  “Why so?”

  “Well, sir, mainly on account of Mr. Dalley’s bee keeping in the neighborhood,” Huber replied. He crossed and then uncrossed his legs as he answered. “You see, many of the residents are fearful of the apiary being so close to where they live. Some of them don’t even let their children out. Mrs. Duqesne’s son, a few houses down, is quite sensitive to bee stings, so they’ve taken to spending their springs and summers out in Torquay, where the risk is negligible. Everyone in the neighborhood has contacted the local constabulary, but it seems their hands are tied, as there are no laws forbidding such an enterprise as bee keeping within the city limits.”

  “So the residents of this neighborhood, as a last resort, called you in, hoping you could reason with Mr. Dalley?”

  “That’s correct, sir. But he would have none of it. Each time I was driven away by threats of legal ramifications, and once by threat of physical violence.”

  “So, it was common knowledge that Mr. Dalley’s relationship with his neighbors was a rancorous one?”

  “Yes, Mr. Holmes, especially after the day he went about door-to-door in nothing but his work slacks, asking them all to plant flowers in pots on their terraces. He said it was to help create local foraging sources for his bees. The boldness of it all caused an uproar that everyone still talks about to this day.”

  “I’m sure,” Holmes said, folding his arms in front of his chest. He had a slight grin carved into his chin. “Do you think the residents of this neighborhood are upset enough about this unusual apiary and Mr. Dalley’s strange behavior to cause him physical violence?”

  Mr. Huber shrugged. “I - I suppose so, Mr. Holmes. I mean, a person can only take so much, but exactly who that would be I wouldn’t know.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Huber, when was the last time you visited Mr. Dalley?”

  Huber vigorously dabbed at the sweat on his brow. “A fortnight ago, sir. That’s when Mr. Dalley threatened to send his bees after me if I should ever return.”

  “I see,” Holmes said then uncrossed his arms. “And did you fear your failure to bring this conflict to a neat and speedy conclusion would affect your reputation negatively?”

  “Of course, sir,” Huber replied, his face red with worry. “But I did the best I could, and I can’t think of anyone else doing anything differently and getting a different result. Mr. Dalley was very stubborn in his endeavor. I’m confident the residents of this district realize this.”

  “You’re free to leave now, Mr. Huber. But keep yourself available in case I have more questions for you.”

  “Y-yes, sir. Thank you.”

  As I watched Mr. Huber hurry out of the room, it occurred to me that the pudgy little man didn’t seem the type to commit murder, but I’d been wrong before.

  “What do you think, Mr. Holmes?” Lestrade asked.

  “I think I should talk to the wife and son now, Inspector,” Holmes replied.

  Lestrade led Mrs. Dalley and her son into the sitting room. Bonnet, leaning against his walking stick with one hand, had his other hand on her elbow as he gently eased her into a paisley patterned sitting chair. The son stood behind her, his hand resting on her shoulder in comfort.

  Macintosh Dalley was a smartly dressed young man, just a few years older than what the portrait on the wall downstairs displayed. His brown hair was parted down the middle, and he had a round, soft face that greatly resembled his mother’s.

  Mrs. Dalley sat in the chair, back straight, chin up, her hands clawing the armrests. She was an attractive woman with sad, dark brown eyes and thin pink lips. The lines around her mouth and eyes were the first signs that maturity was finally catching up with her - much different than her own portrait. She wore a tightly fitting dress patterned with red and brown vertical lines. A high black collar with a small white bow was so tight around her neck that it seemed as if it was strangling her. This was confirmed by the fact that when she turned her head, she had to turn her shoulders as well.

  Bonnet positioned himself behind her chair, so close to Macintosh that their elbows touched. He had a fresh white handkerchief in his free hand, in case Mrs. Dalley needed it.

  “My name is Sherlock Holmes. I’m a consulting detective aiding Scotland Yard in the suspicious death of your husband. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Holmes,” she said, her voice low and trembling. “I’m familiar with your exploits, but cannot, for the life of me, think why you should be involved in this. My husband’s death was an accident.”

  “It appears, on its face, to be an accident. But I have reason to believe otherwise, at least until my investigation is complete.”

  This news rattled Mrs. Dalley. Her eyes widened and her dark eyebrows knitted themselves closely together. “Really, Mr. Holmes, can’t you let the dead rest and a family to grieve?” she pleaded, and then broke out into a coughing fit of tears. Bonnet handed her the fresh handkerchief and she padded her eyes gently, her head down.

  “I wish it was that easy, Mrs. Dalley,” Holmes said.

  “You mean to say that my father’s death was coerced somehow?” young Macintosh asked, stepping around the chair, kneeling, and then taking his mother’s hand. “Anyone with open eyes can see what happened up there on the roof, and it wasn’t murder,”

  “Did you get along with your father?” Holmes asked.

  Macintosh’s face flushed red and he stood up defiantly. “Of course
, Mr. Holmes. He was my father and I’m his only son. I’m not saying we didn’t have our differences, as most young men have with their fathers, but on the whole we had a good relationship.”

  “How did you feel about the apiary upstairs and his sometimes odd behavior?”

  “Not being particularly interested in bees, Mr. Holmes, I rarely went up there. As for his odd behavior, well, he was an eccentric. He lived the way he wanted to live, and had the money to do so.”

  “It didn’t embarrass you?”

  “Of course it did, Mr. Holmes. It’s the main reason why I don’t have any friends, but I’ve always been content to be alone, and having friends has never been important to me anyway.”

  Holmes turned his attention to the sobbing woman. “And how did you feel about your husband’s behavior, Mrs. Dalley?”

  “Now, Mr. Holmes!” Bonnet exclaimed. “Can’t you see she’s upset? Why must you torture her?”

  Lestrade raised his hand. “Calm yourself, Mr. Bonnet - ”

  “It’s all right, Inspector,” Holmes interjected. “Those are fair questions. It’s not my intention to torture her, as you say, Mr. Bonnet. But it’s often been my experience that the spouse of a murder victim is most cooperative, and is usually as interested as the police in finding the killer. I assumed that this is the case here.”

  Mrs. Dalley nodded and raised her head. Her wet, dark eyes stared into Holmes’s. “I - I’m sorry, Mr. Holmes,” she began. “You are, of course, correct in your statement. I will answer every question you deem fit to ask.”

  “How did you feel about your husband’s eccentricities?”

  “When we first met, I thought they were charming. Life with him wasn’t normal, and I liked it. The reaction people would give was priceless when we went out to a restaurant and he’d order his steak so well done it was nothing more than a brick of charcoal. Oh, the faces they would make as he chomped and chomped like a dog with a bone! It sounded like he was eating marbles at times! But as the years went on, it seemed I never noticed his oddities anymore. Even his obsession over bees seemed tame to me recently. In short, Mr. Holmes, I had gotten used to them.”

  “When was the last time you saw your husband, Mrs. Dalley?”

  She wiped a tear away then glanced up towards the ceiling for a moment. “This morning, Mr. Holmes, around eight. He was preparing to meet with Mr. Bonnet at nine so, realizing we had some free time and that it was the servant’s day off, I took Macintosh out for breakfast.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Jolina’s, it’s a café on Elizabeth Street.”

  “When did you and Macintosh return?”

  “Half-past nine. We saw a police hansom out in front of the house when we returned from breakfast, and a constable standing in our doorway. I knew then that something was terribly wrong. Mr. Bonnet rushed out of the house and met us on the street. He explained to us what had happened. I’ve been in a daze ever since.”

  “Was your husband acting, how shall I say it, odder than usual this morning?”

  She shook her head. “It was like every other morning, Mr. Holmes. He bathed in lemon water, put on his slacks, then took his cup of room-temperature tea - that’s the way he always preferred it. Too hot or too cold and he’d let it sit until it became moldy. Macintosh and I asked him to come along with us but he declined, telling us about his meeting with Mr. Bonnet. Then we left.”

  “Did your husband leave a will, Mrs. Dalley?”

  “Yes. Now that he’s eighteen, everything concerning the apiary goes to Macintosh and I receive a modest monthly stipend.” She sobbed gently into the handkerchief.

  “That will be all. Thank you for your time,” Holmes said. “Again, please accept my condolences.”

  Holmes, Lestrade, and I left the sitting room in silence, and on the way down in the elevator, my friend remained in a contemplative stupor. It had been my experience never to interrupt him when he fell into one of those moods, but Lestrade wasn’t so wise. “Difficult case, eh, Mr. Holmes?”

  Holmes’s eyes fired back to life and burned brightly at the inspector. “On the contrary, Lestrade,” he said. “I solved the case as soon as I inspected the corpse. The only difficulty is proving it.”

  It was later that afternoon when Holmes and I returned to Baker Street. Immediately, he began searching through his vast collection of reference books, pulling out everything he could find about honeybees, particularly concerning the species Apis Mellifera, or rather, the western honey bee. After exhausting what he could from that source, he ran through his newspaper clipping indexes, eagerly thumbing through page after page, backwards and forwards, and grunting impatiently when he couldn’t find the article he needed.

  Mrs. Hudson came in a little after the top of the hour with a tray of ham sandwiches with mustard and rye and a pot of freshly brewed tea. Holmes took little notice of the service. Instead, he concentrated on the vials and jars of chemicals he’d amassed over the years, repeatedly mixing small amounts of this and that in a small bowl, sniffing it, then cursing and dumping the contents into a pan, only to begin again with another set of substances.

  Properly famished, I didn’t ignore the food, and set about filling my gullet while I watched Holmes bandy about like an obsessed mad scientist. Around nine that evening, I became drowsy and went to bed without interrupting him, as he was still going strong - mixing, stirring, sniffing, boiling, and performing whatever mysterious alchemy his knowledge of chemistry forced him to do.

  When I awoke, it wasn’t to the aroma of brewing coffee or sizzling bacon and eggs. It was bananas I smelled, and very strongly.

  I hastily threw my robe on, opened my bedroom door, and went downstairs into the sitting room, where I found Holmes, his face unshaven, pale, and glistening with sweat. His clothes were disheveled and stained with perspiration, for it was another hot morning. But he stood there with a satisfied grin on his face, his fists curled victoriously on his hips, his legs spread as he stared through the window.

  “Good morning to you, friend Watson!” he chirped cheerfully. “I dare say I’ve done it! I’ve figured out how he murdered Gordon Dalley!”

  This news stunned me, and I must have sounded like an imbecile when I asked him: “Which ‘he’ are you talking about, Holmes?”

  “Come now, dear Watson,” Holmes said, pointing towards the window. “Need I really explain this one to you?”

  I stepped further into the room and, following Holmes’s pointed finger, peered out the window, stunned to silence!

  Holmes had hung a hand towel outside the window and thankfully had sense enough to close the window afterwards, because covering the object was a bubbling mass of angry honeybees. They were crawling all about, their abdomens throbbing aggressively as they stung the towel and then took to the air, only to be replaced by another wave of irritated bees, reminding me of all those insects covering poor Gordon Dalley’s face and chest the morning before.

  “But - but how, Holmes?” I stammered.

  “Later, my friend,” Holmes said as he clapped his hands enthusiastically and rubbed his fingers together. “Let us make ourselves presentable. It’s time we paid Mr. Thomas Bonnet a visit.”

  It seemed to be an even warmer day than the previous one. Holmes and I drove up in a strangely solid growler along the meandering driveway that led through the colorful, flower-filled landscape of Thomas Bonnet’s apiary estate. Our driver was Reginald, a cabbie with whom we were well acquainted from previous engagements. When he stopped the cab in front of the granite steps that leading into Bonnet’s mansion, Holmes told him to wait for us.

  When I stepped out of the cab, I immediately saw a row of white bee hives, lining the tree-shaded grounds at no great distance to the east. I could just hear the ominous buzzing coming from them beneath the sweet chirps of bird song. There was a shining black carriage,
fronted by two mounts, sitting a little ways up the drive.

  Bonnet met us at the top of the steps and greeted us with pleasant handshakes. He moved with a stiffness more intense than the day before, and with every step came a stifled grunt.

  “Please forgive my condition, gentlemen,” he explained. “But you’ve caught me on the day of my weekly treatment and I’m afraid I won’t move freely without pain until I’ve taken to the sting.”

  “The sting?” I asked.

  “Yes, Doctor,” Bonnet replied. “It’s believed by some that the venom in a bee sting has medicinal properties for many maladies, I undergo sessions to ease the condition of my arthritis.”

  “You sting yourself to ease your pain?”

  “I know it sounds rather contradictory, but I assure you it does work. If you’d like, after we tour the facility, you can stay and watch.”

  Before I could answer, Holmes interjected quite energetically. “We would like that very much, Mr. Bonnet. Thank you!”

  Bonnet limped along against his walking stick as he showed Holmes and me the workshop where lay dozens of honey spinners, tended to by men wearing heavy white coats and protective masks. Then he led us into what resembled a laboratory, filled with long tables, Bunsen burners, countless vials filled with mysterious yellow liquids, and men wearing white coats, gloves, and masks.

  “This is where I have the greatest scientific minds in England trying to break down the elements of bee venom,” Bonnet explained proudly. “It’s my hope we can someday isolate the agent that’s responsible for managing diseases such as arthritis, create it artificially, and then increase its potency, thereby finding a cure.”

  “A noble goal, Mr. Bonnet,” Holmes said, his eyes large with curiosity.

  “But one with an exorbitant price tag, unfortunately,” Bonnet added. “Hence the reason I was so keen to buy into Gordon’s urban apiary.”