The Language of Bees

by Laurie R. King

  “Come in, come in, I was just making certain that all was ready for you. Come, here's my office, have a seat. Would you like tea? Coffee?”

  The tramping had made me thirsty, and I slipped my grateful acceptance in before Holmes could turn him down. The doctor got up from behind his desk and went out of the room, which made Holmes grimace, but we heard a woman's voice, so he was not about to do the task himself. And indeed, he was back in a moment.

  “My wife will bring the tea, the kettle's just boiled. And I have to say, it's an honour, sir, to have you in my surgery. My wife feels the same—she was, in fact, rather hoping to be permitted to meet you, when I told her that you were coming. So, you said you thought you might know this young lady. Is this to be one of your mysterious cases, to be written up in The Strand?” The doctor tried to hide his eagerness behind an air of worldly joviality, but without success.

  “I could hardly reveal the details of a case, if in fact she is a part of one, could I?” Holmes said repressively.

  “No, no, of course not, I certainly agree, it's not to be thought of. Perhaps I should point out, however, that I am a duly sworn servant of His Majesty, in my rôle of coroner, which may qualify me for, well…”

  Holmes just looked at him.

  The door opened, fortunately, and the doctor's wife came in, staring so avidly at Holmes that she nearly missed the edge of the desk with the tea tray. I caught the corner and shoved it back into balance, and she gave a startled laugh at the sudden rattle of cups. “Oh! My, how silly of me, I nearly had it all on the floor.”

  I regretted my craving for tea, and by way of compensation took a heavy lacing of milk and gulped the still-hot liquid. Holmes fielded inquisitive remarks like a tennis champion, and the moment my empty cup hit the saucer, he got to his feet.

  “Shall we go and see what you have?”

  The muscles of a corpse, a day and a half after death, have gone through rigor mortis and slackened again. Even with the relative coolness of the room's stone walls, the decomposition of summer had begun to change the shape of her face and taint her pale skin. Her eyes and mouth had been leached of colour, her black hair lay flat and damp against her head, and the sheet that covered her diminished the outlines further; nonetheless, there was no question.

  This was Yolanda Adler.

  Holmes reached out for the sheet at her chin; I turned sharply away to lift the other end and examine her feet.

  They were tiny, neat, and nicely kept, although they bore signs of having spent much of their life bare or in ill-fitting shoes. In recent years they had fared better, and showed few of the calluses and bunions that many women suffer. However, she had recently walked some distance in ill-fitting shoes: Her toes and heels were blistered.

  “May I see the clothes she wore?” I asked.

  “Oh, we burnt those awful things.”

  We both turned to stare at him, speechless. Huxtable looked back and forth between Holmes' narrowed grey eyes and my widened blue ones, and spluttered his protest. “They were dreadfully blood-soaked, I couldn't have them around the place, really I couldn't. A nice frock, my wife has one very like it—didn't want her to think of it every time she went to put hers on. And she had some very pretty, you know, underthings, but—”

  “You even burnt her under-garments?” Holmes demanded in outrage.

  “Between the bloodstains and having to cut them off of her, there was nothing left, so I put them into the furnace rather—”

  “Have you never heard the term evidence, man?”

  “Yes, of course, but the police had taken their photographs, and they had the description of the garments, even a tag in the back of the frock—from Selfridges, like my wife's. I never thought to ask.”

  “What about her shoes?” I asked.

  He turned from Holmes' frigid condemnation with gratitude. “Yes, oh certainly I have those, and her stockings as well, those were silk and not much stained at all, so I kept them, for when the body was claimed. And the hat, of course. Do you—”

  “Yes. Please.”

  The doctor scurried into the next room and came back with a paper-wrapped parcel that he laid down on the generous margins of the autopsy table. I pulled open the twine and drew out a beautifully made shoe of light brown leather, and set its heel against the sheet of paper Holmes spread out with his sketch of the path-side indentations: an exact match. The shoes were so new they had not yet developed creases. The right one had a splash of dried blood on its toe. The soles and heels were clotted with damp chalk and grass, matching the boots I had left in the car outside.

  I picked up the left shoe and slid it onto her foot; as I'd thought, there was room for two fingers behind her heel.

  “The shoe is at least a size too large,” I commented. Holmes grunted, and turned back to his close examination of her small, soft hands.

  I tucked the cloth back over her naked feet, then took my time re-wrapping the shoes. I held the stockings up to the light, but all they told me was that she had fallen to her right knee on soft ground once, leaving a green stain and starting a small hole in the mesh that had not had time to unravel. The hat was a summer-weight straw cloche, as new as the shoes. Close examination showed one small fragment of grass adhering to the left side of the brim, with a smear of chalky soil beside it: The hat had fallen from her head and rolled on the ground.

  With reluctance, I turned my attention farther up the table, to have my eye caught by a mark on her torso. I pulled the sheet down as far as her navel, and saw a dark red tattoo, an inch and a half long, in a shape that, had I not seen it elsewhere already, my eyes might have read as phallic:

  It lay in the centre of her body, between the umbilicus and the rib-cage; its soft edges indicated that it had been there for years. I pointed it out to Holmes, who turned his attention away from the finger-nails of her left hand (where, I noticed, she had worn a wedding ring, no longer there).

  Over the protest of the doctor, we pulled away the sheet entirely, and turned her over (the unnatural flop of her head made me very glad I had not eaten the cake on the wife's tea tray), but there were no other tattoos, and what marks she bore had been done long ago.

  We turned her back and pulled the sheet up again. Before her head was covered, Holmes tipped her head slightly to show me the skin behind her left ear: A lock of hair had been snipped away, leaving a bare patch the diameter of a pencil. I nodded, and walked around to look at her right arm and hand. She had a bruise on the tender inside of her wrist, old enough to have begun to fade; one of her neatly manicured finger-nails was broken; there was a grey stain on her middle finger.

  I pointed it out to Holmes. “Ink?”

  He took her hand, splaying her child-like fingers so as to see more clearly. “Yes,” he said. He returned her arm to her side, but his own hand lingered on hers. He studied her, this woman his son had loved. “I wonder what manner of voice she had?” he murmured.

  Then he twitched the sheet up to cover her.

  “When will you do the autopsy?” he asked Huxtable.

  “I was scheduled to do it this afternoon, although—”

  “I would appreciate it if you would send me a copy of your results. You have my address?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Who is the officer in charge of the investigation?”

  “Well, it would have been Detective Inspector Weller, but I understand it's been given to Scotland Yard because of the … unusual aspects of the case. Which is why, as I was about to say, the poor girl might be taken up to London for the autopsy. I was told I should hear one way or the other before Sunday dinner.”

  “I see. I shall ring you later today, then, and see where it stands. Good day, Dr Huxtable.”

  Our hasty departure took us as far as the doorway before Huxtable remembered why we had come in the first place.

  “Er, sorry,” he called, “the message said you might be able to identify—”

  “No!” Holmes snapped. “We don't know who she
is.”

  I stared at him, but he swept out of the door, leaving the doctor spluttering his confusion as to why we had shown such interest in a stranger.

  At the car, I got behind the wheel and turned to ask Holmes why he had claimed ignorance, but one glance at the side of his face had me reaching for the starter and getting the motor-car on the road.

  The expression that hardened his features and turned his eyes to flame was one I had rarely seen there.

  Rage, pure and hot.

  Study (1): The next years were spent in a study of

  Transformation: How could the man control the process?

  What Tools might shape Transformation, what methods

  bring it about? Testimony, II:5

  HALFWAY TO POLEGATE, HOLMES FINALLY STIRRED, and reached for the cigarette case in his pocket. When the tobacco was going, he rubbed the match out between his fingers and let the breeze take it, then seemed to notice for the first time that we were on the move.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home. If I pass through a second time without greeting Mrs Hudson, she might just go back to Surrey permanently. Apart from which, with that expression on your face, I figured you'd be wanting your revolver.”

  “This was my son's wife.” His voice was like ice. “A young woman who had lifted herself from the gutter on the strength of her own wits. A person whose acquaintance I was looking forward to making. Instead of which, I find her laid out like a slaughtered farm-animal.”

  “Did you see anything under her finger-nails?”

  “If she struggled, it did not include digging her fingers into the ground or scratching at an assailant.”

  I thought this as good a time as any to tell him what I had seen. “Those shoes were very new and not inexpensive, but a woman would never have bought that ill-fitting a pair for herself. They gave her blisters. And the stockings she wore were far too long for her. She'd had to hook the garters down into the stocking itself—one of them had already worn through.”

  “One might add the general unlikelihood of a Bohemian choosing to dress in silk stockings and a flowered summer frock. I saw no such garments in her wardrobe at home.”

  I thought of my conversation with the neighbour's child. “Perhaps she dressed that way to make a more staid impression on someone.”

  “But if, as you suggest, she chose neither the shoes nor the clothing herself, then either she assembled the garments from another woman's wardrobe, or she was given them to wear.”

  “By someone who didn't know her size very well,” I said without thinking. To my consternation, Holmes did not react, even though my statement clearly suggested that Damian's knowledge of his wife's dress size was a factor to be taken into consideration. He simply smoked and looked daggers at the passing view, while I bent over the wheel and concentrated on not driving over any distracted churchgoers or Sunday ramblers.

  Greetings with Mrs Hudson cost me an hour, which Holmes spent shouting down the telephone and crashing about in his laboratory. I was saved from the enumeration of her Surrey friend's ills by Holmes' bellow from above that he wished to leave in a quarter hour. I tore myself away and hammered up the stairs, throwing an assortment of things into a bag and conversing with him as we went in and out of various rooms.

  “—need to speak with the station masters in Eastbourne, Polegate, and Seaford, and show them her photograph.”

  “Do you have her photograph, then?”

  “How else should I intend to show them it?”

  “Sorry. Do you wish me to bring weapons?”

  “Your knife might be wise.”

  I shuddered at the brief vision of a blade crossing the ivory throat of Yolanda Adler, but added my slim throwing knife and its scabbard to the heap on the bed. “I should like to see the Adler house for myself, Holmes. Might we spend the night there, so I can look at that book by light of day?”

  “I would have stolen it for you, had I known you were interested.” His voice was muffled by the door to the lumber room down the hallway, and I heard thumps and a crash.

  I raised my voice, a trifle more than mere volume required. “I'm interested because she was. Both of them, come to that—Damian's art is infused with mystic symbols and traditions.”

  Holmes' voice answered two inches away from my ear, making me jerk and spray a handful of maps across the floor. “Religion can be a dangerous thing, it is true,” he remarked darkly, and went out again.

  I got down on my knees to fish the maps out from under the bed. “Did you find out who is in charge of her case, at Scotland Yard?”

  “Your old friend and admirer, Lestrade.”

  “Really? I'd have thought him too high-ranking for an unidentified woman in a rural setting.”

  “I haven't spoken with the good Chief Inspector himself, but I am led to understand the newspapers are summoning outrage at the ‘desecration of Britain's ancient holy places,’ and to have this following a death in Cerne Abbas and an assault at Stonehenge means that Scotland Yard will be doing all it can to deter a cause célèbre.”

  I found myself smiling. “I can just imagine what Lestrade has to say about having to investigate suicidal Druids.”

  In a moment, his head appeared around the door frame. “Was the woman who killed herself at Cerne Abbas a Druid?”

  “She was an unemployed secretary, according to the papers. It was a farmer's letter to the editor that mentioned Druids.”

  “Disappointing,” he said, looking both at me and through me. “I don't know that I have ever before encountered Druidical suicides.”

  “It would be an original means of marking your return.”

  “The lunatics rejoice,” he said, and nearly chuckled. Then he caught himself, and his eyes came into focus. “Are you ready Russell?”

  But now it was my turn to look through him, as a thin idea stirred in the back of my mind. Lunatics and linked deaths; Holmes sitting in the moonlit window; a startling eclipse; full moons doubled above a cat's-fur hillside; a conversation: Madness is linked to the moon.

  “Er, Holmes, I'm going to be a bit longer. Would you mind awfully taking a look at the orchard hives before we leave? It seemed to me that a couple of them were wanting the addition of a super, and it would be a pity if it drove them to swarm while we were away.” I could see that he was torn between the urgency of the case and the call of his long-time charges, so I added, “Holmes, it's Sunday. How much do you imagine we'll be able to accomplish in London anyway?”

  “One hour,” he said, “no more.”

  I waited at the window until I saw him cross the orchard. Then I trotted downstairs to the library and looked up the phases of the moon in the 1924 almanac. Dry-mouthed, I pushed the almanac back into place and went upstairs again, glancing out of the window to make sure he was still occupied before I fetched the key to the lumber room.

  The oversized storage cupboard that Holmes called his lumber room was where all the useless odds and ends of a lifetime waited to be dragged into light as evidence, exemplar, or key piece of arcane research. (Including an assortment of deadly poisons—hence the lock.) It took a while to find his collection of outdated almanacs, in one tea-chest amongst a dozen others. I was not certain that there would even be one for that war year of 1918, but there was, although undersized and on the cheapest of pulp paper.

  I perched atop an African wood drum and cautiously turned the limp pages to the calendar showing phases of the moon.

  In April 1918, the full moon came on the 26th.

  The day before young Damian Adler had killed a man in a drunken brawl. My hands trembled as they reached for the next year's volume.

  Full moon: 11 August 1919.

  Four days later, Damian had been arrested in the death of a drugs seller, fifty miles from Paris—to be released, not through proving an alibi, but through disproving a witness.

  Yolanda Adler had been killed on 15 August 1924, when the moon was still full in the sky.

  And as I h
ad found downstairs: Miss Fiona Cartwright of Poole died of a bullet wound on 17 June: the night of a full moon.

  The hair on the nape of my neck stirred.

  Damian Adler, a painter of moonscapes and madness.

  A sound came from somewhere in the house, and my hand flung the almanac into the chest and slammed down the lid. With only a degree more deliberation, I locked up the lumber room and returned the key to its hook in the laboratory, then took a furious brush to the dust on my skirt.

  Absurd. Damian was no lunatic.

  What if I had it the wrong way around? In 1918, Damian Adler—convalescing, shell-shocked, and drunk—had hit a man. If the other officer had been sober, or younger, or stronger, Damian would have been guilty of nothing more than fisticuffs in a bar, not a killing. It had been the night of a full moon; the moon came to haunt the artist's work, not as a stimulus of death, but as a reminder?

  And the other deaths? Were Fiona Cartwright and Yolanda Adler merely coincidences? I mistrusted coincidences as much as Holmes did, but in fact, they did occur. And Fiona Cartwright's death was a suicide. Wasn't it?

  “Ready, Russell?”

  The voice up the stairs startled me. I threw the clothes-brush onto the bed and began to stuff the waiting valise.

  I would say nothing of my … I couldn't even call them suspicions. Morbid thoughts. This was Holmes' son. If there was evidence, Holmes would follow it, and Holmes would acknowledge it. I would say nothing, although the awareness of those dates was already eating into me like a drop of acid.

  I caught up my bag and walked down the stairs.

  “Here I am, Holmes. Let me just see if there's anything Mrs Hudson wishes from Town.”

  Study (2): With Despair and hunger at his heels,

  he followed the faint paths of those who had gone before.

  After long years, he found the first keys:

  the Elements and Sacrifice.