The Language of Bees

by Laurie R. King

  “I can't be certain, but it might be Marcus Tolliver's work.”

  I stood motionless, my hand half-extended to receive the book. “What? Where?”

  “Tolliver? Not sure. Somewhere up near Lord's.”

  “St John's Wood?”

  “Or Maida Vale, perhaps.”

  My hand completed the gesture and returned the book to the carry-bag. I gave him my best smile, and said, “Sir, you don't know how close you came to being kissed.”

  He was imperturbable. “Next time you have a print job, madam, just keep us in mind.”

  A casual stroll past Tolliver's bindery told me that this establishment did not do much of its business printing menus and playbills. Two small windows faced the street. One of them had neat black-and-gilt letters across it:

  Tolliver

  BOOKS BOUND

  The other window looked more like the display of a jeweller than a printer, with two small volumes nestled into folds of deep green velvet. One book stood, showing a cover of bleached deerskin that invited touch. The leather was graced with a delicate vine curling around letters that said, with an incongruous lack of originality, ALBUM. The vine had three blue-green fruits, round turquoise beads set into the embossing.

  The other book lay open, and showed a page from what looked like the diary of a very gifted amateur watercolourist, with a shadowy sketch of a Venice canal surrounded by handwritten commentary.

  I had found the shop twenty minutes earlier, passing on the opposite side of the busy street, then making a circle around its block of shops and flats. Unfortunately, there was no access to the back of the shop, as there might have been for a printer that used greater quantities of ink and paper. If I wanted to break in, I should have to do so through the front door.

  I tore my gaze away from the pair of books and went through that front door now. The air bore a rich amalgam of expensive paper, leather, ink, machine oil, and dye-stuffs, with a trace of cigar smoke underneath. A bell rang, somewhere in the back, but the man himself was already there, bent and balding although he moved like a man in his thirties. He greeted me with an encouraging smile.

  I laid my prepared tale before him: aged uncle with an interesting life; upcoming birthday; big family; multiple copies needed of his round-the-world journal. Many colour pages: Could Mr Tolliver help?

  Mr Tolliver could help.

  I then drew out the copy of Testimony and placed it on the counter. “I rather liked what you did with the sketches in this, and the paper—what's wrong?”

  He had taken an almost imperceptible step away from the book; his smile had disappeared. “Is this your book?” he asked.

  “No, I borrowed it from a friend.” His expression remained closed, so I changed my answer. “Well, not so much a friend, just someone I know.” Still no response. “And not so much borrowed. I sort of took it.”

  “You stole this?”

  An effective witness interview is dependent on tiny hints and clues, reading from words, gestures, and the shift of muscles beneath skin, just what the person is thinking, and what he wants to hear. It happens so swiftly it seems intuitive, although in fact it is simply fast. Here, Tolliver was disapproving of the theft, but also, faintly, reassured.

  “No no, I didn't steal anything, I borrowed it. But I didn't give my friend too much of a choice in the matter, short of snatching it out of my hands. I will return it, honest, I merely wanted to look at it more closely. Apart from the words, it is very beautiful.”

  I hoped he might relent a shade at the compliment, but if anything, he appeared less forthcoming than before.

  And sometimes, an effective witness interview is dependent on techniques one finds distasteful. Such as telling the truth.

  I sighed. “I am not actually in need of a printer. A friend's wife was murdered. I believe the police are looking in the wrong direction. I think the man who had this made knows something that might help. I need to find him.”

  He studied me for a long time, until I began to feel nervous: He had no reason to know that I was avoiding the police—my image was not yet posted across the news—but it was possible he knew of Damian Adler's connexion with this book. At last, he reached out to caress one leather edge with his thick finger. He looked regretful, like a father whose son had committed a shameful crime.

  “Twice in my career I have turned down commissions for reasons other than practical ones,” he said. “The first was early, just my second year, when I was asked to bind a photograph collection of young girls that I found—well, intrusive. The second was to be a privately issued novel built around a series of police photographs of murder victims. Again, the salacious overtones were repugnant.

  “In neither case, you understand, was it the display of flesh that made me say no. Why, just this past autumn, I bound a collection of, shall we say, personal drawings and poems as a gift from a wife to her husband. It turned out very pretty indeed.

  “Those other two projects I rejected because I didn't like the thought of my work around that content. Do you understand?”

  “I believe so.”

  “This book,” he said, laying his hand flat on the cover, “made me wonder if I shouldn't regretfully decline it as well.”

  “But you did not.”

  “I did not. I read it, before I started on the plates, which I do not always do. I found it odd, but not overtly offensive.”

  “So why were you tempted to reject it?”

  He tapped the cover thoughtfully with his fingertips: one, two, three, four. “It might have been the attitude of the man himself. Somehow he reminded me of the two men who brought me their little prizes to beautify. A trace of defiance, as if daring me to find fault with requests they knew to be unsavoury.”

  “But in this case, you could not.”

  “The sketches alone justified the project. In fact, I suggested to him that he might like to do a second version with just the artwork.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  Tolliver's eyes twinkled. “He wasn't entirely pleased—the words, I understood, were his. He did say that he was working on a simpler version of the text, to be used with those same illustrations, a book intended for higher numbers. But I had to tell him that on my equipment, I should not be able to do a large print run.” Tolliver did not sound regretful about the refusal.

  “When was this?”

  “January,” he said promptly. “I generally take two weeks' holiday the beginning of the year—I'm always rushed off my feet December, and seldom finish the last-minute commissions until after Christmas—and he was one of the first customers to come through the door after that. Which may explain my inclination to take on his job.”

  “What—” I started to ask, but he had not finished his thought.

  “Although the sketches would probably have decided me even if he'd come in during December, because Damian Adler was a client I wished to keep.”

  My heart gave a thump; it was all I could do to keep from looking over my shoulder to see if the police lurked outside of the door: The wry tone to his words told me he knew that Damian as a long-term customer was no longer a sure thing.

  “Damian Adler is a client?”

  “This is the friend whom the police are mistakenly looking for? I do read the newspapers. I thought him a most personable young man, with the kind of talent one does not see every day. He was one of the few new clients I undertook in December—he had a portfolio of prints and sketches that he wished me to mount and bind as a present. For his father, I believe it was, although he called by a few days later to tell me that there was no longer any urgency.”

  “I've seen that book,” I interrupted—why hadn't I realised this earlier? “It's stunning.”

  Tolliver dipped his head at the statement, but did not disagree. “However, I stayed up late for several nights to finish it before my holiday, both for the sheer pleasure of the thing, and to encourage Mr Adler to bring me other commissions. When I saw these drawings, I recognised
them as being his, and I understood that Mr Adler had recommended me to Reverend Harris.”

  Harris—yet another name to the man's armoury.

  “This is a man in his forties? With a scar next to his left eye?”

  “That is right.”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  He idly opened Testimony, paging through the text until he came to one of the ink drawings: the moon, in sharp black and white, centred on the page. He studied the drawing as if consulting it, then abruptly stepped away and bent, knees cracking, to draw a heavy leather-bound order-book from beneath the counter.

  He flipped back through the pages, then turned the ledger around on the counter for me to read.

  The address, I thought, would be phoney—Bedford Gardens was a street in Kensington, but I didn't think the numbers went that high. However, written beside it was a telephone number. If Smythe-Hayden-Harris-Brothers valued Testimony as highly as I thought, he might have been unable to bring himself to give a fake telephone number. Capping my pen, I ran my eyes across the ledger page, blinking involuntarily as I noted the sums involved. Then I looked more closely, and saw that this was for nine books.

  “I see you made him nine copies?”

  “Eight, actually. I offered to make fifteen or twenty—it's the plates that cost the money, you see, the actual materials are, well, not negligible, but the lesser of the whole. But he wanted precisely eight, and ordered the plates of the text destroyed.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. He even insisted on seeing the destroyed plates—not those of the drawings, those he asked me to save for the simpler edition of the book.

  “The ninth book consisted of blank sheets of very high quality paper interspersed with the original drawings. That one was called The Book of Truth—inside, not on the cover. The cover had the same design I put on Testimony.”

  “I see. Well, thank you, Mr Tolliver. You've been a considerable help.”

  “I hope you find what you are looking for,” he replied. Then, as I turned for the door, his voice stopped me. “Just, take care.”

  I studied his face, seeing more than mere politeness there. “Why do you say that?”

  He was regretting it, this revelation about a customer, but he answered anyway. “I don't know that Reverend Harris is the most wholesome of individuals. He did not strike me as altogether … balanced.”

  “I'll watch myself,” I assured him, and went to find a public telephone, to set Mycroft onto the telephone number. I then took shelter in a café, drinking tea in a back corner well away from any constabulary eyes, until it was nearer to dusk.

  When I rang Mycroft again, he had an address for me.

  The address was one of a street of sturdy, proud, brick-and-stone terrace houses that rose three stories above the street. Its stone steps were scrubbed, its trim freshly painted. Unlike its neighbours the curtains were tightly drawn—because the master of the house was expected back after dark, or because he was not expected back at all? I strolled slowly past, taking in what details I could from a house with no eyes, then turned right and right again, down the service lane of dustbins and delivery vans.

  And stopped dead.

  A man was coming down the alley from the other end, a dapper figure in a crisp linen suit, a neck-tie of a blue that glowed even in the crepuscular light, and a straw hat. He was swinging an ebony cane. He wore a black ribbon around his neck, which disappeared behind the bright blue silk scrap inhabiting his breast pocket: a monocle. Seeing my approach, he doffed his hat-brim half an inch above his sleeked-down hair.

  Holmes.

  Will: When a group of people are devoted to a goal, when

  they are consecrated into a way of living and dedicated to

  a Great Work, their communal Will glows and pulses like

  a small sun, providing energy for the Practitioner's Work.

  Testimony, IV:2

  WELL MET, HUSBAND”, I SAID WHEN HE HAD CLOSED the distance between us.

  He tipped his hat, then tucked my arm through his and propelled me back the way I had come, for all the world as if we were two residents whose afternoon stroll had brought them down an unexpected path.

  Which was, one might say, nothing less than the truth.

  “Did you find a drugs seller who knew the good Reverend's home address?” I asked him.

  “Indirectly, yes.”

  “Am I to understand your nicotinic meditations were effective?”

  “They generally are. Although it wasn't until the third pipe that it occurred to me that a man who attracts legal secretaries, titled young women, and Oxbridge undergraduates need not skulk through the dark and criminous parts of town to buy his drugs.”

  “A drawing-room drugs seller?”

  “A doctor with a taste for the better things in life. A doctor with a remarkable number of neurasthenics in his practice, poor souls who require the assistance of chemical substances to make each day bearable.”

  “It makes sense.”

  “Shocking, that it took me so long to put it together. I have moved too long among the frankly criminal classes, that I overlook those on the upper tier.”

  “Still,” I said, “no doubt there are any number of doctors who supplement their income by accepting payment for a little something extra. How did you find this particular one?”

  “I recalled a certain Lady—literally, the second daughter of a duke—who holds an open house once a week attended by precisely that class of bored neurasthenics. So I decided to drop in on her and put to her a few questions.”

  “Hence the stylish suiting.”

  “It distracted her long enough to get me in the door. And as you know, I am a difficult person to evict, once I have settled in.” He reached down to pluck a fragment of lint from his sleeve.

  “Threatening a lady, Holmes?”

  “Oh, my remarks were so delicate, they could scarcely bear the name of threat. Still, Her Ladyship's sense of vulnerability is painfully acute. One need only mention a name here, drop a hint there. The doctor she directed me to was of sterner stuff, but even he held out for very few minutes before identifying the man in the photograph, and admitted to having delivered a quantity of liquid Veronal once to the man's house. He insists on house calls, you see, both to provide a hold over his clientèle, and to get the stuff off of his premises, in case of a police raid.”

  I shook my head. “There is no loyalty among the criminal classes.”

  “Sad, but true. And you? You found the man who made Testimony?”

  “And I didn't even have to lie to him,” I said. “Well, I started off lying, but the truth became the simpler proposition. It seemed he didn't care much for the unwholesome atmosphere that surrounded Reverend Harris, as our man called himself.”

  I told him about my conversation with the book binder as we strolled the edges of Regent's Park and waited for dark. When the world had settled itself behind the dinner table, we returned to the house with the neat trim, and broke in.

  A generation earlier, Brothers would have had a maid and even a valet in residence, but times had changed, and at half past eight on a Sunday night, his day help was gone.

  By the stuffiness of the air and the lack of cooking odours, so was Brothers. There had been no lights visible through the curtains when we made our second pass by the front, but we stood motionless inside the dark kitchen for twenty minutes, listening to the emptiness. When we moved into the house, our soft soles made no impact on the silence.

  The curtains at the back of the house were as tightly drawn as those in the front. There was no milk in the ice-box, no bread in the bin, and several advertising flyers on the floor inside the mail flap.

  We started with a cursory, scullery-to-attic survey, our hand-torches confirming that the place was empty apart from a startled mouse—confirming, too, that this was the house we wanted: Two large and three small Adlers hung on its walls.

  One of those, a fanciful portrait of Brothers in a cloak a
nd wide-brimmed hat, solved the question that had niggled at me since Saturday night: The reason Lofte's photograph had seemed familiar was that Damian had used a segment of “Hayden's” face for the painting of Woden in the World Tree that I had seen a week before, although he had exaggerated the damage to Brothers' eye.

  Studying this version of the face, I had a strong impression that Damian had enjoyed putting Hayden on the tree more than he had showing him as Woden the wanderer.

  For a man of God, the Reverend enjoyed his luxuries: expensive drink in the cabinet, bespoke suits in the wardrobe, half a dozen pair of hand-crafted shoes, a set of silver-handled brushes for hair and clothing, and an ornate, high-poster bed that must have been two hundred years old. The coverlet was brocade with gold thread, and on the foot of the bed was folded a sumptuous blanket too soft for mere wool. I left the room, then on second thought returned, to pull back the brocade cover.

  The bed's pillows and feather mattress were bare.

  I found Holmes in the study. He had propped a heavy book against the wall, trapping the crack in the curtains to ensure the centre would remain closed, then switched on the desk lamp. He was not, I noticed, wearing gloves.

  “The maid has stripped the linen from the bed,” I told him from the doorway.

  “Then we shall have plenty of time.”

  “His shoes match the size of the boot-prints you found. And I'd say he took with him a pair of rough foot-wear—there are signs of dirt-clots, but no soles to match.”

  He grunted, concentrating on the shelves, and I reluctantly stepped inside. The room smelt of incense, but under the sweetness lay an unpleasant air, as if some small carrion-eater had taken up residence under the settee. I ran my eyes over the spines of those books shelved nearest the lamp: a pamphlet on “Blood Cults of Kerala”; a Sixteenth-Century Inquisitor's manifesto on witchcraft; several books with Chinese writing on the spines. On the next shelf up resided a family of skulls, four of them, in descending height, elaborately engraved with designs.