The Tomb of the Honey Bee: A Posie Parker Mystery (The Posie Parker Mystery Series Book 2)

by L. B. Hathaway

  Alaric hung his head for what seemed like an age, and Posie was just beginning to feel like a dreadful fat-head when she saw that he had recovered himself a little and was even attempting a half-smile.

  ‘It seems, Miss Parker, that you alone seem to have had the sense that all three of us were lacking. I, in particular, feel a first-rate fool. Fancy not realising that Cosima was not enamoured of Bikram, and then sending him to her anyway! I suppose love must really be blind… It seems I could do with some of your clear-headedness in sorting this nasty mess out once and for all.’

  He stood up. ‘Would you care to walk in the orchards and see the legendary beehives? Many, Harry Redmayne included, would give their eye-teeth for such a pleasure! We may just catch the last of the light. And afterwards, you must stay for tea, and try some of the honey. You can stay here in one of the guestrooms tonight: it’s too late, and too dangerous to start back again for Ortigia tonight.’

  Posie followed Alaric out, watching him as he passed the bee coin solemnly over to an unsmiling Brother Luca, who had been standing like a sentry outside the door to the room they had been cloistered inside.

  What a mess, Posie thought to herself as they passed down ornate tiled corridors of brightest gold, lit by candles, on their way out. They passed a monk in the process of lighting some of the sconces, and Posie remembered with a horrid little jolt the Venetian-masked tallow-lighter in Ortigia, and the similar costume worn by the person who had been following her around in such a sinister fashion. As yet, and she didn’t know why, she hadn’t got around to mentioning it to Alaric.

  And with a guilty tug at her conscience, she realised that she also hadn’t told him about having seen Lady Cosima in the market earlier; that as vague and uncaring as Cosima had proved or pretended herself to be with regard to her feelings for Alaric, she had managed to get herself out here to Ortigia, after all.

  ****

  Fourteen

  ‘The bees have all gone to Bedfordshire for the night,’ joked Alaric, as they walked in the twilight beneath the linden trees.

  Alaric showed Posie an entire side of a stony, nubby mountain filled with fico d’India plants, dispersed among which were hundreds upon hundreds of wicker beehives. A white-robed monk was moving among the hives in the far distance carrying a low-burning torch.

  The light was failing as they walked, and if she were being very honest, Posie could smell more than she could see, but the delicious evening perfume coupled with Alaric’s almost touching enthusiasm for the rare concoction of flora which made the Hyblaean honey so very special raised her spirits. It was a paradise here, even if it was a paradise which Alaric had obviously been hoping to show to Lady Cosima, not her.

  As they walked back towards the Serafina Monastery it seemed almost in bad taste to mention the ‘nasty mess’ which had led the explorer to seek sanctuary here. But time was pressing and Posie was interested in hearing the explorer’s thoughts on who exactly wanted him out of the way.

  ‘I was tasked to find you, and I have,’ she said. ‘But it’s all got so complicated now, and I feel I have to see this thing through to the end, even if I’m no longer “officially” instructed.’

  They had reached a low stone bench set on a terrace outside the main entrance to the Monastery. Posie sat down wearily, Alaric following suit. It was still very hot, and she batted midges away from her face.

  ‘I was given a list of suspects at the very start of this case. But now one of those very suspects, Ianthe, has herself been murdered. I think she had found something out about the person who wanted to harm you, and she wanted to tell me, and she was killed because of it. I therefore have a personal connection to her murder, and this case. But I feel no nearer to pinpointing anyone on that original list! The trouble is, everyone seems to have a motive for wanting you dead. Even my friend, Inspector Lovelace at Scotland Yard, doesn’t seem to have a firm lead. You must tread carefully, Mr Boynton-Dale. Even hiding out here, if this is where you intend to stay.’

  ‘Call me Alaric, please,’ he insisted.

  ‘Fine. But somebody very dangerous was among those gathered at Boynton Hall, Alaric. I could feel the evil there.’

  Alaric smiled in the almost-darkness. He was miles away, back at the home of his childhood, before the time of the Great War, before the loss of his parents, before he gave up his title.

  ‘Ah! Dear, dear Boynton Hall,’ he reminisced fondly. A grave, dreamy look stole over his face.

  ‘You talk of evil, but that evil is a very new thing, you know. A very new atmosphere pervades the place now. Time was when I couldn’t wait to get back there. I dreamt of it when I was needing comfort in the Great War; I thought of it when I was up in my little Sopwith Camel, tearing through the machine gun fire. Boynton Hall has weathered the ages and it will go on doing so. I kept remembering its permanence: wars, sieges, changes of government and religion. Why, did you know there is even a Priest’s Hole and a secret chapel in the house, with loads of secret tunnels? They was built in the sixteenth century, when it was a crime for the Boynton-Dale family to be Catholic, and they had to hide their priest away somewhere. At my lowest points it comforted me to think that Boynton Hall would be there for a long, long time after me. It comforted me, even though I had given it up when I was much younger to my fool of a brother!’

  ‘Do you regret that decision?’

  Alaric shook his head firmly. ‘No! None of that aristocratic title nonsense was important to me. It still isn’t.’

  ‘My friend the Inspector thinks that your brother Roderick is the prime suspect in both Ianthe’s death and in plotting yours: the damaged aeroplane, the burnt beehives. Do you agree?’

  Alaric made a noise somewhere between a choke and a laugh. ‘No! Roderick hasn’t got it in him! He might want my money but he wouldn’t kill me for it!’

  ‘But would he pay someone else to do his dirty work for him?’

  Alaric shook his head.

  ‘But you agree this is about your money?’ Posie said casually. ‘Your Will, more specifically. You did bring it out here, didn’t you? The new one you signed in favour of your sister? Your lawyer, Mr Proudfoot, is apparently going out of his mind with worry, he wants it safely locked up in his strongroom. If your new Will is lost, everything stays the same way as in your old Will. Roderick gets the lot!’

  Alaric turned in the semi-darkness and looked at Posie appreciatively. ‘Cooe-ee! Not much gets by you, does it?’

  He nodded and lit a cigarette, offering one to Posie from a cardboard packet, which she declined. He blew a perfect smoke ring which hung between them in the mosquitoey blue air.

  ‘You’re right. I think this is about my Will, wretched thing. These attacks only started up around the time I announced I was changing it! And yes, I do have the new Will here with me. Don’t worry, I’m not going to lose it. It’s safe here. I wish I could have given the Trust monies away when I signed away the house and title to Roderick, but I couldn’t. No legal way out of it, apparently. So now I’m stuck with some lunatic on my heels trying to kill me for that money. Maybe poor Ianthe found out which particular lunatic it was, and she wrote about it in her new book. I wouldn’t be surprised: she was awfully clever, a bit like you actually.’

  Alaric stared for a second too long at Posie, making her feel uncomfortable. He blew another smoke ring.

  ‘She made it her job to ferret out interesting stories about people. All of this would really have appealed to her. The perils of being a writer, eh? Poor soul, paying with her life like that.’

  ‘You announced you were going to change the Will,’ said Posie carefully, ‘but did you actually tell anyone you had gone to the lawyers’ office and changed it for definite?’

  Alaric shrugged, shaking his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said slowly. ‘I can’t remember really.’

  Was it her imagination or had a cloud of darkness settled over Alaric’s features? A fleeting frown of worry which hung there, caught. She changed tack: />
  ‘So then, which particular lunatic do you think is trying to kill you?’ asked Posie in an even tone. She watched as Alaric drew another mouthful of smoke, exhaling it around him. He crossed his long legs and uncrossed them again.

  ‘I haven’t really got a clue,’ he said quietly, after a time. ‘I think if I were a betting man I would have put money on it being Roderick’s wife, Eve. She’s the recent evil I was speaking of at Boynton Hall; things haven’t been the same in that house since Roderick brought her there. She wants the money in the Will but she wants something else, too.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Alaric sighed. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t find out sooner, what with your nose for a story. Eve is in love with me, has thrown herself at me countless times over the years. She met me first, you know, at some party in London, and pursued me for months. She married Roderick when it was obvious I wasn’t interested in her, and he only married her for her money. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t really love my brother, it’s all a big face-saving act: those adoring looks, the way she won’t leave his side. But in private she has continued to pursue me, even after their marriage. It’s got past the point of being embarrassing now. Just ghastly! That was one of the reasons I set up home in the annexe a couple of years ago, to get away from the wretched woman. Talk about awkward!’

  Posie stared at him, incredulous. It had never crossed her mind! Was Alaric, in common with many very good-looking men, capable of believing that every woman he met was madly in love with him? He didn’t seem the type somehow, not vain enough. Too down-to-earth.

  ‘Really? But your sister Violet told me Eve hates you with a passion! She even came across her in the Library once, cutting up newspaper photos of you, scoring through your face with a razor. Perhaps you didn’t know?’

  Alaric laughed bitterly:

  ‘Oh, poor Cuckoo!’ he said fondly.

  ‘My sister Violet gets the wrong end of the stick sometimes, that’s all. I know exactly what you are referring to. Lady Eve is a great lover of scrapbooks. She cuts out photos and articles all the time. Her favourite subject is me. She’s obsessed. I’ve seen the books – she showed me. She’s made at least twenty, just of me! What sort of skewed compliment is that? Please don’t think I’m boasting, either. I find it very disturbing. I’ve never really spoken of it to anyone, and certainly not to Violet. Cuckoo probably never guessed: she was too young at the time to remember how Eve had come to meet Roderick in the first place. But I’d say the signs were all there, if you knew what to look for. And what Violet saw was probably Eve cutting out another picture, ready to glue into her scrapbook, but when Eve saw that she was cornered she probably thought she would play-act and pretend to deface it instead. Easier.’

  He ground out his cigarette out under his heel. ‘And perhaps Ianthe realised Eve was in love with me, and wrote about it. Who knows?’

  Posie suddenly saw how all of this made sense. She remembered Eve’s particularly venomous, over-the-top tones when she spoke about Alaric, which now made sense if you saw it as a weird form of self-preservation, defensiveness. She remembered the strange light which illuminated Eve’s ugly face when she spoke of Alaric. She recalled talking to Eve’s father on the lawn at Boynton Hall, and his words about Alaric came back to her now, but they had taken on an altogether different meaning: ‘If you ask me, my girl Eve has taken his disappearance mighty badly…’

  And then she remembered what she had been reading earlier in Ianthe’s novel; the characters who she now realised were all obviously based perilously closely on the real-life occupants of Boynton Hall! So Alaric was right! Ianthe had realised that Eve was in love with Alaric and had created a horrible character based on Eve, who was so bewitched by the explorer in the book that she spent all her time plotting how to get him away from his lover.

  If Ianthe had understood people as well as Alaric implied, and wrote about them in her new book, it seemed probable that she had come across the person who had been aiming to harm Alaric, and had exposed him or her in the book, and hence it had proved crucial for the last page to be removed by the killer. Posie vowed to finish the novel as quickly as possible and come to her own conclusions. But was it really possible that the murderer was Eve, as Alaric seemed to think?

  ‘But if she’s in love with you, why would she try and harm you?’ cried Posie incredulously.

  ‘Search me,’ said Alaric, sounding tired of the discussion. ‘Maybe she thinks that if she can’t have me, no-one can. I know she wants to cause trouble: I swear it was Eve who sent that telegram to Hugo Marchpane last month, informing him about my affair with Cosima.’

  ‘Well, what about Codlington, the Valet?’ Posie described his surly tone with her, the inexplicable bright ruby and gold engraved cufflinks which she had seen him displaying proudly, and which were much too fancy for a servant to wear.

  ‘Did you discover him stealing from Roderick?’

  Alaric shook his head.

  ‘No. What makes you think that? He’s a slippery character and no mistake but I’ve never accused him of stealing. I told him fairly recently to stop placing bets which Roderick can little afford, but that was it. But it’s up to Roderick how he spends his money and runs his life. And the cufflinks sound like my father’s. Perhaps Roderick has given them to him as a thank you for all the extra work Codlington does for him. Goodness knows he’s the only one who can keep him in check, especially when he’s been hitting the bottle hard!’

  ‘So, Codlington is not a suspect in your mind?’ Posie asked, confused. She drank this in: Codlington’s own story seemed to be tallying up.

  Alaric shrugged. ‘Who knows? I wouldn’t have said so. Perhaps I should come back with you to England, take part in this investigation. After all, I can’t hide away here forever.’

  ‘But I thought you wanted to stay up here? That this is a legendary place for you? You’ve only been here a week! It also has the advantage of being safe.’

  ‘I don’t really “do” safety,’ Alaric said bitterly. ‘Besides, I’m getting restless. I’ve learnt the bee-keeping tricks from the monks up here, now I want to move off. I’ll accompany you back into Ortigia tomorrow, for starters. Then let’s see what happens. Shall we go and have a bite to eat now?’ he said, standing, offering his hand to her gallantly.

  They walked back inside the Monastery together in a tense silence. Posie was thinking through everything Alaric had said to her. Still nothing made sense. Nothing at all.

  At the end of a very long dim corridor, Alaric opened a door into a delicious smelling high-beamed refectory where monks were moving around bearing plates laden with food. The monks mainly ignored them and Posie and Alaric collected plates and helped themselves to a stew from silver platters on a sideboard.

  Alaric poured red wine from a great golden jug and they sat down at a candlelit trestle table, some way away from the monks.

  ‘I’m intrigued to know what Harry Redmayne is doing on this dig in Egypt. Did you say something about a Honey God or Goddess? He called me, did he?’

  Posie was surprised that Alaric wanted to change the subject away from his likely attacker, and she told him so.

  Alaric smiled a watery smile. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that all that danger feels such a long way away. Please don’t think I’m being dismissive of your attempts to work out who has it in for me: quite the opposite. But I fancy a nice evening now, and you seem terrific company, and I’ve been pretty much alone with my thoughts for over a week now. You understand?’

  ‘Oh, quite.’

  ‘Splendid. So tell me more about Egypt. And then you must try the Hyblaean honey, and the honey cake made by the monks. It’s probably not as good as the one my sister Violet makes, but even so…’

  Posie appreciated Alaric’s light-heartedness and his efforts to entertain her as his guest. She did her best to fill him in on the sketchy details she remembered from Harry Redmayne’s brief discussion. But Alaric was only half-listening to her. Something was worrying him,
that much was obvious.

  She tried to forget about the Venetian-masked stalker in the back streets of Ortigia, and Cosima lurking in the market. She thrust them to the back of her mind and concentrated on drinking her wine and eating a good deal of the honey cake.

  It was only later, when she was lying in her starched white monastic bed, unable to sleep, that something tugged at Posie’s mind: for all Alaric had spoken about danger being far away, he hadn’t really sounded that convinced of it.

  And neither was she.

  ****

  Fifteen

  Ortigia lay spread out before them like a cloudy gemstone on Wednesday morning, set against the sparkling early morning sea. And for the first time since she had seen Len together with his wife on Saturday, Posie realised she had managed to go a full twelve hours without thinking of him. She congratulated herself and took in the beautiful scenery as she walked with Alaric along the old harbour wall.

  ‘This is my guesthouse,’ she said as they reached the Locatelli. He nodded, and entered the tiled blue entrance hall with her.

  ‘I’ll wait here for you,’ he said, removing his panama hat and setting his small rucksack down on the floor.

  ‘I’ll be quick,’ Posie promised, and she meant it: she was not one of those girls who took an age to get ready anyhow, but right now she was starving, and she was looking forwards to the hearty breakfast they had promised themselves as a well-deserved treat after the long, winding descent down from the Hyblaean mountains in the back of the fruit van at the crack of dawn with Brother Luca.

  Brother Luca had been silent and surly the entire trip down, and Posie had almost fallen over in shock at the end of the journey when he had presented her with a small gold-and-white bag as she climbed out of the van and said goodbye through the window. Inside the bag was a very small jar of the dark brown, almost acidic-tasting legendary Hyblaean honey which she had tasted the night before, and which, to be honest, wasn’t exactly to her liking, but which she realised was a very, very special present indeed.