Laurie King - The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Move very carefully; the gun is already cocked, and it takes very little pressure to set the trigger off. Thank you. Mr. Holmes, you look considerably further from Death's door than I was led to believe. Now, if you would please bring that other chair and place it at the table to the left of Miss Russell. A bit farther apart. Good. And the lamp, extinguish it and place it on the shelf. Yes, there. Now, sit down. You will please leave your hands on top of the table at all times, both of you. Good."

I sat at arm's length from Holmes and looked past the gun's maw at my mathematics tutor. She was sitting in the very corner of the room behind a rank of shelves, so that the shadow cast by the shelves cut directly across her. The overhead glare illuminated her tweed-and silk- covered legs from the knee down, and occasionally the very end of the heavy military pistol. All else was dim: an occasional flash of teeth and eyes, a dull glint from the gold chain and locket she wore at her throat; all else was shadow.

"Mr. Holmes, we meet at last. I have been looking forward to this meeting for quite some time."

"Twenty-five years or more, isn't it Miss Donleavy? Or, do you prefer to be addressed by your father's name?"

Silence filled the laboratory, and I sat bewildered.

Did Holmes know where the woman came from? Her father —?

"Touché, Mr. Holmes. I take back my earlier criticism; you still do a nice line in bon mots. Perhaps you might explain to Miss Russell."

"It was her own name that Miss Donleavy signed on the seats of the four-wheeler, Russell. This is the daughter of Professor Moriarty."

"Surprise, surprise, Miss Russell. You did tell me what a very superior sort of mind your friend has. What a pity he was born trapped in a man's body."

With a wrenching effort I took control of my thoughts and sent them, useless as it might now seem, in the direction of the last plan that Holmes and I had laid. I swallowed and studied my hands on the tabletop.

"I cannot agree, Miss Donleavy," I said. "Mr. Holmes' mind and his body seem to me well suited to each other."

"Miss Russell," she said delightedly, "sharp as always. I must admit I had forgotten how I always enjoyed your mind. And, as you intimate, I had also forgotten that the two of you have become — alienated. I must say I often wondered what you saw in him. I could have done a great deal with you had it not been for your irrational fondness for Mr. Holmes."

I pointedly said nothing, just studied my hands. I did wonder why they weren't shaking.

"But now the fondness has turned, has it?" she said, in a voice that was soft and tinged with sadness. "So very sad, when old friends part and become enemies."

My heart leapt with hope, but I kept all expression from my face. If she believed this, we might yet get around her. It was difficult for me to tell, partly because I had to judge solely by her voice and also because my trust in my own perceptions had been badly shaken, but beyond this she also seemed somehow foreign, her reactions exaggerated, fluctuating.

I had little time to reflect on the question, because Holmes stirred at my side and spoke up, his voice flat.

"Kindly refrain from baiting the child, Miss Donleavy, and continue: I believe you have something you wish to say to me."

The round metal circle on her knee began to shake slightly, and after a brief moment of terror I heard her laughter, and I felt ill. She had been playing with me. We might have fooled her for a time, but now our act was exposed, and even the small chance we'd had with deception was no longer ours. "You are right, Mr. Holmes. I have not much time, and you have robbed me of a great deal of energy in the last few days. I have no great energy to spare, you understand.

I am dying. Oh yes, Miss Russell, my absence from the college was no sham. There is a crab with its claws in my belly and no way to remove it. I had originally planned to wait several years for this, Mr. Holmes, but I do not have the leisure now. Before much longer I will not have the strength to deal with you. It must be now." Her voice echoed in the tiled laboratory and whispered away like a snake.

"Very well, Miss Donleavy, you have me at your mercy. Let us dismiss Miss Russell and get on with the issues between us."

"Oh no, Mr. Holmes, sorry. I cannot do that. She is a part of you now, and I cannot deal with you without including her. She stays." Her voice had gone cold, so cold it was hard for me to connect it with the person who had drunk tea with me and laughed in front of a fire. Cold, and with danger uncoiling from its base. I shivered, and she saw it.

"Miss Russell is cold, and I imagine tired. We all are, my dear, but we have a while to go before the end. Come now, Mr. Holmes, don't keep your protégée here all day. I am sure you have a number of questions you would like to ask me. You may begin."

I looked at Holmes, sitting less than a yard from me.

His hand rubbed across his face in a gesture of fatigue, but for the briefest fraction of an instant his eyes slid sideways to meet mine with a spark of hard triumph, and then his hand fell away from features that were merely bone tired and filled with defeat. He leant back in his chair with his long, bony hands spread out on the table before him and gave a tiny shrug.

"I have no questions, Miss Donleavy."

The gun wavered for a moment. "No questions! But of course you have — " She caught herself. "Mr. Holmes, you needn't try to irritate me. That would be a waste of our precious time. Now come, surely you have questions." Her voice had an edge to it, and a flash of memory came, of a time when I had failed to make a logical connexion that ought to have been obvious, and her voice had cut deep. In perfect counterpoint came the voice of Holmes, fatigued and slightly bored.

"Miss Donleavy, I tell you, there are no questions in my mind regarding this case. It has been very interesting, even challenging, but it is now over, and all the significant data have been correlated."

"Indeed? Pardon me if I doubt your word, Mr. Holmes, but I suspect you are playing some obscure game. Perhaps you might be so good as to explain to Miss Russell and myself the sequence of events. Hands on the table, Mr. Holmes. I have no wish to cut this short. Thank you. You may proceed."

"Shall I begin with the occurrences of last autumn, or of twenty-eight years ago?"

"As you wish, though perhaps Miss Russell may find the latter course of some interest."

"Very well. Russell, twenty-eight years ago I, not to mince words, killed Professor James Moriarty, your maths tutor's father. That it was self-defence does not contravene the fact that I was responsible for his falling to his death over the Reichenbach Falls, or that it was my investigation into his extensive criminal activities that was the direct cause of his seeking to kill me. I found him out, I exposed his network of crime, and I was the immediate cause of his death.

"However, Russell, I made two mistakes at that time, though how I might have anticipated events I cannot at the moment think. The first was that my subsequent three- yearlong disappearance from England allowed the scattered remnants of Moriarty's organisation to regroup; by the time I returned it had succeeded in extending itself internationally, with little structure left aboveground in this country. My second mistake was to allow Moriarty's family — the existence of which was one of his better kept secrets — to disappear from my view. His wife and young daughter left for New York, never to be seen again. Or so I had thought. Was Donleavy your mother's maiden name?" "Ah, so you do have a question! Yes, it was."

"Minor lacunae, Miss Donleavy, and hardly worth the effort of pursuit. What does it matter, whether the hair you left for me to find was your father's? or, which room in the warehouse across the river the marksman was in before shooting at Miss Russell? or indeed, was it you or some minion who prematurely triggered the bomb that killed Dickson? Peripheral matters left unanswered make for an untidy case but hardly affect its basic framework."