Laurie King - The Language of Bees

“My wits were at a peak today, and what good did it do us?”

“I did warn you that a round of the hospitals and morgues would be pure slog with little hope of success. If you were to permit the police-”

“No police.”

“I assure you I am capable of inventing a story to account for my enquiries into one Yolanda Adler.”

“I came to you because I thought it might let me avoid the police. If you can't do it, say the word and I'll go.”

“I am merely suggesting that using the established machinery of the official enquiry agents could save us time.”

“No police. Yolanda and Estelle have just begun to settle in here. To start out life with a police enquiry and a scandal would be too much.”

“I appreciate your concern. And I am willing to circumvent the police force in order to salvage your privacy. However, it will make things all the more difficult if I am saddled with a bleary-eyed and half-intoxicated partner on the morrow. I ask again, Damian, please stop.”

“Yes, all right. There. Happy?”

“Thank you.”

“It isn't as if you had never indulged.”

“Yes, thanks to Watson, all the world knows my peccadilloes. Do you wish to bath first, or shall I?”

“You go ahead. Although I'd have thought we could afford something a bit grander than this hole with a shared bath down the hall.”

“Inconvenience is the price of invisibility.”

“Holy Christ, that was cold! Was the geyser working when you bathed?”

“I looked at the device and decided not to risk an explosion.”

“Well, save your penny, it doesn't work anyway. Brrr. And shaving-cold water is why I grew a beard in the first place, when I couldn't afford hot water-they sell it in shops, in Shanghai-and I grew tired of savaging my jaw-line with a razor. It looks as if I'll now have a full beard rather than just the trimmings.”

“One does indeed dread the pull of the blade against cold skin.”

“I can't see you in a beard.”

“I have worn one from time to time, when a case suggested it. I cultivated a goatee in America before the War, but the longest I had a full beard was when I travelled in the Himalayas. The sensation of its removal, in an open-air barber's in Delhi with half the street bearing witness, was exquisite.”

“ America, eh? Where did you go?”

“ Chicago, for the most part.”

“Do you think these bed-clothes have been laundered in the last month?”

“I should doubt it.”

“Perhaps I'll sleep on top of them.”

“The night is warm.”

“And use my clothes as a pillow.”

“Head lice can indeed be a nuisance.”

“You sure you don't want a small night-cap, to help you sleep?”

“Damian, I-”

“Yes, yes, you're right. Clear-headed.”

“Shall I get the lights?”

“No! Leave them. For a bit. If you don't mind.”

“As you wish.”

“So. Did you go to New Jersey? When you were in America?”

“I passed through on my way from New York, that is all.”

“I went there once. With Mother. When I was nine.”

“Which would have been 1903?”

“That's right. Why?”

“1903 was the year I left London for Sussex.”

“And took up beekeeping.”

“Yes.”

“Did you truly not know?”

“About you?”

“About me, about her, about…”

“Your mother was a remarkably clever woman. Too clever, I fear, for the men in her life. What she told me, I believed.”

“Wanted to believe.”

“I did not wish to be sent away. I… was very fond of your mother. She was an extraordinary woman.”

“She was lonely. A son can only do so much.”

“I fear she may have been too clever for her own good, as well.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Not so easy, no.”

“In any case, good night.”

“I shall turn off the-”

“Leave it! One of them, if you don't mind. The small one.”

“As you like. Good night, Damian.”

I WOKE WHEN THE TERRACE GREW LIGHT, GROANING with the aches brought by alcohol compounded by hard stones. Was it Hippocrates who declared that moonlight affected the moistures of the brain, and drove a person mad? Certainly, it did one's body no good.

I staggered to the kitchen to make strong coffee. At seven o'clock I picked up the telephone and asked to be connected with the Monk's Tun inn.

“Hello, is that Johanna? Oh, Rebecca, good morning, this is Mary Russell. Could you- What's that? Oh, thank you, it's good to be back. Could I ask you to take a message to Lulu? Tell her she needn't come out today-in fact, not to come out until she hears from me. Oh no, everything is fine, I'd just prefer she not come out for a few days. That's right, Mrs Hudson is due back Saturday, and I'm sure she'll want Lulu's help then. Thanks. Oh, and give my greetings to your aunt.”

I spent the morning settling into the quiet, amiable house, and finished up the accumulated correspondence. Feeling virtuous, I dropped the letters on the table near the front door and went to don clothing similar to what I had worn the previous afternoon, digging out a small rucksack from the lumber room and tossing into it another impromptu picnic, a few tools, some paper, and a pencil.

If Holmes was off dealing with one mystery, there was no reason I couldn't turn my mind to the one left behind.

The empty hive was on a lonely southerly slope in the lee of a stone wall, as remote as any spot on the Downs. On the other side of the wall was the ancient burial mound; in the distance was a branch of the South Downs Way, one of the prehistoric foot-highways that weave across England and Wales. Towards the sea, figures moved along a rise in the ground: striking, how human beings tend to cluster together rather than spread themselves over stretches of emptiness such as this.

As I quenched my thirst with the bottle of water I had brought, I studied the empty hive. It was typical of those Holmes used, with three stacked segments, the two larger making up the hive body, and a shallower segment on top called the super. All three segments contained sliding frames on which the bees made their comb; when these were full, other supers would be added on top, to satisfy the bees' desire to build upwards. Somewhere between the segments there would be a queen excluder, to segregate the larger queen and her eggs from the comb to be harvested.

When the bottle was empty, I went down on my knees for a scrutiny of the hive's empty doorway.

No sign of mice, a common problem with hives. No litter of dead bees in the forecourt of the hive, and Holmes would have mentioned the presence of the destructive wax moth. So far as I knew, the paint was the same used on all the hives, and the construction was of a kind with at least two others. I prised off the top, set aside the tinkling bells, and began to examine the frames. The fragrance was dizzying. Even though I was not particularly enamoured with honey, the temptation to rip into a segment and pop a wad of ambrosia into my mouth was powerful.

However, I did not want to tempt a neighbouring hive into a raid, introducing bad habits where there were none, so I left the comb whole.

It took some time to slide up each frame, and some muscle to wrestle aside the sections. I shone my torch around what remained. No moths, no death, just full comb and emptiness, as if the entire hive, queen to drones, had heard the Piper's flute and taken off into the blue. I put down my torch and reached for the bottom section's first frame, to return it to its place.