Laurie King - The Language of Bees

“Do you wish me to summon Billy to assist you?”

“We may have to, if it goes on for much longer.”

“I understand. If Damian rings or sends a message, where can I reach you?”

“At Damian's home, if you can manage to ring a code so I'll know it is you. After that, I'll telephone to you again tomorrow night-Saturday.”

“Anything else you would like me to do?”

“Nothing. Except, if the boy gets into touch, tell him… I can't think what you could tell him.”

“I will convey your fervent best wishes.”

“Something along those lines. Thank you, Mycroft.”

“Take care, Sherlock.”

I TRIED, SATURDAY MORNING, TO CONVINCE MYSELF that two long-ago accusations of violence, against a man actively engaged in combat, were no great sin. Damian had not even been charged with the 1918 assault, in part because both men were drinking and witnesses disagreed over which man had started the fight. To compound matters, not only was Damian still convalescing from his wounds, he was a decorated hero (which I had not known) while the other officer was both hale-bodied and whole, and known to be belligerent when drunk: hence the verdict of shell-shock and a quiet placement in the mental hospital at Nantes, rather than a court martial. If Holmes was willing to discount Damian's past, if he was willing to agree that the officer's death had been an accident stemming from self-defence, who was I to disagree?

I got up early from my sleepless bed and spent two hours resolutely finishing the job of emptying my trunks and hauling them to the lumber room. I made toast and attempted to settle to the newspapers, but my eye seemed constantly preoccupied with my discoveries of the night before, and kept catching on headlines concerning death and madness and adverts for honey. When my eye was caught by a personal notice that began with the word ADDLED, I shoved the paper away and went outside, wandering restlessly through the garden, feeling as if I had drunk several carafes of powerful coffee instead of a single cup.

Around ten o'clock, I found myself in Holmes' room studying his unopened trunks, and decided to make a start on them before Mrs Hudson got back that evening. Half an hour later, with every inch of the room buried under the débris of long travel, I looked at the knot of worn-through stockings in my hand and came to my right mind.

I was not Holmes' housekeeper; neither he nor Mrs Hudson would thank me for my labours.

The reason for my uncharacteristic housewifeliness was, I had to face it, uneasiness: When I had turned the page in Holmes' file and seen the photograph of the dead officer, all I could think of was that the man looked like Holmes.

Which was ridiculous. I was not worried, any more than I had been bored or lonely in my solitude. Clearly I needed something to occupy my time other than sorting socks. The best thing was to keep busy. I had intended to return to Oxford later in the week, to resume my life and my work there. Instead, I would go now.

Although I decided to stop first in London and have a little talk with Mycroft. It was, I told myself, the sensible thing to do.

Holmes' elder brother was looking remarkably well, for a man who had peered over the abyss into death the Christmas before. He'd dropped a tremendous amount of weight, and from the colour of his skin, actually spent some time out-of-doors.

He brushed aside my compliments, admitted to a loss of “three or four stone” although it had to have been nearly five, then grumbled that bodily exercise was a tedium beyond measure, and commented that he had heard I joined the short-haired league.

My hand went to my hair, removed when we were in India. “Yes, I needed to dress as a man. Holmes nearly passed out with the shock.”

“I can imagine. Still, I never thought the Gibson Girl look suited you.”

“Thank you. I guess. Were you going out?” I asked, taking in his brown lightweight suit.

“It is of no importance,” he said. “After luncheon I have developed the habit of going for a turn around the park instead of taking a nap, as I used to do, but I shall happily delay that pleasure.”

“No, no, I'm just off the train, I'd appreciate a breath of air.”

With a grimace at the disappearance of an excuse for lethargy, Mycroft caught up his stick and straw hat and we descended onto Pall Mall, to turn in the direction of St James's Park.

“Have you seen your brother?” I asked.

“I have not seen him since January, although I spoke with him across the telephone twice, on Wednesday afternoon and again last night.”

“Was he in London?”

“I believe so. In any case, Wednesday's call was from Paddington, although that can mean anything.”

“Or nothing.” Paddington Station sent trains in all directions north of London, but it was also a main connecting stop on the city's Underground. “What did he want?”

“The earlier call was to request my assistance with an overseas element of an investigation.”

Mycroft's oddly unfamiliar face-it now had bones in it, and the skin had gone slack with the loss of padding-was held in an expression I nonetheless knew well: noncommittal innocence. The quick mind inside the slow body was waiting to see if I knew what Holmes was up to before he revealed any more.

“Let me guess: Shanghai.”

Inside Britain, Holmes' sources of information were without peer, but once an investigation stretched past Europe or certain parts of America, his web of knowledge developed gaps. Mycroft, however, had spent his life as a conduit of Intelligence that covered the globe: When Holmes had need of information beyond his ken, he turned to Mycroft.

Shanghai had not been a guess, and Mycroft saw that.

“Yes, I was given to understand that young Damian had come to Sussex.”

“Damian was there when we got in on Monday, then both of them were gone when I woke up Tuesday. I don't know where they were going, but last night I found Holmes' file on Damian, and I was… concerned.”

“Concerned,” he mused, nodding at the ground.

“Damian killed a man in 1918,” I blurted. “Not the same man he was accused of killing in 1919.”

“In neither was he charged.”

“You knew, about both of them?”

“I did.”

“Why…” I stopped: He hadn't told Holmes for the same reason he hadn't told him of Damian's existence in the first place. “Have you seen his paintings-Damian's?”

“A few of them. I hear he has a small show at a gallery off Regent Street, I'd planned on going to that.”

“He paints madness.”

“I'd have thought that a common enough theme amongst modern artists.”

“With more or less deliberation. But there's something profoundly unsettling about his work.”

“Hmm,” Mycroft said.

“What about last night's phone call?”

“My brother was enquiring whether or not I had seen Damian.”

“He's lost him?”

“I don't know if ‘lost’ is the correct term, but Damian left the hotel where they were staying early on Friday morning, and as of eleven o'clock last night he had not returned. I believe Sherlock would have got a message to me, had the boy reappeared.”

“I see. Well, in any case, I should talk with Holmes before I go up to Oxford, just to let him know where I am and see if he needs my assistance. Do you have any idea where he might be?”

Mycroft reached into his breast pocket and took out a business card, crisply engraved on a startling bright red stock with an address on one of the lanes that connected with Regent Street. On its reverse, in Mycroft's handwriting, was another address: 7 Burton Place, in Chelsea.