Laurie King - The Language of Bees

I just gaped at her, my meal, the surroundings, even Holmes forgotten. Gratified by my response, she continued the story, telling of the nightmare of having her husband die in her arms, of his burial, of her awful trip home…

My intention of questioning the Café's habitués about Damian Adler shrivelled and died. I laid down my utensils, and told Holmes, “I believe I've heard all I need. I'll wait for you outside.”

The heat bouncing off the pavement washed over me. For an instant, the image of the slaughtered cat merged in my mind with Yolanda, making me so queasy, I thought I might disgrace myself there on the street, but soon I felt the first buoying effects of anger, first at the woman May, for polluting the Café with her disgusting tale and spoiling a perfectly good meal, and then at Crowley, that such a man was allowed the freedom of England. When Holmes came out of the Café doors, I turned sharply on my heel and marched away in the direction of Oxford Circus. Soon, he was beside me, and before long my hand had gone through his arm.

“How soon before we can go back there?” I asked.

“Oh, she's liable to be in residence for hours. Still, I'm glad you heard her story.”

“Why on earth would you want me to hear that dreadful tale?”

“I admit, I hadn't considered its effects when delivered over a dining table. However, I thought it a worthy illumination of the extremes to be found in modern belief.”

“ Crowley 's been called the wickedest man in England.”

“By himself, certainly.”

“You think it an act?”

“Not entirely. He's like a petulant boy who searches out the most offensive phrases and ideas he can find, to prove his cleverness and his superiority. You know that his so-called church takes its motto from the Hellfire Club.”

“Fait ce que vouldras,” I murmured. “Do as you like. Which, if you are rich enough, covers any sin and perversion you can invent.”

“ Crowley is not wealthy, but he manages very well, in part because he is deeply charismatic, with eyes some find compelling. No doubt he has brains, and ability-he was at one time a highly competent mountaineer. At seventeen, he climbed Beachy Head to the Coast Guard outpost in under ten minutes. If one can believe his claim.”

“Have you any reason to think that Yolanda was involved with this Crowley nonsense?”

“Were he in the country, I should wish to take a closer look at him, but he has not been here for some time. I shouldn't think Crowley is your group's ‘Master.’”

I resolutely turned my mind from the image of slaughtered cats. “Did you discover anything of interest before I came?”

“Damian has not been seen there since he passed by on Friday morning.”

“Where can he be?” I wondered aloud.

“And you: Have you found anything?” he asked, ignoring my plaintive remark.

“Yes, a great deal.”

As we threaded our way along the once-noble colonnades of Regent Street, surrounded by the irritable shouts and klaxons of a city in summer, I told him what I had found in Miss Dunworthy's flat: the ledger for the Children of Lights; the receipts for the clothing Yolanda Adler had worn to her death; the overheard weeping.

“However, Holmes,” I said at the end of it, “I cannot envision the woman with a knife at Yolanda's throat.”

“She lacks the independent spirit?”

“I should have said, she lacks that degree of madness.”

“It amounts to the same thing,” he said. “She is a follower.”

“Definitely. And of a man, not a woman.”

“The spinster true-believer is a species I have met before, generally in the rôle of victim. They beg to be fleeced of all they possess.”

“I shouldn't say Miss Dunworthy possesses much.”

“Her wits, her energy, her palpable innocence and good will.”

“Those, yes. But, Holmes, about that book, Testimony. She had a copy, in a drawer she's lined with velvet as a sort of shrine. I didn't get much of a chance to look at it.”

“You wish to return to Damian's house.”

“I need to see that book. You don't suppose Lestrade took it?”

“I shouldn't have thought so, although he will have left a presence there, on the chance Damian returns.”

“Several constables, do you think?”

“Unlikely. Shall we toss a coin for who creates the distraction this time?”

“You know-” I stopped, reconsidering what I was about to say. “You know where the book is, so it would make sense for you to fetch it. On the other hand, I should be interested to see what else the Adlers own in their collection.”

“Religion being your field, not mine,” Holmes noted.

“Not if you consider Crowley 's practise a religion. My expertise is about twenty-five hundred years out of date. But still, you're right, I'm better suited than you.”

“Then I shall endeavour to draw the constable's fire while you burgle the household of its exotic religious artefacts.”

“I shouldn't think the constable on duty will be armed, Holmes.”

“Only with righteous indignation and a large stick.”

“Mycroft will stand bail, and I'll bring dressings and arnica for your bruises,” I assured him.

At eleven-fifteen, we were in our positions on either side of the Adler house.

I was in the back. My soft soles made no noise going along the alley. I laid a hand on the gate latch, but found my first hitch: The gate was now padlocked from within.

I had, however, come armed for burglary, with a narrow-beamed torch, dark clothing, and a makeshift stile for climbing fences. I jammed the bottom edge of my length of timber into the soil, propping its upper end against the bricks of the wall. I got one foot onto the step this made, and hoisted myself onto the wall.

I sat there for a moment, grateful that some past owner hadn't seen fit to set broken glass along the top, and surveyed the house. Much of it was dark, but one upstairs window had a dim glow, and the downstairs sitting room lights burned low behind drapes and around the boards nailed over its broken windows. The kitchen alone was brightly lit. I retrieved my stile by the length of rope tied around its middle, then dropped down into the garden, setting the board against the wall again, in case of a hasty departure.

The lawn behind the house was dry with the heat, and crackled underfoot; the rucksack on my back and the clothing I wore rustled with every step; neither would be heard from the house, but they were enough to grate on my nerves. Breaking into a middle-aged woman's flat was not the same proposition as invading a house guarded by a police constable.

The next hitch came when I saw that said constable had taken up residence in the kitchen, ten feet from the back door through which I intended to go. He was sitting on a kitchen chair with his collar loose and his feet up on another chair, reading a detective novel. A tea-pot, milk bottle, and mug sat to hand. Shelves behind him held cooking implements unusual for a British household: the wide, curved pan called a wok; a stack of bamboo steamers; a row of small tea-cups without handles.

Holmes and I had agreed to a delay of a quarter hour for me to work on the locks before he created his distraction; now, there was little I could do for that quarter hour but watch the constable turn his pages and drink his tea.

A young eternity later, the bell rang, and rang, and rang again. At the first sound, the man in the chair dropped his book in surprise and swore an oath. His feet hit the floor the same instant the second ring rattled the night, and on the third he was passing through the doorway, hands going to his collar-buttons.

I jumped for the door and slid my picks into the mechanism.

Holmes had promised me a bare minimum of four minutes of freedom on this first disturbance. At five minutes, sweating and swearing, the lock gave way. I turned the knob; to my intense relief, the bolt inside had not been pushed to.