Laurie King - The Language of Bees

Tourist charabanc to Salisbury and Stonehenge leaves in two minutes, I have bribed the conductor to begin with the latter. Have already been informed twice that I look like Sherlock Holmes. Kindly pray I do not have to ask you to stand me bail for murdering a visitor to Olde England.

S

When I had finished laughing, Mycroft handed me an actual telegram:

TO CUMBRIA AFTER DEAD RAM STOP WILL NEED INFORMATION REGARDING ALBERT SEAFORTH OF YORK FOUND DEAD THURSDAY LAST STOP

“How does Holmes intend to get this information from us?” I wondered.

“I took the otherwise unnecessary ‘will’ in the telegram to indicate that he would need it at some point, although not immediately.”

“You're probably right. Still, it would be nice to let him know that Lestrade's on the war-path, so he can keep his head down.”

“Sherlock tends to keep his head down in any event. I was pleased to find that you made it through the day without having hand-cuffs dropped around your wrists. Lestrade has telephoned twice more today. He sounded increasingly vexed.”

“I'll ring him from a public box tomorrow, and see if I can placate him. I take it your man didn't locate Brothers, or Smythe, or whoever he is?”

“Several shop-keepers and residents thought the description sounded familiar, but without a photograph, or even a drawing, there is little to trigger memory. He will continue tomorrow, further afield.”

“I had no better luck today.”

I had gone immediately home, where I had offended Mrs Hudson for a third time by being unwilling to settle to a conversation or take a meal. I got what I needed and left, but no taxi driver or railway employee recognised either my photograph of Yolanda Adler or the vague description of a black-haired man with a scar next to his eye.

“However, I'm interpreting the lack of response as a positive negative: If Yolanda Adler took a train to Sussex last week, someone would have remembered her,” I told Mycroft. “And Gunderson said his boss had driven the motor some time between Thursday night and Monday morning. He didn't notice the mileage, but he said it was nothing unusual for The Reverend to drive himself. I wonder if Lestrade has got any more out of him than I did?”

“The ears I have within Scotland Yard tell me no, that Gunderson is just a hireling. If he knew where Brothers and Damian had gone, he would give them up in hopes of winning some points for himself.”

“They're not letting Gunderson go, are they?”

“Indications are that they will hold him, if for nothing else than the gun. Scotland Yard does not approve of felons with guns. I imagine, however, that he will have given Lestrade an adequate description of the Amazon who trussed him and poked holes in his epidermis.”

“Lestrade will be steaming,” I said with regret. “Apart from the search for Brothers' house, have you had any results?”

He had, clearly, been waiting for me to ask: He had been busy that day, and between what his “ears” at Scotland Yard had passed on, and what his own operative had been set to find, he had quite a bit. Reverend Thomas Brothers, newly born in November 1923, had a British passport under that name, issued four weeks later, and a sizeable bank account. His man was tracing the deposits and cheques written, but the preliminary report was that Brothers was inordinately fond of cash, even when it came to large amounts. Brothers either had a laden safe, or another account that received systematic deposits of bank notes.

However, as Gunderson had intimated, there was no record of a man named Thomas Brothers entering the country-or purchasing a house, or buying a motor-car. Mycroft had set into motion a close search through the records, looking at any middle-aged male who had come into Britain during the two months before Gunderson was hired, but that would take many days.

“I also,” Mycroft told me, “took a look at our file for Aleister Crowley. Not, as you have said, that Crowley is directly related to this case, but I hoped it might suggest other avenues of investigation.

“There are certain points of similarity to Testimony, but I imagine those would exist between any two belief systems built around individuals who think themselves gods. One thing did come to my attention: Crowley was in Shanghai for a brief time, in 1906. He tells a story concerning a delay there that kept him from arriving in San Francisco, in April of that year.”

I looked up, startled. “The earthquake and fire?”

“He claimed that but for the Shanghai delay, he would have been there at the time.”

“You're suggesting that when Testimony says the narrator ‘preserved the mortal life of the Guide from flames and the turmoil of an angry earth,’ he is talking about Crowley and San Francisco?”

“It is one possibility. The other item of interest concerns the man's claim of a simultaneous meteor and comet. My informant at the Royal Astronomical Society suggests that, if we are looking for the birth date of a middle-aged man, the closest one may come is August and September of 1882. The Perseids were over by the time the Great September Comet was noticed on the first of September, but it reached its maximum brightness so quickly, it requires no great stretch of the imagination to claim that it was in the sky earlier.”

“So we could be looking for an Englishman of forty-two, who was in Shanghai in 1906. Perhaps you could-”

“-ask my colleagues in Shanghai to factor that description into their search.”

I was on the edge of asking when we might expect to hear from them, but bit back the question: Mycroft would be as attentive as I to the problem.

“One thing more,” he said. “Damian's finger-prints are not on the biscuit packet.”

“You had them? To compare?”

“Enough of them. If he touched it, he wiped it thoroughly before it was handled by at least three others. I am having the workers at Fortnum and Mason volunteer their prints, for comparison. One of the hands was small; I suggest it will match Yolanda's when we receive those prints. I will also see if I can get the prints from the walled house, for comparison.”

“Not Damian's,” I said. “Thank God for small blessings.”

I hugged to me that minor confirmation of innocence as I went to bed that night, and it helped me to sleep.

FRIDAY OPENED WITH A TELEPHONE CALL FROM Lestrade. Mycroft answered the ring at a quarter to seven in the morning, and I knew instantly who it was when his eyes sought mine. I went back to his study, and eased up the earpiece of the second instrument.

“-not believe that you have no idea where your brother and his wife are, Mr Holmes.”

“Chief Inspector, I am shocked that you would accuse me of lying to you.”

“I'll just bet you are. I want to know what Miss Russell was doing rolling a villain like Gunderson up in a carpet, and then running off before we got there. I want to know what connexion your brother has with Yolanda Adler. And I' d really like to ask how he knew we'd find grains of Veronal in Yolanda Adler's stomach?”

“Did you?”

“We did. Along with some nut pâté and biscuits washed down by wine.”

“Clever you. Have you had any luck in finding the men who left the house before Gunderson?”

“They abandoned their car in-wait a minute, how do you know about them if your brother isn't there telling you?”

“I have not seen my brother since Tuesday, Chief Inspector. I merely speak from what is already general knowledge.”