Laurie King - The Language of Bees

“Yais, I dew recall him.” The thin, pallid, buck-toothed man adjusted a pair of worn steel spectacles on his narrow nose. “Mr Seaforth encountered some difficulties at his last place of employment.”

“He was fired for making unwelcome advances,” I said bluntly.

“Well, yais. I suggested that his expectations of finding another school willing to take him on might be overly optimistic. Unless he were to leave York, of course. The last possibility I sent him out on was the tutoring of a fourteen-year-old boy who had been expelled for setting fire to his rooms at school.”

In other words, Seaforth had been scraping the bottom of his profession's barrel.

“You're not surprised he killed himself, then.”

“Not ectually, no.”

“Did you meet this boy?”

“Oh no. Just the father.”

“Can you tell me what he looked like?”

“Why should you-”

“Please, I'll go away and stop bothering you if you just tell me.”

Why that should convince him to talk to me, I don't know, but I thought it might, and so it did.

“A pleasant man in his early forties, dark hair and eyes, a good suit. Seemed quite fond of his son, truly puzzled by the lad's behaviour.”

“Did he have a scar?”

“A scar? Yes, I believe he did. Like the splash of a burn, going back from his eye. I recall thinking that he'd been lucky not to lose his sight.”

“Back from his eye-not down?”

“Not really, no. A dark triangle extending towards the hair-line, wider at the back. My own dear mother had a scar on her cheek,” he explained, “from a pan of burning fat. I might not have noticed it, other.”

“I see.” I did not know why it mattered, although it was helpful to have a description as accurate as possible, and if the scar ran one way rather than the other, it might jog the memory of a witness. “Did this gentleman give you a name, or any way to get into contact with him?”

“His name was Smythe. He is new to this area, still looking at houses, but he was particularly concerned with his son's welfare. He took the names I suggested and told me he would be back into touch when he had chosen a man for the position.”

“How many names were there?”

“Er, only the one.”

“Right. And do you know how Smythe found you?”

“I suppose he saw my sign from the street. I don't advertise anywhere, and as for word of mouth, he was new to the area, and-well, to be frank he didn't look like my usual client.”

It made sense, that a man searching for the most downtrodden of the unemployed, men and women of whom suicide would not be unexpected, should troll the streets for a store-front like this one, dingy and dispiriting.

I thanked the man, shook his thin, damp hand, and left the musty office.

On the street, it hit me: An eye with a long triangle of scar beside it might resemble that symbol on the books, in the rings, and tattooed on Yolanda Adler's body.

But what did it mean?

I got to my appointment early, but Inspector Kursall was waiting. He welcomed me into his office and handed me a thin file. “Not much there,” he said.

But they had done an autopsy, and determined that Albert Seaforth had died late Tuesday or early Wednesday, 12 or 13 August, of exsanguination from wounds to his wrists. His cause of death was of secondary importance, however, for the in situ photograph of his hand with the knife beside it told me all I needed to know: The blade was covered with blood; the fingers were all but clean.

The pathologist had been thorough, both in his examination and in writing it up: middle-aged male, lack of muscle tone, no scars, mole on left shoulder, no wounds save those to his wrists, and so on. Then, in the third paragraph, it caught my eye: one-half-inch patch behind left ear where the hair was cut away. Had Fiona Cartwright's autopsy report been less perfunctory, I was certain that we would have seen a similar notation there.

I handed the file back to Kursall. “You need to talk to Chief Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard. Read him the third paragraph.”

It was the least I could do, for a man who hadn't arrested me on sight.

I caught a train that would get me back into London by early evening, and spent the whole journey thinking about the full moon and murder.

The sky grew darker as we travelled south, and when we reached our terminus in King's Cross, the close, restless atmosphere presaged a storm's approach. I flung myself and my valise into a taxi and offered him double if he would get me to Angel Court in half his usual time. The man tried his hardest, and I was inside Mycroft's flat before the first raindrops hit the window.

My brother-in-law looked up, surprised, at my hurried entrance.

“I'm going to the Children of Lights services,” I explained as I passed through the room. “I don't suppose you'd care to join me?”

I glanced back to see one raised eyebrow: Habits die hard, and apart from the self-imposed discipline of walking Hyde Park, his lifelong disinclination to bestir himself was not about to change.

“Anything from Holmes?” I called.

“Not yet. The prints on the biscuit wrapper do not include any of those found thus far in the walled house. And your suspicions concerning the mushrooms found in the drink were justified: Amanita, not Agaricus.”

“Hallucinogenic, then.”

“If a person consumed several glasses of the drink you found, yes, mildly so.”

“More to underscore the hashish, you would say?”

“Indeed. And you-were you successful?”

“Brothers definitely uses employment agencies to locate his victims,” I said, and threw snatches of my findings at him as I rummaged through the wardrobe for suitable clothing-something more orthodox than last week's costume, but still idiosyncratic. Despite the weather, I ended up with a shirtwaist topped with a bright, hand-woven belt from South America, an equally bright neck-scarf from India, and an almost-matching ribbon around the summer-weight cloche hat.

Mycroft had long ceased to comment on the clothing I wore in and out of his flat, no doubt determining that I was incessantly in one disguise or another. This evening he merely glanced at the garish accessories, without so much as a remark at the clashing colours, and wished me a good hunt.

I STOOD ACROSS THE ROAD FROM THE MEETING HALL until I was certain there was no police watch on the entrance. The rain was light, a harbinger of autumn and endings, but it was still enough to dampen me in the time it took to scurry across the evening traffic.

At the door, I again hesitated, and climbed the stairs with all my senses tuned for a figure at the top. The vestibule was deserted, but for the table of pamphlets, and I eased the door open a crack to see within.

The service was nearly over, and nearly empty: Last week's 120 attendees were three times that of tonight's. I did not think that due to the rain.

Millicent Dunworthy was reading again, in her white robe between two black candles. Her text described a sin-soaked yet peculiarly free city in the East where the author had come into his knowledge of the interrelatedness of Light and Dark and the Truth That Lies Between Them, but I thought she was paying little attention to the meaning of the words. She read fast, the words tumbling out with no attempt at meaning, and she stopped occasionally as if her throat had closed. She was bent over the book, not looking up, her hands gripping hard.