Laurie King - The Language of Bees

“Damian Adler is a client?”

“This is the friend whom the police are mistakenly looking for? I do read the newspapers. I thought him a most personable young man, with the kind of talent one does not see every day. He was one of the few new clients I undertook in December-he had a portfolio of prints and sketches that he wished me to mount and bind as a present. For his father, I believe it was, although he called by a few days later to tell me that there was no longer any urgency.”

“I've seen that book,” I interrupted-why hadn't I realised this earlier? “It's stunning.”

Tolliver dipped his head at the statement, but did not disagree. “However, I stayed up late for several nights to finish it before my holiday, both for the sheer pleasure of the thing, and to encourage Mr Adler to bring me other commissions. When I saw these drawings, I recognised them as being his, and I understood that Mr Adler had recommended me to Reverend Harris.”

Harris-yet another name to the man's armoury.

“This is a man in his forties? With a scar next to his left eye?”

“That is right.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

He idly opened Testimony , paging through the text until he came to one of the ink drawings: the moon, in sharp black and white, centred on the page. He studied the drawing as if consulting it, then abruptly stepped away and bent, knees cracking, to draw a heavy leather-bound order-book from beneath the counter.

He flipped back through the pages, then turned the ledger around on the counter for me to read.

The address, I thought, would be phoney- Bedford Gardens was a street in Kensington, but I didn't think the numbers went that high. However, written beside it was a telephone number. If Smythe-Hayden-Harris-Brothers valued Testimony as highly as I thought, he might have been unable to bring himself to give a fake telephone number. Capping my pen, I ran my eyes across the ledger page, blinking involuntarily as I noted the sums involved. Then I looked more closely, and saw that this was for nine books.

“I see you made him nine copies?”

“Eight, actually. I offered to make fifteen or twenty-it's the plates that cost the money, you see, the actual materials are, well, not negligible, but the lesser of the whole. But he wanted precisely eight, and ordered the plates of the text destroyed.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He even insisted on seeing the destroyed plates-not those of the drawings, those he asked me to save for the simpler edition of the book.

“The ninth book consisted of blank sheets of very high quality paper interspersed with the original drawings. That one was called The Book of Truth -inside, not on the cover. The cover had the same design I put on Testimony.”

“I see. Well, thank you, Mr Tolliver. You've been a considerable help.”

“I hope you find what you are looking for,” he replied. Then, as I turned for the door, his voice stopped me. “Just, take care.”

I studied his face, seeing more than mere politeness there. “Why do you say that?”

He was regretting it, this revelation about a customer, but he answered anyway. “I don't know that Reverend Harris is the most wholesome of individuals. He did not strike me as altogether… balanced.”

“I'll watch myself,” I assured him, and went to find a public telephone, to set Mycroft onto the telephone number. I then took shelter in a café, drinking tea in a back corner well away from any constabulary eyes, until it was nearer to dusk.

When I rang Mycroft again, he had an address for me.

The address was one of a street of sturdy, proud, brick-and-stone terrace houses that rose three stories above the street. Its stone steps were scrubbed, its trim freshly painted. Unlike its neighbours the curtains were tightly drawn-because the master of the house was expected back after dark, or because he was not expected back at all? I strolled slowly past, taking in what details I could from a house with no eyes, then turned right and right again, down the service lane of dustbins and delivery vans.

And stopped dead.

A man was coming down the alley from the other end, a dapper figure in a crisp linen suit, a neck-tie of a blue that glowed even in the crepuscular light, and a straw hat. He was swinging an ebony cane. He wore a black ribbon around his neck, which disappeared behind the bright blue silk scrap inhabiting his breast pocket: a monocle. Seeing my approach, he doffed his hat-brim half an inch above his sleeked-down hair.

Holmes.

WELL MET, HUSBAND”, I SAID WHEN HE HAD CLOSED the distance between us.

He tipped his hat, then tucked my arm through his and propelled me back the way I had come, for all the world as if we were two residents whose afternoon stroll had brought them down an unexpected path.

Which was, one might say, nothing less than the truth.

“Did you find a drugs seller who knew the good Reverend's home address?” I asked him.

“Indirectly, yes.”

“Am I to understand your nicotinic meditations were effective?”

“They generally are. Although it wasn't until the third pipe that it occurred to me that a man who attracts legal secretaries, titled young women, and Oxbridge undergraduates need not skulk through the dark and criminous parts of town to buy his drugs.”

“A drawing-room drugs seller?”

“A doctor with a taste for the better things in life. A doctor with a remarkable number of neurasthenics in his practice, poor souls who require the assistance of chemical substances to make each day bearable.”

“It makes sense.”

“Shocking, that it took me so long to put it together. I have moved too long among the frankly criminal classes, that I overlook those on the upper tier.”

“Still,” I said, “no doubt there are any number of doctors who supplement their income by accepting payment for a little something extra. How did you find this particular one?”

“I recalled a certain Lady-literally, the second daughter of a duke-who holds an open house once a week attended by precisely that class of bored neurasthenics. So I decided to drop in on her and put to her a few questions.”

“Hence the stylish suiting.”

“It distracted her long enough to get me in the door. And as you know, I am a difficult person to evict, once I have settled in.” He reached down to pluck a fragment of lint from his sleeve.

“Threatening a lady, Holmes?”

“Oh, my remarks were so delicate, they could scarcely bear the name of threat. Still, Her Ladyship's sense of vulnerability is painfully acute. One need only mention a name here, drop a hint there. The doctor she directed me to was of sterner stuff, but even he held out for very few minutes before identifying the man in the photograph, and admitted to having delivered a quantity of liquid Veronal once to the man's house. He insists on house calls, you see, both to provide a hold over his clientèle, and to get the stuff off of his premises, in case of a police raid.”

I shook my head. “There is no loyalty among the criminal classes.”

“Sad, but true. And you? You found the man who made Testimony?”

“And I didn't even have to lie to him,” I said. “Well, I started off lying, but the truth became the simpler proposition. It seemed he didn't care much for the unwholesome atmosphere that surrounded Reverend Harris, as our man called himself.”