“Surely, there is no need for this immoderate haste,” I said at last, bringing my gait to an exhausted walk.
Holmes slowed his step, but only slightly. “As to the need for haste,” he replied, “I will not be certain about that until I find what I am looking for.”
“And what,” I puffed through gasps of breath, “is that?”
“Beehives,” he said as he plunged into the wall of bushes, heedless of the hundreds of bees buzzing around the pink flowers.
“But, Holmes,” I protested. “We know where the hives are.” I gestured in the direction of the rows of white boxes, some two miles to the west.
As I pushed aside a heavy-laden branch, a bee buzzed at my face. I brushed it aside, and then realized my mistake. “Oh, I see,” I said. “You mean there could be a natural hive out here.”
Holmes’s answer was grim. “There is nothing natural about this hive, Watson, or about the placement of it among these particular trees.”
The blooms were lovely, the shade ranging from palest to deepest pink, the masses of flowers hanging with heavy profusion upon the dark-leaved branches. Rosebay, a lovely spring bloom, also known as-
“Oleander,” I said aloud. My eyes opened wide; I understood Holmes’s urgency. “One of the most poisonous plants known to man.”
“Indeed,” Holmes said. I could hear him ahead of me in the overgrown grove. I followed his voice and step, making my way through thick branches and increasingly agitated bees.
“Aha,” he said at last. “Come quick, Watson.”
I pushed aside the last branches and found myself in a small clearing. In the center, a large hollow tree stump buzzed with insect life.
“Honey made from oleander nectar will be as poisonous as the plant itself,” Holmes said. “The keeper of this rogue hive made certain these bees would feed on oleander by locating the hive here.”
Holmes took two steps toward the tree stump. I took two steps back. The honeybees, already agitated by strangers in their midst, buzzed loudly and menacingly. I felt a sharp stab of pain along the side of my neck and slapped at it automatically. “I’ve been stung,” I cried.
“As have I, several times,” Holmes replied. “It is the occupational hazard of the beekeeper.”
Holmes inched closer and closer to the hive, and the bees, sensing danger, began to swarm around the hive and Holmes. Soon, he seemed enveloped in a cloud of angry, buzzing insects.
Bees were everywhere, crawling inside the hollow log. Holmes, brave as ever, crept closer to the hive and peered in. He shielded his face from the bees with his handkerchief, but I could see that this was wholly insufficient to guard him from stings.
He raised his head, and the look on his face chilled my blood. “The honeycomb is gone,” he said. “There is no time to lose.”
I understood at once. Mrs. Tingley had expressed a preference for honey straight from the comb. She might be eating her deadly treat at this very moment.
We were both stung over and over again as we fled the oleander grove and made our way as fast as we could back toward the colony.
Once back inside the Lomaland grounds, Holmes stopped the first person we saw, a young woman carrying a book. “Do you know where Mrs. Tingley is at this moment?”
“I believe she is taking tea at her house.”
By the time we arrived at Mrs. Tingley’s modest cottage, we were very much out of breath. Holmes flung open the door and we raced through the foyer and found Mrs. Tingley sitting with the Spaldings at a tea table on the rear porch.
In front of her sat a plate with a dripping honeycomb on it. She had lifted her spoon and was about to plunge it into the comb when Holmes whisked the plate away from her.
She raised an eyebrow and said, “What is the meaning of this, Mr. Holmes? I am quite looking forward to my little treat.”
“This treat would be your last, Mrs. Tingley,” Holmes said. “This comb is not from the hives Mrs. Imbler tends. Instead, it comes from a hive hidden deep inside an oleander grove. This honey is poisonous.”
“I knew it!” Elizabeth Spalding said. Her plate contained bread and jam, no honey. “I knew I was right to bring Mr. Holmes here. He has saved you from that presumptuous beekeeper.”
“But would this honey really have killed me, Mr. Holmes?” Mrs. Tingley asked. She seemed almost amused at the prospect of having nearly eaten it.
“It is not unknown for honey to be tainted with the nectar of whatever plants the bees feed upon,” Holmes pointed out. “Cases have been documented in Greece and New Zealand. Those poisonings were, of course, accidental, but one who knows the principles of bee culture could easily arrange for his hive to feed upon poison flowers. Such was the case with Jonas Imbler.”
I started, as did Mrs. Spalding.
“No, madam, your suspicions of Mrs. Imbler are quite unfounded. She did not create the rogue hive in the oleander bushes. Her husband, who is also a skilled beekeeper, did.”
“Holmes,” I protested, “you distinctly said you were hunting a murderess. Did you mislead me on purpose?”
He smiled. “I was referring to the bee. The workers are female; the workers made this honey; ergo, the workers are murderesses. Q.E.D.”
“But why?” Albert Spalding protested. “Imbler has shown no interest in Theosophy and would never wish to become head of the Brotherhood. What reason could he possibly have for murdering Mrs. Tingley?”
For once, I had an answer at the same time as Holmes. He opened his mouth to explain, but I found my voice first. “Not all husbands are as tolerant as you, Mr. Spalding,” I said. “You are content to live here on Point Loma because your wife is a part of this community. You busy yourself with your golf and your civic activities and you are happy here. It was clear to me at our meeting that Jonas Imbler felt very differently. He chafed under the rule of a woman. He resented his wife’s commitment to the Brotherhood and her responsibility for the beehives.”
Holmes nodded and picked up the rest of the tale. “The bees failed to pollinate the avocado trees because their queen was gone,” he explained. “Queenless bees cannot survive. They were queenless because Jonas Imbler removed the queen to start his rogue hive in the oleander grove. The sabotage of the pollination experiment was a mere byproduct of his larger scheme to murder Mrs. Tingley. Without her, he felt sure the Society would fail and his wife would be willing to leave Lomaland.”
“It seems a strange way to commit murder, Mr. Holmes,” Mrs. Tingley said. “Surely there are more straightforward methods available to one who is determined to kill another human being. Poisoned honey seems rather a roundabout way to do it.”
“Roundabout, yes,” Holmes replied, with a small smile. “But for Jonas Imbler, it had the virtue of poetic justice. He saw you, Mrs. Tingley, as the queen bee of Lomaland, and he felt that one queen deserved death at the hands of another.”
Mrs. Spalding’s face continued to wear its stubborn look. “How can you be sure,” she asked, “that Mrs. Imbler was not her husband’s willing accomplice?”
Holmes shook his head. “I am convinced that Mrs. Imbler knew nothing of her husband’s activities. She might be capable of murder; I believe most people are. But she would never use her bees as weapons. She has far too much respect for them. It would be,” he added, turning to me, “as if our own Mrs. Hudson were to put poison into her breakfast porridge.”
I hastily agreed that this was not to be contemplated. I could see that Mrs. Spalding was not mollified, but Mrs. Tingley nodded her agreement.
“The soul is not invisible, Mr. Holmes,” she pronounced. “It reveals itself in our every waking action. And Mrs. Imbler has shown me a soul devoted to order and peace. Her well-tended hives are her character reference.”
We stayed one more night with the Spaldings before returning to the Hotel del Coronado. It was a night of sheer magic, for the magnificent orchestra played exquisitely as the sun lowered itself into the Pacific and the lights went on, one by one, inside the glass globes over the domes of Lomaland.
I stole a glance at Holmes. He was entranced by the music, and I saw another glimpse of the child he had once been as I watched a tall, slender boy of about twelve raise his violin to his chin and draw his bow across it.
