'Sorry, again. The hole in the beech? No— oh, of course. You were scraping off a stinger— you shoved it into one of the beehives.' How ridiculous, the relief engendered by a mere nod.
'Not shoved, Russell, gently placed. The third hive from the end is making queen cells at a tremendous rate, so I thought I might give them something else to think about. They've also been very active of late, and most people would think twice about putting a hand in there, even at night.'
'Except you. But do you mean to tell me that you anticipated ... visitors, even this morning?'
'Merely a precaution.'
My warming brain gave another, more alarming lurch.
'Mrs Hudson! Good Lord, she's there alone. We must warn her!'
'She is not there. I telephoned from the cafe and told her to take a day or two away. She's with her nephew in Guildford.'
'You knew then? Already?'
'We do not know that anything has taken place. We are merely talking about likelihoods,' he said with asperity, and placed the envelope in a breast pocket. I began to laugh.
'My dear Holmes, if I hear you use the word
He did not laugh, merely looked at his brother.
'You see why I married her, Mycroft? The exquisite juxtaposition of ladylike threats and backhanded compliments proved irresistible.' He turned back to me, and his voice and face hardened. 'Russell, if you were occasionally to raise your sight from your Hebrew verbs doubly weak and irregular and your iota subscripts, you might take more notice of the world around you. Your preoccupation with your studies could kill you.'
He was dead serious, and Mycroft's fat face mirrored the grim expression of his brother. My voice was small in response.
'Yes, I see. Could we go home now?'
'Do you wish to equip yourselves with some of what the Americans would call 'firepower' before you go?' suggested Mycroft with the air of a housewife offering provisions for a journey. 'Or, given an hour, I could arrange an escort.'
'No escort, thank you, Mycroft. I've never much fancied myself as a leader of men, and this is no time to begin. Your old revolver would be a welcome addition, on the stray chance that Mr 'Mud' or one of his companions has chosen to wait for us to appear. I should doubt it, but still ...'
'Quite,' his brother said with an admirable lack of concern, and heaved himself upright. He padded out of the room and returned a short time later with a huge and, I was relieved to see, well-oiled pistol, which he handed to Holmes along with a box of ammunition sufficient to withstand a minor invasion of the southern coast. Holmes gave the weapon a cursory inspection and inserted it and the box with difficulty into his pockets.
We took our leave of Mycroft, found a taxi, retrieved the car, left the letter and its covering note at Scotland Yard, and plunged into the darkening countryside of south England, our noses turned for home.
Shortly after midnight, the car's headlamps caught the final signpost. The hedgerows pressed close on either side. A fox with something white in its jaws flickered away into the dark. For the last hour, Holmes had been either stiffly asleep or engaged in a silent contemplation of events. In either case, I interrupted him.
'Do you wish to collect Patrick and another gun as we go past the farm?' My own farm, and its manager, lay a few miles before the cottage. 'Or, we could stay there tonight....'
'Do you wish to do that, Russell?'
Damn the man, he would not even use a sarcastic tone for the question, only stating it simply as a request for information. One of the most difficult things about marriage, I was finding, was the absolute honesty it demanded. I thought for a mile or so.
'No, I don't. I admit to a certain, shall we say, uneasiness about walking into a dark cottage. That blood on the kerb ... disturbed me. But it is my house now, and I find myself distinctly resentful at the thought of being made afraid to enter it. No, I do not wish to stay at the farm tonight. However, I should like to stop and pick up a shotgun. It would give me great pleasure to deposit a load of bird shot into the backside of anyone who had anything to do with Miss Ruskin's death.'
The seat beside me began to shake oddly, and I looked over, to see the gleam of white teeth: Holmes laughing silently.
'That's my Russell. Let us stop and find you a mighty blunderbuss, and go liberate our castle.'
* * *
There was, of course, no one there. With a pounding pulse, fighting down the all-too-vivid memories of the night four years earlier when Holmes and I had nearly died in an ambush inside this house, I stood tensely for what seemed to be hours, watching two of the cottage's doors while Holmes entered the third. No prey was flushed, and soon the entire cottage was blazing with light and Holmes was standing at the front door. Fingers clumsy with relief, I broke the shotgun and went to join him.
Since that morning, I had seen the dead body of a woman I respected and liked, had found evidence of the fact that her death was murder, seen her blood on the street, batted back and forth about London, and spent several hours driving country roads, topped off with twenty minutes outside of a dark house tensely awaiting the sounds of violence. It was now far after midnight, and I stood at the door and looked in at the desolation and the ruin that was my home.
Not one book remained on its shelf. Chairs were turned upside down, their springs exposed, vomiting stuffing onto the floor. Desk drawers had been methodically emptied out onto the middle of the floor, where the carpets had been pulled up. Most of the baseboard was lying loose, prised away from the wall by a crowbar I recognised from the toolshed. Pictures off the walls, the contents of baskets and boxes jumbled together, sewing thread and tobacco, case notes, newspaper clippings, and firewood all lay in a huge mound in the centre of the room. Even the curtains had been ripped from their rods and tossed carelessly on top. I had not been in San Francisco during the great earthquake, but I had seen photographs of the results of that catastrophe, and that was precisely what the
