“What would happen if something kept her own drones from reaching her?”
Miranker glanced sideways at me, realising that he was discussing the mechanics of apian sex with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. He cleared his throat, and replied gamely, “Generally speaking, drones from hives all around respond to the call of a virgin queen. Hundreds, even thousands of them.”
“And if there were no other hives nearby?”
“There are always other hives nearby.”
“As far as I can see, the nearest bees to that hive are those in our orchard, more than a mile away.”
Miranker stared at me. “Are you suggesting that the queen's flight went, er, unconsummated?”
“Is that possible?”
“It is more likely that she did not return at all. That is why the hive produces a number of queen cells, in anticipation of failure.”
“But if she was too bloodthirsty for them? If they didn't stop her from killing her rivals?”
“Then it might well be too late for them to raise up another from the eggs left by the previous queen.” But just as I was thinking that I had succeeded in solving Holmes' mystery, he said, “However. These cells have been opened from within.”
“What, all of them?”
“The five I see here. How many were there in all?”
“Twenty-one. They all looked pretty much-”
“Twenty-one? All like this?”
“As far as I could see.”
“I should say that all of these hatched.”
“You mean, this hive has made twenty-one queens? Every one of them hatched, and fighting for primacy?” Absolute chaos, if that was the case.
“More likely, hatched and flying off into the blue. In some hives, the difference between a cell intended for swarming and one intended for supersedure-replacing the queen-is clear. Here, I would not be so certain.”
“So, one after another, the queen cells hatched and led a swarm?”
“Yes. However, you see this frame here? The brood?”
“Unhatched bees?”
“And eggs?”
When he pointed them out to me, I could see them. “What does that mean?”
“It means the queen was active until quite recently. Certainly there was a queen in residence when I last checked the hive, three weeks ago.”
“So all this happened in the last three weeks? Twenty-one swarms?”
“No, the swarms took place beforehand. And that is the peculiar thing. Your hive had an active queen, and yet continued to hatch virgin queens, time and again. And not only did she not kill them, she did not lead any of the swarms. Just kept laying while the hive swarmed around her.”
“Did the workers keep her from killing them?” A hive madness, indeed.
“In their decreasing numbers? I should be surprised if they could.”
“Then what happened?”
“It would appear as if your queen simply ignored the imperative to murder, and went about her business while the hive swarmed itself to death around her.”
The hive died because the reigning queen and all twenty-one of her royal daughters were too soft-hearted for murder, and the hive could not summon sufficient numbers to maintain the brood.
This struck me as highly significant, although of what, precisely, I could not immediately think. Mr Miranker, however, had moved past the reasons.
“In any case, as I suggested to your husband, filling the hive with a new colony should be done soon. He could add a second hive-box, in the event that solitude has compounded the problem.” He sounded dubious about my theory.
Mr Miranker was clearly more concerned with solution than theory. Holmes, I thought, would prefer to dig into the cause-but then I recalled his initial proposition of doing away with the entire hive. Perhaps even he would not permit philosophy to get in the way of agronomy.
In any event, replenishing the hive was a task I was happy to leave to the professionals, since moving several thousand live bees around the countryside was not a challenge I cared to meet. Mr Miranker promised me that he would be on the watch for stray swarms that might appreciate a new home, and I said I would have Holmes arrange for a second hive-box at first opportunity.
I bicycled the four miles home from Jevington, well pleased with my solution to The Case of the Mad Hive.
Later, I carried the album of Damian's work onto the terrace to re-examine it by light of day.
Were the macabre overtones of his later paintings figments of my imagination? Was my own solitude working to cloud my perception?
One after another, I turned the pages, chewing my thumbnail in thought.
No, I decided: I was not reading a nonexistent message. Damian Adler's paintings were truly mad-although whether they were the deliberately cultivated madness of Surrealism, or an internal madness rising of his own, I could not say.
Studying them in the warm afternoon sunshine, however, I realised something else: Holmes would have asked the same questions.
He would not have been satisfied with a mere catalogue of his son's artwork. He would have gone back to the source and investigated its roots, its influences, and its effects.
And if Holmes had mounted an investigation, then somewhere he would have a case file. It might be an actual file-box, or an envelope stuffed with notes, or a document case tied and sealed with ribbons, but to his eyes, it would constitute records of a case.
Unlike the album, I could not find anything resembling a case file.
I searched for hours: in the laboratory, in the pantry, out in the honey shed, under the carpets. I tapped stones until my knuckles ached, pulled apart all the beds, looked inside every art book on the shelves.
Near midnight, I eased my sore back and decided reluctantly that he had left it in a bolt-hole, or with Mycroft.
I curled up in bed and closed my eyes, trying not to picture the lively features of Irene Adler as drawn by her son. Irene Adler, who had managed to get the best of Holmes in an early, and important, case. Irene Adler, whom he had sought out in France some years later, and, all unknowing, left with child. Irene Adler, whose musical life meshed with that of Holmes, an area of my partner's life in which I could not share, since my tin ear and my dislike-
I sat bolt upright.
Music.
I trotted downstairs to the shelf in the sitting room where Holmes kept his gramophone records. Because I had no ear for music, it was a shelf I rarely went near, and anyone else, knowing Holmes' passion for these fragile objects, kept well clear of it, as well.
Two-thirds of the way along the shelf was an inch-thick cloth-covered box of Irene Adler's operatic recordings. Inside, nestled between the second and third disk, was a manila envelope containing perhaps thirty pages.
The first was a copy of Damian Adler's birth record. The second a Photostat copy of his enlistment in the Army. The third was an arrest form, dated 27 April 1918. The fourth recorded his admission to the mental asylum in Nantes, on 6 May 1918.
He'd killed a fellow officer, ten days before.
15
will invite to its garden parties. The boy's Guide appeared
