The Language of Bees

“Yes,” I said reluctantly. “But she had the child with her.”

“That being precisely why I did not investigate those houses that specialise in children until Damian was no longer with me, on Friday.”

“Oh, Holmes. You can't imagine…” I found myself unable to complete the sentence.

“At this point, I know so little about Yolanda Adler, I may as well be working blind.”

“Holmes, no mother would-”

“Damian thought it possible that his wife had left the child with a friend while she went away, and although a woman would be mad to hand a small child over to a stranger while there was a loving father at home, I pretended to agree with him that it was a possible scenario. I don't think I need to tell you that mothers have been known to… act irresponsibly.”

Of course they did. If Yolanda had grown tired of the child, or been led astray by a seducer, or tempted by money, or… My stomach went suddenly queasy around Mrs Hudson's cooking, and the air from the open window felt cold.

I pulled down the bed-clothes and climbed underneath them, propping the pillows behind my back. “Why did Damian leave you? Did he say?”

“He simply left, before dawn, after being wakened from a nightmare. He had left once before; this time, he did not return. He was last seen at ten o'clock Friday morning, walking up Regent Street with a man.” He described the man, clearly searching his memory as he did so for any similarity to someone he knew, but equally clearly failing to make any connexion. “I believe he received a message to buy a copy of The Times, where he saw an agony notice with the instructions for the meeting.”

“Addled,” I exclaimed.

“You saw it?”

“I did, but I thought it a coincidence.” Before he could scold me for dismissing a clue, I asked him about the man, and he told me about interviewing the Cafe Royal porter.

So: Holmes could not prove his son's whereabouts. My thoughts went back to the body lying in the nearby morgue. “Holmes, I find it difficult to reconcile a person who would… do as you suggest, with the Yolanda Adler I have heard described these past days. She may be colourful, and certainly has some decidedly odd religious beliefs, but even the neighbours who wondered if she was entirely reliable didn't actively claim that she was-is-a neglectful mother. I'd have said she was reformed from her ways.”

“So Damian claimed. And the first two days, he seemed as much irritated as concerned. But for whatever reason, by Thursday night his mood darkened. He spoke of drugs and suggested that, since the end of June, something has been disturbing her.”

“It's true, a dependence on drugs has a habit of going dormant rather than extinct.”

“As we well know,” he said in a dry voice, then continued briskly.

“His description of her actions to us the other night was, I venture to say, fairly conservative compared to the facts of the matter.”

We sat quietly contemplating the mind of a young man who would knowingly marry a drug-addicted prostitute in a foreign country.

“Well,” I said at last, “if she fell back, it must have been a fast journey. Ten days ago she was chatting with her neighbour in the park while their children played.”

He rubbed tiredly at his eyes. “It has been some time since I have toured the depths of the city's depravity-two hot baths and I still feel unclean. I cannot say I hit upon every establishment in the city, but certainly most of them. Yolanda and her child are not there.”

I firmly kept my mind's eye turned away from the picture. “What about outside of London? Couldn't she have gone to Birmingham, or even to Paris?”

“Indeed.”

Or to Sussex, to die at the feet of a prehistoric hill-carving.

Tomorrow would tell.

“Have you any thoughts on where Damian went?”

“I believe messages were left for him in several places where he was apt to go. An envelope with his name on it was left at the Cafe Royal on Wednesday; the porter gave it to him when he appeared early on Friday. And when I broke into their house in Chelsea last night-”

“Ha!”

“Sorry?” he asked at the interruption.

“I was outside of the house earlier this evening, and decided to break in later and spend tomorrow-today- Sunday searching it by daylight.”

“I shall save you the trouble, then, Russell, and say that the only thing to suggest where either of them might have gone was a typed message saying, ‘Look at the Friday Times personal adverts.’ By which time, I had already seen the ‘Addled’ notice. Too late. There may well be one at his studio as well-I'd intended to look there tonight.”

“Instead, you heard about the body at the Wilmington Giant and caught an evening express, arriving here too late to investigate there, but early enough for Mrs Hudson to cook you a squab pie.”

“A newsboy was calling the headline on Oxford Street at three o'clock. And in fact, Mrs Hudson and I walked in within a quarter hour of each other. She had been somewhat taken aback to find the house empty on her arrival.”

“I left her a note!” I protested.

“I quote: ‘Holmes and I have been called away, I'm not certain when we will return, I hope you are well.’ She did not find this terribly informative.”

“I gave her all the information I had,” I snapped, “which was more than you did.”

“True,” he agreed, without a trace of apology. He pawed through the litter on the window-sill for something to tamp his pipe with, coming up with a large nail that he had once thought might be evidence in a case, but was not. “Your turn.”

“I solved your bee mystery,” I told him.

Such was the intensity of his concern over Damian that he looked blank for a full two seconds. “Ah. Yes?”

“I'll tell you about it later. But I also found your album of Damian's early work, and on Friday I finally uncovered your records of his history.”

“Not until Friday?”

“I wasn't looking for it earlier,” I retorted. “I was busy with your dratted bees. And I thought that if you wished my assistance with Damian's wife, you'd have asked me.”

“What made you change your mind and go to London?”

“Perhaps it's because we've been moving forward for so many months, that sitting still felt peculiar. And I was uneasy, after reading his case file.”

“Hardly a case file,” he objected.

“Holmes, he killed a man.”

My husband sighed, but he made no attempt to defend or justify his son's act. Perversely, this made me want to try.

“Although granted, he was-”

He cut me off. “You are correct. When a man kills in the heat of battle, he is a soldier. When he does so off the battlefield, he is a murderer. Damian's mind was unbalanced, but that does not excuse his actions. However, boredom or no, I shouldn't have thought you would immediately assume that because a man kills someone in a bar fight, six years later he is still dangerous.”

“I didn't! It was more… Well, the officer who died, he looked more like you than Mycroft does. I was… uneasy.”

He stared at me, then began to splutter with laughter. “Russell, Russell, we must ensure that you are never again subjected to inactivity, if it introduces such flights of fancy into your mind.”

“What was I to think?” I demanded. “You vanish without a word, even Mycroft doesn't know what you're-”

He held up a placating hand. “Yes, very well, I see I was in the wrong, that my failure to communicate has cost you both time and mental distress. I apologise.”

My outrage subsided, and died. Unexpected apologies were such disarming things. “My time wasn't entirely