The Language of Bees

reached you at about the time she…” Threw you out? Tired of you? In any case, discovered herself with child.

“-told me she planned to return home to America,” he provided. “Alone. And as soon as I was back in London, the life of the metropolis closed over my head. Nine years passed. It seemed but the snap of a finger. Then I retired, and nine years turned into a chasm. Had she wished to communicate with me, she knew where I was. She had not. Thus, it seemed, the matter had been decided. One of the more foolish decisions of my life.”

He stared into his glass, but he must have been thinking of the nine-year-olds he had known, if nothing else among the street urchins he'd dubbed his Irregulars. Had he ventured an overture, he might have met the boy then, on the edge of adolescence. Had he sought her out-and he would certainly have found her-he might have had another life. A life that did not include bees or a hermit's retreat on the Sussex Downs. Or an encounter with an orphan named Russell.

“She was-going by Watson's story-a highly gifted woman,” I ventured.

“In both talent and brains. I was twenty-seven years old when the hereditary king of what Watson chose to call Bohemia came to me, demanding that I retrieve an incriminating photograph possessed by this vain and scheming prima donna from New Jersey. I saw myself a god among men. An easy case, I thought, a satisfying payment in both gold and glory: A dab of paint, a change of costume, a dash of human nature, toss in a smidgen of distraction and a childish smoke-bomb, and voila-I would take back this adventuress's tool of blackmail.

“Except that she was not out for blackmail, merely self-preservation from her royal paramour. What is more, she was one step ahead of me all the way-including on my very doorstep, utilising my own tools of disguise. ‘Good evening, Mr. Holmes,’ she said to me.” He dropped his voice for her imitation of a man's speech, bringing an eerie trace of the woman into the room. “And even with the scent of her under my very nose, even as I put up my feet and crowed to Watson how clever I was, she was laying her own plans, carrying out her own solution.” He turned from the window, searching me out in the dim room. “You know she used me as a witness in her marriage ceremony to Godfrey Norton?”

“I remember.”

He laughed, a sound that contained amusement and rue in equal parts, and I saw his outline stir, heard the rustle of his clothing. Something small and shiny flew in my direction, and I snatched it from the air: a well-worn sovereign coin with a hole in it.

“She paid me for my witnessing with that,” he said. “I assumed at the time that she had failed to recognise me, but later found that she well knew who I was, and was amused, despite the urgency of her distress. I carry it always, to remind me of my limitations. Here-I even had her autograph it for me.”

He crossed the room and switched on the desk lamp. I held the coin under its beam, and there on the back side of it I saw the scratched initials IAN. Irene Adler Norton.

I rubbed at the smoothness of the coin, oddly pleased that it served as a reminder of professional inadequacies and not of a person. I handed it back to him. He turned it nimbly over in his fingers, then clipped it back onto his watch-chain and tucked it away.

“Let us go and eat,” he said, sounding relieved that the worst of the self-revelation was over.

“Can we find a place out of doors?” I requested.

“ Paris is not at her best in the summer,” he agreed.

When I had freshened and changed my dress, we left the hotel and walked down the street until we found a likely bistro, one that spread its tables onto the pavement.

But after facts, and before relaxation, I required instruction. “Since the letter came,” I asked, “have you found any more about the charges against…?” I found it difficult to shape the phrase your son.

“Damian. As you read, Mycroft has arranged the assistance of one of France 's more capable defence attorneys. I have an appointment with him in the morning, and we shall then go to Ste Chapelle and meet the lad.”

Did we include, or exclude, me? If the latter, would he not have said he and I?

“But, Holmes, why didn't you set off immediately you received the letter?”

“I did, in fact, telephone to Mycroft to say that I would leave instantly, but he talked me out of it. He thought I might be more effective if I waited until we had some data with which to work, but beyond this, he pointed out that, if the boy was coming out from under the influence of drugs while in gaol, he would not thank me for seeing him for the first time in that condition. And although I am not accustomed to permitting the personal to influence my investigations, in the end, I had to agree that it might be better to wait until the boy had his wits about him.”

Somewhat mollified, although not altogether convinced, I picked up my knife and began thoughtfully to cover a piece of bread with near-liquid butter.

“Does he know?” I asked. “The boy?”

“Hardly a boy,” he pointed out. “He knows now.”

“How long …?”

“I have no idea when or even if his mother told him about me. Mycroft was forced to explain the situation to the avocat. He in turn told Damian, but apparently Damian showed no surprise at my name. Which could also be due to his mental state. Or, I suppose he may have never heard of Sherlock Holmes.”

“If a tribe of desert nomads in Palestine knows the stories,” I said-which had been the case during our winter sojourn there-“the chances are good a young man in France has come across them.”

“I fear you are right.”

“So, has any progress been made in the intervening days?”

“It looks,” he said, with a mingled air of apprehension and satisfaction, “as though the evidence against him rests largely on a single eyewitness.”

I understood his ambiguity. The testimony of a witness, a person there to stretch out a finger in court and declare the defendant's guilt aloud, was a powerful tool for the prosecution. On the other hand, placing the entire weight of a murder trial on one human being could easily blow up in the prosecutor's face. All the defence had to do was find some flaw in the accuser himself-criminal history, financial interest, flawed eye-sight-and the case began to crack.

If the legal person Mycroft had found to represent Damian Adler was indeed capable, I suspected that the man would be more than experienced with the techniques of destroying testimony.

Relief, a trace of optimism, and a faint stir of air cheered our dinner, and we spoke no more that night about either Adler, fils or mere.

But as I laboriously, one-handedly, dressed for bed in my stifling room, that word responsibilities came back to nag me, and the real question finally percolated to the surface of my mind: Why tell me about Damian? Why hadn't Holmes simply announced that he would be away for a time? Or not even bothered with an announcement-just disappeared, with nothing but a brief note or a message left with Mrs Hudson? God knew, he'd never hesitated to do that before.

Although the thought of waking one morning to find him simply gone would not have been an easy one. Since the shooting, I had come to lean very heavily on his presence. While resenting it at the same time.

I cradled my arm, looking away from my reflection in the glass. Had his response when I asked about his delay been a glibly prepared speech, designed to conceal his worry? Did he believe that I was so fragile that I might not withstand abandonment? Had my admittedly precarious mental state left him with no choice but to bring me along?

Certainly, Mycroft's reference to “your current responsibilities” suggested that both Holmes brothers saw my need for comfort as equal to a prisoner's need for aid.

Which led to the conclusion that Holmes felt there was nothing for it but to reveal to me one of the most private and distressing episodes of his life. To lay out his most personal history, while it was still raw and unformed, to my eyes. To allow my presence to rub salt into the wounds of what he had to consider one of his most abject failures.

I should go home, immediately. I should pack and call a taxi, leaving a brief note to preserve my own self- respect, and to provide a bulwark for the shreds of Holmes' dignity.

And yet…

I could not shake the notion that there had been a degree of relief underlying his chagrin. Almost as if the humiliation was a thing to be borne for a greater cause, to be got through quickly. But for what?

I found myself considering the previous summer, the beginnings of the case involving the child whose letter had