The Mary Russell Companion (22 page)

Holmes read; I read. He dropped the next letter, a considerably thicker one, on top of Mycroft’s, and said in a high and irritated voice, “Mrs Hudson spends three pages lamenting that she will not be at home to greet us, two pages giving quite unnecessary details of her friend Mrs Turner’s illness that requires her to remain in Surrey, two more pages reassuring us that her young assistant Lulu is more than capable, and then in the final paragraph deigns to mention that one of my hives is going mad.”

“‘Going mad’? What does that mean?”

He gave an eloquent lift of the fingers to indicate that her information was as substantial as the air above, and returned to the post. Now, though, his interest sharpened. He studied the next envelope closely, then held it to his nose, drawing in a deep and appreciative breath.

Some wives might have cast a suspicious eye at the fond expression that came over his features. I went back to my newspapers.

The train rattled, hot wind blew in the window, voices rose and fell from the next compartment, but around us, the silence grew thick with the press of words unsaid and problems unfaced.  The two surviving aeroplanes from the American world flight were still in Reykjavik, I noted.  And a conference on German war reparations would begin in London during the week-end.  There had been another raid on Young Things (including some lesser royals) at a country house gathering where cocaine flowed.  Ah—but here was an appropriate interruption to the heavy silence: I read aloud the latest turn in the Leopold and Lowe trial, two boys who had murdered a young cousin to alleviate tedium, and to prove they could.

He turned a page.

A few minutes later, I tried again.  “Here’s a letter to
The
Times
concerning a Druid suicide at Stonehenge—or, no, there was a suicide somewhere else, and a small riot at Stonehenge.  Interesting: I hadn’t realised the Druids had staged a return.  I wonder what the Archbishop of Canterbury has to say on the matter?”

He might have been deaf.

I shot a glance at the letter that so engrossed him, but did not recognise either the cream stock or the small, antique writing.

I set down the newspaper long enough to read first Mrs Hudson’s letter, which I had to admit was more tantalising than informative, then Mycroft’s brief missive, but when I reached their end, Holmes was still frowning at the lengthy epistle from his unknown correspondent.  Kicking myself for failing to bring a sufficient number of books from New York, I resumed the
Times
where, for lack of unread druidical Letters to the Editor, or Dispatches from Reykjavik, or even News from Northumberland, I was driven to a survey of the adverts: Debenham’s sketches delivered the gloomy verdict that I would need my skirt lengths adjusted again; Thomas Cook offered me educational cruises to Egypt, Berlin, and an upcoming solar eclipse;  the Morris Motors adverts reminded me that it was high time to think about a new motorcar; and the Odeon informed me that I could laugh my way through the latest adventures of Mr Charlie Chaplin.

“They are swarming,” Holmes said.

I looked up from the newsprint to stare first at him, then at the thick document in his hand. “Who– Ah,” I said, struck by enlightenment, or at least, memory. “The bees.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “You asked what it meant, that the hive had gone mad. It is swarming. The one beside the burial mound in the far field,” he added.

“That letter is from your beekeeper friend,” I suggested.

By way of response, he handed me the letter.

The cramped writing and the motion of the train combined with the arcane terminology to render the pages somewhat less illuminating than the personal adverts in the paper. Over the years I had become tolerably familiar with the language of keeping bees, and had even from time to time lent an extra pair of arms to some procedure or other, but this writer’s interests, and expertise, were far beyond mine. And my nose was too stuffy to detect any odour of honey rising from the pages.

When I had reached its end, I asked, “How does swarming qualify as madness?”

“You read his letter,” he said.

“I read the words.”

“What did you not–”

“Holmes, just tell me.”

“The hive is casting swarms, repeatedly. Under normal circumstances, a hive’s swarming indicates prosperity, a sign that it can well afford to lose half its population, but in this case, the hive is hemorrhaging bees. He has cleared the nearby ground, checked for parasites and pests, added a super, even shifted the hive a short distance. The part where he talks about  ‘
tinnitusque cie et Matris quate cymbala circum’
? He wanted to warn me that he’s hung a couple of bells nearby, that being what Virgil recommends to induce swarms back into a hive.”

“Desperate measures.”

“He does sound a touch embarrassed. And I cannot picture him standing over the hive  ‘clashing Our Lady’s cymbals,’ which is Virgil’s next prescription.”

“You’ve had swarms before.” When bees swarm–following a restless queen to freedom–it depletes the population of workers. As Holmes had said, this was no problem early in the season, since they left behind their honey and the next generation of pupae. However, I could see that doing so time and again would be another matter. “The last swarm went due north, and ended up attempting to take over an active hive in the vicar’s garden.”

That, I had to agree, was peculiar: Outright theft was pathological behaviour among bees.

“The combination is extraordinary. Perhaps the colony has some sort of parasite, driving them to madness?” he mused.

“What can you do?” I asked, although I still thought it odd that he should find the behaviour of his insects more engrossing than dead Druids or the evil acts of spoilt young men. Even the drugs problem should have caught his attention–that seemed to have increased since the previous summer, I reflected: How long before Holmes was pulled into that problem once again?

“I may have to kill them,” he declared, folding away the letter.

“Holmes, that seems a trifle extreme,” I protested, and only when he gave me a curious look did I recall that we were talking about bees, not Young Things or religious crackpots.

“You could be right,” he said, and went back to his reading.

(For more background and a longer excerpt, see this book’s page on the Laurie R. King website.)

Beekeeping for Beginners

Langstroth hives

Russellisms

The study of bees—the triumvirate of queen, drone, and worker—was a study of mankind.

**

“The child has
brains
, Watson. Do you know how rare that is?”

**

If I cannot have knowledge, wisdom shall have to suffice.

All the world’s stage: places Russell goes in this Memoir

England: Sussex, London

(See the
Maps chapter
for details.)

Laurie’s Remarks

Beekeeping for Beginners
is told chiefly from the point of view of Sherlock Holmes, with some sections by an anonymous narrator.  It recounts the all-important meeting of two great minds on the Sussex Downs, and what came thereafter.  We have seen Russell’s version of these events already, in
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
, but this gives a very different perspective—indeed, a different set of events entirely.  In part, there are things young Mary does not know.  There are also things she sees, but does not interpret correctly.  However, beyond this, there is the question of whether (as with
Locked Rooms
) the usual sure and dependable narrator of the Memoirs can be entirely trusted. 

Why has she never mentioned being in London following the first zeppelin barrage in May, 1915?  Why have we heard nothing concerning the effects of the Lusitania sinking on her legal affairs?  Why have we taken her word for it, all these years?

It is, to be fair, hardly surprising that the events of this tale escaped her attention at the time: she was only fifteen years old, and new to the world of Sherlockian detecting.  There is a great deal that young Mary did not know about the world around her. 

But there was even more she did not know about herself.

Excerpt

Sherlock Holmes writes:

After twelve years in Sussex, I was well accustomed to busybodies. Everyone in the county knew who I was, and although they took care to protect me from the intrusion of outsiders, they felt no compunction to offer the same protection from their own attentions. Stepping into the village shop for Mrs Hudson would bring a knowing wink and a heavy-handed jest about
investigating
the choices of soap powder. If I paused to examine an unfamiliar variety of shoe-print on the ground, a short time later I would look back to find a knot of villagers gazing down to see what had drawn my attention. One time, a casual remark to a passing farmer about the sky—that a storm would arrive by midnight—led to a near-panic throughout the Downland community, until the farmer’s wife had the sense to ring Mrs Hudson and ask if I’d actually intended to warn him that the Kaiser’s troops were lying offshore, waiting for dark. 

Only the pub had proved safe ground: When an Englishman orders a pint, his privacy is sacrosanct.

Every so often, perhaps once a year, I would become aware of what is known as a “fan.” These were generally village lads with too much time on their hands and too many penny-dreadful novels on their shelves. Trial and error had shown that a terse lecture on personal rights coupled with a threat to speak to their fathers would send them on their way.

Now, it seemed, I had another one.

I turned to watch the owner of the slow footsteps approach. The lad was wearing an old and too-large suit, a jersey in place of shirt and waistcoat (it had been cold that morning when I—and, it appeared, he—had set out) and a badly knit scarf, with a cloth cap pulled down to his ears and shoes that, despite being new, pinched his toes. His nose was buried in a book, as if to demonstrate his noble oblivion to any world-famous detectives who might be hunkered on the ground.

But he had misjudged either his path or his speed, because he was aimed right at me. I waited, but when he neither shifted course nor launched into a performance of astonishment, I cleared my throat…

(For more background and a longer excerpt, see this book’s page on the Laurie R. King website.)

The God of the Hive

Russellisms

The business end of a gun is remarkably distracting.  It dominates the world.

**

I’d been in charge of this small life less than twelve hours, and I could already feel an ulcer coming on. How did parents survive?

**

However, things were complicated—not that complicated wasn’t a frequent state of affairs in the vicinity of Sherlock Holmes…

All the world’s stage: places Russell goes in this Memoir

Britain: Orkneys, Lakes District, London, Edinburgh, Sussex

(See the Maps chapter for details.)

Laurie’s Remarks

Who, precisely, is the god of the title?

The obvious candidate is Robert Goodman, who embodies that ancient divinity of the hills and forests of ancient England, the Green Man.  The figure appears on pub signs across the land; half-humorously, he is given a place in parades and ceremonies.  This vegetation-spirit peeps in and out of literature and myth, a man whose beard is leaves, whose eyes and lips are hidden by the wild growth twining from mouth and nostrils. He is a corn god and a figure of the wild; he is a god-man who draws his life from, and gives his life to, the blood and bones that run beneath even a built-up countryside.

Green Man, Southwell Minster

Or is the title’s god a more recent manifestation, the god of modern politics and international manipulations?  Is he one of the controlling gods who waves his hand and directs the whirlwind of technology, who points a finger and brings concrete life to a leaf-strewn suburb?