The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [121]
“What do you make of that second payment, Holmes? Guilt pangs?”
“Cleanliness has affected your brain, Russell. Clearly the murder was premeditated.”
“Yes, of course. The original amount was what had been planned for. But possibly not by Dickson.”
“Make a note, Russell, to ask Lestrade about Dickson’s state of mind at the time of death.”
“You are thinking that it might have been suicide? In exchange for a payment to the family?”
“Whatever it is, it adds an interesting facet to our foe’s personality. She is a person with international connexions, or so the large quantity of American currency would tend to indicate, yet she carries through on her agreement with a dead man. On top of everything else we know about her, she’s a murderer with a sense of honour. Most subtle.”
I returned to the packet, which included a faint carbon copy of the bomb report, highly technical and couched in police English, several large, glossy photographs of the cab and the Ladies’, and a letter from Mycroft. I glanced at the first, set aside the photographs, and began to read Mycroft’s cramped but remarkably impersonal handwriting. The first part of the letter was concerned with the bomb: He agreed that it had been Dickson’s work, adding that although the toggle detonator had been manufactured in America before 1909, it had apparently been ex-posed to London’s corrosive air for some many months. He went on to address the problem of the marksman who had shot at us in Scotland Yard, who may or may not have been the same gentleman whom the mother pushing her pram across the bridge had witnessed bundling an elaborate contraption like a street photographer’s camera, complete with hood and, in this case, wheels, into the backseat of a waiting taxi-cab and squealing off. Concerning this he wrote:
I perceive a distinct odour of red herring, as with the fleeing steam-launch, which we discovered was hired—anonymously, with cash—to make off at all speed immediately the captain heard a sound “like a shot.”
Concerning the identity of your lady pursuer (continued Mycroft) very little has appeared, but for the following: Three days ago on my way to the Club, an unbelievably unsavoury character with the physiognomy of a toad—and something of the colour—sidled up to me in a manner meant, no doubt, to appear casual, and muttered out of the corner of his flat lips that he had a message for my brother. (I do wish that you might arrange for these persons to send letters. I suppose they are illiterate. Might they be instructed in the use of the telephone?) The sum total of his message was, and I quote: Lefty says there’s Glasgow Rangers with buckets of bees in town, the pitch and toss is somebody’s Trouble. End quote.
I thought this might be of interest to you.
Incidentally, heartiest congratulations on the success of your Palestinian episode, no more than I expected from you, but the Minister and the PM are immensely grateful. I suppose that when your name finds its way onto next year’s lists you will wish me to arrange for its removal. This becomes tedious, and I gather that before too long I shall be doing the same for Miss Russell.
I trust this finds you and your companion well. I anticipate your return (with something of the eager interest of a fox outside a henhouse into which he has seen saunter a cat).
Mycroft
I tore my eyes from the intimations of the penultimate paragraph and looked up from the missive.
“Glasgow Rangers? Buckets of bees?”
“Cockney rhyming slang. Strangers, with a great deal of money— bees and honey—and the boss is somebody’s ‘trouble and strife.’ Wife. A woman.”
I nodded thoughtfully, put down the letter, and took up the photo-graphs to lay them out on the low table in front of the sofa, and began to study