The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [143]
I had little time to reflect on the question, because Holmes stirred at my side and spoke up, his voice flat.
“Kindly refrain from baiting the child, Miss Donleavy, and con-tinue: I believe you have something you wish to say to me.”
The round metal circle on her knee began to shake slightly, and af-ter a brief moment of terror I heard her laughter, and I felt ill. She had been playing with me. We might have fooled her for a time, but now our act was exposed, and even the small chance we’d had with deception was no longer ours.
“You are right, Mr. Holmes. I have not much time, and you have robbed me of a great deal of energy in the last few days. I have no great energy to spare, you understand. I am dying. Oh yes, Miss Russell, my absence from the college was no sham. There is a crab with its claws in my belly and no way to remove it. I had originally planned to wait sev-eral years for this, Mr. Holmes, but I do not have the leisure now. Be-fore much longer I will not have the strength to deal with you. It must be now.” Her voice echoed in the tiled laboratory and whispered away like a snake.
“Very well, Miss Donleavy, you have me at your mercy. Let us dis-miss Miss Russell and get on with the issues between us.”
“Oh no, Mr. Holmes, sorry. I cannot do that. She is a part of you now, and I cannot deal with you without including her. She stays.” Her voice had gone cold, so cold it was hard for me to connect it with the person who had drunk tea with me and laughed in front of a fire. Cold, and with danger uncoiling from its base. I shivered, and she saw it.
“Miss Russell is cold, and I imagine tired. We all are, my dear, but we have a while to go before the end. Come now, Mr. Holmes, don’t keep your protégée here all day. I am sure you have a number of ques-tions you would like to ask me. You may begin.”
I looked at Holmes, sitting less than a yard from me. His hand rubbed across his face in a gesture of fatigue, but for the briefest frac-tion of an instant his eyes slid sideways to meet mine with a spark of hard triumph, and then his hand fell away from features that were merely bone tired and filled with defeat. He leant back in his chair with his long, bony hands spread out on the table before him and gave a tiny shrug.
“I have no questions, Miss Donleavy.”
The gun wavered for a moment.
“No questions! But of course you have—” She caught herself. “Mr. Holmes, you needn’t try to irritate me. That would be a waste of our precious time. Now come, surely you have questions.” Her voice had an edge to it, and a flash of memory came, of a time when I had failed to make a logical connexion that ought to have been obvious, and her voice had cut deep. In perfect counterpoint came the voice of Holmes, fatigued and slightly bored.
“Miss Donleavy, I tell you, there are no questions in my mind re-garding this case. It has been very interesting, even challenging, but it is now over, and all the significant data have been correlated.”
“Indeed? Pardon me if I doubt your word, Mr. Holmes, but I suspect you are playing some obscure game. Perhaps you might be so good as to explain to Miss Russell and myself the sequence of events. Hands on the table, Mr. Holmes. I have no wish to cut this short. Thank you. You may proceed.”
“Shall I begin with the occurrences of last autumn, or of twenty-eight years ago?”
“As you wish, though perhaps Miss Russell may find the latter course of some interest.”
“Very well. Russell, twenty-eight years ago I, not to mince words, killed Professor James Moriarty, your maths tutor’s father. That it was self-defence does not contravene the fact that I was responsible for his falling to his death over the Reichenbach Falls, or that it was