The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [34]
“Mr. Holmes, what was that?”
“It was the antidote to the poison which is affecting your husband, Madam. It is sure to be quite concentrated, and I don’t want to harm him by giving too much, too fast. He will have to take it for the rest of his life, but with it he will never be ill like this again.”
“But, I told you he’s not being poisoned. I should be ill too, if he were.”
“Oh no, he’s not received any poison for over a year. He receives the antidote regularly, as do you, without harm. You told me that his manservant had been with him for many years. Did that include his time in New Guinea?”
“Yes, I believe so. Why do you ask?”
“Madam, one of my hobbies is poisons. There is a small number of very rare poisons that, once administered, reside permanently in the nervous system. They are never got rid of, but can be effectively blocked by the regular ingestion of the antidote. One of these poisons is popular with a tribe in the Sepik River area of New Guinea. It is manufactured from a very odd variety of shellfish native to the area. In an interesting serendipity, the antidote comes from a plant which is also found only in that area. Obviously, while your husband was there, his servant con-ducted his own research on the side. I suppose he will tell us eventually why he chose to turn traitor, but turn traitor he did, and made use of the poison last year. Your husband made telephone calls generally on market day, did he not?”
“Why, yes, how did you know? The Woodses were always driven to town by Ron, and I would either walk or go for a drive. And Howell—”
“Howell would take the dogs for a walk, would he not?”
“Why, yes. How—”
“They would go down to the woods; he would climb up to the tele-phone line and listen in on your husband’s conversations while the dogs gnawed bones. On the next clear night he would fail to adminis-ter the antidote, cloister himself up with his master, and slip up to the roof to signal the results of his spying to a confederate on the coast. Ah, I think it is beginning to work already.”
Two dazed eyes looked out of a pale face and fastened onto those of Mrs. Barker.
“My dear,” he whispered, “what are these people doing here?”
“Russell,” Holmes said quietly, “I believe we should see if we can help with moving Mr. Howell and leave these two good people. Mrs. Barker, I suggest that you guard this bottle most carefully until it can be analysed and duplicated. Good evening.”
We found the ambulance attendants working their way awkwardly down the narrow steps. At the front door Jones waited to let them out. A familiar cacophony came from the other side. Holmes reached into his rucksack for the small bottle, but I laid a hand on his arm.
“Let me try first,” I said. I cleared my throat, drew myself up to my full height (over six feet in those boots), and opened the door to face the pack. I put my hands on my hips and glared at them.
“Shame on you!” Seventeen jaws slowly shut, thirty-four eyes were glued to my face. “Shame on you, all of you! Is this any way to treat agents of His Majesty? Whatever are you thinking?” Seventeen faces looked at each other, at me, at the men in the doorway. The wolfhound was the first to turn tail and skulk away into the dark, the Yorkie with the blue bow the last, but they all went.
“Russell, there are unexplored depths to you,” murmured Holmes at my elbow. “Remind me to call you whenever there is a savage beast to be overcome.”
We saw the traitorous butler and his guards off through the gates and walked off down the dark road beneath the telephone line, and talked of various matters all the way home.
A Case of My Own
What is petty and vile is better than that which is not at all.
he barker problem was the first time Holmes and I collab-orated on a case (if one can consider it a collaboration when one person leads and the other follows instructions). The remaining days of the spring holiday went by uneventfully, and I returned to Oxford much invigorated by my hard labour under Patrick’s eye and by having bagged my first