The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [58]
“Just coming through don’t count,” I asserted loftily. “I mean comin’ in and eatin’ and drinkin’ here and stoppin’ for a time. Don’t get many of them, do you?”
I could see from their faces that they didn’t have any convenient group of strangers to offer me, and sighed internally. Tomorrow, per-haps. Meanwhile—“Well, I’m here, but we’re not stopping long. If you want to run home and tell your people, we’ll have a show for you to watch in an hour. Unless my Da’ finds the beer here too good,” I added. “I tell fortunes too. Run along now.”
The supper was good and plentiful, the take from the fiddling and cards poor. Before dawn the next morning we jingled off down the road.
The next village had telephone wires but few isolated buildings. Neither my small informant nor the pub inhabitants could be gently prodded into revealing any recent influx of strangers. We moved on after midday, not pausing to perform.
Our next choice started out promising. Telephone lines, several widely scattered buildings, and even a response to questions about strangers caused my pulse to quicken. However, by teatime the leads had petered out, and the strangers were two old English ladies who had come to live here six years before.
We had to backtrack to reach the road to the other villages, and as dusk closed in on us I was thoroughly sick of the hard, jolting seat and the imperturbable brown rump ahead of me. We lit the wagon’s side lamps and climbed down with a lantern to lead the horse. I spoke to Holmes in a low voice.
“Could the kidnappers be locals? I know it looks like outsiders, but what if it was just a couple of locals?”
“Who spotted an American senator and thought up a gas gun and letters in The Times on the spur of the moment?” he drawled sarcasti-cally. “Use the wits God gave you, Mary Todd. Locals are almost cer-tainly involved but are not alone.”
We crept wearily into village number four, where for the first time we were not greeted by a company of children. “Too late for the little ones, I suppose,” Holmes grunted, and looked at the small stone pub with loathing.
“What I would give for a decent claret,” he sighed, and went off to do his duty for his king.
I settled the horse, found and heated a tin of beans over the caravan’s tiny fire, and slumped at the minuscule wooden table with the Tarot deck, sourly reading my fortune: The cards gave me the Hanged Man, the enigmatic Fool, and the Tower with its air of utter disaster. Holmes was a long time in the pub, and I was beginning to consider moving over to my bunk, travel-stained clothing and all, when I heard his voice come suddenly loud into what passed for the village’s high street.
“—my fiddle, and I’ll play you a dancin’ tune, the merriest of tunes that ever you’ll hear.” I jerked upright, all thought of sleepiness snatched from me and the beans turning instantly to bricks in my stomach. The caravan’s door flew open and in came me old Da’, sev-eral sheets to the wind. He tripped as he negotiated the narrow steps, and fell forward into my lap.
“Ah, me own sweet girlie,” he continued loudly, struggling to right himself. “Have you seen what I done with the fiddle?” He reached past me to retrieve it from the shelf and whispered fiercely in my ear. “On your toes, Russell: a two-storey white house half a mile north, plane tree in front and another at the back. Hired in late June, five men living there, perhaps a sixth coming and going. Curse it!” he bellowed, “I told you to fix the bloody string,” and continued as he bent over the instrument, “I’ll make a distraction at the front of the house in fifty minutes. You make your way—carefully, mind you—around to the back and see what you can without getting too close. Black your skin and take your revolver, but use it only to save your life. Watch for a guard, or dogs. If you’re seen, that’s the end of it. Can you do it?”
“Yes, I think so, but—”
“Me sweet Mary,” he bawled drunkenly in my ear, “you’re all tired out, ain’t you? Off t’bed wi’ you naow, don’t wait