The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [64]
“No, Jessie, this is a friend; he’s my friend and your mother’s friend, and he’s the friend who made all that noise so I could take you from the house. His name is Mr. Holmes, and he doesn’t always look so funny; he’s dressed up, like I am.” This soothing prattle took the worst of the tension from her body. I bundled the rugs together and handed them to Holmes and walked down the hill with the child in my arms.
We took her to the caravan, lit a fire, and dressed her in one of my woollen shirts, which flapped around her ankles. The publican’s wife produced a hot, thick mutton stew, which we wolfed and the child picked at. Holmes then put the kettle of water on the little stove, and when it was warm he washed and examined my sore foot, wrapped it securely to stop the bone ends from their tedious creaking, and finally used the rest of the water to make a pot of coffee and shave the bristle from his cheeks. Jessica watched his every move. When his face was clean he sat down and showed the child how his gold tooth came out, which was the cause for serious consideration. He then brought his ring of picklocks from his pocket and spread it on the table for her to examine, and asked if she wished him to take the chain from her leg. She cringed away from him and tucked as much of herself as she could get into my lap.
“Jessica,” I said, “nobody’s going to touch you if you don’t want. If you like, I can take it off you, but you’ll have to sit on the table—I can’t do it with you on my lap.” There was no response. We waited a while, and then Holmes shrugged and reached for the picklocks. She stirred, and then slowly pushed her foot towards him. Without com-ment he got to work and, touching her as little as possible, within two minutes had the shackles on the floor. She gave him a long, grave look, which he returned, and then gathered herself up against me again and put her thumb into her mouth.
We sat, and dozed and waited, until finally there came another car on the road, which braked to a halt just outside the caravan. Holmes opened the door to the Simpsons, and Jessie flew into her mother’s arms and glued her arms and legs around her as if she would never come free, and Mr. Simpson put an arm around both of them and led them to the car, and I found it hard to see properly, and Holmes blew his nose loudly.
Words with Miss Simpson
...directing all things without giving an order, receiving obedience but not recognition.
he end of a case is always long, tedious, and anticlimactic, and since this is my story I choose to save myself from having to describe the next hours of weariness and physical letdown and ques-tions and the ugliness of confronting those men. Suffice it to say that the night ended and I crawled into my hard bunk for a few hours of collapse before a fist on the caravan door brought me into the day. Cup after cup of black coffee did not help the soggy thickness in my bones and brain, and it was with considerable sour satisfaction that later that afternoon I watched the last of the cars drive off down the narrow track. I rubbed my tired eyes and propped up my sore foot and thought vaguely of a bath but found I could not summon the energy to do any-thing except sit on the wagon’s back step and watch the horse graze.
It must have been nearly an hour later that I became aware of Holmes, sitting on a stump and tossing his jackknife repeatedly into the tree next to him.
“Holmes?”
“Yes, Russell.”
“Is it always so grey and awful at the end of a case?”
He didn’t answer me for a minute, then rose abruptly and stood looking down the road towards the house with the plane trees. When he looked around at me there was a painful smile on his lips.
“Not always. Just usually.”
“Hence the cocaine.”
“Hence, as you say, the cocaine.”
I hobbled into the caravan for more coffee and brought the luke-warm cup back into the last rays of the evening sun. The oily slick on top was slightly nauseous, and I abruptly tipped it out, watched it soak into the trampled grass, and spoke in