The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [69]
“I told her some things that someone told me, when my family died. I hope they do her some good.”
I sat and watched our reflections in the darkening window, and Holmes smoked his pipe, and we spoke no more until we came to Seaford.
olmes’ assessment of the case had been quite right, of course. The men in Wales had been paid—well paid—for their work and had received their orders anonymously, from a hoarse voice in London and through the post. All had been meticulously planned. They had been instructed in every detail, from the hiring of the house and the purchase of clothing in Cardiff to the con-struction of the gas-gun, the route to take away from the tent, how to word messages in the agony column, the wearing of masks around the child (which had been a relief to me, knowing that murder was not intended)—all this within the space of a few weeks, and all with-out any trace of the link with London. When the men were taken, all threads snapped, and we were left with five talkative men, some un-traceable money, and the knowledge that the puppet-master behind the deed had walked away scot-free.
Book Three
PARTNERSHIP
The Game’s Afoot
We Have a Case
The ambushes laid by a hastening twilight... the cold menace of winter.
hree terms go to make up the Oxford calendar, each with its own very distinct flavour. The year begins with Michael-mas term and the autumn closing in, when minds and bodies that have ranged free during the summer are bent again to the life of academe. Days grow short, the sky disappears, the stones and bricks of the city become black in the rain, and the mind turns inward to discipline.
In Hilary term winter seems eternal, with the barest hint of lengthening days and the first sprouts of new life, but with the return in May for Trinity term the sap rises strong with the sun, and all one’s energies are set to flower in the end-of-the-year examinations.
Of the terms, my favourite is that of Michaelmas, when the mind is put back into harness and the wet leaves of autumn lie thick in the streets.
I find I cannot look back on that Michaelmas term of 1918 as an isolated thing, separate from the storms that followed. I know I was filled with tremendous joy as I began seriously to flex my muscles in the realm of the mind. The first year had set my feet underneath me, and I was now ready to build. I was no longer intoxicated by long hours in the Bodleian, though my spirit still soared at the smell of the books. I began serious work with my tutors, and I remember two or three occasions when their looks of respect and interest pleased me as much as a “well done, Russell” from Holmes. The world’s intrusions were few, although the vision of the High on the day the guns of Eu-rope stopped will remain with me to my dying day, with the black gowns swarming the streets and the mortarboards flung into the air, the shouting and the kissing and the wild clamour of the long-stilled bells, and the fervent and reverent minute of silence.
I can hardly call the adventure that began at the end of that term a “case,” for the only clients were ourselves, the only possible payment our lives. It burst upon us like a storm, it beat at us and flung us about and threatened our lives, our sanity, and the surprisingly fragile thing that existed between Holmes and myself.
For me it began, appropriately enough, on a filthy, bitterly wet night in December. I was quite fed up with Oxford and all the tricks she played, not the least of which was her infamously gruesome cli-mate, in this case snow followed by great downpours of near-sleet, buckets of icy rain that drenched the thickest of wool coats and turned normal shoes into sodden leather sacks. I was dressed for the weather, but even so my high hiking boots and shiny so-called water-proof had let in a miserable amount of weather on the walk from the Bodleian to the lodgings house. I was sick of the weather, tired of Ox-ford, irritated by the demands of my tutors, prickly from being cooped up inside, hungry, tired, and