The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [85]
Unconfirmed reports of an earlier bomb at the isolated Sussex farm of Mr. Holmes have reached this newspaper, and one reliable source states that the detective was seriously injured in the blast. There will be further details in our later edition.
I reread the short article, little more than a notice, with a feeling of drunken unreality. I quite literally could not comprehend the words before me, partly due to shock, but more because it simply made no sense. I felt as if my brain were moving through tar. My hands laid the paper down on top of the débris of teacups and eggshells and then folded themselves into my lap. I am not certain how long it was before I heard Mycroft speak sharply over my shoulder.
“Miss Russell, what is the matter? Shall I send for more tea?”
I unfolded one hand and laid a finger across the newsprint, and when he had read it he lowered himself into a sturdy chair. I looked over at him and saw Holmes’ glittering, intense eyes sunk into a fleshy, pale face, and knew he was thinking as furiously and as fruitlessly as I.
“That is most provocative,” he said at last. “We were barely in time, were we not?”
“In time for what?” Holmes came into the room fastening his cuffs, his voice edged. Mycroft handed him the paper, and a sibilant whistle escaped him as he read it. When Watson entered, Holmes turned to him.
“It seems, my old friend, that we owe a considerable and deeply felt thanks to Russell.”
Watson read about his near escape and collapsed into the chair Holmes pushed into the back of his knees.
“A whisky for the man, Mycroft,” but the big man was already at the cabinet pouring. Watson held it unseeingly. Suddenly he stood up, reaching for his black bag.
“I must go home.”
“You must do nothing of the sort,” retorted Holmes, and took the bag from his hand.
“But the landlady, my papers.” His voice drifted off.
“The article states that no one was hurt,” Holmes said reasonably. “Your papers will wait, and you can contact the neighbours and the police later. Right now you will go to bed. You have been up all night and you have had a bad shock. Finish your drink.” Watson, through long habit of obedience to the voice of his friend, tipped the liquor down his throat and stood looking dazed. Mycroft took his elbow and led him off to the bed that Holmes had occupied for such a short while the night before.
Holmes lit his pipe, and its slight sough joined the mutter of the traffic below and the indistinct voices from the bedroom down the hall. We were silent, although I fancy the sound of our thinking was almost audible. Holmes frowned at a point on the wall, I fiddled with a piece of string I had found in my pocket and frowned, and Mycroft, when he appeared, sat in the chair between us at the fire, and frowned.
My fingers turned the string into a cat’s cradle and made various in-tricate shapes until I dropped a connexion and held only a tangle of string. I broke the silence.
“Very well, gentlemen, I admit I am baffled. Can either of you tell me why, if Watson was followed here, Dickson would persist in setting the bomb? Surely he couldn’t have cared about the house itself, or Watson’s papers?”
“It is indeed a pretty problem, is it not, Mycroft?”
“It changes the picture considerably, does it not, Sherlock?”
“Dickson was not operating alone—”
“And he was not in charge of the operation—”
“Or if he was, his subordinates were extremely ineffective,” Holmes added.
“Because he was not informed that his target had left an hour before—”
“But was that deliberate or an oversight?”
“I suppose a group of criminals can overlook essential organisational—”
“For pity’s sake, Mycroft, it’s not the government.”
“True, a certain degree of competence