The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [9]
“No, it is a collaboration on the part of Mrs. Hudson and old Will Thompson, who used to be head gardener at the manor. I took an interest in gardening when I first came here, but my work tends to distract me for days on end. I would reappear to find whole beds dead of drought or buried in bramble. But Mrs. Hudson enjoys it, and it gives her something to do other than pester me to eat her concoctions. I find it a pleasant spot to sit and think. It also feeds my bees—most of the flowers are chosen because of the quality of honey they produce.”
“It is a very pleasant spot. It reminds me of a garden we once had when I was small.”
“Tell me about yourself, Miss Russell.”
I started to give him the obligatory response, first the demurral and then the reluctant flat autobiography, but some slight air of polite inattention in his manner stopped me. Instead, I found myself grinning at him.
“Why don’t you tell me about myself, Mr. Holmes?”
“Aha, a challenge, eh?” There was a flare of interest in his eyes.
“Exactly.”
“Very well, on two conditions. First, that you forgive my old and much-abused brain if it is slow and creaking, for such thought patterns as I once lived by are a habit and become rusty without continual use. Daily life here with Mrs. Hudson and Will is a poor whetting stone for sharp wit.”
“I don’t entirely believe that your brain is underused, but I grant the condition. And the other?”
“That you do the same for me when I have finished with you.”
“Oh. All right. I shall try, even if I lay myself open to your ridicule.” Perhaps I had not escaped the edge of his tongue after all.
“Good.” He rubbed his thin dry hands together, and suddenly I was fixed with the probing eye of an entomologist. “I see before me one Mary Russell, named after her paternal grandmother.”
I was taken aback for a moment, then reached up and fingered the antique locket, engraved MMR, that had slipped out from the buttons of my shirt. I nodded.
“She is, let us see, sixteen? Fifteen, I think? Yes, fifteen years of age, and despite her youth and the fact that she is not at school she intends to pass the University entrance examinations.” I touched the book in my pocket and nodded appreciatively. “She is obviously left-handed, one of her parents was Jewish—her mother, I think? Yes, definitely the mother—and she reads and writes Hebrew. She is at present four inches shorter than her American father—that was his suit? All right so far?” he asked complacently.
I thought furiously. “The Hebrew?” I asked.
“The ink marks on your fingers could only come with writing right to left.”
“Of course.” I looked at the accumulation of smears near my left thumbnail. “That is very impressive.”
He waved it aside. “Parlour games. But the accents are not without interest.” He eyed me again, then sat back with his elbows on the chair’s armrests, steepled his fingers, rested them lightly on his lips for a moment, closed his eyes, and spoke.
“The accents. She has come recently from her father’s home in the western United States, most likely northern California. Her mother was one generation away from Cockney Jew, and Miss Russell herself grew up in the southwestern edges of London. She moved, as I said, to California, within the last, oh, two years. Say the word ‘martyr,’ please.” I did so. “Yes, two years. Sometime between then and December both parents died, very possibly in the same accident in which Miss Russell was involved last September or October, an accident which has left scar tissue on her throat, scalp, and right hand, a residual weakness in that same hand, and a slight stiffness in the left knee.”
The game had suddenly stopped being entertaining. I sat frozen, my heart ceasing to beat while I listened to the cool, dry recitation of his voice.
“After her recovery she was sent back home to her mother’s family, to a tight-fisted and unsympathetic relative who feeds her rather less than she needs. This last,” he added parenthetically, “is I admit largely conjecture,