The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [92]
The more I thought about it, the curiouser it became. What kind of human being would need a refuge capable of sustaining life in a siege? For the plentiful if desultory tins of food, the two travelling rugs tossed over the sofa, three tins of pipe tobacco, a pound of coffee, and the copious reading material—staid medical journals, philosophical tomes, novels with lurid covers, and brittle newspapers ancient enough to qualify as archaeology—all testified that the room’s purpose was to make possible a prolonged captivity. It was quite patently not a refuge for comfort or convenience; at his height, Holmes would find the sofa a dismal night’s sleep. And it was also clearly no holiday re-treat; the threadbare line down the center of the carpet bespoke hours spent measuring its half a dozen paces of clear space.
No, there was no question in my mind: Either my friend and men-tor was quite mad, a man willing to go to considerable difficulty and ex-pense to satisfy a bizarre and romantic fantasy of paranoia, or else the life of my rustic beekeeping companion with the odd skills was extraor-dinarily more demanding, even dangerous, than I had fully realised.
Somehow I could not think him mad.
There was no doubt that the room had been recently occupied: The tea leaves were relatively fresh, the dust had not settled much onto the desk or teapot, the air, though stuffy, was not stifling and smelt faintly of tobacco. I shook my head. Even I had not suspected how very active his career still was.
I wondered, not for the first time that day, nor for the last, what he was doing and how he was holding up.
Which brought me around to wonder what I was going to do. I could, of course, stay here until it was time to meet Holmes, and at the thought of explosive devices and flexible and imaginative would-be murderers, the bolt-hole’s canister of tea, tins of beans, and lurid novels (to say nothing of the revolver I had brought and the other one I had found in the kettle) seemed both tempting and eminently sensible.
Still, there was Holmes in the streets, and Mycroft and Watson bolting for cover, and to sit in a hole with the bedclothes over my head seemed disloyal, cowardly even. Illogical, but true. There might well be nothing I could do, but my own self-respect demanded that I not be completely intimidated by this unknown assailant. Of course, had I known then how very flexible and imaginative our foe actually was, I should probably have stayed well hidden, but as it was I decided defi-antly to see what I could do about depleting the number of high-denomination notes that lay in my handbag on top of the gun, and went to assemble an appropriate wardrobe.
By the end of four years of war, standards of dress had become markedly less demanding, and even the upper levels of society were occasionally seen in clothing that before 1914 would have been given to the maid or the church’s next jumble sale. Still, it took me some time to find myself clothes among Holmes’ collection. In the end I un-covered a tweed skirt that I might tuck up to current length, and a blouse that did not look like something handed down from the butcher’s wife. Stockings and suspenders I found aplenty, but I nearly gave up altogether on the shoes. Holmes’ feet were larger than mine, and his selection of women’s shoes somewhat limited. I held up a pair of scarlet satin sandals with four-inch heels and tried to imagine Holmes in them. My imagination failed. (But if not Holmes, then who? I put them down abruptly, shocked at myself. Keep your mind on the business at hand, please, Russell.) I picked up a pair of dowdy black shoes with a strap across the instep and low Cuban heels and found that I could at least walk in them.
I switched on the row of lights and sat down with the pots and sticks to change my face (How many young women had been taught the subtleties of make-up by a man? I reflected idly.), added a long string of pearls (real) and small earrings (fake), wrapped my head in a piece of