The God of the Hive - Laurie R. King [22]
“Sherlock Holmes?” The rising tone was not quite incredulity, but made it clear that she was questioning her patient’s clarity of mind, if not his outright sanity.
“Madam,” Holmes replied with a tip of the head, and resumed his study of the eastern horizon.
“I’m supposed to believe that?”
“A lady physician might be inclined towards belief in many impossible things.”
“That’s scarcely on the same level.”
He sighed. “You wish me to prove myself. I might show you identification, but papers can be forged. And I might recite the details of my professional life, but you would protest that I had merely read Dr Doyle’s fanciful tales in the Strand. Shall I then put on a demonstration, trot out my own patented brand of common sense? Shall I tell you that I know from your voice that you were born in Kirkcaldy and educated in Nottingham? That your father was a doctor who has either died or become incapacitated for work, freeing you to adopt his bag when you qualified? That the books and equipment you added to the somewhat antiquated surgery in Wick assured me that your skills were both considerable and up-to-date? That I knew you also had nursing experience because of the distinctive scarring on your fingers, which one sees on a person who has been in continuous proximity to infected wounds? That your shoes and your haircut are approximately the same age, which tells me you have been in Wick less than four weeks? That you wore a ring on your left hand for some years, and took it off around the time you started medical school? That—”
“All right! Stop!” She studied her left hand for a minute, comparing it to her right, then thrust both into her pockets. “You are often doubted, as to your identity?”
“One tends to use pseudonyms.”
“And … your son. Although his name is Adler.”
“His mother thought it best.”
She pulled her coat more tightly around her, and considered the decking. “My father died in the 1919 epidemic. And it was an engagement ring—the one I took off. When my fiancé died, it was all I had of him. I wore it until 1922.”
Holmes said nothing.
“Mr Adler’s wife was very pretty. To judge by his drawing of her, that is.”
“So I understand,” Holmes agreed, although she’d not been particularly lovely when he saw her in the mortuary, the plucky little idiot whose infatuation with a lunatic had landed them all in their current predicament—but that was neither charitable nor pertinent.
“He tells me she was murdered.”
“Two weeks ago. Damian only learnt of it yesterday. Her name was Yolanda, a Chinese woman from Shanghai. I never met her in life, but her first husband, from whom she had parted before she met Damian, turned out to be a madman convinced that human sacrifice performed at key places and auspicious times would transfer the psychic energies of his victims into him. He killed Yolanda and at least three other innocents. It was his bullet you retrieved.”
“‘Psychic energies’?” He felt her gaze boring against the side of his head. “You’re joking.”
“Would that I were.”
“He planned to make himself into …”
“A sort of Gnostic Übermensch, I suppose.”
Either she understood the reference to Nietzsche, or she was too distracted to hear it. “And the police find this difficult to believe?”
He glanced at her, surprised not by sarcasm, but by the lack of it. Most people of his acquaintance would cavil at the reasoning of the mad: Dr Henning spurned the distraction to grasp the essentials. Admirable woman.
“They may reach the same conclusion eventually; however, I was disinclined to hand Damian over to them until they did so. As I said, his reaction to being enclosed is extreme.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“Were the wind less assertive, I’d have put in along the coast of England, found a safe haven for Damian, and made my way to London. Now, I shall have to shelter him in Europe and make a more circuitous way home.”
She spotted a sturdy basket that had come to rest beside the capstan, and upended it, sitting with her face turned