The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [104]
Some day, I reflected, we should have to invent a means of actually locating a person based on a finger-print, as photographs were circulated to police departments now. Until that day, the prints a villain left behind were useful primarily in court, a nail of absolute proof in his coffin.
The biscuit wrapper would have to wait in Sussex, until we had a print to compare to it.
The Gods (1): Man teaches by story, the distillation of
his wisdom and knowledge. The earliest stories are about
the Gods, beings of inhuman strength and morality,
yet also stupid, gullible, and greedy. The extremes of the
Gods are where the lessons lie, whether it be
Greek heroism or Norse trickery.
Testimony, III:3
BEFORE LEAVING MYCROFT'S FLAT THAT MORNING, I had assembled a burglar's kit ranging from sandwiches to steel jemmy, wrapping the tools inside a dark shirt and trousers and tucking in a pair of head-scarfs—one bright red-and-white checked cotton, the other the sheerest silk in a subdued blue-green design-then placing the whole in an ordinary shopping bag. I had deposited the bag with the Left Luggage office at Paddington, knowing that dragging it around all day would tempt me to jettison some if not all of its weight.
I went to Paddington now to retrieve it, then crossed town on the Underground to the accountants' office that had filled the “income” column of Millicent Dunworthy's personal ledger during recent months. It was a street that had, once upon a time, been a high street, in a building that began its life, three centuries earlier, as a coaching inn.
The income listed in the ledger indicated a full working week. Since she had taken off most of the previous week's Monday to buy a frock, shoes, and picnic basket for Yolanda's rendezvous with death, I thought it unlikely that she would miss another day this soon.
And I was right, she was there, her desk clearly visible from the front window. I found a café and had a coffee, then went into the booksellers' next door and spent some time with the new fiction at the front window. A book called A Passage to India so caught my attention that I nearly missed Miss Dunworthy's exit from the office across the way; when I looked up from the page, she was down the street and walking fast. I dropped the book and hurried after her, the checked scarf wrapped prominently around the brim of my hat.
But she was merely going to the nearest bus stop. I slowed to a more casual gait and followed, head averted, trying to decide if she was the sort of woman who would climb to the upper level of the bus. If so, it would be difficult to hide from her. If not, I might manage to duck quickly up the stairs without her seeing me.
And then what—leap from an upper window, when I saw her get off?
Yes, if it came to that.
Or I could engage a taxi now, and manufacture some story that justified following a city bus as it made its halting way through the town.
A bus approached, its number identifying it as a route that meandered far out into the suburbs. Millicent Dunworthy stepped forward, and I pressed closer in her direction, slumping to reduce my height beneath the level of the gentlemen's hats and taking care to keep a lamp-post between us.
She got on, and moved towards the front. I wormed my way into the queue, bought my ticket, and trotted up the stairs.
It took several stops before I could claim a window seat with a view of the disembarking passengers, but by employing sharp elbows and a winsome smile, I beat an old woman out of her choice. Ignoring her glare, I removed the bright scarf from my hat and pushed it into the shopping bag on my lap.
We travelled through endless London suburbs, with scores of stops and a constant flux of passengers, and still Miss Dunworthy did not appear below. I started to wonder if perhaps she had removed her hat—or changed her garments entirely, as I was equipped to do? Had she spotted me, and slipped past when I was trapped away from the windows?
The bus churned on, with ever fewer passengers. Solid terraces gave way to