The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [131]
“But isn't that precisely what this woman is—was?”
“You do not admit to the possibility of reform?”
I started to retort, then closed my mouth. Yolanda Chin had been a child when she was forced into a life of prostitution; she was not yet an adult when she married a middle-aged Englishman, who turned out to be a crook, and perhaps much worse. Did I have any reason to think that Yolanda herself was a criminal? I did not. Did I have any reason to believe she was betraying Damian, in any way but attending her first husband's church? I did not.
Holmes saw the internal debate on my face. “It is easier to picture the boy as a victim of an unscrupulous adventuress, but I see no evidence of that, Russell. He loved her. Still does, if you are correct and he does not know she is dead. My son loves his wife,” he said simply. “That is the point at which I must begin.”
“And yet you think he knows. About her continuing attachment to Brothers?”
“He knows. One must remember, the Bohemian way of life is not a surface dressing with Damian.”
I thought about that, and about the denizens of the Café Royal: two couples, leaving arm in arm with the other's spouse; Alice, Ronnie, and their Bunny; the Epstein household of husband, wife, husband's lovers, and their various children; the manifold permutations of the Bloomsbury Group, with lovers, husbands, wives' lovers become husbands' lovers and vice-versa; all of it determinedly natural and open, all of it aimed at a greater definition of humanity.
Yes, Damian could well know, and knowing, permit—even approve of—his wife's continued liaison with a man to whom she had once been married.
I had to laugh, a little sadly. “I'm a twenty-four-year-old prude.”
“And thank God for it.”
“Still,” I said, “I'd have thought that if Damian knew about Yolanda's links to Brothers, he'd have looked to Brothers when she disappeared.”
“Yes, well, I believe he may have done so. On the Wednesday night, he left the hotel for a time. It appeared to be an attack of claustrophobia.”
“He's claustrophobic?” I pictured the room Damian and Estelle had shared at the walled house, its two large windows wide open to the night. “Did he leave for long enough to get up to the walled house and back?”
“By taxi, yes.”
I woke early the following morning, saw the vague pre-dawn shape of Mycroft's guest room, and turned over again. Then I noticed how quiet it was. In London. Drat: Sunday again.
I was on my third cup of coffee when first Holmes, then his brother emerged. Mycroft was cheerful, or at least, as cheerful as Mycroft got, but Holmes shot a dark look at the windows in just the way I had earlier.
Sundays were most inconvenient, when it came to investigation.
Still, it was not a total loss. For one thing, at ten after eight, interrupting our toast and marmalade, a set of discreet knuckles brushed at the door. I went to answer, and found “Mr Jones,” a thick packet in his hand. He peered around me to check that Mycroft was in before he handed it over.
I took it to Mycroft. He tore it open, removing a note; as he read it, his face went enigmatic, and I braced myself for bad news.
“The pathologists for Fiona Cartwright and Albert Seaforth report that there was no indication of Veronal grains in the stomachs of the two victims.”
“They missed it,” I declared.
“Perhaps with Miss Cartwright, but the Seaforth examination appears to have been quite thorough. He was not given powdered Veronal to render him unconscious.”
He handed me the reports, which indicated that Fiona Cartwright had drunk a cup of tea at some point before she shot herself, and Albert Seaforth had taken a quantity of beer. I had to agree, if powdered Veronal had been there, the pathologist would have found it. Which meant that as far as the drugs Brother