The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [132]
“Still,” I said, “he must have drugged Seaforth in some manner. I can't see a man this size just sitting down and permitting his wrists to be slit.”
“Veronal comes in liquid form as well,” Holmes commented. “I imagine he required the powdered form for Yolanda because he could stir it before-hand into the nut pâté. It would be a simple matter to dribble some from a bottle into a cup of tea in a busy café or a pint in a pub, but it would require sleight-of-hand to do so on an open hillside.”
A truly macabre image: a man casually handing a pâté-laden biscuit and glass of wine to the woman who had once been his wife, sitting on the grass with a picnic basket at their feet, the Long Man at their backs, and a waiting knife on his person.
Mycroft handed the remaining contents of the envelope to Holmes. They were photographs, both the reproductions of the Shanghai newsman's shot of “Reverend Hayden,” and two rolls of film that Holmes had taken at the murder sites. He divided them into four piles, one for each site, removing those that showed the great monoliths of Stonehenge. We pored over them, separately and together, but other than illustrating some very attractive pieces of English countryside, they told us little.
“Lonely places to die, all of them,” I remarked.
“One supposes they were chosen, in part, for that reason,” Holmes replied.
“Well, if he'd wanted to commit his acts in a prehistoric site surrounded by people, he'd have been hard put to find one. Most of those that survive are in remote areas—central England may once have had as many standing stones and dolmens and such as Cornwall and Wales still do, but central England has more people needing stones for houses and walls.”
“Certainly I found these sites most inconveniently located.”
I did not mention that I had heard his sigh of relief when settling into bed the night before, hours after I'd gone to sleep.
I swallowed my last bite of toast and picked up one of the Shanghai reproductions, which still looked familiar, but still did not tell me why. “I'm going up to Oxford, I shall be back before dinner. Holmes, promise me you won't vanish again, please?”
“I shall endeavour to be here by six o'clock tonight,” he announced, adding, “Not that I shall have much luck in the daylight hours.”
“You're hunting down where our man got the other sedative?” It was not so much a shrewd guess as the voice of experience, for when it came to London's underbelly, Holmes grasped any excuse to keep me clear of it.
“Drugs sellers tend not to take a Sunday holiday,” he said.
“I shall take your word for it. And, Mycroft, are you—”
“I shall begin enquiries as to the history and whereabouts of Reverend Brothers. But you, Mary, what are you doing in Oxford?”
I put on my hat and picked up my handbag. “It's going to be a perfectly lovely day on the river. Perhaps I shall take a friend punting.”
I left my bemused menfolk staring at my back and wondering if I, too, had not gone just a bit mad.
Great Work (1): The once-born seeks simple life.
The twice-born seeks true understanding.
The thrice-born, divine-man seeks to shape the world,
and set volatile Spirit alight.
Testimony, IV:1
IN FACT, A BOAT ON THE RIVER WAS PRECISELY WHAT I had in mind, although it was more means than end.
My academic interests (sadly neglected over the past year) were in those areas of theological enquiry codified before the beginning of the Common Era—what is generally called the Old Testament, what those of us whose religious affiliations stretch back before Jesus of Nazareth know more precisely as the Hebrew Bible.
However, if my own interests are early, that does not mean I am unaware of the more contemporary, even futuristic branches of theology. I have friends who are experts in the Medieval Church; I have attended lectures on Nineteenth Century Religious Movements; I know people whose fingers are on the pulse of the wilder reaches of modern religion—some of those very wild indeed.
So when a question arose about Black Masses, I knew just where to go.