The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [145]
Something was stirring in my mind, and I did not know what it was. It was in part the awareness of tension: Yes, I was relieved that Damian seemed to be in the clear, but that had been replaced by the growing conviction that he and the child had driven away into mortal danger.
More than that, some combination of events, or of objects witnessed, prowled in the back of my mind; some alarming shape was growing in the darkness, and the only way of encouraging it to emerge into the light of consciousness was to ignore it. I turned resolutely to the news, important and trivial, and drank my tea until it was cold and bitter. Finally, I switched off the light and sat in the gathering dawn.
Today I should have to have another conversation with the Adlers' maid, Sally. Nothing she had said gave a shape to the child's age, but surely if I asked, she would be able to tell me just how old Estelle was. Other than size, what were the determining differences between an ordinary eight-year-old and a precocious four-year-old? Teeth, perhaps? I should have to find out first. And why hadn't I thought to confirm her age with that neighbour?
(Something I had read, days ago, teased at the back of my mind. That heap of papers in Sussex, it must have been, month after month of news items that blurred into one another. A murder here, a drugs raid there, given equal weight with a photograph of a hunt breakfast and a June excursion to the seaside … I firmly withdraw my mind from the direct approach.)
Also today, we should have to find the owner of that trim terrace house a short walk from three train stations. Whether Brothers owned it or let it, there would be paperwork—which could be why he had taken such care to keep Gunderson from knowing about it.
(An excursion to the seaside. But, not the seaside …)
Should I ask Holmes to review with Mycroft the crimes of the full moons? Perhaps the two brothers together would see a pattern I had missed.
(She died on a full moon, and I'd been reading the newspapers that week and come across something….)
My days in Sussex had, actually, been a lovely holiday, four entire days of solitude and bees, brought together, now that I thought of it, in Holmes' book. A man who retired at a remarkably early age from the busy hive of humanity that was London, resigning himself to the conviction that the person he called “The Woman” was lost to him, that his life was—for all he knew—sterile. He had disappeared, freeing me to enjoy the peace and the book and the skies—first the meteors, then that remarkable eclipse of the moon. What a pity he had been in the city, where the skies were no doubt too light—
(An advert! For a Thomas Cook tour, to the eclipse—but not to the lunar eclipse; why run a tour to something visible from one's back garden? That meant—)
I threw off the rug and padded down the hallway to Mycroft's study, impatiently running my grit-filled eyes across the shelves until I spotted his 1924 almanac.
I found the page, read it, and looked up to see Holmes in the doorway, summoned by my footsteps, or by my brain's turmoil.
“What have you found?”
“It may be nothing.”
“Tell me,” he demanded.
“Thomas Cook was advertising an expedition to Scandinavia-well, that's not important.” I tried to order my thoughts. “Holmes, it may not be the September full moon that Brothers is waiting for. Full moons enter into it, but I think he's picking off celestial events. The ram at Long Meg died on the first of May, the Celtic festival of Beltane. Albert Seaforth died on the night of the Perseids. Brothers may be aiming for the solar eclipse.”
“An eclipse? In England?”
“No, it's mostly Arctic. Parts of northern Scandinavia will see it, although it looks as if Bergen, Norway, might be on the very edge. However, Holmes, I—”
“When?”
I looked back at the page, hoping I had read it wrong, but I had not. “August the thirtieth.”
Four days away.
The Tool: A Tool must incorporate all four Elements.
Beyond