The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [161]
The arrangements came from the nearby house to meet us, in the form of a grizzled farmer and his strapping young son, the latter of whom was clearly the enthusiast. The lad stared from the aeroplane to the pilot in open admiration, while his disapproving father moved to tie our eager machine down to earth. I half-fell down the ladder, accepted the valise that Javitz thrust into my arms, and watched him march away down the field with the young man trailing behind, pelting him with unanswered questions.
After a minute, I realized an older man was standing at my side, and had asked me something. “Terribly sorry,” I said. “I could rather use a Ladies', if you might direct me?”
I felt his hand on my elbow, propelling me in the direction of the building he'd come out of. He led me through a kitchen, showed me a door, and went away. I put down the valise, closed the door, and knelt to vomit into the tidy enamel lavatory.
When the spasm had passed, I stayed where I was for a time, shuddering with a combination of cold and reaction, emitting a noise that was part groan and part cry. Not unlike the noise the wind had made all afternoon around my head.
All right, I said after a minute. Enough. I got to my feet, washed my hands, splashed water on my face, and even went into my valise for a comb to restore my hair to order. When I came out, I felt approximately halfway to human.
Which was just as well: The man standing in the farmer's kitchen was so out of place, he could only be Mycroft's Inverness contact, colleague to Mr MacDougall.
“Mungo Clarty, at your service,” he declared. His name and speech patterns were Scots, although the accent originated two hundred miles to the south. He marched across the room with his hand extended, pumping my arm as if trying to draw water. “I've been instructed to make you welcome and get whatever you might want. And if you're fretting over your pilot, I've sent a friend to look after him, in case he decides to get a bit the worse for wear. I've telephoned to a dear friend of mine, runs a lovely boarding-house in the town with more hot water than you could ask for, beds fit for a queen and a cellar second to none. Does that sound like what you'll be needing?”
Had he remained where he was, I might have draped myself around him in gratitude and wept on his shoulder, but he had let go of my hand and picked up my valise, and was already taking our leave from the farmer, leading me from the warm kitchen to his waiting motor, talking over his shoulder all the time.
“You haven't had any information from MacDougall?” I asked when he paused for breath. His motorcar was not as warm as the farmer's kitchen, but it was blessedly out of the wind, and the travelling rug he tucked over my knees was thick.
“He said to tell you the waiter had gone to see his mother, whatever that means, but that he's going after him.”
I took a breath, and pushed away temptation. “Good man. I need to visit all the hotels and restaurants in town.”
“All the—that'll take most of the night!”
“What, in a town this size?”
“Inverness is the door to the north,” he said, sounding reproachful. “Anyone going to northern Scotland passes through here.”
“Superb,” I muttered. “Perhaps we should begin with any ticket agencies that may be open.”
It was, as Clarty had warned me, many hours before I took to that bed fit for a queen. Even when I did, so cold through that I gasped with relief at the hot-water bottle against my feet, the physical warmth had no chance against the turmoil of my thoughts.
We had found no trace of them. I had looked at my last pair of the photographs Holmes had left me, loath to let go of them, but in the end decided that, from here on, the places I would be asking were so remote, any three strangers would attract notice: descriptions would suffice. I left the photographs with Clarty, so he could repeat the circuit of ticket agents and hotels during the daylight hours.
Friday morning, at dawn, I returned to the air field to do it all again.
If Inverness was a tenth the size of Edinburgh,