The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [45]
Studying them in the warm afternoon sunshine, however, I realised something else: Holmes would have asked the same questions.
He would not have been satisfied with a mere catalogue of his son's artwork. He would have gone back to the source and investigated its roots, its influences, and its effects.
And if Holmes had mounted an investigation, then somewhere he would have a case file. It might be an actual file-box, or an envelope stuffed with notes, or a document case tied and sealed with ribbons, but to his eyes, it would constitute records of a case.
Unlike the album, I could not find anything resembling a case file.
I searched for hours: in the laboratory, in the pantry, out in the honey shed, under the carpets. I tapped stones until my knuckles ached, pulled apart all the beds, looked inside every art book on the shelves.
Near midnight, I eased my sore back and decided reluctantly that he had left it in a bolt-hole, or with Mycroft.
I curled up in bed and closed my eyes, trying not to picture the lively features of Irene Adler as drawn by her son. Irene Adler, who had managed to get the best of Holmes in an early, and important, case. Irene Adler, whom he had sought out in France some years later, and, all unknowing, left with child. Irene Adler, whose musical life meshed with that of Holmes, an area of my partner's life in which I could not share, since my tin ear and my dislike—
I sat bolt upright.
Music.
I trotted downstairs to the shelf in the sitting room where Holmes kept his gramophone records. Because I had no ear for music, it was a shelf I rarely went near, and anyone else, knowing Holmes' passion for these fragile objects, kept well clear of it, as well.
Two-thirds of the way along the shelf was an inch-thick cloth-covered box of Irene Adler's operatic recordings. Inside, nestled between the second and third disk, was a manila envelope containing perhaps thirty pages.
The first was a copy of Damian Adler's birth record. The second a Photostat copy of his enlistment in the Army. The third was an arrest form, dated 27 April 1918. The fourth recorded his admission to the mental asylum in Nantes, on 6 May 1918.
He'd killed a fellow officer, ten days before.
The Guide (1): A Guide is rarely a person whom society
will invite to its garden parties. The boy's Guide appeared
as a coarse bully with compelling eyes and the
overweening pride of a man who has conquered
mountains: It mattered not, for the Guide possessed
both knowledge and wisdom.
Testimony, II:1
HOLMES HERE.”
“Mycroft, have you heard anything from Damian?”
“Sherlock, good evening. Where are you?”
“Have you heard from Damian?”
“Not since Saturday. Have you lost him?”
“We came up to Town together on Tuesday, but he left the hotel early this morning, and had not returned when I came in tonight. I wondered perhaps if he had telephoned to you.”
“No. Which hotel?”
“The place in Battersea run by the cousin of my old Irregular Billy.”
“Perhaps that explains it.”
“His absence may have more to do with our activities yesterday than with the quality of our lodgings. I took him on a round of houses of ill repute.”
“Is this related to our last telephone conversation, when you requested that I look into the wife's background?”
“Precisely. Have you had any results?”
“It's been little more than forty-eight hours. Sherlock—”
“Mycroft, we must find her.”
“I see that. And him.”
“It is also possible that he received a message.”
“You speak of the one in The Times agony column, couched as an advert for nerve tonic?”
“I should have known you'd notice it.”
“‘Addled by your family? Rattled by uncertainty? Eros has ten morning tonics for you to try on Friday.’”
“That's the one, although one rather wonders that it was accepted, considering the double entendre. Damian appears to have met the man at the statue on Piccadilly Circus, at ten o'clock.”
“Am I to understand, Sherlock, that you have spoken with the staff at the Café Royal?”
“Damian took breakfast there early this morning, when he was given