The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [68]
“What was I to think?” I demanded. “You vanish without a word, even Mycroft doesn't know what you're—”
He held up a placating hand. “Yes, very well, I see I was in the wrong, that my failure to communicate has cost you both time and mental distress. I apologise.”
My outrage subsided, and died. Unexpected apologies were such disarming things. “My time wasn't entirely wasted, I think.”
He moved to the window-sill to scrape out his cold pipe onto the shrubs below. “So tell me, apart from beehives, where did your investigations take you?”
“I started with Mycroft, who said you had asked him to make enquiries in Shanghai. Then I went to Damian's gallery to look at his art, and to Chelsea to talk with the neighbours. The gallery told me that he is an immensely talented painter who revels in disturbing images, his neighbours indicated that he has a surprisingly conventional home life, except for the occasional disappearances of his wife.
“I then went to visit Yolanda's church.”
“Which one?”
“They call themselves the Children of Lights, with a mish-mash of a service run out of a meeting hall in the Brompton Road. It's new, started up in January, but there were over a hundred people there the other night, despite the heat. People with a certain amount of money, I'd say.”
“On a Saturday. Are they Adventists?”
“Not exactly.” I described the hall, the participants, the service. “The Children of Lights—plural—are led by a man who calls himself The Master, although he wasn't there that night. The woman who led the service did little more than read from a book, although she took care to keep me from looking at it too closely, afterwards. She thought that Yolanda might have known The Master before he started the London meetings—not necessarily in Shanghai, but still. And considering Yolanda's interest in spiritual matters, it seemed possible that either the book or this woman—Millicent Dunworthy is her name—might lead me to The Master, who in turn might know where Yolanda is. So I followed her home.”
“Describe the book.”
“It's an oversized volume with a design but no name on the cover. Privately printed, I'd say, judging from the ornate black and gold cov—”
“Yes,” Holmes interrupted.
I wriggled upright from where I had been slumping against the soft pillows. “You've seen it?”
“The Adlers have one, among a surprisingly large collection of religious esoterica. That one caught my eye, the cover being, as you say, striking.”
“You didn't look at it?”
“Not inside, no.”
The faint edge of regret in his voice kept me from remonstration: Holmes' determined lack of interest in things theological had long been a bone of contention between us.
I took off my spectacles and laid them on the bed-side table, rubbing my eyes. It had been a long day, filled with bees and Bohemians, children scrubbed for bed and children in the most terrible distress. Troubling facts and distressing images chased each other around my fatigued mind, until I fell asleep thinking of the painting I had agreed to buy: a hillside of darkened cat's fur; standing stones circling a spread-eagled figure; a doubled moon looking on. In the confused jumble as fatigue overcame me, the thought occurred that the outstretched figure was not asleep, it was dead.
The Spark (2): In those willing to devote themselves,
the divine spark begins to smoulder With greater effort,
with unbroken concentration, a tiny flame will appear,
reaching greedily for fuel to its Power:
Transformation is at hand.
Testimony, II:3
I SLEPT FITFULLY, AWARE OF HOLMES IN THE WINDOWSEAT, outlined by the brilliant moonlight. At half past four, he brought me coffee; we were dressed and in the motor before the eastern sky was more than faintly light.
The Giant is less than five miles from the house in a direct line, but by road nearly twice that. As we turned north beside the Cuckmere, I asked Holmes, “Do you want me to go into Wilmington?”
“The footpath near Lullington is the more commonly used. Let us