The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [73]
The expression that hardened his features and turned his eyes to flame was one I had rarely seen there.
Rage, pure and hot.
Study (1): The next years were spent in a study of
Transformation: How could the man control the process?
What Tools might shape Transformation, what methods
bring it about? Testimony, II:5
HALFWAY TO POLEGATE, HOLMES FINALLY STIRRED, and reached for the cigarette case in his pocket. When the tobacco was going, he rubbed the match out between his fingers and let the breeze take it, then seemed to notice for the first time that we were on the move.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. If I pass through a second time without greeting Mrs Hudson, she might just go back to Surrey permanently. Apart from which, with that expression on your face, I figured you'd be wanting your revolver.”
“This was my son's wife.” His voice was like ice. “A young woman who had lifted herself from the gutter on the strength of her own wits. A person whose acquaintance I was looking forward to making. Instead of which, I find her laid out like a slaughtered farm-animal.”
“Did you see anything under her finger-nails?”
“If she struggled, it did not include digging her fingers into the ground or scratching at an assailant.”
I thought this as good a time as any to tell him what I had seen. “Those shoes were very new and not inexpensive, but a woman would never have bought that ill-fitting a pair for herself. They gave her blisters. And the stockings she wore were far too long for her. She'd had to hook the garters down into the stocking itself—one of them had already worn through.”
“One might add the general unlikelihood of a Bohemian choosing to dress in silk stockings and a flowered summer frock. I saw no such garments in her wardrobe at home.”
I thought of my conversation with the neighbour's child. “Perhaps she dressed that way to make a more staid impression on someone.”
“But if, as you suggest, she chose neither the shoes nor the clothing herself, then either she assembled the garments from another woman's wardrobe, or she was given them to wear.”
“By someone who didn't know her size very well,” I said without thinking. To my consternation, Holmes did not react, even though my statement clearly suggested that Damian's knowledge of his wife's dress size was a factor to be taken into consideration. He simply smoked and looked daggers at the passing view, while I bent over the wheel and concentrated on not driving over any distracted churchgoers or Sunday ramblers.
Greetings with Mrs Hudson cost me an hour, which Holmes spent shouting down the telephone and crashing about in his laboratory. I was saved from the enumeration of her Surrey friend's ills by Holmes' bellow from above that he wished to leave in a quarter hour. I tore myself away and hammered up the stairs, throwing an assortment of things into a bag and conversing with him as we went in and out of various rooms.
“—need to speak with the station masters in Eastbourne, Polegate, and Seaford, and show them her photograph.”
“Do you have her photograph, then?”
“How else should I intend to show them it?”
“Sorry. Do you wish me to bring weapons?”
“Your knife might be wise.”
I shuddered at the brief vision of a blade crossing the ivory throat of Yolanda Adler, but added my slim throwing knife and its scabbard to the heap on the bed. “I should like to see the Adler house for myself, Holmes. Might we spend the night there, so I can look at that book by light of day?”
“I would have stolen it for you, had I known you were interested.” His voice was muffled by the door to the lumber room down the hallway, and I heard thumps and a crash.
I raised my voice, a trifle more than mere volume required. “I'm interested because she was. Both of them, come to that—Damian's art is infused with mystic symbols and traditions.”
Holmes' voice answered two inches away from my ear, making me jerk and spray a handful of maps across the floor. “Religion can be a dangerous thing,