The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [93]
Between the dressing rooms were a sumptuous bath and a modern lavatory, with a medicine cabinet that contained a number of packets with Chinese labels, some corked bottles containing unlabelled herbs, and a few modern nostrums that suggested Damian had suffered from a chest cold and Yolanda occasionally required a pill against female aches. Then another bedroom, this one fitted out as a nursery.
Dolls, books—a lot of books—and a basket of brightly coloured toys. A diminutive enamel-ware tray with a miniature tea-set for four, missing one cup but otherwise perfect, and perfectly exquisite. A neatly made bed, a diminutive wardrobe. But the walls were the reason the room pulled me in: Damian had painted them.
Even under the fitful gaze of my torch, the walls were incredible. The room seemed to be atop a hill, with a blue sky broken by the occasional puffy cloud overhead, a changing landscape stretching out in all directions, and a green carpet underfoot to remind one of grass: One half expected a fresh breeze on one's face. To the north stood a city on a bay, its boats suggesting a location considerably farther east than London: Shanghai, perhaps? Then came a tropical beach, with coconut palms and birds too exotic even for Nature. Farmland came to the south, more French than English, with a small, Tuscan-looking hill town in the distance. That gave way to jungle, with monkeys and a sharp-eyed parrot watching over the child's cot. Everything there looked real enough to walk to.
It must have taken him weeks.
I would happily have stood there for an hour—would very happily have curled up to sleep in that tiny bed—had I not heard the third and final ring of the doorbell. Reluctantly, I pulled myself out of the room and padded down the hallway to the sound of loud constabulary curses from downstairs.
I waited until he had yanked open the front door and was shouting at Holmes before I trotted down the stairs and through the kitchen. Holmes was apologising loudly, sounding for all the world like a sobering drunk. “The wife says I should bring you these, she baked them this afternoon, and tell you I'm sorry to disturb you. She's right, I don't know what I was thinking, I ought to know my own front door and this surely isn't it.”
In the face of open apology accompanied by a tray of biscuits (brought for the purpose, freshly baked by Mycroft's invisible kitchen) the constable's righteous anger deflated. I passed out of the kitchen door and let the latch lock behind me, scaling the wall and dropping the block of rope-bound wood into the nearest ash can before the PC had dunked his first biscuit.
Holmes was waiting at the agreed-to spot; the tension left his shoulders when I rounded the corner.
“The constable was in the kitchen when I got there,” I explained. “I didn't think it a good idea to pick the lock with him drinking tea ten feet away.”
“I should have expected that he would settle there,” he said.
“In any case, I have the book, and a couple of others. And I found a white robe like the one Miss Dunworthy wore the other night, far too short for Damian. But—when you were there, did you see the child's room?”
“Briefly.”
“Extraordinary, isn't it?”
“My… son.” He hesitated; this was the second time, in all these years, that I had heard him say that phrase. Now he repeated it, saying quietly, “My son loves his daughter.”
Second Birth: Many go through life born but once,
scarcely aware of good and evil. Those who are born
anew—spiritual birth—take their first step outside
of the Garden when they perceive the difference
between good and evil
Testimony, III:1
HALFWAY THROUGH TUESDAY AFTERNOON, I LOOKED up from the final page of Testimony and noticed how very empty Mycroft's flat was. I had slept late and came out of the guest room to find both Holmes and Mycroft away, Mycroft