Sherlock Holmes In America (35 page)

“However could you tell?” I asked. “They all look alike to me.”

“It is a matter of seeing the anomaly,” Holmes replied. “I could not have picked out the queen had she been alone, but I could see that one bee was not exactly like all the others. She is not only larger, but also more purposeful, and the other bees are crowded around, tending her. She did not fit the pattern.”

Mrs. Imbler's response was tinged with something like respect. “You have the makings of a bee master, Mr. Holmes.” She pointed to a section of the comb that contained closed-over cells, some of which bulged out like miniature wasps' nests.

“That is where the new queens are hatching,” she said. “They are fed with a substance called royal jelly. The hive feeds several larvae, so there will be a new one when this one dies. The first to hatch will immediately kill all her rivals. There can only be one queen to a hive.”

On that ominous note, we took our leave and asked directions to the avocado groves. They lay a hot and dusty distance from the main beehives, and I was perspiring freely by the time we arrived at the stand of glossy trees. As yet, I had learned nothing that justified our visit to this improbable place, but Holmes seemed to be enjoying himself.

Avocados, I learned, were alligator pears, and were particularly suited to the California climate. The trees were large and had thick spreading branches and dark green leaves that created a welcome shade in the burning sun. A small gardeners' shed stood at the edge of the grove. As we approached, the door opened and out stepped a wiry little man with ginger hair and a ginger moustache. He introduced himself as Jonas Imbler.

We must have looked startled, and I hastened to explain that we had just met Mrs. Imbler. The little man said, “My wife. We had a small bee farm in Alpine before we came here, but Mrs. Tingley believes that beekeeping is women's work, so my wife tends to the hives while I manage the avocados.”

Holmes went straight to the point. “We were informed that you had a bit of bad luck with your pollination experiment.”

Imbler motioned toward a beehive that stood between the avocado groves and the bluff overlooking the canyon. “I thought surely the bees would pollinate the trees better than any horticulturist could possibly do by hand.”

“What happened?”

“The queen died,” Imbler said shortly. “And when the queen dies, the bees get dispirited. They behave like rudderless ships, aimless.”

“They no longer pollinate,” Holmes said, “because without larvae, they have no need of pollen. Pollen is food for the larvae.”

Imbler nodded. “You know your bees, Mr. Holmes. The queen is all in all to the hive. She is their reason for living, the beacon around which they all swarm and gather. Not unlike our own Mrs. Tingley.” This last was said with a sly little wink, as if he'd made a mildly risqué joke. The image of Katherine Tingley sitting inside a giant beehive, surrounded by buzzing insects, was one I had no desire to contemplate. And yet, gazing around the peaceful grounds and remembering the white-clad students walking to and fro, I could not help but see Mr. Imbler's point. But for the queen, the hive would die. But for Mrs. Tingley, what would happen to the good people of Lomaland?

And yet, we had no evidence that anything of the sort was being contemplated. A dead queen bee and a dead Mrs. Tingley were two very different things.

The next day, Spalding surprised me by offering me a round of golf. The hilly desert landscape struck me as a highly unlikely place for the Scottish sport, but he assured me that his private course was as challenging as, and far more interesting than, any I had experienced before. Holmes encouraged me to play, suggesting that his day would be spent more profitably, perhaps, but with considerably less enjoyment.

The nine-hole golf course sat on the eastern edge of the colony. The putting greens, their emerald grass well tended and heavily watered lay amid roughs that were rougher than anything found in Europe. Stray balls hid behind cacti, rolled down the canyon, lodged in twisted branches of mesquite, and seemed bent on defying all attempts to get them safely onto the minuscule patches of grass. It was a most enjoyable game, and I thanked my lucky stars I had chosen to leave Holmes to the bees.

At the close of the game, I thanked Spalding and went in search of Holmes. I found him in the avocado grove gazing through his binoculars at the neat white beehives. The intense blue of the sky and the waves and the strong sun bouncing off the white buildings were almost painful to the eyes.

Suddenly Holmes turned and darted off in the direction of the Spalding house. I followed hastily and caught up with him just as he reached the porch. I followed him through the front door and into the kitchen. He took a wooden bowl, opened a sack of flour, and dusted the sides of the bowl. He opened the pantry, removed a jar of honey with the Lomaland label, and spooned a glob into the center of the bowl.

“Come, Watson,” Holmes said, his eyes alight with the fervor of the chase. “Let us track our murderess.”

Mystified, I followed as Holmes strode, bowl in hand, toward the North House, in the opposite direction to the hives. When we reached a bed of blue Nile lilies, he set the bowl on the ground near the flowers and motioned me to join him some several feet away. I watched as bees landed in the bowl and edged toward the glob of golden honey.

One of the bees, having drunk its fill, landed on one of the flowers. It rested there a moment and then moved off and flew in its drunken way to the next.

The look on Holmes's face was one I had never seen before. It held all the suppressed excitement I knew from past adventures, yet there was something alight in his eyes. I fancied I had a glimpse of the youthful Holmes studying bees on his grandfather's land. It stood to reason that a man of scientific bent had once been a boy of scientific bent.

We waited for about ten minutes as bees came and went. Finally, Holmes crouched closer to the flowering shrub and examined a bee that sat on a blossom. I looked closely, too, and realized that its underside bore a coating of white. The flour! This was a bee that had sampled honey from Holmes's bowl. Had it returned to the hive with its load of nectar and come back to this flower for more? And what did Holmes hope to learn from watching its progress?

When the flour-marked bee tired of this stand of blossoms, it zigzagged its way to the beds beside one of the Lotus Houses. Holmes picked up his bowl and moved it to an area four feet to the east of the flowerbed.

With each successive movement of the bowl, we moved further and further away from the Point Loma apiary in an easterly direction. Looking closely, I could see that now several of the bees wore white flour stockings on their little legs.

Following honeybees proved to be a tedious activity. We waited for the return of the flour-dusted bees to our little trap, and Holmes smiled when they brought others to feed on the glob of honey. At last we reached the end of the cultivated Lomaland grounds and entered the scrub wilderness at the edge of the settlement. We were heading away from the ocean and toward the mainland from which the elephant's trunk of Point Loma jutted. I trudged after Holmes with a thousand questions in my mind. Something pink in the distance resolved itself into a magnificent stand of rosebay bushes. Their pink blooms and dark leaves glowed in the strong afternoon sunlight. I marveled at the sight; everything else around us was scrub. Someone must have brought water to these flowers—but who and why? There was no habitation that I could see nearby.

Holmes raced toward the bushes as if Moriarty himself could be found at their center. I puffed as I ran alongside my friend, the pain in my leg growing sharper with every step. The heat of the day, combined with my English tweeds, produced a flood of perspiration that dripped from my forehead.

“Surely, there is no need for this immoderate haste,” I said at last, bringing my gait to an exhausted walk.

Holmes slowed his step, but only slightly. “As to the need for haste,” he replied, “I will not be certain about that until I find what I am looking for.”

“And what,” I puffed through gasps of breath, “is that?”

“Beehives,” he said as he plunged into the wall of bushes, heedless of the hundreds of bees buzzing around the pink flowers.

“But, Holmes,” I protested. “We know where the hives are.” I gestured in the direction of the rows of white boxes, some two miles to the west.

As I pushed aside a heavy-laden branch, a bee buzzed at my face. I brushed it aside, and then realized my mistake. “Oh, I see,” I said. “You mean there could be a natural hive out here.”

Holmes's answer was grim. “There is nothing natural about this hive, Watson, or about the placement of it among these particular trees.”

The blooms were lovely, the shade ranging from palest to deepest pink, the masses of flowers hanging with heavy profusion upon the dark-leaved branches. Rosebay, a lovely spring bloom, also known as—

“Oleander,” I said aloud. My eyes opened wide; I understood Holmes's urgency. “One of the most poisonous plants known to man.”

“Indeed,” Holmes said. I could hear him ahead of me in the overgrown grove. I followed his voice and step, making my way through thick branches and increasingly agitated bees.

“Aha,” he said at last. “Come quick, Watson.”

I pushed aside the last branches and found myself in a small clearing. In the center, a large hollow tree stump buzzed with insect life.

“Honey made from oleander nectar will be as poisonous as the plant itself,” Holmes said. “The keeper of this rogue hive made certain these bees would feed on oleander by locating the hive here.”

Holmes took two steps toward the tree stump. I took two steps back. The honeybees, already agitated by strangers in their midst, buzzed loudly and menacingly. I felt a sharp stab of pain along the side of my neck and slapped at it automatically. “I've been stung,” I cried.

“As have I, several times,” Holmes replied. “It is the occupational hazard of the beekeeper.”

Holmes inched closer and closer to the hive, and the bees, sensing danger, began to swarm around the hive and Holmes. Soon, he seemed enveloped in a cloud of angry, buzzing insects.

Bees were everywhere, crawling inside the hollow log. Holmes, brave as ever, crept closer to the hive and peered in. He shielded his face from the bees with his handkerchief, but I could see that this was wholly insufficient to guard him from stings.

He raised his head, and the look on his face chilled my blood. “The honeycomb is gone,” he said. “There is no time to lose.”

I understood at once. Mrs. Tingley had expressed a preference for honey straight from the comb. She might be eating her deadly treat at this very moment.

We were both stung over and over again as we fled the oleander grove and made our way as fast as we could back toward the colony.

Once back inside the Lomaland grounds, Holmes stopped the first person we saw, a young woman carrying a book. “Do you know where Mrs. Tingley is at this moment?”

“I believe she is taking tea at her house.”

By the time we arrived at Mrs. Tingley's modest cottage, we were very much out of breath. Holmes flung open the door and we raced through the foyer and found Mrs. Tingley sitting with the Spaldings at a tea table on the rear porch.

In front of her sat a plate with a dripping honeycomb on it. She had lifted her spoon and was about to plunge it into the comb when Holmes whisked the plate away from her.

She raised an eyebrow and said, “What is the meaning of this, Mr. Holmes? I am quite looking forward to my little treat.”

“This treat would be your last, Mrs. Tingley,” Holmes said. “This comb is not from the hives Mrs. Imbler tends. Instead, it comes from a hive hidden deep inside an oleander grove. This honey is poisonous.”

“I knew it!” Elizabeth Spalding said. Her plate contained bread and jam, no honey. “I knew I was right to bring Mr. Holmes here. He has saved you from that presumptuous beekeeper.”

“But would this honey really have killed me, Mr. Holmes?” Mrs. Tingley asked. She seemed almost amused at the prospect of having nearly eaten it.

“It is not unknown for honey to be tainted with the nectar of whatever plants the bees feed upon,” Holmes pointed out. “Cases have been documented in Greece and New Zealand. Those poisonings were, of course, accidental, but one who knows the principles of bee culture could easily arrange for his hive to feed upon poison flowers. Such was the case with Jonas Imbler.”

I started, as did Mrs. Spalding.
“Jonas
Imbler?” she said with a gasp. “But surely it was Grace Imbler who wanted Mrs. Tingley gone.”

“No, madam, your suspicions of Mrs. Imbler are quite unfounded. She did not create the rogue hive in the oleander bushes. Her husband, who is also a skilled beekeeper, did.”

“Holmes,” I protested, “you distinctly said you were hunting a murderess. Did you mislead me on purpose?”

He smiled. “I was referring to the bee. The workers are female; the workers made this honey; ergo, the workers are murderesses. Q.E.D.”

“But why?” Albert Spalding protested. “Imbler has shown no interest in Theosophy and would never wish to become head of the Brotherhood. What reason could he possibly have for murdering Mrs. Tingley?”