The Language of Bees (36 page)

The Gods (1):
Man teaches by story, the distillation of
his wisdom and knowledge. The earliest stories are about
the Gods, beings of inhuman strength and morality
,
yet also stupid, gullible, and greedy. The extremes of the
Gods are where the lessons lie, whether it be
Greek heroism or Norse trickery
.
Testimony, III:3

B
EFORE LEAVING MYCROFT’S FLAT THAT MORNING, I had assembled a burglar’s kit ranging from sandwiches to steel jemmy, wrapping the tools inside a dark shirt and trousers and tucking in a pair of head-scarfs—one bright red-and-white checked cotton, the other the sheerest silk in a subdued blue-green design-then placing the whole in an ordinary shopping bag. I had deposited the bag with the Left Luggage office at Paddington, knowing that dragging it around all day would tempt me to jettison some if not all of its weight.

I went to Paddington now to retrieve it, then crossed town on the Underground to the accountants’ office that had filled the “income” column of Millicent Dunworthy’s personal ledger during recent months.
It was a street that had, once upon a time, been a high street, in a building that began its life, three centuries earlier, as a coaching inn.

The income listed in the ledger indicated a full working week. Since she had taken off most of the previous week’s Monday to buy a frock, shoes, and picnic basket for Yolanda’s rendezvous with death, I thought it unlikely that she would miss another day this soon.

And I was right, she was there, her desk clearly visible from the front window. I found a café and had a coffee, then went into the booksellers’ next door and spent some time with the new fiction at the front window. A book called
A Passage to India
so caught my attention that I nearly missed Miss Dunworthy’s exit from the office across the way; when I looked up from the page, she was down the street and walking fast. I dropped the book and hurried after her, the checked scarf wrapped prominently around the brim of my hat.

But she was merely going to the nearest bus stop. I slowed to a more casual gait and followed, head averted, trying to decide if she was the sort of woman who would climb to the upper level of the bus. If so, it would be difficult to hide from her. If not, I might manage to duck quickly up the stairs without her seeing me.

And then what—leap from an upper window, when I saw her get off?

Yes, if it came to that.

Or I could engage a taxi now, and manufacture some story that justified following a city bus as it made its halting way through the town.

A bus approached, its number identifying it as a route that meandered far out into the suburbs. Millicent Dunworthy stepped forward, and I pressed closer in her direction, slumping to reduce my height beneath the level of the gentlemen’s hats and taking care to keep a lamp-post between us.

She got on, and moved towards the front. I wormed my way into the queue, bought my ticket, and trotted up the stairs.

It took several stops before I could claim a window seat with a view of the disembarking passengers, but by employing sharp elbows and a winsome smile, I beat an old woman out of her choice. Ignoring her
glare, I removed the bright scarf from my hat and pushed it into the shopping bag on my lap.

We travelled through endless London suburbs, with scores of stops and a constant flux of passengers, and still Miss Dunworthy did not appear below. I started to wonder if perhaps she had removed her hat—or changed her garments entirely, as I was equipped to do? Had she spotted me, and slipped past when I was trapped away from the windows?

The bus churned on, with ever fewer passengers. Solid terraces gave way to groups of houses, then individual semi-detached dwellings. The first field appeared, and another cluster of houses, and finally, when I was the only person on the top of the bus, we stopped again, and Millicent Dunworthy climbed down. She turned to exchange a greeting with the conductor—they sounded like old friends—and I ducked down. Had she seen my head so quickly vanish from sight? When the bus started up again, I risked a glance: To my relief, she was not staring after us in puzzlement, but had set off in the other direction, beside a high brick wall with heavy vegetation inside. The wall was not a perfect rectangle, but left the road at odd angles to encircle an isolated country house that had no-one overlooking it.

Just what I should want, were I up to no good.

I wound down the stairs and told the conductor that I would get off at his next stop, which proved to be the village centre, half a mile down the road. I strode up the row of shops as if certain of my destination, but in fact trying to decide: linger here until dusk and risk missing something at the house, or go back and chance being seen?

A sign on the other side of the high street decided me:
Estate Agent
, it offered;
Properties to Let
.

The office was about to close, it being ten minutes to six, but I slipped in, unobtrusively deposited my bag on a chair near the doorway, and walked up to the man behind the desk, my hand already out.

“I’m sorry, miss—” he began, but he got no further.

Really, what could he do, faced with an enthusiastic young lady who pumped his hand and declared that he was just what she’d been looking for, she was the secretary to Lady Radston-Pompffrey who
was looking for a large house to let for her American niece and family, who for some odd Colonial reason wished a place that felt as if it were in the country whilst at the same time they could be in Town without bother, and this appeared to be precisely the sort of area Lady R-P would approve.

At the thought of what finding a large house for me could do to his monthly income, the gentleman settled back into his chair, apologised that he couldn’t offer me a cup of tea but his assistant had already gone home, and took out his pencil to note the details of what the good Lady wanted for her American niece.

Interestingly enough, what this fictional aristocrat wished matched quite closely what I had seen of the house behind the tall brick walls. His face fell.

“Ah, well, I’m sorry you didn’t come in last summer, we could have helped you there. Yes, I know the house you mean, and in point of fact, I acted as agent for it—the house is now under a two-year lease, not due to expire until November of ’twenty-five. However, I’m sure we can find—”

“November, you say? Do you suppose the tenants might have tired of it by now? Perhaps I should pop in and ask them.”

“No. I mean to say, I wouldn’t recommend that, they made it quite clear that they were looking for privacy.”

“Ooh, how mysterious. Local folk?”

“A gentleman from overseas, I understand, although his agent was local. They hold meetings there, I think it’s one of these new-fangled religious groups.”

“Or perhaps they’re Naturists, you know, prancing about the garden in the nude.” That served to distract him. “Have you met the man? I wonder if I know him? Lady R-P dabbles in Tarot and Spiritualism,” I confided.

“Er, sorry? Met him, no—saw him once, nice-looking fellow, but I shouldn’t think …”

“Do you have his agent’s name?” I asked, thinking,
Please don’t make me break in and go through your books
.

“Gunderson,” he answered absently. “Shady character, that one.
Look, I’ve noticed ladies going into the property from time to time. You don’t actually suppose they—”

“I can certainly find out for you, through Lady R-P’s friends. Gunderson, you say?”

“That’s right. I can’t remember his first name, offhand. …”

“Perhaps there’s a file?” I suggested.

He instantly stood up and went to his cabinets, coming back with a thin file that he opened on the desk—the poor man did not at all care for the idea of nude orgies taking place on a property for which he was responsible.

“There, Marcus Gunderson, although the address he had is that of an hotel.”

I looked over the paper. “You didn’t ask for any personal recommendations?”

“He said his employer was from overseas, and didn’t want to wait for an exchange of letters. But the bank draught he gave me for the first year’s hire cleared with no problem, and the house had stood empty far too long, the furnishings were suffering. So I let him have it.”

“It was furnished, then?”

“Completely. Well, such as it was. The old lady who owned it died and there’s a question about inheritance, so I was ordered to find a tenant until they can settle things legally.”

I wrote down the names and the details of hotel and bank, but there was little to go on.

Not expecting anything more, I said, “Can you tell me anything about the man you think might be behind this Gunderson chap? For Lady R-P’s friends, that is—perhaps they’ll know what he’s up to.”

“As I said, I never met him properly, but I’ve seen him driving through the village once or twice with Mr Gunderson. He’s a tidy-looking gentleman of perhaps forty, dark hair, clean shaven.”

“Well, thank—”

“Oh, and he may have a scar on his face.”

I looked at him, then raised my left hand and drew a line down from the outer corner of my eye. “Here?”

“That’s right—so you do know him?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“But you know of him—so tell me, is there anything—”

“Absolutely not,” I said. The last thing I needed was for this earnest estate agent to thrust his nose into things. “He’s absolutely straight, but as you know, very private, extremely shy, in fact. He’s a—an inventor, and you can imagine how they are—he’s been known to move out of a house overnight if strangers poke into his business.”

The relieved estate agent, not questioning that my aristocratic employer should know a reclusive inventor, hastened to assure me that he wouldn’t dream of disturbing the gentleman.

I thanked him and said that, if he wanted to put together a list of appropriate residences, I should be by in a day or two to look at them. I retrieved my bag of burglary tools, and left.

It was just after six; the brick wall around the house was too exposed for me to risk lurking there by daylight, with bare fields on three sides and a house with brutally manicured hedges across the way.

I walked up the high street to a likely-looking inn, where I ate a surprisingly interesting meal while staring out of the tiny leaded windows facing the street. Four cars entered the gates through the brick wall, just before eight o’clock, followed by a group of three women on foot who disembarked at the bus stop. I paid and asked the way to the inn’s facilities, where I changed into the dark clothing I had brought.

When dusk was drawing in, I walked through the field alongside the wall. When I was certain no eyes followed, I clambered over it, to drop down silently into the garden beyond.

As I let go, I was struck by the oddest feeling, that Holmes, somewhere, was doing precisely the same thing.

The Gods (2):
The Power of a story lies in the extremes:
Hero Odysseus can be cruel and low-handed; the cowardly
cheat Loki is brother to Woden and brings Thor the great
hammer The lessons of myths are not on the surface, but
there for those willing to sit at the Gods’ feet and learn
.
Thus this Testimony of one man’s voyage to Power
.
Testimony, III:3