The Language Of Bees Part 10

"I understand. If Damian rings or sends a message, where can I reach you?"

"At Damian's home, if you can manage to ring a code so I'll know it is you. After that, I'll telephone to you again tomorrow night-Sat.u.r.day." it is you. After that, I'll telephone to you again tomorrow night-Sat.u.r.day."

"Anything else you would like me to do?"

"Nothing. Except, if the boy gets into touch, tell him ... I can't think what you could tell him."

"I will convey your fervent best wishes."

"Something along those lines. Thank you, Mycroft."

"Take care, Sherlock."

The Guide (2): See the steps, lit clear: The boy, tormented See the steps, lit clear: The boy, tormented in soul, wrestled with the Angels and took on their volatile essence. Thus, when he met his Guide, he was set alight, as a volatile substance lights at the mere touch of flame.

Testimony, II:1

I TRIED, SAt.u.r.dAY MORNING, TO CONVINCE MYSELF that two long-ago accusations of violence, against a man actively engaged in combat, were no great sin. Damian had not even been charged with the 1918 a.s.sault, in part because both men were drinking and witnesses disagreed over which man had started the fight. To compound matters, not only was Damian still convalescing from his wounds, he was a decorated hero (which I had not known) while the other officer was both hale-bodied and whole, and known to be belligerent when drunk: hence the verdict of sh.e.l.l-shock and a quiet placement in the mental hospital at Nantes, rather than a court martial. If Holmes was willing to discount Damian's past, if he was willing to agree that the officer's death had been an accident stemming from self-defence, who was I to disagree? TRIED, SAt.u.r.dAY MORNING, TO CONVINCE MYSELF that two long-ago accusations of violence, against a man actively engaged in combat, were no great sin. Damian had not even been charged with the 1918 a.s.sault, in part because both men were drinking and witnesses disagreed over which man had started the fight. To compound matters, not only was Damian still convalescing from his wounds, he was a decorated hero (which I had not known) while the other officer was both hale-bodied and whole, and known to be belligerent when drunk: hence the verdict of sh.e.l.l-shock and a quiet placement in the mental hospital at Nantes, rather than a court martial. If Holmes was willing to discount Damian's past, if he was willing to agree that the officer's death had been an accident stemming from self-defence, who was I to disagree?

I got up early from my sleepless bed and spent two hours resolutely finis.h.i.+ng the job of emptying my trunks and hauling them to the lumber room. I made toast and attempted to settle to the newspapers, but my eye seemed constantly preoccupied with my discoveries of the night before, and kept catching on headlines concerning death and madness and adverts for honey. When my eye was caught by a personal notice that began with the word finis.h.i.+ng the job of emptying my trunks and hauling them to the lumber room. I made toast and attempted to settle to the newspapers, but my eye seemed constantly preoccupied with my discoveries of the night before, and kept catching on headlines concerning death and madness and adverts for honey. When my eye was caught by a personal notice that began with the word ADDLED ADDLED, I shoved the paper away and went outside, wandering restlessly through the garden, feeling as if I had drunk several carafes of powerful coffee instead of a single cup.

Around ten o'clock, I found myself in Holmes' room studying his unopened trunks, and decided to make a start on them before Mrs Hudson got back that evening. Half an hour later, with every inch of the room buried under the debris of long travel, I looked at the knot of worn-through stockings in my hand and came to my right mind.

I was not Holmes' housekeeper; neither he nor Mrs Hudson would thank me for my labours.

The reason for my uncharacteristic housewifeliness was, I had to face it, uneasiness: When I had turned the page in Holmes' file and seen the photograph of the dead officer, all I could think of was that the man looked like Holmes.

Which was ridiculous. I was not worried, any more than I had been bored or lonely in my solitude. Clearly I needed something to occupy my time other than sorting socks. The best thing was to keep busy. I had intended to return to Oxford later in the week, to resume my life and my work there. Instead, I would go now.

Although I decided to stop first in London and have a little talk with Mycroft. It was, I told myself, the sensible thing to do.

Holmes' elder brother was looking remarkably well, for a man who had peered over the abyss into death the Christmas before. He'd dropped a tremendous amount of weight, and from the colour of his skin, actually spent some time out-of-doors.

He brushed aside my compliments, admitted to a loss of "three or four stone" although it had to have been nearly five, then grumbled that bodily exercise was a tedium beyond measure, and commented that he had heard I joined the short-haired league. that bodily exercise was a tedium beyond measure, and commented that he had heard I joined the short-haired league.

My hand went to my hair, removed when we were in India. "Yes, I needed to dress as a man. Holmes nearly pa.s.sed out with the shock."

"I can imagine. Still, I never thought the Gibson Girl look suited you."

"Thank you. I guess. Were you going out?" I asked, taking in his brown lightweight suit.

"It is of no importance," he said. "After luncheon I have developed the habit of going for a turn around the park instead of taking a nap, as I used to do, but I shall happily delay that pleasure."

"No, no, I'm just off the train, I'd appreciate a breath of air."

With a grimace at the disappearance of an excuse for lethargy, Mycroft caught up his stick and straw hat and we descended onto Pall Mall, to turn in the direction of St James's Park.

"Have you seen your brother?" I asked.

"I have not seen him since January, although I spoke with him across the telephone twice, on Wednesday afternoon and again last night."

"Was he in London?"

"I believe so. In any case, Wednesday's call was from Paddington, although that can mean anything."

"Or nothing." Paddington Station sent trains in all directions north of London, but it was also a main connecting stop on the city's Underground. "What did he want?"

"The earlier call was to request my a.s.sistance with an overseas element of an investigation."

Mycroft's oddly unfamiliar face-it now had bones in it, and the skin had gone slack with the loss of padding-was held in an expression I nonetheless knew well: noncommittal innocence. The quick mind inside the slow body was waiting to see if I knew what Holmes was up to before he revealed any more.

"Let me guess: Shanghai."

Inside Britain, Holmes' sources of information were without peer, but once an investigation stretched past Europe or certain parts of America, his web of knowledge developed gaps. Mycroft, however, had spent his life as a conduit of Intelligence that covered the globe: When Holmes had need of information beyond his ken, he turned to Mycroft. America, his web of knowledge developed gaps. Mycroft, however, had spent his life as a conduit of Intelligence that covered the globe: When Holmes had need of information beyond his ken, he turned to Mycroft.

Shanghai had not been a guess, and Mycroft saw that.

"Yes, I was given to understand that young Damian had come to Suss.e.x."

"Damian was there when we got in on Monday, then both of them were gone when I woke up Tuesday. I don't know where they were going, but last night I found Holmes' file on Damian, and I was ... concerned."

"Concerned," he mused, nodding at the ground.

"Damian killed a man in 1918," I blurted. "Not the same man he was accused of killing in 1919."

"In neither was he charged."

"You knew, about both of them?"

"I did."

"Why ..." I stopped: He hadn't told Holmes for the same reason he hadn't told him of Damian's existence in the first place. "Have you seen his paintings-Damian's?"

"A few of them. I hear he has a small show at a gallery off Regent Street, I'd planned on going to that."

"He paints madness."

"I'd have thought that a common enough theme amongst modern artists."

"With more or less deliberation. But there's something profoundly unsettling about his work."

"Hmm," Mycroft said.

"What about last night's phone call?"

"My brother was enquiring whether or not I had seen Damian."

"He's lost him?"

"I don't know if 'lost' is the correct term, but Damian left the hotel where they were staying early on Friday morning, and as of eleven o'clock last night he had not returned. I believe Sherlock would have got a message to me, had the boy reappeared."

"I see. Well, in any case, I should talk with Holmes before I go up to Oxford, just to let him know where I am and see if he needs my a.s.sistance. Do you have any idea where he might be?"

Mycroft reached into his breast pocket and took out a business card, crisply engraved on a startling bright red stock with an address on one of the lanes that connected with Regent Street. On its reverse, in Mycroft's handwriting, was another address: 7 Burton Place, in Chelsea.

"I do not know where my brother is, but those are the addresses of Damian's gallery and his home. Either of those might be a good place to start."

I looked at him in surprise. "You've simply been carrying this around?"

"When I heard that you were not with my brother, I knew it would not be long before you came looking."

I grinned and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, then reversed my direction.

"What shall I do with your valise?" he called after me.

I waved a hand in the air and broke into a trot.

To my surprise, the gallery that sold Damian Adler's paintings was not some narrow and dingy upper-storey hole several streets "off" Regent Street, but a prosperous, gla.s.s-fronted shop a stone's throw from the Royal Academy. A bell dinged at my entrance. Voices came from behind a part.i.tion at the back and a sleek woman in her early forties poked her head around the wall, giving me a brief but penetrating once-over. I did not think that I impressed her overmuch, since I had not intended to enact a patron of the arts when I left Suss.e.x. "I shall be with you momentarily," she said in a French accent.

"I'm happy to look," I told her. She went back to her conversation, which had to do with the delivery of a painting.

The gallery had two rooms. The first displayed paintings, and a few small bronze sculptures, that would have been considered dangerously avant-garde avant-garde before the War but were now just comfortably before the War but were now just comfortably modern. I recognised an Augustus John portrait, and two of the bronzes were Epsteins. It was the next room that held the more demanding forms: one canvas made up of paint ma.s.ses so thick, it could have been the artist's palette board mounted on the wall; three twisted sheets of bra.s.s that might be horses' heads or women's torsos, but in either case appeared to be writhing in pain; a gigantic, wide-brimmed c.o.c.ktail gla.s.s tipped to pour its greenish contents into a puddle on the floor. modern. I recognised an Augustus John portrait, and two of the bronzes were Epsteins. It was the next room that held the more demanding forms: one canvas made up of paint ma.s.ses so thick, it could have been the artist's palette board mounted on the wall; three twisted sheets of bra.s.s that might be horses' heads or women's torsos, but in either case appeared to be writhing in pain; a gigantic, wide-brimmed c.o.c.ktail gla.s.s tipped to pour its greenish contents into a puddle on the floor.

I spotted the first of Damian's paintings immediately I came into the room. It was an enormously tall, narrow canvas, twelve feet by two, and appeared at first glance to have been sliced from a larger, more complete image: branches and leaves at the top, giving way to a length of marvellously realistic bark and, at the bottom, the clipped gra.s.s out of which the tree was growing.

The centre of the image was a confusion of colours and shapes: a hand outstretched, a leg and foot dangling above the gra.s.s, and most troubling, a piece of a man's face with a staring, dead-looking eye. With a shock, I realised that I was looking at a strip, as it were, of a larger image, showing a man hanging from a tree-but if the eye was dead, that tensely extended hand was definitely not.

In a lesser craftsman, I would have thought he had painted the eye badly; in a lesser mind, I might have a.s.sumed the artist did not know how a dead hand would hang. But this was Damian Adler, so I looked at the card on which the t.i.tle had been typed: Woden in the World Tree If I remembered my Norse mythology, the G.o.d Woden-or Odin-had hanged himself for nine days in the tree that supported the world, so as to gain knowledge. Woden was blind in one eye.

I nodded in appreciation, and moved to the next painting, that of a hand shaking itself in a mirror-clever, but nothing more. The one after that appeared to be a solid wall of leaves, meticulously detailed, until one noticed that the twin points of gleam to one side were eyes: The hidden image gradually resolved into the ancient pagan figure of the Green Man.

Next time I walked through the woods, the back of my neck was going to crawl.

The room's far wall at first glance seemed to have a window in it, but did not.

What it had was a trompe-l'oeil trompe-l'oeil painting, with shadows falling naturally both on the inner sill and on the scene "outside." It showed an alleyway, such as might indeed be on the other side of the wall: an expanse of dirty red bricks topped by a slice of sky. At the upper edge of the canvas was a crescent moon, translucent in the bright daylight. A man strode towards the right-hand edge of the canvas, his hat tipped back on his head, his right hand swinging forward, grasping some object that was cut off by the edge of the canvas-although something about his posture made one think he was perhaps being pulled along by whatever was in his hand. painting, with shadows falling naturally both on the inner sill and on the scene "outside." It showed an alleyway, such as might indeed be on the other side of the wall: an expanse of dirty red bricks topped by a slice of sky. At the upper edge of the canvas was a crescent moon, translucent in the bright daylight. A man strode towards the right-hand edge of the canvas, his hat tipped back on his head, his right hand swinging forward, grasping some object that was cut off by the edge of the canvas-although something about his posture made one think he was perhaps being pulled along by whatever was in his hand.

The painting reminded me of something: I walked forward to see if I could figure out what.

Up close, everything changed. The bricks began to glisten and take on the texture of living matter, as if skin had been flayed from a muscle wall. Closer still, the cracks and mortar grew alive with tiny creatures, squirming and baring sharp, minuscule teeth; the pale shape in the upper corner suggested less a daylit moon than it did a mouth, poised to open. Taking a step back felt like a natural response.

I was not surprised to see the signature in the corner: The Addler The Addler. Suddenly, I saw why it looked familiar: If the brick walls had been sandbags and the businessman replaced by three soldiers, I would be looking at his 1915 drawing of the trench under fire.

"Mesmerising, is it not?" came a French accent from behind me.

"Disturbing," I said.

"Great art often is."

I thought about that. Was it possible that time would declare Holmes' son great? That the peculiarity of Damian's work was less the sign of a troubled mind than the fearless exploration of an artistic vision? Many had thought Holmes himself unbalanced. "Great or not, I don't know that I'd want it in my sitting room."

It was the wrong thing to say: When I turned, the woman had raised a polite and condescending face. "Surrealism expresses thought without reason, pure artistic impulse with no hindrance from rationality or aesthetics. Perhaps you should take a closer look at the other room. Vanessa Bell has just sent me a very nice portrait that would look good on a sitting room wall." raised a polite and condescending face. "Surrealism expresses thought without reason, pure artistic impulse with no hindrance from rationality or aesthetics. Perhaps you should take a closer look at the other room. Vanessa Bell has just sent me a very nice portrait that would look good on a sitting room wall."

I hastened to get back into the woman's better graces. "Oh no, I like Damian's work enormously. I like him, for that matter. It's just that some of his paintings are, what? A little too compelling for comfort?"

The small woman tipped her perfect head at me, considering. She herself was an artifice-at any rate, a flawless appearance and a sympathy for Bohemian artists did not go hand-in-hand. In the end, she decided that I, too, was not what I appeared.

"You have met Mr Adler?"

"I've known him for years," I said, which was the literal, if not the complete, truth. "He came to dinner the other night. When I heard you were displaying his work, I thought I'd stop in. This is another of his, isn't it?"

The other painting, on the room's back wall, bore his characteristic hand: painful, nightmare images painted with such loving realism, one was tempted to reach out and touch the surface, just to rea.s.sure one's self that it was two dimensional.

The moon, again. Only this time, it was a pair of moons, two bright eyes in the night-time sky, staring down at the eerie blue-tinged outlines below. The shapes of the landscape were difficult to determine. At first I thought it was a group of bulky figures walking along an unlit street. Moving closer, I noticed that the shapes were nearly square: tall buildings in a modern city during an electrical outage? The painting occupied the room's darkest corner, which did not help any. But when I was nearly on top of it, the details became clear.

The painting showed a prehistoric site, a grouping of ma.s.sive stones both upright and fallen, forming a rough circle on a moonlit hillside. The gra.s.s around them was composed of a million delicate black and blue-black brushstrokes, the texture of a cat's fur.

I lifted my gaze to the dual moons, and saw that the craters and patterns on their near-white surfaces had been re-arranged to suggest a retina and iris: Two great pale eyes gazed down from a sable sky. patterns on their near-white surfaces had been re-arranged to suggest a retina and iris: Two great pale eyes gazed down from a sable sky.

Had I seen this painting earlier, I should never have fallen asleep on the moonlit terrace.

"The Addler is known for his moons," the Frenchwoman said.

"Lunacy," I muttered.

"Pardon?"

"Lunacy. From Luna, the moon. There's a long belief that madness is linked to the phases of the moon."

"Most interesting," she replied in a chill voice, "but The Addler is not mad."

"Isn't he?"

"No more than any artist," she protested, then gave an uncomfortable laugh, as if to acknowledge that we were both indulging in clever badinage.

"The madder the better, when it comes to art," I agreed. "Have you met his wife?"

"But of course. And the child, such a winsome thing."

I thought about that word: Either the woman didn't like children, or she didn't approve of this particular child.

While we spoke, I had been studying the two-moon painting, the shapes of the stones, the texture of the black-on-black hillside. The man had skill, no denying that, although producing an endless string of works that made the viewer uneasy might not guarantee commercial success.