The Beekeeper's Apprentice (27 page)

Mycroft came into the room then and poured himself a cup of tea dregs. There was a rustle outside the door, and I tensed, but he calmly said, “The morning news.” He went to bring it in from his mat. Just then Watson’s voice came from the next room asking for something, so he handed me the paper and went off. I unfolded it, and my breath stopped. A headline on the front page read:

bomber killed by own device watson, holmes targets?

A large bomb exploded shortly after midnight this morning at the home of Dr. John Watson, famous biographer of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, apparently killing the man who was in the act of setting it. Dr. Watson was evidently not at home, and his whereabouts are currently un-known. The house was badly damaged. The resultant fire was quickly brought under control, and there were no other injuries. A spokesman for New Scotland Yard told this paper that the man killed has been identified as Mr. John Dickson, of Reading. Mr. Dickson was con-victed of the 1908 bombing attempt on the Empire Bank on Western Street, Southampton. Mr. Holmes gave key evidence against him dur-ing the trial.

Unconfirmed reports of an earlier bomb at the isolated Sussex farm of Mr. Holmes have reached this newspaper, and one reliable source states that the detective was seriously injured in the blast. There will be further details in our later edition.

I reread the short article, little more than a notice, with a feeling of drunken unreality. I quite literally could not comprehend the words before me, partly due to shock, but more because it simply made no sense. I felt as if my brain were moving through tar. My hands laid the paper down on top of the débris of teacups and eggshells and then folded themselves into my lap. I am not certain how long it was before I heard Mycroft speak sharply over my shoulder.

“Miss Russell, what is the matter? Shall I send for more tea?”

I unfolded one hand and laid a finger across the newsprint, and when he had read it he lowered himself into a sturdy chair. I looked over at him and saw Holmes’ glittering, intense eyes sunk into a fleshy, pale face, and knew he was thinking as furiously and as fruitlessly as I.

“That is most provocative,” he said at last. “We were barely in time, were we not?”

“In time for what?” Holmes came into the room fastening his cuffs, his voice edged. Mycroft handed him the paper, and a sibilant whistle escaped him as he read it. When Watson entered, Holmes turned to him.

“It seems, my old friend, that we owe a considerable and deeply felt thanks to Russell.”

Watson read about his near escape and collapsed into the chair Holmes pushed into the back of his knees.

“A whisky for the man, Mycroft,” but the big man was already at the cabinet pouring. Watson held it unseeingly. Suddenly he stood up, reaching for his black bag.

“I must go home.”

“You must do nothing of the sort,” retorted Holmes, and took the bag from his hand.

“But the landlady, my papers.” His voice drifted off.

“The article states that no one was hurt,” Holmes said reasonably. “Your papers will wait, and you can contact the neighbours and the police later. Right now you will go to bed. You have been up all night and you have had a bad shock. Finish your drink.” Watson, through long habit of obedience to the voice of his friend, tipped the liquor down his throat and stood looking dazed. Mycroft took his elbow and led him off to the bed that Holmes had occupied for such a short while the night before.

Holmes lit his pipe, and its slight sough joined the mutter of the traffic below and the indistinct voices from the bedroom down the hall. We were silent, although I fancy the sound of our thinking was almost audible. Holmes frowned at a point on the wall, I fiddled with a piece of string I had found in my pocket and frowned, and Mycroft, when he appeared, sat in the chair between us at the fire, and frowned.

My fingers turned the string into a cat’s cradle and made various in-tricate shapes until I dropped a connexion and held only a tangle of string. I broke the silence.

“Very well, gentlemen, I admit I am baffled. Can either of you tell me why, if Watson was followed here, Dickson would persist in setting the bomb? Surely he couldn’t have cared about the house itself, or Watson’s papers?”

“It is indeed a pretty problem, is it not, Mycroft?”

“It changes the picture considerably, does it not, Sherlock?”

“Dickson was not operating alone—”

“And he was not in charge of the operation—”

“Or if he was, his subordinates were extremely ineffective,” Holmes added.

“Because he was not informed that his target had left an hour before—”

“But was that deliberate or an oversight?”

“I suppose a group of criminals can overlook essential organisational—”

“For pity’s sake, Mycroft, it’s not the government.”

“True, a certain degree of competence is required for survival as a criminal.”

“Odd, though; I should not have thought Dickson likely to be clumsy.”

“Oh, not suicide, surely? After a series of revenge killings?”

“None of us are dead,” Holmes reminded him.

“Yet,” I muttered, but they ignored me.

“Yes, that is provocative, is it not? Let us keep that in mind.”

“If he was employed—” Holmes began.

“I suppose Lestrade will examine his bank accounts?” Mycroft asked doubtfully.

“—and it was not just a whim among some of my old acquaintances—”

“Unlikely.”

“—to band together to obliterate me and everyone close to me—”

“I suppose I should have been next,” Mycroft mused.

“—then it does make me wonder, rather, about Dickson’s death.”

“Accident and suicide are unlikely. Could a bomber’s boss bomb a bomber?”

“Pull yourself together, Mycroft,” Holmes ordered sternly.

“It is a valid question,” his brother protested.

“It is,” Holmes relented. “Can some of your people look at it, be-fore the Yard?”

“Perhaps not before, but certainly simultaneously.”

“Though there will not be much evidence left, if it was tampered with.”

“And why? Dissatisfaction with the man’s inefficiency?”

“Or wishing to save a final payment?”

“Makes it difficult to hire help in the future,” Mycroft noted prac-tically.

“And I shouldn’t have thought money was a problem, here.”

“Miss Russell’s bomb is of the highest quality,” agreed Mycroft.

“It is most irritating that Dickson is no longer available,” Holmes grumbled.

“Which may be why he was removed.”

“But he did not manage to kill us,” Holmes protested.

“Anger at his failure, and determination to use alternate methods?”

“That’s encouraging,” I tried, “no more bombs,” but Holmes ploughed on.

“You’re probably right. Still, I should have liked to speak with him.”

“I blame myself. I ought to have put a man to watch immediately, but—”

“You had no reason to assume he would arrive so quickly.”

“No, not after his gap of—”

“—a full day,” supplied Holmes blandly.

“—a full day,” said Mycroft, not looking at me.

“If only I had been able to reach Russell’s place earlier....”

I had had enough of this verbal tennis match, so I walked out onto the court and sliced through the net.

“You did not reach ‘Russell’s place’ because Sunday’s attempt to blow you into many untidy bits left you unconscious until dusk on Monday.” Holmes looked at me, Mycroft Holmes looked at his brother, and I looked at the string in my hands complacently, like Madame Defarge at her knitting.

“I did not say I was unconscious,” Holmes said accusingly.

“No, and you tried to make me think the bomb went off Monday night. You forget, however, that I have had some experience of the progressive appearance of cuts and bruises, and the wounds on that back of yours were a good forty-eight hours old when I first saw them, not twenty-four. On Monday I was in my rooms until three o’clock, and you did not get in touch with me. Mrs. Thomas laid a fire, pre-sumably at her customary time. Therefore you were still non compos mentis until at least five o’clock. At eight o’clock, however, when I re-turned, I found Mr. Thomas unnecessarily repairing a light fixture in the hallway outside my door, and as you now tell me he is in your em-ploy, it becomes evident that at some point between five and eight you telephoned him and ordered him to watch my rooms until I returned. And probably after that, as well, knowing you.

“On Tuesday I expect that you would have had Mr. Thomas keep me from my rooms, had you not been determined to make your way up yourself, despite a concussed brain and a raw back. I assume that you intended to arrive somewhat earlier than you did, and Mr. Thomas went off his guard, as he had been told that his services would after that time no longer be required. What held you up, that you did not arrive until six-thirty?”

“Six twenty-two. A positively diabolical series of happenstances. Lestrade was late for our meeting, the matron hid my clothes, the tramp was brought in, and I had to seize the opportunity to arrange a sleight-of-body with the hospital staff, and then when I arrived at the cottage it was swarming with police and I had to wait for them to am-ble off for their tea before I could get what I needed from the house and see what they’d left at the hive—thank God for Will, I’d never have managed without him. And I missed a train and there were no taxis at the rank in Oxford—positively diabolical, as I said.”

“Why didn’t you just telephone from the hospital? Or send a telegram?”

“I did send a telegram, to Thomas, from a station so small I doubt more than six trains stop there in a year. And when I finally made Oxford I telephoned to him and told him not to mention anything to you, that the little problem had been taken care of.”

“But, Holmes, what made you come? Did you have any cause to think I was in danger? Or was it just your generally suspicious mind?” He was looking very uncomfortable, and not because of his back. “Did you have any reason—?”

“No!” My last word made him shout, made us all aware of the glar-ing inconsistency of his actions. “No, it was a fixation visited upon an abused brain. Reason demanded I stay on the scene of the crime, with perhaps a telephone call to put you on your guard, but I...to tell you the truth, I found it impossible to retain a logical train of thought. It was the most peculiar side-effect of concussion I’ve ever experienced. At dawn on Tuesday all I could think of was reaching your door by dusk, and when I found I was able to walk—I walked.”

“How odd,” I said, and meant it. I would not have thought his af-fection for me would be allowed to interfere with the investigation of a case, shaken brain or no. And as for his obvious reluctance to trust me with the necessary actions—lying in wait for an attack, using my gun if necessary—that hurt. Particularly as he had not been altogether successful himself. I opened my mouth to confront him with it but managed to hold my tongue in time. Besides, in all honesty I had to admit that he was right.

“Very odd,” I repeated, “but I am glad of it. Had you not interfered, I should almost certainly have walked in the door, as the only indica-tions of tampering were two tiny scratches on the keyhole and one small leaf and a spot of mud on a window that was across a dim pas-sageway from where I would stand to insert my key.”

He let slip a brief flash of relief before an impassive reply. “You’d have noticed it.”

“I might have. But would I have thought enough of it to climb up the outside ivy, on a night like that? I doubt it. At any rate, you came, you saw, you disconnected. Incidentally, did you come up the ivy too, with your back like that? Or did you manage to disarm the bomb from outside the door?”

Holmes met his brother’s eyes and shook his head pityingly. “Her much learning hath made her mad,” he said, and turned back to me. “Russell, you must remember the alternatives. Alternatives, Russell.”

I puzzled for a minute, then admitted defeat.

“The ladder, Russell. There was a ladder on the other side of the courtyard. You must have seen it every day for the last few weeks.”

Both Holmes and his brother started laughing at the chagrin on my face.

“All right, I missed that one entirely. You came up the ladder, dis-connected the bomb, put the ladder away, and came back through the hall, leaving one leaf and an unidentifiable greasy thumbprint. But Holmes, you couldn’t have missed Dickson by much. It must have been a near thing.”

“I imagine we passed each other in the street, but the only faces I saw were hunched up against the rain.”

“It shows that Dickson, or his boss, was well acquainted with my circumstances. He knew which were my rooms. He knew that Mrs. Thomas would be in the rooms and waited until she left, which I sup-pose he could see from the street below. He went up the outside ivy in the dark, carrying the bomb, went in the window, picked my lock, set the thing . . .” I thought of something to ask Mycroft. “Could he have left through the door after the bomb was set?”

“Certainly. It was triggered by a one-way toggle. He mounted it with the door standing open, and closing the door armed it.”