The Mary Russell Companion (30 page)

Klinger is the author of
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes
and portions of the
Annotated Beekeeper
in this Companion, and has given his permission for the use of this piece.  Miss Russell’s permission was less freely given.

Les Klinger:
Am editing w/LRKing “stories inspired by SH” & wd love an interview w/him or you. OK 4 LRK 2 giv me yr contact info?
Mary Russell:
No, my literary agent Ms King does not have permission to give you my private contact information.
Klinger:
But wouldn’t u prefer to talk in private?
Russell:
“Private” conversations undergo changes in the mind of the interviewer. I prefer that such exchanges be on public record.
Klinger:
U want me 2 interview u on Twitter?
Russell:
I do not wish you to interview me at all, but clearly that is not an option.
Klinger:
We could call it a Twinterview.
Russell:
Mr Klinger, if you wish my participation, I must ask that you refrain from whimsy. And excessive abbreviations.
Klinger:
Sorry
,
Ms. Russell. Okay, no whimsy, & I’ll keep the questions suitable for all eyes.
Russell:
I should hope so. And I prefer “Miss.” Now, may we proceed with this conversation? I have an experiment awaiting me.
Klinger:
First, how does Mr Holmes feels about having inspired the creativity of more than a century of crime writers?
Russell:
My husband does not care to discuss his feelings.
Klinger:
OK, how do YOU feel re his having inspired 100 yrs of crime writers? People other than (sorry must make this 2 Tweets)
Klinger:
—than Dr Watson were telling Holmes stories even as the originals were coming out. Why do u think they felt that urge?
Russell:
They admired Holmes. They wished to speculate about him. So they made up stories.
Klinger:
That’s it? Just a desire for more?
Russell:
Nicholas Meyer (your friend?) claimed that Dr Watson was such a great writer, others saw the stories as a challenge.
Klinger:
But NM was explaining why he wrote his books & doesn’t speak for others. I’m not even sure I believe his excuse.
Russell:
I said claimed. I met Meyer when he was young. I think he wrote them through frustration with a mere 60 published tales.
Klinger:
Does it bother u that writers make up fictions about your husband? Some of their stories are pretty outrageous.
Russell:
I was young when I realised that since Holmes was seen as fictional, by contagion I would be so viewed as well.
Russell:
Thus I have lived a long life with one foot in the real world and the other in the world of being perceived as a fiction.
Russell:
My own literary agent, Laurie King, claims that it is necessary to categorise my memoirs—mine—as novels.
Russell:
And since I expect that you will now ask how that makes me “feel”, I will admit that the sensation of being fictional, is—
Russell:
—is indeed peculiar. What our—Holmes’ and my—friend
Neil Gaiman calls the sensation of being “the idea of a person.”
Klinger:
Neil is one of those contributing to this current volume—which we’re calling A Study in Sherlock.
Russell:
I grasp the reference to the initial Conan Doyle story, but this assumption of first-name familiarity jars, a bit.
Klinger:
Publishers, you know? This is the modern world. & you are after all American.
Russell:
Half American, and I retain very little of the accent, or attitudes.
Klinger:
Back 2 the questions. How did Dr Watson react? Some stories came out while his were still appearing in The Strand.
Russell:
Uncle John had many shouting matches down the telephone with Sir Arthur, demanding solicitors be hired. To no avail.
Klinger:
Well, we know what Shakespeare thought should be done with lawyers.
Russell:
That may be a bit drastic. Some of my best friends have lawyer relatives.
Klinger:
And, um, I’m a lawyer. At least during the day.
Russell:
I know you are a lawyer, Mr Klinger. That was my feeble attempt at humour. We are also very aware of your New Annotated
Russell:
—Annotated Sherlock Holmes. An excellent attempt at scholarship, which will do until Holmes’ own notes are published.
Klinger:
May I ask when that will be?
Russell:
No need to worry, Mr Klinger, it will be several more years.
Klinger:
Right. So Dr W was upset, but not Holmes?
Russell:
Holmes learned long ago to leave the shouting to Dr Watson. He finds it best to stay aloof of the literary world.
Klinger:
Some stories in this collection are less about Holmes than about people affected by Dr W’s stories. Do you approve?
Russell:
One might as well approve of breathing air, as of people falling under the spell of Sherlock Holmes, even second hand.
Klinger:
So you do understand the appeal of the Sherlock Holmes stories over the ages?
Russell:
My dear young man, of course I understand their pull. I was captivated by
the stories long before I met the man. 
Klinger:
Speaking of captivation
,
may I ask about your relationship with Mr Holmes?
Russell:
No. Oh dear, Mr Klinger, ominous noises from the laboratory require my immediate attention. Good luck with your book.
Klinger:
Just another couple of questions, Miss Russell. May I ask, what is Mr Holmes doing these days?
Klinger:
Miss Russell?
Klinger:
Thank you, Miss Russell.

Four:

Brief Interludes

Short–short stories that cast light on

various events in the Russell Memoirs.

The massacre of the males is a yearly occurrence in the hive…  (
Language of Bees
)

*

Only the pub had proved safe ground: When an Englishman orders a pint, his privacy is sacrosanct.  (
Beekeeping for Beginners
)

*

One can always find chunks of débris to heave at wrong-doers.  (
Beekeeper
)

A Venomous Death

Venomous Death
followed an invitation from printmaker Mark Lavender, asking if there might be a Russell & Holmes story he could print on one page, as a broadsheet.  There was.

I gingerly pushed my head through the doorway of the stone cottage to ask my husband, “The constable wants to know if it’s safe yet.”

“Oh, quite.” Sherlock Holmes was squatting beside the small wooden crate into which he had knocked the swarm of bees five minutes earlier, holding its lid open a crack for the last stragglers.

I stepped in, keeping a wary eye on the crate. PC Harris, who had summoned Holmes an hour before—as a convenient beekeeper, not a consulting detective—ventured a look in, then retreated briskly into the pale October sunshine. Holmes, however, wasn’t even wearing a beekeeper’s net: swarming bees were generally not aggressive. Which made this death a puzzle.

“I’ve heard of swarms following a queen into odd places, but never through the open window of a man’s bedroom.” “They did not. This was murder.”

“Holmes,” I protested, “I’d have thought bee-sting a somewhat roundabout method of homicide.”

“Russell, Russell, bees swarm in summer. And the entire village knew the professor was deathly allergic to bee venom.” He absently scraped a stinger from the back of his hand.

“So a retired professor of philosophy had a mortal enemy who decided to chuck a hive of bees through his window?”

“You of all people should know how vituperative academics can be.”

“For heaven’s sake, Holmes, this was an expert on Aristotelian hermeneutics!”

“Ah, but his housekeeper told his gardener, who told Old Will over a pint in The Tiger, who in turn told me over the potato patch this very morning, that one of the professor’s oldest rivals in academia came to call recently, and their conversation ended in shouting.”

“About Aristotelian hermeneutics?”

“The housekeeper did not say.” The last of the bees had crept with relief into the wooden chest. Holmes shut the lid and took out a ball of twine. “But you are right, I should look to something less elevated for the cause of this death. Such as the boundary dispute that has sprung up with the professor’s neighbour, Josiah Warner. The little Standish lad overheard an exchange of threats between the two men concerning the wall that separates the professor’s lane from Mr Warner’s orchard—young Master Standish was up an apple tree in said orchard at the time, intent on plunder. He informed his mother, who told the postmistress, who mentioned it to our own Mrs Hudson two days ago when she went in to purchase stamps.”

“And Josiah Warner keeps bees,” I noted. I had wondered why the PC did not ask Warner to remove the bees: a long-time dispute explained that.

“What is more, Mr Warner had the stonemasons in yesterday morning to talk about repairing the wall. As if already aware that the dispute was moot.”

I interrupted before he could recount how this tale reached his ears. “Still, that will be hard to prove.”

“Yes, but this should not.” He had manoeuvred his way out of the door with the box (causing PC Harris to back-pedal down the walk) and now set it down, holding out a narrow splinter of wood some three inches long with blue paint up one side. “I found this on the bedroom window-sill. Sycamore, I should say. Warner uses a blue box made of sycamore to transport his swarms. Take it, Harris—you will find a matching gap in one corner of Warner’s box, where he hit the window-frame as he poured the bees inside.”

Harris studied the sliver of wood in bemusement, taking no notice when Holmes retrieved the furiously protesting crate and tucked it under one arm.

“Country life,” Holmes mused happily as we turned for home. “The city has nothing on it for sheer viciousness. Now, Russell, where shall we install our newest community of apis mellifera?”

I opened my mouth to protest, then subsided. Perhaps a hive of man-killing bees was just what our household needed.

Birth of a Green Man

This short piece reflects on the period in the life of Robert Goodman
(The God of the Hive)
after he had left the hospital in Edinburgh, where he was being treated for shell shock, and before Mary Russell dropped out of the sky on him in 1924.

Craiglockhart Hospital Edinburgh

A god is born where need and torment meet.  A god is born when dark and light are one and the same.  A god is born, and the earth is given voice in which to sing its joy and its terror.  And where a god is born—have no doubt about this—there is blood.

**

He died when the god named War ripped open his skull and thundered confusion inside.  He died, until one spring day he left the hospital, creeping away to a place of childhood quiet and innocence, among the Cumbrian lakes.  A place where all deaths were meant to be and the only thunder lay in the rain.

**

There, green air washed him, wood and soil touched him, fur and feather healed him.  He shunned a mansion; he built a cave in the green.  He went days, weeks without speech.

**

The greens-man heard the child first, a gulping, choking noise pressing through the summer-thick trees and troubling the birds.  He thought it a creature caught in a poacher’s cruel trap; he was not altogether wrong.

A boy, thin and brown and years from a razor’s touch.  He’d seen him before in his woodland rovings, noticed the way the woodland creatures did not mind the boy’s presence, did not feel that this was a lad who turned restlessness into cruelty.

The boy was hunched beneath a tree, and although he cradled his left arm with exquisite tenderness, the tears were those of a still-child’s impotent rage.