Beekeeping for Beginners Read online

  “THE GREAT MARVEL OF KING’S SERIES IS THAT SHE’S MANAGED TO PRESERVE THE INTEGRITY OF HOLMES’S CHARACTER AND YET SOMEHOW CONJURE UP A WOMAN ASTUTE, EDGY AND COMPELLING ENOUGH TO BE THE PARTNER OF HIS MIND AS WELL AS HIS HEART.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  MORE PRAISE FOR LAURIE R. KING’S BESTSELLING MYSTERIES

  THE GOD OF THE HIVE

  “The God of the Hive is mesmerizing—another wonderful novel etched by the hand of a master storyteller. No reader who opens this one will be disappointed.”

  —Michael Connelly

  “The Mary Russell series is the most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today, and this is the best installment yet.”

  —Lee Child

  “Gloriously complex … utterly absorbing reading … puzzling and uplifting.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “Her storytelling is robust, confident, and lightly sprinkled with grace notes reflecting the author’s background in theology.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “The excitement and suspense build.… Throw in the Baker Street Irregulars, several well-concealed London bolt-holes, some Holmesian cunning, and a rousing finale, and you have all the ingredients of another winning entry in the Laurie King canon.”

  —Mystery Scene

  “Laurie R. King’s God of the Hive is not for those looking for just one more Sherlock Holmes story. This is a rich, complex portrait of the Holmes–Russell extended family, nuanced well beyond the simplicities of Sir Arthur’s tales. As usual, King delivers far more than a ‘mystery’: Indelible characters and telling observations of England after the Great War make this real Literature but without pretension.”

  —Leslie S. Klinger

  “All it takes is the very first page of the newest installment in Laurie R. King’s brilliant series for and you’re gone … disappearing into an artfully crafted, creative and craft world.”

  —M. J. Rose

  “The God of the Hive will astonish and delight even the most seasoned of Holmes’ devotees.”

  —Katherine Neville

  “From thrilling plot to lyrical prose, Laurie R. King’s The God of the Hive is a spectacular finale to the unforgettable The Language of Bees. With nearly a continent separating them in this tale, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes take on a foe so powerful he has nearly eliminated not only their family but them. Without a doubt, King is the master of Sherlockian authors.”

  —Gayle Lynds

  THE LANGUAGE OF BEES

  “Absorbing … in Mary Russell’s wry, brilliant, and occasionally utterly deluded voice … Readers will want the rest right now … this is one of the best of a uniformly superlative series.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “There’s a thriving cottage industry in new Sherlock Holmes stories, but imaginative and subtle Laurie R. King is way ahead of the pack.… The result, as always, is absorbing.”

  —The Seattle Times

  MORE PRAISE FOR LAURIE R. KING’S

  AWARD-WINNING MYSTERY SERIES

  FEATURING MARY RUSSELL AND

  SHERLOCK HOLMES

  “A one-woman case for the defense of unauthorized literary sequels … intelligent, witty, complex and atmospheric … By making a woman possible who matches Holmes in brainpower, as well as in depressive ten dencies of mind and spare elegance of manner, King has made marriage possible for the most famous and, surely, one of the most aloof detectives of all time.… A spellbinding mystery … superb.”

  —The Washington Post, for Justice Hall

  “A wonderful blend of sheer wit and canny ratiocination, this is mystery at its most ingenious.”

  —The Guardian, for The Art of Detection

  “Mesmerizing … King does a wonderful job of probing the human psyche.… All of her novels are superb.”

  —Daily American, for Locked Rooms

  “Suspenseful … Laurie R. King takes on England and literature’s most famous detective with masterful aplomb. I loved it.”

  —Elizabeth George, for A Letter of Mary

  “Inspired … King puts us into each scene so quickly and completely that her narrative flow never falters.”

  —Chicago Tribune, for O Jerusalem

  “Imaginative … dazzling. Lush, colorful and utterly compelling, this is a superbly wrought novel of suspense that evokes its period with enviable panache. Four stars out of four stars.”

  —Detroit Free Press, for The Game

  “A fascinating and often moving account of a friendship so unusual and so compelling that one almost accepts it as being historically real.”

  —The Denver Post, for The Beekeeper’s Apprentice

  “[One of] the best American authors of traditional mystery fiction.”

  —The New York Sun, for Locked Rooms

  “King writes real novels. There’s nothing elementary about her attention to period details and the behavior of her well-developed characters.”

  —Orlando Sentinel, for The Moor

  “Even readers who resist on principle the notion of resurrecting a previous author’s creation should be won over by this delightful and creative pastiche.”

  —The Wall Street Journal, for A Letter of Mary

  Other Novels by

  LAURIE R. KING

  Mary Russell Novels

  The Beekeeper’s Apprentice

  A Monstrous Regiment of Women

  A Letter of Mary

  The Moor

  O Jerusalem

  Justice Hall

  The Game

  Locked Rooms

  The Language of Bees

  The God of the Hive

  And coming soon …

  PIRATE KING

  Kate Martinelli Novels

  A Grave Talent

  To Play the Fool

  With Child

  Night Work

  The Art of Detection

  And

  A Darker Place

  Folly

  Keeping Watch

  Califa’s Daughters (as Leigh Richards)

  Touchstone

  Beekeeping for Beginners is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  2011 Bantam Electronic Edition

  Copyright © 2011 by Laurie R. King

  Excerpt from A Study in Sherlock copyright © 2011 by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger

  Excerpt from Pirate King copyright © 2011 by Laurie R. King

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This book contains excerpts from the forthcoming books A Study in Sherlock and Pirate King. These excerpts have been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming editions.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52993-0

  Cover design: Marietta Anastassatos

  Cover images: frog-traveller/Shutterstock (honeycomb); Peter Waters/Shutterstock (bee); Oxana Zuboff/Shutterstock (landscape)

  www.bantamdell.com

  v3.1

  To the new bee

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapt
er 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Twitter Interview with Leslie S. Klinger and Mary Russell

  Excerpt from Pirate King

  1

  Any reasonable man may reach a point in his life where self-destruction becomes a door worthy of consideration. A point at which it seems that the least a walking anachronism can do for the world is to remove himself from cluttering the landscape.

  It was a cool, sunny day in April, 1915. I had set out at dawn from the silent villa to which I had retreated out of the London fogs some years before, carrying with me both the impedimenta of my avocation, and the means to end my life.

  Do not imagine that I was unaware of the multiple ironies: My beekeeping task required a clear, warm day, while the other was more suited to a bleak and inhospitable sky; my acts were concerned with the populous community of a hive, while my thoughts were at their most solitary; my rucksack carried both restoration, and death.

  My mind was not entirely made up. However, a lifetime dedicated to the science of thought has taught me that focusing the mind’s eye on one matter encourages greater clarity of vision along the periphery of the mental gaze. I should proceed with my surface task, while permitting the deeper machinery of my mind to turn.

  In any event, off I walked onto the Downs that morning with a trio of bottles. Two contained paint, red and blue: With these I might track a wild—or rather, feral—colony for one of my empty Langstroth hives, to restore the apiary to full strength. (In a curious parallel, the designer of those hives had himself felt the grim attraction of a voluntary end.) The third vial held a small amount of nearly clear liquid: It would transform me into a mere problem of disposal and a pang of sorrow for those few individuals who held me in affection.

  That it might also bring a sense of rejoicing to those who wished the world ill was one of the main reasons I had not made use of the bottle before that day.

  I was in my fifty-fifth year on this earth. For nearly forty of those years, my life had been my work. Even during the dozen years of my ostensible retirement to Sussex, I had remained active—indeed, eight months previous, a lengthy case had led to the destruction of a major spy-ring, my contribution to the nation’s security. Then during the autumn, while the guns of France drew into place and plans were made for what the deluded imagined would be a brief war, I managed to keep myself in a position of usefulness.

  But in January, one of my little victories, and its accompanying minor injury, had come to the attention of the powers-that-be. Rather than gratitude, their response had been one of alarm, that a person of my eminence might have been snuffed out by a stray bullet—or worse, taken captive and used as a hostage. One might have thought I was the young Prince of Wales.

  My head had been patted, my protests ignored, I had been sent home to Sussex. To my bees, my studies, and the services of my long-time housekeeper, Mrs Hudson. To a soul-grinding boredom and a pervading sense of uselessness.

  All my life I have battled grey tedium. The challenges of mental work and physical exertion, the escape of music and the occasional dose of drugs have aided me, but always I could reassure myself that the ennui was temporary, that it would not be long before some criminal laid his scent before me, and I would be off.

  Now my so-called friends had conspired against me, coddling me for my own good.

  Fifty-four is not old.

  I found tedium mentally trying, but physically agonising. As winter turned to spring, it became apparent that the world had finished with me; the only thing required of me was a decision to agree.

  So: that absurdly sunshiny April day, with the throb of distant guns an ominous basso beneath the rhythm of waves against chalk cliffs, and a small, clear bottle in the old rucksack at my feet as my hands used the fine camel-hair brush to daub paint on individual honeybees, and my colour-assisted eyes tracked their subsequent flight, and my mind circled ever closer to a decision.

  To be interrupted by slow footsteps, approaching across open ground.

  After twelve years in Sussex, I was well accustomed to busybodies. Everyone in the county knew who I was, and although they took care to protect me from the intrusion of outsiders, they felt no compunction to offer the same protection from their own attentions. Stepping into the village shop for Mrs Hudson would bring a knowing wink and a heavy-handed jest about investigating the choices of soap powder. If I paused to examine an unfamiliar variety of shoe-print on the ground, a short time later I would look back to find a knot of villagers gazing down to see what had drawn my attention. One time, a casual remark to a passing farmer about the sky—that a storm would arrive by midnight—led to a near-panic throughout the Downland community, until the farmer’s wife had the sense to ring Mrs Hudson and ask if I’d actually intended to warn him that the Kaiser’s troops were lying offshore, waiting for dark.

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

  Every so often, perhaps once a year, I would become aware of what is known as a “fan.” These were generally village lads with too much time on their hands and too many penny-dreadful novels on their shelves. Trial and error had shown that a terse lecture on personal rights coupled with a threat to speak to their fathers would send them on their way.

  Now, it seemed, I had another one.

  I turned to watch the owner of the slow footsteps approach. The lad was wearing an old and too-large suit, a jersey in place of shirt and waistcoat (it had been cold that morning when I—and, it appeared, he—had set out) and a badly knit scarf, with a cloth cap pulled down to his ears and shoes that, despite being new, pinched his toes. His nose was buried in a book, as if to demonstrate his noble oblivion to any world-famous detectives who might be hunkered on the ground.

  But he had misjudged either his path or his speed, because he was aimed right at me. I waited, but when he neither shifted course nor launched into a performance of astonishment, I cleared my throat.

  The astonishment that resulted was, I had to admit, no act. The child was furious—embarrassment has that effect on the young, I have noticed—both at my throat-clearing and at the involuntary epithet it had startled out of him.

  He snatched up his dropped Virgil—the Georgics, as one might expect—and demanded, “What on earth are you doing? Lying in wait for someone?”

  It being, I presumed, the eternal task of a detective, to be lying in wait at all times and in all places.

  “I should think that I can hardly be accused of ‘lying’ anywhere, as I am seated openly, on an uncluttered hillside, minding my own business. When, that is, I am not required to fend off those who propose to crush me underfoot.” And I turned back to my task of bee-watching, unaware that my mild (if condescending) remark had triggered off an inexplicable response of fury in the young person.

  He planted those ill-fitting shoes into the turf and snarled, “You have not answered my question, sir.”

  I sighed to myself. Be gone, child, I thought; I’m trying to commit a nice dignified suicide. “What am I doing here, do you mean?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I am watching bees. Now, go away.”

  To my relief, I heard him move off—then ten feet away he dropped to his heels to perform the gaggle-of-villagers-solemnly-examining-the-ground routine. Demonstrating that he, too, could be a detective.

  I tipped back my head, closed my eyes, clenched my jaws, and stifled the urge to leap to my feet and physically drive away this boorish child with my rucksack. Patience, Holmes; you’ve out-waited better men than this displaced London adolescent in ill-fitting garments.

  And so it proved: Within three or four minutes, the subtle clues and demands of surveillance proved too much for my “fan,” and he got to his feet and walked away.

  The footsteps retreated. In a moment, I heard the patter of startled sheep moving across the spring turf. The rumours of th
e sea a mile away and the cannon 200 miles farther off crept back into consciousness, counterpoint to the soothing hum of working bees. I looked down at the rucksack. Should I wait, until dark perhaps, lest some busybody rescue me? Or would it be better—

  But the sound of returning footsteps intruded. My hand tightened on the canvas straps: I could just imagine the newspaper article:

  Last known act of Sherlock Holmes

  In a vicious attack on a visiting lad, whom he beat

  about the head and shoulders with a rucksack, the

  retired detective—

  “I’d say the blue spots are a better bet,” came a voice, “if you’re trying for another hive. The ones you’ve only marked with red are probably from Mr Warner’s orchard. The blue spots are further away, but they’re almost sure to be wild ones.”

  As this speech unfolded from the child’s lips, I turned to look at him. More than that, I rose, that I might see more closely the expression on this unlikely intruder’s face. Hairless cheeks confirmed his youth; blue eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles displayed alarm, but no triumph; the voice was more complex than I had noticed at first, a mixture of London and America (both coasts). The child even looked vaguely intelligent—though that last was probably an effect of the spectacles. One could only wonder who had wound him up and set him upon me.

  “What did you say?”

  “I beg your pardon, are you hard of hearing? I said, if you want a new hive of bees, you should follow the blue spots, because the reds are sure to be Tom Warner’s.”

  “I am not hard of hearing, although I am short of credulity. How do you know what I am after?”

  “Is it not obvious?” I came perilously close to catching up the rucksack and pummelling him, at this mockery of my speech patterns—rather, of the speech patterns that Watson and Doyle between them inflicted upon me: In truth, I rarely descend to open rudeness. However, the lad was still speaking: “I see paint on your pocket-handkerchief, and traces on your fingers where you wiped it away. The only reason for marking bees that I can think of is to follow them to their hive.” He went on, his words delineating an actual thought process: that I marked bees to follow them; I wished to follow them either to harvest the honey or to claim their queen; since it was not harvest time but it had been a cold winter in which wildlife suffered, I must be in need of another colony. Simple, clean, and utterly unexpected logic.