Chapter 18 Chapter Seventeen

Morning comes. His pen was almost out of ink, his blank paper had run out, and the desk was piled with the fruits of Holmes' frenzied labors all night.However, unlike unconscious scribbling and writing, concentrated work allows him to write non-stop until dawn.This unfinished story is about a woman he once had a relationship with decades ago, and she somehow kept coming to his mind in the dead of night, when he was resting at his desk. , when pressing her closed eyes with her thumbs, she would always come to him like a ghost, so vivid, so vivid: "You haven't forgotten me, have you?" said the long-dead Mrs. Keller.

"No." He replied softly. "I haven't forgotten you either." "Really?" He raised his head and asked, "How could it be?" She too, like young Roger, had walked by his side among the flowers and on the gravel paths, and she seldom spoke (and her attention was often attracted by some novelty or other on the way); and Like Roger, her presence in his life was short-lived, leaving him uneasy and overwhelmed after parting.Of course, she never knew his real identity, and it never occurred to her that such a famous detective would follow her in disguise; she would always think of him as a shy bibliophile who shared her love of flowers and The shy man of Russian literature—the stranger he met in the garden was kind and kind. When she was sitting on the bench, he approached her nervously and asked politely about the novel she was reading: "Excuse me. , but I couldn't help noticing, is that Menshoff's Autumn Vespers you're reading?"

"Exactly." She replied calmly. "This book is quite well written, what do you think?" He continued enthusiastically, as if to hide his embarrassment, "Of course, it is not perfect, but since it is a translation, I think mistakes are inevitable, so You can also forgive me." "I haven't watched it yet. Actually, I've only just started—" "Anyway, you must have seen it," he said, "you just haven't noticed it—it's easy to miss it if you're not paying attention." She watched warily as he sat down beside her.Her eyebrows were thick, even bushy, which gave her large blue eyes a serious air.She seemed a little upset, was it because of his sudden appearance, or was it the inherent reserve of a cautious and reserved woman?

"Can you lend me a look?" He nodded to the book in her hand.After a moment of silence, she handed him the book.He pressed the page she had just read with his index finger, turned to the front of the book, and said, "Look, take this as an example—at the beginning of the story, the students practicing gymnastics were shirtless, because Schoff writes: 'The strong man made the bare-chested boys stand in a row, and Vladimir stood with Andrei and Sergey, feeling a little embarrassed and putting his long arms in the way. Both sides of the body.’ But at the back——on the second page, he wrote: “After hearing that this man was a general, Vladimir quietly buttoned up his cuffs behind his back, and straightened his slender shoulders again. .’ You can find many examples of this in Menshov—or, at least, in translations of his work.”

However, in Holmes' record of her, he did not record the specific content of their conversation when they met, only how he asked about the book and how he was flustered by her long-term gaze (she didn't know There's something strangely attractive about a symmetrical face—she raises one eyebrow in that forced smile he's already seen in photographs, in all the air of a nonchalant diva).There was something otherworldly in her blue eyes, in her snow-white skin, and even in all her mannerisms—she moved slowly, and floated ghostly down the path.Apparently, it was something purposeless, yet poised and mysterious, yet resigned to fate.

Holmes put the pen aside, and returned to the cruel real world in the study.He had ignored his physical needs since early in the morning, and now he had to get out of the attic (no matter how reluctant he was).He has to go to the toilet, drink some water, and eat something to fill his stomach. He also has to take advantage of the bright daylight to check the situation of the bee farm.He carefully put away the manuscripts on the desk, sorted them into categories, and piled them up in a pile.Then he yawned and stretched.His skin and clothes smelled of rancid cigar smoke, and he felt top-heavy after working all night.He settled on crutches, pushed himself out of the seat, and stood up slowly.He turned around and began to walk towards the door step by step, not paying attention to the rattling of the bones in his legs, and the slight rattling of the newly activated joints.

Images of Roger and Mrs. Keller mingled together in his mind.He finally left the smoky studio, reflexively looking in the hallway to see if there was Roger's dinner plate, but before he crossed the threshold, he knew there would be none.He walked down the corridor, the very same route he had agonized to climb upstairs the night before.But the chaos of last night had vanished; so had the dreadful cloud which had numbed and shocked him and turned the pleasant afternoon into pitch-dark night, and Holmes was ready for the next task: he was going downstairs into a room with only His own house, changing into appropriate clothes, and going out to the back of the garden—he would put on a white hazmat suit and veil, and enter the apiary like a ghost.

Holmes stood for a long time at the top of the stairs, as he would have stood there waiting for Roger to help him down.He closed his tired eyes, as if he saw the boy running up quickly.Then the boy reappeared elsewhere, where Holmes had seen him before: he slowly sank himself into the tide pool, and the icy water flooded his body, causing his chest to swell. Goosebumps; he wears a cotton shirt untucked into his trousers, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, he holds aloft a butterfly net, runs through the tall grass; he hangs a pollen feeder to a beehive A sunny place nearby, so that the little bees that he fell in love with later can better absorb nutrients.The strange thing is that every time he sees the boy, it is in spring or summer, but Holmes only feels the cold of winter, which always makes him suddenly think that the boy is buried in the cold and dark underground.

At this time, Mrs. Monroe's words would ring in his ears: "He is a good boy," she once said when she took over the job of housekeeper, "likes to be alone, very shy, very quiet, this A little more like his father. He won't give you trouble, I promise." However, Holmes now knew that the child had become a nuisance, a most painful burden to him.But he told himself that, whether it was Roger or anyone else, every life has an end, the same for everyone.Every corpse he had ever knelt down to examine had once been alive.He turned his gaze to the stairs below and began to descend, repeating in his mind the question he had been pondering since his youth without finding an answer: "What is the point of all this? What is the purpose of this painful cycle? It There should be a purpose, otherwise, wouldn’t the world be completely controlled by chance? But what is the purpose?”

He went to the second floor, went to the toilet, and washed his face and neck with cold water.Just then he heard a faint humming, and he thought it might be insects or birds singing, the thick branches outside the window would keep them out anyway.But neither branches nor insects take part in human grief, he thought, maybe that's why they can be reborn again and again, different from human beings.When he reached the first floor, he realized that the buzzing sound actually came from the room.It was soft and low and intermittent, but it was certainly a human voice, a woman's or a child's, animating the kitchen--but obviously not Mrs. Monroe's, and certainly not Roger's.

Holmes took six or seven nimbly steps to the kitchen door, where he saw steam rising from the pan on the stove.He walked into the kitchen and saw her standing in front of the cutting board, with her back to him, cutting a potato, humming nonchalantly.Her long black hair made him uneasy at once—the flowing hair, the white and pink skin on her arms, and her petite figure reminded him of the unfortunate Mrs. Keller.He stood there speechless, not knowing how to talk to a ghost.Finally, he finally opened his mouth and said desperately, "How did you get here?" The buzzing humming stopped, and she turned her head suddenly to meet his eyes.The girl in front of her was an ordinary-looking girl, probably not more than eighteen years old—with big gentle eyes and a kind, even dull expression. "gentlemen?" Holmes walked up to her calmly. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" "It's me, sir," she answered earnestly. "I'm Ann—Tom Anderson's daughter—I thought you knew that." silence.The girl lowered her head, avoiding his gaze. "Constable Anderson's daughter?" asked Holmes in a low voice. "Yes, sir. I suppose you haven't had your breakfast yet, and I'm helping you with your lunch." "But what are you doing here? Where's Mrs. Monroe?" "She's still sleeping, poor thing." The girl's tone didn't sound sad, but she seemed glad to have found a topic.She continued to lower her head, as if speaking to the crutches at her feet, and when she spoke, there was a slight whistle in her voice, as if blowing those words out of her lips. "Dr. Baker was with her all night, but she's asleep now, and I don't know what medicine he gave her." "Is she over there at the cottage?" "Yes, sir." "I see. Did Anderson call you?" She looked a little confused. "Yes, sir," she said, "I thought you knew that. I thought my father told you he would send me." Holmes remembered that Anderson had indeed knocked at the door of his study the night before, and had asked many questions, had said little things, and put his hand tenderly on his shoulder—but all was vague. "Of course I do." He glanced at the window above the sink, where sunlight flooded the cabinet counter.He took a deep breath, and looked at the girl with slightly confused eyes: "I'm sorry, I've been too tired in the past few hours." "No need to apologize, sir, really," she raised her head, "what you need most now is something to eat." "I just want a glass of water." The extreme lack of sleep left Holmes listless. He scratched his beard and yawned.He watched the girl run to pour water quickly, and when she saw that she filled the glass with water under the faucet and wiped her hands on her buttocks, he couldn't help frowning (the girl was happy and even grateful smile and hand him the water). "Anything else you want?" "No need." He hung a crutch on his wrist, freeing one hand to catch a water glass. "Then I'll boil water for lunch," she told him, before turning back to the cutting board, "but let me know if you change your mind and want breakfast again." The girl picked up a paring knife from the countertop of the cabinet.She bent down and peeled a potato, clearing her throat as she cut the potato into cubes.When Holmes had finished his drink and put his glass in the sink, she began humming again.So, he left without saying anything, and walked straight out of the kitchen.He walked down the corridor and out the gate, and the tossing, out-of-tuned humming followed him all the way to the front yard and into the garden shed, even when he couldn't hear it anymore. But when he got to the cottage, the girl's humming disappeared like a butterfly fluttering around him, and instead in his mind was the beauty of the garden: flowers blooming towards the clear sky, the scent of lupines in the air , the birds chirping in the nearby pine woods - and the bees hovering, taking off lightly from the petals and disappearing in the stamens. You wayward worker bees, he thought, are fickle little bugs of inertia. He turned his eyes from the garden to the wooden cottage in front of him, and suddenly remembered the advice on agriculture from a Roman writer centuries ago (the author's name was out of his mind, but the ancient message clearly emerged. in his mind): You must not smoke them or blow on them, nor panic among them; when they seem to threaten you, do not rush to defend yourself, but put your hands lightly in front of you Brush them away gently; last but not least, you must become acquainted with them. He unbolted the door of the hut and flung it wide so that the sun could shine into the dark, starry corner before him.The light illuminated the house's crowded shelves (sacks of dirt and seeds, garden shovels and rakes, empty watering jugs, and a full suit of clothes that once belonged to a novice beekeeper), all within his reach. within reach.He hung his coat on a rake in the corner, put on a white jumpsuit, light gloves and a wide-brimmed hat, and covered his veil again.Soon he went out in full armor, surveyed his garden under the protection of the veil, and walked slowly, along the path, across the lawn, and came to the apiary-the only person who could identify him. Only his crutches remained. But when Holmes looked around the apiary, everything seemed perfectly normal, but he suddenly felt uncomfortable in his prim clothes.He looked inside one hive and then into another.He saw countless bees in the city built with beeswax. They were either cleaning their antennae, rubbing their front legs next to their compound eyes, or preparing to fly again.At first glance, they seem to be at home in their own world - they are highly social creatures, living a life like a machine, making a steady and harmonious hum, and in the orderly operation of this insect empire, you can't find it. to any trace of disturbance.The same is true for the third hive, as well as for the fourth and fifth hives.The apprehension he had had quickly dissipated, replaced by feelings of awe and admiration for the intricate structure of the hive, and such emotions were familiar to him.He picked up the crutch he had set aside during his inspection of the hive, and a sudden sense of invincibility came over him.You can't hurt me, he thought calmly, neither of us has anything to fear here. However, when he bent down to lift the lid of the sixth beehive, he was startled by a terrifying figure.Looking aside through the veil, the first thing he notices is the black dress - a woman's lace-trimmed dress - and then a right hand with a red metal gallon can still clutched in its slender fingers .But what troubled him the most was the forbearing and indifferent face staring at him—the big pupils in her eyes were so calm, and the numb expression conveyed the deepest sadness, reminding him of the girl who came here holding the dead baby Young woman in the garden.But the face in front of her was Mrs. Monroe. "I don't think it's safe here, do you understand?" He stood up and said to her, "You should go back right away." She didn't look away, didn't respond to him, didn't even blink. "Did you hear me?" he said. "I'm not sure, but you might be in danger at any moment." She still stared at him intently, her lips moved, and although she didn't make any sound at first, she finally asked in a low voice, "Will you kill them?" "what?" She raised her voice slightly: "Would you kill your bees?" "Of course not." He replied firmly.Although he sympathized with her very much, he was not used to her increasingly aggressive attitude. "I think you must kill them," she said, "or I'll do it for you." He had already figured out that what she was holding was gasoline (the metal can had been his, the contents of which he had used to burn dead twigs in the nearby forest).He also saw the matchbox in her other hand.In her current state, he couldn't imagine that she still had the strength to ignite the hive, but her calm voice was full of perseverance and determination.He knew that at the saddest moment, people will be controlled by powerful and cold resentment, and the Mrs. Monroe (who is fearless and cold and insensitive) in front of him is not at all the chatty, indifferent woman he has known for many years. A butler who loves to deal with people.This very different Mrs. Monroe made him hesitate and frightened him. Holmes raised his veil with the same restrained expression as hers.He said, "Son, you're so sorry—you're confused. Please go back to the cottage, and I'll send that girl to Dr. Baker." She didn't move or take her eyes off him. "I'm going to bury my son in two days," she told him calmly, "and I'm leaving this evening, and he's going with me. wrong." Holmes's face showed deep sadness. "I'm sorry, my dear. I'm very sorry—" His expression began to relax, and she said above his voice, "You don't even have the courage to tell me yourself, do you? You're hiding in your attic and don't want to see me." "Sorry--" "I think you're just a selfish old man, really, I think you're responsible for my son's death—" "Don't talk nonsense," he murmured, but all he felt was her pain. "I blame you and the monsters you keep. If it weren't for you, he wouldn't be here at all, would he? No, you should be stung by a bee, not my son. It's not his job at all, is it? He doesn't need to be here alone — he shouldn't be here, alone." Holmes studied her stern face--the sunken cheeks, the bloodshot eyes.He wondered what to say, and at last he said to her: "He came here on his own, and you must understand. If I could have foreseen that he would be in danger, do you think I would let him tend the hive? Do you know how much it pains me to lose him? I feel pain for you too, don't you understand?" A bee flew around her head and lingered for a moment in her hair.Her angry eyes were still fixed on Holmes, and she didn't pay attention to the little flying insect at all. "Then you'll kill them all," she said. "If you care about us in the slightest, kill them all. That's what you're supposed to do." "I wouldn't do that, dear. It wouldn't do anybody any good, not even Roger." "Then I'll do it now, and you can't stop me." "You wouldn't do something like that." She didn't move.For a few seconds Holmes wondered what he should do.If she pushed him down, he would be powerless against her destruction: she was younger than he, and he was old and frail.But if he struck first, hitting her on the jaw or neck with his cane, she might fall, and once she was on the ground, he could strike her again.He glanced at his crutches, both standing beside the hive.He turned his eyes to her again.Time passed in silence, neither of them moved an inch.At last she gave up, shaking her head, and said in a trembling voice, "I wish I had never met you, sir, I wish I had never known you in this world. When you die, I will never There will be a tear." "Please," he begged her, reaching for his cane, "you're not safe here, go back to the cabin." But Mrs. Monroe had already turned around, as if in a dream, and staggered away.When she reached the edge of the beehive, the metal can in her hand fell to the ground, and then the matchbox also fell.Then she crossed the lawn, and was soon out of Holmes' sight.Holmes heard her weeping, which grew more and more mournful, and which grew fainter along the path. He walked to the beehive and continued to look in the direction of the lawn.Tall grass swayed behind Mrs. Monroe, who had broken the peace of the apiary and now the lawn.He wanted to yell that there were more important things to do, but he controlled himself: the woman was overwhelmed with grief, and all he could think about was the job at hand (checking the hives, finding a little bit in the apiary) calm).You're right, he thought, I'm a selfish man.This real thought made the frown on his sad face tighten even more.He put his crutches aside, slumped to the ground, and sat there quietly, letting the emptiness in his heart well up.He heard the low hum of the hive in his ears, and at this moment, instead of reminding him of the lonely and self-satisfied years of beekeeping, the sound made him feel more and more deep and undeniable in this world the loneliness. A sense of emptiness engulfed him completely, and he might have burst into tears like Mrs. Munroe, but a strange yellow and black visitor flapped his wings and stopped by the hive, attracting Holmes' attention.After thinking for a long time, he said its name: "The Hornet." Before he finished speaking, it flew away again, circling back and forth above his head, and flew towards the place where Roger died.He fetched the crutch absent-mindedly, and frowned in confusion: What kind of bee needle is that?Are there bee needles on the boy's clothes, skin? He tried to recall the condition of Roger's body, but could only see his eyes, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not be sure of the answer to his question.But anyway, he should have warned Roger about the danger of the hornets, and mentioned the threat they could pose to the apiary.He must have also said that wasps are natural enemies of bees, crushing them one by one with their jaws (some species can kill forty bees per minute), exterminating entire hives, and then Take away the young bees.Of course, he also told the boy the difference between the bee sting and the wasp sting: the bee sting has thick barbs, and when it punctures the human skin, the bee's internal organs will also be taken out ; The barbs on the hornets of the hornets are very thin, and the horns hardly penetrate the skin, and the hornets can pull them out and use them many times. Holmes got up.He hurried across the apiary, the tall grass brushing his legs, and then he stepped on the path that Roger had trodden before, trying to understand the child's death from the apiary What the hell (no, he reasoned to himself, you're not running from bees. You're not running from anything, at least not yet).The path Roger had trodden made a sharp turn halfway to where the body was covered by grass, and ended where the boy had fallen dead: a small limestone clearing surrounded by lawns.This time, Holmes again saw two trodden paths leading from the garden walkway in the distance, bypassing the apiary, one leading to this small clearing, and the other leading out of the small clearing (one led by Anderson and his men). stepped out, and one was stepped out by Holmes after discovering the body).He hesitated to continue down the established path to the lawn, looking for what he knew he might find.But, looking back at the trampled grass, he noticed the turn that led the boy to the clearing, and decided to retrace his steps. He walked to the corner and looked at the path that Roger walked in front of him: the grass was trampled evenly, indicating that the boy, like him, walked slowly from the bee farm.He glanced at the clearing again: the trampled weeds there were intermittent, indicating that the boy ran from here to there.He turned his gaze again to the bend, where the path made a sudden turn.He thought, you came here by walking, but you have been running since then. He continued on until he came to the path the boy had stepped on, looking at the grass beside the bend.A few yards away, he saw a flash of silver in the deep grass. "What's that?" he said to himself, looking for the silver light again.No, he was right, there was something shining in the lawn.He walked over to take a closer look, and left the path that the boy stepped on, but soon he found that he had stepped on another relatively hidden path. The boy should have followed this path and walked into the deepest part of the lawn step by step. .Holmes grew impatient, and hastened his pace, stepping over the ground where the boy had carefully trodden, without noticing that a hornet had landed on his shoulder, and several more were circling about his hat.He half bent over, walked a few more steps, and finally found the source of the strange flash.It turned out to be the watering can in his garden, tipped on its side, the spout still wet and dripping, and three thirsty wasps drinking from it (black and yellow worker bees fluttered around the spout, trying to drink more water. more water). "My boy, you made a wrong decision," he poked at the watering can with his crutch, and the panicked wasp flew away. "A serious miscalculation—" He put down the veil before going on, not being very worried about the hornet that was circling around the veil.Because he knew that he was going to approach their hive, and he also knew that they were powerless to protect themselves.After all, he was armed and better prepared than the boy to wreak havoc, to do what Roger had wanted to do but couldn't.He watched the ground carefully, taking every step carefully.His heart was full of guilt.He taught the boy a lot, but he apparently forgot to tell him the most important fact: pouring water into the hornet's nest will only accelerate their anger, just like adding fuel to the fire - Holmes wished he had told him This point. "Poor boy," he said, looking at a grotesque opening in the ground like a gaping dirty mouth, "my poor boy." He inserted the cane into the hole, withdrew it, and held it up before the veil , looking carefully at the wasps crawling on it (there are seven or eight of them, irritated by the stirring of the crutches, and looking angrily at the appearance of the intruder).He shook the sticks and they flew away.Then he inspected the hole, which was muddy from the water from the watering can.In the dark cave, one hornet after another scrambled to climb out, many flew directly into the air, some landed on his veil, and some crowded around the cave entrance.So, he thought, this is the truth of the matter, my child, and this is why you died. Holmes withdrew without haste, and walked back to the apiary with a heart full of sorrow.Soon, he would call Anderson and say exactly what the coroner had come to after the autopsy, which was what the police relayed to Mrs. Monroe that afternoon: that there was no protrusion on the boy's skin or clothing. The bee stings showed that he had been killed by a wasp, not a bee.In addition, Holmes will also explain that the boy was sacrificed to protect the hive.There is no doubt that he first spotted the wasps in the apiary, and then found their nests.He tried to destroy them by flooding them, only to provoke them into an all-out attack. Holmes still had more to say to Anderson, more details to share with him (for example, the boy, after being stung, fled in the opposite direction from the apiary, perhaps in order to free the hornet from the beehive. field lead).However, before he can call the police, he must first get back the gasoline can and matchbox that Mrs. Monroe threw away.He left a crutch in the apiary, grabbed the petrol can, walked back to the lawn, and poured all the petrol into the hornet's burrow, where the submerged hornets struggled desperately outward.Then a match did his job, and the flames whizzed across the lawn, igniting the opening of the hole, and in an instant a flame rose from the wide open black mouth of the ground (nothing escaped from it. , except for a wisp of black smoke that dissipates in the calm grass), wipe out the queen bee, bee eggs and swarms of worker bees trapped inside.The empire that was once large and complex was wiped out, just like young Roger. Well done, thought Holmes as he crossed the tall lawn. "Good job!" he said aloud again.He looked up at the cloudless sky, and the endless blue made him dizzy and disoriented.As he uttered those words, a sudden sense of sadness and sadness welled up in him, for all the living beings, and for all that was, is, and will forever be wandering under this perfectly serene sky. "Well done!" he repeated, but the tears flowed silently behind the veil.