Trio for Flute and English Horn in A minor
Wiggins was the only one who knew that Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen wasn't really about bees.
He'd received the book in the post one June afternoon after returning early from his cab-driving shift. Given his limited reading skills, he'd squinted at the paper and wondered if the postman had made an error in delivering the book, sent straight from the publishing house, until he recognized the scrawl of his former employer, Mr. Sherlock Holmes on the enclosed note.
"Blimey," was all he could say – he had not heard from Mr. Holmes since the birth of their second child a year ago, when the man had dropped by their home unexpected, bounced their oldest on his knee, drank tea from his wife's best china, changed his disguise in the "bolt-hole" closet he leased from them, and left a check of enormous sum in the flour-jar - and so Wiggins went to his wife to ask for her help.
"He knows I don' read much," said Wiggins as they puzzled over the problem. "It mus' be important."
"It's jes a gift," said Mrs. Wiggins, shrugging. "He done and wrote himself a book and is sendin' it to everyone 'es got an address for."
"I wonder," said Mr. Wiggins, but refrained from arguing further.
They read it together that week by firelight when the babes were asleep, Mr. Wiggins struggling through many words as he could until both of them were too frustrated at his pace, at which point Mrs. Wiggins put down her darning to plough through the rest of the chapter.
The first few chapters were dreadfully dull, talking about the history of bee-keeping and the literature about bee-keeping, and it was all very dense and very wordy. Those who knew Holmes' previous writing would have assumed Holmes was getting soft in the head with age, for it was very tedious, dry, and pedantic work, and while it was as rigorous an investigation as any he had ever produced, the execution of his summary lacked the clarity of expression and succinctness of phrasing as had been a particular trademark of his in earlier works. However, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wiggins had the foreknowledge to make this distinction and throw away the book with the despair for Holmes' health that John Watson did, and they slogged painstakingly through every word of the dreary exposition.
At chapter four, however, Mrs. Wiggins' reading got ahead of herself, and her lips stopped moving as her eyes darted across the page, too engrossed to realize she'd stopped reading aloud until Mr. Wiggins dropped the poker with a clatter.
"Now, that's peculi'r," she said with a start, "who'd have ever thought?"
"Thought what?" asked Mr. Wiggins, keen to know.
"There's an awful lot of spiders, all of a sudden."
For indeed, the book had segued, without a moment's notice, into a narrative depicting the deep and terrifying entrance of a garden spider into the heart of the hive.
By humming a pattern vaguely resembling Offenbach's Barcarolle from the Tales of Hoffman, the assistant worker bee lured the spider's attention for just long enough that the queen bee could exchange places with the worker bee carcass, unnoticed. Then, when the spider revealed its intent by removing the drone, wrapped as it was in silken threads, from the place it had stashed it, the queen and her flock buzzed forth and confronted the creature, stinging the spider in the abdomen and thorax with a mighty force. The devil collapsed with the shame of the guileless, allowing its captive drone to be set free again.
"That is strange," said Mr. Wiggins. "Go on, then!"
Further reading revealed the queen's adventures with many spiders indeed. The book, after chapter three, was an exceptional narrative of uncountable incidents of the queen and her network of bees protecting the hive from the invaders that swarmed it, frequently described in the trappings of police-versus-criminals metaphor.
Or was it just the opposite?
Spellbound, Mr. Wiggins listened to his wife sound out the long educated words of Sherlock Holmes with undue confidence, and he felt with every fibre of his being that the work was no artful contrivance of scholarly study but something much more deep, meaningful, and mythic.
Was it just the ramblings of a declining apiarian, or was it the laid-bare heart and soul of the genius Wiggins had known for so long?
Sometimes the work verged on philosophical, with such passages like this:
Bees are not so different from people – that is why they engage me so. Moreover, as I observe them, I find that their diligent work-habits and patterns work to a common good. I believe our creator wished us to deduce much about the intended nature of mankind from these creatures.
Then there were passages that were humorous in their tone, such as this:
The queen bee was constantly accompanied by a buzzing drone that might well have done worse than write the queen bee's biography and be called her Boswell, if the creature by virtue of being an insect hadn't lacked all of the facilities necessary for such an endeavor! Henceforth, let us indeed call the queen's companion Boswell.
There were passages that made Mr. and Mrs. Wiggins look at each other with cocked eyebrows and slightly puckered faces.
One of the most excellent worker bees with which the queen was acquainted in this period, I shall call Wiggins. Wiggins was a good sort of worker – capable, energetic, a natural-born leader, and devoted to the tasks to which she was set. In many instances, her efforts were necessary and crucial to the success of ridding the L. beehive of the vermin that infested it. The queen looked favorably upon her and the troupe of bees that did her bidding – what they lacked in organization, they more than made up for in vigor.
There were passages that were complex and deeply symbolic, but made little sense to the Wiggins, since they seemed to have elements of fantasy and exaggeration that Holmes had long scorned Dr. Watson for including in his stories.
At one point the shadow that had been growing over the pulsing city of bees in the L. hive finally began to be noticed by the residents inside. Most continued along their daily business, but a few keen observers, sprightly young guards trying to prove their worth, scat immediately to report their findings to the appropriate channels. Soon the queen heard, and she seemed at first to take no notice – what was a shadow? However, soon this author realized that the queen was making preparations to seek out and take down the shadow, sending her guards to assess the magnitude of the shadow and chart its wax and wane.
It was not long before these guards discovered what was causing the shadow – an organized network of webs that crossed the entire back opening of the hive, and then some, with a spindly large spider in the far corner of it. This web was organized in such a way that at any touch anywhere on this web, the spider could be at the site at a moment's notice and devour the worker bee or fly that dared make its mark there. This spider was undoubtedly the largest and most insidious of all the criminal masterminds that were present in the hive, and its web surpassed in every way the webs of its predecessors and contemporaries. The queen encountered this spider only twice in her travels – once when it dared enter her private chambers unannounced, and once on the rim of a dangerous peak of a birdbath far from the hive. It was nearly the death of the queen, and her survival was nothing short of miraculous. Then again, are not bees a symbol of resurrection, the creatures that carry bodies across from the world of light to dark in Egyptian myth?
Many years later, the queen still felt conflicted about her experience with this adversary. So much of what she herself considered herself to be was in the image of this great queen spider. The spider was ruthlessly efficient, incredibly skilled, and brilliant in every type of way to which the queen aspired. The queen feared that she might, with provocation, become a creature like this spider, conducting her workers in such a way to organize with evil purposes, and she was haunted by the possibility that she had indeed only killed herself in killing her nemesis. She found comfort in knowing that since she had indeed come to realize that possibility, she could be armed against it, but she considered all her steps much more carefully after that incident for fear that without such an adversary to occupy her attention, she might turn her mind towards devious, unwholesome uses of her resources. She also told herself that her workers, who surrounded her with wholly good and beautiful intentions, could do no real harm to any creature in their world who did not deserve it, and took solace in this as well.
Then there were passages that made Mr. and Mrs. Wiggins pause and look at each other, full of the shivers. This is an excerpt of the Segregation of the Queen part.
I have lived much of my life believing that I worked for the side of good, opposing the side of evil. But I realize in these later years that this is not the case. We, all creatures of the earth, were built to serve and worship one entity in a unified manner. There is no essential difference between a bee and a spider – the greatest divide between them is not presence of extra legs, wings, or an exoskeleton, for these are only the ways that the soul of these creatures choose to manifest in their world. No, the souls of these creatures are in point the same - both can be gentle, both can be fearless, both can be cruel, both can die.
When these creatures are tired and have served their time, they withdraw into a flower and rest there and die. Then they can look closely at the thing that has been their life-long occupation from a new perspective, more closely, though a different lens than before. The bee that has retired of flitting from flower to flower expends her remaining energy on one bloom alone and breathes deeply of it until she passes. The bees have much to teach us, indeed. The queen, in her old age, after her life of exciting adventures, must retire her mantle and cap and take to the flower that calls to her – a rose, perhaps.
The conclusion of the book ran like this:
I am nothing more than a bee myself. Lonely I may be, in my villa on the Sussex Downs, with only my housekeeper and my bees to keep me company, and it may be a place so dreary that I truly am suffocating for want of something to do – but thus is the conclusion of a life in a flower. I will make little more honey in this lifetime, save perhaps this book. I have served our master in the way best suited to my temper and abilities, and now seek nothing more than to end my service at the proper and fitting time.
The book ended with this dedication:
To J.M., the spider who was the ever-present 'bee in my bonnet,' as my friends called you. R.I.P. 1891. I have recently realized: Bonitas non est pessimis esse meliorem.
"It's not really about bees," said Wiggins, shaking his head at his wife as she put down the book at last.
Mrs. Wiggins stopped rocking and picked up her knitting, sensing that she was in for a long and tiresome resumption of this drawn-out conversation.
"Naw," she said, perhaps just for the sake of being contrary. Or perhaps she was scared that they actually were privy to such a deeply personal secret autobiography as Mr. Wiggins thought. Could it be that Mr. Holmes had conveyed the book to them for that reason? Such trust from such a gentleman was too much for her to comprehend. "Cain't be. Why'd anyone want to do that? It's jes' a book about bees. Fantastic-like, but splendid readin' once you get past the dull bit."
"I wonder," said Wiggins thoughtfully, rising at the cry of one of their young ones from the other room, "I wonder."
Some days later, a worn Mr. Holmes appeared on their London doorstep, far from his Sussex beehives.
"We read your book," said Mr. Wiggins as Mrs. Wiggins served fresh bread and butter. "It weren't unexciting."
"Thank you," said Mr. Holmes with a gentle, tired smile. "Doctor Watson said he read it, but clearly didn't, even though he cracked the spine very noticeably. It's all right," he added, as the Wiggins looked on sadly, "it's better he think I'm addled than that he think I'm sick. For a doctor, he's particularly impatient with my illnesses."
"Maybe 'cause he's af'eard o' seein' you frail an' weak, Mr. Holmes," Mrs. Wiggins suggested kindly, "when 'es been so inspir'd by your ways of living."
"Hm. I hadn't considered it like that," the detective replied, and a small smile graced his lips as he pondered, "Perhaps indeed I represent a certain vitality that enlivens his dull existence."
He shook his head and looked weary. "Now, I have a small favor to ask of you both," Mr. Holmes said, settling back in his chair and accepting another slice of bread. "I have been recently called to embark upon a journey. Refusal is beyond my capabilities. In the meantime, I require someone to care for my villa in Sussex and manage my bees."
"Real bees?" asked Mr. Wiggins, and Mr. Holmes smiled.
"And metaphorical," replied the detective with some amusement.
Wiggins nodded. "What'll you be needin', Mr. Holmes? Is it to do with spiders?"
The detective shrugged. "More like moths – in some contexts harmless, but when presented with the fabric of our solid English tweed, they are fierce indeed. Strategy and care is required to remove them from the coat-closet."
Mr. and Mrs. Wiggins looked at each other, communicating between them in the married language of looks and twitches while Mr. Holmes looked on wistfully, pining.
With unanimous conclusion, Mr. Wiggins looked back at Mr. Holmes and said aloud, "We'll be happy to do anythin' you'll be needin', Mr. Holmes."
"I'm so glad you understand. I will send word when all the necessary arrangements have been made."
With that, Mr. Holmes finished his tea, shook Mr. Wiggins' hand, and kissed the hand of Mrs. Wiggins in his old-fashioned way that made her blush.
After his departure, Mr. and Mrs. Wiggins sat in the parlor, feeling (even together) inadequate to bear the heaviness of the secrets of one of the world's most brilliant men.
"He didn' send that book to us by accident," said Mrs. Wiggins astutely, sweeping from the parlor, scooping up the whining baby from the crib in the next room, and shushing it as she rejoined her husband.
Mr. Wiggins nodded. "You're right, my girl. It was a way to show he trusted us."
He paused and shrugged. "People always said he had a bee in his bonnet about that Professor Moriarty. I guess he took those words to heart."
"Naw, I think he was laughing at those people," said Mrs. Wiggins, thumping the baby on her knee. "But not at us. You saw what he wrote about you."
"Aye," replied Mr. Wiggins thoughtfully, lighting his pipe. "Aye."
It occurred to him how lonely the other man had seemed. Resigned, determined, and bittersweet. Not pleased about being called out of his retirement whatsoever.
"I almost wonder if he hopes he doesn't survive," Mrs. Wiggins said with a whisper, as though the baby could understand the dread in her words, "This mission, I mean."
This echoed the rumbling fear in Mr. Wiggins' own heart, and he nodded. "I did feel like the man was comin' to us with a final request."
They let the silence hold those words for a moment, and then Mrs. Wiggins couldn't help but speak.
"If he does come out of it, I think it'd be an idea to stay in Sussex for a while. As long as he'd have us."
"I'd agree," said Mr. Wiggins with a smile. "As long as he'd have us."