Laurie R. King

Love your library? Want to see Laurie King there? We’ve saved some slots in The Language of Bees tour just for events in east coast libraries (roughly, Richmond to Boston) during May 1 to 5. If you know a library in that area that does great events, send us the email address of their events coordinator, and we’ll see if we can add them to the tour.

Thanks, and–Laurie Loves Libraries!

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Without further ado, here is the sixth installment of Mary Russell’s story, reproduced here with her permission from her MySpace blog.

Mary Russell: My Story

6.

By good fortune, our solicitor-actor would be available for several days, to play the part of a genial if rather befuddled elderly farmer who, indeed, happened to bear a resemblance to one Sherlock Holmes. With him in place, the Americans could batter themselves against our doors until they were convinced that their information was faulty, at which time they might go back to the Plains or prairies whence they had come.

Behind our drawn curtains, Holmes returned to his experiment and I to my manuscripts. Before padlocking the trunk, however, I went through the house and collected an armful of treasured memorabilia that called to mind our cases and adventures over the years. They were, with certain exceptions, items of little commercial value—a friend’s trademark monocle, one of Holmes’ more disreputable pipes, some newspaper clippings—but were they to be spotted by any sharp-witted Sherlockian (if that be not an oxymoron) they could not only give lie to our ruse, they would be themselves vulnerable to the predations of the horde outside: Sherlockians are inveterate collectors.

I arranged them atop my memoirs, and padlocked the lid. When I had more

leisure, I should write a letter of explanation to the recipient of the trunk, but

today, I had much to do.