In Passing

by Copper Beech

And speak of the devil, there was David.

"Good morning, Brother Adam," he said.

"Good morning, David. What can I do for you?"

"It's about Michael."

It was always about Michael, thought Brother Adam. But there was no rancor in David's voice and he suspected there was more to it than just Michael. "What about him?" he asked in his most inviting voice.

"I have some of his letters. He sent them during the war. They were addressed to me. Mother saved them for me. When I got back from France, I didn't want to look at them. It's only been recently that I've gotten the courage to open them. And only this morning that I actually looked at them."

"I don't understand." said Brother Adam. "If you were in France, why would he send your letters to England?"

"I don't know. Maybe he wanted to make sure they got to me if something happened to him. Most of them talk about our childhood and he asks for forgiveness for the times he hurt me. But there's one letter among them that makes no sense."

"What does it say?" asked Brother Adam.

"Here, read it yourself," said David as he handed an envelope to Brother Adam.

Brother Adam opened the envelope and extracted a folded sheet of paper. Moving closer to a lit candle, he read:

My Dear Brother,

How goes it? Have you heard from Mr. Dodgson lately? He wrote and told me he was in an accident on the second and hit his head. But on the third, he was feeling much better and stood unaided.

Felt a little uffish myself last Tuesday. But by Wednesday, I was full of mimsey. Perhaps that six mile walk in the wood helped.

Hope all is well with you. Let me know how you find things.

"Who is Mr. Dodgson?" asked Brother Adam, returning the letter to David.

"I don't know. I've never heard of him."

"What do the words 'uffish' and 'mimsey' mean?

"I haven't the slightest."

"Do you think it could be a code?"

"It might be. We used them as children," admitted David.

"Could it be one of them?'

"No. We created simple codes. Numbers for letters, anagrams, and the odd rebus. Never anything like this."

"Well, what do you think Michael is trying to tell you?" asked Brother Adam, slightly exasperated.

"If I knew that, I wouldn't have brought it to you," said David losing his patience."

Brother Adam took a deep breath and rubbed his tonsured head. Actually at 50, he found he had to shave less and less of his russet hair. Nature was very kindly providing him with its own sign of his devotion to God.

"Well," said Brother Adam slowly. "If you don't know and I don't know, I think I know someone who might. Remember Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Miss Mary Russell?"

The came addressed to Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Miss Mary Russell. And since my husband and partner, Sherlock Holmes, was nowhere to be found at the moment, I opened it. It was an epistle from Brother Adam, a fellow beekeeper like Holmes, and until last year, a man I had not yet met. Holmes and I helped him solve the small mystery of the dancing bees. And now, he lay another before us, or rather me.

The letter like Brother Adam, was short and to the point. It read:

Dear Friends,

David has presented me with another puzzle. It seems his brother sent him letters from the war and he doesn't know what to make of them. Can you come to Shropshire and take a look?

It was not like Brother Adam to summon us without cause, but this did not seem like an emergency. From all accounts, David was doing well and the good brother did not say the letters upset him. Why couldn't he just send them? A detective can deduce much from evidence found at the scene of the crime without having to visit it. Ah, well, I thought. He expects that sooner or later, we will need to or want to come. Maybe he's just saving time.

Time is something of which I usually don't seem to have enough. But at that moment, it felt like an one too many visitors in a stuffy room. My book was presenting me with one or two thorny problems that I was having trouble resolving. Until they were, I could not move on. Sitting and thinking about them wasn't getting me anywhere. Instead of feeling like time was at my elbow, keeping pace with me, I felt like it had stopped to have a picnic. Maybe a change of scenery would do me good.

I got up from the table and went to look for Holmes. Holmes had taught me to follow footprints ten miles across country, but he also taught me not to overlook the ordinary or the obvious. I went to look for him at the hives. He was not there, but evidence that he had been there was. I cast about for a clue to where he had gone. It wasn't difficult to pick up his trail. He was wearing a pair a shoes that had recently been resoled. They left good clear impressions in the spring earth. Holmes was also not one for idle wandering. If he went somewhere, it was with a purpose in mind. From all appearances, he had set off in the direction of my farm. It was a six mile walk from the cottage Holmes and I shared to the farm my late mother left me. But the sun was up and so was a slight breeze and rather than taking the old Morris or riding my bicycle, I decided that like Holmes, I would walk. Patrick could drive me home if I so desired.

It was a lovely walk. And from time to time I looked for evidence that Holmes had indeed passed this way. Since he had no reason to keep it a secret, it wasn't hard to see that he had. When I got to the farm, I found Holmes talking with Patrick, my farm manager.

Patrick was a man of few words, but he seemed to be at the end of an elaborately told story. Even with my short-sighted eyes, I could see him waving his arms as he spoke. By the time I got up to him, all of the story I heard was, "And I swear Mr. Holmes, it's all true." I waited a moment for Holmes' laughter to subside and though I wanted to ask what was all true, I stood silent.

Holmes was the first to speak. "Good afternoon, Russell. Patrick was just telling me the story of when you were six..."

"Oh, God, Holmes, he didn't tell you about my hunting of the snark, did he?"

"Yes, he did."

"My father was fond of Lewis Carroll," I tried to explain. "He read "The Hunting of the Snark" to me. He bet me I couldn't find a snark."

"And did you find one?" asked Holmes.

"No," I said sheepishly.

"Well, you found me," said Holmes. "Is there something you require?"

"Yes," I said, nearly forgetting why I walked six miles.

I handed Holmes Brother Adam's letter. After reading it, he said, "So, you propose we go to Shropshire?"

I nodded.

"Then go we shall," said Holmes. And after Patrick drove us home, we prepared to do so.

The end of the week found us once again at the door of the monastery of Our Lady of the Desert in Shropshire. And this time, Brother Adam was waiting for us.

He took us to our room and after giving us time to settle in, came 'round to talk to us about David. We sat in the monastery courtyard and after explaining the circumstances, showed us the letter Michael had written.

"We think there is more to this message than meets the eye," said Brother Adam, "but what it might mean, we don't know."

I took a close look at the hand-written note. Following Holmes' methods, I analyzed the handwriting. "The handwriting indicates he has something to hide," I began. See how small the letters of the first line are? He wants to say something, but not too loudly. The letters get larger as he goes along. He's gaining more confidence in his ability to deceive."

"Very good, Russell." said Holmes. "But what do you think he's trying to hide?"

"Well," I began slowly. "I don't know, but I can see where the clues are. The second line asks about Mr. Dodgson."

"David said he doesn't know anyone by that name," Brother Adam interrupted.

"But I do," I replied. "Charles Dodgson, under the pen name of Lewis Carroll, wrote "Alice in Wonderland," and other works for children. He was a mathematics tutor at Oxford as well as a clergyman." Two things, I wanted to say, that are not mutually exclusive.

"What about the nonsense words?" asked Brother Adam.

"They are from his poem, 'Jabberwocky,'" explained Holmes.

I looked at him in what could be best described as a puzzled face.

"I do have some knowledge of popular culture, Russell," he said in response.

"Yes," I replied. "I believe 'uffish' and 'mimsey' can be found among other of his inventions there." It is a place to start at any rate.

I have whole passages of Greek and Latin classics, Shakespeare, and the Bible committed to memory, but I do not know all of the lines to "Jabberwocky." So, I asked Brother Adam if he had a copy.

"No, I don't," he replied, but maybe David does.

David was found checking the hives. He had become an unofficial apprentice to Brother Adam in the past year. We made our inquiry and he responded by heading home to see if there might be a copy among Michael's things. We waited thirty minutes, amid the thick and familiar smell of honey and the sound of buzzing bees, for Adam to return. He came back with a smile on his face and a worn, but sturdy edition of Alice in Wonderland in his hand.

"I didn't even know he had this," said David as he handed the book to Brother Adam. "I found it in a trunk with some of his old school texts."

Brother Adam handed the book to me. After a few moments, I found the poem in question and read it aloud.

JABBERWOCKY

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsey were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought -
So he rested by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One,two! One,two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Calooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsey were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Alice's response to hearing the poem was 'Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don't know exactly what they are.' My response to Michael's letter, exactly.

"I confess," said Brother Adam, "hearing that brings me no closer knowing what Michael was trying to say."

"Nor I," I admitted. "But if you give me a little time with it, I think I might."

With that, I left Holmes, Brother Adam, and David to talk about bees or the weather or nonsense verse. I went back to our cell and took out Michael's letter. The clues would be there.

It is common to use numbers in the writing of a code. I looked for them in the letter. They were there in the form of the words, second, third, and six. I wondered if they might refer to lines two, three, and six. That gave me "Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:" and "All mimsey were the borogroves," and "The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!" And like Alice, I found them pretty words that meant nothing.

Maybe focusing on the words of Michael's letter that could be found in Carroll's poem would help. They were obviously "uffish" and "mimsey." Were they paired with any numbers? No. But they were matched with days of the week. Tuesday and Wednesday respectively. And the days of the week are seven in number. If one, like our calendars, considers Sunday to start the week, then Tuesday is the third day and Wednesday the fourth. What did that tell me?

Not much at first. Not much at second either. But I persisted. I looked at the lines that contained uffish and mimsey. "And in uffish thought he stood," the first said. "All mimsey were the borogoves," said the second. But what did third and fourth have to do with them? The uffish line was not the third of the stanza, though the mimsey one was the fourth. To what else could I apply third and fourth I wondered?

"Let's see," came my reply in a barely audible tone.

"See what?" asked Holmes who had come into our room as quietly as the night.

Startled, I said, "What?"

"That is what I asked you, Russell."

"Holmes," I said, "Why didn't you let me know you were here?"

"The door squeaked when I came in Russell. You were not paying attention. At least not to the world around you."

"So I wasn't," I admitted. "I was engrossed in solving this puzzle."

"So I gathered. Do you want to show me what you've found so far?"

I explained my process to him. He took a look at the lines and said, "The third word in the line with uffish is "in." The fourth word in the line with mimsey is "the." What other matching words do you see?"

I looked closely and found wood. Shortly after, I found stood. Holmes found the sixth word of the line with wood to be "wood." And the third word of the line with stood to be "its." "Now Russell, in what order do we put these four words?"

"The only way it makes sense is, "Its in the wood," I said. "But that's grammatically incorrect," I added.

"Details," said Holmes. Michael Sears was a mathematician, not a grammarian. The fact that there is no apostrophe between the t and the s of its is of no consequence."

"How did you know Michael was a mathematician?" I asked, as much to find the answer as to distract him from my chastisement.

"David told me after you left us to the bees. By the way Russell, you could have found the order of your words by matching them to the order of their mention in the letter."

"Thank you, Holmes," I said dryly. "I'm sure I would have come to that eventually. Now what we need to know is what is in the wood and where in the wood it is."

"Ah," said Holmes. I believe David has the answer to that, also. But it will have to wait until morning. Night has fallen, in case you hadn't noticed."

I had not. But if I had paid attention to the noises of my stomach, I would have realized that at least supper had slipped by without my notice. Fortunately, Holmes did notice. He brought me a sandwich and some beer. To my querulous look he answered, "The brothers brew beer in addition to making wine. Their vows are of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Apparently no one said the couldn't enjoy the occasional spirit in their quest for the Spirit."

I laughed and ate my meal. That night I dreamed of slaying dragons in the wood. When I woke the next morning, we set about finding their treasure.

Holmes and I met Brother Adam following Matins. He took us to David's home. It was a small farmhouse on land that adjoined the abbey. It looked like it had been years since the land was intensively farmed, but there were fields showing the marks of planting and an orchard that given time and good weather would produce fruit. Brother Adam knocked on the heavy wood door and moments later, David appeared.

"Please come in," he said. "Mother and Father are in town," he added by way of explanation of what I did not know.

"I'm sorry to miss them," said Brother Adam. And then I knew why David had made the remark.

In a few steps, we found ourselves in a sun-lit drawing room. The pale yellow walls seemed to take their color from the rays coming in through the leaded glass of the windows.

David offered us seats and tea and after we politely finished our cups, Holmes handed him back both book and letter he had lent to us. David set them on a nearby table and when he turned back to Holmes, he saw yet another offering to be taken.

"What do you make of this?" Holmes asked him.

David smiled. It was the second time I had seen him do so in as many days. "I don't know what we're looking for," he said, "but I know where to look."

Where? Was the question we all asked him in our minds and as if he heard us, replied, "A hiding place we discovered as children. A cave in the wood."

"We'll need a torch," said Holmes. "Do you have one?"

"Yes," said David. "In fact I have two. I'll get them."

Returning from some distant room, David brought the two torches, one of which he handed to Holmes. Holmes switched it on to make sure it worked. It glowed faintly in the bright room, but would cut a clean swath through the darkness of the cave. He switched it off and David led us out the door and through the wood. The path was rough and fraught with the exposed roots of more than one copper beech. I tripped twice, but caught myself before I wounded more than my pride. I was more than a little pleased to reach the cave. At least I was until I remembered where we were going. My experience being locked up in that cool dark cellar by Margery Childe's disreputable husband, I have had a great reluctance to enter dark enclosed places. Holmes saw the expression on my face and handed me the torch. "Come, Russell," he said. "I'll be right behind you."

David led the way through passages that must have seemed spacious to a child but to a nearly six foot tall adult, were perilously tight. At one point I stopped to ostensibly to catch my breath, but found it hard to breathe at all. Panic set in and and my short rapid breaths brought in little air. I felt a firm hand on my shoulder and a soft voice in my ear. "Breathe slowly, Russell," it instructed. And I could hear the voice doing so. I listened and followed the pattern until I could regain my composure. "All right now?" asked Holmes.

"Yes," I said weakly.

"It's not much farther," I heard David say from a distance in front of me. And from that I took comfort.

Holmes kept his hand on my shoulder until the passage debouched into a large room. At least it was large by the standard of what we had just come through. I felt a rush of cool air that reminded me there was a world of sky and sun waiting me out there. I closed my eyes and imagined it. I opened them when I heard David say, "I found it." He had clambered up one rocky wall and was sitting on a narrow shelf. In his hands was a tin box.

Carefully, he made his way down. The box was locked and while Holmes or I could have opened it in seconds, he suggested we wait until we reached sunlight. I sighed gratefully and we made our way out of the cave.

The sunlight was wonderful, though I found myself squinting as I did when I was not wearing my glasses. As my eyes got used to the brightness, they opened more fully and in a few moments they were ready to see what was in the box. Holmes had already set about opening the box. It proved no problem for his picklocks. Faster than a key, I thought.

Holmes lifted the lid and let David have the honor of extracting the contents of the box. From it, he drew out several sheets of paper. He looked at them and handed them to Brother Adam who looked at them and handed them to Holmes who looked at them and handed them to me. I examined them carefully. They were filled with precious few words, but many a mathematical formula. The words that did catch my eye were "universe," "origins," "space," and "time." It appeared Michael was working on a theory of the origins of the universe.

Holmes gave me an expectant look to which I responded, "It seems Michael was a physicist in addition to a mathematician. This looks like a theory on the origins of the universe or at least the makings of one." I handed the papers back to David.

David looked at the papers again. "I'm not so sure I understand this," he said.

"I think I do," said Brother Adam. We all looked at him. He took the papers from David and held them like an ancient scroll. I half expected him to begin an exegesis. Instead, he said, "I think he was looking for God and he found him in the simplicity and beauty of numbers. I think he left this for you to let you know he found what he was looking for and with hopes that you would do the same."

"I think I already have," replied David.

"Then I think these will be of more use to you, Miss Russell," Brother Adam said, handing me the papers.

"Yes, thank you," I said.

"A little light reading?" asked Holmes.

"Relatively," I replied. And we turned to walk back to the monastery.

Brother David sat quietly in the choir stall. Vespers would begin soon. This was his favorite time of day. A day of hard labor done and a night of sleep broken only by welcome prayer, to begin.

He thought about all that had transpired in the past few years. Michael's death, his own brush with death, and the resurrection that came from both. It was in facing the pain that he had come to know joy. And how he felt joy in this holy place. In a few minutes he would be joined by his brothers. Old and new. He smiled. It came easy to him now.