Dead Man's Land (39 page)

Only now, in the gloom of the old beer cellar, did he think about Miss Pippery. Mrs Gregson was with her now, inconsolable. Would she blame Watson for her death? After all, in the midst of all this, he himself had delivered a murder. He had brought Miss Pippery up into the firing line. A stab of guilt, a physical punch to the stomach, made him groan, before logic reasserted itself. It wasn’t his fault.

No?

No. Just this bloody war.

He turned his head as the door opened and Major Torrance entered. He looked in need of medical attention himself. His white coat, worn over his uniform, was almost as soiled as Watson’s pyjamas had been. His face was drawn and pallid.

‘I am sorry to interrupt, Major Watson.’

‘There’s plenty of room in here,’ he said.

The man smiled and shook his head. ‘Not yet. Apparently our phone lines are down thanks to that air raid. I have a message for you. Marked Most Urgent.’

‘From whom?

Torrance tried not to sound impressed as he raised the envelope. ‘Winston Churchill.’

‘Hand me a towel, would you?’

The major passed one across, along with the note. Watson dried his hands and ripped at the gummed flap. It was a single sheet of paper. Churchill, it said, had received a call and there was a message from Mr Sherlock Holmes. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Watson.

He handed it across and watched Torrance’s face as he read it and took in the implications.

‘It explains a lot,’ said Watson.

‘But not quite everything. You should finish drying yourself and come with me to the morgue.’

The young American doctor had been blown to pieces. One leg was missing and most of a hip, leaving a huge crimson wound, from which part of his entrails poked. The left arm was amputated above the elbow. The right hand was present but was detached from the wrist. Tendons poked from the severed surfaces like cut electrical wires. His face showed the disfiguring ripples of blast damage. But there was enough left for Watson to tell that, at one time, the eyes had been bulging and that the face carried a distorted grin.

Watson took all this in and asked the morgue attendant to draw the sheet back over and cover the remains of Caspar Myles. He desperately wanted a cigarette to mask the smell of death all around him.

‘Well?’ asked Torrance.

‘All these injuries are post mortem,’ Watson said.

‘True. A bomb from the air raid appears to have unearthed one of the mass graves. He was blown to the surface. At least, most of him was. The blast also ripped open the blanket he had been put into. An orderly recognized the body.’

‘He never left the CCS then,’ Watson said.

‘It seems not.’

Watson pondered for a second. ‘He was murdered and buried sometime after he left the Shipobottom tent.’ It was a devious place to dispose of a body; just one more blanket-wrapped corpse among many.

‘And it looks like this
Risus sardonicus
,’ offered Torrance.

‘Oh, it is.’

‘So, forgive me. What does this mean?’

‘It means we know who the murderer is,’ said Watson.

Lieutenant Metcalf moved along the fire trench, fighting for grip on the slimy duckboards, past the gas alarm stations and the snipers, the observers with their periscopes and the machine-gun crews in their raised strongholds. He kept his head down, below the sandbagged parapet. The water table was high here and the trenches relatively shallow. Sandbags and wooden planks were used to give the excavations extra depth, but even so, it was far too easy to expose yourself to enemy fire for his liking.

He found Tugman, Farrar and Moulton together, as always, in a sodden funk hole, looking miserable as they chewed on their hard tack biscuits.

‘Don’t get up,’ he said, even though they had shown no inclination to do so.

‘No hot breakfast this morning, sir,’ said young Moulton.

‘No, so I heard,’ said Metcalf, who had enjoyed a meal cooked by their batman in a rather spacious dugout. ‘The supply column didn’t get through. They’ll be here this evening.’

‘Funny how we got more bullets through, though,’ said Tugman, indicating a new ammunition box.

‘Tugman, a word, please,’ Metcalf said.

The corporal struggled to his feet and stepped out of the alcove into the body of the trench. Metcalf indicated they should move along, out of earshot of the others. They turned the corner of the trench and halted at a small redoubt, excavated to protrude a little way into no man’s land as a forward observation post. At the far end a box periscope, unmanned, had been nailed to an upright plank of wood.

Metcalf offered the corporal a cigarette, which he took. ‘Tugman, I know we don’t always get on or see eye to eye, although I confess I have no idea why.’

Tugman lit his cigarette and didn’t offer an answer.

‘Well, Captain de Griffon and I were talking, and we were saying that, despite that, you are the most senior and capable of the men.’

Senior? Well, he was thirty-five, which made him an old ’un for a Pal. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, with Shipobottom and Platt gone—’

Tugman began a laugh that turned into a hacking cough.

‘You all right, Corporal?’

‘Blimey. You’re not offering me an extra stripe are you, Lieutenant?’

Metcalf didn’t like the tone one bit. ‘As a matter of fact, we are.’

‘Must be mad,’ Tugman muttered.

‘I beg your pardon, Corporal?’

‘I said it makes me sad, sir.’

‘What does?’

Tugman puffed on the cigarette. ‘To have to turn you down.’

Metcalf put a foot on the firestep. ‘And why would you do that?’

‘Because the last two who got that stripe ended up dead, that’s why. Permission to speak freely, sir.’

‘Granted.’

‘The men is frightened. They ain’t stupid, not a bit of it. Someone killed Shippy, then Platt tries to kill a fuckin’ major and gets shot for his trouble. We all saw Captain de Griffon rolling around in agony; lucky to be alive he is, I reckon.’ He pointed over into no man’s land. ‘When we signed up for this, we thought we knew who the enemy was. Over there. Fritz. The Hun. But who’s the enemy now? Time was you could stand on that firestep and at least know your back was covered. Not now, though. The enemy might be the bloke next to you, the one bringing the tea, even your lieutenant.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

They both heard what sounded like a ragged volley of gunfire.

Tugman shrugged. ‘I’m just sayin’. You were in with the captain when he took queer, like. You tell me what’s goin’ on?’

‘I have no more idea than the next man. But the Military Police are investigating.’

Tugman curled his lip at the mention of the despised ‘cherry-knobs’.

‘So “no” is your final answer?’

Tugman nodded and said something, his words drowned out by the roar of a misfiring engine. A crippled German plane came low over their heads, trailing oily smoke as it tried to maintain enough height to reach its own lines. That’s what the shooting had been. Pot shots from trenches further back.

Without thinking, Metcalf unbuttoned his holster and raised his revolver to have a pop at the now vanished plane. He levered himself up on the firestep. As he did so, Tugman heard the faintest of metallic pings and Metcalf stepped back.

He turned to stare at Tugman, a dazed expression on his face. ‘Damn,’ he said softly.

A curtain of blood oozed down his forehead towards his eyes and his knees buckled. The revolver clattered onto the firestep and bounced off into the sludge. As the young officer collapsed onto the duckboard, Tugman stepped back to give him room to fall, looking down at the neatly drilled hole in the Brodie helmet that clearly showed where the sniper’s bullet had entered Lieutenant Metcalf’s skull.

After they had said their goodbyes to Miss Pippery and she had been removed to the mortuary, Sister Spence had invited them to her tent for her special brew of hot chocolate with rum.

Mrs Gregson, uneasy at the truce that had apparently been declared between them, said very little as Watson, forced to address an audience despite the sombre occasion, told them what he thought was the most likely explanation for the events they had all witnessed.

‘Mrs Gregson here found three marks on Hornby’s coffin,’ said Watson as he took a sip of the invigorating drink.

‘I shan’t ask how,’ said Sister Spence, handing her a mug.

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Gregson, her voice thin after all the crying she had done at poor Alice’s side.

‘Which means that the murderer couldn’t get to the body, so had to do the next best thing. Mark the box that Hornby was to be buried in.’

‘Why?’ asked Sister Spence. ‘Why mark the bodies?’

‘I don’t know,’ Watson admitted. ‘One thing at a time. This is the next step.’

He passed Sister Spence part of the message from Holmes, which she in turn handed to Mrs Gregson. ‘Lord Stanwood was victim number one in the sequence,’ she read.

‘Stanwood, Leverton, Hornby, Shipobottom, numbers one to four,’ Watson added.

‘And Captain de Griffon, potentially five,’ said Sister Spence.

‘No,’ Watson said, giving her the second section of the telephone message.

Captain de Griffon is an imposter
.

‘My goodness,’ the sister said, showing it to Mrs Gregson. ‘How can this be?’

‘The murderer was, is, de Griffon, or someone pretending to be him. Right under my nose.’ He balled a fist and swept it through the air, as if striking an invisible table.

‘Our nose,’ Mrs Gregson corrected. ‘We were all fooled.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But he saved your life. From the gas.’

‘I’ve thought of that. Was he saving my life? Or was he trying to save his horse?’

‘Save his horse?’ Mrs Gregson asked. ‘He shot his horse, remember?’

‘Or was it to silence Sergeant Platt?’ continued Watson. ‘Perhaps he wanted to put Platt in the frame so we would think this was all over. That we had our murderer.’ The sergeant was hardly the shiniest button in the box; Watson was certain it would have been easy for a charmer like de Griffon to subvert him to his cause.

‘But de Griffon nearly died himself. I saw him. You saw him. The fits.’

‘Mrs Gregson, I think we are dealing with a man of many parts. What if he knows just how much of this toxin is fatal? What if he diluted the dose?’

‘But his fever. The pulse.’

‘Bah,’ said Watson. ‘How blind could I be? The pallor, the palpitations. Chewing cordite would do that. A mix of his poison and the propellant would be enough to blur the symptoms. And a fit is easily imitated. You don’t have to be Edmund Kean to do that.’

‘A risky strategy,’ she said.

‘And killing your own men isn’t? Don’t imagine we are necessarily dealing with a rational mind here.’

‘Hmm.’ Sister conceded the point but went on gnawing at the bone of doubt. ‘How on earth could he have arranged the gassing? He was here, man, in this station.’

Watson had considered that. ‘Cecil.’

‘Cecil?’

‘The dog. I would wager anything you will find his collar contains a sleeve or similar for messages. It was how he would communicate with Platt. So he could be here and tell Platt to take me out of the picture.’ He thought for a moment. ‘In fact, Platt offered me a tot of rum at one point, just when I had mounted Lord Lockie.’ He shivered at the thought of what might have happened had he accepted. ‘The gas was the second attempt on my life, perhaps.’

‘But why all the deaths?’ asked Mrs Gregson. ‘What links them? And why would he kill Myles? He’s not on your little list.’

Watson already had a theory about that, but he knew enough not to blurt it all out at once. He could see that he had already strained their credulity. ‘We’ll just have to ask de Griffon.’

‘The Leigh Pals have pulled out of Suffolk Farm,’ said Sister Spence. ‘So he’s at the front.’

Watson pinched the bridge of his nose. Gassed, shot at, bombed, saddled with cracked bones he may be, but he had to summon up some more reserves. He had to see this through. By himself, for once.

‘Then that’s where I’ll have to go.’

The old man was dozing when the mine detonated. He knew from experience that you didn’t so much hear the explosions as feel them. Such was the amount of TNT packed into the tunnels under the enemy’s lines – for the mine could be either German or British, he had no way of telling – that it caused a ripple in the earth. And the resultant wave was so powerful it spread out from Belgium, travelling under the Channel and causing the windows of his cottage on the South Downs to rattle and the building to creak alarmingly. It also set up a powerful resonance of fearfulness in his body. His friend was out there, in the very place where whole swathes of the countryside – and any living things upon it – were swallowed into vast craters. Men were turned to dust in an instant. The thought made him feel nauseous.

He had been resting in his chair in front of the dying embers of his fire. The effort of travelling to Flitcham had depleted his shallow reserves of energy. He had been snoozing off and on for the best part of two days. But the unease generated by the mine meant he wouldn’t be able to sleep for a few hours now. He looked at the clock. Time for some hot chocolate. And a small brandy, perhaps. He would have to get it himself. He had given Bert a few days off. It would take at least that before he had the strength for his next visit, all the way up north to Leigh.

He felt a second vibration through his feet, like an aftershock.

Strange, he thought, they usually detonated the mines first thing in the morning. Just before dawn was the preferred time. Of course, accidents did happen. They always did with high explosives. He looked down at the book he had been reading when he had nodded off.
The American Civil War
. The technique of burrowing under enemy lines and creating a huge subterranean bomb had been perfected in that conflict.

And something else relevant to Watson’s predicament had also played its part. In certain Confederate states, he had read, if a man was conscripted, he could nominate a willing replacement to go in his stead. These doppelgängers had to be roughly the same age and physical fitness, and they were often paid by rich landowners to avoid their sons having to go into battle. It was like nominating a ‘champion’ to fight in your place. If they survived, the champions would come home to wealth and land. If, of course, the South won. It was a double gamble – being alive and on the winning side – but many thought it worth the risk, as they would end up serving anyway.