Dead Man's Land (45 page)

At the transit camp he’d managed to buy forty of Fortnum’s own Virginian Special from a young subaltern, an Old Etonian, who was returning home without most of his right arm. ‘My smoking hand,’ as he put it. ‘Can’t get used to using the left. Keep missing my mouth.’

Watson had told him the new prosthetics could be ordered with a built-in cigarette holder, which cheered him up no end.

Watson had hoped for a sudden unveiling of the coast, to see the brightly lit uplands of Great Britain, something to make his weary heart soar, but the capricious weather denied him this. Still, he could smell it now on the breeze, the scent of the land, as well as the pungent mix of oil, steam and fish from the docks. But it was a very British stench.

‘There you are. You’ll catch your death up here.’

He’d known she was on board, but had spent her time on the train, at the quay and on the boat tending the most seriously wounded, so they had seen little of each other since leaving the CCS.

‘I’ll be fine. What on earth have you got there?’

She was holding a large, painted cast-iron, very French cockerel.

‘It’s a present for someone. I bought it off one of the patients,’ said Mrs Gregson.

He looked at it. ‘It’s quite spectacularly ugly,’ he said.

‘Isn’t it just?’ she said with a wide grin. ‘But then so is the man I’m sending it to.’ She smiled at the thought of the note she would include with it when she sent Lang his very own cock. Childish, but she also knew it was the kind of juvenile, smutty humour that might placate him. After all, she might end up having to deal with him again one day. She didn’t need any residual anger or suspicion on his part.

‘Will you stop in Folkestone?’ he asked her. ‘It’s getting late now.’

‘I’ll see what the formalities are. Lots of paperwork I should imagine.’

‘If I can help with that, as a doctor, please ask.’

‘Thank you. I would like to travel up there with her as soon as I can. Get it over with. And get back to France.’

‘You’ll return?’ he asked, surprised.

She nodded firmly, as if there was no doubt. ‘I shall.’ She pointed at the metal cockerel. ‘Hence this peace offering. I’ll put in a request once I’ve seen the Pipperys. If they’ll even entertain me.’

Mrs Gregson was determined to face Miss Pippery’s parents. She feared, however, that they would blame her for their daughter’s death. Without Mrs Gregson, there would have been no motorcycle club or weekend hill climbs, no volunteering for nursing duties as soon as war broke out. The great adventure had ended, like so many, with a German bullet. On the other hand, someone had to tell them about how the shy, self-effacing girl had comforted dying men, helped repair wrecked bodies and, in the early days, defied snipers to extract the wounded men from what would become no man’s land.

‘You’re returning their daughter to them. Of course they’ll see you. And you are a link to Alice’s final days. I can’t tell you how important that will be to them. Don’t be surprised if they adopt you.’

He was serious, but she brushed it aside. ‘I’m not sure I make a good orphan. Even if they don’t invite me in, I can hand over her things. There’s some unfinished letters.’ Mrs Gregson cleared her throat and sniffed. ‘She talks about you in them.’

‘Me?’

‘You. It’s always the quiet ones. She thought it was hilarious that you suspected everyone of knitting those socks but her. I think Alice was a little goofy for you.’

Watson hooted so hard his ribs hurt again. He didn’t know the expression, but it was clear what she meant. ‘Oh, really, Mrs Gregson.’

She had given up trying to get him to call her Georgina. On the few occasions he had tried, he had rolled the word around his mouth like a gobstopper before he could bring himself to utter it. Even then, it never sat easy. She was beginning to wonder if he had called his wives ‘Mrs Watson’.

‘Oh, don’t be so surprised, Major,’ she said. ‘You have a certain something. For an older man.’

He let his smile fade into an exaggerated grimace. ‘It was all going so well until that last part.’

Mrs Gregson took a position next to him on the rail and slid close. ‘It’s not so bad, getting old.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Not when you consider the alternative.’

Her eyes gave an involuntary flick down to the deck. Miss Alice Pippery’s coffin was below, in the hold. Goodness knows what strings her family had pulled to have the body returned to them. It was very rare that anyone other than a very high-ranking officer or a member of the nobility was repatriated. A few dozen had made the crossing to rest under the earth of home; hundreds of thousands were interred where they had fallen, from labourer to lord, an equality in death that had been denied in life.

‘That is true.’

‘Did you hear that young Lieutenant Fairley is to be awarded the Military Cross?’ she asked.

This was a new award since his day, introduced in 1914, for warrant officers and commissioned officers below the rank of major. ‘I did. For rescuing me, apparently. Brave lad.’

Even braver when Watson discovered that Fairley really had been trapped out there once, wounded and pinned under a dead colleague, for several days; hence his aversion to no man’s land. It made his feat of excavating Watson from the lethal gloop that had almost engulfed him and carrying him back to safety even more remarkable.

‘And for making a fool of himself with my scarf.’ She shook her head at the embarrassing memory. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’

‘You were thinking it might just save his life. Which it did.’

Mrs Gregson had followed Watson along the overhead railway, and almost caught up with him several times. However, the presence of a woman had caused consternation among the men and she had been delayed several times by over-zealous and over-protective junior officers. Only the force of her personality, the sharp edge of her tongue and agreeing to hide her hair under a steel helmet had got her to Major Tyler and Lieutenant Fairley.

When Fairley saw the flare and determined to go out to get Watson, Mrs Gregson had persuaded him to don the green bandana and her topcoat. It had kept her safe out there, once upon a time, she insisted. Young Fairley, who had a healthy regard for the vagaries of no man’s land, and a superstitious streak just as wide as it, had agreed to the unusual garb. He’d dressed up as worse during high jinks in the mess, so he said.

‘He asked to keep the scarf, you know,’ said Mrs Gregson. ‘Claimed it had brought him luck. That he would carry it with him for the rest of the war.’

‘I hope it works for him.’ The phrase ‘rest of the war’ had a chilling ring. Who knew how long this madness would endure?

‘Did you hear from your friend Mr Holmes?’

‘Not yet.’ He had cabled Holmes to tell him that, judging by what he had overheard out in no man’s land, and from talking to Mrs Gregson, the key to the de Griffon case lay with the Truelove sisters. They were, apparently, legendary in suffragette circles for standing up to mill owners for equal pay, rights and promotion. But something had mysteriously made them flee the fight. And he had clearly heard ‘de Griffon’ call himself ‘Johnny Truelove’. A son, perhaps, out to revenge a mother and an aunt. But for what?

Holmes had replied he would be travelling to Leigh armed with the information and looking for that answer. ‘He will be disappointed in me, I fear, for losing the one man who could provide every answer.’

‘We’ve been through this, Major. You identified the killer. Nobody could have expected more.’

Watson gave a small, dissatisfied grunt. There had obviously been seven names on Truelove’s list. Seven potential victims. The man had got them all. And poor Caspar Myles. Truelove died knowing he had won, after a fashion. Which meant Watson had lost
. Nobody could have expected more?
Well, one man would have. A lot better.

‘At least you came back alive.’

‘I murdered him, didn’t I? De Griffon. I didn’t pull the trigger. Couldn’t do it. But by pinpointing him with that flare . . .’

She put a hand on his forearm and squeezed. ‘John, please.’ She hoped the use of his Christian name might make him listen for once. ‘You were just signalling for help. How were you to know there was a German sniper out there?’

Because there is always a German sniper out there, he thought. They hadn’t found Truelove’s body, although in truth nobody had looked very hard. It was possible that he was at the bottom of a shell hole, slowly rotting into mulch, or been blown to wet dust by a shell. Plenty of others had suffered such fates.

The ship’s horn sounded – a deep, confident blast that caused a shiver of pleasure in him – and he became aware of the propellers churning water. The hull of the ship juddered. They were slowing. Folkestone was ahead. The constellation of following gulls screeched their encouragement. A sudden sense of relief was palpable throughout the ship, as if all, including the vessel, had been holding their collective breath. They were safe from the U-boats at last.

‘Will you ever go back?’ Mrs Gregson asked.

He looked towards France, but a milky veil had been dropped over the Channel. He imagined he could smell the fortifications, though, and the vile taste that came with it made his stomach perform somersaults. Churchill had asked him to return. His interrogation of a captured sniper had convinced him that there was a spy network operating around Plug Street, communicating details of troop movements. He wanted Watson to investigate. But Watson had recommended he hand it over to Tobias Gregson. However, he had a feeling Churchill wasn’t finished with him yet. The man seemed to trust, even like him, now his suppositions about Porton had turned out to be correct.

‘I don’t know, is the honest answer. I’d be more than happy never to stand in a damned trench again. Excuse my language. Or see no man’s land.’

He had thought of it as a river when he had first spied it from the balloon, snaking its poisoned course across Europe. Now he knew it was nothing so benign; it was a raw, bleeding wound in the flesh of the earth, made and sustained by deranged men. One day soon, perhaps, it would scab over, but a full healing would take a lot longer than the time he had left in this world. Generations, perhaps. No, he didn’t want to lay eyes on that again.

‘On the other hand,’ he continued, ‘there is a terrible guilt at leaving our young men out there, fighting in those conditions. They need doctors. They need blood. No matter what you think of this war, they’ll need blood.’ He shook his head at the thought of the desperate transfusions, the hasty surgery, the number of maimed to come. Not to mention the bountiful crop of white crosses sprouting from the earth of Northern France and Belgium. Young men like Fairley were being cut down in droves.

A new general order had been issued that junior officers going into battle must dress like regular Tommies to stop them being targeted. Sticks, the badge of office, were prohibited during attacks. Watson doubted it would help. Snipers and machine gunners would still aim for the man with the revolver or the chap encouraging his platoon forward. But just thinking about the trenches gave him a hollow feeling, as if he had left some part of himself behind. Perhaps that was why men kept going back. To find the part of them that was missing when they were away from the front. Perhaps, of all the ailments they treated, war itself was the most virulent, insidious, strangely seductive disease.

‘I don’t know,’ he repeated.

‘Then where will you go when we dock?’ she asked. ‘London?’

He thought of smoke-filled lounges, crowded hotel lobbies, busy concert halls – would they still play Wagner or Beethoven at the Bechstein Hall now it had become the Wigmore? – and long lunches, of walks in Greenwich Park, the smell of the brewery along the river and of the tanneries when the wind blew from the northeast, the mournful honks of the lightermen in the fog, the view from the Observatory on a clear day. ‘I intend to. I telegrammed my club from Boulogne, asking them to keep me a room.’ He couldn’t face his cold, empty house near his old practice in Queen Anne Street. Not yet. Not ever? In that precise second he decided to sell it and buy somewhere that wasn’t suffused with the spirit of Emily. Perhaps he would move to rooms around the corner to Harley Street. Or even Baker . . .

‘I still see their faces in my dreams sometimes,’ Mrs Gregson confessed. She spoke quickly, as if she had been waiting to admit this for some time. ‘Hornby, Shipobottom. Do you?’

‘Sometimes,’ he admitted. And that poor horse, too.

‘Will you ever get to the bottom of everything that de Griffon did? And why?’

As they slid into the harbour, Watson imagined for a moment he saw a familiar figure, out on the breakwater, leaning on a heavy cane, watching intently as the ship slid into calmer waters. But that was impossible, as the movement of Channel traffic was highly classified. Nobody could possibly know he was on this boat at this time. No ordinary man, anyway.

‘Major?’

He looked at her, holding her headdress as the wind whipped at her. ‘Sorry. Miles away. I can’t quote chapter and verse about de Griffon or Truelove just yet.’

When he turned his gaze back to the spray-lashed wall, the figure with the walking stick had disappeared.

‘But I suspect there’s someone who can.’

Dead Man’s Land
was inspired by Sherlock Holmes’s suggestion, at the end of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
His Last Bow
(set in 1914), that Watson would return to his ‘old service’, which by that stage was called the Royal Army Medical Corps. What, I wondered, would a man of a certain age be able to do for the war effort? And how would he get along without his great friend?

My first and most heartfelt thanks go to Sue Light, whom I found through her blog This Intrepid Band (http://greatwarnurses.blogspot.com). It is a wonderful source of information about the medical services in WWI, especially the QA nurses. She kindly read an early draft of the book and made suggestions and corrections. Any errors remaining are mine alone (some by choice – she warned me not to have a VAD at the front). Very early on in our discussions about writing a WWI historical thriller, my editor, Maxine Hitchcock, came up with the idea of a detective in the trenches, and had the patience and tenacity to wait until I had worked out it had to be a doctor and a famous one at that. David Miller, my clear-headed agent, then pointed out that Dr Watson has been trademarked by the Conan Doyle Estate. So thanks to him and to Olivia Guest of Jonathan Clowes, which administers the estate. She listened while I pitched the idea over the telephone, and supported its progress through to permission being granted. Susan d’Arcy – as always – and Rob Follis gave early advice on the story and structure. Roger Johnson of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London (www.sherlockholmes.co.uk) put me in touch with David Stuart Davies, who gave the manuscript a once-over for any Holmesian howlers (although any that remain are my responsibility, of course). I would also like to thank lifelong Sherlock Holmes fan Anders Peter Mejer (see www.anderspetermejer.com) in Copenhagen for his long-distance enthusiasm and guidance, and Maxine Hitchcock, once more, and Clare Hey for their exemplary (and diplomatic) work on plot, character and pace, and for believing in Dr Watson. Also I am very grateful to James Horobin and Kerr MacRae for sticking with me over the years.