Dead Man's Land

by Robert Ryan

  But the marks on the body? How to explain away those? The scoring he had found was definitely man-made.

  Or woman-inflicted. Yes, or woman. Don’t make the mistake of leaving out fifty per cent of suspects due to their sex.

  Plus there was a third factor he had kept to himself. Shipobottom’s eye had shown signs of blue flecking when he examined him at the Big House. Before the transfusion. Whatever had killed him had begun its work before he had received his fresh blood. If only he had mentioned the blue spots at the time; now it would seem like a retrospective revision, an attempt to shift the blame away from the blood.

  Just for a second Watson felt his head spin.

  This had been a pivotal skill for Holmes. The ability to hold a half-dozen scenarios in his mind at once, examining each one in detail, while maintaining a questioning overview of the whole case. It was akin to the ability that great chess players were believed to possess, the mental flexibility and acuity to analyse the strategic and tactical outcome of a great many potential moves. And Watson had always been a middling chess player. Cards were more his forte – nap, loo, piquet, poker. Games that relied on a hefty dose of chance, he reminded himself.

  He closed the gun box and flipped down the catches. He would return it to Myles in the morning.

  Next, he crossed over and, using his penknife, carefully slit open the packet, pulled out the magazine within and dropped it on the bed. What he saw looking back at him from the rough blankets made him reach for his cigarettes.

  He smoked for some minutes before he finally flipped open the pages. The table of contents of the British Bee Keepers’ Journal told him that on page 43, he should find the article trailed on the front: ‘Towards an Understanding of the Worker Bee’s Dance’. The article in question was credited – as had been proclaimed on the cover – to Mr Sherlock Holmes. However, in the more comprehensive listings within, it was noted that there was a co-author (the name in smaller type), a Thomas Patrick.

  A co-author?

  For a second Watson thought this might have been sent by some old adversary, taunting him, exulting in the broken partnership. He looked at the postmark. A Lewes stamp. And the envelope was San Remo, linen lined, which he knew was a favourite. And the gum? A scent of strong tobacco. No, it was no tease. It was from the retired detective himself.

  He gaped the end of the envelope and peered in, then took the journal by the spine and shook it. No note or card fluttered out. He flicked the pages, searching for an inscription or notation. Nothing.

  Thomas Patrick? Obviously some fellow apiarist. Reluctantly he turned to page 43, which was adorned with a large photograph of a crowded comb, over which white directional arrows had been super-imposed to represent the movements of one of the inhabitants of the hive. To the layman this was gobbledegook, like those beginners’ guides to dancing that purported to show the foot movements. He read the first line of the article.

  ‘My years of investigation as the world’s only consulting detective . . .’

  His years of investigating?

  ‘. . . revealed nothing in the criminal annals that has been quite so baffling or exciting as trying to decipher the code of the humble honeybee.’

  Hah. He could name a dozen cases that were intellectually the equal of . . .

  ‘Yet during the past three years, my colleague and companion, Thomas Patrick . . .’

  Well, really. That was just too much. Unforgivable. Colleague and companion? The man had set out to wound. And had done so.

  ‘Despite the best efforts in the last century of august apiarists such as Leon Alberti and Auguste Kerckhoffs, the mechanism by which . . .’

  Watson scanned the following pages, picking out words and phrases and sighing. Holmes had always been admirably succinct in speech; he could analyse and solve a conundrum and present the solution not only quickly but eloquently. But here, he was rambling and imprecise. Did this bee-lovers’ rag not have an editor?

  Watson took a deep breath. He was tired, emotional and, he had to accept, not a little jealous of the new collaborator. Who on earth was he? He could think of no intimate of that name and Holmes had never mentioned any enthusiasts he admired. Patrick? he said to himself, rolling the name around, like a kitten batting at a ball of yarn. Thomas Patrick? Holmes and Watson had always had a good, solid ring about it. But Holmes and Patrick? They sounded like bankers or a small-town firm solicitors of oaths. Perhaps even pawnbrokers. Anarchists.

  He picked up the magazine, stuffed it carelessly back in the envelope and tossed it towards the chair, hardly caring when it missed and slid to the stone floor. He began to unbutton his tunic, eager for a wash and for sleep to come quickly without, he hoped, too many dreams of poor Shipobottom’s distorted death mask. Or, for that matter, Apis bloody mellifera.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Watson did not dream of human gargoyles or of foraging honeybees. Instead, his exhausted and overworked imagination took him back to their final meeting on the Downs. It was more like one of the popular newsreels than a dream, almost a verbatim account of what took place, apart from the colours. The green of the Sussex grass was of a far more intense hue than usual and the sky looked like a storm straight from Turner’s brush, dashed with livid purples and scarlets. The order of the conversation was jumbled, too, but the sentiments intact.

  On the day in question, Watson had called at the cottage. There had been a cold lunch accompanied by a glass each of Montrachet. Watson had given Holmes a present, a leather-bound, heavily illustrated treatise on the morphology of bees by René Antoine Ferchault de Réamur. Holmes had presented him with a handsome magnifying glass with a touching inscription. Then, a walk was proposed.

  In the dream, as in reality, Holmes had stopped within sight of Firle Beacon and turned to face Watson. It was the first time the detective had spoken since they had left the cottage.

  ‘I must say, you look quite dashing, Watson.’

  ‘Thank you. Aquascutum does wonders for a man’s figure. And you look well. A little thinner, perhaps.’ Gaunt might be closer to the truth, he supposed. Holmes’s skin had a chalky quality, as if minerals had leached out of the soil. He was dressed in a rough tweed jacket, with a matching hat that sported thick earflaps, and breeches with buttoned gaiters atop a pair of stout shoes. In his hand was the dark walking stick with a bulbous head known as a Penang lawyer.

  ‘I am lacking Mrs Hudson’s breakfasts, Watson. I have a girl but, alas . . .’

  ‘And you are sufficiently busy? In the mind?’

  He laughed, for he knew what the doctor was getting at. ‘Fear not, Watson, the puzzle of the bees, and the extraction of the honey – remind me to give you a pot – are more than enough distraction from the seven per cent solution. You may search my cottage—’

  Watson hooted. ‘I have just seen your cottage. It would take a week to tidy the newspapers and the old files.’

  ‘Ah, we have a routine. Once I can no longer make the front door unimpeded, my girl throws out whatever is on the floor. Now, Watson, I have a little proposal for you.’

  He felt a frisson of the old excitement, those moments when the detective would look out of the bow window and announce a very curious visitor, or gather his flap-eared travelling cap and ask him to bring along his service revolver. But he sensed this would be something more prosaic. ‘And that is?’

  From now on the dream encounter followed exactly the real thing, the only addition by his unconscious being the broiling, rapidly darkening sky.

  ‘If you tell me where your offices will be in Wiltshire, I shall endeavour to come across to that county once a week. Breakfast, lunch or dinner. A venue of your choosing.’

  A gloom fell on Watson. It was an attractive offer. ‘But I won’t be based in Wiltshire.’

  ‘No?’ Holmes looked surprised. ‘Aldershot, perhaps? That’s not too far. Or London?’ He sounded excited at the prospect.

  ‘I have asked to go overseas. As part of a front line Medical Investigation Un
it.’

  The reaction was unexpected. His friend threw back his head and roared with laughter, his bony shoulders shaking. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Watson,’ he said at last.

  ‘I am, as you have said before, an old campaigner.’

  ‘With an emphasis on the old. Why, you were limping and wheezing before we were half-way here.’

  Watson pointed at Holmes’s Penang lawyer. ‘I did not have a benefit of a stick.’

  ‘This? An affectation. I have all my old energies and appetites intact. Come, Watson, you cannot be serious. Do you really want to go over there?’ He pointed south with the stick and repeated a popular phrase from the current headlines. ‘To rescue plucky little Belgium?’

  Watson became aware of a crackling sound. There was a restless kite above their heads and, at the other end of it, a young lad looking disturbed at their cross words. Watson raised a hand in greeting, to show there was nothing to be concerned about, but the boy ignored the gesture and returned to wrestling with his aerial charge. Watson turned back to Holmes. ‘You once said that this war would bring us a cleaner, better, stronger land.’

  ‘And I believe that to be so. But war is a young man’s business, Watson. And when you were young, you took two bullets for your country. Debt paid. In fact, you are very much in the black. You belong behind a desk.’

  ‘If I were to spend the war in some stuffy Whitehall office, it would be me reaching for a seven per cent solution.’

  ‘You never had that much imagination, Watson,’ he said, somewhat cruelly. ‘Let me tell you, as a dear friend, that you have never been the same since the death of Emily—’

  ‘Of course. I loved her. It was a terrible waste. I grieved—’

  ‘And grieve still. Oh, I know time is the great healer, and I bided that time. And bided. You became rash. Distracted. Sentimental. You wrote poetry, Watson. Poetry. And I tell you, this army nonsense is all too soon. I was worried about you at the time of that Von Bork business. How you moped those two years I was away. Oh, when you come to write it up, what will it be? His Last Case? I am sure you’ll gloss over your own condition at that time. Let me tell you, it was cause for concern. And I am not sure the balance of your mind has yet recovered.’

  ‘Because I wrote poetry?’

  He pursed his lips. ‘Not entirely. Although it isn’t your forte.’

  ‘Because I want to serve my country?’

  He hissed his answer and banged his stick on the ground to back up the words. ‘Because you want to put yourself in harm’s way. Deliberately.’

  ‘Now who is being ridiculous? For once your analytical powers fail you,’ Watson declared. ‘I am not hoping for release from this life. I am a doctor. I want to save lives. The lives of our soldiers.’

  His face drained of blood, as if he was shocked at his skills being slighted. ‘For goodness’ sake, Watson, you were always the practical one in the partnership. You told me your surgical skills had slipped. You even put it in writing when reporting the Godfrey Staunton case.’

  His memory was slightly faulty; Watson had admitted his once assiduous habit of keeping abreast with the very latest medical developments had fallen by the wayside somewhat. He had since remedied that. ‘That’s as may be, but there is more to being a medical man than the knife.’

  ‘You told me there was a position at the War Department Experimental Grounds. Wiltshire, you said.’

  ‘I did not like the type of work.’

  ‘Well, I forbid it. I forbid you to go to war.’

  This re-emergence of the old, infuriating high-handedness stunned Watson. ‘You cannot.’

  ‘Can’t I?’ The arrogant matter-of-factness of his next statement was even more exasperating. ‘I shall write to the Director-General of Medical Services. I shall explain my misgivings about your mental health.’

  Watson felt his vision cloud, and he was suddenly viewing the world down a long, dark tunnel. A hammering began in his temple. ‘Should you do that, it would be the end of our friendship.’

  A brittle silence thickened around them, save for the whistle of the wind off the sea and the snap of the kite.

  ‘Very well,’ Holmes said at last. With that, he turned and walked off the way they had come, stabbing at the ground with the Penang lawyer with each stride.

  Watson was struck by the enormity of what had just happened, how a few cross words had escalated to the kind of impasse that could strain a relationship for years. For ever.

  ‘Holmes!’ he shouted at the retreating figure. ‘Holmes! Come back, man.’

  The kite-flyer was standing watching him, something like sympathy in his young eyes. Watson took three steps along the path and tried one last time, filling his lungs for a final bellow. ‘Sherlock Holmes!’

  But the long legs had done their work, the wind gusting across the Channel from France snatched at his words and the now distant detective showed no acknowledgement that he had heard.

  WEDNESDAY

  THIRTY

  Despite such a vivid reminder of the parting of the ways, Watson awoke with a fresh energy. His mind, so clouded and woolly the night before, had sharpened overnight. The knots that had clustered behind his brow had dissolved. Brindle, who appeared to have suppressed his grief at his friend Lovat’s death, arrived with hot tea, warm water, a fresh uniform and two white medical coats.

  Watson thanked him and requested breakfast in his room, not being ready to confront what was sure to be a Mess that had already set its face against him and his transfusions. Nor did he want to spar with Caspar Myles just yet. Not until he had more ammunition.

  While he waited for his eggs and toasted bread to arrive – plus, he hoped, bacon and perhaps some tomatoes – Watson wrote in his notebook. He had been very remiss in his questioning of the various individuals who had encountered poor Shipobottom at one stage or other of his illness. He needed a timetable of events. Plus a note of all who had been alone with the deceased for any length of time. He then wrote down a full account of all that had happened to him since his arrival in the CCS. Not, as he once did, for posterity, but because he felt certain he would be called to account for his actions at some stage, and as Ho—

  – and as he knew, even the most trivial details might turn out to be important.

  Especially the trivial details, came the soothing voice. But he wasn’t listening to ghosts. Not today.

  Once breakfast had been dispatched, along with more tea, Watson found himself pom-pomming Tchaikovsky’s Third as he hurried down towards the transfusion tent. The weather looked to have settled in as uniformly dreary. A slate-grey cap sat over Northern France and Benelux, and the rain, while not quite as punishing as the previous night, was steady and chill.

  Wrapped in his Aquascutum, he slithered along paths that were now filmed with treacherous mud. Here, the stuff was brown, with the consistency of caramel, stretchy and sticky. Down the road, it was yellow and slimy. Elsewhere it was a grey-greenish fluid, viscous like rice pudding, and in yet other places it was black and putrid and dried into a coating as hard and brittle as toffee. ‘Mud’ hardly did the malleable substance justice. He had read Captain Scott’s account of his last journey and how he catalogued the various states that ice and snow could adopt. Watson thought they needed a similar vocabulary for the liquid soil of Flanders.

  Once inside the tent, he divested himself of his coat and tunic and began to look around. The body, its torment now hidden within a stitched blanket, was where he had left it. But it wasn’t the deceased that interested him for the moment.

  Instead, he began to test the walls of the tent, looking for rents or ventilation openings. He knew only too well that death could enter a room in many ways, through a false ceiling, a ventilation shaft, a trap door. But there was little to suggest anything of the sort here. True, someone could lift up the skirts of the tent and come in, but the rain had done its best to remove anything that might be helpful in that regard. Still, he went over the ground, looking for incriminating impri
nts, just in case. No stone unturned, as he told himself.

  Afterwards, his back aching from all the bending, he sat on one of the empty cot-beds. It had been foolish to think a solution would spring out at him fully formed. But there was one aspect he could eliminate very easily indeed.

  He stood and crossed to where the Icehouse box stood on a trestle table. He twisted the two barrel-locks and opened it. To his relief a wash of cold air hit him in the face. Most of the ice had melted, but only just: the temperature had not risen above . . . he looked at the dial thermometer . . . thirty-nine degrees. One short of the maximum. He would have to refill it shortly.

  From the cold cavity he extracted one of the glass bottles and then resealed the lid of the box. Watson was a group IV, a universal donor – his blood could be given to anyone with relative safety – but he could only receive a transfusion from his own kind. Fortunately, IV was well represented in the population, and he actually had two 500cc samples of it. He quickly located a sterilized cannula and was rolling up his sleeve when he became aware that someone was watching him.

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’

  Staff Nurse Jennings stood close to the entrance, the bottom of her long grey woollen coat weighted with fresh mud. She was wearing gumboots several sizes too large, with her regular shoes in her hand.

  When he didn’t reply, she said: ‘I heard all about the incident with the sergeant. What use is it testing the blood on yourself, Major?’

  ‘Every use.’

  ‘But it might have been one contaminated batch.’

  He finished rolling up his sleeve. ‘All samples were treated equally, Staff Nurse Jennings.’

  She took off her coat and slid out of the gumboots. ‘But what if . . . ?’ Her eyes darted towards the canvas-shrouded corpse. ‘What if it does that to you? If you start to fit?’