by Robert Ryan
‘I’m sorry about Churchill, sir.’
‘Ach, do not worry about that. You’ve proved a special kind of man can get behind enemy lines and back again, with the right planning. You missed him this time. There’ll be another. Eh, Bloch? We’ll get him next time.’
But Bloch didn’t answer. He was too busy looking at the damaged stranger reflected in the unforgiving glass of the telescopic sight.
THIRTY-TWO
‘Murder?’ Torrance rolled the word around his tongue, as if it assessing a fine claret. ‘Murder? Have you taken leave of your senses?’
Watson shifted in his chair. They were in Torrance’s office, a room that had once been the abbot’s sanctum. It was lined on three sides with bookshelves, all empty apart from a few military manuals, with the fourth wall taken up almost entirely by mullioned windows that overlooked the nearest tents of the CCS. Dense sheets of rain obscured the rest.
‘Yes, that’s correct.’
‘Are you all right, Watson? You don’t look too good.’
‘Just a small post-transfusion reaction. I’m feeling better by the minute.’ He mopped his brow. ‘It isn’t unusual. I suspect our method of cross-matching blood is a touch crude and sometimes our bodies remind us of this fact.’
‘A transfusion? Why have you had a blood transfusion?’
‘To demonstrate that whatever caused the death of Shipobottom was not related to the blood I gave him. I considered every aspect, and can think of no other explanation than that the man was murdered.’
Torrance began to quake. A ripple ran through his body, his shoulders heaved and he let out a great blast of laughter. ‘Why on earth would anyone want to murder the already dead? Every man sent back up the line is likely to die within weeks or months. We lost 1,500 men at the battle of Mons, then 80,000 at Marne a month later. Total Allied casualties at Ypres? About 150,000. The British alone lost 50,000 at Loos. How many do you think will perish in the next big push? Five thousand a day? Ten? Twenty? There is murder, Watson, on an unprecedented scale, but it isn’t happening in forgotten little aid stations behind the lines.’
His face had gone quite red and he began to excavate his briar with a pocketknife.
Watson was having none of it. ‘Don’t you see, that this is the perfect place for a murder? Bodies, dead bodies, have lost all currency. They matter not one jot. Stabbed, shot, gassed, blown to smithereens, rotted away from gangrene – there are so many ways to take a life, they have lost any value. I have only been here a few days and I feel it happening to myself. The care and compassion we would have over one lost soul has been swept away. We doctors always run the risk of becoming inured to suffering. But here, that impunity is the only way to survive and keep your sanity. And against that backdrop, in the midst of this indifference, it would be so easy to commit a murder.’
Torrance looked unimpressed. ‘I ask again, why? Why go to such lengths when, as we agree, the odds are that this conflict will take the victim at some point anyway.’
This was the important question. Who profits from the act? No real answer had yet presented itself. ‘Perhaps the murderer wanted to be certain of the man’s death. Dear God, some of our youth must survive this war; nobody can be one hundred per cent sure of any one man’s demise. Perhaps he wants to, needs to, witness the event for himself. Or, indeed herself. It is also possible that it is important to the perpetrator that the victim knows who is killing him and why.’
Torrance tapped the bowl into a saucer, making a cone of ash. ‘That smacks of melodrama, Watson, not fact. A field in which you are something of an expert, or so I hear. Never read any of your stuff myself. But I am of the opinion this was a form of tetanus. An involuntary muscle spasm, a lockjaw. I admit the symptoms were peculiar in their strength, but I have seen many strange things since I came out here. Things beyond reason. Who knows if it wasn’t a delayed reaction to gas? Or a rat bite? They have become monsters, feeding on the dead. Or perhaps something from the damned lice they all carry. Now, if you tell me that I should keep an eye out for similar occurrences, I would agree. But murder? You want me to call in the Military Police, do you?’
Watson spoke more calmly this time, but still with conviction. ‘It is not tetanus. The cyanosis tells us that. There are no breaks in the skin consistent with a rat bite. I have seen rat bites, by an animal as unfeasibly large as they grow in the trenches, albeit a type native to Sumatra. Unmistakable. There were no such marks. The symptoms we witnessed, Major, are called Risus sardonicus, the sardonic grin. Although this seems to be a peculiarly powerful version of it. It is the result of an alkaloid poison. I have come across these toxins before. I had hoped never to do so again.’ Watson didn’t want to go into details of the case known at The Sign of Four. That would involve thinking about Mary again, and he needed to stay focused on this case, not dwell on his past.
‘If – and I mean if – there has been a murder, whom do you suspect?’ asked Torrance.
‘I need to question Miss Pippery further, to establish a time sequence and who had the opportunity to enter the tent. But, of course, the poison might have been administered prior to him entering the transfusion tent. It could be a slow-acting toxin. I saw blue flecks in the white of Shipobottom’s eye earlier that morning. It might have been the first expression of the symptoms.’
‘In other words, you have not the faintest idea.’
Watson wiped his brow once more. How he wished at this moment he could have said, with the confidence of a Holmes, that he had all the pieces of the puzzle in hand and merely needed a few hours to complete the picture. But it would have been a downright lie. ‘No, but I am confident—’
‘And you have a motive?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Did this Shipobottom have any obvious enemies?’
‘He seemed to be well liked. I need to question his platoon.’
‘You need to question?’ Torrance demanded. ‘By whose authority?’
That was a good point. He and Holmes had always assumed every right to investigate on behalf of clients. In the army, though, it was different. Who was the client? Shipobottom was hardly in a position to give his permission to investigate. ‘Well, perhaps we should call in the Military Police then.’
Torrance began to stuff tobacco into his pipe with some force. ‘My dear Watson, I am sure life as a blood doctor is dull compared with your old adventures. I am afraid you have a case of over-active imagination. Not everything we can’t explain is a crime. And you are not a policeman or even a detective. You are a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps.’
‘And as an RAMC doctor, I need to clear the reputation of the citrated blood process. I am not looking for extra adventure, Major Torrance. How many volunteers as either donors or recipients do you think we’ll get when the rumours start to fly about the manner of Shipobottom’s end?’
‘All the more reason not to make a song and dance about one, single unexplained death amongst so many.’ He pointed the stem of his pipe at Watson. ‘I want that body disposed of as soon as possible.’
‘You aren’t inclined to contact the Military Police?’
‘On such flimsy evidence?’
‘Are you worried about Field Marshal Haig’s visit?’
Torrance twitched as if he had stepped on a live wire and Watson knew he had hit a nerve. The thought of the CCS being overrun by MPs and the shadow of an unsolved murder – with a grisly corpse to boot – hanging over it was not one he relished.
‘I am more worried about you making a fool of yourself.’
Watson, though, was not yet out of ammunition. ‘There was another curious aspect of this case. There were small incisions on the chest. Quite tiny, and not difficult to overlook with the naked eye. But they were easily spotted under a magnifying glass. I suspect the scores were made post mortem, as there was little or no blood.’ Watson reached over and grabbed a pencil, sketching the marks in the column of a report. He held it up. ‘Like this. Does this suggest anything to you?’
&n
bsp; ‘Is it a symbol?’
‘Yes. A Roman symbol. It is the number four. Do you see? The Roman numeral for four. It just so happens the downstroke is longer than the V.’
‘Which suggests what exactly?’ Torrance asked, lighting his pipe and sucking loudly, generating a sudden billow of blue-grey smoke.
‘I think, Major Torrance, we have been witness to victim number four.’
Torrance looked cross. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning, it rather raises the question, who were victims number one, two and three?’
THIRTY-THREE
Mrs Gregson was only too aware that if she reported to her sister-in-charge or matron, she would be assigned duties immediately. So she avoided her old wards, which wasn’t difficult. Bailleul Hospital had once been a sprawling sanatorium housing TB sufferers from across Belgium. As well as the formidably gothic bulk of the main house, the grounds held a dozen isolation cottages and exercise and rehabilitation centres. It was to one of these latter single-storey buildings, now called the Notifications and Effects Department, that she headed.
The main N&ED operation took place in a single large room, containing rows and rows of open metal shelving, stacked high with boxes of belongings of the deceased. A team of orderlies worked at low wooden benches, packaging and sending on the deceased’s effects, either back to the regiment or the next of kin. The process generated a prodigious amount of paperwork, which was stored in the old gymnasium next door. Somewhere within the bureaucracy of those adjacent rooms was the confirmation she was looking for. That Shipobottom was not the only soldier to have died with a dreadful grin on his face.
Overseeing the N&ED was a mono-headed Cerberus of a warrant officer, Arthur Lang, who occupied a desk that all but blocked the opening where double doors once stood, barring entry to the main room.
Lang was the kind of man, Mrs Gregson knew, who thought women should be kept on a leash just long enough to enable them to shuffle from hearth to bed and back again. He had a moustache that dipped and rose again on each side, so it looked like the letter ‘w’, and beady, suspicious eyes the colour of coal tar. They had sparred in the past when he had discovered her background. He clearly read the popular press, for he remembered her nickname, the Red She-Devil. She thought all that had been forgotten with the war. Apparently not.
‘Well, Mrs Gregson,’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘It’s been a while since we saw you down here. And empty-handed. Have people stopped dying on your rounds?’
VADs usually brought down the cardboard boxes of meagre belongings for cataloguing.
‘I am afraid not. Death hasn’t taken a holiday. I was simply reassigned for a few days.’
‘And you missed me, did you?’
‘Only your wit and good looks.’
He beamed. ‘Oh, there’s more to me than that.’
‘That’s not what Mrs Lang tells me.’
He sniggered at this. ‘Well, I have missed you, Mrs Gregson. For all the wrong reasons. What can I do for you?’
‘I need to check up on a case history. See the copy of the death certificate. You’ll have it on file.’
He snapped his fingers at her.
‘What is it?’
‘You’ll have a doctor’s enquiry docket?’
‘No, it’s a very simple matter—’
‘And so is a docket. Signed by a doctor. It’s a question of confidentiality.’
‘I don’t need anything confidential,’ Mrs Gregson said. ‘Surely it’s a matter of public record.’
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Everything here is confidential, Mrs Gregson. We have to allow them some dignity in death. We can’t allow any Tom, Dick or She-Devil to come rifling. Can we? How do we know you aren’t working for some gutter newspaper, looking to see what became of Lord So-and-so?’
She looked over his head. She daydreamed about breaking in at night, accessing the gymnasium, and stealing away without leaving a trace. Like something out of Angela Brazil, she concluded, and about as likely.
She made eye contact with Lang, wondering if she had the nerve to lift up the ashtray and crown him with it, then bully the others into handing over the document. But threatening them with a loaded ashtray was hardly an effective strategy.
‘Please?’ Mrs Gregson asked.
‘No.’
‘Just this once.’
‘You aren’t entitled.’
‘What about a dirty postcard then?’
His eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘A what?’
‘A mucky picture. About a tanner. Isn’t that the going rate? Two bob for the really filthy stuff.’
His moustache twitched and two fiery red spots appeared high on his cheeks. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘There’s an orderly on Spyon ward. Gordon is the name. Got a pocket full of them. Shall we go and ask him where he gets them from?’
He looked over his shoulder, to see if any his subordinates had heard, but they carried on with their morbid tasks, oblivious to her accusation. ‘Mrs Gregson, I assure you—’
‘Oh, come on, Mr Lang. I have done the night rounds. It’s all you men can talk about. What Fifior Trixie does or doesn’t do with your little gentleman. The special tricks that the French girls have. And the Belgians . . . well, they could show the English rose a thing or two about pricks. I’ve heard it all. Including how you can buy saucy French postcards. No questions asked about where they came from. But we know, don’t we?’
He swallowed hard.
She smiled, enjoying his discomfort. ‘I bet Mrs Lang isn’t familiar with that sort of thing.’
‘You leave Mrs Lang out of this,’ he hissed. ‘Now look,’ another glance over his shoulder, ‘it’s true that many of the deceased have, what shall we say, inappropriate material in their belongings. What would you have me do? Send pictures of your Trixie with her underwear and worse showing to his mother, sister, wife or sweetheart? With a little note saying, “Look what we found in Albert’s backpack”, eh?’
‘No, and it is very considerate of you to remove it from the effects. But you are supposed to incinerate them. Not resell them around the wards.’
‘You’re bluffing. You can’t prove a thing,’ he said with a leer. ‘And you can suck my big fat cock.’
If it was an attempt to intimidate or shock it was a very poor one,
Mrs Gregson thought. She had, after all, been both a married woman and a front-line nurse. ‘No, but I can make sure the racket is squashed once and for all, can’t I? And although that’s a very generous offer, I am in a hurry.’
He had to laugh at her insouciance in the face of his deliberate crudity. He had reduced other nurses to trembling tears with less.
‘Or I’ll go straight to Matron with a complaint about the magic postcards that keep reappearing. Like most matrons sent to the continent, Elizabeth Challenger was a force to be reckoned with.
Lang took a deep, nervous breath and came to a decision. ‘Very well. But if I do this and you drop me in it—’
‘Why would I? Even She-Devils have their standards. A promise is a promise. Now, it was a soldier who died about ten days ago. He turned blue. He had this look on his face. Of horror.’
‘That doesn’t narrow it down. Almost every man can summon up one horror or another. Anything else?’ There was a hint of impatience in his voice.
She racked her brains for more details. On an overworked ward, with men in need of constant attention, the dead were quickly dismissed. Only the strange colour and the twisted features had caused her to pause, and then just for a moment. Because she’d had to . . . yes, see the show.
‘It was the night of the Gasmaskers. You know, the entertainment.’
The Gasmaskers were an all-male troupe of singers, dancers and mime artists, many of whom specialized in dressing as fetching women. They toured hospitals and reserve lines with their sub-music-hall routines. ‘He died just before their show.’
‘Lucky man. I had to sit thr
ough it. I can look at the deaths on that date in the ward logbooks. You did log it?’
‘Sister did.’
‘As?’
She frowned again. They had wondered how to classify the death. ‘Kidney failure, I think.’
‘And which ward?’
‘I was on Nelson then.’
‘Wait here.’ He pushed back from the desk, stood and marched towards the entrance of the gymnasium.
She gave a shudder as he left. Somehow the image of what he had suggested she do to him wouldn’t be shifted. The last eighteen months had given her a thick carapace and a robust vocabulary that enabled her to spar with the worst of them. That didn’t mean she enjoyed it. Descending to their level always made her feel she needed a shower and a scrub with Lysol.
Lang returned, his face having regained its usual pallor. He placed a buff folder on the desk. ‘You have one minute.’
Mrs Gregson fixed him with a defiant stare. This, she knew, was dangerous. Lang was not a man who liked to be bettered. She suspected that somewhere down the line, he would find a way to make her pay for this small victory. But, for the moment, she had the upper hand.
Lang gave a harrumphing sound and went off to check on his clerks and sorters, while she leafed through the documents. It was him all right. Edward Hornby by name. Nineteen. Kidney failure.
My left foot, she thought, as she read the description of the symptoms. The blue colour, though, was not mentioned. Nor the claw-like hands. She had seen both of those things. Hadn’t she? Then she saw something that really did link Shipobottom and Hornby.
She closed the folder. Then she opened it again, glanced up to make sure Lang was still occupied, and ripped the top off the second sheet of paper and then the bottom of the third page. She folded the fragments and slipped them into her pocket.
‘Oy!’ Lang shouted as she picked up her coat and put it over her head, ready to face the rain.
She tried hard to stop her face burning with guilt.
‘Quite finished with that, have you?’ he asked.
‘I have, yes.’