Dead Man's Land

by Robert Ryan

  De Griffon bent down and ruffled the back of his dog’s neck. The animal gave a bark of greeting and began to pant excitedly.

  ‘Why is he called Cecil?’

  ‘After Cecil Rhodes. Another great explorer. All over the place, every day. Eh, Cecil?’

  The dog yapped a reply.

  ‘Miss Pippery, do you think you could get me a pen and paper? My company is due to return to the reserves imminently. I need to remind Lieutenant Metcalf of a few things before I can rejoin them.’

  ‘That might be a few days.’

  ‘Nonsense. I can feel my dancing legs coming back. Although don’t think I am in any hurry to leave you lovely ladies behind.’

  Miss Pippery blushed.

  ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to be crass. As I said the other day, it’s just that— Ah, Mrs Gregson, hello there.’

  Mrs Gregson gave a brief smile, as fleeting as a lightning strike, ‘Sister Spence says, thanks to Major Watson’s representations, I can stay on for a few days, just as long as I do nothing more medical than serve tea.’

  ‘Well, that’s something,’ said Miss Pippery, hesitantly.

  ‘And only to the men. Not the officers.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said de Griffon, as he pulled himself back on the bed. ‘Can Miss Pippery here still do me a brew?’

  ‘I think the rules only apply to me. Miss Pippery is all yours.’

  De Griffon gave Miss Pippery a wink. ‘So, Mrs Gregson, I hear tell you are from Manchester?’

  ‘Cheshire,’ she corrected. ‘But my father worked in Manchester for a good few years when we were young.’

  ‘And you, Miss Pippery? The name’s Old English, I believe.’

  Miss Pippery nodded, pleased someone had noticed. ‘It is. Or so my father drummed into us.’

  ‘And how did you two meet?’ he asked. ‘Come on. Sister Spence isn’t here now.’

  ‘Motorcycling,’ said Miss Pippery slowly, in case he was one of those who considered it an unladylike pursuit. ‘My brother was a keen motor-cyclist, you see, and so was Mrs Gregson’s. Both did time trials and hill climbs. I used to go along to watch at first.’

  ‘Miss Pippery’s parents will tell you I corrupted her to a world of leather, oil and grease.’

  ‘Sounds rather splendid. I love motor cycles.’

  ‘Do you?’ asked Miss Pippery.

  ‘Yes, I have a Sunbeam at home. A lovely machine. Perhaps all three of us could go riding. One day.’

  Miss Pippery beamed at the thought.

  ‘Look, about that paper,’ he said. ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

  ‘Oh, of course not. I’ll fetch you some.’

  After she had left, Mrs Gregson said: ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Lead her on so. Miss Pippery might be able to change a spark plug, but she’s not as worldly as some. She’s almost ten years younger than me—’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘Good Lord, you wouldn’t have thought—’

  ‘There you go again. Turn off the charm. Or at least turn the wick down a little, Captain.’

  Cecil jumped on the bed with a frisky yelp and de Griffon caught the look of disapproval and pushed him off. ‘I’ll send him back soon. He’s the only visitor from my company I’ve had so far. Watson told me Metcalf came, but he sent him away. You haven’t seen the lieutenant? No, probably trying to recruit more nurses for his damned dance. Look, I’m not toying with Miss Pippery. It’s just . . . just it makes a change from all that relentlessly male company. It’s all football, fags, and – excuse me – another word beginning with “f” with the lads.’ His mouth turned down at the sides in an exaggerated grimace at his uncouthness. ‘If you know what I mean?’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘Frollicking, let’s say. I don’t share their attitude to women, Mrs Gregson.’

  ‘I should hope not.’

  ‘Nor, as I said, my family’s. Nothing like that strike-breaking of the last century will happen again on my watch. Terrible business.’

  ‘What became of the ringleaders? My father used to talk about two women who were the main instigators?’

  ‘The Trueloves. Bess and Anne. My father talked of them, too. They disappeared after the strike collapsed. Bess told the women to go back to work. There were rumours she’d been paid off.’

  ‘And had she?’

  He shook his head. ‘Father always said not. Not a penny. Change of heart, he said. Then they disappeared. Nothing sinister. But there was bad feeling among the women after that speech by Bess. Some believed the rumours that they’d been promised money. The sisters moved to London and then abroad, so I heard.’ His eyes lost focus for a second, thinking back on events a quarter of a century ago, before he was even born.

  ‘There we are,’ he said eventually. ‘What do you think Major Watson hopes to find today?’

  ‘I think Major Watson is a little confused at the moment.’

  ‘How so?’

  Mrs Gregson pursed her lips. De Griffon wasn’t certain whether it was in disapproval or not, but there was certainly a buzz of waspishness in it. ‘Major Watson’s not entirely sure whether he is being a detective or a knight in shining armour.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow.’

  ‘He has gone off to save the virtue of Staff Nurse Jennings. And . . .’

  She gave a little snort of a laugh.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing, I have to go before Sister catches me in here with you.’

  But there had been something. A little spike in her heart. And it was funny. Hilarious. And ridiculous, she thought. Just for a moment there, she’d actually been jealous of Jennings having her very own white knight.

  FORTY-ONE

  Wallace McCrae was a ruddy-faced, fiercely beetle-browed man somewhere in his forties, with ginger hair and pale eyes. He was sitting behind his desk, fingers interlocked, listening intently to Watson, who was pacing in front of him, explaining exactly why he had ridden over from Suffolk Farm to visit the American volunteers.

  ‘Therefore,’ Watson concluded, ‘as he seems not to be here—’

  ‘We have not seen Caspar Myles for some time, no,’ agreed McCrae in a deep baritone.

  ‘I really need to know what, exactly, occurred to cause him to leave this hospital and the Harvard Volunteers.’

  McCrae began fiddling with the Notre-Dame paperweight on his desk. The gloomy room, the doctor’s office, was on the third floor of what had once been an old mental asylum. The original patients had been rehoused, shipped south, out of danger. Now it specialized in the treatment of fractures, with an X-ray machine installed by Madame Curie herself. ‘Much as I appreciate the situation, I’m not sure I can tell you everything. There are reputations at stake.’

  Watson didn’t give two hoots for reputations. ‘There might be lives at stake.’

  ‘I can’t say I condone what Myles did.’

  Watson stopped pacing, horrified. ‘I should think not.’

  ‘Then again, he’s a red-blooded man.’

  ‘Where I come from, that’s no excuse.’

  ‘That’s as maybe. I’m from Chicago, Major Watson. Not the subtlest place on God’s earth. Hog Butcher to the World. And proud of it. So am I. My father made his money in meatpacking. Enough to send me to Harvard. My grandfather, mind, was from Dundee. One of the Scots who came over to build Chicago. Both of them believed that there were times when men’s baser instincts take over. That there is a natural justice—’

  ‘And the nurse in question? How would she feel about “natural justice”?’

  ‘Might agree also.’

  Watson gave a snort of impatience. ‘I don’t believe this. A nurse is raped—’

  ‘Almost raped,’ McCrae corrected.

  Watson was pleased he didn’t have Mrs Gregson with him. The resultant explosion might have knocked the earth off its axis.

  ‘A serious assault, then.’

  ‘Two serious assaults
, in fact.’

  Watson could not believe his ears. ‘Myles is a habitual rapist?’

  McCrae’s brows beetled together even more. His nose twitched as if he had just detected a bad smell. ‘Myles? He’s no rapist.’

  Watson threw his arms in the air. ‘Then for pity’s sake, McCrae, tell me what he is!’

  ‘He’s a complicated fellow.’

  ‘So it appears.’

  ‘He is one of those chaps who, on the surface, has it all. Good looks, wealth, fine manners. Sense of humour. Well-connected family. But there are areas where the edifice cracks. He is surprisingly crass sometimes, especially where women are concerned. His approach can be, let me see, flat-footed. If you get my drift.’

  Watson thought of Myles’s attempts to find out if Watson had any designs on Staff Nurse Jennings. ‘I do.’

  ‘There was a nurse, a very good one, called Amelia Wilkes. One of the Connecticut Wilkeses. Very nice. Very pretty. We all knew that Caspar was sweet on her. Well, there was a dance. And two fellows thought it would be funny to make Myles jealous. First by dancing with her. Then by disappearing with her. Doctor, I am ashamed to say this, but much alcohol was consumed. The two fellows became boisterous. To be frank, they tried to force themselves on Nurse Wilkes. She resisted. One of them . . .’ He repositioned himself in the chair. ‘One of them slapped her to try and gain some compliance. The other ripped her dress. It was at that point that Caspar Myles found them.’

  Watson was seized by the terrible feeling he had misjudged the man. ‘And?’

  ‘And, as I say, I can’t condone what he did. But part of me admires him. He waded in. One of the two men ran away, although not until his nose was broken by Myles. The other decided to put up his fists. Myles doesn’t look like a boxer. And the Harvard Athletic Committee does not recognize it as an official varsity sport. But perhaps you know that Teddy Roosevelt boxed on campus? No? Well, Caspar Myles did, too, and with some success. He pounded this guy. And pounded. And pounded. Until all three of them, the nurse included, were drenched in his blood. That was how I found them.’

  ‘Good Lord.’

  ‘Quite. The man he attacked was the son of a very generous benefactor of the Longwood facility. The medical school. And Myles’s parents are not without influence.’

  ‘And Nurse Wilkes . . . ?’

  ‘Was actually unharmed, physically. In fact, she still works here. But the man that Caspar had beaten, well, we operated on the face, but he’ll never be handsome again.’ Watson remembered Myles’s right hand. Holmes would have known what it was: broken knuckles that had not healed well. ‘There were those who thought Myles had over-reacted. Mostly friends of the man he had assaulted. It was agreed that Caspar would leave the Volunteers, at least for the time being. I knew the British were short of doctors, and that there was a CCS nearby. I told Torrance a version of the truth.’

  ‘One that suggested he was a rapist?’

  ‘That he’d been indiscreet with a nurse. I don’t have to tell you that most men would see that as the nurse’s fault.’

  ‘Shame on you,’ Watson said.

  McCrae shrugged, unabashed by the criticism. ‘Perhaps. We shipped the injured boy back home. The story was he had been injured when the hospital was shelled. We left it to him to embellish the details.’

  ‘He’s probably a war hero.’

  McCrae made a noise a little like laughter. ‘Knowing the young man in question, I don’t doubt it.’

  Watson finally sat down in the chair and let out a long, slow breath. ‘Thank you for being so frank with me.’

  ‘In retrospect, I might have done things differently. But it’s done. As I say, in Chicago, we would have said he did the right thing. Have you been?’

  ‘To Chicago?’ Holmes had, of course, during the Von Bork affair. ‘No, we once had some dealings with . . .’

  The thought tailed off. McCrae waited and then prompted: ‘Now, would you like to explain what this is all about?’

  ‘Yes. I just . . . Chicago, it reminded me of something, but I’m blowed if I can recall what. But yes, I can give you the basics.’ Watson, after requesting McCrae’s discretion on the matter, gave him an outline of the death of Hornby, Shipobottom and the near-murder, as he believed it to be, of de Griffon.

  ‘Peculiar,’ McCrae said when he had finished. ‘But my instinct would be gas. We’ve had a few cases of a new one that Fritz is using. It’s not like chlorine, doesn’t act as an irritant, so you don’t cough. Which means it gets inside your lungs quicker. Some say it smells like a meadow that’s been freshly cut, others like silage. But, this is the strange thing, men report they are fine until one, two, even three days later. Then their lungs stop working.’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘We haven’t had a chance to name it yet. Did you bring any blood samples, by the way? From the victim?’

  ‘I did. There is citrated blood with the lab.’ He unfolded the batch number the laboratory assistant had given him.

  ‘Fine. You want to leave that with me? If it throws up anything, I’ll get a message to you. You’ll be at the CCS?’

  He put the docket on the desk. ‘For the foreseeable—’

  Chicago!

  ‘You OK, Major?’

  ‘Yes. No.’ Watson’s collar suddenly felt very tight. Chicago, that was the key. ‘I just remembered what your home town meant to me.’ He stood, suddenly anxious to be on his way. ‘I have to go. Apologies.’

  ‘Right. Listen, be careful who you talk to about gas. It’s a mighty sensitive area right now. Unless you have friends in high places, they’ll stonewall you.’

  ‘I do,’ said Watson, gathering up his cap.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Have friends in high places.’

  FORTY-TWO

  The sharpshooter moved through the woods as silently as was humanly possible. The ground underneath was sodden and slimy, which, although hampering his progress, helped deaden the sound of his steps. The rain had left the trees shedding water with a steady pit-pat, like a leaky tap. His ears were attuned for a sudden burst, a spray of water, evidence of a disturbed branch, which could well indicate an enemy being careless.

  He was dressed in the latest sniper outfit, loose fitting and coloured with a mottled pattern of green and brown. On his head was a hood, decorated with a corona of twigs and leaves. He thought it made him look like a ball of mistletoe or a swollen scarecrow. The hood restricted vision, made breathing hard and would slow down any attempt to slip on a gas mask. He had already made a note of five improvements that could be made to the outfit.

  There was a burst of birdsong, a jarring sound these days, and he stopped at a crouch, close to a tree trunk, to make sure it was a genuine chorus and not the enemy communicating. It was. No guns thumping, the rain gone, and the birds singing. It might have been a day to enjoy, if he wasn’t intent on killing.

  His target was Churchill’s so-called reserve HQ , which had been christened Maison 1875. His advanced HQ , Laurence Farm, had been badly hit by the surprise bombardment and was undergoing repairs.

  The trees were thinning now and he could see the building, a rather impressive four-square manor house, standing behind what had once been a ploughed field, now dotted with shell craters, each with its own stagnant pool in the bottom.

  With rifle held across his body, he threaded through a stand of saplings, some of which showed artillery damage, from shredded branches to shards of shrapnel that protruded from the slender trunks, like dull, metallic bracket fungi.

  He felt exposed among the slender young trees, but there were some mature ones, also showing war scars, to his left. He moved towards them, stopping every few yards. The hood also amplified the wearer’s breathing, which meant it was hard to pick up on extraneous or threatening sounds from the outside world. They should cut ear holes. He licked his lips. Fear dried the mouth. Always.

  Two more steps and he froze, knees bent. There were figures, some distance beyond the ed
ge of the wood, deep in conversation. Three men, each coddled in heavy coats and scarves, wreathed in smoke from their cigars. The centre one, unmistakable even at that distance, was Churchill. He smiled to himself under the sacking. Don’t rush it. Target acquisition and recognition was two-thirds of the process. Still at a crouch he crabbed through the undergrowth, trying to frame a perfect, clear shot. At the same time, he kept a watch for any patrol that might discover him.

  With a slow, steady movement, he raised the rifle and sighted. Another step to the side, leaning against a tree trunk that had lost its upper crown trunk to a shell burst. He put the A.PX scope to his eye.

  Target acquired. Kill imminent.

  The point of a bayonet pricked his neck.

  ‘Ow,’ he protested.

  ‘You’re did, so you are, mae son,’ said the tree in a broad Scots accent.

  Corporal Leith ripped off the sniper’s hood and put his fingers to his throat. His fingertips showed a red smear. ‘You cut me, you Jock madman.’

  His fellow fusilier stepped from within the elaborate, hollowed-out trunk of the fake trunk and pulled off his own hood. ‘Aye, an’ you’d get worse from a Hun.’

  ‘It’s a fuckin’ exercise, you daft cunt.’

  ‘Oi,’ said the treeman, waving the bayonet. ‘Wha’ you call me?’

  A whistle blew, marking the end of the manoeuvre. The two men relaxed and, after a moment, punched each other on the shoulder. The treeman even gave something that could be interpreted as an apology for his over-enthusiasm. The sniper took out a field dressing and mopped up the trickle of blood staining his collar.

  Watson, flanked by Churchill and his aide-de-camp Captain Edmund Hakewill-Smith, the young officer who had blown the whistle, watched as a dozen men emerged from the battered Ploegsteert woods, all outlandishly dressed in various outfits of deception.