The Sign of Fear

by Robert Ryan

  Watson wondered if Staff Nurse Jennings would be on one of these trains, as her telegram had suggested. What would the war have done to that fresh-faced nurse he had met at the field hospital in Flanders? It had changed them all, most physically. The obvious manifestation of the conflict could be seen on the streets, the disgrace of disabled soldiers reduced to begging while the Government squabbled over pensions and compensation. But it had altered the entire country mentally, possibly for ever, for the nation that once ruled most of the globe now knew the fear of an enemy – first with Zeppelins and now by the hated Gothas – that could fly over it with impunity and kill its citizens in their beds.

  What would two years of nursing on the front line have done to Staff Nurse Jennings? Put new lines on her face and scars on her soul, no doubt. He must not expect the bashful young girl of old, with her coy, dimpled smile and the light in her eyes. The war had a way of extinguishing such a blaze, replacing it with cold cinders. Still, it would be good to see a familiar, friendly face, and someone who had known, no matter how briefly, Mrs Gregson, the woman who had proved such a loyal and devoted friend that it had led her to a terrible death.

  The thought of her caused him a spasm of pain and he quickly examined the list of hospitals again. Stay busy, that was his mantra. The stations at night, the hospitals by day, a petition to the compensation board here, attending lectures on new medical procedures at the Royal College of Physicians or a debate on the Psychology of the Unconscious at the University of London, writing a letter to his old friend, then some Elgar . . . and keep away from those idle moments when you find yourself on a bridge in Holland once more, unable, no matter how you try, to change the outcome–

  It wasn’t your fault, Watson.

  It was nobody’s fault but that damnable woman Miss Pillbody. Evil in a dress.

  Quite.

  Watson let out a long sigh and caught Trenchard’s look of concern. ‘I’m all right, lad. Just a bit tired.’

  Watson took out a pack of Joy’s Cigarettes – the ones that claimed to cure wheezing and asthma, although he had his doubts – and offered one to Trenchard. He lit both of them with a single match.

  ‘How much will you get for the leg?’ he asked. ‘Compensation?’

  ‘Gosh, I don’t know. Haven’t had my Board yet. Not much, I suppose. Not compared to some of these chaps . . .’

  ‘And your brother,’ Watson said, recalling what Trenchard had divulged one night as they had shared a flask of brandy.

  Trenchard nodded. His brother was in Netley Hospital, a victim of vicious shrapnel burst. ‘I don’t know how he stays so optimistic. I’m not sure I would want to live like that.’

  ‘You’d be surprised how much people want to live.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  Watson explained about the man shouting, ‘One hundred per cent!’ to Sir Gilbert earlier that night.

  ‘Well, I have some sympathy. But you can’t give everyone the same, can you? There isn’t enough money to go around, is there? And I can still walk, after a fashion, and there is talk about perhaps a special shoe to help alleviate the limp.’

  ‘What will you do? After the war?’

  ‘I’m only qualified in battlefield medicine. I’d like to take the training further. That or the family business.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘If you lived in Berkshire, sir, the chances are at least someone you knew would have been laid to rest by James Trenchard and Co. Undertakers. But part of me thinks perhaps I should switch sides – try to keep people out of my father’s clutches for as long as possible.’

  ‘How would your father feel about that?’

  ‘Oh, as he always said when a new undertaker opened in the vicinity, there’s always enough dead to go around.’

  The truth of this made them pause and ponder for a while. It will seem strange, Watson supposed, going back to the rituals and homilies of the individual burial, when the passing of one single human is given such pomp and ceremony. How overearnest and self-indulgent that seemed now after years of the lime pit and the ‘Known Only Unto God’ mass graves. Then again, perhaps when death became less commonplace, more noteworthy, it would be an important step back towards the world they lost in August 1914.

  ‘Train coming,’ said Trenchard, and sure enough, there was a multi-pointed star of light moving along the tracks towards them. Watson began to sort the sheets out, readying himself for the rapid assignment of hospitals and wards that was needed to make sure the platforms didn’t become clogged with stretcher cases and walking wounded.

  Already the stretcher-bearers were moving forward, trying to ascertain which platform the train would pull into. Ambulance engines were quickly cranked into life by the drivers, spewing fumes up into the cast-iron girders of the concourse roof as they waited at idle. There were fresh volunteers at Lady Limerick’s free buffet, lining up mugs of tea for the traditional British welcome home for the wounded.

  ‘Just the one?’ Watson asked, throwing down his cigarette and stubbing it out with the toe of his Trenchmaster.

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘Might not be another tonight, not here. They’ve closed Dover and Folkestone harbours,’ said a concerned voice from behind them.

  Watson turned to be confronted by the elaborate grey moustaches of Sir Francis Lloyd, the man who effectively ran London these days, like a military governor. The ambulance trains only entered when he said so, spies were only shot when he agreed, anti-aircraft guns were sited only where he indicated, no free buffets or soldiers’ rest houses opened without his approval.

  ‘Why’s that, Sir Francis?’ Watson asked.

  ‘Bloody Hun. They’ve sunk a boat-ambulance out of Calais. Fully marked up with its red crosses, clear as day, apparently. Can’t reopen the ports till we’re certain the bugger’s not still out there, lurking like the dog it is. You know the drill – sink one ship, then wait till the rescuers come and sink them, too.’

  ‘So we didn’t send rescue ships out to this boat?’

  Sir Francis avoided his gaze. ‘I gather not.’

  Watson closed his eyes, thinking of the wounded trying to tread water, weighed down by casts and bandages, incapacitated by fever, disease and amputation, desperately holding on for saviours who never came. ‘Damn them.’

  Sir Francis assumed he meant the German U-boat crews. ‘Damnation is too good for them, Watson.’

  The air was full of wet smoke and cinder now as the train approached, belching a plume of steam. Watson felt a growing sense of panic. He had to go and help with the trainload of sick and wounded, but some feeling of dread made him want to know more about events at sea. ‘So no survivors?’

  Sir Francis shook his head. ‘Torpedoed. Out in the Channel, in the pitch-dark. Didn’t stand a chance. All hands,’ he said angrily. ‘All hands.’

  ‘Will there be a passenger manifest?’

  ‘I expect so. I don’t know.’ Sir Francis caught the desperation in Watson’s voice. ‘You suspect someone you know was on there?’

  ‘I can’t be certain,’ Watson said, the image of Staff Nurse Jennings unloading his blood transfusion kit, and of the distinctive little scar on her throat, flashing into his mind. But it’ll be just my damned luck, he thought, but didn’t say. Is anyone safe around me?

  ‘Does the boat have name?’

  Sir Francis consulted a telegram. ‘Yes. The Dover Arrow.’

  SEVEN

  Fatigue had infected the crew by the time the coast of Belgium came into view. With the bomb load gone, on paper the R-type should have been capable of much more than 200 kilometres an hour, but truculent winds had buffeted the machine, making progress both slow and queasy.

  Once they were clear of England and its defences, and had passed over Tongue lightship, Oberleutnant Schrader had ordered the pair of pilots – the R-type required two of them at the controls – to take the plane down to an altitude where the oxygen bottle was no longer needed. All they had to do was nurse her i
n and land. All they had to do, he repeated to himself, as if it were nothing. How many planes had been lost on the final approach? More Gothas than the British could claim, that was certain. And as for this unwieldy beast, with its 18-wheel undercarriage, one mistake and . . .

  He broke out the coffee as they approached land, real coffee, strong enough to jolt them all awake, to give them the alertness that might mean they would survive to drink a schnapps in the mess before turning in.

  ‘Eyes sharp, everyone,’ Schrader said.

  The British, unable to catch the bombers, had taken to attacking the home airfield, so the landing lights were kept extinguished at night. They would only be switched on when the Giant identified itself. The radio operator, therefore, began sending out a pulse of radio signals in the direction of the strip.

  The pilots, Deitling and Fohn, took the plane down, and Schrader’s ears popped. As they pierced the clouds he could see the dark, broiling waters beneath them. More than enough Gotha crews had ended in those unforgiving waves. Rescue was possible, thanks to fast search boats from Zeebrugge, but in practice it was a rarity.

  ‘There!’

  One of the pilots had spotted something. Schrader stood and peered into the darkness. Yes, a light – long, short, long, short. The Ostend Beacon. The Flanders coast was ahead.

  As if over-excited at the news, one of the engines began to miss a beat, its steady pulse replaced by a jittery rhythm. All heard it and Schrader saw Fohn and Deitling exchanged glances as the aluminium sides of the Giant’s cabin began to vibrate in sympathy. ‘Too much coffee, perhaps,’ he said, breaking the tension.

  He could afford to be flippant, with a few dozen kilometres left to run. If the engines malfunctioned on the way out or some distance from the base, they had mechanics who would climb out on the wing, into the darkness, to be plucked at by the icy slipstream, and service them. Not a job for the faint-hearted. He wasn’t going to send Rutter or Borschberg, the upper gunner/engineer, out at this point; with a trio of engines left they could glide in if need be, but it wouldn’t come to that.

  They ploughed on in silence, all alert to the sound of the three healthy Maybachs, waiting for more evidence of malfunction, but none came.

  ‘Ahead, skipper,’ said Fohn eventually. A row of green lights flashed off and on three times, a brief come-hither from the Ghent airfield.

  ‘Circle at five hundred metres,’ Schrader instructed, ‘until they give us the full set.’

  He drained the last of the coffee and screwed the cup onto the flask. Mission almost accomplished. Soon he could let the tiredness wash over him. He could almost taste the welcome schnapps as the great biplane lurched into its holding pattern over the strip, waiting for the main landing lights to illuminate for just long enough to get them down. There was only one slight fly in the ointment of elation. The thought that tomorrow, they would have to go back to London and do it all again.

  EIGHT

  Three days after the sinking of the Dover Arrow, the event, along with the after-dark raid on London, still dominated the newspapers, driving even the new offensives in Flanders from the front pages. After a lengthy all-night shift settling the wounded into Millbank, many from those under-reported skirmishes around Ypres, Watson bought a Pictorial on the Embankment and set off to walk through Mayfair and Marylebone to his rooms in Wimpole Street.

  The sun was up, and London’s soot-stained buildings seemed a shade lighter as the rays probed the façades. It was hard to imagine this was a city that all but shut down once the sun had completed its arc through the sky and began to fall towards the horizon. Night had rarely been so unwelcome in London.

  As he walked towards the park, he scanned the pages for more information on the sinking of the boat-ambulance. ‘What happened to the Dover Light Barrage?’ demanded a leader writer. A system of ships equipped with powerful searchlamps, magnesium flares and a drape of steel antisubmarine cable had been established between Dover and Calais. It was designed to deter U-boats, and had apparently worked until now, but one daring Kapitan had apparently crept in and done for the Dover Arrow.

  The number of casualties – 139 – had been published, but no full passenger list. Watson had no way of knowing if Staff Nurse Jennings was among those who had perished. The newspapers were claiming the names of the dead were being held back as a matter of ‘national security’ and so as not to give succour to the enemy. Which suggested some bigwigs had died in the attack – when Kitchener’s ship hit a mine there had been a small but vocal minority in the cabinet who had wanted the news suppressed, fearing the impact on the public’s morale. There was even talk of producing an impersonator to deny Kitchener had been killed at all. It was unlikely, however, that anyone as important as the Secretary of State for War was on the Dover Arrow. But whoever had perished, it was clear that a notice under the Defence of the Realm Act – DORA – had been served on newspaper editors, effectively muzzling them. To Watson, the thought that he might never know if Staff Nurse Jennings was on the Dover Arrow was almost unbearable.

  The other topic exercising the contributors to the Pictorial was the weather. Nothing unusual in that for the British, except now London had started praying for bad weather. Watson looked at the sky as he crossed St James’s Park. The clouds were mostly bone-white, but to the east was an ominous band of dark pewter and the Pictorial was forecasting strong winds out in the Channel and the North Sea and moonless nights. London could breathe easy, for a few days at least.

  Still, there were obvious signs of government jitteriness. The park was dotted with great mounds of sandbags, to be supplied free to Londoners. The night-time raids of the Zeppelins had caused a certain amount of consternation, but they had proved vulnerable to the incendiary shells of the ack-ack batteries and the phosphorescent bullets of the night fighters. These Gothas, however, flew high and fast, and apparently fearless, and were more robust than gasbags filled with flammable hydrogen. No, Watson was sure, the bombers would return. He just hoped the Government was using the lull to do more than fill sandbags.

  The strain of the night had begun to seep into his bones by the time he let himself into 2 Upper Wimpole Street and climbed the stairs, one weary step at a time. His tread was heavy, as if the Trenchmasters had leaden soles.

  He was halfway up when he realized he could hear voices, real ones, not those that sometimes played in his head these days. He could make out the high, fluting tones of Mrs Turner, but there was another, pitched at a far deeper register. Watson removed his cap, slicked back his hair and rose to his full height before opening the door to the sitting room.

  Mrs Turner had served tea and was standing pouring a cup for the man who was perched on the edge of Watson’s favourite armchair, one of the few items he had rescued from Baker Street.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Major,’ she said. ‘I was just telling the inspector that you were a little late this morning.’

  Inspector. There was a time when Watson knew almost every senior policeman in London, but this one was a stranger. He was early forties, barrel-chested, clean shaven, with calm, heavy-lidded eyes that suggested – erroneously, Watson was sure – a sleepy, docile personality. Very useful in a copper. The man sprang to his feet with an effortlessness Watson could only envy. No aching joints or stiff muscles there.

  ‘George Bullimore,’ the policeman offered, along with his hand, which Watson took.

  ‘Major John H. Watson at your service, Inspector. How can I be of assistance? It’s a long time since Scotland Yard came calling.’

  ‘Bow Street, actually,’ Bullimore corrected. ‘And I am not calling upon you to engage you in your former capacity.’

  ‘Please, sit down. Thank you, Mrs Turner,’ Watson said as she handed him a cup of tea.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it, gentlemen. I’ll run a bath, Major Watson, and prepare breakfast.’ She turned to the policeman. ‘Will thirty minutes be sufficient?’

  ‘I’m sure my business will be complete by then,’ said Bullim
ore.

  Watson took a place on the couch and Bullimore fetched a notebook and pencil from his inside pocket. ‘Firstly, Major, I hope you don’t mind me asking . . . how is Mr Holmes?’

  ‘Content in his retirement,’ Watson said.

  ‘Very good. He deserves it. Now, I am here about Sir Gilbert Hastings. You know the gentleman, I believe.’

  ‘We share an appreciation of music, yes.’

  ‘And you saw him, let me see, three nights ago?’

  ‘The night of the air raid, yes. Why? If I might ask?’

  Bullimore looked pained. ‘Major Watson, we believe you were the last man to see Sir Gilbert before his disappearance. The final item in his appointment book was a night at the Wigmore with you.’

  ‘Disappearance?’

  ‘He failed to return home that night.’

  ‘But I put him in a motor taxi.’

  ‘What time was that, sir?’

  ‘Just gone midnight, I think. The “All Clear” bugles had been blown.’

  Eyes flicked to the notebook. ‘That was at eleven forty-seven. And how was his temperament?’

  ‘Temperament?’

  ‘Did he seem angry, depressed, agitated, worried?’

  Worried about my state of mind, perhaps, Watson thought. I’m the one who is all of those things. ‘As even-tempered and level-headed as always.’

  ‘Did anything untoward happen during the course of the evening? Anything out of the ordinary.’

  Don’t give me that innocent look. You know damn well it did, thought Watson.

  ‘One thing before I get to that. Three days have apparently passed. Why have you only just contacted me?’

  ‘A number of reasons. Sir Gilbert was often enough in the habit of spending a night or two at his club and his failure to return home raised no eyebrows.’

  ‘Not even from his wife?’

  ‘Sir Gilbert had sent her to the country, along with the children. Evacuees, you might say . . . not uncommon among those that can afford it.’