by Robert Ryan
‘I don’t think he is trying to entice her to heaven, if that’s what you mean,’ replied Watson. ‘That is no note from beyond the grave. And trust me, I have experience of such things. If the dead do send notes, they are not as neatly packaged as that one. No, a human hand put that on her doormat.’
‘So what’s it all about?’
‘Well, if he was insured for a small fortune, I would suspect a man who had faked his own death. But I am of the opinion he might have shared such a plan with his wife before now. Besides, as she assured me, there was no great insurance pay out. And if I am not mistaken, she was genuinely taken aback and puzzled by the note.’
Betsy sipped her tea. ‘Is there another possibility? A hoax, perhaps?’
‘Yes, a malicious hoax is a possibility. A neighbour, perhaps? A work colleague? It would have to be someone who knew Crantock’s writing style and could imitate it.’
‘Perhaps an admirer who doesn’t want her to leave? She is a handsome woman beneath all that black.’
‘Whoever it is, he is keeping a close eye on her. He—’
‘Or she.’
‘Or she,’ Watson admitted, ‘clearly knew that Mrs Crantock was considering leaving London.’
‘So someone is spying on her?
‘Or opening her mail.’
‘Are you interested?’
No, Watson. We aren’t.
‘The truth is, I have other problems to occupy me.’ The whereabouts of Staff Nurse Jennings being his primary concern.
Betsy looked disappointed. ‘Well, of course. What’s one woman’s happiness in the grand scheme of things, huh?’ She sipped her tea. ‘But you did promise to consider the matter.’
‘I am considering it now. I also told her to put her trust in the police.’
‘And she told you they laughed at her.’
Watson put the tea down and sat back, the better to appraise his hostess. There was something doll-like about her, but Watson suspected a core of steel was at the centre of that apparently delicate frame. ‘Are you interested in this because of Mrs Crantock’s wellbeing or because you smell a newspaper story, Miss Buck?’
She seemed to relax a little and her voice was softer when she spoke. He wondered what her tale was – it can’t have been easy getting accreditation as a female reporter in Europe. ‘Oh, I have my newspaper story – plucky doughboys arrive in England to win the war for the Allies. A few words with General Pershing, if I’m lucky. That’s what my readers will want to hear: how we pulled England’s chestnuts out of the fire. No offence intended.’
‘None taken,’ Watson sighed. He knew right enough what the coming of Americans meant – industrial might, an army of fit young men, overwhelming numerical superiority, a fresh perspective on the stalemate of the Western Front. ‘Right now, we’d be grateful for anyone winning the war for us. So, why are you interested in Mrs Crantock?’
‘OK, honest Injun.’ Betsy beamed at him. ‘I can think of a better catch than the doughboys. Every American scribbler in London will be filing that story once the troop ships dock. But here, I have one that might make my editor sit up and take notice of little Betsy Buck.’
‘And what’s that?’
She mimed the banner headline with her thumbs and forefingers, as if it were written across the sky: ‘“The Return of Sherlock Holmes”.’
ELEVEN
The Northumberland Arms, near Charing Cross, was not the sort of establishment that Watson frequented on a regular basis. He was more at home a few hundred yards to the east at Simpson’s, sitting in the window, watching the stream of humanity ebb and flow along the Strand.
The Northumberland hadn’t been a rough pub/hotel before the war – Watson could remember it well from the affair of The Hound – but its proximity to the railway station now made it a favourite for the working girls and the sort that preyed on gullible soldiers, often using prostitutes as bait.
That afternoon, the air in the pub was chewy with thick yellow smoke and the sound of gulping as pint glasses were emptied in double-quick time. Soon, last orders would sound, closing the pub for two or three hours, encouraging those who had work to return to it. Few in the pub, however, kept what could be called regular hours. Fewer still could be accused of assisting the war effort directly.
Watson, dressed for once in sombre civilian clothes, pushed his way through the crush to the bar. Snippets of conversation caught his attention as he progressed through the packed bodies.
‘Ten months, she got, for deliberately sleeping with a soldier knowing she was infected.’
‘Hardly seems fair. Y’pays y’money . . .’
‘The Germans are droppin’ poison sweets on Paris—’
‘Pontefract cakes.’
‘Madeleines or macaroons. French don’t eat liquorice . . .’
‘Everyone who ate them died . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘Poison gas—’
‘That Dover Arrow hit a mine, one of ours, mark my words.’
‘I read it in the Mail, so it must be true.’
‘Full moon due soon. Harvest moon. Then the hunter’s. They’ll be over then.’
‘You read that in the Mail, too?’
‘Nah, Express.’
The thought of the bombers returning seemed to lower a small cloud of gloom over the group. Watson took advantage of the sudden stillness as they contemplated the Gotha Hum, placed his elbows on the polished wooden bar top and ordered a pint of mild from a barman with a nose like fleshy cauliflower.
‘Make that two, Dr Watson.’
Watson didn’t have to turn. He would recognize that sandpapery rasp anywhere. He changed the order to two pints.
‘No treatin’, I’m afraid, sir,’ said the barman, as he pulled the pints, reminding Watson that the buying of ‘rounds’ was forbidden under wartime regulations.
‘I’ll be payin’ my way, don’t you worry, Derek,’ said Porky.
That would be a first, thought Watson. ‘I would have stood you a decent lunch somewhere, Porky.’
He could feel warm breath on his ear when the man laughed. ‘I don’t like to move much out of me old haunts these days. Even this is a bit far south for me. Here, hand me one of those; there’s a room out back where we won’t be disturbed.’
It was less a room than a wood-panelled, three-sided cubbyhole or ‘snug’, but with its opaque glass panels, red-cushioned benches and polished table, it did feel a world apart from the throng in the other bars.
Shinwell Johnson raised a glass. ‘Your good health, Dr Watson.’
‘And yours.’ The man known for years as ‘Porky’ no longer deserved that old nickname. He was lean and lined, the face weathered by a life on the fringes of respectability, and some periods when he had crossed over fully to the criminal side. There had been prison time, too. The skin never seemed to shake off that pallor entirely.
‘How is Mr Holmes?’ said Watson.
Porky froze, the glass halfway to his lips. ‘How should I know, Doctor?’
‘No, I mean that is your next question: “How is Mr Holmes?”’
Porky laughed, showing stained tombstone teeth that appeared to have developed an aversion to each other. ‘What, you a mind reader now?’
‘It’s just the normal sequence of events,’ said Watson with a sigh.
‘Still playing second fiddle to his nibs, eh? Well, I wasn’t going to ask you about Mr Holmes, ’cause I saw him not that long ago.’
Now Watson was on the back foot. ‘Really? Where?’
‘Here. Not in here, exactly, but London.’
‘Well, I’ll be . . .’ Watson gulped the warm liquid to cover his annoyance. ‘What was he doing here?’
Porky winked in an exaggerated fashion. ‘Well, you’ll have to ask him that, won’t you? I’m like a priest or a lawyer when it comes to confidentiality.’
Watson had to laugh. ‘Porky, you are as far removed from either of those professions as I can imagine.’
Porky joined in with a
throaty chuckle. ‘Maybe. But I still have me uses. First Mr Holmes and then you come calling.’ Porky drained half the pint in one. ‘Probably get another in before the bell goes if we don’t hang around. What can I do for you, Dr Watson?’
‘I have three problems. Two of them, I need your help with.’
Watson quickly outlined the case of Sir Gilbert and his disappearance after an evening at the Wigmore.
‘Do the police suspect you?’
‘I doubt it. But these four names . . .’ He passed the policeman’s card across.
‘Arnott, Holbeck, Powell and Carlisle. Firm of solicitors?’
‘All members of the War Injuries Compensation Board. As is Sir Gilbert. Eminent surgeons and psychologists all, except Lord Arnott, who is a money man, holding the purse strings for the Board’s ruminations. Between them, they decide on the level of compensation for war injuries, juggling what is fair with what the country can afford.’
‘I’ll wager I know which side of that wins. I’m glad I was too old to serve.’
‘That’s as may be, but I placed telephone calls to all of the committee members at their places of work this morning. None has been in. There was a level of evasion about the replies I received, too.’
Porky caught on quickly. ‘Ah. You think they’ve been disappeared, too?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Kidnapped, like?’ The rest of the pint disappeared and Porky licked his lips.
‘Again, we have to consider that possibility.’
‘And it’s something to do with this compensation board they all serve on?’
‘I would say it was a mighty coincidence, if not. I can’t see what else connects them.’
Porky nodded his agreement. ‘What do you want me to do exactly?’
‘Confirm that they have all gone missing. And find out what the police are doing about it.’
Porky scratched his neck beneath his collar. ‘I’ve a few contacts at the Yard left . . . not as many as I did have, but I can get the s.p. on it. Is that it?’
‘Not quite.’ Watson explained about Mrs Crantock and her husband who apparently wrote messages from beyond the grave.
‘What’re your thoughts?’ Porky asked.
‘That he faked his death. She identified him only by his boots and clothing. His facial features were smashed by falling masonry. For some reason he wanted to disappear.’
‘And you think he’s watching her?’
Watson nodded and rose just as the bell rang for last orders.
‘Don’t rush. We’ll be all right in here. What do you want me to do about the haunted widow?’
Watson sat once more. ‘Put a man on her. Try to find the watcher.’
‘You have an address?’
Watson handed it across.
‘Two men, Doctor, in shifts.’ Porky rubbed his thumb and forefinger together to show it would cost.
‘Agreed.’
‘What’s the third thing? You said you had three problems.’
‘Don’t worry about that, Porky,’ he said. ‘The Dover Arrow is mine.’
‘The Dover Arrow? I tell you they should string those submariners up by their balls if they ever catch them.’
Two fresh pints were delivered by the big-nosed barman, who took Watson’s proffered coins and removed the empties without a word. Porky took the glass and raised it to Watson. ‘Nice doing business with you again, Dr Watson.’ He took a sip. ‘You know, it’s just like old times.’
Watson was about to object when he realized what had been bothering him for most of the day, ever since he had called in at 221b Baker Street. For the first time in what seemed an age, he was actually enjoying himself.
A sly grin split his face, as if he was holding back a guilty secret. ‘Yes. It is, isn’t it?’
TWELVE
Beneath the billowing square of green camouflage netting that hid the Giant from prying Allied eyes, Oberleutnant Schrader crouched down in front of the undercarriage. He used a knuckle to rap on one of the main spars that held the multi-wheeled contraption together. It rang sonorously and, satisfied, he stood. The original wooden stay had cracked on landing. He had been dismayed to find that only a few intact millimetres had separated him and his crew from disaster. That spar had been milled from a piece of cheap softwood. As if that would last more than a few landings, given the weight of the R-type. It was, he thought glumly, typical of the poor workmanship and materials being used in all the aircraft being delivered to the front.
He walked from under the shroud of camouflage and examined the sky. A uniform lid of Dreadnought grey pressed down on them. The sun was low now and, as if peeking under curtains, part of its disc had appeared in the gap between cloud and horizon. There, the sky glowed red, as if it were being annealed.
Schrader looked back at the enormous bomber. Were the British building an equivalent? A vast war machine capable of flying to Berlin? It was likely, because the whole war in the air had been a game of leapfrog, each side gaining the upper hand before the enemy came up with its own innovation that gave it a temporary advantage. The thought of his mother and sisters running like frightened rabbits into holes in the ground, cowering in U-Bahn stations, depressed him. It was why they had to smash London and the morale of its inhabitants as quickly as possible. Before they did the same to Berlin.
‘Oberleutnant Schrader!’
It was Feldwebel Rutter, his ventral gunner – an unenviable position, crouching on a ramp lowered beneath the belly of the beast – and engineer. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Leutnant Trotzman requests your presence in his office, if it is convenient.’
Schrader glanced once more at the sun, the disc now fully bridging the gap between the ragged cloud line and the horizon. ‘Good news?’
A shrug. ‘I don’t know, sir.’
Schrader felt a flutter of something in his stomach, a mix of apprehension and excitement at the thought that Trotzman was about to authorize a mission to London that night.
The former wasn’t cowardice. He had examined his feelings carefully. Only a fool wouldn’t be concerned about the quality of the planes he was expected to fly. Setting off in a Giant to England was every bit as hazardous as Heinrich Barth heading off to map the Sahara or those Englishmen who insisted on trying to walk to the South Pole. A voyage into the unknown. Although he wasn’t one of those flyers who feigned engine trouble when conditions looked bad, he was a man who insisted on stacking the odds in his favour as much as possible.
He pointed at the bomber. ‘Run the engines on her. Fifteen minutes. Make sure the fuel lines are clear.’
‘Sir.’
‘And Rutter . . .’
‘Sir?’
‘From now on, I want all fuel filtered through the finest mesh before it goes into the tanks.’
Rutter nodded. The engine malfunction on their return flight had been caused by flakes of rust in the fuel line, probably from a storage tank or the bowser. Now, so he had been told, they would fit superchargers to two of the engines, an experiment in giving enough boost to enable them to fly higher than the Gothas. Superchargers. Something else to go wrong.
Trotzman was the England Squadron’s chief weather officer. It was, Schrader mused, as he hurried across to the meteorological hut where Trotzman was based, the most thankless task in the unit. Trotzman was meant to work miracles. Using information from weather balloons released on the Belgian coast, from German shipping and the occasional air patrol, he was meant to predict what conditions would be like over the North Sea, London and south-east England over a twelve-hour period. You’d have to be Freyr or Zeus to do that.
It meant every unexpected airstream blowing them off course, every unanticipated cloudbank, was reason to curse Trotzman and his stupid, useless charts. It had been so much easier when the British newspapers had published detailed weather forecasts. Now, aware that the ‘other side’ was reading them, they produced puzzles or cartoons instead, which were little use to Trotzman
and his ilk.
He opened the door to the hut and stepped in. To his surprise, Hauptmann Rudy von Kahr, the squadron’s leader, was already in there, pouring himself a coffee from a pot on the stove. Trotzman was leaning over a map spread out on the table, the familiar rectangle of Belgium, France, North Sea and England in which the Giants and Gothas operated.
‘Oberleutnant, come in. Coffee?’
Schrader closed the door behind him and saluted but was ignored by the captain, who handed over his tin mug of coffee and then poured himself another. Schrader sipped the coffee and then addressed Trotzman.
‘Is it clearing?’
The weatherman shook his head, his expression as jowly and hangdog as ever. He looked like a depressed bloodhound. ‘My guess is it’ll be another four or five days. In time for the full moon.’
‘I see.’ Except he didn’t. Why were they bothering him with no news?
‘How is the shoulder?’ von Kahr asked him.
Instinctively Schrader rotated it, feeling it click and crunch in the socket. ‘Not bad.’ He tried to raise his arm above his head. ‘Movement still limited. The doctors reckon—’
‘You could still fly a plane, though? A real plane? A fighter?’
Schrader hesitated, gathering his thoughts by drinking some more of the bitter coffee. ‘I could fly one. I’d have trouble with some actions.’ He mimed reaching forward and felt a twinge. ‘Clearing the guns, maybe. Depends on the model. Why, might I ask? Sir.’
Von Kahr moved to stand next to Trotzman, his sharp, handsome features and meticulous grooming making the weatherman look like he was built from sacks of potatoes. The squadron leader was of impeccable Prussian stock, and the holder of two Iron Crosses and an Order of Hohenzollern at the age of thirty ‘Can it be done?’
‘It is possible,’ Trotzman said, tracing a line. ‘For a good pilot.’
They both looked up at Schrader.
‘Why do I feel like I am being measured for my funeral suit?’ he asked.
Von Kahr laughed and waved the suggestion away. ‘The England Squadron has been selected for a highly prestigious mission. They wanted the best pilot—’