The Sign of Fear

by Robert Ryan

  ‘A German plan? Are you sure?’

  Holmes shook his head. ‘Certain, no. Suspicious, yes.’

  Watson felt a sudden chill. ‘You are thinking that . . . that I’ve been played for a fool? That somehow Miss Pill—’

  ‘I would put nothing past that woman.’

  ‘That woman is meant to arrange for me to fly to Belgium tomorrow.’

  ‘To speak to the survivor of the sinking? I think it best if you let the Dover Arrow go, Watson. I fear she is dealing her own hand in all this. And she is a better player than either of us when it comes to espionage.’

  Watson slumped back and let a cloud of gloom settle over him. Could it be? He ran through the sequence of events in his mind, trying to see where Miss Pillbody might fit as puppet master. But he couldn’t create a convincing case for any duplicity on her part. ‘I am not so sure, Holmes.’

  ‘It pains me to say this, but if you insist on pursuing the matter, there is only one sure way to find out.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Go along with her scheme. Go to Belgium. Talk to this witness, who may or may not exist. But be aware . . .’

  ‘That?’

  ‘You might not make it back with whatever knowledge you glean.’

  Rutter, the other gunner/engineer, had offered to do the job, but Schrader felt obliged to scrub the blood from the upper part of the Giant himself. It seemed disrespectful to delegate the task to another. He was Borschberg’s commander. It was his way of paying respects to a brave man.

  Using a stiff scrubbing brush and a bucket of bleach, he stood on the ladder and worked at the stained canvas, scooping off the lumps of skin and gristle that had somehow avoided being dislodged by the slipstream, and throwing them over the side. Not even a body for the parents to bury.

  He examined the area where Rutter must have been standing. The upper wing had absorbed a lot of punishment. The engine nacelles were holed, too, which meant they would have to strip them down to make sure no damage had been done to the mechanicals within. One of the wooden propellers looked as if termites had been at it, and another was missing the last quarter of a blade. A day or two’s work, at least.

  He felt a tug at his ankle and crouched down to peer into the cockpit. It was von Kahr, his squadron leader.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You were right. Camels. They transferred a squadron back from France last week. They were refitted with top-mounted Lewis guns. “Sopwith Comics”, they are known as.’

  ‘Why didn’t we know this yesterday?’

  ‘Would it have made any difference?’ von Kahr asked.

  Schrader thought about this. ‘Perhaps not. But we’ll have to change our game.’ He glanced upwards. ‘I don’t think Borschberg was hit by any Sopwith. I think one of our own got him.’

  ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ said von Kahr irritably.

  ‘It doesn’t change the facts. The flat diamond is not ideal when the British planes are fast and able to come among you. Gunners panic. They don’t think about what happens to the bullets that don’t hit. We need a new formation.’

  ‘I was there, remember?’

  ‘Then you know. We were lucky to get back. They form another squadron of these Comics and it will be no laughing matter up there.’

  ‘I agree. We’ll have to rethink tactics. But I’ll not have you saying we shot our own. Understood?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘And you won’t have to worry about being hit by either side tonight.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘We lost three Gothas in that fire-fight. Another two to engine failure. We have another eight dead, including your Borschberg, and most of the surviving planes have some damage. Including mine. We skip tonight, get back up to strength.’

  Schrader wiped his forehead. ‘Then when we go back, we’ll be ready for them.’

  ‘You might be excused tomorrow, too.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon. You have to fly to England.’

  Schrader sighed. He knew it was no use arguing. ‘I don’t want anyone else taking this plane up while I am gone.’

  ‘You will follow orders. You can’t do everything.’

  ‘I can be over there and back before we take off for London.’

  ‘Not necessarily. You’ll be flying heavy on the return trip.’

  ‘Why, who am I bringing in? Clara Butt?’

  Von Kahr frowned at the levity. ‘You have new orders.’

  ‘New how?’

  ‘When you land, there will be a man with the woman you took out waiting. Originally, just the man was to come. Now, they want both.’

  ‘Three up in that Bristol?’

  ‘If anyone can do it, it’s you, Schrader.’

  ‘If anyone is stupid enough to do it, it’s me, you mean.’ Schrader dropped the brush in the bucket. ‘If you’ll excuse me, sir.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To church.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were religious.’

  Schrader opened the door of the cabin and stepped out onto the folding ladder. ‘I wasn’t, until about thirty seconds ago.’

  ‘Miss Adler, would you get dressed and come with me, please?’

  Miss Pillbody pulled the dressing gown tighter around her waist. She was peering around the door of her rooms at the policeman on the landing. ‘I think I deserve some rest after last night’s exertions.’

  Inspector Bullimore nodded. ‘I’m sure you do. But there are other pressing matters. By the way, I have a constable with me at the foot of the stairs here and one posted at the rear of the property. Just in case, you understand.’

  ‘I am under arrest? What for? Saving the Crown a pretty penny? Oh, no, forgive me. Saving your life.’

  ‘I am making allowances for the fact you shot Mr Amies. I’m not handing you over to his colleagues. Not yet.’

  ‘And you’d trust his colleagues, would you?’

  It was a fair point. How many more bad apples were there in MI5, he wondered. But that wasn’t why he was showing her some clemency. He knew that once the secret services got hold of her, he would be sidelined. Having been comprehensively taken in by her, he wanted to make sure he was the one who got the credit for unmasking a German spy. Having been made a fool of by this woman, arresting her might just save his career.

  ‘Can we please step inside?’ he asked.

  ‘What about my reputation?’

  ‘Miss Pillbody, your reputation is why I have my hand on a pistol right now.’

  She pulled the door open and allowed him in, closing it behind her. She let the dressing gown fall open. His eyes flicked down, but she pulled it shut when she realized what Bullimore was really looking at. Not her underwear, but the weight of the gown’s pockets, just in case she, too, had a gun. But the tiny Beretta was back in its hidey-hole in the bathroom down the hall.

  Bullimore allowed himself time to examine the room. It was spartan: a single bed, a rug, showing signs of wear, over-painted and stencilled floorboards, a gas fire, a table with a mirror on it and a padded stool. Various creams and powders were arranged on the table. The view from the window was of a light well. There was another, small room off to one side.

  ‘What’s in there?’ he asked.

  ‘Dressing room.’ She took a step towards it. ‘It’s just where I hang my things. Take a look, if you wish.’

  He shook his head. ‘Stay where you are. I want you to get dressed. Out here.’

  ‘You’ve got the gun. What do you imagine I might do?’

  ‘I’ve read your file. I can imagine lots of things you might do. Plus I have seen you in action, remember? I know you have a gun somewhere.’

  She shrugged, walked over to the table and sat at the stool.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You expect me to go along with you looking like this?’

  ‘It’s not a beauty parade.’

  She unscrewed the lid of a jar of oxygen face cre
am and began to apply it to her cheeks. ‘Won’t take a minute. Even spies like to look their best.’ She half-turned. ‘Tell me, out of professional curiosity, how did I slip up?’

  ‘Not you. Watson. When we were in the car at Old Street, when I was trying to get you off him. He called you Miss Pillbody, not Miss Adler.’

  ‘Did he indeed,’ she said flatly, not letting her irritation at the doctor show. ‘And you knew of that name?’

  ‘No. Pillbody rang a bell, but I couldn’t place it. I wasn’t in London when you escaped from Holloway. But the moment I mentioned it at Bow Street . . . seems you are something of a legend, if that is the right word.’

  She met his gaze and spoke directly to him. ‘Inspector, what if I were to tell you that, at this moment, I am working for the British Government?’

  He pulled the gun free from his jacket pocket and waved it at her.

  ‘Get on with it and stop wasting your breath.’ She wiped some of the excess cream away with a cloth and leaned in to examine her eyes. She gave each one a few strokes of Verdi’s eyelash pomade.

  ‘It’s true,’ she said as she applied it. ‘You can ask Watson.’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust anything Watson said. He is clearly besotted with you.’

  She laughed at this. ‘On the contrary, he wishes me dead. He’s in love, all right, but not with me. With the memory of a woman.’

  She swivelled again, examining his face. ‘Like you, Inspector. That’s what I see in your eyes. Did she die? Marry someone else? Perhaps she is already married—’

  ‘Shut up!’

  Apparently satisfied that she had the answer she wanted, Miss Pillbody applied a light dusting of colliandum powder to put colour in her cheeks.

  ‘I’ll need a dress from in there.’ She waved towards the dressing room.

  ‘I’ll fetch it. Tell me which one.’

  ‘There is a floral one, with matching jacket, on a coat hanger, just behind the door. Possibly a bit too summery for this time of year, but I suppose it’s not a fashion parade either. You can reach in without taking your eyes off me if you wish.’ She flashed him a beaming smile.

  ‘You are a very strange woman, Miss Pillbody.’

  ‘That’s been said before. But it’s why I am still alive, Inspector.’

  Bullimore backed up to the anteroom and, with the gun in his right hand, began to grope along the door with his left. He found the dress and worked his way up the material to where he could unhook the hanger. He had no time to react when something gripped his wrist and yanked him hard. His head caught the edge of the door, splitting the temple, and sending him to a heap on the floor.

  Miss Pillbody was on him in a second, tying his arms while he groaned.

  ‘He’s hurt,’ said Watson.

  ‘A scratch. Get me something to gag him with.’ She glanced up at him. ‘Thank goodness you called on me before he did.’

  Watson felt sick to his stomach at the sight of the policeman. ‘Perhaps I should have just let him take you in.’

  ‘We had an agreement, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not sure you told me the full picture of why you’re in London.’

  ‘The full picture? Look, Major, can we play this little game of truth or dare later? Once we have hog-tied our policeman?’ The old metal came into her voice. ‘Or do you have another solution, as this mess was your doing?’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘If you hadn’t called me Miss Pillbody . . .’

  ‘Slip of the tongue.’

  ‘The kind of slip that in my business can prove fatal. Are you going to help?’

  When Bullimore was suitably bound and Watson had made sure the blood was from a superficial cut, he leaned in close to him. Bullimore’s eyes were flickering into consciousness. ‘I know you will find this hard to believe,’ Watson assured him, ‘but for the moment, Miss Pillbody really is on the side of the angels.’

  She shrugged off her gown, pulled the dress over her head and began buttoning it. ‘Otherwise I’d kill you and have done with it.’

  Watson stood. ‘Enough of that, you vile woman. You heard what he said. He has a constable downstairs. One out the back. And I’m not going to let you shoot your way out. What do you suggest now?’

  She feigned disappointment. ‘Much as I might like a good gunfight, you forget one thing. I am a She Wolf. You can never paint a She Wolf into a corner. Give me a hand.’

  ‘With what?’

  She pointed at a tallboy. ‘This. Oh, do keep up, Major. It’s not just a wardrobe. There’s a window behind here.’ The cupboard moved under her shoulder and a strip of grey daylight entered the room. ‘What we spies call an escape plan. Are you going to stand there gawping, or help?’

  THIRTY-NINE

  ‘I have a good mind to arrest you for obstruction of justice.’

  Sherlock Holmes looked unmoved by the threat. He was sitting in Watson’s chair, in front of the fire, a medicinal whisky in his hand, courtesy of Mrs Turner. He stared at the coal flames, counting the seconds between a flare of gas, glowing yellow, that was erupting with the regularity of Old Faithful.

  ‘What do you say to that?’ asked Bullimore.

  ‘I am returning to the country tomorrow, first thing. The city has not really agreed with me. Besides, the bees need preparing for over-wintering.’

  Bullimore strode over and addressed the detective as if he were hard of hearing. ‘Mr Holmes, do you know how much trouble Major Watson is in?’

  Holmes tore his gaze away from the dancing flames. ‘I suppose there is a hue and cry out for him?’

  ‘If we could raise a hue and cry, we would put one out, I can assure you. My own career is at risk. I was instructed to put out an arrest warrant and your brother persuaded me—’

  ‘Mycroft can be very persuasive.’

  ‘That he was an innocent. Now we find out he is consorting with an enemy agent. So what forces we do have at our disposal are on alert to look for Watson and the German woman and detain them both. By force, if necessary.’

  ‘I can’t say I approve.’

  ‘Of the use of force?’

  ‘Of the German woman. But Watson is quite adamant. He has become somewhat stubborn in his advancing years, I have found. The only bees he seems interested in are the ones in his bonnet. Of course, he hasn’t been the same since that affair in Holland. It was that woman, are you aware of that?’

  Bullimore sat down. A black and blue discoloration had formed around his right eye and his head still thumped from the blow against the door of the dressing room, and, although he had been bound for less than twenty minutes before one of the constables had come to check on him, both wrists and ankles were very sore. However, she had not actually cut the circulation off and most of the damage came from his struggling to get free. Which he had manifestly failed to do. Knots were clearly another Miss Pillbody speciality.

  ‘I am not entirely sure what I’m aware of. All I know is that, leaving aside the events at St Luke’s and the Garavan fellow, we have a dangerous spy loose and she is loose with your companion. And I believe you know where they are.’

  ‘Believe away, Inspector, believe away, but it will not alter the facts. My part in this is done. I now know that Frank Shackleton was, in fact, this Micky Garavan. I also know that my instinct regarding his appearance in London was correct. Something was afoot. That is all I ever wanted. Watson, however, has his own agenda.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Holmes swivelled his head towards Bullimore. ‘I am an old man. I have lapses. He did explain what he was up to, but, to be honest, it was singularly uninteresting. It involved a woman. I find it often does with Watson.’

  ‘The German woman?’

  ‘No, one of his old colleagues. The name is in here somewhere.’ He clicked his fingers and then gave a defeated smile.

  ‘There is treason here, Mr Holmes. Treason.’

  ‘And having been a protégé of Mr Amies, you would know all about that.’

&n
bsp; Bullimore bristled. ‘Damn it, I wasn’t his protégé. I was taken in by him.’

  ‘And by Miss Pillbody, it seems.’

  ‘We have all been taken in by Miss Pillbody at some point.’

  Holmes nodded at this. ‘Amies had debts. Large debts. He moved in the same circles as Garavan. Amies was almost certainly homosexual. Garavan was not. But as part of his affectation of being Frank Shackleton, he inhabits, or rather inhabited, that shadowy world that runs through London like seams of coal through the Welsh valleys. It would be simple for a man like Garavan to entice a man like Amies over to his scheme with promises of money.’

  ‘But, surely, MI5 wouldn’t employ a man who was . . .’

  ‘A gambler and of . . . singular tastes?’ Holmes pursed his lips. ‘You would be surprised. Both vices are dangerous in the world of espionage, granted. But there is also something about it that attracts both sorts. A habitué of the tables has to gamble, to take risks. As does any spy. A homosexual, by his very nature and the rigour of this country’s laws on such matters, has to live a double life. Lying and deception become second nature. Again, perfect for a spy. But, all that aside, I suspect that if you ask at two or three of the more discreet gaming establishments around Mayfair and St James’s, Amies’s markers will come up.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The gambling clubs? The Park for one, the New Crockford, the Orinoco and Henry Black’s. I’d start with the latter. It has a reputation for its handsome young men. Or, at least, it did before they were all taken off to war.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  Holmes raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t about to let slip his methods, even it did consist of nothing more than a few well-placed telegrams and the services of his brother. ‘It was once my job to have an exact knowledge of London.’

  ‘Yet you claim to know nothing of Watson’s movements?’

  Holmes returned to staring into the flames. ‘I have nothing that can help you, Inspector, even if I wanted to. I bid you good evening. I shall probably dine at Goldini’s tonight, if you need me.’

  ‘Is that Mayfair?’

  ‘Gloucester Road. And if you are intent on arresting me at some later date, I will leave a forwarding address with Mrs Turner.’