by Robert Ryan
An orb, brighter than the moon, was falling to earth in front of him, a man-made shooting star, no longer discernible as an aircraft of any kind, just a blazing white sphere of thermite and magnesium, sending off hot globules behind it, as if it were giving birth.
The Giant hit the ground well before he did, creating a ragged-topped column of light that illuminated the fields where it fell as if it were day. The deep boom of the impact and the whoosh of flames reached him some moments later. He tried not to think of Schrader, Deitling, Fohn and the others. But he couldn’t let the bomber go on to London with its firebombs. He would have felt complicit in its actions.
Far too many had died around him of late – not just the bomber crew, but Mrs Gregson, Staff Nurse Jennings, Miss Pillbody. Then there was Trenchard, Garavan, Amies. Some might have deserved to die, but that was enough bodies laid at his door. More than enough.
Watson reached up and gripped the lines, letting his weight relax into the harness. It was so damned quiet, apart from the occasional crackle and pop from the burning bomber, which reached up to him even at that height. It was easy to imagine this was what the world once sounded like, before man and his machines marched across it. Silence, he realized, was a precious commodity, especially in war. Now, at last, the appeal of the Diogenes was clear.
Watson looked down between his feet. He had no idea how far away the ground was. He could only make out the ghostly outlines of hedgerows, the black ink-spot of woods and copses. Not a light shone in a house. Still, gravity would do its work. He would be down soon enough. Yet, dangling there in the straps, Watson felt suspended not just by the harness, but in time itself, and he wished that the warm feeling coursing through him, the calming sensation of being free from all the cares that awaited him below, could last for ever.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
After a series of accidents and failures, the experimental Elektron incendiary bomb was withdrawn in the autumn of 1917 and the modified version was not introduced until the spring of 1918.
By that time, the British air defences had been formalized and streamlined. The system of observation, plotting and interception was essentially the same as that used just over two decades later in the Battle of Britain, apart from the fact that, by 1940, the far more effective radar had replaced the acoustic dishes built on the coast.
His service record states that Colonel Arthur Hartford contracted typhus in the course of his duties. He died at an isolation ward in Essex. After a period of mourning, his widow, Marion, married a former policeman in 1919. He took over the care of the couple’s son, Charles, and daughter, Clara.
St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics, as it was originally known, was used by the Treasury and subsequently the Bank of England from 1916 onwards until the early 1950s. The building was demolished in 1963. The author would like to thank Margherita Orlando of the Bank of England’s Archives Department for help in researching the wartime history of the printing works.
The body of Stephen Harrow was never found. Rumours of a German spy killed by locals in the north Kent village of Iwade have never been substantiated.
The origin of the Spanish flu epidemic that swept the world in two waves during 1918–20, killing 50–100 million people, has never been definitely established. Some researchers suggest it may have been a bird virus that mutated and spread to pigs kept near the front. Others contend that it first appeared in Kansas, which was certainly the location of the first big outbreak, but possibly not the site of its origin. Mark Humphries of Canada’s Memorial University of Newfoundland is of the opinion that it was brought by some of the 96,000 Chinese labourers who were transported to the Western Front. He points to evidence that a respiratory illness that struck northern China in 1917 was identified a year later by Chinese health officials as being identical to the Spanish flu. The symptoms included the skin turning blue.
In the trunk containing Dr John Watson’s papers in the vaults of Cox & Co. on the Charing Cross Road, there is a partial manuscript called ‘The Adventure of the Dover Arrow’. Dr Watson’s notes appear to indicate that the definitive solution to the case eluded Holmes, possibly because vital information was destroyed by individuals in senior positions in the British Government and further enquiries curtailed by use of the draconian DORA regulations.
Robert Ryan