Dead Man's Land (31 page)

Is that all you are worried about? Her safety?

He wasn’t going to justify that with a reply, he decided.

But you like her.

Of course I—

Ha. His conscious was trying to tell him his concern for the girl was distracting him away from the real matter in hand. Of course I like her. He had always enjoyed the company of intelligent, independent women. He even appreciated Mrs Gregson, although there was a wild streak in there that any man of his generation would find unsettling. It was fine when it was harnessed for good, such as the retrieving of the burial records of Hornby, but he suspected—

And speaking of Hornby. And Shipobottom. And de Griffon.

Yes, yes, enough of women. Back to murder. So, he was now as certain as he could be that gas had not played a role in this case, unless Churchill found otherwise from the Wiltshire death. Had he been right about that? It was possible he had maligned British scientists.

Watson pulled open the door to the nearest stone barn and lit one of the lanterns in the doorway. He wrinkled his nose at the acrid smell of ammonia and worse. Some of the men had decided to use at least one of the stalls as a latrine. These were people, he reminded himself, who often made do with earth closets at home. A pile of clean straw might seem rather tempting to them. They could have used some chloride of lime, however, to soften the stink.

He took the light and walked Lord Lockie to a stall at the far end, away from the odiferous area. Hanging up the lantern, he began to untack, starting with the nose lash to release bridle. He didn’t bother with a rope harness; Lord Lockie was glad to be home and wasn’t going to give him any trouble.

As he unbuckled the girth, he thought about how marvellous it would feel to be going back to Baker Street. To a steaming cocoa from Mrs Hudson. A hot bath and soaking to the sound of a violin seeping through the closed door. A good whisky waiting on a side-table. One of their landlady’s fine pies for supper. Perhaps an unexpected knock at the door . . .

Stop torturing yourself, Watson admonished. There are a million men crouched in trenches all across Europe, pining for home comforts and old friends. You have considerably less right to them than they. He was an old man sliding into the past rather than facing his inevitable future. He had seen it happen to many of his patients, that yearning for a golden age that had never really existed, at least not in the prelapsian version that memory presented. It was true in this case. He had always exaggerated Holmes’s ability on the violin. It could be maddeningly caterwauling at times. The pies, mind, really were delicious.

Watson chuckled to himself as he heaved off the saddle and its pad, and placed it on the stall divider. Then he draped a fresh mantle over the horse’s back. Lord Lockie gave a little shudder of pleasure at the touch of the cool blanket and Watson stepped back as the animal emptied his capacious bladder. Watson fetched oats and water for the horse while he waited for the stream to weaken. He had just started to search for some brushes, when he heard the barn door slam in the wind. At least, he thought it was the wind. But it was a clever breeze that could lift up a beam of wood and re-bar the door from the outside.

‘Hello?’ he shouted, his voice strangely deadened by the stone and wood that surrounded him. The flat, empty timbre of the word made his heart beat a little faster. It sounded like it had come from another place, the dream world he had just been indulging in.

‘Who’s that?’ he asked. ‘Lewis? Is that you?’ Why would it be Corporal Lewis? Because he had asked where he was going next and Watson had told him. Using footpaths, Burnt-Out Lodge was only a short walk across two fields.

Watson took a step towards the now-closed double doors when he saw something snake underneath them, whiplashing as it came. It was a hose. Perhaps, he thought, the stable was to be sluiced. Then it gave a twitch and a jolt, as if given an electric shock. A shushing noise issued from the open end, followed by a foul white-green cloud that blossomed rapidly, like the bloom of a flower speeded up by a cine camera. Watson instinctively took a step back and put a hand to his mouth. It was the hiss of chlorine gas.

‘See?’ Robinson de Griffon cried triumphantly. ‘See this?’

He was pacing up and down the tent at double speed, his arms pumping, legs straight out and stiff. Cecil followed him, snapping at his heels.

‘And this!’

The captain began to hop, alternating one leg with another, pyjama bottoms flapping. He looked so ludicrous that Mrs Gregson had to laugh. ‘Can you stop now? One of us will burst an organ.’

He collapsed onto the bed, a smile on his face, his chest heaving. ‘I am well enough to be discharged,’ he said at last.

‘Major Watson ought to have the last say in that,’ said Mrs Gregson. ‘And I have to go and serve tea. Would you like some? As long as you don’t tell Sister its provenance.’

‘Mrs Gregson, have a heart. I can’t rely on Major Watson. Lord knows where he is off gallivanting to now.’

She had to agree. He had come in with Cecil under his arm, his eyes wild with excitement, almost feverish, she would have said. He had asked Captain de Griffon a few questions about poison gas, and then declared his intention to visit Burnt-Out Lodge. He had also mentioned something about Winston Churchill and sending Miss Pippery off with a telegram. He had been babbling, as if a whole clutch of sentences were trying to get out of his mouth at once. Mrs Gregson wondered if his brain had scrambled into dementia or, rather unkindly, if he had been at the morphia. The calm, reassuring gentleman doctor she knew seemed to have deserted, leaving a voluble Mr Hyde in his place.

‘Look, my whole company has pulled out,’ said de Griffon, in measured tones. ‘All gone up to the front for another stint. I really need to be with them. There are young, frightened men in their ranks who, strange as it may sound, look to me for guidance. I’m not a professional soldier. Not that long ago I was an idiot subaltern. But my job is to lead the men by showing them the correct way to behave, both in and out of combat. If they think their officer is shirking—’

‘Nobody can think that,’ she objected. ‘Not after what you have been through.’

He shook his head ruefully. ‘Mrs Gregson, I wouldn’t be the first officer to find a creative way out of this madness. But upon my return to England, if God spares me, I will take up my role as Lord Stanwood.’

‘You are Lord Stanwood?’

‘Both my father and brother are dead. My mother lives in that great house all alone but for a cook, a single maid, and Harry the chauffeur. Who is not the man he was. My job will be to return Flitcham to the house it was before my father took ill, and to make sure the mills are ready for the peacetime economy. A great many of the lads in my unit will be my employees. They’ll want their jobs back. Imagine if they lose all respect for me, for the family name. It’s a recipe for disaster. One thing that is going to be very difficult when all this is over is getting back to normal, to bring back the old order. Dereliction of duty by me won’t help.’ He pushed back his hair from his forehead and Mrs Gregson thought he was really quite attractive when he was agitated.

‘I didn’t realize. That you’d lost . . . that you were now the head of the family.’

‘Head of the wicked de Griffons.’

‘I didn’t say that . . .’

‘I think you did. But I promise. After the war, no more wickedness. I know I said I wanted the old order back, but it will never be quite the same. Good Lord, how many lords have shared a trench or a shellhole with their men, watched them die, carried them from . . . ? What I mean is, I can’t see them as faceless pawns on a board after this. Ever. Nor will I ever think of women in quite the same way.’

’I’m pleased to hear it, Lord Stanwood.’

‘Good Lord, no, not here. That’s for the future. Robinson, please.’

‘I think that might have to wait a while longer, too,’ boomed Sister Spence. She had slid in behind them, unseen and unheard. ‘I thought I told you not to fraternize with the officers, Mrs Gregson.’

‘Sister, this is all my fault. I sent for Mrs Gregson. I needed to know how Major Watson’s investigation was proceeding. Please, if you are going to shout at anyone, shout at me.’

Sister Spence tutted at the thought. ‘I knew having VADs would turn the place upside down. What with Field Marshal Haig on the way—’

‘Sir Douglas won’t be here long,’ said de Griffon. ‘Not in any hospital. I hear he doesn’t like to see the end result of his grand schemes.’ He winked. ‘Better to think of them as faceless pawns on a board, eh, Mrs Gregson?’

The VAD wondered how he could possibly know this about Haig, but for once she kept quiet.

‘So, there we are,’ de Griffon announced, as if a mutual decision had been reached. ‘I’m going to get dressed now and I’d appreciate it if neither of you lovely ladies stood in my way. I’ll answer to Major Watson for my actions. Oh, and one last thing, Mrs Gregson.’

‘Yes?’

‘I wouldn’t mind that tea before I go.’

Watson’s first thought was to grab a wooden hay rake and push the belching hose back under the door. He scooped one off the wall and advanced on the cloud, but already, in less than a minute, the sickly-coloured fog was so thick he could hardly see the point of origin. He held his breath, turned his head away and sent the wooden implement into the mist, jabbing like an ineffectual prizefighter.

The amorphous monster, however, struck back and within an instant Watson’s eyes were aflame as the chemicals attacked his conjunctivae. It was like having oil of vitriol flung in his face. He squeezed his lids shut as tightly as he could and retreated towards Lord Lockie. The horse could now smell the pungent gas and he began to shake his head and snort violently.

Think, Watson. Think, man.

He looked around the solid, stone barn, but the only windows were piercings high up by the roof line. There was no hayloft to clamber up to. At the end of each stall divider, upright wooden beams, fat and square, ran from the floor to the open rafters and tie beams. No doubt the roof tiles could be penetrated, if only he could reach them. But they were twenty-five feet away.

Now he began coughing for real as the first of the corrosive molecules attacked his upper airways. He looked down. Tendrils of the whiteish gas were curling at his feet and slowly climbing his leg. Very slowly. The straw was rippling in places as rats and mice scurried away from the danger.

Heavier than air.

The phrase leaped into his head. Chlorine gas was heavier than air. He had to get higher. He put a foot on a crossbeam and heaved himself up onto a stall divider, clinging on to one of the vertical supports. Could he shimmy up that? Unlikely. If he did, would he be able to lift the tiles? Nearly every building he had seen hereabouts had lost part of its roof, but here it was maddeningly intact.

‘Help!’ he tried to yell, but that just ended in a terrible hacking. Now, though, even coughing was beyond him. He was choking. His throat was constricting. He fumbled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, folded it and held it to his mouth and nose.

Lord Lockie was stamping, thumping the ground and making strange barking noises. He reared up, and Watson’s perch shook under him as the hoofs thumped down. The horse did it again, his calls of distress louder. There were equine nose plugs, anti-gas hoods and goggles in sporadic use along the front, but Watson could recall no evidence of them in the stable. Man and beast were in this together.

What was the antidote to chlorine gas? What did they soak those hypo helmets in? Calcium hypochlorite and glycerine. No help. But there was another possibility. The first anti-chlorine pads were impregnated with urine. The ammonia in the urine had a delaying effect on the gas. But, as he balanced precariously on the divide, he thought of the impossibility of trying to successfully soak his handkerchief in his own urine. Tricky to balance. And would his bladder comply? But perhaps there was no alternative except to try. He had to buy himself some time. With a free hand he reached down for his buttons.

Lord Lockie reared up in the stall to his full height, his teeth exposed and head blurred as he tried to shake off the terrible burning that was afflicting him. His whole body quivered in pain and he flung himself against the side of the stall. There was a terrible crack and the wood underneath Watson twisted and splintered. He managed to hang on to the upright with one leg waving free. Then, the thrashing head caught the doctor a full blow on his flank. Watson found himself in mid-air, arms flailing, falling head first into a swirl of billowing green vapour, a series of gaseous arms that appeared to reach up to welcome him into their embrace.

The cottage was as cluttered as ever. Not only with newspapers of every stripe, dating back ten years or more (he would get around to preparing and filing cuttings one day, he promised himself) but also the apparatus and materials for chemical experiments long forgotten or abandoned. There were also boxes of proprietary medicines, a complete set of the
Illustrated London News
and other periodicals stretching back forty years or more, four pipe racks, with an assortment of occupants, not one but two violin cases – although only one actually contained an instrument – and the evidence of recent meals, in the form of uncleared trays.

Still, the girl was due in the next day. At least the crumbs and half-eaten chops would be disposed of, even if the rest was beyond her. As it was him. This was, he thought, truly the end of days. The flashes of inspiration at the Zeppelin had been welcome, but an anomaly. All too often his waking hours were spent existing in a fog of half-remembered intentions.

He knew his faculties were dimmed. Had known it from the moment when his intellect had first failed him. No, failed was too strong a word. There had been blanks in his thought process, infinitesimal little moments where his brain had thought of . . . nothing. He doubted anyone would notice even now. But he knew they were there. It was like a conductor homing in on a horn player who was a fraction of a second behind the metre or a mechanic hearing the tiniest misfire of an engine. Most people wouldn’t be able to detect anything wrong, but a specialist could. And his brain had always been his special instrument.