Dead Man's Land (35 page)

‘I hope this is worth it,’ she said to herself as she flipped open the canvas sheet that covered him. There was the sound of scuttling.

Hornby was naked under the shroud. The hands, she noticed, were still curled to claws. Despite herself, she looked at the face. The eyes had been pushed forward from the sockets. There were tiny creatures, bright red in the torch beam, running over the clouded, sightless hemispheres. The tongue, startlingly black, had been forced between the teeth. The skin had shrunk hard onto the skull. But, she noticed with relief, the skin was still intact over the upper body. A vile colour, perhaps, but intact.

She took out the magnifying glass and began to look at the blue-grey covering of his torso, examining the throat and chest, trying to ignore the red mites and other scavengers. Three, she reminded herself. You are looking for the numeral three. A series of slashes. Something regular, artificial.

Sure enough, the skin had split here and there, but in ragged lines. There was nothing that looked like a knife or a scalpel mark.

‘They’re getting closer. The guards.’ Brindle sounded frightened.

Mrs Gregson swore vigorously, which made her feel better. ‘Just a minute. I’m rushing it as it is.’

‘I’m bloody rushing you,’ said Brindle. ‘They’re coming right for us.’

She stood up, away from the coffin, and took in a lungful of relatively sweet air then, as if about to dive for pearls at some great depth, plunged in again. She waved her arms to direct the beam that Brindle controlled. The rain was hissing on Hornby’s taut skin and she risked brushing away the film of surface water. A piece of Hornby’s outer flesh the size of a dinner plate came away on her fingers. She tried to shake it off, but it seemed glued tight. ‘Oh, Jesus.’

She could hear voices now. It was hopeless. So much for playing the great detective-ess.

She scraped the pancake of skin off on the side of the coffin and replaced the lid. She stood on it, hoping that might push some of the fixings into place and then scrambled up the side of the grave.

‘Aye, aye. What’s going on here?’

There were two of them, dressed in oilskins and helmets, but, judging by their ages, not front-line soldiers.

‘I slipped in. Sorry. Gosh, that wasn’t nice. Look, we’ve been asked by the family to make sure that these two brothers are buried together. As a personal favour. And, well . . .’ She wiped the rain off her face.

‘You can’t just come here and do your own digging,’ one of them said.

‘No. I can see that now.’ She reached into her coat pocket and brought out a flask. ‘I need a drink after that tumble. Anyone? Filthy night ahead by the look of it.’

The two newcomers shrugged in unison. She moved round the hole in the ground and handed them the rum. She had intended it as a gift for Brindle, a thank you for joining her, but needs must, she supposed.

As they drank she took the flashlight off the driver and waved it at the ambulance. ‘The thing is, we’d be awfully grateful if you could help us get the coffin in here.’ She swung the flashlight down into Hornby’s grave. She heard Brindle give a little gasp. Her efforts to reseal the coffin had dislodged some of the clumps of soil that had clung to it. There, in the beam of light, as clear as if they had been recently scored, were three deep single grooves in the lid, capped and underscored by lighter strokes. The Roman numeral for three.

‘This Mrs Gregson is an interesting one,’ the old man said, handing an old copy of the
Pall Mall Gazette
to Bert. ‘Have a read. Then do you think you could snip that out and put it on our wall?’

The space above the fireplace now reminded Bert of a spider’s web, an intricate pattern of threads spiralling out from the centre. Or dual centres, he should say. And the spider, he had to admit, looked to be intoxicated, as wobbly as his father on Christmas Day. But even though it looked to be a confusing jumble, Mr Holmes, as he called him, seemed to hold every piece of information in his head, too.

Having spent the day on his plank, the former detective was spending an evening on the sofa, although propped up ramrod straight by cushions. They had enjoyed a dinner of bangers and mash cooked by ‘the girl’, who was far from being as young as that name suggested, Bert thought. Now, they were talking over the case. Thrillingly, he was treated as an adult in these sessions, with no subject – sex or war or politics – out of bounds. Bert did occasionally offer opinions and sometimes his employer reacted as if he were surprised Bert was in the room. Or could speak at all.

But at times like this, when his opinion was sought, he relished the fact that his mother had allowed him to come and assist. Although her permission was granted only after she had insisted on scrubbing the place to her standards (she clearly didn’t think much of ‘the girl’), blacking the front doorstep and putting fresh sheets on the narrow bed shoehorned into the boxroom. Before his first overnight visit she had taken Bert aside and said: ‘Even if he is a bit funny, he isn’t likely to cause you too much trouble with that back of is, is he?’

‘Well?’ he asked when Bert had finished and was neatly clipping the piece with the long-bladed scissors that Mr Holmes had designated for the task.

‘It is obvious she has criminal tendencies from this article,’ said Bert, using a term he had heard the old man use. ‘And is quite ruthless. And political. So could she be the murderer?’

‘We can’t rule anyone out at this stage. Watson has given me the
dramatis personae
, but little in the way of stage directions.’ He pointed at the centre of his web. ‘I think the answer lies in one or both of those places.’ There were two names written at the heart of the construction on the wall. One was ‘Leigh’ and the other was ‘Flitcham’.

‘We shall have to see where Mrs Gregson was born or brought up, to see if she has links with either area. There might be more on her trial in
The Times
.’ He indicated a stack of boxes hitherto untouched by Bert. ‘Which we have back until 1905. But there is something we should look at closely now, Bert, before we call it a night.’

‘What’s that?’

Mr Holmes pointed to the top shelf of the bookcase behind him. ‘The red volume, please, Bert.’

Bert clambered up the bookcase and fetched the tome the old man had indicated. He read the gold-lettering on the spine and said it out loud, ‘
Who’s Who
?’

‘The very same.’

Ten minutes later he asked for a run of
The Times
, covering dates almost a year previously. Having located what he wanted, he asked Bert to fetch his Bradshaw railway timetable.

It was, he said, bad back or no, about time they made a ‘house call’, whatever that was.

When Watson emerged from his drug-induced exile, it was as if he had been launched from the seabed like a projectile. One minute he was admiring the luminescent blobs floating around him, giant versions of the tadpoles that swam across his retinae in bright sunlight, the next he was propelled from this warm, enervating soup into a harsh reality. It was like a bucket of cold water to the face and, for a few seconds, he kicked against it.

‘Major Watson, calm yourself.’

‘Can’t speak, can’t speak,’ he gasped.

‘Hold on, let me take this off.’

He sucked at the air while his tumbled senses realigned themselves. Slowly, his brain began to tick off a checklist, as if going through an inventory of goods.

He was in the transfusion tent. Electric lights had been installed, hence the brightness. He had been wearing an oxygen mask. That really was Staff Nurse Jennings. His throat was terribly parched.

‘Can I have some water?’ he croaked.

‘Of course.’ Staff Nurse Jennings slid a hand under his head and tilted it while she put the glass to his lips. It tasted marvellous, like fine Islay or cognac. But he knew that was always a reaction to finding yourself, against all better judgements, alive. For a few precious moments the nervous system was capable of heightened responses, as if under the influence of some opiate, before they calmed down, back to normality. This was probably why his neck was tingling to Staff Nurse Jennings’s touch.

‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

She spoke softly, as if to a child. ‘Me? I work here, Major. At the Casualty Clearing Station.’

‘I know that. But you’d gone. With Myles . . .’

Staff Nurse Jennings laughed. Why was everyone trying to pair her off with Myles? ‘I’m sorry, Major Watson. The sedatives haven’t worn off.’

‘Dinner! You wanted me to accompany you . . .’

‘Dinner?’ She furrowed her brow, before she realized what he was referring to. ‘Oh, yes. That’s right. But then I had news that my brother was in Boulogne. He was at a hospital there, awaiting transport. Sister Spence kindly let me go to him, but on condition I didn’t shout about it. I don’t think she wanted anyone to think she’d gone soft.’

Brother. Yes, Sister Spence would feel sympathy for a nurse with an injured brother. Had she not lost her own to a ‘relapse’? But he could see she might not want others to know she had a tender spot in her iron soul.

‘But what of Myles?’

‘I have no idea. Is that why Mrs Gregson was questioning me about him? On your behalf?’ She sounded extremely annoyed.

‘Not at my behest. Mrs Gregson is her own woman.’

‘You can say that again,’ she said. She bit her lip, as if she wanted to add more.

‘And, forgive me, about Caspar Myles . . . ?’

Jennings shrugged. ‘There was talk of him going back to his unit.’

‘He hasn’t.’

‘Oh.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘But by all accounts he did clear out without a by-your-leave to Major Torrance. Who is none too pleased with him. More water?’

‘Thank you.’

After another sip, Watson lay back on the pillow and licked his lips. ‘Do you knit, Staff Nurse Jennings?’

‘Knit? Yes. But not for a while. Not much time for it over here. Why, what do you need?’

He waved the subject away. ‘How long have I been here?’

‘Since just before I returned. The best part of three days. You missed Field Marshal Haig. Mind you, most of us did.’ What a storm in a teacup that turned out to be. Although it was a storm captured by cine cameras for the newsreels.

‘Three days!’ Watson threw back his blankets.

‘Stop that! You are lucky to be here at all,’ interrupted Miss Pippery. ‘George carried you in over her shoulder and virtually demanded the entire CCS stop what it was doing and tend to you.’

‘I must thank her,’ said Watson.

‘She’s not here,’ said Jennings. ‘Gone back to take up other duties at Bailleul.’

Watson frowned. There was a reason she had not wanted to go back there. Something about having burned her bridges. ‘And Captain de Griffon?’

‘With his men once more.’

‘I need to . . .’ He could feel a fatigue building. ‘I need to find out something. There was a man there. The one who locked me in the barn . . . set off the gas . . . the dead man.’

‘Yes, well, I think you had better ask the Military Police about that,’ said Staff Nurse Jennings. ‘They have been here once, asking questions, but asked to be notified when you were strong enough to answer any. Are you?’ Watson nodded. ‘In that case I shall send a message to the Military Police barracks at Camar. Tell them Major Watson will be well enough to answer questions later on today.’

‘Very well,’ said Miss Pippery. ‘To whom shall I address it?’

Jennings hesitated. ‘I suppose you’d better contact Lieutenant Gregson.’

‘Gregson?’ Watson asked. It was a common enough name, but even so. ‘Any relation to Mrs Gregson?’

Jennings shrugged, but in a way that suggested she knew more than she was letting on. ‘I think you’d better ask her that, Major.’

Lady Stanwood stood in a first-floor window and studied the driveway of Flitcham, impatient for the stranger’s arrival. The grounds she inspected looked far better than they had at the time of her husband’s passing. True, the death of old Tommy Turner had been a blow. Some said the old gardener should never have come back, once all the groundstaff had volunteered
en masse
to serve. That being out in the cold and wet with his gang of novices had taken him off. Lady Stanwood believed it had been the loss of his two grandsons within three days of each other at Ypres that had accelerated his end.

Oh, how she wanted this war to end. Then she could get on with her plans. As it was, she felt frozen into inertia by it. Like, she supposed, every other mother in the land, dreading that little red demon on the crimson bicycle, with his sackful of sorrows. Surely it couldn’t go on much longer?

Yet conscription had been announced, which suggested that there was some way to go yet before they defeated Germany. And now there was a request for her to hand over parts of the hall to the Canadians for the rehabilitation of the wounded. She could see no reason to refuse. The place was too large for her now, especially with a denuded staff.

The Albion turned tentatively into the driveway, brushing close to the gatehouse, and began making a stately, albeit somewhat jerky, progress between the limes. It was, she hoped, carrying providence. She moved back from the window, not wanting to be seen by her visitor.

The voice on the telephone had been tremulous, suggesting an older man. But the words had carried the force of youth. He had read the obituary of her husband in
The Times
, he had spoken to Dr Kibble – whom he stressed was the soul of discretion – and this man was convinced that Lord Stanwood had died what he called an ‘unnatural’ death.

She caught sight of herself in one of the gilded mirrors. Time and worry had blurred her features. The years of fretting over poor Bimmy, as she called her husband, slipping away into a terrifying dementia. And now the constant, gnawing concern over Robinson, the new Lord Stanwood. Would he ever get to take his seat in the Lords? Would he ever be half the man his father was?

An ‘unnatural’ death. It was certainly that. Which was why she had agreed to see this man.