A Study in Murder (13 page)

The cottage was some five miles from Holmes’s original home on the South Downs. Nathan had told her he had moved because journalists had begun to seek him out to ask his
opinion of the war and to wonder why the ‘Greatest Mind in England’ was not doing more for his country. Holmes had kept the new address even from MI5, insisting he could be reached via
the classified advertisements of
The Times
if they ever needed his services. Which was unlikely. All at MI5, and its sister organization, MI6, knew that Holmes was a spent force, his
remarkable energy exhausted, seemingly permanently, by his exposure to the Black Sands of Foulness. The man deserved his retirement and a peaceful twilight with his bees.

The cottage was modest but handsome enough, single storey, whitewashed, thatched – albeit in need of patching – with a small front garden, but a generous walled area to the rear,
which was, perhaps, where he now kept his bees. Mrs Gregson asked the motor-taxi driver to wait and proceeded to knock on the door. It had been a long, slow train journey from London to Lewes and
she felt a surge of disappointment when there was no immediate reply.

She gave a holding sign to the cabby and walked round the side. There was a wooden gate to the walled area and, when she tried the latch, it opened. The space beyond contained a few fruit trees
and, at the rear, a row of hives, shut down for winter. The lawn needed a scything, but it was by no means overgrown.

She walked round the rain butt and tried the handle of the door that led to the kitchen. It turned freely, she leaned her shoulder against the glass and the swollen door broke from the frame
with a squeak. It swung back on oiled hinges.

‘Mr Holmes?’ she hissed. ‘Are you in there?’ Then again, louder. ‘Mr Holmes? It’s Mrs Gregson. Georgina. May I come in?’

She took a breath, aware of her heartbeat thumping in her ears. Steel yourself, Georgina. He’s an old man and he lives alone. Anything could be waiting for her within. There was a slight
tremor in her voice when she spoke again. ‘Mr Holmes?’

It was dark within the thick-walled cottage. The deep-set windows admitted little light. There was no sign of electricity. She found an oil lamp and a box of matches and lit it. She checked the
temperature of the stove. Cold. As was the kettle. There was a dish in the sink, unwashed, the food crusted on hard. Mr Holmes had not been there for a day or two at least. She walked through to
the sitting room, as stuffed full of books and magazines as she had expected, although a large stack of unopened brown boxes suggested there were more to see the light of day. She could smell pipe
tobacco.

An oblong table dominated the room, a fine piece of oak made for a much larger, grander dwelling. Several books lay open on its surface, and the matching chair had been pushed back, as if the
reader had recently got up and moved to another room.

She crossed to the fireplace. Again, the embers were cold, a few nuggets of charcoal, topped by a pile of burned, flaked paper. She sat in an old armchair, its red velvet seat and headrest shiny
from use, one side darkened by smoke from the fire.

‘What are you doing, Mr Holmes?’ she asked herself. ‘Where are you?’

She felt her body sag with weariness. The tension was exhausting her, she knew, though she had the resolve to go on. But why? She hardly dared explore her feelings fully, for she was ashamed of
herself. Ashamed at how she was toying with Robert Nathan, using whatever feminine charms she still possessed to jerk him around like a puppet. But it was in a good cause. It was for Dr Watson, the
man she . . .

She what? She certainly held strong feelings for him, but once again she backed off from examining them too closely. Watson was twenty-five years older than she, at least. Yet he didn’t
think or act that way. But could she imagine a life with him, after all this was over? Again, doubt clouded her vision of the future. But one thing was clear – if he died in some camp over
there, she would never get to find out what she truly felt. And she would never forgive herself if she believed there was more she could have done to free him. It was, she knew, a selfish
motivation, but if the end result was freeing Watson, who would complain? Not John.

The cabby’s horn parped with a brittle impatience.

Should she wait until Holmes returned? Perhaps take lodgings nearby? Or seek out Bert Cartwright? What she wanted was information on this Von Bork. Nathan had done her a service by uncovering
the circumstances under which Holmes, Watson and Von Bork had met, near Harwich on the eve of the war. Clearly, Von Bork harboured some grudge against Watson, which was why he had struck him off
the repatriation list. But what, exactly? Nathan had said the written records were sketchy in the extreme. All he knew was that a German spy ring had been broken just in the nick of time.

If only Watson were here to explain what role he had played in this particular adventure. Breaking spy rings didn’t sound like the John Watson she knew. No, it was Sherlock Holmes who
would have been the prime instrument of espionage. It was he who liked subterfuge and disguise, not Watson. This Von Bork was simply lashing out at anyone involved in his defeat, when he should
have been after Holmes . . .

Holmes! Perhaps he was the ultimate target.

She moved the lamp closer to the fireplace, to the embers she had touched. She picked them out one by one, trying to discern a scrap of writing, a postmark, any solid piece of evidence that
could give truth or lie to her new suspicions. But there was nothing. The papers had been thoroughly burned.

She moved over to the desk and examined the books. There was one on beekeeping, a pamphlet on blood typing, a guide to the birds of England, a pre-war Baedeker,
La Hollande et la
Belgique
. As if anyone would want to be a tourist in Belgium these days. Holland, though, had at least been spared the worst effects of the war, but again few tourists . . .

She snatched up the book and rifled through the pages, until she found what she was looking for. Or, rather, didn’t find it. The map at the rear of the book had been torn out, an act of
vandalism that suggested a man in a hurry.

Holland. Sherlock Holmes was going to Holland. And she knew what the motive was – she even understood it, after a fashion. But she also knew that Holmes had to be stopped. Yes, John, she
was certain, would want her to stop him. No matter what the cost.

‘Know your beard,’ Holmes had once told him. ‘It is a reliable measure for the passage of time, when
in extremis
.’ Back then Watson had been hard
put to imagine a situation where he would have to rely on stubble to tell the hour, but in that dank cell, four paces by five, with just the odd snuffling rat for company, it had proved a godsend.
Three nights, his fingertips told him. Three nights since he had been plucked out of line and frogmarched to the house and into the basement, where six ‘Stubby’ cells lined a
corridor.

His prison consisted of a bed with a straw mattress, a bucket, full to overflowing, which he had not been allowed to empty, and a tiny slit of a window near the ceiling, which admitted the
gloomiest of light, even at noon.

The whistles for
Appell
should also have helped him keep time, but there had seemed more than usual, five or six a day, perhaps as a punishment for his fictitious transgressions. If so,
it was guaranteed to make the inmates hate him more than ever. He had grudgingly to admire Von Bork. He had orchestrated his torment perfectly. The instrument of his death would be his own
countrymen, as they grew increasingly tired of the deprivations caused by the new arrival. Sometimes even the British turned on their own, like hyenas might on a wounded pack member.

Watson lay down and let himself cough as freely as he could. There was fluid on his lungs. He could feel it in his tubes. When he awoke each morning he was forced to clear his throat and spit up
a golf ball of phlegm. As far as he could tell there was no blood in there, but that would only be a matter of time if he spent much longer in the cold and damp cell.

Chin up, old chap. If you succumb to despair, Von Bork will have won.

Von Bork had already secured victory. What chance did one old man, alone and ailing, have against a machine determined to crush him?

As I have said before, my mind, and I believe yours, rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my
own proper atmosphere. I crave mental exaltation. You must do the same.

‘Holmes,’ he said out loud, ‘will I ever truly be free of your platitudes?’

Watson pulled the greatcoat around him and allowed himself to doze off. As he did so, Holmes’s words echoed around his drifting consciousness. Something about him being one fixed
point—

‘Stand!’

Watson snapped awake at the command. After months of captivity his muscles seemed to know what to do even before his nervous system had sent the appropriate messages. He pushed himself to
upright with a minimum number of groans and shuffled away from the door, which had been cracked open by the German orderly.

Once Watson was well back, the wan-faced veteran stepped in, eyeing the prisoner warily, as if he presented some kind of threat. Out in the corridor Watson knew an armed soldier waited. It would
be a foolish man who tried anything with the orderly. But, Watson suspected, after a week or two in these conditions any man could become foolish.

The orderly placed the circular metal tray, which held the usual wooden bowl of soup and a slice of KK bread, on the bed. Made from
Kleie und Kartoffeln
, bran and potatoes, the bread was
like eating the contents of the mattress, and about as nutritious. The man’s suspicious gaze never left Watson as he backed out and clanged the door shut.

Watson waited until his eyes readjusted to the half-light after the brightness of the bulbs in the corridor and sat next to the meagre offering. A finger told him the soup was barely warm.
Grease was already congealing on the surface into an opaque skin. He quickly snapped the bread into small pieces and dropped it into the liquid, then gulped down the resulting mush, hoping it
didn’t linger long enough to sully his taste buds.

A coughing fit exploded after he had barely managed half of the loaf and he shuddered as he caught the tang of something rancid. Sometimes the meat they put in the soup was worse than no meat at
all. He wiped his chin and tried to breathe as evenly as possible. He would have to take his time. Choking to death on this slop would be an even more ignominious way to go than consumption or
hypothermia.

As he waited, he thought of Holmes’s words. A mental exercise was needed. He put down the bowl and began to feel along the dust and dirt of the floor. It was close to the aromatic bucket
that something stabbed his skin. He picked it up and examined it. A shard of brick. It would have to do, he thought, and set to work.

The German agent known as Miss Pillbody had memorized every inch of the bathing closet that served the landing they had assigned her at Holloway. It was about twenty feet long,
nine feet wide and ten in height. There were two baths in this room, separated from each other by a wooden partition, so two female prisoners could bathe at the same time. But she always bathed
alone, after the incident where she was forced to near-drown the Dryden woman in scalding water, just to show her who was boss. For months afterwards Dryden had stared out from eyes sunk into
shiny, scarred skin and each time the gaze of hatred had been held by Miss Pillbody. After Dryden’s husband visited for the last time, just before his wife’s release date, she had
hanged herself in the laundry. Miss Pillbody wasn’t sure what her roughhouse of a husband had said about welcoming home a mutilated monster, but she could imagine.

Adjoining the bathroom was a small store of prison-made clothing, carefully arranged on the shelves, consisting of dark grey jackets, vests, skirts, socks and shoes. There was also a large chest
of drawers containing linen, stockings, flannel shirts, and drawers. This was the domain of Mrs Gray, the bathing wardress.

Miss Pillbody piled up her stockings, drawers, petticoat, dress, apron and cap and slipped on a chemise, taking her shoes with her. There would be freshly laundered clothes waiting for her upon
her return. She was taken by a landing wardress to the medical room, where she was weighed by a matron, who noted the figure in a ledger, and then returned to the bath closet, where the bathing
wardress had already drawn the water and was waiting to gift her the cube of carbolic soap she was allowed, plus an oatmeal-coloured linen towel and a rag of flannelette.

‘Ten minutes,’ the ferret-like Mrs Gray said.

‘Fifteen, please, ma’am,’ Miss Pillbody replied, head to one side, eyes as wide as she could make them. She thought of a dormouse or a cute rabbit as she did so.

‘Twelve,’ said Mrs Gray, her voice losing its sharp edge. ‘Shout if you need anything.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ the prisoner replied. ‘And thank you, ma’am.’

Once the sour-faced bitch was next door, Miss Pillbody quickly kneeled and, using what fingernails she had left after stitching webbing belts for the British soldiers, she levered up a loose
hearth tile and slipped out the piece of metal she had been working on for weeks now. She had spotted it, glinting in the corner of the exercise yard, close to a drainpipe. She had resisted the
urge to look up, to see where it had come from. Where it had come from didn’t matter. Where it was going did. Stooping to apparently retie her shoelaces, she had managed to secrete the metal
up the sleeve of her prison jacket, and to keep it hidden until the next bath time.

It was around fifteen centimetres long, perforated with four drilled holes, two at each end, and with blunt, rounded extremities. A fixing strap of some description, intended to repair the
drainpipe or gutter or part of the roof. About as threatening as a baby’s rattle. No matter, it was not made of lead or zinc or copper or any other useless metal, but galvanized steel.