The Dead Can Wait (39 page)

‘Not much at the moment, but we’ve been given someone to babysit him who knows more than enough. Good chap.’

‘Who is it?’

‘The French tankman. Claude Levass.’

FORTY

Miss Deane turned out to be a rather charming and efficient woman, somewhere in her late twenties or early thirties, with fair hair drawn tightly into a bun; a rather shiny, well-scrubbed face; and dark, unbecoming clothes, a severity offset by a warm smile. She insisted on cooking dinner for all three of them and listened intently as Watson explained his diagnosis of Holmes. Holmes seemed less engaged than previously during the course of the meal, often shooting off on strange tangents. Miss Deane, however, was both indulgent and adept at steering the conversation back from its various precipices. She was also very modest about her painting skills, which Watson thought somewhat better than the ‘mere dabbler’ status she insisted upon.

After dinner, Watson performed the transfusion, taking some of his own blood, citrating it and injecting it slowly into Holmes. It took more than an hour in all. Afterwards, Holmes fell asleep in the armchair and Miss Deane said she would show Watson to his lodgings. He had been assigned the Dutch House, a small cottage once occupied by a dyke engineer from Rotterdam who had helped redesign the sea walls in the previous century. She took an oil lamp from Holmes’s window ledge to help guide their way. She promised she would put his old friend to bed before she retired to her own place in the Workhouse, where all single women were housed.

‘Thank you,’ said Watson, ‘for looking after him.’

‘It’s my pleasure. I enjoy his company. And you think you can cure him?’

Watson shook his head. ‘I can’t promise that. But I might be able to manage the condition.’

As they picked their way down the lane by the lamp’s jaundiced light, Watson asked her how the pair had met.

‘He found me painting on the beach one evening – well, I was out in the samphire – and he talked about the landscape of the island. How strange it is, how long it has been occupied. He pointed out the Broomway—’

‘The what?’

‘The Broomway. It’s a path, out at sea on the sands.’

‘Tidal?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it goes where?’

‘Careful here,’ she said. ‘The road is very uneven. Look, your cottage is down there.’

He peered into the gloom and could see the silhouette of a thatched roof against the almost starless night sky.

‘Only ten minutes to curfew,’ came a voice from the darkness.

Watson could see the figure, a Home Service soldier, he assumed, sitting in a makeshift guard post at the end of the garden. ‘Don’t worry . . . Corporal Deal, isn’t it?’

She has better eyes than me,
Watson thought.

‘Yes, miss.’

‘I’m just dropping off Major Watson here and I’ll be back along presently. Is that all right?’

‘Make it snappy, miss. The old man isn’t too happy at the moment. What with being a woman down, as it were.’

‘Really?’

‘Best ask your gentleman friend about that.’ He also sounded none too pleased.

As they walked on, Watson explained in more detail about the need to get Holmes off the island for medical tests. He didn’t mention the tanks or Levass, who had made it more urgent than ever that they escape. Someone had to get to France and warn them what they had in their midst. Even if that someone, heaven forbid, was Major John Watson.

‘How long have you been here?’ he asked.

‘A few weeks.’ She waited for the inevitable follow-up question. ‘Do you wish to know why I was exiled?’

‘Not if you don’t want to tell me.’

‘I have a brother . . . oh, it doesn’t matter. I was careless, that’s all. I fell foul of the GPO and the police came knocking one morning. I am, apparently, a risk to national security and the defence of the realm.’

‘Well, in a strange way I am pleased you are here. For Holmes’s sake. I feared I would find him rather the worse for wear.’

‘Oh, I doubt I have much to do with that. I get the feeling he doesn’t really care for women. The fact that I like observing and painting birds is far more important than my sex.’

‘I am not sure I can argue with that.’

‘Although the fact I can make a half-decent steak-and-kidney pie seems to have caught his attention, too.’

They both laughed at this. Holmes had always enjoyed his food. And, inadvertently, she had been feeding him the kind of sustenance that might help with his anaemia.

‘This is you, here. Do you want me to come in and light the fire?’

‘Miss Deane, do you cosset
all
the men on the island?’

She giggled. ‘Only the famous ones, Dr Watson. Good night.’

‘Good night. Oh, Miss Deane, one more thing. This Broomway. What else did Holmes say about it?’

‘That it goes to the mainland. And that it is the most lethal road in Britain.’

The combination of darkness and fog had been extremely kind to Miss Gregson. Nevertheless, she waited in her hiding place – a storage cupboard near the bow on the starboard side of the
King of Burnham
– until she was sure the boat had been secured for the night.

As she crept along the deck, peering through the darkness for any sailors still on board, she reflected on how well their ruse had worked. Dr Watson was only meant to have yelled, ‘Woman overboard!’ and thrown a life belt into the creek. But his frenzied removal of his jacket and his clamber onto the rail, apparently moments away from making a dive into the murky waters below, had convinced captain and crew that Mrs Gregson must really have leaped rather than return to Foulness. They had hauled him down, struggling. Watson’s subsequent wailing and gnashing of teeth had, to her ears, verged on the melodramatic, but it seemed to do the trick. No onboard search was made, and even at Foulness her escape bid was accepted at face value. All she had had to do was wait until the
King
returned to Burnham and bide her time.

There was a chain across the top of the gangway to the pier and she was careful not to rattle it as she unclipped it and stepped through, closing it behind her. There were voices onboard, the sound of glasses clinking and laughter, but as far as she could tell any crew was sensibly inside, rather than out in the fog.

She hurried onto dry land and headed for the quayside exit, which would take her out to the bottom of the high street. Up there, then along Station Road, and she should be in time to catch one of the last trains to Liverpool Street. And then—

‘Miss?’

The man loomed out of the mist and cut off her path, planting himself in front of the ornate gates that stood between her and freedom. He was in his fifties, clean shaven and in the uniform of one of the Home Service Defence units. The guard was holding an old Martini-Henry rifle of greater vintage than he. ‘What are you doing here, miss? It’s all out of bounds when the gates are locked.’

‘Mrs,’ she corrected, pointing back at the
King of Burnham.
‘I just took my boy, Sam, his supper.’

‘You didn’t come through here.’

‘I did.’

The man narrowed his eyes. ‘I never sees you.’ He looked her up and down.

At least she wasn’t in any sort of prison uniform, but the coat she had been allowed was two sizes two large and the collar moth-eaten. She didn’t look her most elegant. She could almost be . . .

Mrs Gregson coarsened her voice. ‘All right, you have me. How much?’ She thrust out one hip.

‘How much for what?’

‘Your share of what I just earned with the tars, m’lovey.’ She stepped closer and the guard retreated a little. ‘I made some money with the sailors tonight. I suppose it’s only fair to share it about a little. Half a crown do the trick?’ She began to rummage in her bag.

‘Oi, none of that. I’d be no better than you if I take a whore’s money. I should take you over to the harbour master—’

‘And explain how you let me in to do some business while you turned a blind eye. All for half a crown?’

‘I never—’

Mrs Gregson hit him with her fullest, devilish smile. ‘Look, you are flustered already. I don’t think he’ll believe you, will he?’ She stepped in even closer and stroked his face.

‘Stop that!’ He raised his rifle, threatening to push her back. ‘I ain’t even got half a crown on me.’

‘You have now,’ she grinned. ‘Best check your pockets.’

‘You little minx. Get out of here,’ he snarled. ‘And don’t let me see you round here again, you tart.’

He fumbled a set of keys from his webbing and unlocked a small access gate, all but pushing her through.

‘Night,’ Mrs Gregson said, cheerily, before letting the mist swallow her. The thought of him searching every pocket of his tunic and trousers for a phantom half-crown put a skip in her step as she headed up the hill.

At the station she bought a second-class ticket to Liverpool Street and waited the seven minutes for the Great Eastern Railway service, which arrived trailing its own mini-smog, the sparks from the fire flitting off into the night like escaped glow-flies.

It was only after she had taken a seat in an empty compartment that she allowed herself a sigh of relief. Done. She had with her Desmond’s letters, describing all that was wrong with Gallipoli, letters she felt Churchill would pay handsomely to keep from the public.

There came the blast of a stationmaster’s whistle from down the platform and the train gave a jerk.

And all she would be asking Churchill for was the release and rehabilitation of Holmes and Watson. It was as good as in the bag.

With a rising sequence of chuffing, the loco took up the strain and the service began to move forward. Mrs Gregson closed her eyes, weariness threatening to snatch her away, when the train slowed and then halted. They had barely left the platform. Then there came the creak of wood and the squeal of metal couplings and they were on the move once more. But backwards this time. They were reversing into the station, where, as she lowered the window and peered out into the soup of smoke and fog, she could just make out the distinctive silhouettes of the waiting policemen.

The cottage smelled of damp and mildew, but once he had lit the lamps and got the fire going, Watson began to feel better-disposed towards it. Besides, he expected he wouldn’t be there for long. Not if Mrs Gregson had anything to do with it. Her plan was simple: to recruit Vernon Kell of MI5 to her cause, using the letter Watson had given her, and to buttonhole Churchill until he gave way on getting Holmes off the island. Not an easy task, but Mrs Gregson had realized she had one weapon for her campaign: Desmond’s letters to her, blaming the High Command for the strategic and tactical failures of Gallipoli and singling out Churchill in particular. They might just make the difference between censure and exoneration for the former Sea Lord. It was blackmail, a crime Holmes held to be particularly abhorrent, but in this case it was all for the greater good. And, Watson thought with some satisfaction, it was turning Churchill’s own weapon of choice against him.

Watson went upstairs to inspect the bed, stripped off the sheets and located new ones in the cupboard. Slightly musty, but they’d do. Back down in the kitchen he found supplies of Camp coffee, tea, mouse-nibbled biscuits and Bovril. He would need more than that. There was, according to Miss Deane, a small shop next to the George and Dragon. Sadly, the pub had been shut down for the duration.

He had just set about making coffee – it would have to be black – when he heard the rap at the door. He half expected Holmes, but it was Montgomery. Without asking if he could come in, the colonel shouldered his way past Watson, sweeping off his cap as he did so. He was tall enough to have to stoop in the low-ceilinged cottage.

‘Making yourself at home, Major?’ Montgomery asked.

‘As best I can. Coffee?’

‘No, thank you. Don’t let me stop you.’

Watson made a cup of the glutinous brown liquid of, mostly, chicory essence. He liked his hot, although there were those who swore it was best served cold.

‘What can I do for you, Colonel?’ he asked, after the first sip.

‘Just checking you have everything you need.’

‘Not quite.’

‘Oh?’

‘Mr Sherlock Holmes is not a well man. I suspect pernicious anaemia.’

Montgomery tutted his sympathy.

‘I would be grateful if you could arrange a transfer to a hospital.’

‘I have seen him striding about. He doesn’t seem ill to me.’

‘Mr Holmes has a most unusual constitution. But he is not a young man. We can slow down the effects with diet and blood transfusions. But I would like confirmation—’

‘I can’t let anyone off the island.’

‘Even on compassionate grounds?’

‘Security. You have heard of the Black Deep?’

‘No.’

‘Fifteen miles from here is a remarkably deep sea trench. Deep for this part of the world, at least. Once a day, specially built boats leave from East London and make their way out here. When the tide is exactly right, they open the valves in their holds and London’s sewage comes out as a thick sludge, turning the sea black.’

‘I can’t see exactly—’

‘Two days ago, one of the boats had a mechanical failure. It dropped anchor while the crew carried out emergency repairs. It is dangerous out there. Many a ship has broken its back on the sands. When it was ready to go, at dusk, it saw the most remarkable thing. A German submarine, U-48, surfaced in front of it. The British captain had the presence of mind to order full steam ahead and it rammed the boat before it could fully submerse. We don’t know if it sank it, but, judging by the damage to the sludge boat, significant contact was made. We believe that U-boat was sent to find out what is going on on this island. There are channels in the sands that a small boat can navigate. I suspect the U-boat was trying to land a raiding party. To be honest, nobody will be kept here indefinitely, I can say no more than that. Have some patience, Major. But while we suspect imminent enemy action, my orders are to keep this place locked down tight. No exceptions.’

‘It seems rather draconian.’

‘I’m sorry.’