The Dead Can Wait (6 page)

The door to the lecture theatre opened and an orderly put his head in. ‘Major Watson, my apologies. I am afraid you have visitors.’

‘Not now, man!’ boomed Crocker. The orderly flinched, reddened, but stood his ground.

‘I have a few more minutes,’ said Watson, in more modulated tones.

‘They say they can’t wait. It’s about Dora, they said.’

Not Dora. Watson tried to ignore the stab of alarm. Dora was one woman you didn’t want leaving a calling card at your door. DORA. The Defence of the Realm Act.

‘Will you excuse me, gentlemen?’ He pointed at the table once more. ‘There are the notes that you might like to look at until I return.’

They were sitting in the foyer of the building, both smoking. The tall, rangy Irishman with the freckled and flinty features and the portly ex-sapper. Coyle and Gibson. Vernon Kell’s so-called ‘scallywags’. Part of what Watson had known as the Secret Service Bureau, then MO5, and now, for the past few months, MI5. This unlikely duo were secret agents.

Gibson threw down his cigarette and stamped on it. ‘Ah, Major Watson. Apologies for the interruption. Would you come with us, please? We have a car outside.’

‘Mr Gibson, I am in the middle of a most important—’

‘It’ll have to wait, Major,’ replied Coyle, softly but firmly. ‘You have been summoned.’

‘Summoned, indeed? By whom exactly?’ Gibson handed over a folded piece of paper. Southworth Professional, Watson idly noted. He flipped it open and read the typed message. ‘Watson – come at once with these gentlemen. Bring your medical case. It is a matter of the utmost importance.’

And it was signed, in a shaky but instantly recognizable hand: ‘Sherlock Holmes’.

SEVEN

Miss Pillbody, the village schoolmistress without a school, would remember that day for as long as she lived. It was very rare for her to have a gentleman caller. But on that sultry mid-August afternoon, when even her thick-walled cottage cast off its chill, she had two of them, almost tripping over each other on the stone flags that led to her door.

She had just finished a music lesson with Emily Torrent, who was really quite gifted, when the first of them appeared. He was a stranger in all senses of the word, unknown to her and a brighter creature than the village was used to, in his cream linen suit and straw boater. She had just pocketed the coppers and thrupenny bits that Emily had been sent with – a whole florin short, but worth it to hear what the girl could do with Miss Pillbody’s neglected piano – when there was a rap at the door.

He raised the boater as she answered and apologized profusely for disturbing her. His accent was equally foreign to these parts.

‘You’re American.’

‘Indeed, ma’am. Bradley Ross. Late of the
New York Herald
. I have rented the little house a few doors down, with a view to writing a book over the next six weeks or so.’

‘A book,’ she said. ‘How interesting. A novel?’

He laughed. ‘I’m a writer but not that kind of writer. No, it’s on why America should join Britain in fighting Germany and her allies.
The Good Fight
is the working title.’

She nodded approvingly. ‘I like it. And will it? Join the war.’

‘If I get my pennyworth in, perhaps it will. So, in the American fashion, I am just introducing myself around to my new neighbours.’ He grimaced. ‘Although it isn’t going quite as swimmingly as I imagined it might.’

She laughed at that. Miss Pillbody could well imagine how some of the more insular villagers might react to this bright bird that had landed among dowdy pigeons. ‘Can I offer you some tea? We could sit in the garden,’ she added hurriedly as Charles, the elderly postman, cycled by and almost fell off, craning his neck to look over his shoulder at them. A story for the pub later, no doubt: Miss Pillbody has
entertained
a man at her house.

‘Lovely. But I don’t want to put you to any trouble as you must be busy, Miss . . .?’

‘It’s Miss Pillbody. And I’m hardly busy. Not these days. If you take a seat.’ She pointed around the side of the cottage, where a cast-iron table and three matching chairs sat under a quince tree. ‘You will have to shake the leaves off, and watch out for any fruit that might have fallen.’ She made a mental note to harvest the gravid tree. She had plenty of time on her hands to make jam. ‘I wouldn’t want you to mark that lovely suit.’

‘Pah, don’t worry. I’m sure there’s a laundry nearby.’

‘Mr Ross, there is
nothing
nearby here, as you will soon discover. And what there is, you have to drive the long way around to visit.’

‘Yeah, I saw that. They blocked the main road. I have to say they were none too pleasant about telling me to skedaddle. Manners cost nothing, I said. And then this old boy said he’d put his bayonet up my . . . Anyway, tea would be lovely.’

As she waited for the kettle to boil, Miss Pillbody looked at her visitor through the leaded kitchen window. He had big, open features, was broad-shouldered, with a strong thatch of fair hair cut short at the back and sides, but with an attractive fringe across the forehead, and he was a good four to six inches taller than most of the men in the village and surroundings. They were like the local cottages – cramped, dark and mean-proportioned. Only the vicar was taller, and he was from Oxfordshire. It must, she concluded, be the American diet that made for Mr Ross’s harmonious proportions.

She looked up at the row of Victorian dolls that held court on the top of her dresser. She caught the lifeless eye of her favourite and asked, ‘What do you think of Mr Ross, Heidi?’

As expected, no answer came from the ceramic face, so she took the pot, cups, milk and four Abernethys and two Creolas – all she had left after dishing out the contents of her biscuit barrel to her pupils – into the garden.

Ross was staring at the sky, shading his eyes, watching a tiny dot pirouette through the heavens. ‘Is that a Vickers?’ he asked. ‘The aeroplane?’

‘Don’t ask me, Mr Ross,’ she said. ‘I know nothing about that sort of thing.’

‘Bradley, please. And I take my tea black, if that’s OK.’

‘Of course. The plane is from the airfield at Thetford. We get Zeppelins come over sometimes, trying to bomb it.’

‘Really?’ He couldn’t hide the excitement in his voice. ‘How often?’

‘Not very. And don’t worry, they never really do any damage to the village.’

‘No, but a good opening for the book. The vile Hun bombing idyllic English pastures with their lighter-than-air war machines. Thank you.’ He took the tea. ‘So, Miss Pillbody, you know what I do. What about you? You paint’ – he pointed to the empty easel set up in the garden – ‘and you play piano.’

‘I do both, adequately.’ In fact, she was quite proud of her watercolours. ‘But mostly I teach, or taught, I should say, at the village school.’

‘Past tense?’

After a moment’s hesitation, she told him about what the locals called The Clearance. It could do no harm. After all, it was common knowledge thereabouts. In fact, some people talked of little else.

‘And you have no idea what they are doing in there? In the forest? On the estate?’ he asked, reaching for a biscuit.

‘No. We are told not to ask. On “pain of death”.’ She giggled, dropping her voice to a whisper, so low a stray gust of wind could snatch the words away. ‘One of the villagers, Jimmy, who worked at the smithy, but was, is, a poacher too, he claimed he got in one night. To the estate. He was after some of those fat birds that aren’t going to get shot this year. Stood in the pub, so I heard, telling anyone who listened it was a new kind of weapon. A heat ray. Like in H. G. Wells . . . you know.’

‘Golly. Did he have proof of this?’

She shook her head. ‘No. It was the drink talking. Then, a few days later, he disappeared. Three weeks he was gone for. They say he’s back now, because there are lights on in his cottage sometimes, but he won’t answer the door.’

Ross looked puzzled. ‘So, they think . . .’

‘Somebody took him away and had a word in his ear. A very strong word, Mr Ross. So I think you should leave whatever is going on there out of your book.’

‘Sounds like it,’ he said, with a frown. ‘But you’ve seen nothing?’

She sipped her tea, aware she had already said too much to this long-limbed stranger. More than she had intended. There was an ease about him that was absent in most Englishmen.

But what if this were a test? What if he had been sent by the military to see if she was a loose-tongued danger? Or was it possible that, although he said he was ‘late’ of the
New York Herald,
it was a case of once a journalist, always a journalist? Her throat suddenly went dry. She hadn’t seen anything. But she had
heard
things. The strangest things. Voices, seemingly disembodied, drifting across the fields. For the most part it was incoherent mumblings, but occasionally a word – or even a vile profanity of the lowest sort – would emerge from the formless drone. And there were more unsettling goings-on – sometimes, those who lived near the railway sidings were forced to draw their curtains and not look out, with guards posted to make sure they did as they were told. What was being hidden from them?

‘No, nothing, Mr Ross,’ Miss Pillbody said.

Conversation moved on to their respective backgrounds, and she explained about her brother, Arnold.

‘Well, it is to reduce the number of cases like your brother that America should come into the war. It’d snap the deadlock in a heartbeat.’

‘Let us hope so. More tea?’

‘Thank you, but I should be going. If you don’t mind, though, I’d like to call again. I just have some questions about how to find a few things.’ He looked down at his trousers where a tiny blot of tea had marked one thigh. ‘Like that laundry.’

‘There you are. Sorry to intrude. I heard voices and . . .’

They both looked up at the uniformed officer who had silently come round the side of the cottage, his cap under one arm, a luxuriant bunch of wild flowers in his right hand. It took a second for Nora Pillbody to place him. ‘Lieutenant . . .’ The name hovered just out of reach. It had been a good three weeks since she had seen the young soldier. ‘Booth?’

‘Yes. James Booth.’ He looked flustered for a moment, moved the flowers to his left hand and offered the right to Ross, who took it, standing as he did so, and introduced himself.

‘Don’t let me disturb you,’ Booth said, looking from one to the other, although his gaze lingered on her for a second longer. Miss Pillbody remembered how he had appraised her back at the school. Had he liked what he had seen? Hence the flowers?

‘Not at all, I was just leaving,’ said Ross with a wink. ‘Unless they were for me?’

He nodded at the flowers and the Englishman reddened slightly. Ross smiled. ‘I thought not.’ He retrieved his boater, placed it on his head and touched the brim. ‘I bid you good day. Miss Pillbody. Lieutenant.’ He walked off, hands in pockets, whistling a jaunty tune.

After the American had left, Booth handed the blooms over.

‘Thank you,’ Miss Pillbody said. ‘Although when we last met, you threatened to have me shot.’

He ran a finger under his collar. ‘Yes, well, I am sorry about that. We had to try to get over the, um, gravity of the situation. I brought the flowers to apologize.’

‘Are you staying for tea?’

‘Perhaps a glass of water? I cycled over. Jolly hot work.’

‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘But what brings you over here, Lieutenant? Was it just to give me flowers?’

‘Well, no. This is a kind of follow-up mission to those left on the fringes of the, ah, exclusion area. I was asked to check you are being treated properly. You are meant to have received compensation for your work.’

‘Not a penny as yet.’

‘Really?’ He frowned as fiercely as he could manage to show his displeasure. ‘That’s just not good enough.’

It is,
she thought,
a rather thin story, but it might be true.
Just because she had two men call in a single day, she shouldn’t let it go to her head. ‘The education board is paying me fifty per cent of my salary for now. And I am doing some tutoring with those children who haven’t been deported—’

‘Relocated.’

She waved a hand, irritated by his word games. ‘Whatever you call it. They’ve still been spirited away.’

‘And for a very good reason.’

‘So you claim. But we have no way of judging that, do we?’

‘Not yet, no. But it is a matter of national importance, Miss Pillbody, as I think I said at the time. There’s a war on. A little discomfort is to be expected.’ He was back to being the harrying intelligence officer she had found in her classroom. He took a breath. ‘Still. I’m sorry about your salary. We’ve had a few cases like this. Farmers not compensated and the like. I’ll look into it.’

‘Thank you. I’ll fetch that water.’

‘I’d be obliged. Just one thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘What does your American friend do? Ross, wasn’t it? I mean, he’s not a country lad, is he? Not in those clothes.’

‘He’s writing a book.’ Should she mention the journalism part?
Best not
, she decided. ‘I’ll get the water.’

For the second time that day she examined a male visitor through the window of her kitchen, as she waited for the pipes to cease banging and groaning and the water to run a little clearer. This one was just as striking as the American, in a different way, but his features were screwed up as he frowned, clearly disturbed by something. He was worrying at a fingernail, too, chewing the corner.

Was he really here because he was worried about her finances? Unlikely. It was true that there weren’t many single women of a certain class around, so perhaps it was inevitable that such men would find their way to her.

Stop over-analysing
, she told herself.
Whatever the men are up to, relax and enjoy the attention
. It wouldn’t last. It never did.

EIGHT

Coyle drove them from the hospital into town, handling the big open-topped Deasy with a practised ease. Gibson sat in the back with Watson. The baffled major knew better than to quiz the two spies. All would be revealed. They had allowed him to sum up his lecture and to make arrangements for Fairley to be taken back to his room at Wandsworth Hospital, where he had been moved to a less secure wing.