TWENTY-TWO
As they walked down the corridor towards the front entrance of Somerset House, Churchill worked at lighting a cigar the size of a cavalryman’s lance. ‘I had no idea you were out here, sir,’ Watson said,
‘It took some string-pulling, I can tell you.’
Watson was well aware the former Home Secretary had been driven from his position as First Lord of the Admiralty after the fiasco of the Dardanelles and cast into the wilderness. ‘But eventually they gave me the Royal Scots Fusiliers, just to shut me up. A fine bunch, though. Distrusted me, a Sassenach, at first, of course, especially when I turned up with my own bath and boiler, but it’s a wonder what a round of clean, dry socks for every man can achieve.’ He chortled, his face wreathed in smoke from the newly caught cigar.
‘I’m sorry you witnessed the scene earlier. Phipps is one of those who want us to sit on our hands and wait for the Germans to make the first move. My God, I have experience of fighting the Boers too and yet it appears we learned nothing. Small, light skirmishing units, highly mobile, stirring things up a bit. That’s what we need. Not sitting in slits in the ground, year after year. We need to remind them we still have a fight in us.’
Watson knew instinctively that it had been Churchill goading the Germans with rifle grenades to elicit a response in his sector. It was he who had brought the ‘hate’ – the bombardments – down on the heads of a quiet stretch of the line.
‘Watson, I don’t think I ever told you how grateful I was that you never wrote up what you would doubtless have called The Adventure of the King’s Wife, or some such.’
Watson was offended. ‘I felt it was my patriotic duty not to do so.’
‘Quite. One thing that always puzzled me,’ said Churchill, halting in the gloomy hallway beneath the skeletal remains of a glass chandelier, stripped down to a few lonely pendants by percussion and concussion. With the windows heavily curtained, light was provided by a string of guttering electric bulbs that weren’t up to the job, ‘was how he knew I had come straight from the Reform Club when I pitched up at Baker Street?’
Churchill had been smoking a Home Spun Broad Leaf No. 2, a Cuban cigar imported exclusively by the Wine and Cigar Committee of the Reform Club. But as a distant voice reminded him: A conjurer gets no credit once he has explained his trick. ‘I am afraid I am not at liberty to tell you, sir.’
Churchill narrowed his eyes as if he were going to bark an order to reveal all, but eventually smiled. ‘Well, I have a most mysterious occurrence that I would welcome your help on. Let’s call it The Case of the Man Who Died Twice. The events—’
Watson could feel his curiosity being aroused. He could not allow that to happen. ‘Sir, I am afraid I am acting merely as a medical doctor here. Not a companion or a foil or a biographer. Certainly not any shade of detective.’
‘That may be so. But you have contacts. I didn’t expect him to be here in person, but I thought if anyone can engage the great consulting detective—’
‘It pains me to say this, sir, but the partnership is dissolved.’
Churchill’s jaw sagged, and only his moist and fleshy lower lip kept the cigar in place. ‘Dissolved?’
‘He is happy keeping his bees and walking the Downs, his conscience disturbed only occasionally by the rumble of the distant guns, or so I would imagine. I am here to do what little I can to alleviate pain and suffering. We – he and I – are no longer in the business of deduction.’
‘Really? I’m sorry to hear that.’ Churchill opened the door to allow Watson to step through. ‘But perhaps you would consider taking a look at the facts in the case?’
‘Until the war is over, I am simply a medical man.’
Winston stepped out into the fresh air. Mrs Gregson, seeing Watson was readying to depart, fetched the starting handle to fire up the Crossley.
‘Ah, well. So be it.’ Churchill held out his hand. ‘Thank you again for your work on the Mylius case. I’m sorry it can never be officially recognized.’
‘It was a pleasure.’ Watson wasn’t lying. He longed for the days when an average week might involve helping Holmes save the royal family from disgrace, a game played out in the library at the Athenaeum, the drawing rooms of the great stately homes of Hampshire, the Old Bailey and even Buckingham Palace. He would never have countenanced such a statement at the time, but life was so much simpler then.
He came back to the present when the clocks in the house began a staggered chiming of one o’clock, a sound that merged perfectly with the whistle of an approaching German shell.
The first 105mm round of the afternoon bombardment detonated close to the lonely tower of the church, the great thud in the earth causing the structure to sway alarmingly. As Churchill and Watson watched the dirty fan of earth spread, both were aware of a smaller explosion behind them, as part of the plaster disintegrated into fine powder. Watson felt the heat cross his face and his skin prickle with the impact of dust and stone and caught a noxious garlicky smell.
The sentry stepped across, blocking the doorway and putting himself in harm’s way to cover the colonel. He was rewarded with a round in his chest, which imploded into a grisly crater. As the sentry went down, Watson grabbed Churchill by the arm and hurled him back inside the hallway, yelling over his shoulder for Mrs Gregson to follow them in.
As she dropped the handle and sprinted, a salvo from a battery of Minenwerfer landed in the trees and backtracked towards the steeple, the noise building with each fall, until it was like a continuous series of hammer blows.
The concussion from a Minnie shell the size of a railway carriage snatched at Mrs Gregson and hurled her across the threshold into Watson’s arms. They collapsed into a heap in the hallway.
Watson was back on his feet when two things happened: firstly the Crossley was picked up and flung against the front of Somerset House, the bodywork twisting and crumpling as it shattered windows and stonework, and one of the rounds took out the brickwork at the base of the steeple of Le Gheer. Despite the flying shrapnel and splinters, Watson stood at the side of the doorway, transfixed, and watched the tower totter like a drunkard before it fell, poleaxed, into the surrounding wood, with a ground-shaking boom that, just momentarily, blotted out the kettle-drum roll of enemy shellfire.