SIXTY-TWO
Watson, with a hastily recruited dressing gown thrown over pyjamas, ran out into confusion and cacophony. Above him there was an agitated flock of German biplanes, the black crosses livid on the underside of the lower wings. They were turning and diving like the bees at the entrance to one of Holmes’s hives. Their target was clearly the lorry park to the east of the CCS, and already thick columns of oily smoke were rising, fusing together into one bulbous black cloud. It looked as if a giant insect out of H. G. Wells’s imagination was bestriding the countryside.
Around him came the pop-pop of small-arms fire. The pack store, a locked wooden hut where soldiers’ kit was stored, had been wrenched open. It appeared that every patient who was mobile had grabbed a rifle from it, burst out into the open and was taking aim at the Albatroses. The rapidity of the fire reminded him that when they first encountered the BEF in France, the Germans were convinced the British had machine guns. He could see, just over the treeline, the very upper dormer windows of the monastery, which had been thrown open. Men were leaning out, shooting revolvers futilely but magnificently into the sky. A handful had made the slate roof, and they, too, were taking pot shots.
Watson felt a real surge of pride at this group of men scattered across the CCS, many bandaged, some on crutches, others who had crawled from their beds, all determined not to let the marauders have it all their own way.
Even as he peered into the sky, one of the aggressors faltered, falling slightly. He gave a hoarse cheer.
It was only as it performed a twisting acrobatic that Watson realized the aircraft was not hit. The pilot had noticed the pinpricks being aimed its way. It was like a big dog suddenly becoming aware that it had fleas. Now it was going to scratch.
With a flip that Watson thought might rip the wings off the biplane, it flattened out and headed straight for the CCS. Now the hornet-like buzzing of its engine stood out from the general mêlée of sound. Behind the propeller, lights winked, like semaphore signals: interrupter machine guns, synchronized to fire through the propellers. Watson watched, as frozen as any statue, as a dust devil swirled across the grounds of the hospital and churned its way through a group of patients who were left collapsed in its wake.
Still the others fired, and the angry machine banked, turned and started another run, the nose winking again, the angry engine note singing in his ears.
‘For God’s sake, sir, get down.’
Brindle, his driver, was sprinting towards him, his long limbs splaying as he did so, and launched himself into a rugby tackle on Watson just as the ground exploded around them.
He hit Watson full force amidships and the pair of them crashed down into the mud. The air was punched out of Watson’s lungs and a sharp stab in his side told him a rib might have gone.
As the plane soared overhead he could hear the popping of the guns above the screaming engine. The prop wash engulfed the entwined pair in wet leaves. A Humber ambulance’s petrol tank ignited at the entrance, the vehicle bucking as it was lifted in the air by the explosion. It came down and split into two, broke-backed.
At a signal none of those on the ground could discern, the attackers all broke off the assault in the same instant. A last bomb was tossed, detonating with a loud crump, and the planes regrouped, their buzzing diminishing as they deserted the scene, wings wagging in the aerial equivalent of a loud guffaw. It was little consolation that one of them was trailing an oily plume and appeared to be losing height.
Around him more fuel tanks exploded, and the air filled with black specks and an acrid, rubbery stink. With some difficulty Watson rolled Brindle off him. ‘You all right?’
‘Leg,’ he said groggily.
Watson scrambled to his knees. A bullet had severed something significant in the driver’s thigh and blood was pumping from the wound like claret from an uncorked cask.
He could see panic rising in Brindle’s eyes at the size of the pool forming on the ground beneath him. The colour fled from his cheeks, leaving a grey pallor.
‘I’m going to die.’
‘Yes, you are,’ said Watson, taking the cord from his dressing gown. ‘Just not today.’ He carefully positioned the tourniquet and pulled it tight until the flow reduced to a trickle.
‘One thing we’ve got a lot of, Brindle, old chap,’ he said calmly, ‘is spare blood.’
A shadow fell over his face and he stood, feeling a catch in his ribcage as he did so. Something had gone in there, all right. Sister Spence was a few feet away and she looked down at his sodden pyjamas, darkened with blood, in some alarm. ‘Not mine,’ he assured her, pointing to his driver.
Sister instructed two stretcher-bearers to load up Brindle.
‘He needs a transfusion,’ said Watson. ‘I’ll prepare the tent. Have you seen Miss Pippery?’
‘You’d better come with me,’ said a stony-faced Sister Spence.
She was lying on a cot-bed in one of the bell tents. Someone, perhaps one of the several nurses that surrounded her, had cut open the top of her uniform. It had revealed a mound of pink froth. The foaming mass looked like an aerated blancmange, but, along with the sickly whistle coming from her chest, it confirmed that Miss Pippery was dying.
The nurses parted and Watson kneeled down, ignoring another protest from his ribcage. He gripped her left hand. In the right she was holding her cross.
‘I’m not scared,’ she said in a whisper.
‘No, of course you’re not.’
‘You believe me, don’t you?’ she implored.
‘Yes.’
‘Have they sent for the padre?’
He glanced over his shoulder. Sister Spence, her face a pale mask, nodded.
‘Morphine?’ he mouthed at Sister.
Another inclination of the head.
‘He’s on his way,’ Watson confirmed to Miss Pippery.
She tried to take a deep breath, but more bubbles appeared and there was that hideous whoosh of free air. ‘I’ll prepare the way,’ she said.
‘For what?’
‘For Mrs Gregson. I’ll tell God she is a good woman. Her work over here. She should be judged on that. Not . . . not the other things.’
He squeezed harder. ‘I’m sure she will be grateful.’
‘Don’t mock me.’
He leaned in closer. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’
‘Will you tell her?’
Watson was painfully aware he had no saliva. He tried to keep his voice normal. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘For lying.’
Lying, had she said? Or dying? Watson stroked her forehead. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’
‘I told you I never left the sergeant alone in the transfusion tent. But I did. Just for a second. Well . . . a few minutes. Lieutenant Metcalf asked me outside for a chat. About . . .’
He waited, letting her marshal her fading reserves. There was blood on her lips now. He used the sleeve on his jacket to dab the pink flecks away.
‘. . . my foxtrot.’
There was commotion behind him. The RC padre had arrived. Watson stood to give him room. He bent down to catch her words as her lips moved.
‘Very persuasive. The lieutenant is. And Captain de Griffon. Charming. Very nice. For a toff. Who knew they could be so . . . so normal? I’m sorry. About leaving the sergeant. I thought I would get into trouble. Be sent away.’
‘None of that matters now, Alice.’
A cloud of pain crossed her features. The shock of the bullet’s impact was wearing off quickly. Her stunned nerves were coming alive once again. Even the chemical blanket of morphia couldn’t hold back the pain. She, too, realized what was to come. ‘Would you go now, Major? And leave me with the padre?’
‘Of course.’
Watson gave a final squeeze of her hand, turned and walked out into the late afternoon drizzle, turned his face to the sky and, with the water stinging his face and merging with his tears, silently raged at heaven and all its monstrous works.
Watson had the luxury of one of the giant beer vats to himself. Filled with hot, soapy water up to his chest, he sat on one of the wooden blocks that had been sunk into the enormous half-barrel. He was not in tip-top shape. If he were a racehorse, he’d either be withdrawn from the race or face Lord Lockie’s fate. His body ached from neck to ankle, his knee throbbed and his left ribcage had a livid purple bruise on it and was tender to the touch. He needed it strapping.
After leaving Miss Pippery, he had seen to Brindle and his transfusion and then assisted with the other casualties until Torrance had ordered him away. By that time his pyjamas and dressing gown had been soaked in blood, rain, saline and more blood. He had given them to the orderly for burning.
Only now, in the gloom of the old beer cellar, did he think about Miss Pippery. Mrs Gregson was with her now, inconsolable. Would she blame Watson for her death? After all, in the midst of all this, he himself had delivered a murder. He had brought Miss Pippery up into the firing line. A stab of guilt, a physical punch to the stomach, made him groan, before logic reasserted itself. It wasn’t his fault.
No?
No. Just this bloody war.
He turned his head as the door opened and Major Torrance entered. He looked in need of medical attention himself. His white coat, worn over his uniform, was almost as soiled as Watson’s pyjamas had been. His face was drawn and pallid.
‘I am sorry to interrupt, Major Watson.’
‘There’s plenty of room in here,’ he said.
The man smiled and shook his head. ‘Not yet. Apparently our phone lines are down thanks to that air raid. I have a message for you. Marked Most Urgent.’
‘From whom?
Torrance tried not to sound impressed as he raised the envelope. ‘Winston Churchill.’
‘Hand me a towel, would you?’
The major passed one across, along with the note. Watson dried his hands and ripped at the gummed flap. It was a single sheet of paper. Churchill, it said, had received a call and there was a message from Mr Sherlock Holmes. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Watson.
He handed it across and watched Torrance’s face as he read it and took in the implications.
‘It explains a lot,’ said Watson.
‘But not quite everything. You should finish drying yourself and come with me to the morgue.’
The young American doctor had been blown to pieces. One leg was missing and most of a hip, leaving a huge crimson wound, from which part of his entrails poked. The left arm was amputated above the elbow. The right hand was present but was detached from the wrist. Tendons poked from the severed surfaces like cut electrical wires. His face showed the disfiguring ripples of blast damage. But there was enough left for Watson to tell that, at one time, the eyes had been bulging and that the face carried a distorted grin.
Watson took all this in and asked the morgue attendant to draw the sheet back over and cover the remains of Caspar Myles. He desperately wanted a cigarette to mask the smell of death all around him.
‘Well?’ asked Torrance.
‘All these injuries are post mortem,’ Watson said.
‘True. A bomb from the air raid appears to have unearthed one of the mass graves. He was blown to the surface. At least, most of him was. The blast also ripped open the blanket he had been put into. An orderly recognized the body.’
‘He never left the CCS then,’ Watson said.
‘It seems not.’
Watson pondered for a second. ‘He was murdered and buried sometime after he left the Shipobottom tent.’ It was a devious place to dispose of a body; just one more blanket-wrapped corpse among many.
‘And it looks like this Risus sardonicus,’ offered Torrance.
‘Oh, it is.’
‘So, forgive me. What does this mean?’
‘It means we know who the murderer is,’ said Watson.