A Study in Murder (40 page)

No, it couldn’t be.

‘Holmes!’ she hissed. ‘Holmes, wait.’

The man looked over his shoulder, just a glance, but those piercing grey eyes told her she was right. He broke into a faster pace but she was after him.

Target moving.

She could sense the consternation at the other end of the crossing. One of the German officers had taken a step onto the as-yet-unsecured bridge, which oscillated under his weight. He, too, had
perhaps appreciated that Holmes had been in plain sight this whole time.

‘Sherlock, wait, please,’ she pleaded.

‘Stay out of this, Mrs Gregson,’ he growled. ‘I know what I am doing.’

‘I am glad one of us does. Wait, damn you!’

Target in crosshairs. Trigger tensioned. Wind zero.

Younger and fitter than Holmes, and driven by a deep desperation, she reached him before he was halfway across.

‘Mr Holmes—’

He pushed her away and she turned back to Nathan. ‘Robert. What are you doing? Shoot him! Shoot his legs!’

But Nathan stood rooted to the spot next to the car, his pistol still in his pocket, as if frozen into inaction.

Take the shot.

The crack of a high-powered rifle echoed over the flat landscape, the sound reaching those around the bridge some moments after its bullet penetrated the flesh of the upper arm, found the collar
bone and was deflected downwards, severing the pulmonary artery as it went, ploughing through soft lung tissue until it nicked the aorta, causing the chest cavity to fill with blood, before it
punched its way out between the ribs, leaving its victim to crumple down onto the wooden surface of the bridge.

A volley of shots followed from several directions, the bridge’s metalwork sparking and flashing with the ricochets. Most of the onlookers, feeling the air about them snap and crackle,
flung themselves down to the ground but two witnesses to the assassination, one from either end of the bridge, broke into a sprint.

In that moment, few noticed that the waters of the Meuse next to the German bank had started to bubble and boil as a glistening black shape emerged from its muddy resting place.

The two figures collided close to the centre. There was a brief tussle and the pair of them pitched sideways. Their balance gone, Holmes and Watson fell through a gap in the iron latticework of
the bridge and, still intertwined in a desperate embrace, plunged into the icy waters of the river below.

The convalescent home had a decent view over the wintry South Downs from its veranda, where the patients spent much of the day. Watson wondered if this particular establishment
had been deliberately chosen to torment him, to remind him of where his former friend had once cultivated his bees and his honey. Most of the other occupants of the converted mansion were wounded
soldiers, for the most part missing limbs or gas-blinded. Watson felt something of a fraud. All he had lost, he thought, sitting in his bath chair, blanket over his thighs, was his will to live.
That and about three stones in weight.

He was scanning the advertisements in the
Argos
when the matron announced he had a visitor.

‘Who is it?’

‘A Mr Holmes.’

‘Mycroft Holmes?’

‘I believe it is.’

He carefully folded the paper and laid it on the table next to him. ‘Very well. Show him in, please.’

Mycroft stepped from the shadows of the day room and onto the glassed-in veranda and pulled up a chair, taking his time in sitting, showing the care of a man cautious with his ageing joints.

‘Watson,’ he said once he had settled.

‘Mycroft.’

‘How are you?’

‘Getting stronger, despite myself.’

‘That water was very cold. The shock to a body of our vintage . . . it takes time to heal.’

Watson didn’t answer.

‘You might like to know that a Red Cross investigation team, operating under the Geneva Convention, is at Harzgrund. The Germans have agreed to co-operate fully, to hand over any evidence
of wrongdoing on the part of prisoners and to deliver the perpetrators to British military authority. Men will be hanged for what they did in that camp, Watson.’

‘The thought gives me little pleasure.’ In truth, there was little in life that gave him much pleasure these days.

‘I have something for you.’ Mycroft handed over a parcel.

‘What’s this?’

‘Notebooks. Pencils. You have a story to write.’

Watson threw the package on top of the newspaper. ‘I don’t want to write any of this. Not Harzgrund. Not that bloody bridge.’

Mycroft was not surprised by the mix of venom and despair in Watson’s words. The mental scars of that day would clearly take even longer than his body to heal. ‘No, not that. The
Harwich Von Bork affair. It turns out that Mrs Gregson sold that story, and the promise of several others, to Greenhough Smith to finance her little escapade. He wants to call it “His Last
Bow”.’

Watson nodded his approval. The Von Bork affair would probably be Holmes’s last official appearance, at least chronologically. There were still earlier adventures to relate, he supposed,
‘The Girl and the Gold Watches’, for one, but the tale of that night in August 1914, when he bested Von Bork, would be a fitting place to end his tenure in the public eye. ‘How
much did she get?’

‘Two hundred pounds, so he says.’

‘Well done her.’ Watson looked the older man in the eye. ‘It was more than an escapade, you know. Wrong-headed, perhaps, but at least she tried.’

‘And so did we.’

‘By positioning a sniper to kill Sherlock?’

It was Mycroft’s turn to be silent.

‘And a very poor sniper at that. Missed his bloody target completely.’

Watson could sense that something was troubling Mycroft, something he didn’t quite know how to express.

‘Didn’t he?’

‘That’s not entirely true. At least, we don’t believe it is.’

‘Tell me,’ demanded Watson.

‘Perhaps when you are a little better.’

Watson gripped Mycroft’s arm. ‘Tell me.’

‘The sniper – our sniper, that is – was under orders to shoot only if Sherlock was in German hands. We had a plan in place to make sure that didn’t happen.’

‘The Holland.’

‘It was Churchill’s idea.’

‘Churchill is full of . . . ideas,’ said Watson slowly. ‘Not all of them good.’

Watson had discovered once he and Holmes had been dragged onboard that the Holland was an experimental class of submarine, most of which had been lost or scrapped. Holland 6, though, a minelayer
designed for penetration of estuaries and rivers, was still extant. Churchill had persuaded Jackie Fisher of the Board of Invention and Research to release it for a special mission, which involved
travelling through neutral waters, to emerge on the German side of the Meuse at the appropriate time.

‘It worked,’ said Mycroft. ‘The marines did a good job of pinning down the enemy while you were fished out of the river. It is a shame we were late – a small tug that had
been depth-sounding for us missed a mud bank. We were grounded for a few minutes.’

A few very precious minutes, thought Watson. ‘You were saying about the sniper.’

‘Churchill had a man named Bloch released. German sniper. He was promised freedom no matter what happened, but if Von Bork had my brother in custody, he was to shoot Sherlock. At least,
that’s what Churchill told me.’

‘And you believe him?’

Mycroft hesitated. ‘It’s possible he told him to shoot Sherlock the moment he crossed over to the German side.’

‘That sounds more like Churchill.’

‘But without Winston we wouldn’t have had the Holland. I wouldn’t have been on board to help save you. It was a belt-and braces approach. Give him credit for that.’

‘The sniper?’ prompted Watson. ‘What happened to him?’

‘Dead.’

‘How?’

‘Throat cut.’

‘By whom?’

‘The one who took his place on the tower. As far as we can ascertain, that is.’

Watson leaned forward. ‘You are talking in riddles.’

‘Miss Pillbody was on the tower. It was she who pulled the trigger.’

Watson reacted as if he had been given electro-therapy at full voltage; his body arching into spasm.

Mycroft reached over and poured him a glass of water. ‘Nurse!’

‘No, no . . . I’m all right.’ He took the water and gulped, spilling some down his front. ‘Miss Pillbody? That damned woman again. How?’

Mycroft explained about the escape from Holloway and the subsequent murder of two men in Venlo, including his own agent. ‘She killed a local man and took his hunting rifle. We think she
was looking for a suitable spot to shoot at the bridge when she saw the tower and instinctively knew that it was the location we would choose to try and silence Sherlock. Her training would tell
her that.’

‘So Mrs Gregson’s death wasn’t an accident? Miss Pillbody meant to kill her.’

‘Possibly.’

Watson remembered the moments after the bullet struck, how he had turned round and punched Von Bork so hard his nose had split, and then tossed him into Hersch. His run over the bridge towards
the body and his confusion when a Dutch worker had come straight at him. The shock of recognition when he was confronted with Holmes. The anger when Sherlock wouldn’t let Watson go to the
crumpled, lonely figure of the woman he . . . the woman who, by filling his imagination and dreams, had kept him alive through his incarceration.

The tussle that took them over the bridge to the waters where Holland 6 had already broken the surface and was disgorging a line of Royal Marines, marksmen every one. The volleys that kept the
Germans’ heads down while they were extracted from the water. The delirium, the total physical collapse that followed. Yes, he could recall every hideous moment.

Mycroft passed him a handkerchief, ostensibly to mop up the spilled drink from his waistcoat, but also to dab away the tears on his cheeks.

‘The other shots, after the one that . . . after the first one?’

‘Again, mostly Miss Pillbody with the hunting rifle. Less than accurate. We had no idea who or what she was aiming at till now. I’m afraid she got clean away, though. She could be
back in Berlin, for all we know. But rest assured, when this war is over we will run her to ground. You might be pleased to hear that Von Bork is to face a military trial for overstepping his
authority. That’s the story they are giving the Red Cross, anyway. The plan to ensnare Sherlock was all the work of a rogue officer, pursuing a personal vendetta.’

Watson was only half listening. ‘I never got to say goodbye to Georgina. Not properly. He denied me that, your brother.’

‘When this is over we’ll bring her body back for a proper burial and service. But the Dutch were furious about their neutrality being compromised. Although the Holland 6 was in
German waters, technically at least, when it picked you up, it had to pass through Dutch sections of the river to get away.’

‘I don’t give a fig for Dutch neutrality.’

‘I realize that. My brother did it for the best, you know.’

‘I didn’t even get to see her face!’ Watson snapped. ‘Just for a second would have been enough.’

Mycroft sighed. ‘I appreciate that you must miss her. Even I understand that.’ Mycroft indicated the newspaper. ‘That’s not the way forward, though.’

‘What isn’t?’ Watson asked suspiciously.

‘A séance. Or any other bogus way to contact the dead. Wherever they are, the dead are always beyond us.’

Watson looked puzzled. ‘How did you . . . ?’

‘When I asked Matron how you were doing, she said you were strong enough to consider a trip to Brighton this Saturday. I see from the newspaper there that there is a public meeting of the
British Society for Psychical Research, with a famous author or two speaking on the matter of life after death, on that very day. It will be very busy. You aren’t alone in hoping this life
isn’t the end. Not by a long chalk.’

‘I don’t believe. And yet, there was one case in the camps that I keep wondering about.’ Watson outlined the details of Brevette and the séance where he apparently told
Hulpett that the captain had not made it home. Hulpett, apparently, was not one of those who knew the truth about the fate of the men who entered the trick coffins. He was onboard solely for his
experience as a solicitor. And so he had told Lincoln-Chance about his qualms, sealing Archer’s fate and, for good measure, the medium’s fellow voyagers to the afterlife.

‘It could be a coincidence,’ offered Mycroft when Watson had finished.

‘Do you believe in coincidence?’

‘On the 30th of June 1916,
The Times
crossword had clues that gave the answers “Somme”, “offensive” and “Albert”. And the next day the Battle of
Albert began, the first part of the Somme Offensive. The poor man who set the clues was hauled off and virtually hung by his ankles. Turned out to be a complete coincidence. So, yes, sometimes the
stars do align and coincidences do occur. Look, you know that Harry Houdini has spent much of the last few years debunking mediums and the like. Sherlock has done his fair share of explaining
supernatural phenomena. Good Lord, man, you were there for most of them.’

Watson’s chin dropped onto his chest. ‘I know. I am a foolish old man.’

‘And, as I said, you miss her.’ There was a touch of impatience in the voice. ‘It might have been for the best, you know, that you didn’t see her on the bridge. She was
already dead,’ said Mycroft, putting a hand on Watson’s knee. ‘Sherlock knew that. He wanted to save the living . . . there was no time for mourning.’

Watson did not answer.

‘If you insist on exploring the possibility of the continuation of sentience, there was always one case that baffled Houdini and every other investigator, including Madame
Curie.’

Watson turned and looked at Mycroft. ‘Don’t mock me.’

‘It’s true. A woman in Paris, Eva Carrière, has received some acclaim, although I also hear she is something of a sexual exhibitionist. Personally, I am not convinced, but I
think it might be more interesting than the hysteria that will ensue in Brighton. People
want
to believe so badly, you see. It doesn’t make the dead come calling.’