The Dead Can Wait (40 page)

‘Do you ever know the great secret that this island is meant to protect?’ asked Watson.

‘No. I don’t need to and I don’t wish to. It would be one more burden.’

‘But what if I told you there is a man who wants to make sure the whole project founders at birth?’ Watson swept his arm in a semicircle. ‘A man who wants all this subterfuge to be a waste of time?’

‘Go on.’

‘He is a Frenchman, yet far from an ally. You could stop him simply by sending a telegram.’

‘To whom?’

‘Churchill. Just say “Arrest Levass”. He’ll understand.’

Montgomery frowned at this. ‘On what grounds?’

‘On Mr Sherlock Holmes’s say-so.’

‘And that will be enough to put this Levass behind bars, will it? The word of a man that you yourself have admitted is not entirely well? It will secure an arrest?’

Watson could see that it might not. An accusation without hard evidence, a piece of conjecture by Holmes from a second-hand account. ‘Perhaps not. But it is worth a try. It will certainly pique his interest.’

‘I’ll think on it.’ In actual fact he had already made up his mind. Montgomery didn’t want Churchill back, sniffing around. The man made trouble wherever he went. And at that moment, he knew, Churchill was fighting for his political life and reputation, giving evidence to the Dardanelles Commission, trying to prove Gallipoli was not his fault alone. And the idea that one man – a Frenchman at that – could derail the British war effort was ridiculous. Montgomery suspected this Levass business was simply a ploy by Watson to get his friend off the island.

‘That’s all I ask.’ Watson didn’t press the point. He still had the ace of Mrs Gregson up his sleeve.

‘But I warn you, I am not inclined to grant you any wishes after today’s shenanigans.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I know you have already tried to make me look a fool.’

Watson said nothing, fearing what was to come.

Montgomery finally let a smirk play over his face. This is what he had come for: a gloat. ‘You see, we picked up your friend at the station, on board a train for London. Seems she made a guard at the docks suspicious and he reported her. Mrs Gregson is in the Workhouse under lock and key. And that’s where she’ll stay until charged under the Defence of the Realm Act.’

FORTY-ONE

Holmes and Watson discussed their options over some excellent devilled kidneys prepared for Holmes by Miss Deane. She confirmed that Mrs Gregson was being held, under guard, in a room on the top floor of the building known as the Workhouse.

‘What’s to be done?’ she asked.

Holmes pointed a forkful of kidneys in Watson’s direction. ‘Watson, your thoughts?’

‘We have to get off the island, get you to a hospital.’

‘Don’t you worry about me,’ said Holmes. ‘You have bigger fish to fry. You must warn the Heavy Branch about Levass.’

‘But surely it is too late for this man to stop the machines being deployed,’ said Miss Deane.

‘What if he sabotaged the landships enough that all sides think they are a failure, until he is ready to show the world his own, Gallic version?’ replied Watson.

‘But the French are our allies,’ said Miss Deane as she poured them all tea. ‘Surely he wouldn’t—’

‘Miss Deane, men – mostly men – often perpetrate the most terrible crimes on the flimsiest of pretexts,’ said Watson. ‘Levass believes he is right, and everyone else is wrong, and there is no telling what he might do.’

She sipped her tea. ‘I suppose you are right.’

‘I intend to see Montgomery this morning,’ said Holmes, ‘to try to convince him of the peril of the situation.’

‘I wish you luck,’ said Watson glumly. ‘A most intractable chap, he seems to me.’

‘I fear you are right, Watson. But the alternatives?’

There was a moment of contemplation, and the taking of more kidneys, around the table.

‘Holmes,’ said Watson eventually, ‘there is another option. This Broomway that Miss Deane mentioned. Perhaps I could—’

‘Ha! Do not even consider it, Watson. You know what locals call it? The Doomway. The most lethal road in the entire United Kingdom. I, for one, cannot think of another that has claimed more lives.’

‘How so?’

‘It is called the Broomway because the route was marked with bundles of twigs. Like sweeping brooms. Hazel, I believe. Well, most of those have long gone, replaced by wooden posts. Posts that are not easy to spot in a mist or a sea fog. And there are precious few landmarks to steer by. The glutinous Black Grounds that fringe the pathways have claimed even those familiar with the route: postmen, farmers, priests, horses and sheep. Why do you think they put so few patrols on the south side of the island? Nobody in their right mind would attempt to navigate it, especially not with this mist. And the tide. You have seen how flat the land is? The tide races in faster than even a young man can run. You would be food for crabs.’

‘You make it sound worse than no man’s land,’ said Watson with a shudder.

‘Apart from the fact there are no shells or snipers trying to do you harm, I believe it is, Watson. No, you would surely founder and die.’

‘I see.’

‘I, on the other hand, with my admirable sense of direction, can get you across.’

‘Holmes—’ he began.

‘Miss Deane, fetch me a piece of paper, if you will. And a writing implement. I believe there are some in the drawer in the kitchen. These kidneys, might I say, are the finest I have had in many a year.’

‘Did you hear about the submarine?’ Watson asked while she was gone.

‘No. Pray tell.’

Watson repeated what Montgomery had told him, about the sludge cruiser.

‘What was a German submarine doing here?’ asked Miss Deane, returning with the requested items.

‘Up to no good, I assume,’ said Holmes, dismissing the tale from his mind. ‘Now, let me show you.’ He took the stub of a pencil and a sheet of lined paper. ‘The Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges, once wrote a monograph on the forgotten and ancient roads of Great Britain. Rather better than his later poetry, in my opinion. He traced the Broomway back to Roman times, I believe.’

Holmes drew a rough shape on the paper. ‘This is Foulness. Approximately. And here, to the south-west, the mainland at Wakering Stairs. Now the path actually runs offshore from the island, some hundreds of yards. The trick is to find the solid paths, the causeways, which feed into it, like the tributaries of a stream. They come from here, here and here. These are in some ways the most lethal part of the journey, because people try to cut corners to get to the Broomway. But that is a fatal mistake – these are the tracks where people die when they stray. Go either side of that solid ground, which you can usually detect by the remains of ancient wattles, wooden boards, laid over the mud, and you are in the Black Grounds. And you won’t be coming out of that sinking mud.’ He gave a theatrical twirl of his hand, a gesture retrieved from long ago, and lowered his voice. ‘Not alive, Watson, not alive.’

‘But you couldn’t do that journey. It looks far too dangerous, Holmes. And you are not a well man.’

Holmes dismissed this with another wave of his fingers. ‘I shall have you to lean on, Watson. And Mrs Gregson.’

‘Mrs Gregson is under lock and key,’ Watson reminded him. ‘And I don’t see why we need involve her in such a treacherous undertaking.’

‘Oh, I can get her out of that room, gentlemen,’ said Miss Deane. ‘There is an attic that runs the entire length of the building. It wouldn’t be hard to break through a patch of ceiling if someone could devise a distraction.’

‘A nice fire, perhaps,’ said Holmes with a wry smile, recalling, thought Watson, the ruse he had used in the story they called ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’.

‘Well, there is a kitchen,’ Miss Deane said.

‘Once unleashed, fire is difficult to control,’ said Watson. ‘We don’t want casualties.’

‘True. We must plan this carefully,’ said Holmes, his eyes blazing with excitement. Watson was inclined to take his pulse to make sure he wasn’t over-doing it, but he knew he mustn’t fuss. The sense of purpose burning within Holmes was both gratifying and infectious.

‘And when we get to Wakering Stairs?’ Watson asked. ‘What then?’

‘We find a motor car,’ said Holmes, as if Watson was being particularly dim. ‘And drive it to London. A few words with Kell at MI5 will put us in the clear, I’d wager. And then we send word to the tankmen in France that they have a viper in their midst.’

‘Steal a car?’

‘Borrow one, Watson, borrow one.’

‘But I have no idea how to
borrow
a car,’ admitted Watson.

‘No, but from what you tell me, your Mrs Gregson does. That is why she is vital to our plans. We need to spring her from her trap. A prison breakout, if you please.’

They both turned to look at Miss Deane.

She flushed slightly under their gaze, then took a deep breath. ‘Very well, I will help break her out, gentlemen. But on one condition.’

‘What is that?’ asked Holmes.

‘I can come with you.’

‘In which case,’ announced Holmes, ‘we will be needing four stout walking sticks, even stouter shoes, a brick or stone and a large spool of thread.’

FORTY-TWO

The stutter and then roar of the six tank engines cut through the silence of the dark woods as the four-man starter handles turned. Already the attuned ear could hear that one of them was running rough, its rhythm erratic and the exhaust note strained.
So five will
move forward from Yellow Dump
, thought Levass,
the great invention edging ever closer to the front line, albeit it in painfully small increments
.

He walked through to the edge of the once verdant, now ruined and splintered forest, where the machines sat, their drivers waiting for the Daimler engines to reach their operating temperature. The wilier mechanics would have lit a small paraffin fire under the gearbox or diff to help thin the oil and speed things along. They were all learning the little tricks and foibles of the machines. Another six months . . .

‘They need to be in place by dawn. Shouldn’t they get a move on?’ It was Colonel Cecil Frogatt-Lewis, newly installed commander of the Heavy Branch and a man who had little sympathy for the waywardness of complex mechanical devices. He and Levass were touring each of the muster sites of the tanks that had so far made it to the forward areas. The attrition rate had been appalling. And now, as the sick engine missed several beats and fell silent, it appeared they had lost another. Levass saw figures moving through the gloom, torches in hand, heading for the stricken ‘bus’. The mechanics would try to get to the bottom of the fault, but experience told him that repairs inevitably took several hours. And he had been adamant to Frogatt-Lewis that the tanks should not move in daylight hours and must remain camouflaged when stationary. He hadn’t come this far to let a clever German spotter realize what kind of new weapon they had.

‘What’s that smell?’ asked Frogatt-Lewis, sniffing the air like a bloodhound. ‘Flowers?’

‘Gas shells,’ said Levass. ‘It leaves a sickly sweet smell even after it has lost its potency.’

‘I see,’ Frogatt-Lewis replied, instinctively changing to shallow breathing.

‘Captain!’ Levass yelled.

The commander of the small group of tanks, a weary-looking lad in his early twenties, with a grease-stained face, trotted out of the darkness and saluted. ‘Sir?

Levass recognized the man from Elveden. He had driven
Genevieve.
‘Halford, isn’t it?’

‘Captain Henry Halford, yes, sir.’ He had been promoted from lieutenant on arrival in France. The new rank still sounded strange to his ears.

‘You only have an hour until dawn,’ said Frogatt-Lewis, returning the salute. ‘You need to move up.’

‘One of the tanks—’ Halford began.

‘Leave it,’ said Levass.

‘Leave it?’

‘No time. Where are you moving to?’

‘Memetz Wood.’

‘That’s four miles away,’ said Levass.

‘So I believe,’ said Halford, with just a hint of insolence.

‘And you average less than three miles an hour.’

The young man nodded. ‘If we push them any harder, the fuel consumption is enormous. It’s like pouring petrol into a hole in the ground. We stack the steering gear with spare tins, but as it is . . . it’s a worry.’

‘We are aware of that.’ Levass also knew that U-boats had sunk several tankers full of fuel destined for the greedy tanks. ‘Take any supplies off the crippled tank and distribute between the remaining five. We’ll get you all the fuel you need up to Memetz.’

‘Sir. Thank you.’

‘And one other thing,’ asked Levass. ‘You’ve been to the front?’

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘I have, recently, for the first time. I thought I was prepared. I had heard all the stories. In half a mile the landscape will change. You think this wood has had shell damage? Wait until you see what artillery has done up ahead. There will be craters like you have never experienced. And there will be bodies. You’ll have to go over them. Are you prepared for that? You won’t know if they were friend or foe, men or horses. Death has mixed up their bones like it was making a soup.’

Halford blanched a little. ‘We’ll do our job, sir.’

They heard the low rumble of guns, even above the tank engines, and Levass caught a glow on the horizon a false dawn of shellfire.

‘Good luck, Captain. What’s your tank called?’

‘
G for Glory
, sir.’

Frogatt-Lewis grunted. ‘Well named. It will be a glorious dawn.’

Levass couldn’t resist a snort.

‘And, son . . .’ added Frogatt-Lewis.

‘Sir?’

‘Wipe some of that muck off your face, will you? And that helmet is all very well when you are engaging the enemy, but I expect a cap when outside the tank.’

This, Levass knew, was nonsense. Any time you drove a tank there was a danger of skull hitting bulkhead. Swapping caps every time one de-tanked was just impractical. ‘Understood?’

‘Sir.’

‘Off you go.’ When the lad had left, Frogatt-Lewis turned to Levass. ‘Did you have to put the wind up him quite so much?’