by Robert Ryan
‘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 clai
m. 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.
‘We’ll need to pay a visit to your home at some point, Major. We’ve asked your housekeeper to pack a bag,’ Gibson said as they crossed the river at Battersea.
‘I’ll need my copy of the BMJ, too.’ Watson said absentmindedly. He had been halfway through a fascinating article by a Swedish physician on the use of diet to treat particular forms of anaemia, and there was another on a new anticoagulant for use in blood transfusions he hadn’t even started to read. With medical science galloping headlong into new areas, spurred by the terrible casualties of war, it was imperative Watson kept up with the latest developments. ‘And my Empire medical kit. The letter asked specifically for it.’
‘Of course. But it makes sense to call at Mayfair first.’
‘Mayfair? Since when has Sherlock Holmes lodged in Mayfair?’
Gibson didn’t answer.
‘Shouldn’t be detained too long, and we can be on our way,’ said Coyle.
‘And how many days am I to be packed for?’
‘As long as it takes, Major.’ Gibson winked at Watson, just to let him know his evasiveness was nothing personal. In fact, Watson liked the chubby little ex-sapper. It was his current profession he found hard to swallow.
They were motoring along the King’s Road now and, with all the barracks nearby, there were plenty of soldiers on the street. A brass band comprising injured veterans was outside the Duke of York’s, and Watson marvelled at the dexterity of the maimed men in playing their instruments. The ensemble, known as the New Contemptibles, included Jack Tyler, the one-armed trombonist, who had been bought his instrument by readers of the Daily Mail. He, at least, had a future of sorts, gaining a fame he could capitalize on in the music halls and variety theatres.
Too many amputees, though, were already reduced to begging while the government bureaucracy sorted out its pension plans. Along with hundreds of other doctors, Watson had lobbied the Admiralty, Chelsea Hospital and the Army Council to have war neurosis or neurasthenia recognized as battlefield-derived damage. So far, they had been promised that the proposed Ministry of Pensions would look favourably upon such claims. But promises weren’t feeding families.
Watson turned to speak to Coyle when he heard a loud bang from over his shoulder. A black landau, of the sort he hadn’t seen for some years, appeared at their side, the sleek horses dangerously close to the bonnet of the Deasy, the wheels a blur as the polished body of the carriage drew level.
Gibson leaped at Watson, his hands grappling with his head and shoulders. Watson fought back, until he realized what the man was trying to do and allowed himself to be forced down into the footwell. Coyle was shouting something and Watson felt a jolt as the car mounted the pavement. It gave a shudder and halted.
Watson looked up at Gibson, his face inches from his own. He could smell peppermint on the man’s breath.
‘A little forward, perhaps, Gibson?’ Watson said.
The spy sat back up and Watson saw that Gibson had pulled a serious-looking revolver from beneath his jacket.
‘Sorry, Major,’ said Gibson, yanking him up and adjusting his lapels. Coyle was out of the car, a starting handle in his hand. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, alert for any change in the scene, scanning faces. The pedestrians all but ignored him. Cars were still an unpredictable nuisance to many people, and there were plenty of drivers who had trouble knowing where the road ended and the pavement began. Coyle, Watson suspected, wasn’t one of them. That had been an emergency defensive manoeuvre.
Around them traffic was flowing again. The landau was nowhere to be seen.
‘False alarm,’ said Gibson with a half-smile. ‘Everyone is a bit jumpy, what with one thing and another.’
Watson didn’t enquire what the one thing, or indeed the other, might be. He retrieved his hat and straightened his jacket, trying not to show his concern. Experience told him one thing: when men like Coyle and Gibson got jumpy, there was usually something worth getting jumpy about.
They drove down Mount Street, and Watson wondered if the Coburg Hotel was their destination, but they motored on by the grand frontage, watched by the doorman, who seemed disappointed such a grand conveyance was not turning in to deliver guests. They eventually parked outside the premises of James Purdey & Sons, at the corner of South Audley Street. The window still held an elaborately scrolled, matched pair of shotguns and several beautifully crafted hunting rifles, as well as all the accessories required for a good shoot, but Watson knew that most of the company’s expertise was being utilized by the War Department to create new weapons for the battlefields of Flanders. The pheasant, the grouse, the stag, the tiger and the elephant would have to wait. Purdeys were bagging Germans now.
Coyle was still tense as he turned off the engine and the Deasy shivered to a halt. The Irishman slipped out of the driver’s door and looked up and down the street, before he signalled Watson to step from the rear.
‘You all right, Coyle?’ he asked.
‘I will be, once we are away from here.’ He gave a crooked smile, and Watson could see he had chipped a front tooth since they had last met. There were deeper lines on his face, too, creases that bracketed his mouth, and his freckles appeared to have faded, as if bleached out. ‘But it looks quiet enough now. Off you go, Major.’
Coyle stayed with the car while Gibson led Watson back along Mount Street, past a variety of businesses trying to out-do each other with their floral displays, until he reached a recently constructed mansion block. He rang a bell and the concierge admitted them. A young concierge, Watson noted, of army service age. Unusual. There was no sign of anything that might have invalided him out of the army. And he seemed to know Gibson. Another of Kell’s spies?
In the lift taking them to the top floor, Watson remarked, ‘Coyle seems on edge.’
Gibson nodded. ‘That’s the way I like him.’
The former engineer, too, had changed since their first meeting in 1914: he seemed to have grown glummer, more careworn over the two years. They had come across each other when they had been involved in an elaborate subterfuge designe
d to draw out a German spy. That, and a concurrent piece of deception by Sherlock Holmes to try to keep Watson out of the army and out of harm’s way. It had caused a rift between the two old friends, although Watson now accepted that Holmes had acted from the best of intentions.
‘What have you been up to?’ he asked the secret agent.
Gibson looked up at him with a you-should-know-better-than-to-ask expression. Then he relaxed. ‘Mostly interviewing or tracking aliens.’
‘Looking for spies under the bed?’
‘Nothing quite so exciting.’ He laughed. ‘The vast majority are perfectly innocent, accused by jealous or suspicious neighbours. But Coyle has a nose for sorting the wheat of German agents from the chaff of gossip.’
‘I see he has had some dentistry since we last met.’ Watson pointed to his front tooth.
Gibson laughed again. ‘Yes. The dentist used a revolver barrel.’
‘Unconventional.’
‘Don’t worry. Coyle had the man’s licence to practise revoked.’
Watson could only imagine what that meant as the lift halted with a jolt and a bell pinged. He reached for the gate but Gibson gripped his wrist. ‘The dentist had a friend called Casement.’
Roger Casement had been instrumental in supplying weapons – Russian weapons sourced from Germany – for the Easter Uprising in Dublin. He had been arrested in Ireland – presumably Coyle had been there – and hanged at the Tower for treason just eleven days before.
‘Coyle was involved in detaining Casement?’
A nod. ‘Coyle’s had a few tussles with his conscience since then. As any man who still has friends and family among the revolutionaries would.’
‘Really?’
‘Every Irishman is just two removes from knowing a Fenian.’
‘But he’s sound?’ asked Watson.
Gibson looked annoyed at the question. ‘Sound as a bell, Major. Don’t you go doubting him. Now, I won’t be coming in with you.’
‘No? Why not?’
Gibson stepped in closer. ‘The thing is, Coyle and I have been up to our necks in secrets and not a few lies these past two years. But whatever this is here, today, I’m not privy to it. I am to deliver you and take my leave. So I’ll be waiting for you downstairs.’ The engineer didn’t sound too pleased about this.
