by Robert Ryan
Churchill’s man. Why did they all kowtow to the Butcher of Gallipoli? Yet Booth was as guilty of it as the next man. The very name Churchill opened doors. Although just as often you ended up catching your finger when they slammed shut. ‘Very well. Where have they put him?’
‘The Sandgrouse Lodge, sir.’
‘I’ll be along shortly.’
Booth waved his stick in dismissal, but the lad didn’t seem in too much of a hurry to move along. ‘Something else?’
‘The colonel said to tell you that Major Watson has insisted on getting straight to work.’
‘Has he? Good for him.’
‘And he is insisting on seeing the new weapon for himself.’
‘Is he?’ said Booth slowly. ‘We’ll see about that.’
TWENTY
His name was Hubert Hitchcock, known to all as Hugh. His father was a senior clerk at the War Office, his mother a distant cousin of the Asquiths. He was born in Windsor; educated nearby at Eton, possibly with financial assistance from those relatives. Attended Balliol College, but volunteered for the army before graduating. He was commissioned into the Norfolk Regiment then transferred to the Machine Gun Corps and then its ‘Heavy Branch’, as the secret unit was called. He was selected, after a brief assessment, as commander of the weapon known as G for Genevieve. He was twenty-two years of age.
All that and more was in the file on the table in front of Watson. What wasn’t in there was the fact that Hubert ‘Hugh’ Hitchcock had suffered a catastrophic breakdown.
He sat opposite Watson in the old servants’ quarters in the basement of what was known as the Maharani House, a short walk from his rooms, which were located in a rather grand hunting lodge. There were slot windows high in the wall of the basement of the Maharani House, letting in a little of the dusk light, but the space was gloomy, even during the day. Which was, apparently, how Hitchcock preferred it. There was a cot bed, a table and two chairs, a small wardrobe and a bookcase, containing a set of encyclopaedias and a selection of adventure novels, mostly Rider Haggard. Not that there was enough light to read by.
Hugh Hitchcock was dressed in blue overalls. His feet were bare. His moustache needed trimming but he had shaved – or more likely, been shaved – albeit rather spottily. His hands, sporting long, artistic fingers, were lying on the table. Watson consulted the notes. Hobbies: walking, playing the piano. Watson looked at the eyes. He hardly blinked and the pupils were pin-sharp. He also had a strange, coin-shaped mark of reddened, shiny skin on his left cheek.
‘Hugh, I’m going to light a cigarette. Would you like one?’
No reply. Watson lit his cigarette.
‘Well, this is a bally situation, isn’t it? As I said, my name is Major Watson. I am with the Royal Army Medical Corps. I’ve been sent to try to help you. I am not a head doctor, as they call them. You aren’t mad. I don’t deal with lunatics. You are the opposite. What has happened to you is entirely natural. Forget any notion of letting people down or some sort of weakness. Poppycock. I just think that sometimes we push our minds beyond a point our maker designed them to go. If one believes in a maker. Do you, Hugh? No matter, it could just be the constraints of our biology we are dealing with. I was reminded when I was driving here. Or being driven. The car began to overheat. We had driven the poor thing hard. And slowly I watched this little gauge that measured the engine temperature. Very clever. My driver said they are quite new. So as the engine got hotter and hotter, so the needle moved over towards this little red zone. What happens if it gets into the red? I asked Coyle – he was the driver. Sir, he said, we have to stop. And if we don’t? We l l , he said, the engine seizes. And can it unseize? I asked. No, not without stripping it down and rebuilding, checking to see what damage has been done. It struck me as a reasonable analogy for what our soldiers are going through. They are going into the red zone and instead of letting them rest, we keep going and keep going until we seize their engines. Sometimes it’s the body that gives out, but just as often the mind. You’ve seized up, Hugh, and we have to find out what damage has been done, if any.’
Watson took a sip of water before resuming. ‘Have you had any visitors? Would you like some? I can arrange that. But we should start by talking about that day. The day you seized up. That’s the key. Forget about all those people who tell you to pull yourself together. Have you had that? Please put it out of your mind. But we have to face that day. You have to talk about it, know what it is, find its shape, before you can box it up and put it aside. And perhaps you never will do that entirely. But you can live with it, of that I am certain. Right now, though, you are frozen. It’s there in your mind, isn’t it? I would wager it is there in your dreams. We can talk about that, too. Often, I believe, our dreams tell us truths that we find hard to face at other times.’
Throughout this whole one-sided conversation, Hitchcock had remained impassive, his breathing even. Nothing Watson had said had caused a change in facial expression.
‘Have you eaten? I’ll get you something. And tomorrow, let’s take a stroll outside this room. I’ve only been here fifteen minutes, and it’s driving me mad.’
Not the best choice of word, perhaps, but Watson had been hoping for a reaction. Again, not a flicker, just a long, slow blink. Still, he didn’t blame him. It wasn’t a good joke.
‘You aren’t mad, Hugh. I’m sure you can hear me. I’ll get you out of there.’
Watson waited a couple of heartbeats. ‘Did you kill them, Hugh? Oh, maybe not deliberately, but was it something you did? A mistake, that was all? Because you are here. And they are not. Why is that, Hugh? Why were you chosen to survive?’
The only response was a low growl in the throat.
There was a sharp rap on the door before it opened. A shaft of light from the corridor outside fell on Hitchcock. He shaded his eyes with his palms and the growl became a whimper. Perhaps a walk outside wasn’t such a good idea after all.
‘Sir, sorry to interrupt,’ said the soldier, ‘but Colonel Swinton would like you to join him for dinner at the Hall when it is convenient. He said no need to dress.’ Watson noted the crossed machine guns on the private’s uniform.
‘Of course. And I’d like Lieutenant Hitchcock here to have something.’
‘Oh, he will, sir. Just not while anyone is watching. Clears his plate while I’ve gone. Nothing wrong with his appetite, sir.’
The private said this with something approaching a sneer. Not sympathy, anyway. As if Hitchcock were faking it, that it was an act he could snap out of at will.
‘Tell the colonel I’ll be along shortly.’
‘Sir.’
Watson turned back to Hitchcock. He put his hand over the sick man’s. He didn’t try to withdraw it. ‘Don’t worry, Hugh,’ he repeated. ‘Whatever happened to you and those others, I’ll get you out of there.’
Watson approached Elveden Hall up the gravel drive, musing on what an unappealing hotchpotch the building was. There was clearly a sombre Georgian country house underneath all the extensions, domes and Italianate pillars that had been plastered on it over the years. It was grand, without being handsome. His opinion altered as he walked into the property. It was still far from handsome, but it became extraordinary.
The house’s obvious shooting heritage was indicated by the two small rooms that flanked the immediate entrance. One was full of empty gun racks; the other boot scrapes and hooks for coats and hats. Both had cabinets of stuffed pheasants, partridges, grouse and rabbits on their walls, alongside photographs of gun dogs. Beyond that was the most astonishing hallway, all huge pillars and gilded ceiling, with stars and crescent moons shining down. Ahead was an elaborate, polished marble staircase, and flanking it a series of scalloped arches, supported by pillars bearing a complex coat of arms and inscriptions in what he would later discover was Gurmukhi, the language of the Sikhs.
Although there was European furniture dotted about, the effect was as if he had walked into a maharajah’s palace in Lahore.
&
nbsp; ‘Good Lord,’ he said to himself, looking up at the constellations on the ceiling.
‘Major Watson?’ came a voice. ‘In here.’
He walked from the hallway, through an arch, into a drawing room even more ostentatious and oriental than the hallway. No inch of plasterwork was free from the carved depiction of flowers, trees, animals – a strange mix of deer and elephants, rabbits and tigers – and yet more foreign writing. Each arch had a dozen mini-arches in its curvature, as if an enormous creature had been nibbling at them, while the columns were deeply fluted, and topped and tailed with elaborate capitals and plinths.
Standing in front of the marble fireplace, which was topped by a gilded mirror decorated with gold and silver peacocks, was a group of five men, drinks in hand.
‘Welcome to our humble haveli,’ said one of them, holding out his hand. ‘Colonel Swinton. Pleased to meet a fellow author.’
To Watson’s eyes, Ernest Swinton looked like a younger version of Kitchener, with his moustaches trimmed back somewhat. ‘As am I,’ said Watson. ‘I enjoyed the Defence of Digger’s Drift immensely.’
Swinton beamed and those moustaches twitched. It was a slight exaggeration on Watson’s part. It was a workman-like novel in terms of prose, but the military details were exact and the historical setting well rendered. ‘Thank you. Of course we all enjoy the retelling of a good Holmes case.’
Retelling? Was he suggesting that Watson was a mere reporter? He dismissed it. Fellow writers often reacted strangely to another’s perceived success. Watson would not claim his works were great literature. But there was more artifice in them than a mere recounting of the facts.
Swinton made the introductions, his companions being Lieutenant Booth, an intelligence officer; Major Thwaites; a lieutenant-colonel called Solomon and, most surprisingly, a Frenchman, Colonel Claude Levass.
Booth was a surprisingly young man for an IO, with darting, suspicious eyes and an uncomfortable demeanour, as if something – or someone – had unsettled him.
Thwaites was an old-school cavalry officer – the uniform told Watson he was with the Royal Horse Guards, The Blues, who had fought at Waterloo – well over six foot, still whippet-thin into his fifties, with flamboyant sideburns and whiskers.
‘How was your ride this evening?’ Watson asked him.
‘Very exhilarating,’ replied Thwaites. ‘You saw me?’
‘No. But those fresh marks on your cheek could only have been made by the tips of branches.’
‘Or perhaps a lady’s fingernails,’ suggested Levass, the Frenchman. Levass was smaller than Thwaites by a whole head, dark, almost swarthy, with a pencil-thin moustache, fine cheekbones and a rather winning smile. His English was close to perfect.
Thwaites touched the fine red marks beneath his eyes. ‘If only that were the case. But Watson is right, I rode through the thicket at Crisp Hollow with Colonel Solomon here. He had the good sense to duck.’
‘I was trying to hang on for dear life,’ Lieutenant-Colonel Solomon said. ‘With Thwaites every ride is a cavalry charge.’ Solomon was a rather hangdog figure, uneasy in both skin and uniform, who didn’t seem to Watson to have the bearing of a military man. There were also peculiar flecks on his hands like liver spots that he couldn’t quite identify.
‘We don’t normally dine here,’ said Swinton, changing the subject, ‘but we like to show off the place from time to time.’
That, thought Watson, or he doesn’t want me mixing with the junior officers.
‘I am afraid his lordship took his cooks and most of his staff with him when he decamped to London,’ Swinton continued, ‘so we fend for ourselves somewhat. Drink?’
‘A Scotch?’ Watson suggested.
A white-jacketed orderly detached himself from the shadow of a pillar and fetched him a drink. Fending for yourself was all relative, Watson supposed.
‘There you are,’ the orderly said. ‘With just a splash of water, as you like it, sir.’
Watson looked at the man: fifties, greying hair forced back from a widow’s peak and sparkling eyes that suggested life was a huge joke. ‘Wright? Billy Wright?’
‘Sir. Late of the Army and Navy Club, now mixing drinks at the Elveden Explosive Area until further notice.’
Watson took the drink. ‘It’s good to see a familiar face.’
Wright gave a cheeky wink in reply.
‘That’s the official name, by the way,’ said Swinton, from over his shoulder. ‘The Explosives Area. Anyone asks, it’s a munitions testing site. You know the story of this place? Elveden?’
Watson turned. ‘I’ve heard of it. I know it was owned by a mahara-jah.’ He looked around. ‘I had no idea he had brought India with him.’
‘Punjab, actually,’ corrected Booth.
‘My Uncle Walter fought in that war,’ offered Thwaites. ‘Second Anglo-Sikh. Seventy-odd years ago now. He’s still alive. Almost a hundred.’
Swinton said: ‘The maharajah was a boy king, just eleven years of age, when we won the Punjab.’
‘Or, as we say in my country, stole the Punjab,’ said Levass, his voice full of singsong mischief.
Thwaites glared at him. ‘I think the nation that gave us Napoleon should be careful about accusing others of land-grabbing.’ He turned to Watson for support. ‘Don’t you, Major? Eh?’
‘Gentlemen,’ chided Swinton, as if addressing squabbling children. ‘As part of the reparations, we requested the Koh-I-Noor diamond.’
Levass gave a hoot. ‘Requested? Demanded, I think. Your Lord Dalhousie smuggled it back under his shirt, as I recall. And brought the boy to England to present it as a gift to Queen Victoria,’ he said with an admiring laugh. ‘So clever. If anyone ever wants it back, you can just say, “But it was a gift.”’
Watson knew some details of the story. The maharajah went on to become a great society figure, friend of the Prince of Wales, and a legendary shot.
‘Didn’t the maharajah fall from grace by trying to take back his lands?’ Watson asked.
‘Yes. Fell in with the Fenian Brotherhood and the Russians. Died a broken man in Paris,’ said Thwaites.
‘I wouldn’t feel too sorry for him,’ added Swinton. ‘There’s a fair number of swarthy boys and girls in this part of the world, some with the middle name Singh. He had a soft spot for a chambermaid, did the maharajah. Married one in the end. After his first wife died.’
‘I painted his son. Frederick. Prince Freddy.’ It was Solomon, speaking in a low monotone. ‘Not in this house. He was forced to sell this when his father died. It was at Blo Norton Hall, his house not far from here. He’s in France now, with the Norfolk Yeomanry. I saw him when I was gathering colour palettes.’
Palettes? Now Watson had him and the reason for those dabs of faded colour on his hands. ‘Sorry, sir, but you’re Solomon J. Solomon? The artist?’
The man nodded and gave a pleased half-smile.
‘Holmes sat for you, didn’t he?’
‘Some time ago now.’ The painter nodded. ‘I think he was displeased with the results.’
‘Holmes? Oh, no. Don’t be fooled by any bluster. He wouldn’t have wanted to seem vain. But he certainly wasn’t unhappy with it.’ It was a portrait of the detective leaning against the mantelpiece in 221B, his chin thrust out, his brow furrowed, a pipe frozen on the way to his lips. It was so dramatic, you could almost hear that great mind turning over a two- or three-pipe problem. ‘It used to have pride of place in Baker Street.’
‘And now?’ Solomon asked.
Watson wasn’t sure what had become of the portrait. ‘Storage,’ he said diplomatically, ‘until a suitable place is found to rehang it.’
‘And what of Mr Holmes?’ Solomon asked.
Watson looked around, wondering if anyone in the room knew of his fate. Was this apparently convivial company of men part of the conspiracy that had stolen his friend away? But all simply waited for his answer. ‘Retired,’ said Watson curtly. ‘And you, sir?’
‘Ah. I am a m
ere housepainter now.’ Solomon turned to Swinton. ‘As one of your officers reminded me today.’
‘Just for the duration,’ said Levass, emptying a sachet of powder into a glass of tonic. ‘For my gout,’ the Frenchman explained when he saw Watson’s professional curiosity was aroused. ‘Bicarbonate of soda.’
‘To neutralize the acid in the blood,’ Watson said. He had never suffered himself, but had seen many patients in agony down the years from swollen joints and skin so sensitive a feather across it could generate intense agony. ‘The Greeks, by the way, swear by cherry juice.’
‘Do they?’ asked Levass as he downed the solution and shuddered. ‘It has to taste better than this.’
‘And I have had good results with cider vinegar.’
Levass nodded. ‘Really? I am much obliged, Major.’
‘Although the taste is sometimes worse than the gout.’
A gong sounded, rippling through the house, reflecting sonorously off the marble and the domed ceilings.
‘Ah,’ said Swinton. ‘Dinner. And time to talk business.’
Dinner was served in a rather splendid oak-panelled room in the ‘new wing’, lined with portraits of Anglo-Irish aristocrats and with none of the more elaborate Indian motifs of the hallways and drawing room, although subtle reminders of the sub-continent remained here and there, like the Sanskrit letters on the ceiling mouldings. There were silver platters, gleaming cutlery, crested plates, crystal goblets and decent wine, but the food was standard mess fare.
Swinton explained: ‘There is an officers’ mess we usually dine in, above Lord Iveagh’s stables, closer to the, um, main training area. But I thought we’d break you in gently.’
Or sound me out first, thought Watson.
‘But this is the inner corps of Operation Puddleduck, give or take a couple of engineer chaps.’
‘Puddleduck?’ Watson couldn’t keep the incredulity from his voice. The most secret project in Great Britain was called Puddleduck?
‘Well, strictly speaking, that’s just this part of the enterprise. Elveden.’ Swinton looked slightly flustered, as if someone had been reading his diary. ‘Only a silly name.’
