The Dead Can Wait

by Robert Ryan

  ‘Yes, well. Somewhat hysterically, I would say.’

  Compared to standard army reports, perhaps, Watson thought. But then it was incredible how dry the army could make the deaths of thousands of men seem.

  ‘I need you to brief us on exactly what happened in that village last night. I assume you know all the facts?’ Colonel Swinton said.

  Watson looked over his shoulder, wondering if it was best that Mrs Gregson did it. After all, she had been there. But he decided not to make her relive it again. And, clearly, his account, even if second-hand, would be held in higher regard than any woman’s. ‘I know enough.’

  ‘And the business in the ice house?’

  ‘I can make informed guesses about who did that.’

  Swinton rubbed his chin. Watson could see he had shaved – or had been shaved – hastily and that he was worrying at a few bristles on his jaw. ‘Watson, what the hell is going on? Are we compromised?’

  ‘Up to a point. The Germans will now be even more curious about what is happening at Elveden. I suggest you make security even tighter. This is your operation, Colonel, but my advice is to press on. After all this time and effort . . .’

  ‘Levass told me you were sceptical about our wonder weapon.’

  ‘Part of me still is. But I don’t want men such as Coyle to have died in vain, Colonel. If Churchill is right, if you, Levass and Cardew are right, and it will change things for the better, then I think we should proceed. What time was the tank test scheduled for?

  ‘Three o’clock.’

  ‘Then I suggest you reinstate it. I want you to gather together all your best tank crews, please. At the trench test site.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to ask for volunteers to restart and drive that damned tank. And I am going to see if I can coax Hitchcock to watch.’

  ‘Really? Is he up to that?’

  Watson shrugged. ‘Last night I thought I saw something, a spark, as if I had broken through—’

  He stopped when he heard shouts of alarm coming from outside.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Swinton.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Watson, as calmly as he could. ‘But it doesn’t sound like good news.’

  ‘In here, sir.’ The corporal, hoarse from all his yelling, stepped aside and let Watson walk into Hitchcock’s cell.

  ‘I brought him his breakfast,’ the soldier said, his voice shaking, ‘and he was like that. I didn’t—’

  ‘Hush now, Corporal. Nobody is blaming you. When did you last look in?’

  ‘Midnight or so. Sleeping soundly, he was.’

  ‘You brought him the blankets as I asked?’

  ‘Well before that, sir.’

  ‘Can you leave me?’ Watson asked. ‘Ten minutes.’

  The corporal seemed glad to acquiesce and, when he had gone, Watson pulled the door almost closed. He crossed over and kneeled beside Hitchcock.

  ‘Poor Hugh,’ he said softly to the figure on the floor next to the bed. The dead man was lying on a pile of the blankets, curled up, his hands interlocked behind his head, knees drawn up to his chest. Hedgehogged, just like the others. ‘I let you down, didn’t I? I’m sorry, old chap. Looks like that bloody Genevieve has the full complement now. All eight of you.’

  Watson touched the body. Still warm. He gently moved a limb. Rigor mortis hadn’t taken him yet, so if they moved quickly they should be able to uncurl him from that undignified posture.

  He stood, wincing as one knee clicked, and looked around. Not sure what he was looking for, he began to examine every inch of Hitchcock’s cell.

  After ten minutes the door swung open, but it wasn’t the corporal. Swinton exclaimed when he saw the coiled shape of the dead tankman: ‘For crying out loud. Hitchcock too? I thought you said you’d had a breakthrough, Watson!’

  The major didn’t reply immediately, just licked his thumb where he had burned it on the paraffin heater.

  ‘Colonel, I want Hitchcock laid out in a cool cellar,’ he said eventually. ‘And I want him guarded, day and night, until I can organize a full post-mortem and pathological investigation. I’d like to do a preliminary examination within the hour.’

  ‘You don’t think he was . . . ?’

  ‘Murdered? I don’t know.’ Watson gave a last glance at Hitchcock, crunched up as if expecting a barrage to fall on his head any second. ‘But, for the moment, all I’d say was that this man died of very unnatural causes.’

  While he was waiting for the body to be moved and straightened, Watson found time to examine the ground around the ice house. It was, as he expected, churned into mud from all the water that had flowed out of the doors when he and Mrs Gregson had been rescued. There was nothing to be gained from going over that ground. Stooping low, he moved away from the ice house, following the soggy ground until it dried a little, just before the flagging of the gravel path. There, he identified his own boots, but the rest of it was an incoherent riot of hobnails and heels, with only a severely square-toed imprint and Mrs Gregson’s Glastonbury motoring boots standing out from the rest.

  ‘Sir!’ It was the corporal, hailing him from the steps.

  ‘Yes?’ asked Watson, straightening.

  ‘Lieutenant Hitchcock is ready for your attentions now, sir. In the cellar of the main house.’

  ‘I’ll be right over. Someone with the body now?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Good. Give me five minutes.’

  The tankman was laid out in the wine cellars of Elveden Hall, a series of rooms that were secured by a heavy oak door. There was a guard outside, as requested, and the key to the area – which still held some of Lord Iveagh’s best bottles – was with Mrs Joyce, the housekeeper.

  They had laid Hitchcock out on a gnarled old table, scarred from candle burns and the ring-marks of countless bottles and glasses. He was still dressed, but covered in a sheet. Although there were electric lamps, they were dull affairs, with a light reminiscent of a tallow candle, and Watson lit two ancient oil lanterns. He had looked for Mrs Gregson to assist, but she was nowhere to be found. No matter, he wasn’t going to do a full autopsy.

  He pulled back the sheet and looked down at the husk of the tankman. Watson muttered a small prayer, but mainly from habit. He knew from his conversations with Mrs Gregson that they shared an increasing disbelief in any deity. Like every man at the front, he had prayed when he was in the trenches. Who wouldn’t call on help from a supreme being while hell was unleashed around you? And like almost every man at the front, he had come away wondering how God could allow such monstrous happenings. Unless it was pure malevolence on the part of a supreme being, who enjoyed watching his creations destroy themselves in evermore complex and ingenious ways. Perhaps, after all, it was the devil up there, pulling the strings of war.

  Can you smell that?

  Holmes was never one for pointless philosophical musings. He wanted facts, and facts about God’s motives were few and far between. And yes, Watson could smell something. Feeling like a self-conscious bloodhound, he sniffed at the corpse, running from head to toe. As he neared the feet he recoiled slightly. He knew that smell, even in its feeble form, as here. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? The damp and the paraffin heater in the cell, perhaps, the perfumed sticks in the music room, might have masked it.

  Hitchcock had on Derby pattern shooting boots, rather than regulation issue ‘ammunition’ boots, but that was hardly surprising; many men – especially officers – customized their footwear if they could get away with it. Watson undid the laces, loosened the tongue and its gusset and eased one off. As he rolled the sock down he saw the telltale discolouration and now the smell made him hold his breath.

  Gangrene.

  Not gas gangrene, the curse of Flanders Field, thank the Lord, nor trench foot, but the old-fashioned sort, familiar from his kind of war in the last century. But how did that form? Hitchcock had not been wounded, had not been standing in a trench in icy, filthy water or wearing boots that had crushed his
feet.

  A thought occurred to him, and Watson looked at the man’s fingers. The tips were discoloured. Two of them were black. That was why he cried when he played the piano. The pain. Not the tune. The pain. Idiot!

  Go easy on yourself. This isn’t what you were expecting.

  Ha! Good of him to say so. But Holmes always expected the unexpected, thrived on the twists and turns of a case. Gangrene. How had Genevieve done that? He wished he had his medical books with him.

  Not Genevieve. Not the tank.

  There was a footfall behind him and he turned, startled. It was Thwaites. ‘Sorry to disturb you, I . . .’ His nose wrinkled. ‘Good Lord, what is that stink?’

  ‘You’ve never smelled gangrene before?’

  Thwaites shook his head, his moustaches oscillating. ‘Not for a long time now. Festering bullet wounds, mostly.’

  ‘No bullet wounds here.’

  Thwaites cleared his throat. ‘Colonel Swinton sends his regards and says, when you are ready, we can begin the new test of Genevieve.’

  ‘Of course.’ He held up his hands close to his face. The aroma of necrosis seemed to have clung to his skin. ‘I’ll just go and clean up.’

  Thwaites looked at Hitchcock’s body once more, at the swollen, blackened toes on the single uncovered foot. ‘Did that bloody tank really do that?

  Watson flicked the sheet back over the corpse. ‘That’s what we are about to find out.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  Thirty-two men gathered in the shade of an oak on the edge of a partially cut field of rye, next to the trenched area that had been used to recreate a version of the Loos battlefield, and where the lozenge-shaped G for Genevieve now sat, an innocent, harmless lump of metal. Until someone fired her up. Watson had commented on the rye, it being an unusual crop in the district, but Swinton had told him that the maharajah had loved rye bread, and that the tradition of making it had continued. The harvest, though, had been abandoned for security reasons, and now the over-tall plants lolled drunkenly in the breeze.

  Most of the group that gathered to hear Watson were dressed in the overalls that were most convenient for operating a tank. Many wore caps with their original unit badges on them: mostly Machine Gun Corps and Royal Artillery. It was clear that the ‘Heavy Branch’ had been put together in such a rush that nobody had had time to think of uniforms or badges. Yet in Watson’s experience, the esprit de corps of any new service – the Royal Flying Corps was a case in point – was vital to its success. And a singular identity was a vital part of that. From his conversations, it appeared everyone was working towards the one big ‘reveal’ when the tanks were unveiled in action. Few people, it seemed to him, had considered the weapon’s long-term future or the sort of unit that would man it, apart from Thwaites, the cavalryman. Genevieve and her ilk wouldn’t be a secret for ever. What did they do with them then?

  Swinton had arranged for a series of ammunition boxes to be lashed together to make a small stage for Watson to address the troops. Watson was dreading this. He was well aware that he was no great orator. He could deliver a lecture and a clinical appraisal to a packed room, but here he was asking for men to risk their lives. He had to appeal to their hearts and minds, their patriotism and sense of duty. And to what end? He wasn’t sure.

  Cardew, Levass and Thwaites were clumped together near the makeshift podium. Cardew had a grease-stained face, as he had been putting the finishing touches to Genevieve. As usual, there was a rag in his hand. Levass was smoking a small cheroot, enjoying the sun on his face, while Thwaites slapped his leg with his swagger stick, as if impatient to be elsewhere.

  From the far edge of the field of rye came a low thumping sound, and all felt it transmit through their feet. A second, higher note as an engine revved, then a thump as gears were engaged. As a man they turned to see what was making the noise, which was soon joined by the threshing of plant material. Above the agitated necks of the plants they could just make out the landships coming towards them, like agricultural machinery reprogrammed to destroy, flattening the crop before them, sending up a column of grain and chaff. The pair of tanks didn’t exactly burst out of the rye field, more pushed the stalks aside like curtains: heavy-set Wagnerian sopranos of riveted metal making an operatically grand entrance.

  Even though he had seen one before, Watson felt a surge of panic as the pair turned and wheeled towards him, those linked tracks rotating hypnotically, whisking the soil into a yellowish dust, as if intent on crushing him and grinding him into the ground. If he were a German soldier, he’d run.

  They juddered to a halt in unison, the doors in the rear of the sponsons swung open and most of the crew de-tanked, leaving the drivers, visible through the open front visor, in place.

  This pair had, according to instructions, been running with all ventilation open. The two were slightly different: one had machine guns, like Genevieve; the other had wicked-looking naval six-pounders poking from the side sponsons, so it looked like a ship’s turret turned on its side, one on each flank. A female and a male. The male had a cage-like structure over its top, sloping away from the centre in an inverted V, as if it were a shallow roof awaiting slates. It was, Watson decided, a device to deflect grenades and bombs.

  Cardew walked over, rubbing his dirty hands on the rag. ‘What’s this, Major?’

  ‘Colonel Swinton allowed me two more, one male and one female. These are our controls, Mr Cardew.’

  ‘Controls?’

  ‘Controls. The question is, was what happened in Genevieve a function of that one tank, or will it be repeated in each of the machines? There is only one way to find out. If the problem is Genevieve’s alone, well, you know better than I, but I am sure she can be stripped down and rebuilt. If it is all the tanks . . .’

  ‘It’d put us back months,’ Cardew said glumly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Watson, ‘because Haig won’t be best pleased if you send him what turn out to be mobile coffins, will he?’

  ‘I should think not. The whole idea is for the tanks to kill the enemy, not the poor buggers inside,’ agreed Cardew. ‘Excuse my French. How will you decide who goes in which tank?’

  ‘We’ll draw lots, apart from two places.’

  ‘Which are they?’

  ‘There are two men I want in Genevieve.’

  Cardew laughed. ‘Let me guess. Me and you?’

  ‘Indeed. I shall look for any medical anomalies. You for mechanical defects. One of the crew will be wearing a gas mask and have extras ready to hand out at the first sign of trouble.’

  ‘A gas mask?’ Cardew asked. ‘So you think it’s the engine fumes?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Watson, truthfully. ‘But we’d best be prepared for all eventualities. Now, I have to ask for volunteers to run with all hatches closed over the testing ground.’

  ‘I’d better warm Genevieve’s engine up to the same temperature as those,’ said Cardew. ‘Otherwise we won’t be comparing like with like.’

  ‘Good idea,’ conceded Watson. He turned to Swinton and nodded that he was ready to proceed.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ Swinton bellowed. The assembled soldiers snapped to attention. ‘At ease. I would like to introduce Major Watson of the Royal Army Medical Corps. He has been brought in to get to the bottom of what happened in G for Genevieve recently – events that have given rise to wild speculation and rumour. Major Watson is a man of science and a man of medicine. Also, a few of you might have heard of him in a previous career, Dr John H. Watson of Baker Street.’

  Someone actually applauded, a rather lonely sound in the open air, but there was a murmur of recognition. Watson waited for the inevitable disappointment when they realized they had the cart but not the horse. Sherlock Holmes cast a long shadow, even when he was incarcerated in some high-security prison.

  Watson stepped onto the ammunition boxes, rewriting his words as he went. The opening seemed feeble; he needed something with power, something to stir the blood.

  ‘Soldiers of the tanks
! Sailors of the landships! It seems you might have made enemies. Good! It means you are doing something right.’

  The words boomed over the field and Watson, like every other man, looked in the direction of their origin. For one moment it seemed as if the sycamores had spoken, but then, from the shadow of one of them, stepped a familiar figure. Winston Churchill. Behind him was Mrs Gregson and, next to her, leaning slightly on her, was a beaming Captain Fairley, his face still pale and drawn, but shell-shocked, Watson hoped, no more.

  Churchill, too, was grinning, loving the theatricality of his entrance. Watson had expected – indeed requested through the post-mistress – the captain, but Churchill coming was a total surprise. And how on earth had the pair got to Elveden so quickly?

  ‘Can I have the floor for a few minutes, Major?’ he asked Watson. He lowered his voice. ‘Before you ask, I still have friends in the RNAS.’ Of course. He’d have flown up with pilots of the Royal Naval Air Service. ‘You solve puzzles, you cure men. Me, I make speeches. Mrs Gregson told me the gist. Do you mind?’ Watson shook his head. ‘Excellent. And I hope there are no hard feelings about my technique for getting you up here? Perhaps you appreciate now—’

  ‘You did what you thought was necessary,’ said Watson flatly.

  ‘As I always do.’

  Churchill puffed on his cigar as he surveyed the tankmen before him. At once the atmosphere had changed. The wily politician, well fed and red-faced, had the air of a Roman general about him. The soldiers, still at ease, now seemed taller, and leaned forward, as if to catch every word, every nuance of what the former First Lord of the Admiralty was going to say.

  ‘I am not going to take credit for that marvellous creation.’ He pointed the glowing end of the cigar at the two parked tanks, still clicking and creaking as they cooled. ‘But I will take some credit for nursing it to life. I am the midwife, not the father. Yet I still fill with pride when I see it. Yes, it’s crude and noisy and slow. But so am I sometimes.’ A ripple of laughter. ‘But I can build up a head of steam for those who get in my way. When I know I am right, there is no force in the world can stop me saying so. God give me strength to admit my failures and I do, I do. But the tank, gentlemen, is not one of them. I will not allow it to be one of them. It will take its place alongside the horse, the lance, the musket, the Martini-Henry, the Maxim, the aeroplane, the submarine and the dreadnought as a weapon that changed the face of war. And that weapon is ours, it is Great Britain’s.’