The Sign of Fear Read online

  ‘What about work? Didn’t one of his hospitals miss him? Surely they noticed when one of the top surgeons failed to appear in the theatre?’

  ‘He had taken a few days off. The final reason is . . . well, the police are ruinously understaffed at the moment, as you know. It is taking us two or three days to get around to most incidents. And a gentleman being a few hours overdue, having dispatched his wife to the country and booked some leave . . .’

  ‘You thought a mistress might be involved.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  A nod of confirmation. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘I don’t know him well, but I have no reason to believe Sir Gilbert kept a mistress. He didn’t seem the type.’

  That doesn’t mean he didn’t, Watson. Some men boast of such things, others prefer a little . . . discretion.

  ‘Oh, be quiet.’

  ‘Sir?’ asked Bullimore, a concerned expression on his face.

  ‘Nothing, Inspector. Just dismissing a theory. I speak out loud, sometimes. It’s an affliction of age.’ And an affliction of having a fictitious Sherlock Holmes inhabiting his cranium. ‘Who raised the alarm then?’

  ‘His valet, concerned that his clothes were untouched and he must still be wearing evening dress. Can you tell me more about the night you had at the concert? Anything unusual happen?’

  ‘There was one strange incident that night. It was outside the Wigmore Hall, following a concert we had attended. Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Dvorak . . . Debussy, yes. Debussy. The latter not entirely to my taste. Anyway, a young man . . . young-ish anyway, attacked Sir Gilbert. With a sack of flour.’

  ‘Flour?’

  ‘Not a whole sack. There is rationing on, you know.’

  Bullimore gave a wry smile. ‘But it was only flour?’

  ‘I’m almost certain. I didn’t think to have it analysed. It smelled like flour, tasted like flour.’

  ‘And were you hit with this floury substance?’

  ‘A little light dusting . . . Do you think it may have been noxious in some way?’

  Bullimore didn’t reply.

  ‘I have had no ill effects. Nor Mrs Turner, who must have breathed a considerable quantity when she was brushing down Sir Gilbert’s coat.’

  ‘We’ll assume it was simply flour then. Tell me about the assailant.’

  ‘Protestor as much as assailant.’

  ‘Protesting about?’

  ‘The deliberations of the War Injuries Compensation Board. I, we, had the impression he was disaffected, perhaps because his own injury was relatively minor.’

  ‘Injury?’

  ‘A false hand. Wood or ceramic. He struck me a blow with it.’ Watson held up his right hand, showing the faint blue bruise that remained. Old skin, he thought, marks more easily and heals much more slowly than the elastic covering of youth.

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘Late twenties. Brown hair. Brown eyes. A chipped front tooth. Tweed lounge suit, not of the best quality, perhaps.’ Oh, Holmes, you would have been able to pin him down to address, hobbies and occupation.

  Once upon a time, perhaps. What about the medal?

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Watson, as if the memory had just come flooding back to him. ‘He had a medal ribbon in his buttonhole.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you know which one?’

  ‘Which medal, you mean?’ Watson said, playing for time.

  ‘Yes.’

  Watson squeezed his eyes shut and pictured the man stepping from the crowd, the yell of ‘One hundred per cent!’ on his lips. He urged his mind’s eye to move down towards the collar of the jacket, and it did so but reluctantly. There was the ribbon . . .

  In what colours?

  They came into focus. A central band of golden yellow, with three stripes of white, black and blue running down each side. ‘Mons,’ Watson blurted.

  ‘Mons?’

  ‘The Mons Star,’ explained Watson. ‘Yellow, white, black and blue. That means it must have been the 1914 Star.’

  Bullimore wrote this down. ‘Forgive my ignorance, awarded for . . .?’

  ‘Those who served in France or Belgium between the 5th of August 1914 and midnight on the 22nd of November 1914 inclusive.’

  ‘Ah. I didn’t get out there until the end of 1915. Then got myself gassed. So, really it was for those in at the beginning. The Old Contemptibles.’

  ‘It’s broader than that. It covers British and Indian Expeditionary Forces, doctors and nurses, as well as anyone from the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Royal Navy Reserve and Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve who served ashore in France or Belgium.’ Mrs Gregson would have been due one, he thought, for she had spent time with a volunteer ambulance brigade in 1914, one of the first British women to see action near the front line. It had been a baptism of fire but, like tempered steel, she had come out of it harder and tougher.

  Bullimore let out a sigh. ‘Well, that hardly narrows it down. There must be hundreds, thousands, out there.’

  ‘Yes, I think you have a pool of many thousands to fish in. But you think this attack is somehow linked to Sir Gilbert’s disappearance?’

  Bullimore scratched the corner of his eye. ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Are you suspecting foul play? Or an abduction?’

  ‘There has been no demand, ransom or otherwise. I had the valet who reported him missing open all Sir Gilbert’s correspondence. Nothing. I don’t suppose you caught the number of the cab that picked him up?’

  Watson shook his head. ‘No. But . . .’

  ‘But?’

  ‘In hindsight, it was remarkably easy to find a taxi. Considering there had been an air raid. They tend to make themselves scarce when bombs are falling. It was outside here and put up its flag when we emerged onto the street.’

  ‘Did you see the driver?’

  ‘No. Not clearly. It was dark and he was wearing a muffler, as I recall. As we have established, I’m not a very good detective.’

  The policeman stood. ‘You’ve been most helpful, sir. Would you be amenable to a police artist making a sketch of this flour man?’

  Watson also rose to his feet. ‘Of course, Inspector, although sketchy will be the word. But any way I can help . . .’

  Bullimore consulted the notebook one last time. ‘As well as Sir Gilbert, do you perhaps know Professor Anthony Holbeck? Or Dr Adrian Powell? Or Lord Henry Arnott? Perhaps Professor Carlisle?’

  ‘I know of them, have met them, in fact, but I can hardly claim acquaintance. Why?’

  The notebook snapped shut like a bear trap. ‘Thank you for your help, Major. If you think of anything else this is my number at Bow Street.’ He laid a card next to the teapot. ‘Just one word of advice . . .’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Knowing your reputation of old, I must remind you this is a police matter. Sir Gilbert may be a friend, but perhaps you and Mr Holmes could leave this to the police?’

  ‘Inspector, as I said, I am hardly the detective type and, as I also noted, Mr Holmes is contently retired.’ Except in my head, he thought. ‘You will not be tripping over us.’

  When he had seen him out, Watson quickly scribbled the three names the inspector had mentioned on the back of the policeman’s card. Holbeck, Powell and Arnott. There was another, wasn’t there? Yes, Professor Carlisle of The London. He added that name to the list.

  ‘The inspector has gone, has he?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Turner. Can my bath wait? I have to make some telephone calls.’

  ‘Of course. I drew it hot just in case the inspector was one of those windbags. Oh, before you place your calls, two telegrams came earlier addressed for your urgent attention.’ She fetched them from the mantelpiece.

  One was from Sister Spence in France, asking if he had heard from Nurse Jennings, as her parents were concerned about her whereabouts. So she had not made it home. Had she indeed been on the Dover Arrow? Part of him had clung to the hope that she hadn’t boarded that particular train,
and now his heart fluttered nervously at the prospect that she really had perished at sea. If so, she’d be on that secret passenger manifest. But he knew a man who could cut through all that ‘matters of national security’ horse manure and find out for him.

  The second telegram was the one that caused his pulse to race. ‘Your presence is requested at 221b Baker Street as a matter of some urgency.’

  NINE

  A return to 221b was always a bittersweet affair for Watson. Much of the fabric of their old rooms was still recognizable, the wallpaper up the polished stairs, the fireplace, but at some point it had been tidied up, the windows flung open and the delicious, and sometimes not so delicious, smells of the detective and the doctor’s tenure purged. It wasn’t surprising. It was some years since they had lived there. Holmes had given up the rooms when he had moved to Sussex and Watson was living at his medical practice. Mrs Hudson had subsequently retired to the North Country and the building was now managed by a nephew of hers.

  Watson returned to 221b on occasion to pick up the mail that still arrived for Holmes (the Post Office assiduously delivered even those marked simply ‘Sherlock Holmes, London’, to Baker Street) and, he had to admit, sometimes to wallow in nostalgia for days long departed. This time, though, he approached with a spring in his step, a fresh purpose in his mind. Two mysteries! What had happened to Nurse Jennings? And where was Sir Gilbert? Had he been abducted? Or suffered an accident? A loss of memory, perhaps? Or was he simply entertaining some younger woman in an unsuspected pied-à-terre somewhere in this anonymous city?

  And a third, Watson. There is a third question to be answered.

  Yes, of course. Who, exactly, had summoned him to their old chambers? For the telegram had been unsigned.

  He raised the brass knocker and let it fall, remembering that sound from the other side, the thin thud that reached their sitting room, when Holmes’s nostrils would flare and his head move to one side as he waited for Mrs Hudson or Billy to show the visitor up. The squeaky tread on the stairs. The protest of deliberately unoiled hinges. In some ways it was the most delicious few moments of any case: the anticipation of a singular problem that would engage that great mind for days or weeks to come.

  The woman who flung open the door was neither landlady nor servant. She was short, perhaps not five foot, but she radiated an energy that Watson could feel across the threshold. It was like being under a radium lamp. Her blond hair was piled on top, adding a few precious inches, and she was wearing a modish wrap-around tunic in a bold chequered pattern. He caught a hint of citrus perfume.

  ‘Dr Watson, I presume!’ she exclaimed in an accent he placed as East Coast America. It was quite brash to his ears.

  ‘Major Watson, yes.’

  ‘Oh, come in, come in.’

  He removed his hat and stepped inside the hallway.

  ‘You know where to go.’ She pointed up the stairs.

  ‘I am afraid I am at a loss, Miss . . . did you send the telegram?’

  ‘Forgive me. Yes. Elizabeth Buck.’ She held out her hand. ‘Of the New York Reporter. You can call me Betsy; everyone does.’

  ‘Betsy Buck?’ It sounded like a name from a theatre poster.

  ‘My editor’s idea. Thought it sounded more fun than Elizabeth. I told him, I’m not in this business to do fun. I want to do real journalism. But Betsy kind of stuck.’

  ‘What happened to Mr Hammond? He was in residence on the last occasion when I called.’

  ‘Gone. A mine in Rhodesia or some such. I rent the rooms now. While I’m in London, that is. I hope, of course, to go to France.’

  ‘France?’

  ‘To the war! I am a reporter, Dr Watson, and I intend to cover the entry of our boys into the war. Go on up . . . Oh, that’s your mail; you can collect it later. You get rather a great deal, huh? Or rather your old friend and colleague does. Hup, come on.’

  Watson barely managed a glance at the stack of papers before he was driven up the stairs like an errant sheep by a keen collie. He would have to deal with that teetering pile at some point. He had a standard card: ‘Mr Sherlock Holmes appreciates you getting in touch with him concerning your problem, but unfortunately he is not in a position . . .’

  Most of the conundrums the correspondents sent were nothing of the sort, being more often than not merely vague accusations (Mr X is a German spy, Mrs Y murdered her husband). But there was normally one that caused something to twitch inside, that bore reading once or twice . . . Eventually, though, Watson would always sign the standard card and slip it into the reply envelope. They simply weren’t in the detection game any longer, no matter how intriguing the puzzle.

  There were three shocks awaiting him when he stepped into the old sitting room. The first was the colour of the walls, a rather startling canary yellow; the second was the paucity of furniture, a brace of armchairs and a writing desk and chair, the former with a typewriter sitting on it. There were no paintings hanging from the rail, no shelves of books, no Bradshaw’s, no Persian slipper. The old Holmes room had been, well, gutted.

  The third surprise rose to greet him as he entered. She was a tall woman, towering over the American, wearing a black veil and bodice – partial widow’s weeds. With so many bereaved, the convention for full mourning was no longer de rigueur for a wife; in fact, it was considered too self-centered in some quarters. It was felt a less formal approach recognized that the woman was not alone in her loss, and acknowledged that a whole nation mourned.

  ‘Dr Watson. Thank you for coming.’ It was a London accent, East End, but softer than the lowest classes. ‘I was hoping for Mr Holmes.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ he said wearily. ‘And it’s Major Watson.’

  ‘This is Mrs Violet Crantock,’ said Betsy. ‘Who has been coming here day after day demanding an audience with Mr Sherlock Holmes. I have no address for him, but I found one for you and—’

  ‘You have to help me, Dr Watson. I’m at my wits’ end.’

  This wasn’t what he expected at all. Part of him had hoped that, somehow, the telegram was a summons from Holmes himself. Not from a widow with, no doubt, some case of merely passing interest. He had two mysteries already. He didn’t need a third.

  ‘Please, sit down, Mrs Crantock.’

  As she did so, she removed her hat and veil.

  ‘I’m sorry for the loss of a loved one,’ he offered.

  ‘That’s just it, Dr Watson. I’m not sure I have lost him. Not now.’

  ‘You’d best start from the beginning,’ suggested Betsy, taking her place at the writing desk.

  ‘The Upper North Street School bombing. You remember it?’

  ‘Who could forget such a terrible act?’ Watson said truthfully. It was the same raid that had caused the carnage at Liverpool Street, the first time London experienced the Gotha Hum. ‘Eighteen dead from a single bomb. Mostly mere babes.’

  ‘Eighteen children. And my husband. John Crantock. He was killed by falling masonry.’

  ‘I remember, yes. But he was not discovered until the next day, as I recall.’

  ‘That is correct. John is, was, a sergeant in the London Rifles, until he lost an eye. And the hearing in one ear. So he was invalided out. He was given a job at Old Street, St Luke’s.’

  ‘The Mental Hospital for Lunatics?’ he said, giving it its full title. ‘I have had dealings there.’ The first cases of shell shock had been dispatched to the rather grim asylum, for a regime of electro-shock and cold baths, which did nothing for their mental state.

  ‘Well, it ain’t a loony bin no more, it’s a printing works. My husband was a nightwatchman there. A trusted employee, given his military record an’ all.’

  ‘I am sure he was. And he was unfortunate enough to be walking home when the bomb struck?’

  ‘Yes. Night shift, you see. Thirty-three hours sometimes they make them work. Understaffed, y’see. Use girls of thirteen now, to do a man’s job. So I wasn’t worried he was late – overtime, I thought. First I know
is when I get a messenger boy round in the morning asking if John was unwell, on account of him not turning up at St Luke’s as expected. Two hours later, I’m down the morgue identifying him.’

  ‘A tragic case,’ said Watson. But, he failed to mention, hardly unusual or noteworthy.

  The widow reached down, unclipped her bag and handed across a folded piece of paper, which Watson took.

  ‘John was killed in June. June the 13th. Last month, my mother, who is in service in Derbyshire, said there was an opening up there for a lady’s maid. Now, I’m not trained, but, as you know, there’s a shortage of domestic staff now the munitions pays so well. But I’ve never fancied being on the shells – all that yellow skin. And once Silvertown went up . . . not likely. I don’t want to leave Georgie – that’s our boy – an orphan. Plus the Germans aren’t bombing Derbyshire, are they? We’d be safer up there. So I gave notice to our landlord and wrote to my mother. And then, four days ago, that was on the doormat.’

  Watson unfolded the paper. It was written in a slow, deliberate, highly cursive style, as if copied from a book of calligraphy.

  ‘John didn’t learn to write till he was in the army. So it’s very distinctive.’

  Watson looked down again and read out loud: ‘“Do not leave. Wait for me. It won’t be long now.”’

  ‘What do you think it means?’ Betsy asked Watson.

  ‘It means,’ interrupted Mrs Crantock, ‘that me and George are going to join John in heaven.’ She put her lace-gloved hands over her face and began to sob. ‘And I don’t want to go.’

  TEN

  After Mrs Crantock had composed herself, Watson questioned her further on the circumstances of John Crantock’s death and the identification procedure at the morgue. Satisfied she had nothing left to furnish him with, he promised he would give the case some consideration.

  She took her leave, having written down her contact details – but taken the note from her husband with her – and Betsy made some tea for Watson.

  ‘Well,’ she said, once she had poured, her eyes wide with excitement. ‘What do you think?’