Mrs Gregson was well aware that Nathan had thought she was joking when she gave him her ‘shopping list’ for her scheme, but she hadn’t been. A magician was essential to its successful execution, and not any old music-hall conjuror with a hat and a rabbit. She needed something far more sophisticated. She needed the very best in the business. She needed David Devant.
But her heart sank when Devant opened the door of his apartment on Haverstock Hill. To her dismay, he was a shadow of the man she had seen on stage five years earlier – he was stooped, his skin waxy and his moustache untrimmed.
‘Mr Devant? I’m Mrs Gregson. I’m the one who sent the telegram. You were kind enough to say you would see me.’
He nodded, releasing a small spray of dandruff, and retreated down the hall, walking with an odd, stiff gait. Mrs Gregson followed, closing the door behind her. She tracked him into the living room, which had an oblique view of Hampstead Fever Hospital, now being mainly used for military patients.
‘Can I fetch you something?’ he asked.
She looked at the tremor in his right arm and said, ‘No. Thank you.’
‘Please be seated.’
Mrs Gregson sat in one of the armchairs, while Devant took the couch. The room smelled of neglect and dust. The owner himself looked careworn, in a threadbare jacket and slippers whose soles had had an argument with their uppers. It was hard to believe this was once a man who strode the stages of London in capes of red and gold, turbans with glittering rubies, and shirts of the finest silk.
‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ he said. ‘Not been too well of late.’
Mrs Gregson smoothed out her skirt and removed her hat. ‘When did the symptoms first appear?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Mr Devant, I have some medical training. Mostly in treating gunshot wounds and the aftermath of gas attacks.’
‘Golly.’
‘I was at the front for some time,’ she explained. ‘But I have seen this before. Paralysis agitans.’
A long sigh escaped from him. ‘That’s what the doctors say.’
‘Can I make some tea?’
‘That would be wonderful,’ he said with a smile. ‘At least you won’t spill half of it.’
The kitchen was long and narrow, like the galley of a ship, and before she started she quickly wiped down all the surfaces, which had attracted a sticky film of grime. A veritable necropolis of flies lay at the bottom of the small window. She lit the gas, put the kettle on, rinsed the metal teapot and rifled the cupboards. She found an unopened packet of Nyasaland tea. She looked around for a cool box.
‘There’s . . . there’s . . . there’s no fresh milk, I am afraid,’ Devant shouted from the other room. ‘Just condensed.’
She went back to the cupboards and found it behind a jar of Camp coffee and some tinned asparagus. ‘That’s fine. I acquired a taste for it in Belgium.’ She examined the label. Libby’s, an American brand, part of that country’s food aid and, thank goodness, unsweetened.
Once she had made the tea and located sugar, cups, saucers and a strainer, she carried the tray in and placed it on a low table. ‘I brought the Dorset Knobs, just in case.’
‘Splendid.’
As she poured the tea she glanced at her host. He was around fifty, although the strain of his condition had aged him considerably. She suspected he wasn’t too far from giving up entirely. ‘I thought there was a Mrs Devant?’ she asked.
‘I sent her and the boy away, back to her parents in Ireland. The Zeppelins, you know.’
‘And you didn’t think to go?’
‘My audience is here. I’m expecting another engagement once this improves.’ He held out a hand with dancing fingers.
She put the tea on the arm of the couch next to him, with a biscuit in the saucer. She sat and said quietly: ‘It doesn’t get better, Mr Devant.’
His face crumpled for a moment and she thought that she was telling him something he didn’t know. He took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been told as much. But a little voice tells you that they don’t know everything, do they? Doctors, I mean. They could be wrong. Miracles do happen.’
Mrs Gregson nodded, as if in agreement. ‘Mr Devant, I saw you at the Palace Theatre. You were a miracle in yourself.’
‘Did you?’ He seemed pleased. ‘And the Egyptian?’
‘No, I never saw that run,’ she admitted. ‘But I have never in my life laughed so hard as I did during A Boy, Girl and Eggs.’
Devant beamed for a moment, then remembered something that made him blink away a tear. ‘Nevil isn’t well either, you know. Nevil Maskelyne. We make quite a sad pair these days.’
‘I am sorry to hear that. I was hoping to make use of Maskelyne’s equipment for the Vanishing Pilot.’
He gave a croak of a laugh. ‘The trick that nearly burned down the Empire Liverpool?’
‘I want to do it out of doors,’ she said.
‘Sensible. Well, I have access to all Nevil’s props. They are in Camberwell. Have to ask his permission, of course. Simple enough illusion.’ He looked around the room. ‘I’d just have to remember what I did with the key.’
‘And a pilot?’
‘Oh, yes, yes . . . now, where did I . . . ?’ He pursed his lips in concentration.
‘You don’t have anyone who does for you here? A girl?’
‘Ah, we did. Two, in fact. Both went off to work in the munitions factory.’ He held on to the cup with both hands as he took a sip of the tea, then, with great concentration, placed the cup back in the saucer with a minimum of rattling. He smacked his lips. ‘Very good. Better pay in the factories, you see.’
‘I can find you a girl,’ said Mrs Gregson. ‘I have contacts with some of the Prisoner of War charities. They have a surfeit of willing helpers.’ The ladies who packed parcels wouldn’t stoop to domestic work, but the army of messenger girls and cleaners might provide a willing candidate.
‘Well . . .’
‘And I’ll pay for her.’
‘Pay? Why on earth would you do that?’
‘For services to be rendered?’ One thing she was certain of was that two thousand pounds wasn’t quite the fortune she had envisaged.
‘And I think there are ways to alleviate your condition. I have heard tell that velvet beans help. And certain physical regimes.’
He wagged an admonishing finger. ‘Don’t dangle false hope in front of me, young lady.’
There was no malice in his reproach, but she apologized. It was true that she had heard of various treatments for the disease Parkinson had described. But she could not promise any actually worked. ‘I’d . . . I’d just like to help.’
Devant went through the painful ritual of drinking more tea, then lay back and looked at her, as if for the first time. ‘Who are you, Mrs Gregson? And what are you doing here?’
They were good questions. Not that long ago all she had wanted to be was a woman serving the soldiers on the front. Then she had fallen in love with one of them. And he had died. And now? She wasn’t certain who she was. She hoped that a certain major might be able to show her.
‘I’m here to save a friend.’
‘And what do I have to do with that? You said you wanted to engage me. I had thought in a professional capacity.’
‘Oh, I do, Mr Devant,’ she said. ‘I want to engage you very much.’ From her bag she extracted the sketches she had made. ‘I want you to give the performance of your life.’
The magician and the props secured, she needed the second item on her requirements list. A dead body. Which was how, an hour after leaving an elated Devant – thrilled that his talents were required once more – she was staring at the internal organs of a collection of deceased individuals. Mrs Gregson was very familiar with the inside of the human body. During her time in France and Belgium she had seen far too many organs that were designed to be hidden from human view. Young men turned up day after day, their skin unzipped by shrapnel and bullets, insides glistening with vital fluids draining from ruptures and punctures. Yes, she could tell a spleen from a kidney from a duodenum. Yet she had never seen a liver like the one on the shelf before her.
It was elongated for a start. Whereas the lobes of the liver fanned outwards over the stomach, pressing up against the diaphragm, this one was funnelled to the vertical. It looked – in shape if not in texture – like a towering thundercloud, nipped in here and there before billowing out again. It was difficult to see how a human abdomen could have made room for such a distorted organ.
‘A tight lacer,’ the voice behind her said.
She turned and looked across the student teaching room of St Barts at the tall figure that had entered the room. Like Greenhouse Smith, he was a throwback to another era, with his long, dark frock coat and mutton-chop whiskers. His skin was as grey as the specimens that lined the walls of this triple-storey demonstration room.
‘Mr Valentine?’
He gave a small bow. ‘I haven’t got round to cataloguing that one yet. I am sure women of this day and age will suffer no such deformities, but the generation passing on now, a remarkable percentage have internal damage from lacing their corsets too fiercely for fifty or sixty years.’
‘Yes,’ she said, thinking back to the elderly woman she had treated at the Savoy and her over-tight stays. ‘I have come across it.’
‘And what do you think of our display?’
He waved an arm to take in the whole room, which was indeed impressive. Wrought-iron staircases led up to balconies that ran the perimeter of the room, which was illuminated by a full-length glass ceiling, like something from the greenhouses at Kew. Each level was packed with the morbid, the exotic and the freakish, from miscarried conjoined twins to the overgrown skeletons of those suffering from Paget’s disease. Whole sections had rows and rows of hearts, split open to show the many and varied types of damage that could occur to valves, vessels and ventricular muscle. There were similar displays of diseased or damaged lungs, livers and kidneys. All human suffering – at least of a medical nature – was here, in one form or another.
‘Remarkable,’ she said truthfully.
The curator flicked on the electric lights, which spluttered into life after a number of false starts. ‘The skylight doesn’t give us quite enough in winter. When it was built thirty-odd years ago it was all candles and oil lamps – the daylight was a blessing. But, Good Lord, it gets hot in here in summer. Especially when you have thirty students and a freshly dissected corpse. Quite ripe, if you’ll pardon the expression.’
‘I have nursed under canvas in high summer in France. I would imagine it is similar.’
Valentine looked impressed by this admission. He took out a pair of folding spectacles and placed them on the bridge of his nose, as if to examine this rare specimen more closely. ‘A nurse, you say.’
‘A VAD,’ she corrected.
He nodded. ‘You said in your letter you were acquainted with Mr Holmes and Dr Watson.’
‘Major Watson, mostly.’
‘Major?’ he chortled. ‘I heard he’d gone back in.’ He shook his head. ‘A man of his age . . .’
‘Now a prisoner of the Germans.’
Valentine’s face took on a grave aspect. ‘Oh dear.’
‘This is where they met, isn’t it? Holmes and Watson.’
The curator nodded. ‘In the hospital, yes. Not this room. Next door in the pathology block. And Watson used to scribble his stories in a little office next door when he did a few months’ training here.’
‘Wasn’t Holmes flogging a body or some such?’
Valentine laughed at the memory. ‘Indeed. You couldn’t get away with that now, of course. He was beating a body with a cane to see how bruises developed after death.’
‘I have reason to believe Mr Holmes is also in danger, Mr Valentine.’ She gave him an outline of her plans, including the role that David Devant was to play. It was a calculated risk, for such shenanigans might outrage the man in the street. But she suspected this creature of formaldehyde and twilight was no ordinary citizen.
‘I am thinking of a plaque,’ he said when she had finished.
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘I am thinking the hospital should erect a plaque. To commemorate the meeting. On this spot, Sherlock Holmes and Dr John H. Watson were first introduced with the words, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” What do you think?’
‘A fine idea,’ she replied, unsure of where this was leading.
He nodded furiously. ‘I think so. They have given people so much pleasure. I would hope they live to do so again. But, Mrs Gregson, I am afraid your scheme is foolish in the extreme.’
‘Risky, I will grant you—’
He whipped off his glasses. ‘Risky? Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel is less risky than what you propose.’
She sensed there was more. ‘But?’
‘But . . . I could not live with myself if I failed to offer my assistance to any undertaking that might save those men. Foolish or not.’
She felt the warmth of relief course through her. ‘Thank you, Mr Valentine.’
‘I am not,’ he said, slipping his glasses back on and looking down his nose at her, ‘in any way condoning it. Foolish it was, foolish it remains, with or without my help.’
‘Still, I am grateful. But it is not without risk to you.’
Valentine relaxed a little and the pomposity was gone from his voice when he spoke. ‘Only three times in my career here has Mr Holmes sought my help or advice. On two of those occasions, he came with requests as outlandish as yours. On the third, he simply wanted help identifying the effects of white lead poisoning. Therefore I shall pretend it is Mr Holmes in front of me, making one of his more unusual requests. So, tell me what it is you desire of me?’
‘It is very simple, Mr Valentine. I shall require one fresh cadaver. Female. Thirty or thereabouts.’
Mrs Gregson had to suppress a smile as Valentine’s jaw hinged towards the floor.
‘And I need it within two days.’
With the magician and corpse ticked off Mrs Gregson’s list, all that remained was for her to tackle Mr Sherlock Holmes. Not relishing the thought of trying to persuade him that she knew what was best for Watson, she stared gloomily out of the motor taxicab’s window. London was being assailed by a spiteful black rain falling from the heavy sky. The roads and pavements looked as if they had been painted with creosote. Extended umbrellas, pulled-down hats and turned-up collars made the city’s inhabitants even more anonymous than usual.
The Evening News hoardings were proclaiming that America was threatening to sever all diplomatic ties with Germany, but few were stopping to buy from the drenched vendors. Perhaps they didn’t realize there was more in that single sentence than a diplomatic spat. Help – no, salvation – might be on the way for their battered nation.
Robert Nathan had told her about an intercepted telegram, an invitation from Germany to Mexico to invade the USA, with a promise of German money and arms in support. The idea was for Mexico to reclaim lands such as Texas and parts of California. The intent was to distract America from Europe. The British had decoded the telegram and were about to reveal its contents to the Americans. Nathan was sure it would tip the Americans into entering the conflict on the Allies’ side.
Nathan, of course, shouldn’t have told her any of this. She was fully aware that he was trying to win her favour with such confidences. She rather liked him, a no-nonsense man who was used to getting his own way. But that certainly included women. A courtship gave little indication of what lay ahead in an engagement or marriage. She suspected that, once the war was over, Nathan would become bored with grey old England and itch to return to India or perhaps apply for a new posting in Africa. She would be a memsahib, or whatever the equivalent was in Kenya or Egypt or Rhodesia. And that didn’t appeal one jot.
So, yes, she was toying with him but without Nathan she would never have been able to secure the telegram traffic from the Post Offices around Holmes’s house, which led her to the one he had sent to Venlo.
Agree all terms. Need a week to tidy affairs in London. Leave all details of exchange at Hotel Bilderberg. Holmes.
But you didn’t need to be Sherlock to work out what was being planned at or near Venlo. Or where he might base himself in London to tidy his affairs, now Baker Street was no longer available. Which is what made the intercept of the detective at the Diogenes so straightforward.
And what of Devant? Was she simply using that great magician’s talents and goodwill too? Well, he was in no fit state to take too active a part in her enterprise, but his thoughts on the matter were inspired, if suitably bizarre. The man was a showman, after all, someone who had introduced the theatreograph to the West End. A man who lived for the limelight. Engaging his mind could – no matter what her motives – only be to the good. He had certainly seemed a darn sight more sprightly when she had explained what she had in mind than when she had arrived. ‘A show!’ he had exclaimed.
But would it work? She had to believe so.
Meanwhile there was Holmes to interrogate. She needed to know as much about this Von Bork as possible, to see if the second part of the ruse would fly. She was sure the old detective would be furious with her, but he would have to see that she had both Watson and Holmes’s interests at heart. Much as she wanted Watson home, she couldn’t sacrifice his old friend to do that. It would, for one thing, destroy Watson if Holmes offered himself as a sacrifice to save him, which is what he fully intended to do. Watson, on the other hand, would rather they perished together than he survive at the expense of his companion. He had demonstrated that out on the Black Sands off Foulness.
A cascade of gloom washed over her and she could hear her mother’s voice, chiding her. What are you doing meddling in the affairs of men? You are attempting to undermine the play of nations. All for a pointless infatuation. Go back to packing parcels.
‘We are here, ma’am,’ said the cabby, interrupting her thoughts. ‘The Connaught.’
She shook herself, like a dog emerging from a pond, flinging off the negative voices. She paid the fare and entered the hotel, taking the lift up to the fifth floor, where Kell’s comfortable prison was located. At the end of the corridor was a bowler-hatted man, reading the weekly Herald. Mrs Gregson recognized him as one of Nathan’s colleagues.
‘Turning pacifist on us, Mr Cusack?’ she asked, for the Herald was violently anti-war and had opposed conscription. ‘You’ll have the Shameladies on you.’
Cusack smiled beneath his moustache. He was an ex-army man, a fervent patriot and admirer of General Haig. Only his limp, caused by a bullet through his pelvis, had kept him away from the front line. ‘Just keeping abreast of what the other side are up to, ma’am. Know thine enemy, especially when they publish their own newspaper. Mr Nathan is inside, if you wish to go through.’
‘And how is our guest?’
Cusack grimaced. ‘Demanding.’
She nodded. ‘That’s not unexpected.’
Cusack unbolted the weighty black door and swung it open. She was immediately aware of raised voices.
‘You do not believe me? In a word, then, there was a famous trial in Paris, in the year 1890, in connection with a monstrous scandal in politics and finance. How monstrous that scandal was can never be known, save by such confidential agents as myself. The honour and careers of many of the chief men in France were at stake. You have seen a group of ninepins standing, all so rigid, and prim, and unbending. Then there comes the ball from far away and pop, pop, pop – there are your ninepins on the floor. Well, imagine some of the greatest men in France as these ninepins and that this Monsieur Caratal, who was on the train, was the ball which could be seen coming from far away. If he arrived, then it was pop, pop, pop for all of them. It was determined that he should not arrive.’
As she entered the room she took in the scene. Nathan was sitting on the sofa, smoking. At the window stood Holmes, far more substantial than when she had last seen him. There was an impression of bulk and, in his movements and speech, an undercurrent of impatience.
Nathan leaped to his feet, ever the eager puppy. ‘Mrs Gregson, there you are. Come in. Mr Holmes is just telling me a fantastical story about a lost special. A train. Apparently it was all a French Government plot to make sure a certain Frenchman never arrived in Paris.’ He turned back to Holmes. ‘And you say this train lies buried in a mine? A whole train?’
‘I do. Minus most of the innocent passengers, who were forced off at gunpoint. I can give you the precise location. I know the French are our allies, but it demonstrates their duplicity as a nation.’
Mrs Gregson knew all about that duplicity from a certain Levass, who was, indirectly, responsible for Watson’s capture by the Germans. ‘I hardly think we need—’ Mrs Gregson hesitated as Holmes turned from the window, his great head enveloped in smoke. ‘Mr Holmes?’
‘Yes?’
Mrs Gregson felt as though she were in a lift in which the cable had snapped, plunging down floor after floor. She dropped her bag and took two steps forward. Now she knew she had been made a fool of. ‘Mr Mycroft Holmes?’
‘At your service.’
She spun towards a slack-jawed Nathan, all the anger she felt against her own stupidity coming out with a venomous hiss. ‘Nathan, you damned fool. You’ve got the wrong Holmes.’