Authors: Robert Ryan
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.