It was a plague of rain.

"I feel as though we are under siege," Jenny Lestrade complained. She had waited impatiently for her sopping-wet father to stomp to the door-step, and was pulling the coat off before he was finished with the buckles. "Why are we getting all the rain? It isn't fair!"

"I don't think we're getting all of it, bihan." He stopped to shudder and took the hand-towel to dry his face and hands. Against his usual routine he had used the front entrance; spots of wet had leaked through his coat's formidable armour and stained his cuffs and shoulders. A steady line of wet tracked from the bottom of his trouser-cuffs to the knee where it met the coat-hem. "Where's the—ah, thank you." He took the clothes-brush and took yesterday's coat off the tree where it had peacefully slow-dried over the course of the night in the cool airs of the hallway. Jenny put the new victim in its place; a steady plink-plink of recycled rain sifted through worsted wool to fall into the tin bucket beneath. Jenny eyed the colour of the water mistrustfully.

"How did it go?" She asked.

"Bought and paid for." Her father sniffed and held up the offending object that had sent him out in the weather on his one day off. A new passport looked back at Jenny; she studied the strangeness of it all. Her father's sober photograph looked back at her, a tiny image against the little book of paper and proof of his citizenry. Now that it was illegal to have a passport without a photograph, the Yard was embracing the law philosophically, for it would help identify people…living, dead, or criminal.

Her father did not look especially happy nor sad to be before a camera; he had that look that said he was doing his duty and that was that.

"Where was I? Oh…" He pulled a small wooden arm down from its hinge against the coat-tree and carefully spread yesterday's coat over it. With his usual grim attention to detail he brushed the mud off the wool, bit by bit. "Go look at the newspapers. Plymouth is ready to float into the sea."

"I would enjoy looking at the papers," Jenny sighed tartly. "But they're a sodden mess by the time they get here."

"Be glad we're not closer to the East Side. The sewers are backing up again."

Jenny grumbled. "Even this building is running out of things to clean."

"It is?" He was honestly surprised. "What about the new lodgers?"

"You mean the brothers that stay in the basement and never come out?"

"That's the ones, yes." He ignored her youthful opinions—they were as sharp as new cheese, honestly, and reminded him of his wife in their early years of marriage.

"They've scoured their rooms to the last inch." Jenny shrugged. "I suppose that's sailors for you. And I imagine they don't mind having only two six-inch windows for light…it reminds them of being in a ship's hold."

The mud was finally off the coat and into the dustbin. He remembered when the dustman would take everything they had…sifting the dust for anything useful. The mud would have been separated and taken to a mortar-mixer along with the rest.

"Well, you haven't missed much news, dear. The Royal Navy sent a German ship off packing off the coast of Chile…we lost the Dardanelles…But there's some rather bad news that I hope Dr. Watson doesn't get for a good long time."

"Oh?"

"Yes. George Llewellyn-Davies died."

Jenny dropped her eyes to the ground. "Flanders?"

"It was."

The two didn't say much for a while…they concentrated on getting the coats in proper shape for tomorrow.

"We need to finish carving up the rooms," he said at last.

Jenny's usual spirits were becalmed. She nodded and did not say anything. "Do you need some help?"

He appeared to be debating with her, within his mind, but she saw him put it aside. He smiled instead. "We need some butcher's paper and a pencil," he said at last. "Make it two."

"Just the two of us?" Jenny wondered. Not that she minded working with her father on one of their projects; it was just that there was usually someone around to help.

"Your mamm will be at the Chapel until sundown—well, I hope she leaves before that—your brothers are working with limestone slabs and strange seashells, and your sister is off with your cousins doing their best to get in trouble with knitting needles and beaus." He shot his cuffs out with a sigh of relief. "I'll get a dry Jersey on and meet you in the back room. The light ought to be a bit better there."

Jenny caught on; she felt herself smile. "This is about Nick and Ivy, isn't it?"

"Don't be impertinent, youngster." But he smiled back as they ascended the steps.

-

"…so if we let them have the old study room…it ought to be good enough for the two of 'em…"

Jenny watched her father slowly mark pencil over the butcher's paper. In a way she felt as though they were doing something illicit and exciting; deciding how the spare rooms would be let to lodgers without anyone else to offer their opinion. She knew it needed to be done; the Harpers had left and they had rented the attic-rooms; the Stover brothers were well enough in the basement but they were shipping out with the Royal Navy at the end of June. Jenny hardly saw them anyway; they made their pin-money by working in seedy bars as crowd control. The family who had been able to produce the most income in the way of rent, the Pluckroses, had been almost rudely standoffish but their rooms now hung empty. A son had fallen in Ypres and they would move deeper inland to rejoin their old family ties. Jenny didn't really know where that was; Pluckrose wasn't a common name by half, but her father had appeared to know everything about them and even put up with their odd ways.

The Collins Building was still solid and strong, which was a comfort to the girl. She had grown up here, as her brothers and sister. She didn't want to think of something happening to it. But it took money to keep it all up; once every three months their father received something in the post by a solicitor and he would look a little happier; it was a banking-statement of sorts, but she didn't know why he would trust this particular bank when he'd made of point of pulling out every pence to their name at the offset of the war and putting it in hiding places across the island.

But living off an endowment didn't cover the small things from day to day, and his wages as a superintendent were only a little better than they had been. They needed lodgers, and she was looking forward to company again. The building was hollow-sounding when it wasn't filled with people.

"Tad," she began slowly as drew squares to represent the vegetable-beds in the back, "Is Nick going to pay rent when he gets married?"

"He says he is." Her father answered tartly. "I keep telling him I'd rather he save his money and help out with the repairs. We've been going around it for a while now. I'll settle for his paying half-rent…He's making decent wages now, but things aren't going to last. They're talking of rationing food now and you can hardly get some tools on the market. I take that as a sign of things coming."

Jenny nodded. "Roger says the same."

"My friend Roger, or your friend Roger?"

"Tad!" Jenny protested, and far too loudly, with a face red beyond belief.

"I'm sorry, girl."

"No, you aren't!" Jenny protested, caught between laughing and being angry at her father for teasing. "You're horrid!"

"Just thought I'd lighten up the mood, girl…you seemed to need it."

"Because my Roger's leaving." Jenny supplied heavily.

"Yes."

She studied the paper without seeing it. "He asked if I wanted to marry before he left. I said no."

The pencil fell to the desk; the garden-squares smeared with lead.

-

May, 1915

The tiny newspaper clipping had shocked him by fluttering to his grimy lap after opening the letter. He caught it up hastily, and peered in the softening evening light of May. His wife's beautiful handwriting looked back at him, neat and delicate as etching on a wedding ring. The letters looped smoothly around the four margins of the tiny clipping, and he wondered what paper had wasted so much paper in making a margin on four sides. An extravagant one, perhaps?

Or one that was growing tired of the censors and was making its own silent protest. Sgt. Brill had said one of his back-home papers had published a newspaper with large, empty squares where articles and images ought to be; in the headlines a poignant taunt:

"Due to lack of approved information from the War Office, the news content has been reduced by 30%."

Brill liked radical publications.

Dr. Watson—when he was this covered with mud he simply ignored his rank—squinted to read the neat type. It was an announcement long overdue: The Valley of Fear had been published—all the way back in February—and a checque for the amount was processed. She did hope he would think of himself once in a while, but as she doubted he allowed himself the time, she had taken the liberty of sending a parcel his way…and it ought to be there, she was assured, several days after his reading this one.

Several days…

The parcel was probably still back at the infirmary, collecting bloody dust with everything else. Personal posts were months overdue here and there, some mail delayed while the rest going through swifter channels dubbed by Providence.

Dust was settling on his eyes even now.

The doctor leaned back against the bowel of the trench—but tired as he was, he did it by inches. Even if a part of the trench looked clean, free of corpses or metals, there was no telling. Too many times his spine had discovered a hard little brass button from either army, or a protruding bone still wrapped in its uniform…once the spike off a German helmet…Watson had not been able to bring himself to see if the rest of the German was on the other side of the helmet. It was all a war internment; all what happened when large, demonic shells erupted craters of earth and then returned everything blown to bits back to the ground. Trenches were made and re-made daily; there was nothing to do about it, and even grieving was not a problem.

Watson didn't know a single one of his men who would regret their bodies adding to the trench if it meant but one of their comrades would be spared later. Grim and corpse-garlanded like a Norse Hell, there had once been a hope that there was some safety in being hidden.

Then in the very first month of the war, when August was still hot, the French started using a lachrymatory weapon; 26 mm grenades of ethyl bromoacetate—tear gas, they called it—in a hope of using effective but non-mortal ways of winning battles.

At the time, and miles away from where he was now, Watson had sat at his borrowed desk in his borrowed farm-camp and hoped it would help matters.

He had not known it was about to mark the end of war as he or anyone else had known it.

Two months later, the Germans had fired fragmentation shells against the French in Neuve Chapelle and irritant gas had been mixed within.

This time, something made Watson feel very sick inside---enough that he wrote directly to one of his old friends at the Base and asked for details. Not to worry, Tom had assured him…The Hague Treaty only covered gases of an asphyxiating or poisonous nature.

But Watson had not been completely eased. Something was happening, and the Treaty was fifteen years old—old enough in war terms to be dangerously obsolete.

This January had seen the beginning of what Watson had wanted desperately to be unthinkable.

The Germans attacked the Russians with White Cross—a xylyl bromide, the Office had assured him. Easy to manufacture, alas, but no different from the stuff the French had used back in August.

Watson stopped listening—and reading—after that. The assurance had completely overlooked the most important point:

The Russians were being attacked with the vile stuff at the River Rakwa, and tear gas, no matter how seemingly innocuous, would have meant a disaster and rout of panicking men without the protection of masks or even wet cloths—the river had been frozen solid; at least the cold had protected the Russians, for the tear gas had solidified in the icy temperatures, minimizing the damage.

But the Germans would learn from their mistakes. They had the same brains as anyone else. They would learn; and for every mistake or victory they made…their enemies would learn too…learn to start their own attempts.

Tear gas in a crowd might not violate the Treaty, but Watson knew they had hoped to create mass death by panic and confusion. Confused men were easy targets. Rabbits herded against the fence to be clubbed to death. No…it didn't violate the Treaty…but the Treaty would be walked around until it was finally an embarrassment.

Watson was soon assured of his pessimism. All the while he had been anguishing over tear gas, the Germans had been aiming chlorine gas at his own men. "This is a horrible weapon," A German officer had said, reporting that 140 English officers had been killed but making no mention of the many more English soldiers who had followed their officers in death.

In early April, the Germans were ready to attack and they did it north of Ypres. What kept a complete bloodbath had been the fact that the Germans were as frightened of the gas as the French. The Canadians had held firm against the few attacking Germans, though it had been a display of sheer courage on their part. Afterward the German government claimed the Treaty had not been violated because it was not a chemical shelling, but gas projecting.

Obeying the letter of the Treaty, if not the spirit, which had been to prevent cruel and inhumane death, the war had turned worse, as swiftly as an eclipse could take the sun.

Ypres was seeing the future dead now. Men scalded in the eyes, the throat, the nose, the lungs; the throat and man died choking on the caustic death. But it wasn't enough.

The Germans were preparing to attack again, and it would be very soon.

He knew they would attack with gas.

-

"Here you are, sir!"

Watson's dreams had been red-tinged and clogged with mist. He staggered upright from a terrible lost place in his mind and wiped at his face and eyes. He felt old.

"Mail, sir." A large square packet in brown paper was placed almost reverently in his lap. For a moment Watson stared at it stupidly. It remained what it was.

"Shall I read it for you, sir?" Asked the young man—Chaplain Root. A small gold cross hung neatly at his breast-pocket, and he looked far, far too young.

"Read it for me, my good fellow." Watson blinked his way through a higher state of conscious as he reached for the hair-comb upon his folding field-table. A mirror no larger than a promise was his only consultant for the regular grooming. He struggled to see in the lightening grey of dawn.

"Yes, sir. There's a note affixed to the top…" Root cleared his throat. "P.S. to you, John, and regret to be the bearer of bad news. I just heard myself that over in the trenches we lost Kings Royal Rifles, Second Lieutenant—"

The brittle comb split in Watson's large hand.

"Sir?" Root breathed.

Watson was holding his eyes closed. "Allow me," he said heavily. "Kings Royal Rifles, Second Lieutenant George Llewellyn-Davies…"

"Killed in Flanders, sir." The young chaplain repeated. "A gunshot wound in the head. It doesn't say if they could recover his body."

Watson flinched. They knew what the trenches were like—they were on their way to them! Often shells went off too close and the percussion created killing earthslides and smothering clouds of atomised soil. Watson had been at the trenches north; he remained haunted by the sight of a man's foot protruding out of the earth embankment that shielded his living brothers. The foot had been broken and hung awkwardly like a branch, still clad in its trousers and boot. No one had been able to retrieve the man, and they could only wait in cynical expectation of a second shell to release the earth and allow him an official burial with honours.

About him the other medical men were sitting in exhausted patience. The news had fluttered up, then down the lines of damp, wet, plank-lined trench and steaming dank earth. The name was familiar to them; familiar to all of them. To any man who had once been a boy refusing to grow up.

"I hope we're never invaded," Private Johns said softly. "My mother lives for the little theatres and the performances in the parks. She's been to Wyndham Theatre three times…I promised I'd take her again when I came back." If he came back. He was trying to talk about something to show he had heard the news and understood…and yet it was too painful to approach.

They were hungry, he realised. Hungry for a world beyond the War, for society and bright lights and something as remarkable as the sight of a woman smoking in public or to know someone who knew someone famous. Someone who could be a celebrity…

In this world, anyone who knew a celebrity could be a celebrity.

"I knew him." Watson said at last, and every hollow eye sharpened eagerly in his direction. "He was a fine soul."

"What was he like, sir?" Asked a new Cpl…Watson wasn't certain of his name yet.

"He was the nephew of Gerald du Maurier," he heard himself saying. "Has anyone seen him perform?" A show of hands went up with breathtaking speed. "A very poised, polished man and polite…he always scolded the young men for being too eager to woo on stage." Even now, Watson had to smile at fond memories. "I watched every performance I could afford, even when it shamed my cheque-book…did you know, sometimes I lied and told my friends I was spending the money on the horses?" That collected silent smiles; no laughter in the trenches. "He was a cricketer; very popular and a fine actor…and he was good to our Lieutenant." His smile drooped. "I should send him my condolences…and that of Mr. Barrie. They were close, but I didn't see much of Barrie's work…"

"We are sorry, sir." Chaplain Root said softly.

"He said something once."

But Watson fell silent.

The trenches grew silent as well; with dawn would come the sounds of distant fire, and their continued attempts to reach the wounded though ambulance, horse, mule, or human back. It would happen soon.

And they'd be lucky to save one-fraction of their men. They knew it. It was just one of the odd things about the human brain that they weren't thinking of any of that just then, just the death of a young man who inspired the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up. Now the boy had grown to a man—just barely a man—and would never grow older.

"He said…" Watson felt his voice break as his throat swelled. The others looked upon him expectantly. "One day, I'm told, Barrie was telling the boys that all the babies who died went to Neverland. And Young George, upon hearing this…he exclaimed…" Watson stopped for a moment and cleared his throat. "He said that…to die would be an awfully big adventure."

No one else felt like saying much for the rest of the day.