Blackstone and the Great War (23 page)

Blackstone wondered what had eventually happened to the extravagant, horse-loving count. The date set in the brickwork of the stable – 1777 – made it more than likely that he had ended his life in the Place de la Revolution in Paris – his body knelt before the guillotine, and his head in a basket below, looking up at it. And if that was what
had
actually happened, then he really had no one to blame but himself.

There were no horses in the stables now. The British Army had taken over the whole estate, assigning the chateau itself to those high-ranking officers who could not reasonably be expected to endure the grubby conditions of trench life, and converting the stable block into a garage.

And a busy garage this was, Blackstone saw. All around him, corporal-mechanics were hard at work – tinkering with the engine of a militarized Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, welding new steel plates on to the side of a Lanchester armoured car, changing the tyres on a supply lorry  . . .

Yes, it was a very busy place – and it had probably been equally as busy when the three musketeers had appeared in search of a vehicle which would take them to Calais.

A sergeant – slightly plump and in his mid-twenties – appeared in the stable doorway, walked over to the Lanchester, and looked down at the work the welder had been doing.

‘Well, if I was a betting man, I'd definitely put my money on you winning the prize, Corporal Philips,' he said.

The corporal looked up. ‘What prize, Sarge?'

‘The prize for the prettiest armoured car in the whole of northern France, of course.'

‘I didn't know there was a prize for that,' the corporal replied.

The sergeant emitted a dramatic, theatrical sigh. ‘That's because I just made it up, you bleeding halfwit.'

‘Oh,' the corporal said, clearly confused.

‘You see, lad, the idea behind an armoured car isn't that it looks nice – it's that it's bloody
armoured
,'
the sergeant explained. ‘So I'm not really interested in how
neat
your welding looks – all that concerns me is that when it hits a bump in the road, the bloody steel plate doesn't fall off. Got that?'

‘Yes, Sarge,' Philips said miserably.

‘Then let's have a little less delicacy and a little more strength,' the sergeant said. He turned to face Blackstone. ‘Can I help you?'

‘I'd like to ask you a few questions,' Blackstone said, producing his warrant card.

‘A copper, are you?' the sergeant asked. ‘My dad was a copper, God rest his soul.' He held out his hand. ‘Winfield's the name – Ted Winfield..

‘Are you related to the sergeant who runs the telegraphy office?' asked Blackstone, shaking the hand.

‘That's my brother, Wally – the black sheep of the family.'

Blackstone grinned. ‘What makes him the black sheep?'

‘He put in his papers to be an officer, didn't he? Think of that – Wally Winfield, an officer and a gentleman! I laughed like a drain when they turned him down. It would have had our poor old dad turning over in his grave. Still, he's not a bad bloke – in his own way.'

‘And he's a dab hand at transmitting Shakespeare,' Blackstone said.

‘Told you about that, has he?' the sergeant said drily. ‘Well, I suppose he would have – if you'd been talking to him for more than a couple of minutes.'

‘About my questions  . . .' Blackstone said.

‘Would you mind asking them in my office?' Winfield asked. ‘It's not as noisy as it is out here – and anyway, I've got this bottle of very fine French brandy that's screaming out to be opened, and I've been told it's bad luck to open it when you're alone.'

‘I've heard that, too,' Blackstone said.

Though the room to which Winfield led Blackstone was less of an office and more of a storeroom for spare parts, it did have a table and chairs, and there was indeed a bottle of good French brandy sitting on the table.

‘I was on easy street when the war broke out,' the sergeant said, pouring out two generous shots of the cognac. ‘I was the foreman at one of the biggest garages in the West End.' His eyes went misty at the memory of it. ‘You should have seen the cars that came into that garage – Rolls-Royce, Hispano-Suiza, Mercedes  . . .' He paused. ‘I've not been back to Blighty recently, but I'll be willing to bet you don't see too many Mercedes being driven around London nowadays – not with them being German. People don't even dare walk their dachshund dogs any longer, for fear that some bugger will kick the shit out of them. And I believe they've even changed the name of the German shepherd, and have started calling it an Alsatian.'

‘That's right, they have.'

Winfield shook his head. ‘Mad! As if it was the poor mutt's fault what it was called. Anyway, as I was going to say, it was a good business, that garage, and what with the inducements and everything, I was starting to build up a nice little nest-egg for myself.'

‘Inducements?' Blackstone said.

‘Some chauffeur would bring in his boss's Lanchester, and take me over to a quiet corner. “Now look here, my man, there's something I want to ask you,” he'd say.”' Winfield grinned. ‘“My man”! That's what they'd call me, these ponces who thought that being dressed up in livery made them better than me. “Look here, my man, Lord Toffee-Nose wants his vehicle back as soon as possible, and if you're prepared to move it to the head of the queue, there could be a couple of pounds in it for you.” And, naturally, I'd say I'd see what I could do.'

‘And
did
you move it to the head of the queue?'

‘Course not, but I always told them I had – which meant me and the lads had a couple of quid to share between us. I saw myself as a bit of a Robin Hood – taking from the rich and giving to the poor.'

‘And that's exactly what you were,' Blackstone said.

‘Anyway the war broke out, and the posters started to appear – “Your Country Needs You”, “What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?” – all that kind of guff – and my lady-friend started nagging me into joining up.'

And she wouldn't have been alone in that, Blackstone thought, remembering one poster with the banner ‘Women of Britain Say Go!', in which a woman and her children were standing at the window and watching soldiers march away.

Winfield reached over and poured them both a second glass of brandy.

‘Effie – that's her name – said that when she got married, she wanted it to be to a hero, and there wasn't much heroic about taking internal combustion engines to pieces,' he continued. ‘Well, you can't argue with a woman who's right, can you? Come to that, you can't argue with a woman who's wrong, either – so I went and enlisted! And then, of course, my brother Wally had to do the same.'

Blackstone laughed.

‘As a matter of fact, once I'd signed up, I did begin to think that maybe I
could
be quite heroic if push came to shove,' Winfield told him. ‘I started picturing myself storming the Hun trenches, and then getting a medal pinned on me by the King himself. And what happened instead?'

‘Somebody told the powers that be what a bloody good mechanic you were?' Blackstone suggested.

‘Exactly,' Winfield confirmed. ‘So here I am, doing just the same job as I'd be doing back in London, but without any of the home comforts.'

They had drained their glasses, and Sergeant Winfield filled them up for a third time.

‘I want to ask you about some officers who might have requisitioned a vehicle from you,' Blackstone said.

‘Don't talk to me about officers requisitioning vehicles,' Winfield said. ‘They make me sick – the lot of them. They turn up, looking all serious and high-minded, and say they need a car. So I ask for the paperwork, and they tell me that it hasn't come through yet, but they still need the car immediately, because they're on important official business. And what kind of important official business is it, do you think? It's the kind that involves them writhing around between the legs of a high-class whore in the nearest big town!'

‘So what do you do in that situation?' Blackstone asked.

Winfield shrugged. ‘I give them the car – because something that officers have in common with women is that they're right even when they're wrong, and while their commanding officer might know full well they were pulling a fast one, it's me that would get the rocket if I put in a complaint.'

‘Do you remember three officers asking you for a vehicle a few days ago?' Blackstone asked.

‘Skinny, Beefy and Sly?' Winfield replied, without hesitation. ‘Oh yes, I remember them, all right. But they didn't want a car – they wanted a lorry. I asked them why it had to be a lorry, and Sly told me not to be so impertinent. Me! Impertinent! I've got a few years on the snot-nosed young bastard – and, as you may have noticed, I'm not exactly built like Jack Johnson – but if him and me ever got into an altercation outside a pub on the Mile End Road on a Saturday night, I reckon I could still beat the crap out of him.'

‘I'm sure you could,' Blackstone agreed. ‘You did give them the lorry, though, didn't you?'

‘I did not,' Winfield said, ‘but only,' he continued, slightly shamefacedly, ‘because I didn't have one.'

They wouldn't have liked that, Blackstone thought – they
needed
a lorry, because they were about to steal a coffin.

‘So what happened next?' he asked aloud.

‘Beefy started blustering about how, if I didn't come up with a lorry in the next five minutes, he'd have my stripes. So I told him that none of the lorries I had in the garage would be roadworthy for at least three or four hours – which was quite true. And that made him really hit the roof.'

It would have, Blackstone thought, because Soames knew – as did the other two – that if they lost three or four hours, the coffin might well be on a ship bound for England by the time they reached Calais.

‘While Beefy was throwing a fit, Sly was looking around him,' Winfield continued, ‘and that's when he noticed the ambulance. “Is that roadworthy?” he asked, and when I told him it was, he said, “Fine, we'll take that.” Skinny didn't like the idea at all. He said they couldn't take the ambulance, because it might be needed for injured men. But Sly just smiled, in a nasty way, and said that given what they wanted to use it for, an ambulance would be perfect.'

And so it had been, Blackstone mused – because who would have thought twice about seeing them load the coffin into an ambulance?

‘So you let them take the ambulance?' he said.

‘I did,' Winfield admitted. ‘And, thank God, it wasn't needed for anything else while they were using it.'

‘Would you be prepared to sign a statement outlining what you've just told me?' Blackstone asked.

Winfield's bonhomie melted away immediately.

‘No, I'm not sure I would,' he confessed. ‘It's one thing to chew the fat with a like-minded soul over a couple of brandies, but it's quite another to put what we've been talking about down in writing.'

‘You don't seem like the kind of man who'd want to see someone get away with murder,' Blackstone said.

‘Is one of
them
a murderer?'

‘Yes.'

Winfield nodded. ‘It'll be Beefy,' he said.

‘Why do you say that?' Blackstone wondered.

‘Because Skinny's too frightened to kill anybody, and while Sly might
want
somebody dead, he's too smart to do it himself.'

‘
Are
you the kind of man who'd want to see a murderer get away with it?' Blackstone asked.

Winfield shrugged again. ‘If you'd said that to me a year ago, back in England, I'd have been insulted that you even needed to ask. But life's a lot cheaper out here, isn't it? Every Tommy mowed down by machine-gun fire is being murdered – and not by the bloke firing the gun, but by the General who sent him out to certain death. And that General's never going to pay for his crime, now is he?'

‘No,' Blackstone agreed. ‘He isn't.'

‘Besides, if Beefy killed somebody, Beefy will get away with it – because he's an officer.'

‘It was an officer he killed,' Blackstone said.

‘You think he was the one that topped that Lieutenant Fortesque?' Winfield gasped.

‘Yes, I do.'

‘Well, you could knock me over with a feather,' Winfield said. ‘I'd never have thought he'd have murdered one of his own kind.' He fell silent for a whole minute. ‘But, when you think about it, it doesn't really make any difference if it
was
a brother officer he killed, does it? He could have wiped out half a dozen of them, and his regiment still wouldn't admit he was guilty – because that would mean admitting that he wasn't exactly the paragon of virtue that all officers are supposed to be.'

‘It's more than likely that you're right,' Blackstone conceded reluctantly, ‘but there's just a chance it will turn out differently this time – and isn't that worth taking a gamble on?'

‘Maybe for you,' Winfield told him. ‘But I've got my girl waiting for me back home – and even if I can't walk down the aisle a hero, I do at least want to walk down the aisle.'

‘Once you've made your statement to me, you'll be safe,' Blackstone promised him.

‘If I make a statement to you, you'll use it as part of your case against Beefy,' Winfield said. ‘And when your case falls apart – and it will – you'll go home, and I'll still be here.'

‘You'll be safe,' Blackstone repeated. ‘Whatever happens to my case, you'll be safe.'

‘Oh, they won't kill me, if that's what you're talking about,' Winfield agreed. ‘But they'll find some way to punish me – they'll have to, if only as an example to the rest of the poor bloody infantry of what happens when you cross the officer class. So they'll trump up some charge against me, and I'll spend the next ten years of my life in the glasshouse.'