Blackstone and the Great War (24 page)

‘It doesn't have to happen that way,' Blackstone said stubbornly.

‘That's just how it
will
happen,' Winfield insisted. He looked Blackstone squarely in the eyes. ‘Here's what I'll remember of this little meeting of ours if I'm asked: I'll say you wanted to know if I remembered three officers asking me for a vehicle of some sort, and that I told you that it was strictly against regulations for any officer to take a vehicle without official permission.'

‘Even though everybody knows it happens?'

‘Even though everybody knows it happens! And I'll add – if I'm pushed – that I considered it an insult to all the officers serving on the Western Front that you'd even ask the question, because they're fine upstanding men who would never even think of doing such a thing.' Winfield shook his head, sadly, from side to side. ‘Sorry, Mr Blackstone, but that's the way things are.'

NINETEEN

T
here were only two sorts of people he kept coming up against in this investigation, Blackstone thought dispiritedly, as he walked back to the village.

On the one hand, there were those who believed that it was impossible for an officer to have been a killer – and that included not just the officers themselves, but also those outside the officer class, like Corporal Johnson, who had fully accepted the ruling class myth.

And on the other hand, there were people like Sergeant Winfield, who could be persuaded to accept that such a thing might just be possible, but had embraced another, equally damaging, myth – that officers were above the laws which applied to ordinary folk like him.

‘But officers are as likely to commit a murder as anybody else, and they'll swing from a rope as well as the next man,' Blackstone said aloud – and with fresh resolve. ‘I
know
that for a fact – and I'll prove it, if it's the last thing I do.'

As he approached his billet, he was not in the least surprised to see the young soldier waiting impatiently outside his door. It would, in fact, have been a surprise if – fired up with enthusiasm for the investigation as he was – he
hadn't
been there.

‘You've been gone a long time,' Mick complained, as the policeman approached him.

Blackstone grinned. ‘Well, you know what it's like once you're at the seaside – you find it difficult to tear yourself away.'

‘I wouldn't know about that. I've never been to the seaside myself,' Mick replied, perhaps a little sadly.

Of course he hadn't. The chances were that, before he'd come to France, he'd never wandered more than three or four miles away from the house in which he was born.

Blackstone glanced quickly up and down the street. There was no one else in sight – no witnesses to report what the Scotland Yard man and the private soldier did next.

‘You'd better come inside,' he said.

Once they were through the door, he was expecting Mick to immediately start babbling out the gossip he had picked up from the other members of his platoon, but instead, when the boy did start talking, it was about himself.

‘My old mum used to do a bit of cleaning for this lady called Mrs Robertson, who lived in this big house north of the river,' Mick said. ‘Once, when I was a nipper, and the whole Robertson family was out for the day, she took me to see the house. I couldn't believe it when I walked through the front door. It was like stepping into a palace. I'd never dreamed that anybody could be so rich.'

The young man's obvious naivety brought an involuntary smile to Blackstone's face.

Despite what Mick might believe, this Mrs Robertson hadn't really been rich at all, he thought. If she'd been rich, she wouldn't have employed Mick's mum to pop in now and again and char for her, she'd have had a permanent staff – butler, maids, footmen – waiting on her hand and foot. And her house couldn't really have been a palace, either – it had only
seemed
like one to a lad brought up in the slums.

‘Have I said something funny?' the boy demanded, with a suspicion which was bordering on anger. ‘Are you laughing at me, Mr Blackstone?'

‘No,' Blackstone said hastily, feeling thoroughly ashamed. ‘I was just remembering something amusing that happened yesterday.'

‘Are you sure about that?' Mick asked.

‘I'm sure,' Blackstone lied. ‘Carry on with what you were saying.'

‘Well, this Mrs Robertson used to give my mum all the stuff she didn't want any more – clothes and things. She told mum she could cut the clothes up, and use them for floor rags, but mum would never have done that.'

‘Of course she wouldn't,' Blackstone agreed. ‘So what
did
she do with them – wear them herself, or sell them to a stall on the New Cut Market?'

‘Sometimes one, sometimes the other,' Mick said. ‘Anyway, this once, it wasn't clothes she gave her – it was a jigsaw puzzle. Do you know what a jigsaw puzzle is, Mr Blackstone?'

‘Yes,' Blackstone said. ‘I do.'

‘This particular jigsaw was a big heavy wooden thing. It had a picture of a windmill on it. And I suppose you know what one them is, and all.'

Blackstone smiled again – and this time he was smiling
with
Mick.

‘Big pointy thing with sails on it?' he suggested.

Mick smiled back. It was a good-natured smile, and his earlier animosity was obviously quite forgotten.

‘You know just about everything, don't you, Mr Blackstone?' he said. ‘There's no wonder you're a detective.'

I wish I
did
know everything, Blackstone thought. I wish I knew why three apparently normal young men had decided to cold-bloodedly murder another young man who they had been friends with for most of their lives.

‘The picture was peeling off that jigsaw a bit,' Mick continued. ‘To tell you the truth, there was some pieces that had no picture left on them at all. But I thought it was a bloody marvellous thing. I used to spend hours working at it. My pals all called me a proper Mary Ellen for wasting my time, but I didn't care. I loved that puzzle.' A tear ran down the corner of his eye. ‘It was the first real toy I ever had.'

Blackstone nodded. ‘I know what it's like to be without toys,' he said, thinking back to his days in the orphanage.

Mick took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. ‘But that's neither here nor there,' he said, matter-of-factly. ‘The only reason that I mentioned it at all was because, when you first gave me this job, I had no idea what it was you wanted me to do, did I?'

‘Well, you couldn't have been expected to grasp the whole thing right away,' Blackstone said tactfully.

‘Not an idea in the world,' Mick said firmly. ‘Not a bleeding clue. And then I began to think about it like it was that jigsaw puzzle, and suddenly it all started to make sense. See, you collect a little piece of information here, and a little piece of information there, and then you try to fit them together to make a picture.' He looked at Blackstone uncertainly, as if he was suddenly afraid he'd made a fool of himself. ‘It is a
bit
like that, isn't it?' he pleaded.

Blackstone beamed at him. ‘It's a
lot
like that,' he said. ‘You'd make a fine detective.'

‘Really?' Mick asked.

‘Really,' Blackstone confirmed. ‘Now let's hear about the bits of puzzle you've found.'

‘Well, the first thing that any of the lads remembers as being unusual  . . .' He paused. ‘You did
ask
me to find out what was unusual, didn't you?'

‘Yes, I did,' Blackstone assured him.

‘The first thing that was unusual was Lieutenant Soames taking a couple of lads out on night patrol,' Mick said. He paused for a second time. ‘No, that's not quite right. It wasn't the patrol that was unusual at all – because there are patrols every night.' He shook his head in frustration. ‘I need to get the story straight in my head. I need to be able to tell it properly.'

‘Take your time,' Blackstone said soothingly. ‘We've got all the time you need.'

‘The thing about these patrols is, they're not as dangerous as they might seem,' Mick continued. ‘Even if the patrol stumbles across a few Fritzes – doing the same thing as they are – nobody usually gets killed.'

‘So what
do
they do when that happens? Ignore each other?'

‘That's right. It'd be certain death not to.'

Of course it would, Blackstone thought. One flash from a weapon in No Man's Land, and both sides would open fire from the trenches.

‘Anyway, that night, one of Lieutenant Soames' patrol
did
get killed, and another got wounded,' Mick continued. ‘Nobody's quite sure how it happened. It was probably just bad luck – some Fritz sentry fancied firing a couple of shots into the dark, and by pure chance he hit our lads.'

‘I think I've already heard part of this story,' Blackstone said. ‘Lieutenant Soames dragged the wounded man back to our trench, didn't he?'

‘That's right, he did,' Mick agreed. ‘And that's where we come to the
next
unusual bit of the story. When he got back to his dugout, Lieutenant Maude and Lieutenant Hatfield were there waiting for him.'

‘What was strange about that?'

‘They weren't on front-line duty that night, so you might have expected them to stay in the reserve trench, and catch up on a bit of sleep. That's what most officers do when they get the chance. Course, there's no law that says an officer can't go to the front line if he feels like it – but there's never any real reason to.'

But there
was
a reason that night, Blackstone thought – the three musketeers needed to get together to put the final touches to the plan to murder Lieutenant Fortesque.

‘Anyway, the next funny thing – and that makes three funny things, you know.'

Blackstone smiled again. ‘I do know,' he agreed. ‘I'm counting.'

‘The next funny thing was that Maude left the other two, and went to visit Fortesque in
his
dugout, further along the trench.'

Now that
was
strange, Blackstone told himself.

Since Soames was the one nominated to actually commit the murder, he would obviously have to chance being spotted near the scene of the crime. But there was no need for either of the other two to run such a risk. Quite the contrary – it would have been no more than prudent for them to keep well away from Fortesque in the hours before his impending death.

Yet Maude
had been
to see Fortesque! Now why would a man like him – who otherwise hadn't put a foot wrong so far – even think of doing that?

‘What time was it that Lieutenant Maude visited Lieutenant Fortesque?' Blackstone asked Mick.

‘Nobody's quite sure. Apart from the ones who are on sentry duty, none of the lads pay much attention to time down in the trenches. But as near as any of them can tell, it was a couple of hours before dawn.'

Perhaps the reason that Maude had visited Fortesque was to make one last attempt to talk some sense into him. Perhaps he'd still hoped that he could convince Fortesque to change his mind, because if he
could be
persuaded, there would no longer be any need to kill him.

‘Are you still listening to me, Mr Blackstone?' Mick asked.

‘I'm still listening,' Blackstone said. ‘Carry on with your tale.'

‘Maude stayed with Fortesque for about ten minutes, and when he left, he went back to Soames' dugout. And then, maybe half an hour before dawn, Lieutenant
Soames
paid a visit to Lieutenant Fortesque.'

Maude's efforts at persuasion having so obviously failed, Soames is sent to deliver the killing blow, Blackstone thought. He finds Fortesque alone, as he expected to  . . .

He felt a sudden chill run through him, as he began to see a hitherto unsuspected flaw in his own logic.

Soames would have had no real basis for believing that he would find Fortesque alone!

None at all!

At that time of day – just before the morning stand-to and the inspection which followed it – what would have been more natural than that Fortesque would ask his servant to make him a cup of tea and cook him some breakfast?

As it happened –
as things turned out
– Fortesque
had been
alone, because he had sent Blenkinsop to the reserve trench for more whisky – but Soames couldn't possibly have
known
that he would do that.

Hell, even Fortesque himself couldn't have known, with any degree of certainty, when the whisky would run out.

And that was where the theory broke down, wasn't it? The three musketeers
couldn't
have been planning to kill Fortesque that morning – because there were far too many imponderables.

Wind it back, Blackstone ordered himself. Start again.

The plan had been for Fortesque to die sometime later – perhaps when they were all back in St Denis. But then Soames – hotheaded, impulsive Soames – had taken a spur of the moment decision!

Blackstone pictured the scene in his mind.

Fortesque is sitting at his table when Soames enters the dugout.

‘Have you thought about what Maude had to say to you, Charlie?' Soames asks.

‘I have,' Fortesque replies.

‘And what conclusion have you reached?'

‘I've examined my conscience, and I now see, more clearly than ever, that while it will be damaging to all of you, I really have no choice but to come clean.'

But come clean about what? Blackstone asked himself.

About bloody
what
– for God's sake?

Had
they come across a stash of abandoned gold – or something almost equally valuable – and decided between them to keep it for themselves? Had Fortesque changed his mind about it, leaving the others with no choice – in their own minds, at least – but to kill him? And had those gold bars been in the coffin that Maude, Soames and Hatfield had stolen from the warehouse in Calais?