Blackstone and the Great War (29 page)

‘And there was his family's reputation to think of, too,' Maude added. ‘How would old General Fortesque have felt if he'd known the truth?'

‘Charlie wouldn't have been the first officer ever to be a homosexual, you know,' Blackstone pointed out. ‘There's a long history of it – stretching right back to Alexander the Great.'

‘
He
was a foreigner!' Soames said, with disgust.

‘It wasn't so much what Charlie
did
– because you're right, and all armies have had their share of nancy boys,' Maude said. ‘No, the problem with Charlie was that he had a conscience about it. He wanted to come clean about his sordid little affair, resign his commission on medical grounds, and set up a little love nest with Danvers.'

‘With
Danvers
!' Soames exploded. ‘With a common soldier – a peasant.'

‘Yes, you must have thought that was
terribly
wrong of him, Lieutenant Soames,' Blackstone said.

‘Damn right, I did!' Soames agreed.

‘Especially when you consider that he could have had
you
instead – simply by asking!'

‘You bastard!' Soames screamed. He appealed to Maude. ‘I swear I never touched him – or any man.'

Maude smiled sadistically. ‘I'm sure that's quite true, Roger' he said. ‘But, let's be honest – we both know you've always wanted to.' He turned back to Blackstone. ‘Do carry on with your narrative, Inspector.'

‘You tried to persuade Fortesque to keep his secret, but he wouldn't, because – I suspect – he really
did
love Danvers. So what could you do? Well, you could remove the
reason
for the secret – by removing Danvers.'

‘We can't just kill him,' Hatfield says.

‘Have you got a better plan?' Maude counters.

‘How would we do it, William?' asks Soames, who seems to have no qualms about the murder. ‘Could we stick a rifle barrel in his mouth, and make it look like he killed himself?'

Maude gives him one of those looks he has grown accustomed to over the years, and now more or less accepts – a look which says he has the brain of an ant, and that he'd be better leaving the thinking to someone better equipped for it.

‘And how do you propose to fake this suicide, in a trench full of witnesses?' Maude asks. ‘Or do you perhaps plan to ask all the other Tommies to leave before we do the deed?'

‘No, that wouldn't work,' Soames says.

‘And besides, Charlie would never believe that his “lady friend” had killed himself – not when they were both so looking forward to their happy little life together,' Maude continues. ‘It would be better if it looked like he'd been killed by Fritz. You could take him out on night patrol, Roger, and make sure he doesn't come back.'

‘You want me to kill him personally?' Soames says.

‘Would you have any objection to that?'

‘No.'

‘I thought not. But having you kill him wouldn't solve the problem at all,' Maude says.

‘Why not?' Soames asks. ‘What kind of problem could there be, once he was bloody well dead?'

‘The problem is that Charlie would suspect we were behind it – just as he would suspect we were behind a suicide. And God alone knows what he might do then.' Maude thinks for a moment. ‘No, what we need is an independent witness to Danvers' death – a witness who could swear that you had absolutely nothing to do with it.'

‘How's that possible?' Soames asks.

‘You don't just take Danvers out on patrol – you take another of your men as well. And the other man will be a witness to the fact that Danvers was shot down by Fritz.'

Soames looks troubled. ‘I don't see how we'd ever manage that,' he tells Maude. ‘The only way to ensure Fritz fires on us is to expose ourselves – and if we expose ourselves, the chances are that all three of us will be killed.' He pauses. ‘Or is that the plan? We all three get killed?' He squares his shoulders. ‘Well, anything's better than having it known that not only is one of our officers a nancy boy, but he's not even
ashamed
of it – so for the good of the regiment, I'm prepared to make the sacrifice.'

‘You're not thinking – though that comes as no particular surprise to anybody,' Maude says. ‘I wouldn't send you out to your death – not unless it was absolutely necessary. Besides, if you remember, I said that the other Tommy with you had to come back in one piece, so he can tell Charlie what happened.'

Soames frowned. ‘Then I don't see  . . .'

‘It won't be Fritz who actually shoots down Danvers – it will be Hatfield and myself.'

‘That was why, on the day that Danvers died, Hatfield came up with a spurious reason for putting the two privates – Jones and Clay – under arrest,' Blackstone said.

‘Balderdash!' Soames said, though he was now the only one in the dugout who thought there was any point to denial.

‘Officers are issued with revolvers,' Blackstone said. ‘You needed rifles to kill Danvers, and arresting the two privates was the best way to get your hands on a couple without raising any suspicion.' He paused for a moment. ‘That's right, isn't it, Lieutenant Maude?'

‘Indeed it is,' Maude replied.

‘Apart from meeting the obvious need to get rid of Danvers, the plan held a bonus for each of you,' Blackstone said. ‘It gave you, Maude, the chance to scheme and manipulate. It gave Hatfield the opportunity to do something really appalling, and thus demonstrate just how much your friendships meant to him. And it gave you, Soames, the chance to lead to his death a man who you were so jealous of that you hated him more than you'd ever hated anyone before.'

‘You swine! You filthy swine!' Soames screamed, as he lashed out and slapped Blackstone hard across the face.

‘Control yourself, Roger – there'll be plenty of time for that later,' Maude said.

Blackstone rolled his head, in an attempt to shake off the grogginess that came with the blow.

‘Do you want me to carry on with my story – or would you prefer to knock me about a little more first?' he asked Soames.

‘Soames would like you to carry on,' Maude said. ‘He is fascinated to learn how the mind of a common man works, aren't you, Roger?'

Soames said nothing.

‘
Aren't you, Roger
?' Maude repeated.

‘Yes,' Soames agreed grudgingly.

‘It all went according to plan,' Blackstone said. ‘It's true that because you, Maude, can't shoot straight, the other soldier, Private Mitchell, was wounded  . . .'

‘How do you know that I was the one who shot Mitchell?' Lieutenant Maude interrupted.

‘Because it would have been Hatfield's job to shoot Danvers,' Blackstone replied.

‘Are you saying I didn't have the nerve to kill Danvers?' Maude asked, and for the first time there was a hint of anger in his voice.

‘Of course I'm not saying that,' Blackstone replied. ‘You'd kill anybody or anything that got in your way, without a second's thought – but you get much more pleasure out of compelling others to do something than you'd ever get from doing it yourself.'

Maude nodded. ‘Very clever,' he said. ‘Do carry on.'

‘Mitchell was wounded,' Blackstone continued, ‘but that was all to the good, because it gave Soames the chance to play the hero – and who would ever suspect a hero of being a cold-blooded killer?'

‘No one,' Maude said. ‘Do you know, I wish that I'd have thought of that myself, and shot Mitchell deliberately.'

‘It's as well you didn't,' Blackstone countered. ‘With your degree of marksmanship, you'd probably have killed him. But, to get back to the story, we now move on to the next phase of the plan. You, Maude, went to see Fortesque a couple of hours before he died. At one time, I thought that you did that because you wanted to make one last appeal to Fortesque not to ruin you all. But it wasn't that at all – what you were actually doing was breaking the bad news.'

The moment Maude appears at the door to his dugout, Fortesque knows that something has gone very wrong.

‘I'm so sorry to have to tell you this,' Maude says, ‘but Private Danvers is dead.'

‘How  . . . how did it happen?' Fortesque gasps.

‘A Fritz sniper, out in No Man's Land.'

‘But  . . .'

‘These things happen in a war, Charlie,' Maude says. He advances into the dugout, and puts his hand on Fortesque's shoulder. ‘I didn't approve of what was going on between the two of you, you know that, but you're my friend, and if you're hurt, then I'm hurt, too.'

‘Thank you, old chap,' Fortesque says.

‘Would you like me to stay with you for a while?' Maude asks.

Fortesque shakes his head.

‘Perhaps you're right,' Maude tells him. ‘A man is better handling these matters on his own.'

‘You could have insisted on staying, but you didn't,' Blackstone said. ‘Instead, you decided to leave Charlie Fortesque alone with his grief, and – what was probably worse – his guilt,' Blackstone said.

‘His guilt!' Soames exclaimed. ‘Why should Charlie have felt guilty? He had nothing at all to do with Danvers' death.'

‘Ah, but you see, he did – at least in his own mind,' Blackstone said. ‘He could have made Danvers his servant, but he caved in under your pressure, and appointed Blenkinsop instead. Worse still, he allowed Danvers to be transferred to your platoon, Lieutenant Soames. And he knew that if he hadn't given way on those two things – and especially the latter one – Danvers would not have been out in No Man's Land that night. So whose fault was it that Danvers was dead? It was his!'

‘So that's why he did it,' Soames said, almost choking on the words. ‘That's why he  . . .'

‘Yes, I think so,' Blackstone said.

It is an hour before dawn when Soames reaches Fortesque's dugout. He has not come because Maude told him to – though Maude has – but because Charlie is his friend, and he loves him.

When he enters the dugout, Fortesque is sitting with his head on the table, and for a moment Soames thinks he must simply have collapsed from nervous exhaustion.

And then he sees the gun in his hand.

A great wave of anguish sweeps over him. He cannot believe that Charlie – beautiful, intelligent Charlie – would have done this to himself. He cannot accept that the one person he really cared about in the whole world is dead. He feels his legs give way under him, and when he hits the ground, his body curls up into a ball. And he is sobbing, weeping salt tears on to the packed earth floor.

Slowly, the grief abates a little, like a briefly retreating wave, and he can think – if only fracturedly – again.

Questions will be asked about Charlie's suicide – they are bound to be.

There are officers serving on the front line whose deaths could be put down to a loss of nerve – a cowardice which led them to believe that certain death now was preferable to the constant worry about possible death in the future. But anyone who had known brave, courageous Charlie Fortesque would not believe that of him for a moment.

So why, they would ask themselves, had he taken his own life?

And then it would all come out.

They would learn of the dirty disgusting things that he and Danvers had done together.

They would tie that in with the death of Danvers – and suddenly that death wouldn't seem as straightforward as it once had.

Disgrace would descend on the Fortesque family, and ridicule would be heaped on the regiment.

‘How can I stop that happening?' asks Soames, still on the ground, still in the foetal position. ‘What can I do?'

He wishes Maude was there to advise him. But Maude is not there – and he dare not go to look for him in case someone else happens to discover the body in the meantime.

As he is climbing to his feet – eyes stinging and mucus running down his chin – he has an idea.

If, instead of committing suicide, Charlie had been murdered, then an entirely different set of questions – the wrong questions – would be asked about his death. And if the wrong questions were asked, the right answers would never emerge.

He sees a hammer hanging on the wall, and lifts it off its hook. He walks over to the table, and stands there for a moment, looking down at his dead friend. His free hand lifts, almost of its own volition, and gently strokes the dead man's cheek. Then he removes the hand, steps back, and swings the hammer.

As it strikes the point at which the bullet entered Fortesque's brain, he is sobbing again.

‘I wondered how you could inflict so much damage and yet not be covered with his blood,' Blackstone said. ‘And then, of course, I reached the only conclusion it was possible to reach – there was so little blood because the heart had already stopped beating before your attack began.'

‘There was blood enough,' Soames said with a shudder. ‘Blood and bone and gristle. God, it was truly awful.'

‘And then you left the body and carried out an inspection, before returning to the dugout and “discovering” it again,' Blackstone said. ‘I must admit, I admire you for that. There can't be many men who could have held themselves together after what you'd been through.'

‘Having survived Eton, you're prepared for anything,' Soames said, almost mournfully. Then a sudden anger entered his voice, and he added, ‘Don't you
dare
say you admire me – I don't want admiration from a man like you.'

‘You must have panicked when you learned the body was being sent back home,' Blackstone said, ‘because while whoever examined Fortesque here might have accepted that he'd been battered to death, it wouldn't have taken long for a good police surgeon in England to work out that he'd been shot. So you dashed to Calais and stole the body.'