Blackstone and the Great War isb-3

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Tell her that when I get home on leave, I’ll take her out dancing, if that’s what she wants,’ Clay says.

  ‘Sounds a bit flat, that,’ Jones tells him.

  ‘So what do you think I could say?’

  ‘How about, “When I come home to your loving arms, my darling, I’ll take you dancing and whisk you off your feet.” Doesn’t that sound better?’

  ‘It does,’ Clay replies happily. ‘You’re a bit of a poet on the sly, ain’t you, Jonesey?’

  Absorbed in their task, neither hears the officer approaching, and it is only when Hatfield bellows, ‘Sergeant!’ that they even realize he is there.

  The sergeant strides up the trench. ‘Sir!’

  ‘These men have just insulted me, Sergeant,’ Hatfield says.

  ‘Have you just insulted the officer?’ the sergeant demands.

  ‘No, Sarge,’ Clay protests. ‘We didn’t say nothing to him. We was just talking to each other.’

  ‘Does he take me for a complete fool?’ Hatfield demands — and though he is trying to sound angry, it is not really convincing. ‘He called me a useless bastard. I heard him distinctly.’

  ‘I never. .’ Clay begins.

  ‘Is he calling me a liar now?’ Hatfield interrupts.

  ‘Are you calling the officer a liar now?’ the sergeant demands.

  ‘No, Sarge,’ Clay says, ‘but I never. .’

  ‘I want both these men putting on a charge,’ Hatfield says. ‘They’ll pay dearly for insulting me — I can promise them that.’

  ‘Lieutenant Hatfield had them brought to the lock-up here in St Denis,’ Mick said. ‘And the funny thing is, they weren’t even his own men — they were from Lieutenant Fortesque’s platoon.’

  Strange that Hatfield should have done that, Blackstone thought.

  It did not reflect well on an officer when an enlisted man dared to insult him, which was why some of the weaker officers would pretend not to hear — yet he had chosen to make a big issue out of it.

  ‘Were they charged?’ he asked.

  ‘No, that was the strange thing,’ Mick said. ‘The next morning they were released, and told to report to Lieutenant Maude.’

  ‘You’re sure that was who they were told to report to?’ Blackstone asked. ‘It wasn’t to Lieutenant Hatfield, who’d had them arrested, was it? Or Lieutenant Fortesque, who was their platoon commander?’

  ‘It was Maude,’ Mick said firmly. ‘I mean, think about it, Mr Blackstone, Lieutenant Hatfield couldn’t have seen them, could he — because that would have been like admitting he’d been wrong to put them on a charge.’

  ‘True,’ Blackstone agreed.

  ‘And as for Lieutenant Fortesque,’ Mick continued, ‘well, he was dead by then.’

  ‘Of course he was,’ Blackstone said. ‘Carry on.’

  Maude is sitting at the table in his dugout, a glass of whisky in his hand, when the sergeant marches Jones and Clay in.

  ‘Lieutenant Hatfield has been thinking over the incident which occurred yesterday, and has decided he may have misheard what you said,’ he tells the two privates.

  ‘Honest, sir, I would never have-’ Clay says.

  ‘Shut your mouth, Private Clay!’ the sergeant screams.

  ‘Since there now appears to be some element of doubt, Lieutenant Hatfield is willing to drop the charges against you,’ Maude continues, with a smile that could almost, but for its cold edges, have been considered benevolent. ‘Now that is good news, isn’t it?’

  Jones and Clay say nothing.

  ‘Answer the officer!’ the sergeant bellows.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Jones and Clay mumble in unison.

  ‘I can’t hear you!’ Maude says harshly.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the two men repeat, louder this time.

  Maude nods his head.

  ‘You’ve been lucky on this occasion,’ he tells Jones and Clay. ‘Very lucky. You are to return to your normal duties immediately, and, if I were you, I would take the first opportunity I got to thank Lieutenant Hatfield — through his sergeant, of course — for your release.’

  Maude’s sergeant looks at the lieutenant, and when Maude nods, he says, ‘Dismissed.’

  Jones and Clay salute, and then execute a smart military turn.

  ‘Just a second!’ Maude says. ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’

  Jones feels his heart sink. He has already spent one night in the lock-up, and he does not want to endure another.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he says, hoping that is what was expected.

  ‘Thank you?’ Maude repeats, mystified. ‘What are you thanking me for?’

  Oh God, what does he want me to say, Jones thinks desperately. Oh God, oh God, oh God. .

  ‘For. . for taking the time to talk to us like this’ he says finally. ‘For explaining things.’

  Maude scowls. ‘I’m your superior, not your kindly Uncle Fred,’ he says. ‘I neither expect, nor want, your thanks.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry, sir, but if it’s not that, I don’t know what. .’

  ‘I asked you if you had forgotten anything. Well, have you?’

  ‘No, sir, I don’t think so,’ says Jones, in a complete panic now. ‘At least I can’t-’

  Maude raises his hand to silence him, then points with his index finger to the corner of the room.

  ‘Your rifle, man! Your bloody rifle!’

  Jones feels an enormous sense of relief.

  His rifle!

  Of course!

  The redcaps had relieved them of their rifles when they were arrested, and now both weapons are propped up in the corner.

  ‘Your rifle is your best and only true friend, Private Jones,’ Maude says. ‘It should be such a part of you that you feel incomplete without it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but what with all the worry-’

  Maude raises his hand to silence him again.

  ‘Collect your weapon and leave,’ he says.

  Hatfield’s putting the two men on a charge in the first place had been a mistake, Blackstone thought, but withdrawing the charges was a bigger one — because there were only two possible conclusions that his superiors can draw from this.

  The first conclusion was that Hatfield was publicly admitting that he’d been wrong — a fatal error on the part of an officer.

  The second was even worse — that he had been so weak that his men had bullied him into backing down.

  And whichever interpretation they chose to put on it, Hatfield had seriously damaged his career.

  But perhaps having the two privates arrested had been nothing more than a small part of a bigger plan, in which Hatfield’s own military advancement was of no importance, Blackstone thought — a plan, formulated by Maude, of course! — which had come to fruition with the murder of Lieutenant Fortesque.

  He closed his eyes, and tried to picture what might have happened shortly before Hatfield made his accusation.

  Jones and Clay respect Lieutenant Fortesque — and even like him, as much as an enlisted man is ever allowed to like an officer — but they are still nervous about being summoned to his dugout without a sergeant in attendance.

  Fortesque seems nervous himself.

  ‘I think of you men as my comrades,’ he says. ‘I would die to protect you, if that was necessary.’

  You are not supposed to nod in the presence of an officer, but Jones and Clay can’t help themselves, because what Fortesque had just said is quite true.

  ‘I have reason to believe my life is in danger,’ Fortesque says.

  Jones chuckles instinctively, then, realizing what he’s done, clamps his mouth tightly shut.

  ‘Have I said something funny, Private Jones?’ Fortesque asks angrily.

  ‘No, sir. Sorry, sir,’ Jones mumbles. ‘I didn’t mean to laugh, but of course your life’s in danger. All our lives are in danger. We’re all in the middle of a bloody war.’

  Fortesque relaxes a little. ‘I apologize for not explaining myself more clearly. What
I meant to say was that my life is in danger from someone in these trenches.’

  Clay and Jones could not be more shocked if a German shell had landed just behind them.

  ‘Who’d want to kill you, sir?’ Clay asks.

  And there, he would have had a problem, Blackstone thought. All the training he has received — all the assumptions he holds dear — tell him that he cannot criticize a brother officer to an enlisted man.

  ‘I can’t tell you who’s threatening me — not now,’ Fortesque says. ‘But I’d like you to watch my back for me, and if you see someone about to take my life, then for God’s sake step in — whoever that someone might be. Will you do that for me?’

  ‘Of course we will, sir,’ Jones and Clay say in unison.

  Somehow, Maude finds out about the meeting, Blackstone thought. And when he does, he realizes that he will have to find a way to have the two privates removed if the plan is ever to be put into effect.

  ‘There was an offensive the next day. Did Clay and Jones survive it?’ he asked Mick hopefully.

  The young soldier shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’

  Of course they hadn’t. It would be far too easy if they had!

  But maybe there was still a way to prove a link — and to tie that link to Maude and his pals.

  ‘Ask the other lads if they noticed Clay and Jones talking to Lieutenant Fortesque shortly before their arrest,’ he said.

  ‘Officers don’t talk to enlisted men,’ Mick pointed out.

  ‘Ask anyway,’ Blackstone said firmly.

  ‘Is that it?’ Mick asked, disappointedly.

  ‘No,’ Blackstone told him. ‘The other thing I want you to do is build up a picture of what life was like in that trench in those last few hours before Fortesque was murdered.’

  ‘It will have been like any other night in the trenches, won’t it?’ Mick asked, puzzled.

  ‘Mostly, it will,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘But there will have been things that happened that didn’t ordinarily happen, and I want you to find out about them, because they just might be connected to the murder.’

  Enlightenment dawned on Mick’s face.

  ‘Before I met you, I thought that all coppers were good at was beating a confession out of lads like me, but you’ve got a real head on your shoulders,’ he said, with frank admiration.

  Blackstone smiled at him. ‘Thanks, Mick.’

  ‘I’ll be back with everything you need to know in an hour,’ Mick said, enthusiastically.

  Too soon! Far too soon!

  ‘I don’t want you going at it like a bull in a china shop, Mick,’ Blackstone warned. ‘I want you to be a little subtler than that.’

  ‘Subtler?’ Mick repeated. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t ask the lads directly if anything unusual happened,’ Blackstone explained. ‘Get them talking in general terms, and if anything strikes you as not quite right, say something like, “That’s odd.” Do you see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘I think so,’ Mick said, unconvincingly.

  ‘The real trick to getting the right answers to important questions is to seem as if you’re not actually asking any questions at all,’ Blackstone amplified.

  ‘Oh, you mean I should be sneaky.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Mick grinned. ‘Well, why didn’t you just say that in the first place?’

  Blackstone grinned back — it was hard not to.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ he admitted. ‘That’s just what I should have done.’

  ‘But say, even being very sneaky and very careful, I do find out something that could be important in the next hour or so, I should come to you straight away, shouldn’t I?’ Mick asked, bubbling over with enthusiasm again.

  ‘You won’t discover anything important in an hour,’ Blackstone said. ‘If you go about it in the right way, it could take you days before you come up with anything.’

  ‘But say I did,’ Mick persisted.

  ‘There’d be no point in coming back even if you’d solved the whole mystery — because I won’t be here,’ Blackstone said firmly.

  ‘Then I’ll go wherever you are, and-’

  ‘You won’t be able to do that, because I’ll be out of reach.’

  Mick looked very disappointed. ‘Oh, where will you be, then?’

  ‘I’m off on a trip to the seaside,’ Blackstone told him.

  FIFTEEN

  The band — playing loud and strident military music — could be heard long before it could be seen, and a shiver of anticipation was already running through the waiting crowd.

  Archie Patterson, standing in that waiting crowd, rocked on his heels in perfect contentment.

  It would have been criminal to have visited the royal town of Windsor without watching the ceremonial changing of the guard at the castle, he thought — and anyway, as a loyal subject of His Majesty the King, it was virtually almost his duty to grasp the opportunity when it was presented to him.

  The military band appeared further down the street — tall men made even taller by the high bearskin hats they all wore, marching in perfect step, and with perfect resolution.

  The American tourist who was standing next to Patterson gasped at the spectacle, and Patterson himself experienced a sudden surge of full-blown patriotic pride.

  Behind the band came the New Guard, led by a captain with his sword drawn and pointing to the sky.

  ‘Gee, they really know how to do things over here in England,’ the American woman said to her husband.

  ‘It’s just a show, honey,’ the husband growled back. ‘It doesn’t actually mean anything.’

  Patterson chuckled to himself.

  The disgruntled husband sounded just like Sam Blackstone, who might have admired the discipline on display, but would have had no time for pomp and ceremony, he thought.

  The New Guard entered the castle grounds, and was met by the Old Guard. The two captains approached each other, then touched left hands, which was symbolic of handing over both the keys and the responsibility for guarding the monarch.

  Sam Blackstone didn’t have much time for the royal family, either, Patterson reflected — which was ironic when you considered that he had once risked his own life in order to save that of the Queen.

  The New Guard had taken up its position, and the Old Guard began its march back to its barracks.

  Patterson turned his back on the castle, and crossed the bridge which led into Eton. The changing of the guard, as impressive as it had been, was only an appetizer, he told himself with relish — the real treat of the day was yet to come.

  Ahead of him, he could see the towers and crenellations of Eton College. The college had been founded when most of the London that he knew was still countryside. Fifteen British prime ministers — and many of the young officers now serving on the Western Front — had been educated there. It had stood on the same spot for nearly six hundred years — and if someone had assured Patterson it would still be there in another thousand, he would have accepted the assurance readily.

  The closer he drew to the college, the more the ‘natives’ were in evidence — and a strange tribe they were! The boys were all wearing black tailcoats, waistcoats and pinstriped trousers, but some wore a black gown as well.

  The wheels in Patterson’s encyclopaedic mind whirred and clicked.

  The ones in the gowns are King’s Scholars — the brightest of the bunch, he told himself. Nicknamed tugs, from the Latin, togati — wearers of cloaks.

  What else did he know?

  He knew that all the older boys had one of the younger boys assigned to him as a fag — or personal servant.

  He knew that when one of the senior boys — for some reason called a Library member — wanted some errand running, he simply called out ‘Boy, Up,’ and every first year boy within earshot was obliged to come running.

  He knew that members of Sixth Form Select were allowed to wear silver buttons on their waistcoats, and that House Captains could wear a mott
led-grey waistcoat.

  And though he didn’t like to admit it, he was starting to see some point to Sam Blackstone’s disdain for pomp and ceremony.

  He grinned to himself. He loved meeting people who had an unjustifiably high opinion of themselves, he thought. They were so much fun to play with.

  General Fortesque sat at his desk, deep in troubled thought. He was wondering if he had been open enough with the chubby detective from Scotland Yard, or if he should have told him more.

  ‘You don’t know any more,’ he said aloud. ‘You do no more than suspect — and even that’s putting things too strongly.’

  Besides, suspicion, if it was to be of any value, must have a firm foundation of expert knowledge, he argued to himself — just as it had always done in his soldiering days.

  He thought back to a time — long ago — when he’d been in command of a small company of cavalry men, out on a routine reconnaissance mission in the high Hindu Kush.

  Military intelligence had assured him before he set out that there were no hostiles in the area. His scouts had reported the same. But the enemy were not the only people not in evidence. There was no sign of the caravans of traders, bringing goods from British India across the mountain passes, either. And not a single villager had come to the camp he had established, attempting to sell dried fruits and ‘good clean girls’ to his men. They knew something — those traders and villagers — and he needed to know what that something was.

  The tribesmen were planning a surprise attack, he decided. It was the only possible explanation. But where would the attack come from?

  He had made a detailed study of the tactics they had used in the past, and had discussed those tactics with friendly tribal leaders, and looking round him now, he fixed his attention on a ridge in the near distance.

  The enemy were behind the ridge at that very moment. He could sense it. But he knew that since it was the eve of Friday, they would never think of attacking before their holy day was over.

  He deployed his men under the cover of darkness, and as dawn broke on Friday, he was ready to launch his own attack. He had still not known, even an hour before the attack, whether, by the end of the morning, he would be regarded as a hero or a fool.

  ‘It turned out that my suspicions were right,’ he told his study wall. ‘But I would never have had them if I hadn’t already known something about the way the Afghans thought and acted.’