Blackstone and the Great War

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Balderdash,’ Carstairs said, unconvincingly.

  ‘You wouldn’t have reacted like that if I’d been one of your young lieutenants,’ Blackstone continued. ‘You’d have been annoyed, certainly. You’d have torn a strip off him, undoubtedly. You may even have put him on some kind of punishment parade. But you wouldn’t have felt the rage. And why did you feel it when I helped myself to a drink – because I’m a jumped-up ex-sergeant who refuses to even call you “sir”!’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Carstairs mumbled.

  ‘It’s exactly as simple as that,’ Blackstone contradicted him. ‘If the circumstances are right, anyone can kill anyone. And that’s why I’m here – to find out what those circumstances were.’

  ‘I want to make one thing absolutely clear,’ Carstairs said, in a tone which was both chilling and resolute. ‘I love this regiment, and if you do anything which affects either the morale of the men I command or the honour of the regiment, I will kill you – and damn the consequences!’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Blackstone said.

  FOUR

  Soon, the sun would appear on the horizon behind the German lines, and light would begin to filter down into the trench. For the moment, however, the only illumination that Blackstone and Carstairs had was from the captain’s flashlight, its beam bobbing along the trench floor in front of them – and it was like walking in a tunnel.

  ‘If you once get lost down here, you can be wandering about for hours, trying to find your way back,’ Carstairs warned.

  Blackstone did not doubt it. The trench system was more complex than he would ever have imagined it could be. In addition to the reserve trenches, there were not only the fire trenches – the front line for both armies – but also the relief trenches and countless communication trenches which intersected and criss-crossed each other with bewildering regularity. It was almost like a small town, with its highways and byways, alleys and cul-de-sacs.

  As the narrow communication trench joined the much wider fire trench, Carstairs came to a halt.

  ‘The General’s wasting both my time and yours, you know,’ he said. ‘You’ll never catch your killer.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Blackstone wondered. ‘Is it that you share Captain Huxton’s conviction that he’s probably already dead?’

  ‘I try to share as little as possible with Captain Huxton,’ Carstairs said disdainfully. ‘But on this occasion – and more by luck than judgement – he might well be right. We lost fifty per cent of the platoon in the offensive, which means logically, that there’s a fifty per cent chance the killer was amongst them. But even if he survived – and any possible witnesses survived along with him – you still have no chance of making your case.’

  ‘And why’s that?

  ‘Let me tell you a story,’ Carstairs suggested. ‘I heard it from another officer, a man I’d trust with my life, so though I can’t personally vouch for it, I’m sure it’s true. It seems that a sanitary-man was in the area between the fire line and support trench one night, and was in the process of burying the night-soil he’d taken from the latrine when he was killed by a stray bullet. By the time he was discovered, rigor mortis had set in, and his right arm, which had been stretched out at the moment he died, was as stiff as a board. Well, I suppose the recovery party could have broken the arm, but they didn’t. They brought the dead man back to the trench and laid him out on the fire line, where he was to stay until the burial party could pick him up and take him to the graveyard.’ Carstairs paused. ‘We do like to give the men a proper burial whenever we can, you know.’

  ‘Now that is kind of you,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Don’t you dare ridicule me in that way!’ Carstairs said, suddenly angry. ‘I care about my men – I might not like them, but I do care about them. And whenever possible, I treat their bodies with the respect they deserve.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Blackstone said.

  And so he was, because he recognized that – within his limits – the captain was both a decent man and a decent officer.

  ‘But that’s not the point I was about to make,’ Carstairs continued. ‘They laid the dead man on the fire step, but because his arm was sticking out, it inevitably blocked a good half of the trench. And how do you think the other men reacted to that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Blackstone admitted.

  ‘Most of them treated the arm as if it were a turnstile at a football ground – just brushed it aside and, as they did so, said things like, “Don’t get in the way, you selfish old bugger.” Some of them actually shook the dead hand, and asked him how he was getting on. They’d known the man while he was alive – they’d been his comrades, for God’s sake – but now that he was dead, he was no more than a comic prop for them.’

  Perhaps he was, Blackstone thought – but perhaps treating him as a comic prop was the only way they had of dealing with his death.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ he asked aloud.

  ‘So that you’ll understand what this war – more than any which has preceded it – has done to the common soldier. He feels no compassion – not even for his own kind. So why should he care who killed Lieutenant Fortesque? And even if he knew, why should he bother to tell you?’

  They turned on to the fire trench. The platoon occupying it was lined up in strict military order, under the watchful eye of their lieutenant and sergeant.

  ‘If an attack comes, it will either be at dawn or dusk, and that’s why we’re always ready at those times,’ Carstairs told Blackstone.

  If he’d been Captain Huxton, he might have added an oafish, ‘I know these things, and you don’t – and your lack of knowledge about what goes on here is yet another reason that you’ll never find your killer.’

  But Carstairs, being more subtle than Huxton, knew there was no need to add it, because it was obvious enough, Blackstone thought.

  ‘None of those men will have been here the morning that Lieutenant Fortesque was murdered, will they?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘No,’ Carstairs replied. ‘The survivors of that platoon will have been rotated after the offensive. They’re most probably in the village of St Denis.’

  As they approached the platoon, the lieutenant turned and saluted.

  ‘Anything wrong, sir?’ he asked with all the anxiety of a young man who does not fear death, but lives in perpetual trepidation of doing something which does not conform to the correct military code.

  ‘Nothing at all wrong, Toby,’ Carstairs assured him. He glanced at the platoon. ‘Your men are very well turned-out, under the circumstances. You’re doing a splendid job.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ the lieutenant said, with a barely disguised sigh of relief.

  Carstairs looked up at the lightening sky. ‘Any minute now,’ he said to the lieutenant.

  ‘Any minute now, sir,’ the lieutenant agreed.

  The stillness of the air was suddenly shattered by loud explosions from both the British artillery and the German guns.

  Blackstone, who had been under fire more times than he cared to remember, still found it hard to believe that anything could generate this amount of noise.

  ‘The men call this the Morning Hate,’ Carstairs said, shouting to be heard above the din. ‘It normally lasts for about ten minutes.’

  ‘And does it achieve anything?’ Blackstone bawled back.

  ‘A few lucky shots might produce some casualties, and it certainly shreds some of the weaker men’s nerves – but apart from that, it doesn’t achieve a damn thing!’ Carstairs replied. He turned to the lieutenant, and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Could I have your periscope for a moment, Toby?’

  The lieutenant handed the periscope to Carstairs, and Carstairs handed it to Blackstone.

  ‘Why don’t you take a look at the world outside, Mr Blackstone?’ the captain suggested.

  Blackstone raised the periscope and looked out on to No Man’s Land. It was the barbed wire fence he saw first – a compl
ex twisted tangle of wicked spikes, stretched tautly between strong posts and gleaming in the early light.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, and imagined himself dashing across No Man’s Land under heavy enemy fire – knowing that his only hope of salvation lay in reaching the enemy trench – and then suddenly coming up against this evil, impenetrable web of sharpened metal. There could be no despair in the whole world quite like that, he thought.

  Yet that was just what had happened to Lieutenant Fortesque’s platoon, the morning after he died. The big guns were supposed to have cut the wire, but they hadn’t – and there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

  Blackstone took a deep breath, and looked beyond the fire to a meadow, glistening green as the sun caught the morning dew. There were summer flowers, too, poking up between the lush blades. But there were also holes – deep pits made by the shells which landed short of their target, and gouged up the earth.

  Beyond the meadow was more barbed wire – German, this time – and beyond even that, the enemy lines.

  ‘Seen enough?’ Carstairs shouted into his ear.

  ‘More than enough,’ Blackstone told him.

  ‘Then we’ll go and look at the dugout,’ the captain said.

  The dugout where Lieutenant Fortesque met his death was located midway down the section of trench.

  Captain Carstairs opened the door, and waved Blackstone through.

  ‘Here you have it,’ he said. ‘The scene of the crime.’

  The bombardment continued, but it did not seem quite as loud inside the dugout as it was outside, and when Carstairs spoke again, it was almost in his normal voice.

  ‘When you were looking through the periscope, did you happen to notice the pits that the shells had made?’ he asked.

  ‘It would have been hard to miss them,’ Blackstone replied, grimly.

  ‘They’re where the wounded crawl to die,’ Carstairs said. ‘There are bodies lying at the bottom of most of them. Once in a while, we get the opportunity to clear them out, but by then, the rats and the maggots have done their work, and they hardly look like men at all.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ Blackstone wondered.

  ‘I’m doing it because I want you to see the world through our eyes,’ Carstairs said.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘In your world, death is a significant event, but out here it’s commonplace and relatively unimportant. It’s not human life that we value here – it’s those things that we are shedding our lives to protect that truly matter.’

  ‘Like patriotism?’ Blackstone suggested.

  ‘Yes, like patriotism,’ Carstairs agreed wearily. ‘But, above all, it is honour that drives us – our own, and that of the regiment.’

  Blackstone nodded, then looked around him.

  This dugout was smaller than the one which served as the company headquarters, he noted, but in all other respects it was very similar. There was a rough wooden table (with two upright chairs), a wind-up gramophone, an easy chair and a camp bed.

  ‘When we found Lieutenant Fortesque, he was sitting at the table, facing the door,’ Carstairs said. ‘As you probably already know, his skull was completely smashed in.’

  ‘What direction did the attack come from?’ Blackstone asked. ‘Was he hit from behind – or from the front?’

  ‘Neither from the front, nor from behind,’ Captain Carstairs said. He touched the side of his own head lightly, with his right hand. ‘This was where he was struck. And from the damage done, I would judge it was not one blow, but several. There were fragments of bone all over the floor.’

  ‘Which probably led you to believe that the killer was in a state of rage,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Naturally,’ Carstairs agreed. And then something in Blackstone’s tone made him reconsider his response. ‘Is there any reason I shouldn’t have thought that? Aren’t all murderers enraged?’

  ‘Some are,’ Blackstone said, ‘and some of them commit their crimes as coldly and unemotionally as if they were slicing a loaf of bread. Some walk away from their crime sickened by what they’ve done, and some have never felt happier. The only rule of thumb in a murder investigation is that there is no rule of thumb.’

  ‘But we’ve already agreed that it was a particularly violent attack,’ Carstairs protested. ‘And if the killer wasn’t enraged, why did he continue long after it must have been obvious to him that Fortesque was already dead?’

  ‘Maybe he wanted to give the impression of being enraged, even though he wasn’t,’ Blackstone said. ‘Or perhaps he actually was in a fury. At the moment, we’ve no way of knowing.’ He looked around the room again. ‘Have you found the murder weapon yet?’

  ‘No, we haven’t,’ Carstairs said.

  ‘Do you know if Captain Huxton’s men even bothered to look for it?’ Blackstone wondered.

  ‘No, I don’t know, as a matter of fact,’ Carstairs admitted. ‘What I do know is that if I’d been in his place, I wouldn’t have wasted my men’s time on such a pointless exercise.’

  ‘Pointless?’ Blackstone repeated quizzically.

  Carstairs sighed. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in a trench – in the middle of a bloody war,’ he said. ‘There’s any number of things lying around that the killer could have used. There are hammers, there are shovels – he might even have used the butt of his rifle. Of course, you could look for something that had a bloodstain on it, but given that a German shell fell in this trench two days before the murder – blowing up three men in the process – you’d be very lucky to find something that wasn’t bloodstained.’

  ‘You said he might have used his rifle butt,’ Blackstone mused.

  ‘And so he might.’

  Because it was an enlisted man who killed Fortesque, wasn’t it, Blackstone thought. It just had to be an enlisted man.

  ‘Who has access to this dugout?’ he asked.

  ‘The officer who is on duty, his servant, a visiting officer, a sergeant making a report . . .’ Carstairs paused. ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘Do enlisted men ever enter the dugout?’

  ‘Of course not! The dugout is the officer’s sanctum.’

  ‘Is it possible that Lieutenant Fortesque might have summoned one of the enlisted men?’

  Carstairs shook his head, almost pityingly. ‘I don’t know how things worked in your day, Sergeant, but in my army, an officer does not address the men directly, but instead communicates with them through an NCO.’

  Thus avoiding the unpleasant necessity of breathing the same air as a member of the working class, Blackstone thought.

  He’d been right in the assumption he’d made in the command dugout – the army hadn’t changed at all.

  ‘An officer doesn’t address the men directly, yet, according to your theory, one of the enlisted men did enter this bunker,’ he said to the captain.

  Carstairs laughed at the detective’s obvious stupidity.

  ‘It would be a serious breach of regulations for a common soldier to enter the dugout without permission,’ he agreed, ‘but given that he had his mind set on a cowardly murder, he was probably more than willing to wave such minor considerations aside.’

  ‘So the killer checks there’s no one watching, bursts into the dugout, and kills the lieutenant,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Exactly!’ Carstairs agreed.

  ‘Then why was the blow which killed Fortesque delivered to the side of his head?’ Blackstone asked.

  A frown filled Carstairs’ face. ‘I’m not following you.’

  ‘Didn’t you say that Fortesque was sitting in his chair, facing the door?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Carstairs agreed, puzzled. ‘What of it?’

  ‘I have a theory,’ Blackstone explained. ‘Would you mind sitting where Fortesque was sitting, so that we can test it out?’

  ‘All right,’ Carstairs agreed, walking around the table and sitting down facing the entrance.

  ‘I won’t be a moment,’ Blackstone told h
im, opening the door and stepping out into the trench.

  The bombardment had stopped, and the soldiers were squatting on the duckboards, eating the breakfasts which had been sent up from the field kitchen. Blackstone nodded to them, but only one or two nodded back. And even then, it was a cautious nod – a nod which said, ‘Judging by the way you’re dressed, you might just be on our side – but we’re not putting any money on it.’

  Blackstone turned, opened the door again, and re-entered the dugout.

  ‘Well?’ Carstairs demanded. ‘Are you going to tell me about this theory of yours, or must we continue playing silly bloody games?’

  ‘If you were facing the other way – towards the back of the dugout – you might not even have noticed I’d come in,’ Blackstone said, ‘but you’re not facing the back of it – and neither was Fortesque.’

  ‘So what’s your point?’

  ‘You’re Fortesque, and you see an enlisted man enter your dugout without your permission. What do you do?’

  ‘I ask him what the devil he thinks he’s doing.’

  ‘Exactly! And what does the killer say?’

  ‘How the hell would I know?’

  ‘Remember, this is a major breach of protocol, so Fortesque is both outraged and on his guard. If the killer wishes to blindside him in order to deliver the fatal blow, he must first calm him down. I’m right, aren’t I?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘So how does he go about doing that?’

  Carstairs considered the matter.

  ‘He makes up some excuse for being here,’ he said finally.

  ‘Like what?’

  The captain shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps he says that there’s an emergency further down the trench.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he report that to the sergeant?’

  ‘Normally he would, but perhaps he tells Lieutenant Fortesque he can’t find the sergeant.’

  ‘Let’s try that theory out,’ Blackstone suggested. ‘When I next speak, I don’t want you to think about what I’ve said – I want you to react instinctively.’

  ‘All right,’ Carstairs agreed.