Blackstone and the Great War

by Sally Spencer

  ‘What I don’t see is why, if you hardly ever left the dugout, you weren’t there when Lieutenant Fortesque was killed,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Oh, that was because he’d sent me on an errand,’ Blenkinsop told him.

  It was half an hour, to the second, when Corporal Johnson and the other two redcaps returned.

  ‘We’ve come for the prisoner,’ Johnson said – as though that wasn’t already obvious.

  ‘Take him outside,’ Blackstone said to the other two redcaps. ‘But I don’t want him locking up yet.’

  ‘If you don’t mind—’ Johnson began.

  ‘But I do mind,’ Blackstone interrupted. ‘I mind very strongly. And once the other three are outside, Corporal Johnson, you and I are going to have another one of our cosy little chats – at the end of which, even someone like you should be able to see why I mind.’

  Johnson nodded to the other two redcaps, who grabbed Blenkinsop and frogmarched him out of the room.

  Blackstone waited until they’d closed the door behind them, then said, ‘Tell me, Corporal Johnson, before you arrested Blenkinsop, did you bother to check out his alibi?’

  ‘He didn’t give me one,’ Johnson said, as if that were all the defence he needed. ‘He just kept babbling on about how he hadn’t killed the lieutenant.’

  ‘So he didn’t give you one – and you didn’t think – even for a moment – to ask him if he had one?’

  ‘There was no need to, was there?’ Johnson replied. ‘Captain Carstairs’ note made it quite clear that he was the guilty man.’

  What was the matter with these people? Blackstone wondered – although he already knew the answer.

  ‘Blenkinsop claims that Lieutenant Fortesque stayed up all night, drinking whisky,’ he said.

  ‘Officers do that kind of thing,’ Johnson said. ‘It’s because they’re gentlemen, you see.’

  ‘Though if an ordinary man did it, you’d just call him a drunk – and lash him to the wheel in the town square,’ Blackstone pointed out.

  ‘It’s not the same thing at all,’ Johnson said stubbornly.

  ‘How is it different?’

  ‘I can’t explain it – it just is.’

  Because the officers said it was, Blackstone thought.

  ‘Blenkinsop also says that, as a result of spending all night “being a gentleman”, Lieutenant Fortesque had drained his bottle by an hour before dawn,’ he continued.

  ‘That’s possible.’

  ‘And that the lieutenant ordered him to go and get another bottle from the quartermaster’s office in the reserve trench.’

  ‘Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? A man who’s worried about being shot will say anything.’

  ‘Yes, he will – and sometimes, it will even be the truth.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Blenkinsop says he can produce witnesses who will support his claim. He says that when he left for the reserve trench, there were several other privates near the dugout, and they can testify that Lieutenant Fortesque was standing in the doorway, alive and well.’

  ‘I don’t see—’ Johnson began.

  ‘You mean, you don’t want to see,’ Blackstone interrupted him. ‘Blenkinsop further claims it took him about twenty minutes to reach the reserve trench. That would be about right, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘More or less,’ Johnson said reluctantly.

  ‘And that when he did reach the reserve trench, the supplies still hadn’t arrived, and he had to wait until they did. All of which meant that by the time he returned to the dugout, Lieutenant Fortesque’s body had already been discovered. Have you got all that clearly in your mind, Corporal Johnson? When Blenkinsop left, Fortesque was alive – and when Blenkinsop returned, Fortesque was dead.’

  ‘He could have doubled back,’ Johnson said.

  ‘Would there have been time?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then bloody well find out!’

  ‘He was the only enlisted man who could have got close enough to Lieutenant Fortesque . . .’ Johnson muttered, mantra-like.

  ‘Did you question Blenkinsop shortly after the lieutenant’s body was discovered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the trench, of course. Just outside the dugout.’

  ‘And was he holding a whisky bottle in his hand?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Oh come on!’ Blackstone said, exasperatedly.

  ‘I was investigating the murder of an officer. A whisky bottle’s not something you notice at times like that.’

  ‘Well, here’s something you will have noticed,’ Blackstone said. ‘Was the front of his uniform soaked with blood?’

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘You did see Lieutenant Fortesque’s injuries for yourself, didn’t you, Corporal Johnson?’

  ‘Well, yes . . . I . . .’

  ‘And was it at all possible for the man who inflicted them not to have been covered in blood?’

  ‘Well, no – but he could have changed into another uniform.’

  ‘The army must have altered a great deal since my day,’ Blackstone said, ‘because, back then, enlisted men didn’t have spare uniforms they could simply change into.’

  ‘They don’t now,’ Johnson said worriedly.

  ‘But officers do, don’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Let me ask you that question again,’ Blackstone said menacingly. ‘Do officers have spare uniforms?’

  ‘Some of them might,’ Johnson conceded.

  ‘I want you to examine Blenkinsop’s alibi carefully,’ Blackstone said. ‘And if it checks out – and it will check out, because he hasn’t got the imagination to have invented it – I want you to release him. Is that clear?’

  ‘It’s clear,’ Johnson said, dejectedly.

  ‘Are the other men I wanted to talk to still waiting outside?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then send one of them in.’

  The private who took Blenkinsop’s place in the chair opposite Blackstone was called Hicks. He was about twenty-two or twenty-three, and had intelligent eyes.

  ‘What did you do before you joined up?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘I was a cooper,’ Hicks said. ‘I followed my old man into the trade. And between us, sir, we made the best beer barrels in the whole of London. You could always tell if you were drinking your bitter out of one of our barrels – somehow, it just tasted better.’

  Blackstone smiled at the young soldier’s obvious enthusiasm for the work that the war had robbed him of, but before he went any further, he wanted to make sure that Hicks was as steady as he seemed to be.

  ‘Have you ever been in any trouble with the police?’ he asked.

  Hicks grinned. ‘Have I ever been in trouble with the police?’ he repeated. ‘With a dad like mine to answer to? You’ve got to be joking, sir.’

  ‘He’s a bit of a hard case, is he?’

  ‘Not really,’ Hicks said seriously. ‘As a matter of fact, he never raised a hand to me when I was growing up – not even once. But if I’d ever done anything to bring the coppers round our house, he’d have thrashed me within an inch of my life – and I’d have deserved it!’

  Blackstone nodded.

  Hicks was just the kind of witness every policeman dreamed of – law-abiding, sober, and hard-working.

  ‘I want to ask you what happened in the trench the morning Lieutenant Fortesque was killed,’ he said.

  ‘All right,’ Hicks replied.

  But already, his free and open attitude was starting to evaporate, and a note of caution was creeping into his voice.

  ‘Blenkinsop says that the lieutenant sent him off for a bottle of whisky about an hour before dawn,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘That’s right, he did,’ Hicks agreed, relaxing a little.

  ‘You saw him yourself, did you?’

  ‘I certainly did. As clear as I’m seeing you now. And I can go even
further than that – I heard what the lieutenant said to him.’

  ‘And what did he say to him?’

  ‘He said, “Quick as you can, Blenkinsop. I really need that drink”.’

  ‘Did you see anybody enter the dugout after Blenkinsop had left?’ Blackstone asked.

  Hicks’ eyes suddenly went blank.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ he said in a wooden voice.

  ‘Nobody at all?’ Blackstone persisted.

  ‘Not a soul.’

  ‘So the lieutenant bashed his own brains in, did he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Blackstone sighed. ‘What sort of officer was Lieutenant Charles Fortesque?’ he asked.

  ‘A good one,’ Hicks replied, without hesitation. ‘One of the best. Nobody wants to charge into the jaws of hell, but if you have to do it, then you want a bloke like Lieutenant Fortesque leading you.’

  ‘And yet – despite your obvious admiration for him – you don’t want to see his killer brought to justice?’ Blackstone asked.

  Hicks looked guiltily at the table. ‘If I thought I could help you, sir, then I would,’ he muttered.

  ‘You can help me,’ Blackstone said. ‘All you need to do is tell me who you saw going into the dugout.’

  ‘What if the person I saw was an officer?’ Hicks asked.

  ‘What if it was?’

  ‘They’re never going to charge an officer with the murder, are they? You could have a watertight case against him, and he’d still get away with it, because his kind always will.’

  ‘Give me his name,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘But what would happen to the poor bloke who fingered him?’ Hicks continued, ignoring him. ‘Well, that’s a different matter entirely, isn’t it? He’d be a marked man.’

  ‘No one need ever know you’d told me,’ Blackstone assured him.

  ‘They’d find out,’ Hicks said fatalistically. ‘Somehow, they always seem to find out.’

  ‘Just give me the name,’ Blackstone coaxed.

  ‘There was no officer, except for Lieutenant Fortesque, in the trench that night,’ Hicks said firmly. ‘Or if there was, I certainly didn’t see him.’

  With minor variations, Blackstone got the same story from the rest of the platoon. Most of the men had seen Blenkinsop leave, and several of them had heard his exchange with Lieutenant Fortesque. But none of them had seen anyone – least of all an officer – enter the dugout after Blenkinsop had left.

  Blackstone lit up a cigarette, and wondered what to do next.

  Well, he finally decided, after a couple of puffs, if the men who were treated like monkeys weren’t saying anything, then maybe it was time he went and talked to the men who thought they were the organ grinders.

  SEVEN

  As he got closer to the bottom of the hill, Blackstone was not at all surprised to hear the familiar sound of leather striking willow, nor the restrained clapping which followed it.

  This was, after all, a beautifully warm and gentle summer day – the sort of day the English talked about with such pride that they might almost believe they invented it.

  And what else would the inhabitants of villages all over England do on a day like this, but flock to the village green, drink warm beer and watch a game so imbued with complexities and nuances that it had become the most Byzantine of English institutions?

  Of course, this wasn’t England. It didn’t even look like England. And when the breeze blew in the right direction, it was possible to hear the boom of guns engaged in a bloody and tragic conflict. But such minor considerations had no effect on the Englishmen playing cricket on the edge of St Denis. They were doing what Englishmen always did when they were abroad – completely ignoring the fact that this was a foreign land, and carrying on as usual.

  Blackstone reached the temporary pitch, and surveyed the scene. The batsmen and the bowlers, he noted, were all dressed in immaculate cricket whites. The fielders, in contrast, wore mud-stained khaki.

  So it didn’t necessarily have to be viewed as just a cricket match, Blackstone told himself. If he were of a mind to – and at that moment he was – he could take it as a symbol of a society in which the rich and privileged had all the fun, and the poor and dispossessed ran themselves ragged making that possible.

  He walked over to one of the rich and privileged, a blond-haired, sharp-featured man who, having been recently bowled out, was sitting on a camp stool – his soldier-servant standing in constant attendance behind him – and sipping at what looked like pink gin.

  It was obvious that the officer was fully aware of his approach, but it was not until Blackstone was right at his side that he took his eyes off the cricket match, and looked up.

  He smiled sardonically, through thin lips.

  ‘I was wondering how long it would take you to get round to paying us a visit, Inspector Blackstone,’ he said.

  ‘And why is that, Lieutenant Maude?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Because, unlike many of my friends, I don’t necessarily equate being lower class with being stupid.’

  ‘Could I ask you to explain that?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Certainly,’ Maude said easily. ‘The last time we met was in the company headquarters dugout in the reserve trench, was it not?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘At the time, you probably didn’t give such a brief encounter even a moment’s thought,’ Maude said.

  Oh, but I did, Blackstone reminded himself. Even then, I sensed that something wasn’t quite right.

  ‘And why should you have?’ Maude continued. ‘After all, the army is so full of arrogant young officers like Soames, Hatfield and I that you couldn’t spit without hitting one of them. Is that correct?’

  ‘It’s correct.’

  Maude smiled. ‘Which part of my statement are you agreeing with?’ he asked. ‘That there are so many of us? Or that we’re young and arrogant?’

  ‘Both parts,’ Blackstone said, flatly.

  ‘I would have expected no less of you,’ Maude replied. He paused, to take a sip of his pink gin. ‘Where was I? Ah yes! You thought no more about us until you learned – as you were bound to do – that we were here in St Denis. And then the wheels started to turn in your brain, which I’m sure, incidentally, is a very fine one – given its obvious limitations. “If they’re here now, what were they doing in the trenches last night?” you asked yourself. “They can’t have been on active duty, can they?” And that thought led to another – that if we were not on duty last night, the chances were that we had been on duty the morning Charlie Fortesque was murdered. Am I following the way your mind was working?’

  ‘Perfectly. And were you in the trenches on the morning Lieutenant Fortesque was murdered?’

  ‘We were. Though we were not all on the front line.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. Fortesque and Soames were on duty in the fire trench, but Hatfield and I were in the reserve trench.’ Maude took another sip of his drink. ‘But to continue – the next stage in your mental process was to ask yourself why we were in the command dugout last night, and you reached the inevitable conclusion that we knew you were due to arrive, and were there to get your measure.’

  ‘And is it a false conclusion?’

  ‘Not at all. That’s precisely why we were there.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell me more,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘I won’t have to tell you anything,’ Maude shot back at him, with a sudden flash of anger. ‘You should not think, Inspector Blackstone, that because I have a healthy respect for your obvious intelligence, that is enough to make me consider you anything like my equal.’

  On the pitch, Soames took a spirited swipe at the ball, and sent it hurtling towards the boundary.

  ‘Well done, Roger!’ Maude called out. He turned his attention back to Blackstone. ‘I will tell you why we were there, Mr Blackstone – but only because I feel inclined to,’ he said, in a much softer tone than the one he had used earlier. ‘Roger Soames has an un
cle who, purely for his own amusement, works in New Scotland Yard. Roger’s uncle might, I suppose, even be called a colleague of yours – although, of course, he’s much higher up the ladder than you are.’

  ‘Assistant Commissioner Soames,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘The very man,’ Maude agreed. ‘At any rate, we thought it might be interesting to ask Roger’s Uncle Arthur all about you.’

  Blackstone said nothing.

  ‘Aren’t you curious to learn what he told us?’ Maude asked.

  ‘Why should I be interested in what a dilettante assistant commissioner has to say about me?’ Blackstone wondered.

  ‘Dilettante!’ Maude repeated, with obvious delight. ‘That’s a big word for a humble policeman like yourself.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Blackstone agreed. ‘For a humble policeman, I probably know enough big words to keep you amused for hours. “Marmalade” – that’s another one. But I’m still not particularly interested in AC Soames’ opinion of me.’

  ‘I think I’ll tell you what he said, anyway,’ Maude replied, sounding a little disappointed. ‘He said you have a reputation for being something of an agitator – possibly even one with Bolshevik leanings.’

  ‘I have no interest in politics,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Perhaps not, at least in specific terms,’ Maude agreed easily. ‘But your record shows that you do seem to take a great deal of pleasure in pulling down your betters from their pedestals.’

  ‘If a man’s guilty of a crime, I don’t care what his background is,’ Blackstone said stonily.

  ‘That’s probably true,’ Maude conceded. ‘But you do prefer it if he’s high-born, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Blackstone said – though he realized he did not sound entirely convincing, even to himself.

  ‘At any rate, we reached the conclusion that, given your prejudices, there was a greater chance you’d suspect an officer than there was that you’d suspect an enlisted man. Were we right?’

  ‘You’re right, but you’re also wrong,’ Blackstone told him. ‘I came here with a completely open mind, but the more I learn, the more I’m inclined to think that Lieutenant Fortesque was killed by an officer.’