Blackstone and the Great War

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Well, there you are, then,’ Maude replied. ‘Suppose I gave you my word – as an officer and a gentleman – that Charlie Fortesque was not murdered by any officer in this regiment. Would you believe me?’

  ‘No – but that wouldn’t be based on any particular prejudice against you. The reason I’d refuse to accept your word is that unless you’d actually seen the murder yourself, you’d have no basis for giving it.’

  ‘Ah, now you’re being tactful,’ Maude said, with some amusement. ‘And that really doesn’t sit well with you, you know.’

  ‘All right,’ Blackstone said. ‘I wouldn’t believe you because I think there’s something that’s much more important to you than your word as a gentleman – something even more important than seeing that your friend gets the justice he deserves.’

  ‘And what might that be?’ Maude asked interestedly.

  ‘Preserving the status quo,’ Blackstone said. ‘If you thought, for example, that your mate Roger Soames had killed Lieutenant Fortesque, you wouldn’t tell me about it, because that would mean admitting to one of the lower orders that a gentleman is capable of such a horrendous crime. Far better, from your point of view, to let Fortesque’s murder go unavenged.’

  ‘What a cynical view you do seem to have of us,’ Maude said. ‘I could take great offence at that, you know.’

  ‘Yes, you could,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘But it wouldn’t do you any good – and I might quite enjoy it.’

  There was a loud cry of ‘Howzat!’ in the background, and Blackstone turned to see Lieutenant Soames flinging his bat down furiously on the ground.

  ‘Well bowled, sir!’ Maude shouted.

  He held out his glass, and his servant took it from him. He clapped briefly, then held out his hand again, and retrieved the pink gin.

  ‘Well, that’s our team all out, but I suppose we can’t complain – we’ve had a good run,’ he said to Blackstone.

  One of the enlisted fielders was already retrieving the bat from where Soames had flung it, while Soames himself – with Hatfield, his batting partner – walked slowly away from the wicket.

  ‘Roger’s just spotted you,’ Maude drawled. ‘Now we should see some fireworks.’

  Blackstone examined the two men as they approached. Soames was large and beefy – a natural for the rougher sports in which brawn, rather than brain, was at a premium.

  Hatfield was taller and slimmer, and carried himself without either the intellectual assurance of Maude or the physical assurance of Soames.

  He was the weakest link in the chain – the runt of the litter – Blackstone quickly decided.

  Soames scowled at Blackstone, then turned to Maude.

  ‘What’s that man doing here?’ he demanded.

  Instead of answering directly, Maude turned to watch the batsmen from the opposing team walking on to the pitch.

  ‘You knocked up a good score, Roger,’ he said, after a few moments, ‘but that may not necessarily be to our advantage. The other side are the underdogs now, and that might just give them the push they need to best us.’ He swivelled to face Blackstone. ‘What do you think, Inspector?’

  ‘I’d never underrate an underdog,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘I asked you what this man was doing here, William,’ Lieutenant Soames said impatiently.

  ‘Mr Blackstone?’ Maude replied, as if fielding a question he’d never expected to be asked. ‘Oh, he’s here because he suspects one – or all – of us of killing Charlie Fortesque.’

  ‘He does what!’ Soames demanded, outraged.

  ‘I have got that right, haven’t I, Mr Blackstone?’ Maude asked. ‘You do suspect us, don’t you?’

  ‘There are certainly some questions I’d like to ask you,’ Blackstone responded.

  ‘Now look here, my man, I’ve had just about enough of your damned impertinence!’ Soames said.

  ‘Quiet, Roger,’ Maude said. ‘You may not be interested in hearing what questions Mr Blackstone wishes to ask but, for my part, I find the whole matter quite intriguing.’ He turned to Blackstone again. ‘You may speak now,’

  ‘You can’t imagine how grateful I am for your permission,’ Blackstone said. ‘Why don’t we start by you telling me what the argument was about?’

  ‘Argument!’ Soames said to Maude. ‘I really don’t know what the devil he’s talking about.’

  ‘The day before Fortesque was murdered, three officers – I assume you three – went to see him in his dugout. Fortesque told you that he was going to make a clean breast of things, and one of you told him that that would ruin you all.’

  ‘Never happened!’ Soames said dismissively.

  ‘I take it you got this information from that sniffling little weed who served as Charlie’s servant,’ Maude said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter where I got it from,’ Blackstone told him. ‘We all know that’s what did actually occur.’

  ‘Let’s assume for a moment that you’re right,’ Maude said, with the smile back on his lips. ‘What do you think that conversation he overheard could possibly have been about?’

  ‘My best guess is that you’d all been involved in something illegal, and that Fortesque was about to confess to it,’ Blackstone admitted.

  ‘We might have been embezzling the mess funds, for example?’ Maude suggested.

  ‘That’s one possibility,’ Blackstone agreed.

  ‘Now why would we want to do that?’ Maude asked. ‘You look like a man who will have studied his history, so you must surely know that our ancestors stole such unimaginable amounts from their starving peasantry that our prosperity is assured until the end of time.’

  ‘I knew a lord when I was soldiering in India—’ Blackstone began.

  ‘Knew him, did you?’ Soames scoffed. ‘Great friend of yours, was he? Used to wash your socks together?’

  ‘I knew of him,’ Blackstone corrected himself. ‘He ran a string of polo ponies and, when he was sure someone was watching, he lit his cigars with Indian bank notes. But the money didn’t come from his family, as yours does. It came from the brothels that he owned – brothels which employed girls as young as twelve.’

  ‘I’m surprised, once you learned how he was “exploiting” the poor niggers, that you let him get away with it,’ Soames said mockingly.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Blackstone told him.

  There was a moment of awkward silence.

  Then Maude laughed and said, ‘That really is a most amusing little anecdote, Inspector Blackstone, but you shouldn’t let it lead you into believing that we all need to run brothels in order to live in the style to which we’ve quite rightly become accustomed.’

  ‘No?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘No,’ Maude said. ‘Soames’ family, for example, owns half of Berkshire. Isn’t that right, Roger?’

  ‘Wouldn’t say it was quite half,’ Soames replied.

  ‘While my own people control considerable tracts of the wilds of Yorkshire – a place I’ve never visited in the past and have no intention of visiting in the future,’ Maude continued. ‘And as for Hatfield here – well, it’s true that his grandfather earned his money in trade, but he made so very much from it that we’re more than willing to forgive him.’

  Maude was treating this whole encounter as a game, while Soames regarded it as an assault on everything he held dear, Blackstone thought. But Hatfield was neither amused nor enraged – merely uncomfortable.

  ‘So just what was it that Fortesque could have done which might have ruined you?’ he asked the three lieutenants.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Maude said calmly. ‘Charlie Fortesque’s servant – who ranks on the evolutionary scale slightly below pond scum – heard what was merely amusing banter between friends, and got completely the wrong idea. I’d be more than willing to tell you what the joke was, if I could remember it – but it was so inconsequential that it’s gone completely out of my mind.’

  ‘You’re lying, of course,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Damn your impud
ence!’ Soames exploded. ‘Fifty years ago – civilian or no civilian – I could have had you horsewhipped for saying that.’

  ‘Not fifty years ago, Roger – much closer to a hundred,’ Maude said, still amused. ‘But you’re quite right, there was certainly a time when you could have had Mr Blackstone horsewhipped – and if you had, I, for one, would gladly have paid money to see it.’

  He had gone almost as far as he could with this particular interrogation, Blackstone decided, but he still had one last shot to fire.

  He turned to face the weakest link in the chain.

  ‘You’ve said absolutely nothing, so far, Lieutenant Hatfield,’ he pointed out. ‘I wonder why that is?’

  Hatfield opened his mouth wide, but the only words which came out were, ‘I . . . I . . .’

  ‘Benjamin prefers, quite rightly, to let the senior members of our little group do the talking,’ Maude said.

  ‘And the senior members of the group would be you and Lieutenant Soames, would they?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Maude agreed. ‘By several centuries, at least.’

  There was a loud cry of ‘Howzat’ from the field.

  ‘The innings has only just started, and the opposition is already one wicket down,’ Maude said. ‘It would appear that, in this case at least, the underdog is being much less successful than he might have hoped.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You will bear that in mind, won’t you, Mr Blackstone?’

  ‘If the underdog always won, he wouldn’t be the underdog any more,’ Blackstone countered. ‘But the fact that he’s still called the underdog indicates that next time he just might come through.’

  ‘I have no idea what the damn fellow’s talking about,’ Soames said, to no one in particular.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t have,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘But you understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Lieutenant Maude?’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ Maude said. ‘In fact, I think it can safely be said that, as a result of this brief meeting, we each understand the other.’

  The new batsman was walking on to the field to a smattering of half-hearted applause.

  Blackstone turned to go, then swivelled round on his heel.

  ‘When you do want to talk to me, Lieutenant Hatfield, I shouldn’t be hard to find,’ he said.

  And then, as the bowler vanquished the new batsman with his first ball, he turned again, and walked away.

  EIGHT

  Blackstone sat at the table in his billet, deep in thought, and occasionally sipping from the bottle of French beer – the only beer available in the NCOs’ mess – which he held in his hand.

  He had never investigated a case quite like this one before, he mused. And what made it so unique was that he was almost certain he knew who the murderer was – or, at least, that he could pin it down to one of three possible suspects – but he had absolutely no idea of what the motive could possibly be.

  He had almost completely dismissed the idea that Fortesque had been killed to prevent him revealing the details of a racket they had all been involved in, because that simply did not square with the characters of the three young men he had talked to at the cricket match.

  For openers, Hatfield was too earnest to become involved in anything shady, and Soames was too stupid. As for Maude, it would be beneath his dignity – and his intellectual pride – to do anything which could as easily be done by a common man. And then there was Fortesque – the fourth member of the group – who, Blackstone hoped, had inherited at least a little of his grandfather’s integrity.

  Besides, it was hard to think of any kind of racket they could become involved with in the bleak, muddy trenches.

  A gambling debt, then, he asked himself, taking a drag on a French cigarette which, to his taste, was only slightly better than dried camel dung.

  It was true that many officers had been destroyed by gambling, but gambling was, by its very nature, a solitary activity, and Blenkinsop had distinctly heard one of the lieutenants say that if Fortesque came clean, it would ruin them all.

  A woman?

  Back in England, perhaps, the love of a woman might lead to a crime of passion. But there were no women within a hundred miles who these young men might feel strongly about. And even if they did visit fancy whores in some of the better brothels in Paris – women covered in perfume and silk, according to Blenkinsop – no man kills his friend over a whore.

  The stumbling block, from whatever angle he examined the problem, was always the same three little words – ruin them all.

  This was one investigation that he could not handle alone, he decided – and the help he needed would have to come from both sides of the Channel.

  England was no problem.

  There, he could rely on Dr Ellie Carr, the brilliant forensic scientist who was his sometime-lover. She had helped him find the solution to seemingly unsolvable crimes before, and if anyone could pluck a vital clue from the dead body of Lieutenant Charles Fortesque, it was Ellie.

  There, he could draw on the strange and idiosyncratic talents of Detective Sergeant Archie Patterson – a man with a huge attic of a brain, crammed full of information which others would long ago have discarded, but he had carefully stored in case, one day, it just might come in useful.

  Getting any help in France was a completely different story. In France, he was hemmed in from all sides by invisible walls – walls which had been erected by the officers who would not help him and the enlisted men who didn’t dare to – and try as he might, he could think of no way of breaking those walls down.

  The knock on the door took him by surprise, and the surprise deepened when the door swung open and he saw who his visitor was.

  ‘Good afternoon, Captain Carstairs,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you, but now you’re here, do please take a seat.’

  Carstairs sat down in the chair opposite him – the chair from which Privates Blenkinsop and Hicks had so recently told their tales.

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to inform you that I’ve had complaints about your recent conduct from some of my young officers.’

  This was a Captain Carstairs he’d not seen before, Blackstone thought.

  This new Carstairs was much softer spoken, and even sounded a little apologetic. And his face mirrored his voice – the expression on it one of a neighbour who feels he must complain about the noise, but doesn’t really want to cause a fuss. But it was all a disguise, because underneath the bland reasonableness, Blackstone could sense a bubbling rage.

  ‘Can I offer you a beer?’ the policeman asked his guest, playing the same game. ‘I’m afraid I can’t offer you a glass – I wasn’t issued with any – but if you wouldn’t mind drinking out of the bottle . . .’

  ‘You did hear what I just said, didn’t you?’ Carstairs asked, the disguise slipping a little.

  ‘Yes, you said you’ve had complaints about me from some of your officers. But was that what you really meant?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Didn’t you really mean that you’ve had complaints from one of your young officers – Lieutenant Soames?’

  Because it had to be Soames, didn’t it, Blackstone thought.

  Lieutenant Maude would never have complained, because that would have been as good as admitting that he’d let a common man like Blackstone rattle him. And – for the moment at least – that was an admission he was not prepared to make, even to himself.

  As for Hatfield, he would have been too frightened about rocking the boat to have complained without first getting Maude’s permission.

  ‘Is it only Lieutenant Soames you have a low opinion of – or do you feel contempt for all my young officers, Inspector?’ Carstairs asked, with what seemed like genuine curiosity.

  ‘I don’t hold them in contempt,’ Blackstone said. ‘I may not like them very much – though I suspect I might have liked Charlie Fortesque if I’d ever met him – but I accept that that’s not entirely their fault. They can’t
help having been brought up to privilege, any more than I could have helped being brought up in an orphanage. And I do admire their obvious courage.’

  ‘Roger Soames has courage – and to spare,’ Carstairs said.

  ‘No, he doesn’t,’ Blackstone contradicted him. ‘The others show their courage – as most men do – in the way they fight to control their own fear. Lieutenant Soames, on the other hand, has neither the intelligence nor the imagination to even know what fear is.’

  ‘Do you suspect him of killing Fortesque, Mr Blackstone?’ Carstairs asked bluntly.

  ‘Do you seriously expect me to answer that question, Captain Carstairs?’ Blackstone countered.

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ Carstairs replied, ‘although your evasion answers it well enough for me. But you’re wrong. Soames could never have done it.’

  ‘Of course he couldn’t – because he’s an officer!’

  ‘I’m prepared to concede that the murderer could be an officer,’ Carstairs said.

  ‘You don’t believe that for a second,’ Blackstone told him.

  ‘No, I don’t believe it, but suppose that, for the sake of putting forward an argument, I was willing to concede it as a possibility,’ Carstairs said. ‘Would you then be willing to listen to that argument?’

  Blackstone shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  ‘If an officer did, in fact, kill Fortesque, then I am sure that officer would not have been Soames, because, despite your opinion of him, I know him to be both courageous and thoroughly decent.’

  ‘Those are just words,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Then let me give you a concrete example of what I’m talking about,’ Carstairs said. ‘The night before young Fortesque was killed, Roger Soames led a patrol out into No Man’s Land—’

  ‘Why would he have led out a patrol at night?’ Blackstone wondered. ‘What would be the point of that? What could it possibly achieve?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘Not to me.’

  ‘It is a matter of regimental pride that during the hours of darkness, it is we – and not Fritz – who hold the area.’