Blackstone and the Great War isb-3

by Sally Spencer

  ‘You don’t strike me as the kind of man who’d be as careless as to be taken in by a simple trick like that,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘You’re right, I normally wouldn’t be,’ Baker agreed, ‘but, you see, the bloke who asked me for a light was wearing an officer’s uniform.’

  ‘Was he, by God!’

  ‘Anyway, I was out cold for at least half an hour. When I came to again, I had a bump on the back of my skull as big as a duck egg. I had a massive headache, too, but I knew that the first thing I had to do was check the warehouse — and that’s when I discovered that the coffin was gone.’

  ‘It was stolen?’ Blackstone asked incredulously.

  ‘It was,’ Baker confirmed.

  ‘Did the thieves take anything else?’

  ‘Not a bloody thing.’

  Blackstone’s head was reeling. ‘But if what happened to the coffin was that it was stolen,’ he said, speaking slowly and carefully, to make sure he got it exactly right, ‘why was General Fortesque told it had simply disappeared?’

  ‘The CO said that was to spare the old man’s feelings,’ Baker said weakly. ‘The way he argued it, it would be a blow to the General to learn we’d lost his grandson, but it would have been even worse for him to find out that somebody had snatched him. Besides, he said, we had our own reputation to think of — you don’t end up looking very clever if you lose a coffin, but if you have it taken from right under your nose, you look like a complete bloody idiot.’

  There was something about his tone which was not quite right — not quite genuine — Blackstone thought.

  ‘You’re happy with your CO’s explanation, are you, Bob?’ he asked.

  Baker hesitated again.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, unconvincingly. ‘I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it? We’re policemen — that sort of thing’s not supposed to happen to us.’

  ‘What do you really think?’ Blackstone persisted.

  Baker looked down at the ground.

  ‘I think the CO was just feeding us a load of old bollocks,’ he mumbled.

  ‘So what was the true reason that he wanted the lid kept on what had really happened?’

  ‘I. . I think he did it to protect the thieves.’

  ‘And why would he want to do that?’

  ‘Can’t you work that out for yourself?’ Baker asked plaintively.

  ‘I’d rather hear it from you,’ Blackstone said.

  Baker sighed. ‘I think he was worried in case it turned out that the robbers weren’t just dressed like officers. .’

  ‘. . but were exposed as actually having been officers!’ Blackstone said, completing the thought.

  Baker nodded. ‘Officers are like gods. They can do no wrong. Whatever they do has to be right — simply because they’re the ones that have done it.’

  ‘Unless they do something so horribly wrong that no amount of doubletalk will ever make it seem right,’ Blackstone said. ‘And stealing Lieutenant Fortesque’s coffin was so horribly wrong that, whatever happens, it can never be admitted that the thief was an officer.’

  It just had to be the work of the three musketeers, he told himself — it was the only reasonable explanation — but what possible reason could even they have had for wanting the body?

  Blackstone paced furiously up and down for several minutes. He did not look across the water at his beloved England again. He did not even seem to notice the other pedestrians, who had to jump out of their way to avoid him.

  Why would they have done it? his quick brain demanded. Why, why, bloody why?

  He came to a sudden halt.

  Perhaps they hadn’t stolen the body at all — because there’d been no body to steal, he thought.

  Perhaps there’d been something else in the coffin — something which, if it was discovered by anyone else, would ruin them all!

  ‘I think I’d like to see the warehouse where the incident occurred,’ he told Baker.

  ‘I was afraid you’d say that,’ the corporal replied gloomily.

  New experiences were raining down on Lieutenant Warren with such force and regularity that he felt he was in an almost permanent state of confusion.

  Only a few months earlier, he had been one of the golden boys of his minor public school. He had been head of his house and the captain of cricket. The world had seemed simple, clear and predictable.

  Then, suddenly, he was not a boy at all, but a man. And, as if that were not a big enough jump to make, he was an officer — and there could be no doubt about that, because the pip on his epaulette said so.

  Now he was in France, amid a scarred and battered landscape which seemed a million miles from the immaculate green cricket pitch on which he felt so at home. He was billeted with officers who drank like fishes, and talked of doing to women things that he considered both revolting and near impossible. And he was in daily contact — though usually that contact was mediated through an NCO — with the enlisted men who made up his platoon.

  He did not understand the common soldiers at all. They appeared to view everything through very different eyes to his own — to embrace a reality which was quite alien to the one he had long accepted as indisputable.

  And if that was true of the English soldiers, it was even more extreme in these four Welshmen, who he was leading along the trench.

  They were short, heavy, dark men. They moved with their heads slightly bowed, and in a manner which suggested they were passing between close invisible walls. Occasionally, one would whisper to the others in an incomprehensible language, but apart from that, they were silent.

  When they reached the large white X which had been marked on the wall of the trench, Warren called a halt.

  ‘This is where I want you to dig,’ he said.

  The Welshmen made no reply.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’ Warren asked.

  ‘This is where you wants us to dig, sir,’ said one of the men, who Warren had heard the others call Dai.

  ‘I want you to keep the tunnel at this level, and proceed in a straight line,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Do you think you can manage that, Private Thomas?’

  Dai Thomas poked the earth with his thick stubby index finger. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ he said.

  ‘It will be quite a long tunnel,’ Warren cautioned. ‘I don’t know quite how long, but it could be at least a hundred and fifty yards.’

  ‘We have dug five tunnels under the German lines,’ Thomas said. He turned to one of his companions. ‘How long was the longest, Alun?’

  ‘Must have been five hundred yards,’ the other man replied.

  ‘See, sir, when you’re born in the Valleys, you come out of the womb with a pick in your hand,’ Thomas explained.

  ‘That’s why all our mams find giving birth so painful, like,’ said Alun — and all the others laughed.

  Warren frowned, unsure of whether they were being deliberately overfamiliar with an officer and a gentleman — or whether they just couldn’t help themselves.

  The problem was, he decided, that though he had not yet learned how to gauge the responses of the ordinary men, he was even further away from knowing how to deal with the Welsh. And these men were not even really soldiers — they were coal miners in soldiers’ uniforms.

  He really should have brought an NCO along to translate, he thought, but he’d been keen to show he could do this on his own.

  One of the other miners nudged Thomas in the ribs with his elbow.

  ‘Tell the lieutenant about that German tunnel,’ he suggested.

  Thomas chuckled. ‘This’ll make you laugh, sir. We was digging this tunnel towards enemy lines when we heard this scraping ahead of us. “They’s digging a tunnel towards us,” I tells Alun. “That they is,” Alun agreed. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” I says. “We’ll go lower.” And that’s what we did. We dug lower, then we stopped digging and we waited. And sure enough, the next day we heard the noise of them digging above our heads.’

  ‘This is the funny b
it,’ Alun said.

  ‘Well, we’d already got our tunnel packed with explosives, so we went back to the trench, and set them off,’ Thomas said. ‘There was the big bang that made a crater five yards wide-’

  ‘Closer to seven,’ Alun interrupted him.

  ‘It was five yards wide,’ Thomas said firmly. ‘And there was bits of Germans flying all over the place — arms, legs, even a head. Well, talk about laugh — we nearly wet ourselves.’

  Warren shuddered. This really wasn’t cricket, he thought.

  ‘The point is, we don’t think we’s’ll have any trouble with this little tunnel of yours, sir,’ Alun said.

  ‘Your main difficulty is the lack of precision actually attached to your instructions,’ Warren said, in his best crisp officer tones. ‘I told you it was a hundred and fifty yards, but that’s only an approximation. And whilst we believe that what you’ll be looking for is in a straight line from here, it could well be a little to the right or a little to the left.’

  ‘Come again?’ Thomas said.

  ‘The officer thinks that we’s going to have to root around a bit, Dai,’ Alun explained.

  ‘No problem, sir,’ Thomas said. ‘We once had this pit disaster in the valleys where there was bodies all over the place. Took us two weeks, but we got them all out, right enough — some of them bit by bit.’

  The Welshmen were approaching this whole mission far too casually, Warren thought.

  ‘You should be aware that though I’m the one who’s briefing you, the orders come from much higher up,’ he said. ‘In fact, I don’t think there’s any harm in you knowing that this whole operation is being mounted at the personal request of General Fortesque. And the War Office takes that request so seriously that it had his letter specially couriered out — by airplane.’

  The Welshmen did not look over-impressed.

  ‘We’d have used a pigeon in the valleys,’ Alun said. ‘They’s more reliable than airplanes. Why, I once had one that-’

  ‘Yes, well, I’m sure the War Office knows more than you do about carrying messages,’ Warren interrupted him. ‘Are there any more questions — and I mean relevant questions — before you start work?’

  The four miners looked at each other, then Thomas said, ‘Who did you say we was digging this tunnel for, sir?’

  ‘It is at General Fortesque’s request,’ Warren repeated, laying emphasis on the words ‘General Fortesque’, in case the Welsh ears had not quite picked up the significance of them.

  The Welshmen stared blankly at him.

  ‘You’ve surely heard of him, haven’t you?’ Warren asked, exasperatedly. ‘He was one of the heroes of the Afghan Campaign.’

  ‘Where’s Afghan?’ Alun asked.

  ‘Don’t show your ignorance,’ Dai Thomas said scornfully. ‘It’ll be somewhere in England, look you.’

  Lieutenants Hatfield and Maude were observing the scene with the miners from the other end of the trench.

  ‘Do you think they’ll find him?’ Hatfield asked, worriedly.

  ‘Probably,’ Maude replied. ‘Those Welsh are like greedy ferrets — they’d dig for weeks in search of a farthing. But what does it matter if they do find him? It’s not as if they’re going to learn anything from it, is it? There are no clues for that grubby little detective, Blackstone, to latch on to.’

  ‘How can you be so sure of that?’ Hatfield demanded. ‘You’re not a detective, are you?’

  ‘Of course I’m not a detective,’ Maude said contemptuously. ‘I don’t look like a workman, do I?’

  ‘You should have done something to prevent things ever going this far,’ Lieutenant Hatfield said. ‘You should have stepped in, right at the beginning, and put a stop to it.’

  ‘Should I?’ Maude asked. ‘And exactly how would I have gone about doing that?’

  ‘You could have talked to Captain Carstairs. Or even someone higher up the chain of command. You’re always saying you’ve got influence.’

  ‘And so I have. But what would I have said? Would you have liked to explain the real reason we don’t want this tunnel dug?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then what other story could I possibly have come up with?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Problems rarely come from what happens — they come from how we react to what happens,’ Maude said. He held out his hand, palm down. ‘Look at that. It’s as steady as a rock, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s because one of the marks of a true English gentleman is that he is able to keep his head in all sorts of difficult situations. And if you ever wish to be taken for a gentleman yourself, Hatfield, that is something that you will simply have to learn how to master.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘If you keep calm, they’ll never be able to touch us,’ Maude said, in a soothing voice. ‘If you keep calm, we’ll all be perfectly safe.’

  SEVENTEEN

  The British Expeditionary Force warehouse was located near the edge of the main dock. It was distinguished from the other warehouses which surrounded it only by the fact that it had a large sign mounted on the wall.

  Blackstone examined the sign, looking first at the imperial crown which stood proudly at the top, and then at the words, ‘HM Government Property. Keep Out’, which were written underneath.

  They might as well have put up a sign saying, ‘Want to nick some British Army stuff? You’ll find it here,’ he thought.

  But as tempting as the goods inside might be, breaking in wouldn’t be an easy job, because it was a formidable building, with stone walls, small barred windows and a door constructed of solid oak.

  ‘How long did you say you were out cold after you were attacked?’ Blackstone asked Corporal Baker.

  ‘It was probably around half an hour.’

  ‘And the first thing you did when you came round again was to check the contents of the warehouse?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘Through the door,’ Baker said, as if that should be obvious to anyone.

  ‘So you had your own keys?’

  ‘No, only the clerk-in-charge has the keys, but I didn’t need a key, because the door was open.’

  Blackstone bent down to examine the lock. It was probably a few years old, but since it was a Firbank and Bains’ MB 5–2 — one of the finest locks ever made by one of the best locksmiths in London — its age didn’t really matter.

  ‘There are probably only a couple of dozen men in the whole of England who could have opened this lock,’ he told Baker. ‘And out of that couple of dozen, I doubt there’s more than three or four who could have done it without damaging the lock itself. So what do you think the chances are that one of those three or four men was here in Calais the other night?’

  ‘Slim,’ Baker said.

  ‘Very slim,’ Blackstone replied.

  The front half of the warehouse was crammed with packing cases containing bully beef, tins of baked beans, powdered milk and jugs of rum. Blankets, uniforms, picks and shovels and all the other necessities of trench life, were stored in the rear.

  The clerk-corporal in charge of this little empire was called Hoskins. He was a small man, and wore glasses which had lenses as thick as jam jar bottoms.

  ‘The coffin was delivered by lorry,’ he told Blackstone. ‘It wasn’t anything fancy to look at. In fact, you might have mistaken it for an ordinary packing case, if it hadn’t been for the shape, and the Union Flag draped over it. I expect they’d have taken him out of it, and put him in a much fancier one, once he was safely back in Blighty.’

  ‘Yes,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘I expect they would have.’

  And then the boy would have been carried to the family vault with due ceremony and full military honours, and laid to rest with his ancestors, he thought.

  It would have been some consolation to poor old General Fortesque to see such a fitting interment — but now the consolation had been denied him.


  ‘To tell you the truth, I didn’t really fancy having a rotting corpse in my warehouse at all,’ the clerk continued, ‘but what else were they going to do with it? And anyway, I figured out that it wouldn’t really start to stink until all the ice had melted. .’

  ‘What ice?’

  ‘Didn’t I say? The body was packed with ice.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ Blackstone asked sharply.

  ‘I’m not sure, now you ask. I think the blokes who delivered it must have told me.’

  ‘You didn’t look yourself?’

  ‘Course not! That would have been really morbid,’ the clerk said dismissively. ‘And anyway,’ he added, ‘the lid was screwed down and sealed.’

  A wise precaution, if what the casket actually contained was something other than Lieutenant Fortesque’s remains, Blackstone thought.

  ‘What did you do with the coffin?’ he asked.

  ‘I had them put it over in that corner, where it’s nice and cool.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then I closed up shop for the night, and went back to my billet.’ The clerk turned to look at Baker for confirmation. ‘You saw me leaving, didn’t you, Corp?’

  ‘That’s right, I did,’ Baker confirmed.

  ‘Did you go straight back to your billet?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘I most certainly did. I was really knackered, you see, so all I wanted to do was get my head down.’

  ‘So if I question the men who share the billet with you, they’ll confirm that, will they?’

  ‘Why would you want to go and do that?’ Hoskins asked uneasily.

  ‘They’ll confirm it, will they?’ Blackstone repeated stonily.

  ‘Now I think about it, I did actually go for a walk before I turned in,’ the clerk said unconvincingly.

  ‘Even though you were really knackered?’

  ‘Yes, I. . er. . wanted to make sure that once I was in bed, I really did fall asleep.’

  ‘There’s something that’s bothering me about this whole business,’ Blackstone said. ‘Would you like me to tell you what it is?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. . if you want to,’ Hoskins replied, without much enthusiasm.