Hardcastle's Soldiers

by Graham Ison

  ‘I’ll check the train times, sir.’ Marriott thought it unwise to point out that, far from dealing with bucolic crime, Lichfield was a cathedral city, and doubtless beset with problems similar to those encountered here in the capital. ‘I suppose it means waiting until Monday, sir,’ he added hopefully.

  Hardcastle raised his eyebrows. ‘I hope you’re not suggesting that the army doesn’t work on a Saturday when there’s a war on, Marriott.’

  At two o’clock that afternoon, Hardcastle had a surprise visitor.

  ‘There’s a Captain McIntyre of the Military Police downstairs, sir,’ said the PC on station duty. ‘He wishes to see you.’

  ‘Send him up, lad,’ said Hardcastle, wondering why McIntyre should be paying a personal visit rather than resorting to the telephone.

  ‘I was in London seeing Colonel Frobisher on official business, Inspector, so I thought I’d catch you in your lair, so to speak.’

  ‘Take a seat, Captain McIntyre.’ Hardcastle paused, and then withdrew the bottle of whisky he kept in the bottom drawer of his desk. ‘I daresay you could use a tot of whisky,’ he said.

  ‘Never known to refuse a dram, Inspector,’ said McIntyre, tossing his glengarry carelessly towards Hardcastle’s hatstand. And missing.

  Hardcastle poured two substantial measures of whisky, and set a glass in front of the military policeman. ‘Cheers!’

  McIntyre raised his glass in brief salute. ‘Slàinte!’ he said, as he made the Gaelic toast of good health. He placed the glass carefully on the desk. ‘Colonel Fuller assures me that none of his officers’ revolvers are missing, Inspector.’

  ‘Can we be certain of that, Captain?’

  ‘To be perfectly honest,’ said McIntyre, drawing back his kilt and placing his hands firmly on his bare knees, ‘I wasn’t too happy about it. He told me that he’d assembled all his officers in the mess, and asked if any of them had lost a revolver. None had.’

  ‘You mean he didn’t check them physically, or had someone do so?’ Hardcastle was astounded. In a similar situation, he would have made sure that the weapons were produced, no matter what the rank of those involved.

  ‘I’m afraid so, Mr Hardcastle.’ The DDI noticed that there was an element of apology in the provost officer’s statement. ‘Colonel Fuller has an old-fashioned faith in the integrity of officers. But I’m afraid I don’t, not since I’ve had dealings with some of the ragtag and bobtail that are being commissioned these days.’ McIntyre raised his hands in a gesture of hopelessness. ‘But there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  Hardcastle now realized why McIntyre had arrived in person to give him the result of the firearms check; he doubted whether he had an appointment with Colonel Frobisher at all. ‘And the armoury?’

  ‘I spoke to the regimental quartermaster, and he assured me that no revolvers are missing. And when the RQM says that, it’s true.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Hardcastle, draining his glass. ‘I doubt that it makes a great deal of difference. Thank you for letting me know, Captain McIntyre.’

  It was close to midday on Saturday by the time that the two detectives arrived at the North Staffordshire Regiment’s depot.

  ‘Halt. Who goes there?’ As he quoted the time-honoured formula for greeting strangers, the sentry at the barrack gate raised his rifle to the high port, and stared at Hardcastle. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘I want to see whoever’s in charge here, lad,’ said Hardcastle, holding his warrant card in front of the sentry’s face.

  ‘You’d better go into the guardroom and see the sergeant, sir.’ The sentry lowered his rifle.

  The wooden floor of the guardroom shone with years of polish. In the centre of this impeccable oasis of military efficiency stood a soldier, his uniform immaculate, his red sash indicating that he was a full sergeant. ‘Gentlemen?’

  ‘I’m Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle of the Metropolitan Police, Sergeant, and this here’s Detective Sergeant Marriott.’

  The sergeant of the guard allowed himself a brief smile. ‘Bit off your patch, aren’t you, gents?’ he said.

  ‘A bit of an expert on policing, are you, Sergeant?’ exclaimed Hardcastle.

  ‘I was a copper in Sheffield until this lot started,’ said the sergeant. ‘Who have you come to see?’

  ‘Someone who can tell me about one of your officers,’ said Hardcastle.

  ‘Ah!’ The sergeant brushed briefly at his trimmed moustache. ‘I think that Captain Murdoch might be your best bet, Inspector. He’s the adjutant. He’s the one man who knows everything about anything hereabouts, apart from the regimental sarn’t-major, of course. One moment, and I’ll get a runner to show you the way.’ He paused as a late thought occurred to him. ‘I suppose you’ve got your briefs with you, have you, gents?’

  Hardcastle laughed, and he and Marriott produced their warrant cards.

  The office into which Hardcastle and Marriott were shown was the usual stark army accommodation.

  Hardcastle introduced himself and Marriott.

  ‘Peter Murdoch, gentlemen,’ said the young captain, as he shook hands with the two detectives. ‘How may I help you?’

  Once again, Hardcastle explained about Lieutenant Geoffrey Mansfield, and the mystery that had now developed about him.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Murdoch, waving a hand towards some chairs to indicate that the two CID officers should sit down. ‘I had no less a personage than the Chief Constable of Lichfield here a few days ago making enquiries about this same officer.’

  ‘I know. He was here at my request,’ said Hardcastle, ‘but it now looks as though the Lieutenant Mansfield I spoke to at Victoria Station was an impostor. Although why he should have adopted a false identity beats me.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you there, Inspector,’ said Murdoch with a laugh.

  ‘Unless, of course, you happen to have two officers called Geoffrey Mansfield in your regiment.’ But Hardcastle doubted that it was likely.

  ‘I’m pretty certain that we don’t,’ said Murdoch, as he stood up. ‘And I know Geoffrey Mansfield quite well. I’m sure he would have mentioned it if there had been another Mansfield. But I’ll just have a word with the orderly room quartermaster sergeant. He’ll be able to tell me in a trice.’ He opened a door. ‘Mr Wilson, be so good as to find out how many officers by the name of Mansfield we have in the regiment.’ Sitting down again, the adjutant said, ‘He won’t be a moment. Has everything at his fingertips, does our Mr Wilson.’

  Five minutes later, during which time Captain Murdoch launched into a depressing analysis of the progress of the war, ORQMS Wilson returned.

  ‘We only have the one, sir,’ said Wilson. ‘Lieutenant Geoffrey Mansfield, currently serving with the fourth battalion in or around Arras. At least, that’s unless they’ve moved again.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Wilson,’ said Murdoch, and turned his attention to Hardcastle. ‘A strange business, Inspector. Incidentally, I told the Lichfield policeman that Mansfield had registered here when he returned from the Front on leave.’

  ‘So I understand,’ said Hardcastle, ‘but I’ve also been told that he lodged his details at St John’s Wood Barracks in London. What’s more, he booked a room in the mess there for the period of his leave, but according to the officer we saw, he never made use of it.’

  ‘That’s easily explained, Inspector,’ said Murdoch. ‘I suggested that he registered at a barracks nearer to where his fiancée was living.’

  ‘Why should you have done that?’ asked Hardcastle, a bemused expression on his face.

  ‘If he was suddenly recalled before his leave was up, it would be easier for him to obtain travel warrants, and that sort of thing, from, say Wellington Barracks, Chelsea Barracks or even St John’s Wood Barracks. It would save him travelling all the way up here to Lichfield.’

  ‘I see,’ said Hardcastle, not really seeing at all. Not for the first time, he failed to understand why the army had to work in such a
convoluted way. He thought that Mansfield could have called in at any barracks to obtain travel documents, whether he was registered there or not. ‘Can you tell me the date of his return to the Front?’ he asked, realizing that he should have posed that question to Billie Harcourt.

  ‘Just a moment.’ Once again, Murdoch walked to the communicating door and relayed Hardcastle’s request to the chief clerk. Returning to his desk, he said, ‘Lieutenant Mansfield embarked from Southampton on the morning of Tuesday the tenth of July.’

  ‘Are you sure about that, Captain Murdoch?’

  ‘Quite sure, Inspector.’

  ‘But the Chief Constable of Lichfield told us that he went back on the fourteenth of July.’

  ‘He must have got it wrong,’ said Murdoch. ‘I quite definitely told him the tenth of July.’

  ‘So, there we have it,’ muttered Hardcastle vehemently, much to Murdoch’s surprise. ‘Mansfield left the country the day before the murder at Victoria Station. Bloody country coppers,’ added the DDI under his breath.

  ‘So it wasn’t Lieutenant Mansfield that we interviewed, sir,’ said Marriott.

  ‘Well, I knew that as soon as Billie Harcourt showed us his photograph, Marriott. And if the Chief Constable of this God-forsaken police force had done his job properly, we wouldn’t have had to traipse all the way up here.’

  Hardcastle was still in a foul mood by the time he and Marriott returned to Cannon Row Police Station.

  ‘I’m damned if I know what’s going on, Marriott.’ Hardcastle filled his pipe, and lit it. ‘Why the hell should an army officer give us a false name?’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t want to get involved, sir. Or perhaps he wasn’t an army officer at all.’

  ‘Then why did he hang about? He could’ve pushed off without waiting for us to turn up and start asking questions.’

  ‘To allay suspicion, sir?’ suggested Marriott.

  ‘Suspicion of what, for crying out loud?’

  ‘He might’ve committed the murder himself, sir.’

  Hardcastle shook his head in bewilderment. ‘There are times, Marriott, when I wonder if you’ve learned anything about the investigation of murder.’ But secretly, he thought that there might just be something in Marriott’s bizarre comment.

  ‘In view of what Captain Murdoch said about reporting to a barracks nearer home, sir, d’you think we should have enquiries made at Wellington and Chelsea Barracks?’

  ‘I suppose so, Marriott, but I’m buggered if I’m going to do it. Tell Wood to run round all the barracks in the vicinity and check it. And tell him to speak to an officer, not the bloody guard commander.’

  ELEVEN

  Unable to pursue his investigation into the murder of Herbert Somers until at least the following day, Hardcastle fretted for the whole of Sunday. He spent half the morning reading the News of the World, which included an account of the Germans breaking through the Russian lines at Zloczov, a place of which he had never heard. He wandered out to the kitchen to search for this obscure place on the map provided by the Daily Mail, which, unwisely as it happened, he had pinned on the wall next to the cooker.

  ‘What on earth do you want out here, Ernest?’ said Alice. The use of Hardcastle’s Christian name in full was an indication of his wife’s impatience. ‘You’re just getting under my feet while I’m trying cook the Sunday lunch. If you’re looking for something to do, I’ve been on at you for the past two weeks to put a new washer on this tap. And now the sink’s turned brown where it’s been dripping. But don’t think of doing it now.’

  Hardcastle muttered to himself, and retreated to the sitting room.

  Despite the shortages, which had become worse as the war progressed, Alice Hardcastle had been able to produce roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, with roast potatoes and cabbage. For once, all the Hardcastles’ children, Kitty, Maud and young Walter, had been present for the meal. It was an unusual event because all three were engaged on shift work, and very often Hardcastle himself was involved in some enquiry that kept him from joining them.

  ‘Did you hear about the tram that was hit by a bomb on Victoria Embankment, Pa? Everyone on it was killed.’ Kitty’s choice of becoming a bus conductress had been decried by her father on the basis that it was both unladylike and dangerous.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Hardcastle tersely. ‘It’s time you gave up that job.’

  ‘You know why I took it, Pa,’ said Kitty, embarking on a now familiar set of reasons. ‘It’s released a man to join the army. It’s patriotic. Anyway, these days you can get killed just walking down the street. A bomb might even hit this house.’

  ‘I don’t know why you can’t do what your sister’s doing,’ said Hardcastle testily. ‘That’s woman’s work.’ His other daughter, Maud, had taken voluntary work as a nurse, and was based at one of the large houses in London that had been given over to the care of the war wounded. Although only nineteen years of age, Maud’s nurse’s uniform coupled with her harrowing tales of wounded soldiers – some of whom had died while she was tending them – had caused her to grow up very quickly.

  ‘And I suppose you’re still working overtime, Wally.’ Realizing that, as always, he had lost his argument with his eldest daughter, Hardcastle turned his attention to Walter. Now seventeen, he was a telegram boy working out of the local post office.

  Walter, whose job had also matured him beyond his years, looked at his father. ‘I delivered ten telegrams yesterday telling folk that one of the men of the family had been killed,’ he said. ‘And that’s only for the area covered by my post office.’

  ‘Thank God you’re too young to join up, Wally,’ said Hardcastle, as he finished carving the joint.

  ‘Only another six months, and I can go,’ said Wally enthusiastically. Despite his experience of delivering harrowing news to the bereaved, he still maintained a romantic view of the war. In his mind, it was all derring-do and winning medals. ‘I rather fancy the navy.’

  ‘Please God, the war will be over by then,’ said Alice. She was convinced that, if Walter joined the forces, he would be dead within weeks. But her wish was granted. Although Walter applied for the Royal Navy on his eighteenth birthday in January 1918, the fatherly chief petty officer at the recruiting centre had told him that the war was nearly over, and they had enough men. ‘Get on with delivering your telegrams, lad,’ he had said. ‘That’s important war work.’

  ‘Don’t forget what happened to Arthur, Mrs Crabbe’s boy,’ said Hardcastle. ‘He put up his age and enlisted. On his first day in the trenches he was killed by a sniper. One of his pals wrote and told the boy’s mother how he’d died. And her husband had been killed the year before.’

  ‘I know,’ said Walter moodily, ‘I delivered the telegrams. Both of them.’ He skewered a piece of meat, and put it in his mouth. ‘On the other hand I might join the police. I rather fancy the City of London force.’

  ‘Over my dead body!’ exclaimed Hardcastle, nearly choking.

  ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full, Wally,’ said his mother.

  Although Hardcastle was a loving husband and father, he was nonetheless pleased to be back at work on Monday morning. After inspecting the crime book, he went upstairs to his office to find that Marriott was waiting for him.

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Morning, Marriott. You got something for me?’

  ‘Yes, sir. A message from Colonel Frobisher. He’s double-checked the information about Second Lieutenant Nash, and—’

  ‘Who the hell’s Nash?’ demanded Hardcastle, looking up from the task of filling his pipe.

  ‘Second Lieutenant Adrian Nash is the Army Service Corps officer who failed to arrive at his new unit in Boulogne, sir. We went to see his mother at Forest Hill.’ Marriott suspected that his chief was playing another of his little games in pretending not to know who Nash was.

  ‘Oh, that Nash. Yes, I remember. What about him?’

  ‘Colonel Frobisher has had his clerk check with Buller Barracks, and
there was definitely no mistake in the movement order that required Nash to report to 143 Mechanical Transport Company. So he’s adrift, sir. And then there was Bryant whose people live at Fulham …’ Marriott glanced up. ‘We saw his parents too, sir. But Bryant hasn’t arrived either. The colonel also checked the other two – Morrish and Strawton – and they still seem to be unaccounted for as well.’

  Hardcastle finished filling his pipe, lit it, and dropped the match into the ashtray. He expelled a long plume of smoke, and leaned back with a satisfied smile on his face. ‘I do believe things are coming together, Marriott,’ he said. ‘Any one of those officers would’ve been in a position to steal those items of clothing that went missing from Stacey’s barrack room. Give Captain McIntyre a call, and ask him if he’d be so good as to ask Stacey if there were any officers in the pub where he lost his cap.’ After a further moment’s thought, he shot forward in his chair. ‘Where do Mansfield’s people live?’

  ‘Er, I don’t know, sir. We never thought to ask.’ Marriott was unconcerned that he was including the DDI in this lapse. He regarded it as a just return for all the occasions that the DDI had blamed Marriott for his own shortcomings. But Hardcastle chose not to notice.

  ‘Mmm! Perhaps it would be as well to find out. Get one of the men to look into it.’

  ‘But what do we hope to learn, sir?’ asked Marriott, who could not understand why Hardcastle attached so much importance to the Mansfield family, particularly as it had been proved that Geoffrey Mansfield was not the man they had spoken to at Victoria Station.

  ‘Think about it, Marriott. It’s no coincidence that the officer we saw at Victoria Station claimed to be Lieutenant Geoffrey Mansfield of the North Staffordshire Regiment. It means that whoever he was must’ve known Mansfield, and knew which regiment he was in. I don’t believe that he just conjured that name out of thin air.’

  ‘But we’ll not find anything out from Mansfield’s parents, surely, sir.’

  ‘We shan’t know until we ask, Marriott. On the other hand, this tale about Mansfield going back the day before the murder might be all my eye and Betty Martin. I know what that officer at Lichfield said about Mansfield going back from leave on the tenth of July, but I’m more inclined to believe the Chief Constable of Lichfield when he told us that Mansfield had gone back on the fourteenth. I know I don’t think much of country coppers, but policemen don’t usually make a mistake about dates. I’m beginning to have grave doubts about the efficiency of the military machine, Marriott. And despite what Frobisher and Punchard said, I’m still not convinced that our four officers are adrift. In fact, I’m certain they’ll turn up somewhere.’