Blackstone and the Great Game (The Blackstone Detective Series Book 2)

by Spencer, Sally

  ‘Certainly, sir. Providing I can give such information without being indiscreet.’

  ‘The Colonel is dead,’ Blackstone reminded him.

  ‘That is true, but I have always believed that we have an obligation to those who employ us which goes well beyond the grave.’

  Major Walsh chuckled. ‘Oh, now I get the picture. Like that, was it?’

  ‘Like what, sir?’

  ‘The odd painted lady arriving on the London train? Or did the Colonel prefer fresh young things with big country bosoms.’

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly comment on anything of that nature, sir,’ the butler said stonily.

  ‘Of course not,’ Blackstone hastily assured him. ‘Major Walsh was only joking. Our sole interest is in the Colonel’s more conventional visitors. The owners of neighbouring estates, for example.’

  ‘The Colonel had very little to do with his neighbours.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  The butler hesitated for a second. ‘In part, it was of their doing,’ he admitted. ‘Living as close to the castle as they do, birth has become something of a preoccupation with them.’

  ‘The Colonel wasn’t good enough for them?’

  ‘Let us just say that it did not take long for them to establish for themselves that the Colonel was not someone they would be comfortable with socially. But I would not wish you to believe that this hurt the Colonel—he showed no interest in cultivating such relationships either.’

  I’ll just bet he didn’t, Blackstone thought. Socializing with the locals would have interfered with the job for which he had been plucked from obscurity and sent to Windsor.

  ‘Did the Colonel often have visitors from outside the area?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘Not often, no. And none of them stayed…’ the butler faltered for a second, ‘…and none of them stayed overnight.’

  ‘Do you remember the names of any of his visitors?’

  ‘I remember the names of all of them,’ the butler said frostily. ‘Their ranks, too, since, given the Colonel’s background, they were all military men.’

  He quickly reeled off a list which included two generals, one colonel, three lieutenant colonels and one major.

  ‘And all of the visits were short?’

  ‘Usually no more than two hours.’

  Blackstone paused for a moment before posing his next question. ‘You hesitated when you were about to say that none of them was here overnight. Why was that?’

  ‘There was one occasion when the Colonel had a visitor without informing me of the fact,’ the butler said, his tone suggesting that the failure was his and not his employers.

  ‘If he didn’t inform you that he’d had a visitor, then how can you know that he did?’

  ‘The incident to which I refer happened at the start of last month,’ the butler said reluctantly. ‘At eleven o’clock in the evening, I escorted the Colonel to his bed chamber, as was my normal practice, and then took my leave. When I arrived at his chamber with the breakfast tray, at seven o’clock the following morning, I knew immediately that he had had a visitor during the course of the night.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘There was a small patch of dried mud on the floor, which I would suspect, from its shape, had come from the edge of the sole of a riding boot. I had left the cushions on the armchair plumped up, but now they were flattened, even though the Colonel never sits in that particular chair himself. I am used to the smell of the Colonel’s cigars in the air, but there was also the hint of a much inferior brand. And though I always leave the Colonel two drinking glasses, one for whisky and the other one for water, both of them had been used for whisky.’

  ‘You’d make a good detective,’ Blackstone said.

  The other man smiled almost imperceptibly at the comment. ‘A good butler must be the master of many skills.’

  ‘And you have no idea who this mysterious midnight visitor might have been?’ Walsh asked, looking him straight in the eyes.

  ‘None,’ the butler replied, returning the gaze.

  ‘Tell me about the tiger,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘There is very little to tell. It arrived one afternoon in a Harrods van, and was taken directly to the pen which had been prepared for it.’

  ‘Didn’t you think it strange that your master should have bought a tiger?’

  ‘It was not my place to think about it one way or the other.’

  ‘So you say the tiger was taken straight to its compound. How often did you see it after that?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘The Colonel summoned all the staff together. He told us that the tiger was a very dangerous creature, and that, for our own protection, we should keep well away from it. To reinforce his warning, he said that anyone who was caught near the tiger’s enclosure would be instantly dismissed.’

  ‘So none of the staff saw hide nor hair of it. When were you told it had died?’

  ‘Last week.’

  ‘And you believed it?’

  ‘Why would anyone wish to lie about the death of a tiger?’

  There was an urgent knocking on the sitting-room door, and Inspector Downes entered the room.

  ‘Don’t know how you ever worked it out, Mr Blackstone, but you were quite right,’ he said.

  ‘Quite right about what?’

  ‘You told my men to look for bloodstains, and bloodstains were what they found.’

  ***

  The cottage was a modest one, but with all the services of the big house available to him, Tebbitt would have needed no more. It consisted of a scullery, a workshop, a parlour and a bedroom. It was in the bedroom that the bloodstain had been discovered. It was not clearly visible, and had not the conscientious constable gone down on his hands and knees at the side of the bed, the search might have missed the tell-tale stain altogether.

  Walsh lowered himself on to the flag floor to take a closer look. Blackstone, on the other hand, seemed more interested in other aspects of the room, and instead of joining Walsh, he first examined the contents of Tebbitt’s wardrobe and chest of drawers.

  ‘Very interesting,’ the Inspector said.

  ‘What have you found?’ Walsh asked, looking up at him. ‘It’s not so much what I found, as what I didn’t,’ Blackstone said enigmatically. ‘That really is blood, is it?’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ Walsh confirmed.

  ‘Then here’s what I think happened,’ Blackstone said. ‘Tebbitt was in bed when his attackers entered the room. They woke him up, ordered him to get out of bed, and then clubbed him to death.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier just to attack him while he was asleep?’

  ‘Easier, but messier. There’d have been blood all over the sheets, and it would have been more difficult for the attackers to make it look as if Tebbitt had left of his own accord.’

  ‘Is that what they tried to do?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why they removed most of his clothes. They didn’t want us to think there’d been any murders at Amritsar Lodge, because that would have led to further questions and speculations. A suicide and a flight were another matter entirely, and that is what they tried to simulate.’

  ‘Have you considered the other possibility?’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘That there was no attack at all. That the single drop of blood might have come from some injury Tebbitt had sustained during the course of his day. That he really did run away.’

  Blackstone examined the floor, then repositioned himself so that he was clear of all the furniture.

  ‘What do you notice about the flagstones immediately around me?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re a little darker than the others,’ Walsh said. ‘And why is that?’

  ‘Possibly because they’re damp.’

  ‘And why should they be damper than the flagstones in the rest of the room?’

  ‘Because they’ve been washed more recently.’ Walsh paused, a
nd a look of comprehension came to his face. ‘And the reason for that is to wash away the blood!’ he continued.

  ‘Which is what the murderers did—apart from one tiny spatter which ended up close to the bed.’

  Twenty-Eight

  ‘I’ve been a fool,’ Major Walsh said suddenly, as the cab which was returning them to the railway station entered Windsor.

  ‘A fool?’ Blackstone repeated.

  ‘More than that! I’ve been a complete bloody idiot.’ Walsh patted his pocket for his cheroots, then remembered that he had lost them. ‘I have something important to say, but before I begin, can I tell you a story about my soldiering days?’

  ‘Why not?’ Blackstone asked, intrigued.

  ‘When I was a raw young 2nd lieutenant, I was posted to Calcutta. One of my first assignments was to work under a captain who had been given the task of investigating serious losses from the quartermaster’s store.’

  ‘What kind of losses?’

  ‘Riding tackle, guns, ammunition, medicine—anything, in other words, for which there would have been a ready market outside the cantonment.’

  ‘Go on,’ Blackstone encouraged.

  ‘The captain began working on the assumption that the guilty parties must be among the native workers attached to the stores. He questioned them all, and had several of them flogged to within an inch of their lives. When it became apparent—even to him—that the Indians were not responsible, he turned his attention to the enlisted men. But in the meantime, I had been doing some thinking of my own, and had decided that even if these common soldiers were guilty of assisting in the crimes, they were not the chief culprits.’

  ‘And what had led you to that conclusion?’

  ‘I can probably best explain if I take one robbery as an example. A hundred saddles had gone missing. A hundred! Now how would the common soldiers ever meet the kind of Indian who had sufficient cash to purchase a hundred saddles, even at knock-down prices?’

  ‘He might have approached them,’ Blackstone suggested, playing devil’s advocate.

  ‘All right,’ Walsh conceded. ‘Let us assume that, without them even seeking him out, they had already had a buyer. How would they manage to smuggle a hundred saddles out of the cantonment all at once?’

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t smuggle them all at once. Perhaps they only took a few at a time.’

  ‘Where would they store the rest while all this was going on? You know what a barracks is like, Inspector. There’s barely the space for the men to store their own equipment. And what other areas would they have access to—areas where they could be assured their hoard would not be discovered by one of their superiors? None! The whole thing would have been impossible without the active co-operation of at least one officer.’

  ‘You told the captain this, did you?’

  ‘I did. I put forward to him the same arguments as I have put forward to you. He wouldn’t hear of it. He refused to contemplate the notion that an officer could ever be involved in such a sordid business. And I thought him a fool to be swayed by his prejudice to such an extent that he would refuse to see the logic of my argument. Yet am I any better? After the way I have been acting since you told me of your suspicions, am I any less of a fool?’

  ‘So you’re prepared to accept that Army officers are behind the kidnapping of the Maharaja’s son?’

  ‘Yes. I do not say active officers—perhaps they are all retired, like Colonel Howarth—but certainly officers of some sort. I don’t want to accept it, but I’m forced to—especially now we have been given the names of the men who visited Colonel Howarth.’

  ‘You recognized one of them?’

  ‘I recognized all of them. But there was one in particular which stood out. May I return to my story about Calcutta for a moment?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The captain, as I have said, refused to accept any of my conclusions. Eventually, he arrested a sergeant and a corporal. They were tried and found guilty. As they stood before the firing squad, they were still protesting their innocence. I believed them, and I determined, then and there, to carry on my own investigation in secret. I was ruthless in my approach—I owed it to those two dead men to be so. I deliberately put aside my personal prejudices and preferences. That a man was my friend—that I would trust him with my life—did not exclude him from my scrutiny. It took me months to reach my conclusions, but in the end, by a process of elimination, I found that the finger pointed very clearly at one man. I could not prove he was guilty, but I was convinced in myself that he had to be. He was a major at the time, and his name was Roderick Pugh.’

  ‘According to the butler, a General Pugh visited Colonel Howarth recently. Could it be the same man?’

  ‘It is the same man. I have been following his career ever since my time in Calcutta. I kept hoping that, though I was unable to bring about his downfall myself—though I was unable to make him pay for standing by while two innocent men were executed—someone else would eventually unmask him for what he truly was. But it was not to be. Whatever his other faults, he was a good soldier in the field. He was promoted to colonel, then to general. It is possible that as he grew older, he grew more honest. But I, for one, do not believe it. A leopard does not change his spots—especially a vile, avaricious, ruthless leopard, which was what I had discovered Roderick Pugh to be.’

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘He retired about three years ago. He lives somewhere in the Home Counties in quiet respectability. And if you are looking for a man capable of organizing the kidnapping of the prince and the murders attendant on it, then you need look no further.’

  Twenty-Nine

  Night had fallen in Agra, bringing with it a little relief—but only a little—from the glue-like stickiness of the day.

  It was simply not a white man’s climate at this time of year, Captain Donald Threlford thought as he abandoned his rickshaw and covered the last few yards to the General’s bungalow on foot. Not a white man’s climate at all!

  In this part of India the sun was not the benevolent, smiling face it was at home. Rather it was an angry ball of fire, hurling its cursed heat down on those below. Even before it had reached its height, the sweat which gathered under the armpits would become as thick as a swamp, as sticky as treacle. And it would get worse as the day progressed, so that by evening a man would feel as if not just his uniform, but also his skin, had begun to rot away.

  General Greer was sitting on his veranda, somewhat cooled—though not enough, never enough—by the punkah-wallah’s fan. He was gazing into the night towards distant Chandrapore, and seemed so absorbed in his own thoughts that he did not even notice his aide was approaching.

  Threlford took a handkerchief out of his pocket, paused to wipe his perspiring brow, and wondered if he was about due to endure another tirade against the Princely States.

  ‘They’re nothing but a damned nuisance!’ the General would tell his own officers, the occasional official visitor, the British merchants of the city—and anyone else he could back into a corner at a social function. ‘A damned nuisance and a damned inconsistency. We already have direct rule over a good part of the country, do we not? Then why not over all of it?’

  Agreeing with him—saying you shared his views entirely and without question—would do nothing to staunch the flow once he had got started.

  ‘Does the government really think that the native princes do as good a job of running their states as we could?’ he would continue. ‘Has the Prime Minister—God rot him!—ever considered what a provocation it is to our niggers to see other niggers ruled by one of their own kind? And wouldn’t the niggers in the princely states be much happier under British rule?’

  A slight contradiction there, the listener would think. Either the natives would prefer to be ruled by the Raj or they wouldn’t. He couldn’t have it both ways. But they were wrong. Despite the logical inconsistencies, Greer was still the commanding general, and thus could have it as many ways as
he liked.

  ‘And why should the princes grow fatter and fatter on money which would be much more useful in the British treasury?’ he would conclude.

  ‘Why indeed’? his listeners would sincerely agree, whatever their personal opinion of the General. The princely states were there for the picking. All that was needed was someone with the will to harvest them.

  Greer noticed the arrival of his aide-de-camp, and gave him a warm beam of welcome. ‘Wonderful evening, is it not, Donald?’

  Threlford agreed—just as he would have agreed if his commanding officer had said it was raining frogs—and found himself wondering just what had caused Greer to abandon his usual sour demeanour.

  ‘We’re going to see a bit of action at last,’ Greer said. He handed Threlford a piece of paper. ‘First thing in the morning, I want you to instruct the company commanders on this list that their men should be ready to move out at two hours’ notice.’

  Threlford ran his eyes down the list, and quickly calculated that the soldiers involved in the General’s plans—whatever those plans were—accounted for two-thirds of the entire garrison.

  ‘Are we going on manoeuvres, sir?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘No, we most certainly are not. What we will be doing, my dear Donald, is marching into Chandrapore.’

  Despite the heat, Threlford paled slightly. ‘I wasn’t aware that we’d received any orders from the Viceroy on such a course of action, sir.’

  ‘Nor have we,’ the General agreed jovially. ‘Wait for orders from that old fool, and you’ll wait for ever.’

  ‘So the order came from London?’

  ‘Not from there, either. Those stuffed shirts in the India Office are more concerned about their next visit to their favourite brothel than they are about the Empire.’

  ‘Then if the order didn’t come from the Viceroy and it didn’t come from London, I don’t quite see how we can—’

  ‘The commander on the ground—which in this case, I should remind you, happens to be me—is allowed to use discretionary powers if the situation is deemed to warrant it. And that’s just what I’m doing—assuming discretionary powers because the situation warrants it.’