Blackstone and the Great War

by Sally Spencer

  ‘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.

  ‘It bothers me that the thieves found it so easy to break in,’ Blackstone told him. ‘In fact, strictly speaking, they didn’t break in at all – they simply came through the door. And how did they manage to open that door?’

  ‘They must have picked the lock.’

  ‘They didn’t. If they had, I’d be able to tell.’

  ‘Then I don’t know how they did it,’ Hoskins said sullenly.

  ‘Of course you do! They opened it with the key that you gave them!’

  ‘Now look here—’ Hoskins protested.

  ‘If you tell me how it really happened that night, Corporal Baker will be willing to overlook the fact that everyone involved in the robbery is equally responsible for him being knocked unconscious,’ Blackstone said. ‘Isn’t that right, Corporal Baker?’

  ‘Since you ask – and since I’m in your debt – I suppose I’ll have to,’ Baker agreed.

  ‘I’ll also overlook the fact that looting is an offence which is punishable by death,’ Blackstone continued. ‘On the other hand, if you make me go to all the trouble of digging up the proof myself, I’ll personally organize your firing squad.’

  ‘I . . . I . . .’ Hoskins stuttered.

  ‘They come for you at dawn,’ Blackstone said. ‘They tie your hands behind your back, take you into a courtyard, and stand you against a wall.’

  ‘There’s no need . . .’ Hoskins said weakly.

  ‘A chill runs through you, though you’re not sure if that’s due to the temperature or your own fear. They offer you one last cigarette. You accept it, not because you want to smoke – your mouth feels too dry for that – but because it will put off the moment when the order to fire is given.’

  ‘Enough!’ Hoskins sobbed.

  ‘Sometimes you’re killed immediately, but sometimes you’re not, and you lie there on the ground – in agony – waiting for the officer to come across and finish you off with a bullet to the head . . .’

  ‘I didn’t know they were going to hit you, Corporal Baker,’ Hoskins babbled. ‘I’d never have agreed to it if I’d known they were going to do that.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better tell us exactly what it was you did agree to,’ Blackstone suggested.

  The men have been following Hoskins since he left the warehouse, but it is not until he is sitting down in the seedy bar – a glass of absinthe in front of him – that he notices them.

  There are three of them. One is sharp-faced, the second chunky, and the third slim and nervous-looking.

  Hoskins’ first panic-stricken thought is that the sharp-faced one has bought up his gambling debts, and the chunky one is there to break his bones if he does not pay up immediately.

  Then he relaxes, because though the men are in civilian clothes, they are not the kind of civilian clothes that a third-rate French gangster would wear. No, these men are English – and probably gentlemen.

  The men sit down at the table – surrounding him.

  ‘And that’s when they offered you the bribe?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Not a bribe, exactly,’ Hoskins said, uncomfortably.

  ‘Then what did they offer you?’

  ‘They said they had a bit of a problem, and that if I’d be kind enough to help them sort it out, it might be worth a couple of drinks.’

  ‘We have a business proposition to make to you,’ the thin-faced one says.

  ‘What kind of business proposition?’ Hoskins asks suspiciously.

  ‘A very simple one. If you lend us the keys to the warehouse for half an hour, we will give you one hundred pounds.’

  Hoskins’ fear has been receding slightly, but now, once he has heard the size of the bribe, it comes back stronger than ever.

  ‘They shoot you for stealing government property,’ he says.

  ‘It’s not government property we’re after,’ the sharp-featured one tells him. ‘The only thing we’re interested in is the coffin – and that belongs to the family of the dead man.’

  It’s wrong – Hoskins knows it’s wrong – but when the sharp-faced one starts counting out the big white banknotes on the table, he feels himself weakening.

  With a hundred pounds, he could pay off all his gambling debts and make a fresh start in life, he tells himself.

  ‘There’s a sentry outside the warehouse,’ he says, in a desperate attempt to save himself from making a big mistake.

  The sharp-faced one smiles. ‘You’ve got your uniform in the vehicle, haven’t you?’ he asks the tall nervous one.

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ the tall nervous one replies.

  ‘The sentry shouldn’t be much of a problem,’ the sharp-featured one tells Hoskins.

  ‘And when he said that, I thought he meant they could get in without hurting you,’ Hoskins told Baker.

  ‘And how did you think they’d manage that?’ Baker asked angrily. ‘By offering me a bribe, too?’

  ‘Well, yes. They seemed to have plenty of money on them, and—’

  ‘Not everybody’s like you, you dirty little scumbag,’ Baker growled. ‘Some of us have a sense of honour and decency that can’t be bought.’

  A minute later, the keys and the money have been exchanged, and the deal is done.

  They’ll return the keys in half an hour – maybe even less than that – the sharp-faced one promises, and nobody will be any the wiser.

  Hoskins watches them leave the bar, knowing that – eve
n now – he could probably call it off if he wanted to. But he needs to pay his gambling debts, and maybe, once he has paid them and his credit is good again, he’ll have one last flutter for old-times’ sake.

  ‘They never said they were going to steal the coffin, you see, only that they were interested in it,’ Hoskins whined.

  What the hell was in the coffin, Blackstone wondered.

  It couldn’t have been anything small, or they’d simply have removed it, and left the coffin where it was.

  ‘You say they came in a vehicle?’ he demanded.

  ‘That’s right. The tall thin one said that was where he’d left his uniform.’

  ‘You’re sure that he said a vehicle – not a motor car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It would be a lorry, then, Blackstone thought.

  ‘How heavy was the coffin?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t weigh it,’ the clerk replied. And then, seeing Baker glowering at him, he quickly added, ‘But it must have been quite heavy, ’cos it took four blokes to carry it in.’

  ‘And you didn’t think it was just a little odd that a body should have weighed so much?’

  ‘Maybe he was a big bloke. And anyway, the ice would have weighed quite a lot, wouldn’t it?’

  Yes, it would, Blackstone thought. If there had been ice in the box. If there had been a body in the box.

  What else would be heavy enough to need four men to carry it? It had to be something that would make three young men from privileged backgrounds risk everything they had to steal it.

  Gold! Blackstone thought suddenly.

  Gold was heavy.

  Gold had such a magic attached to it that, throughout history, fabulously wealthy despots had gambled their whole empires on the chance of acquiring more of it.

  Gold was portable wealth which, in times of war, was often moved around – and often went missing.

  Yes, it was perfectly possible that the young officers – even Lieutenant Fortesque – had been seduced by the thought of gold.

  But it was still only a possibility, Blackstone thought, reining in his rampant speculation – one possibility of many.

  ‘How much did the three men you met in the bar really pay you?’ he asked Hoskins.

  ‘I told you,’ the clerk replied shiftily.

  ‘Then tell me again.’

  ‘They bought me a couple of drinks.’

  Blackstone mimed raising a rifle, pointed the imaginary rifle at Hoskins, and said ‘Bang!’

  ‘They paid me a hundred quid,’ Corporal Hoskins muttered, looking down at the floor.

  That was a lot of money, even for wealthy young men like the three musketeers, Blackstone thought. Whatever was in the coffin, they must have wanted it very badly indeed.

  ‘And where’s the money now?’ he asked.

  ‘Gone,’ Hoskins told him. ‘I . . . I got into a game of cards, and I was very unlucky.’

  Corporal Baker threw the punch with a speed which impressed even a veteran street fighter like Blackstone. And it was not only fast, it was well-aimed, catching Hoskins squarely in the middle of his face.

  The force of the punch lifted the clerk off the ground for a second, then he collapsed in a heap on the floor.

  Blackstone, looking on, said nothing.

  Hoskins gently felt his injured face, and winced.

  ‘You’ve broken my nose,’ he sobbed.

  ‘Good,’ Baker replied. ‘So maybe the next time you’re entrusted with the care of the dead, you’ll show them a little more respect.’

  A fair point, Blackstone thought, and maybe next time Hoskins would do just that – but it was by no means certain that he had been entrusted with the care of the dead this time.

  EIGHTEEN

  Returning to the front line was, if anything, even slower and more frustrating than the journey to Calais had been, and it was late afternoon – more than twenty-four hours after he had met Baker in front of the statue of the Six Burghers – when Blackstone finally found himself back in St Denis.

  He was as exhausted as he could ever remember being, and the prospect of going straight to his billet and getting his head down was almost irresistible. But resist it he must, he told himself, squaring his shoulders. There were too many questions still unanswered – too many opportunities still available to the three musketeers that would allow them to wriggle off his hook – for him to even think about sleeping. And so, with a heavy sigh, he turned his back on the village and began to walk towards the chateau which it shared its name with.

  If the size of the stable block in the grounds of the Chateau St Denis was anything to go by, then the count who had ordered its construction must have been a real enthusiast of equine pastimes, Blackstone mused.

  And it was not just large, it was also highly elaborate, with gargoyles and crenellations aplenty. It was almost, in fact, a small chateau in its own right, and it must have cast a long shadow over the hovels of those peasants whose back-breaking work had financed it.

  Blackstone wondered what had eventually happened to the extravagant, horse-loving count. The date set in the brickwork of the stable – 1777 – made it more than likely that he had ended his life in the Place de la Revolution in Paris – his body knelt before the guillotine, and his head in a basket below, looking up at it. And if that was what had actually happened, then he really had no one to blame but himself.

  There were no horses in the stables now. The British Army had taken over the whole estate, assigning the chateau itself to those high-ranking officers who could not reasonably be expected to endure the grubby conditions of trench life, and converting the stable block into a garage.

  And a busy garage this was, Blackstone saw. All around him, corporal-mechanics were hard at work – tinkering with the engine of a militarized Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, welding new steel plates on to the side of a Lanchester armoured car, changing the tyres on a supply lorry . . .

  Yes, it was a very busy place – and it had probably been equally as busy when the three musketeers had appeared in search of a vehicle which would take them to Calais.

  A sergeant – slightly plump and in his mid-twenties – appeared in the stable doorway, walked over to the Lanchester, and looked down at the work the welder had been doing.

  ‘Well, if I was a betting man, I’d definitely put my money on you winning the prize, Corporal Philips,’ he said.

  The corporal looked up. ‘What prize, Sarge?’

  ‘The prize for the prettiest armoured car in the whole of northern France, of course.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a prize for that,’ the corporal replied.

  The sergeant emitted a dramatic, theatrical sigh. ‘That’s because I just made it up, you bleeding halfwit.’

  ‘Oh,’ the corporal said, clearly confused.

  ‘You see, lad, the idea behind an armoured car isn’t that it looks nice – it’s that it’s bloody armoured,’ the sergeant explained. ‘So I’m not really interested in how neat your welding looks – all that concerns me is that when it hits a bump in the road, the bloody steel plate doesn’t fall off. Got that?’

  ‘Yes, Sarge,’ Philips said miserably.

  ‘Then let’s have a little less delicacy and a little more strength,’ the sergeant said. He turned to face Blackstone. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions,’ Blackstone said, producing his warrant card.

  ‘A copper, are you?’ the sergeant asked. ‘My dad was a copper, God rest his soul.’ He held out his hand. ‘Winfield’s the name – Ted Winfield..

  ‘Are you related to the sergeant who runs the telegraphy office?’ asked Blackstone, shaking the hand.

  ‘That’s my brother, Wally – the black sheep of the family.’

  Blackstone grinned. ‘What makes him the black sheep?’

  ‘He put in his papers to be an officer, didn’t he? Think of that – Wally Winfield, an officer and a gentleman! I laughed like a drain when they turned him dow
n. It would have had our poor old dad turning over in his grave. Still, he’s not a bad bloke – in his own way.’

  ‘And he’s a dab hand at transmitting Shakespeare,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Told you about that, has he?’ the sergeant said drily. ‘Well, I suppose he would have – if you’d been talking to him for more than a couple of minutes.’

  ‘About my questions . . .’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Would you mind asking them in my office?’ Winfield asked. ‘It’s not as noisy as it is out here – and anyway, I’ve got this bottle of very fine French brandy that’s screaming out to be opened, and I’ve been told it’s bad luck to open it when you’re alone.’

  ‘I’ve heard that, too,’ Blackstone said.

  Though the room to which Winfield led Blackstone was less of an office and more of a storeroom for spare parts, it did have a table and chairs, and there was indeed a bottle of good French brandy sitting on the table.

  ‘I was on easy street when the war broke out,’ the sergeant said, pouring out two generous shots of the cognac. ‘I was the foreman at one of the biggest garages in the West End.’ His eyes went misty at the memory of it. ‘You should have seen the cars that came into that garage – Rolls-Royce, Hispano-Suiza, Mercedes . . .’ He paused. ‘I’ve not been back to Blighty recently, but I’ll be willing to bet you don’t see too many Mercedes being driven around London nowadays – not with them being German. People don’t even dare walk their dachshund dogs any longer, for fear that some bugger will kick the shit out of them. And I believe they’ve even changed the name of the German shepherd, and have started calling it an Alsatian.’

  ‘That’s right, they have.’

  Winfield shook his head. ‘Mad! As if it was the poor mutt’s fault what it was called. Anyway, as I was going to say, it was a good business, that garage, and what with the inducements and everything, I was starting to build up a nice little nest-egg for myself.’

  ‘Inducements?’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Some chauffeur would bring in his boss’s Lanchester, and take me over to a quiet corner. “Now look here, my man, there’s something I want to ask you,” he’d say.”’ Winfield grinned. ‘“My man”! That’s what they’d call me, these ponces who thought that being dressed up in livery made them better than me. “Look here, my man, Lord Toffee-Nose wants his vehicle back as soon as possible, and if you’re prepared to move it to the head of the queue, there could be a couple of pounds in it for you.” And, naturally, I’d say I’d see what I could do.’