Blackstone and the Great War

by Sally Spencer

  ‘And did you move it to the head of the queue?’

  ‘Course not, but I always told them I had – which meant me and the lads had a couple of quid to share between us. I saw myself as a bit of a Robin Hood – taking from the rich and giving to the poor.’

  ‘And that’s exactly what you were,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Anyway the war broke out, and the posters started to appear – “Your Country Needs You”, “What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?” – all that kind of guff – and my lady-friend started nagging me into joining up.’

  And she wouldn’t have been alone in that, Blackstone thought, remembering one poster with the banner ‘Women of Britain Say Go!’, in which a woman and her children were standing at the window and watching soldiers march away.

  Winfield reached over and poured them both a second glass of brandy.

  ‘Effie – that’s her name – said that when she got married, she wanted it to be to a hero, and there wasn’t much heroic about taking internal combustion engines to pieces,’ he continued. ‘Well, you can’t argue with a woman who’s right, can you? Come to that, you can’t argue with a woman who’s wrong, either – so I went and enlisted! And then, of course, my brother Wally had to do the same.’

  Blackstone laughed.

  ‘As a matter of fact, once I’d signed up, I did begin to think that maybe I could be quite heroic if push came to shove,’ Winfield told him. ‘I started picturing myself storming the Hun trenches, and then getting a medal pinned on me by the King himself. And what happened instead?’

  ‘Somebody told the powers that be what a bloody good mechanic you were?’ Blackstone suggested.

  ‘Exactly,’ Winfield confirmed. ‘So here I am, doing just the same job as I’d be doing back in London, but without any of the home comforts.’

  They had drained their glasses, and Sergeant Winfield filled them up for a third time.

  ‘I want to ask you about some officers who might have requisitioned a vehicle from you,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Don’t talk to me about officers requisitioning vehicles,’ Winfield said. ‘They make me sick – the lot of them. They turn up, looking all serious and high-minded, and say they need a car. So I ask for the paperwork, and they tell me that it hasn’t come through yet, but they still need the car immediately, because they’re on important official business. And what kind of important official business is it, do you think? It’s the kind that involves them writhing around between the legs of a high-class whore in the nearest big town!’

  ‘So what do you do in that situation?’ Blackstone asked.

  Winfield shrugged. ‘I give them the car – because something that officers have in common with women is that they’re right even when they’re wrong, and while their commanding officer might know full well they were pulling a fast one, it’s me that would get the rocket if I put in a complaint.’

  ‘Do you remember three officers asking you for a vehicle a few days ago?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Skinny, Beefy and Sly?’ Winfield replied, without hesitation. ‘Oh yes, I remember them, all right. But they didn’t want a car – they wanted a lorry. I asked them why it had to be a lorry, and Sly told me not to be so impertinent. Me! Impertinent! I’ve got a few years on the snot-nosed young bastard – and, as you may have noticed, I’m not exactly built like Jack Johnson – but if him and me ever got into an altercation outside a pub on the Mile End Road on a Saturday night, I reckon I could still beat the crap out of him.’

  ‘I’m sure you could,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘You did give them the lorry, though, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did not,’ Winfield said, ‘but only,’ he continued, slightly shamefacedly, ‘because I didn’t have one.’

  They wouldn’t have liked that, Blackstone thought – they needed a lorry, because they were about to steal a coffin.

  ‘So what happened next?’ he asked aloud.

  ‘Beefy started blustering about how, if I didn’t come up with a lorry in the next five minutes, he’d have my stripes. So I told him that none of the lorries I had in the garage would be roadworthy for at least three or four hours – which was quite true. And that made him really hit the roof.’

  It would have, Blackstone thought, because Soames knew – as did the other two – that if they lost three or four hours, the coffin might well be on a ship bound for England by the time they reached Calais.

  ‘While Beefy was throwing a fit, Sly was looking around him,’ Winfield continued, ‘and that’s when he noticed the ambulance. “Is that roadworthy?” he asked, and when I told him it was, he said, “Fine, we’ll take that.” Skinny didn’t like the idea at all. He said they couldn’t take the ambulance, because it might be needed for injured men. But Sly just smiled, in a nasty way, and said that given what they wanted to use it for, an ambulance would be perfect.’

  And so it had been, Blackstone mused – because who would have thought twice about seeing them load the coffin into an ambulance?

  ‘So you let them take the ambulance?’ he said.

  ‘I did,’ Winfield admitted. ‘And, thank God, it wasn’t needed for anything else while they were using it.’

  ‘Would you be prepared to sign a statement outlining what you’ve just told me?’ Blackstone asked.

  Winfield’s bonhomie melted away immediately.

  ‘No, I’m not sure I would,’ he confessed. ‘It’s one thing to chew the fat with a like-minded soul over a couple of brandies, but it’s quite another to put what we’ve been talking about down in writing.’

  ‘You don’t seem like the kind of man who’d want to see someone get away with murder,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Is one of them a murderer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Winfield nodded. ‘It’ll be Beefy,’ he said.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Blackstone wondered.

  ‘Because Skinny’s too frightened to kill anybody, and while Sly might want somebody dead, he’s too smart to do it himself.’

  ‘Are you the kind of man who’d want to see a murderer get away with it?’ Blackstone asked.

  Winfield shrugged again. ‘If you’d said that to me a year ago, back in England, I’d have been insulted that you even needed to ask. But life’s a lot cheaper out here, isn’t it? Every Tommy mowed down by machine-gun fire is being murdered – and not by the bloke firing the gun, but by the General who sent him out to certain death. And that General’s never going to pay for his crime, now is he?’

  ‘No,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘He isn’t.’

  ‘Besides, if Beefy killed somebody, Beefy will get away with it – because he’s an officer.’

  ‘It was an officer he killed,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘You think he was the one that topped that Lieutenant Fortesque?’ Winfield gasped.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Well, you could knock me over with a feather,’ Winfield said. ‘I’d never have thought he’d have murdered one of his own kind.’ He fell silent for a whole minute. ‘But, when you think about it, it doesn’t really make any difference if it was a brother officer he killed, does it? He could have wiped out half a dozen of them, and his regiment still wouldn’t admit he was guilty – because that would mean admitting that he wasn’t exactly the paragon of virtue that all officers are supposed to be.’

  ‘It’s more than likely that you’re right,’ Blackstone conceded reluctantly, ‘but there’s just a chance it will turn out differently this time – and isn’t that worth taking a gamble on?’

  ‘Maybe for you,’ Winfield told him. ‘But I’ve got my girl waiting for me back home – and even if I can’t walk down the aisle a hero, I do at least want to walk down the aisle.’

  ‘Once you’ve made your statement to me, you’ll be safe,’ Blackstone promised him.

  ‘If I make a statement to you, you’ll use it as part of your case against Beefy,’ Winfield said. ‘And when your case falls apart – and it will – you’ll go home, and I’ll still be here.’

 
; ‘You’ll be safe,’ Blackstone repeated. ‘Whatever happens to my case, you’ll be safe.’

  ‘Oh, they won’t kill me, if that’s what you’re talking about,’ Winfield agreed. ‘But they’ll find some way to punish me – they’ll have to, if only as an example to the rest of the poor bloody infantry of what happens when you cross the officer class. So they’ll trump up some charge against me, and I’ll spend the next ten years of my life in the glasshouse.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to happen that way,’ Blackstone said stubbornly.

  ‘That’s just how it will happen,’ Winfield insisted. He looked Blackstone squarely in the eyes. ‘Here’s what I’ll remember of this little meeting of ours if I’m asked: I’ll say you wanted to know if I remembered three officers asking me for a vehicle of some sort, and that I told you that it was strictly against regulations for any officer to take a vehicle without official permission.’

  ‘Even though everybody knows it happens?’

  ‘Even though everybody knows it happens! And I’ll add – if I’m pushed – that I considered it an insult to all the officers serving on the Western Front that you’d even ask the question, because they’re fine upstanding men who would never even think of doing such a thing.’ Winfield shook his head, sadly, from side to side. ‘Sorry, Mr Blackstone, but that’s the way things are.’

  NINETEEN

  There were only two sorts of people he kept coming up against in this investigation, Blackstone thought dispiritedly, as he walked back to the village.

  On the one hand, there were those who believed that it was impossible for an officer to have been a killer – and that included not just the officers themselves, but also those outside the officer class, like Corporal Johnson, who had fully accepted the ruling class myth.

  And on the other hand, there were people like Sergeant Winfield, who could be persuaded to accept that such a thing might just be possible, but had embraced another, equally damaging, myth – that officers were above the laws which applied to ordinary folk like him.

  ‘But officers are as likely to commit a murder as anybody else, and they’ll swing from a rope as well as the next man,’ Blackstone said aloud – and with fresh resolve. ‘I know that for a fact – and I’ll prove it, if it’s the last thing I do.’

  As he approached his billet, he was not in the least surprised to see the young soldier waiting impatiently outside his door. It would, in fact, have been a surprise if – fired up with enthusiasm for the investigation as he was – he hadn’t been there.

  ‘You’ve been gone a long time,’ Mick complained, as the policeman approached him.

  Blackstone grinned. ‘Well, you know what it’s like once you’re at the seaside – you find it difficult to tear yourself away.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve never been to the seaside myself,’ Mick replied, perhaps a little sadly.

  Of course he hadn’t. The chances were that, before he’d come to France, he’d never wandered more than three or four miles away from the house in which he was born.

  Blackstone glanced quickly up and down the street. There was no one else in sight – no witnesses to report what the Scotland Yard man and the private soldier did next.

  ‘You’d better come inside,’ he said.

  Once they were through the door, he was expecting Mick to immediately start babbling out the gossip he had picked up from the other members of his platoon, but instead, when the boy did start talking, it was about himself.

  ‘My old mum used to do a bit of cleaning for this lady called Mrs Robertson, who lived in this big house north of the river,’ Mick said. ‘Once, when I was a nipper, and the whole Robertson family was out for the day, she took me to see the house. I couldn’t believe it when I walked through the front door. It was like stepping into a palace. I’d never dreamed that anybody could be so rich.’

  The young man’s obvious naivety brought an involuntary smile to Blackstone’s face.

  Despite what Mick might believe, this Mrs Robertson hadn’t really been rich at all, he thought. If she’d been rich, she wouldn’t have employed Mick’s mum to pop in now and again and char for her, she’d have had a permanent staff – butler, maids, footmen – waiting on her hand and foot. And her house couldn’t really have been a palace, either – it had only seemed like one to a lad brought up in the slums.

  ‘Have I said something funny?’ the boy demanded, with a suspicion which was bordering on anger. ‘Are you laughing at me, Mr Blackstone?’

  ‘No,’ Blackstone said hastily, feeling thoroughly ashamed. ‘I was just remembering something amusing that happened yesterday.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ Mick asked.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Blackstone lied. ‘Carry on with what you were saying.’

  ‘Well, this Mrs Robertson used to give my mum all the stuff she didn’t want any more – clothes and things. She told mum she could cut the clothes up, and use them for floor rags, but mum would never have done that.’

  ‘Of course she wouldn’t,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘So what did she do with them – wear them herself, or sell them to a stall on the New Cut Market?’

  ‘Sometimes one, sometimes the other,’ Mick said. ‘Anyway, this once, it wasn’t clothes she gave her – it was a jigsaw puzzle. Do you know what a jigsaw puzzle is, Mr Blackstone?’

  ‘Yes,’ Blackstone said. ‘I do.’

  ‘This particular jigsaw was a big heavy wooden thing. It had a picture of a windmill on it. And I suppose you know what one them is, and all.’

  Blackstone smiled again – and this time he was smiling with Mick.

  ‘Big pointy thing with sails on it?’ he suggested.

  Mick smiled back. It was a good-natured smile, and his earlier animosity was obviously quite forgotten.

  ‘You know just about everything, don’t you, Mr Blackstone?’ he said. ‘There’s no wonder you’re a detective.’

  I wish I did know everything, Blackstone thought. I wish I knew why three apparently normal young men had decided to cold-bloodedly murder another young man who they had been friends with for most of their lives.

  ‘The picture was peeling off that jigsaw a bit,’ Mick continued. ‘To tell you the truth, there was some pieces that had no picture left on them at all. But I thought it was a bloody marvellous thing. I used to spend hours working at it. My pals all called me a proper Mary Ellen for wasting my time, but I didn’t care. I loved that puzzle.’ A tear ran down the corner of his eye. ‘It was the first real toy I ever had.’

  Blackstone nodded. ‘I know what it’s like to be without toys,’ he said, thinking back to his days in the orphanage.

  Mick took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. ‘But that’s neither here nor there,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘The only reason that I mentioned it at all was because, when you first gave me this job, I had no idea what it was you wanted me to do, did I?’

  ‘Well, you couldn’t have been expected to grasp the whole thing right away,’ Blackstone said tactfully.

  ‘Not an idea in the world,’ Mick said firmly. ‘Not a bleeding clue. And then I began to think about it like it was that jigsaw puzzle, and suddenly it all started to make sense. See, you collect a little piece of information here, and a little piece of information there, and then you try to fit them together to make a picture.’ He looked at Blackstone uncertainly, as if he was suddenly afraid he’d made a fool of himself. ‘It is a bit like that, isn’t it?’ he pleaded.

  Blackstone beamed at him. ‘It’s a lot like that,’ he said. ‘You’d make a fine detective.’

  ‘Really?’ Mick asked.

  ‘Really,’ Blackstone confirmed. ‘Now let’s hear about the bits of puzzle you’ve found.’

  ‘Well, the first thing that any of the lads remembers as being unusual . . .’ He paused. ‘You did ask me to find out what was unusual, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Blackstone assured him.

  ‘The first thing that was unusual was Lieutenant Soames
taking a couple of lads out on night patrol,’ Mick said. He paused for a second time. ‘No, that’s not quite right. It wasn’t the patrol that was unusual at all – because there are patrols every night.’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘I need to get the story straight in my head. I need to be able to tell it properly.’

  ‘Take your time,’ Blackstone said soothingly. ‘We’ve got all the time you need.’

  ‘The thing about these patrols is, they’re not as dangerous as they might seem,’ Mick continued. ‘Even if the patrol stumbles across a few Fritzes – doing the same thing as they are – nobody usually gets killed.’

  ‘So what do they do when that happens? Ignore each other?’

  ‘That’s right. It’d be certain death not to.’

  Of course it would, Blackstone thought. One flash from a weapon in No Man’s Land, and both sides would open fire from the trenches.

  ‘Anyway, that night, one of Lieutenant Soames’ patrol did get killed, and another got wounded,’ Mick continued. ‘Nobody’s quite sure how it happened. It was probably just bad luck – some Fritz sentry fancied firing a couple of shots into the dark, and by pure chance he hit our lads.’

  ‘I think I’ve already heard part of this story,’ Blackstone said. ‘Lieutenant Soames dragged the wounded man back to our trench, didn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right, he did,’ Mick agreed. ‘And that’s where we come to the next unusual bit of the story. When he got back to his dugout, Lieutenant Maude and Lieutenant Hatfield were there waiting for him.’

  ‘What was strange about that?’

  ‘They weren’t on front-line duty that night, so you might have expected them to stay in the reserve trench, and catch up on a bit of sleep. That’s what most officers do when they get the chance. Course, there’s no law that says an officer can’t go to the front line if he feels like it – but there’s never any real reason to.’