‘I have got that right, haven’t I, Mr Blackstone?’ Maude asked. ‘You do suspect us, don’t you?’
‘There are certainly some questions I’d like to ask you,’ Blackstone responded.
‘Now look here, my man, I’ve had just about enough of your damned impertinence!’ Soames said.
‘Quiet, Roger,’ Maude said. ‘You may not be interested in hearing what questions Mr Blackstone wishes to ask but, for my part, I find the whole matter quite intriguing.’ He turned to Blackstone again. ‘You may speak now,’
‘You can’t imagine how grateful I am for your permission,’ Blackstone said. ‘Why don’t we start by you telling me what the argument was about?’
‘Argument!’ Soames said to Maude. ‘I really don’t know what the devil he’s talking about.’
‘The day before Fortesque was murdered, three officers — I assume you three — went to see him in his dugout. Fortesque told you that he was going to make a clean breast of things, and one of you told him that that would ruin you all.’
‘Never happened!’ Soames said dismissively.
‘I take it you got this information from that sniffling little weed who served as Charlie’s servant,’ Maude said.
‘Doesn’t matter where I got it from,’ Blackstone told him. ‘We all know that’s what did actually occur.’
‘Let’s assume for a moment that you’re right,’ Maude said, with the smile back on his lips. ‘What do you think that conversation he overheard could possibly have been about?’
‘My best guess is that you’d all been involved in something illegal, and that Fortesque was about to confess to it,’ Blackstone admitted.
‘We might have been embezzling the mess funds, for example?’ Maude suggested.
‘That’s one possibility,’ Blackstone agreed.
‘Now why would we want to do that?’ Maude asked. ‘You look like a man who will have studied his history, so you must surely know that our ancestors stole such unimaginable amounts from their starving peasantry that our prosperity is assured until the end of time.’
‘I knew a lord when I was soldiering in India-’ Blackstone began.
‘Knew him, did you?’ Soames scoffed. ‘Great friend of yours, was he? Used to wash your socks together?’
‘I knew of him,’ Blackstone corrected himself. ‘He ran a string of polo ponies and, when he was sure someone was watching, he lit his cigars with Indian bank notes. But the money didn’t come from his family, as yours does. It came from the brothels that he owned — brothels which employed girls as young as twelve.’
‘I’m surprised, once you learned how he was “exploiting” the poor niggers, that you let him get away with it,’ Soames said mockingly.
‘I didn’t,’ Blackstone told him.
There was a moment of awkward silence.
Then Maude laughed and said, ‘That really is a most amusing little anecdote, Inspector Blackstone, but you shouldn’t let it lead you into believing that we all need to run brothels in order to live in the style to which we’ve quite rightly become accustomed.’
‘No?’ Blackstone asked.
‘No,’ Maude said. ‘Soames’ family, for example, owns half of Berkshire. Isn’t that right, Roger?’
‘Wouldn’t say it was quite half,’ Soames replied.
‘While my own people control considerable tracts of the wilds of Yorkshire — a place I’ve never visited in the past and have no intention of visiting in the future,’ Maude continued. ‘And as for Hatfield here — well, it’s true that his grandfather earned his money in trade, but he made so very much from it that we’re more than willing to forgive him.’
Maude was treating this whole encounter as a game, while Soames regarded it as an assault on everything he held dear, Blackstone thought. But Hatfield was neither amused nor enraged — merely uncomfortable.
‘So just what was it that Fortesque could have done which might have ruined you?’ he asked the three lieutenants.
‘Nothing at all,’ Maude said calmly. ‘Charlie Fortesque’s servant — who ranks on the evolutionary scale slightly below pond scum — heard what was merely amusing banter between friends, and got completely the wrong idea. I’d be more than willing to tell you what the joke was, if I could remember it — but it was so inconsequential that it’s gone completely out of my mind.’
‘You’re lying, of course,’ Blackstone said.
‘Damn your impudence!’ Soames exploded. ‘Fifty years ago — civilian or no civilian — I could have had you horsewhipped for saying that.’
‘Not fifty years ago, Roger — much closer to a hundred,’ Maude said, still amused. ‘But you’re quite right, there was certainly a time when you could have had Mr Blackstone horsewhipped — and if you had, I, for one, would gladly have paid money to see it.’
He had gone almost as far as he could with this particular interrogation, Blackstone decided, but he still had one last shot to fire.
He turned to face the weakest link in the chain.
‘You’ve said absolutely nothing, so far, Lieutenant Hatfield,’ he pointed out. ‘I wonder why that is?’
Hatfield opened his mouth wide, but the only words which came out were, ‘I. . I. .’
‘Benjamin prefers, quite rightly, to let the senior members of our little group do the talking,’ Maude said.
‘And the senior members of the group would be you and Lieutenant Soames, would they?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Oh yes,’ Maude agreed. ‘By several centuries, at least.’
There was a loud cry of ‘Howzat’ from the field.
‘The innings has only just started, and the opposition is already one wicket down,’ Maude said. ‘It would appear that, in this case at least, the underdog is being much less successful than he might have hoped.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You will bear that in mind, won’t you, Mr Blackstone?’
‘If the underdog always won, he wouldn’t be the underdog any more,’ Blackstone countered. ‘But the fact that he’s still called the underdog indicates that next time he just might come through.’
‘I have no idea what the damn fellow’s talking about,’ Soames said, to no one in particular.
‘No, you wouldn’t have,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘But you understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Lieutenant Maude?’
‘Indeed I do,’ Maude said. ‘In fact, I think it can safely be said that, as a result of this brief meeting, we each understand the other.’
The new batsman was walking on to the field to a smattering of half-hearted applause.
Blackstone turned to go, then swivelled round on his heel.
‘When you do want to talk to me, Lieutenant Hatfield, I shouldn’t be hard to find,’ he said.
And then, as the bowler vanquished the new batsman with his first ball, he turned again, and walked away.
EIGHT
Blackstone sat at the table in his billet, deep in thought, and occasionally sipping from the bottle of French beer — the only beer available in the NCOs’ mess — which he held in his hand.
He had never investigated a case quite like this one before, he mused. And what made it so unique was that he was almost certain he knew who the murderer was — or, at least, that he could pin it down to one of three possible suspects — but he had absolutely no idea of what the motive could possibly be.
He had almost completely dismissed the idea that Fortesque had been killed to prevent him revealing the details of a racket they had all been involved in, because that simply did not square with the characters of the three young men he had talked to at the cricket match.
For openers, Hatfield was too earnest to become involved in anything shady, and Soames was too stupid. As for Maude, it would be beneath his dignity — and his intellectual pride — to do anything which could as easily be done by a common man. And then there was Fortesque — the fourth member of the group — who, Blackstone hoped, had inherited at least a little of his grandfather’s integrity.