Besides, it was hard to think of any kind of racket they could become involved with in the bleak, muddy trenches.
A gambling debt, then, he asked himself, taking a drag on a French cigarette which, to his taste, was only slightly better than dried camel dung.
It was true that many officers had been destroyed by gambling, but gambling was, by its very nature, a solitary activity, and Blenkinsop had distinctly heard one of the lieutenants say that if Fortesque came clean, it would ruin them all.
A woman?
Back in England, perhaps, the love of a woman might lead to a crime of passion. But there were no women within a hundred miles who these young men might feel strongly about. And even if they did visit fancy whores in some of the better brothels in Paris — women covered in perfume and silk, according to Blenkinsop — no man kills his friend over a whore.
The stumbling block, from whatever angle he examined the problem, was always the same three little words — ruin them all.
This was one investigation that he could not handle alone, he decided — and the help he needed would have to come from both sides of the Channel.
England was no problem.
There, he could rely on Dr Ellie Carr, the brilliant forensic scientist who was his sometime-lover. She had helped him find the solution to seemingly unsolvable crimes before, and if anyone could pluck a vital clue from the dead body of Lieutenant Charles Fortesque, it was Ellie.
There, he could draw on the strange and idiosyncratic talents of Detective Sergeant Archie Patterson — a man with a huge attic of a brain, crammed full of information which others would long ago have discarded, but he had carefully stored in case, one day, it just might come in useful.
Getting any help in France was a completely different story. In France, he was hemmed in from all sides by invisible walls — walls which had been erected by the officers who would not help him and the enlisted men who didn’t dare to — and try as he might, he could think of no way of breaking those walls down.
The knock on the door took him by surprise, and the surprise deepened when the door swung open and he saw who his visitor was.
‘Good afternoon, Captain Carstairs,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you, but now you’re here, do please take a seat.’
Carstairs sat down in the chair opposite him — the chair from which Privates Blenkinsop and Hicks had so recently told their tales.
‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to inform you that I’ve had complaints about your recent conduct from some of my young officers.’
This was a Captain Carstairs he’d not seen before, Blackstone thought.
This new Carstairs was much softer spoken, and even sounded a little apologetic. And his face mirrored his voice — the expression on it one of a neighbour who feels he must complain about the noise, but doesn’t really want to cause a fuss. But it was all a disguise, because underneath the bland reasonableness, Blackstone could sense a bubbling rage.
‘Can I offer you a beer?’ the policeman asked his guest, playing the same game. ‘I’m afraid I can’t offer you a glass — I wasn’t issued with any — but if you wouldn’t mind drinking out of the bottle. .’
‘You did hear what I just said, didn’t you?’ Carstairs asked, the disguise slipping a little.
‘Yes, you said you’ve had complaints about me from some of your officers. But was that what you really meant?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Didn’t you really mean that you’ve had complaints from one of your young officers — Lieutenant Soames?’
Because it had to be Soames, didn’t it, Blackstone thought.
Lieutenant Maude would never have complained, because that would have been as good as admitting that he’d let a common man like Blackstone rattle him. And — for the moment at least — that was an admission he was not prepared to make, even to himself.
As for Hatfield, he would have been too frightened about rocking the boat to have complained without first getting Maude’s permission.
‘Is it only Lieutenant Soames you have a low opinion of — or do you feel contempt for all my young officers, Inspector?’ Carstairs asked, with what seemed like genuine curiosity.
‘I don’t hold them in contempt,’ Blackstone said. ‘I may not like them very much — though I suspect I might have liked Charlie Fortesque if I’d ever met him — but I accept that that’s not entirely their fault. They can’t help having been brought up to privilege, any more than I could have helped being brought up in an orphanage. And I do admire their obvious courage.’
‘Roger Soames has courage — and to spare,’ Carstairs said.
‘No, he doesn’t,’ Blackstone contradicted him. ‘The others show their courage — as most men do — in the way they fight to control their own fear. Lieutenant Soames, on the other hand, has neither the intelligence nor the imagination to even know what fear is.’
‘Do you suspect him of killing Fortesque, Mr Blackstone?’ Carstairs asked bluntly.
‘Do you seriously expect me to answer that question, Captain Carstairs?’ Blackstone countered.
‘No, I suppose not,’ Carstairs replied, ‘although your evasion answers it well enough for me. But you’re wrong. Soames could never have done it.’
‘Of course he couldn’t — because he’s an officer!’
‘I’m prepared to concede that the murderer could be an officer,’ Carstairs said.
‘You don’t believe that for a second,’ Blackstone told him.
‘No, I don’t believe it, but suppose that, for the sake of putting forward an argument, I was willing to concede it as a possibility,’ Carstairs said. ‘Would you then be willing to listen to that argument?’
Blackstone shrugged. ‘Why not?’
‘If an officer did, in fact, kill Fortesque, then I am sure that officer would not have been Soames, because, despite your opinion of him, I know him to be both courageous and thoroughly decent.’
‘Those are just words,’ Blackstone said.
‘Then let me give you a concrete example of what I’m talking about,’ Carstairs said. ‘The night before young Fortesque was killed, Roger Soames led a patrol out into No Man’s Land-’
‘Why would he have led out a patrol at night?’ Blackstone wondered. ‘What would be the point of that? What could it possibly achieve?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘Not to me.’
‘It is a matter of regimental pride that during the hours of darkness, it is we — and not Fritz — who hold the area.’
‘Was that the only reason he was there?’ Blackstone asked incredulously. ‘Was there no tactical advantage to it?’
‘There could have been a tactical advantage,’ Carstairs said, as if that were a minor point, barely worth consideration. ‘It was always possible, I suppose, that the patrol might have got close enough to the German trenches to hear something useful. That has happened in the past. But as I said, the main objective of the exercise was to have control of the area.’
‘That’s insane,’ Blackstone said.
Carstairs looked disapproving. ‘I would have thought, as an ex-soldier yourself, that you might have had at least some sense of the honour of your regiment,’ he said.
‘I do,’ Blackstone replied. ‘I just don’t see how crawling around in the dirt is supposed to enhance it.’
Carstairs shook his head again, as if he had reached the conclusion that Blackstone was a hopeless case, and would never truly grasp what the concept of honour meant.
‘At any rate — and for whatever reason — the patrol was out in No Man’s Land when Fritz spotted it, and opened fire,’ he continued. ‘One of the two privates with Soames was killed instantly, and the other was wounded in the shoulder. The wounded private was too weak to move under his own steam, and if Soames had decided to leave him to his fate, no one would have blamed him. But Roger didn’t do that. While still under heavy enemy fire, he managed to drag the private back to our trenches.’