‘You’re in the way!’ the sergeant screamed at him. ‘Get out of the bloody way!’
Blackstone eased himself past the soldiers with their shovels, and their angry sergeant with his whistle. He wanted to tell them all that he understood their pain and their fear, but he knew that he didn’t — knew that he was only a visitor to this war which had become the centre of their existence.
He turned the corner, and entered another world. In this section of the trench, the men were following their normal routine — filling sacks with sand, stacking the sandbags against the wall of the trench, and repairing the duckboards, all with a calm, steady work rhythm.
Did they know about the tragedy which had occurred in the next section? Blackstone wondered.
Of course they did! They could not have failed to hear the boom, and were well enough aware of what damage an exploding shell could do.
But since it hadn’t happened to them, it was none of their business. If it didn’t touch their own struggle for survival, it could be ignored — must be ignored, if they were to avoid going mad.
He spotted the man he’d come to see standing at the entrance to his dugout, and looking towards the other end of the trench.
Even from that angle — and at that distance — it was obvious that Hatfield was not in command of himself, let alone anyone else, he thought.
Blackstone had known a number of officers like Hatfield during his service in India — weak men who, because they had been born into privilege, felt it was their duty to serve their country in the army. They had been quite wrong, of course — they would have better served their country by staying out of the army, and letting men who knew what they were doing take charge — but there had been no telling them that then, and there was no telling them that now.
‘Good morning, Lieutenant!’ Blackstone called out.
The words made Hatfield turn around, perhaps more quickly than he had intended to, and a wince of pain crossed his face.
‘Terrible mess in the next section of trench,’ Blackstone said. ‘There’s blood everywhere — and if the field gun had been pointed a fraction of a degree to the left when it was fired, that could have been you.’
‘It will be me,’ Hatfield replied. ‘Sooner or later, it’s bound to be me.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Blackstone agreed cheerfully. ‘There are some blokes who are both unlucky in love and unlucky at cards — and you do seem to be one of them. But if I was a betting man, I’d put my money on Lieutenant Maude surviving the war without a scratch — because he’s the kind of man who always does.’
‘Perhaps he is,’ Hatfield said flatly.
‘You are rather forgetting your manners, aren’t you?’ Blackstone asked.
‘My manners?’ Hatfield repeated, mystified.
‘You never asked me how I was feeling this morning, which is really rather rude.’
Most other men in his position would have damned Blackstone for his impertinence, but Hatfield, after an uncomfortable silence of perhaps twenty seconds, forced himself to say, ‘So how are you feeling this morning?’
‘To tell you the truth, I’m getting a bit of gyp from this left ankle of mine,’ Blackstone said. ‘And how are you feeling, Lieutenant Hatfield?’
‘I’m. . uh. . fine,’ Hatfield replied, refusing to meet Blackstone’s eye.
‘Really? When I saw you turn around just then, you looked a little stiff to me. A touch of the rheumatics, is it? That’s an old man’s affliction, you know. I should have thought a boy of your age would have been fighting fit.’
‘I am fighting fit,’ Hatfield said, with an uncharacteristic burst of pride.
‘I’m certainly relieved to hear that,’ Blackstone said. ‘But, as pleasant as it’s been talking about health matters with you, that’s not at all why I came here today, is it?’
Hatfield should have said nothing — he knew he should have said nothing — but once again, after a few moments of awkward silence, he felt compelled to speak.
‘So why did you come here?’
‘I came to bring you a present,’ Blackstone said.
‘A present?’
‘Well, it’s not really a present, I suppose. It’s more a case of my returning your property to you.’
‘My property?’
‘You really should get out of the habit of repeating everything I say, you know,’ Blackstone advised. ‘It makes you sound like you’re not your own man at all.’ Then he reached into his pocket, took out the tent peg mallet, and held it out to the lieutenant. ‘This is yours, isn’t it?’
Hatfield folded his arms across his chest — and winced again.
‘I’ve never seen it before in my life,’ he said unconvincingly.
‘You’ve never seen a mallet before?’ Blackstone asked, in mock-surprise.
‘Well, of course I’ve seen a mallet before, but. .’
‘But not this one?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Now that is interesting,’ Blackstone mused. ‘Myself, I can’t tell one mallet from another, but without even really looking at it, you’re sure you’ve never seen this particular mallet before.’
‘I have no more to say to you, Inspector,’ Hatfield told him, turning towards the dugout.
‘But I have a great deal more to say to you,’ Blackstone replied, putting a restraining hand on the other man’s shoulder. ‘I watched Lieutenants Soames and Maude lead their men out of St Denis last night, but I didn’t see you. Now why was that?’
‘None of your business,’ Hatfield said sulkily.
But he did not brush Blackstone’s hand away with contempt, as Maude would have done. Nor did he take a swing at the policeman, which would probably have been Soames’ instinctive reaction.
‘We both know you stayed behind in the village so that you could pay me an unexpected visit in the middle of the night,’ Blackstone said, ‘and we both know that if you stripped off your jacket and shirt now, we’d find a big bruise on your chest that I made with my foot.’
‘That’s not true!’ Hatfield protested.
‘Well, it should be easy enough to prove, one way or the other. Are you willing to show me your chest?’
‘No!’
‘I thought not,’ Blackstone replied. He frowned. ‘Do you know what’s puzzling me?’
Hatfield — having at last learned the value of silence — said nothing.
‘It’s puzzling me why Maude sent you to do his dirty work for him,’ Blackstone said.
‘He didn’t. .’
‘He needed to send somebody, of course. I understand that. I was getting far too close to the murderers for comfort. But you’d have thought he’d have sent someone who could do a proper job, wouldn’t you?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Of course you have! You know that I know that it was you who attacked me, and I know that you know it.’ Blackstone paused again. ‘You could have finished me off when I was on the ground — Soames would have done, if he’d been in your place — but instead you ran away like a frightened rabbit, which, when you think about it, was awfully bad form.’
‘I didn’t. .’ Hatfield began.
‘So am I right in assuming that you don’t want your mallet back?’ Blackstone interrupted him.
‘It’s not my mallet!’
‘Is it the same one you used to kill Lieutenant Fortesque?’ Blackstone asked, as if the other man had never spoken. ‘Oh, I was forgetting, you didn’t kill Fortesque — that was Lieutenant Soames.’
Hatfield looked almost as if he was about to burst into tears.
‘If only you knew what damage you were doing by being here, you’d put an end to this investigation of yours immediately,’ he said.