‘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.’
But there was a reason that night, Blackstone thought — the three musketeers needed to get together to put the final touches to the plan to murder Lieutenant Fortesque.
‘Anyway, the next funny thing — and that makes three funny things, you know.’
Blackstone smiled again. ‘I do know,’ he agreed. ‘I’m counting.’
‘The next funny thing was that Maude left the other two, and went to visit Fortesque in his dugout, further along the trench.’
Now that was strange, Blackstone told himself.
Since Soames was the one nominated to actually commit the murder, he would obviously have to chance being spotted near the scene of the crime. But there was no need for either of the other two to run such a risk. Quite the contrary — it would have been no more than prudent for them to keep well away from Fortesque in the hours before his impending death.
Yet Maude had been to see Fortesque! Now why would a man like him — who otherwise hadn’t put a foot wrong so far — even think of doing that?
‘What time was it that Lieutenant Maude visited Lieutenant Fortesque?’ Blackstone asked Mick.
‘Nobody’s quite sure. Apart from the ones who are on sentry duty, none of the lads pay much attention to time down in the trenches. But as near as any of them can tell, it was a couple of hours before dawn.’
Perhaps the reason that Maude had visited Fortesque was to make one last attempt to talk some sense into him. Perhaps he’d still hoped that he could convince Fortesque to change his mind, because if he could be persuaded, there would no longer be any need to kill him.