‘Are you still listening to me, Mr Blackstone?’ Mick asked.
‘I’m still listening,’ Blackstone said. ‘Carry on with your tale.’
‘Maude stayed with Fortesque for about ten minutes, and when he left, he went back to Soames’ dugout. And then, maybe half an hour before dawn, Lieutenant Soames paid a visit to Lieutenant Fortesque.’
Maude’s efforts at persuasion having so obviously failed, Soames is sent to deliver the killing blow, Blackstone thought. He finds Fortesque alone, as he expected to. .
He felt a sudden chill run through him, as he began to see a hitherto unsuspected flaw in his own logic.
Soames would have had no real basis for believing that he would find Fortesque alone!
None at all!
At that time of day — just before the morning stand-to and the inspection which followed it — what would have been more natural than that Fortesque would ask his servant to make him a cup of tea and cook him some breakfast?
As it happened — as things turned out — Fortesque had been alone, because he had sent Blenkinsop to the reserve trench for more whisky — but Soames couldn’t possibly have known that he would do that.
Hell, even Fortesque himself couldn’t have known, with any degree of certainty, when the whisky would run out.
And that was where the theory broke down, wasn’t it? The three musketeers couldn’t have been planning to kill Fortesque that morning — because there were far too many imponderables.
Wind it back, Blackstone ordered himself. Start again.
The plan had been for Fortesque to die sometime later — perhaps when they were all back in St Denis. But then Soames — hotheaded, impulsive Soames — had taken a spur of the moment decision!
Blackstone pictured the scene in his mind.
Fortesque is sitting at his table when Soames enters the dugout.
‘Have you thought about what Maude had to say to you, Charlie?’ Soames asks.
‘I have,’ Fortesque replies.
‘And what conclusion have you reached?’
‘I’ve examined my conscience, and I now see, more clearly than ever, that while it will be damaging to all of you, I really have no choice but to come clean.’
But come clean about what? Blackstone asked himself.
About bloody what — for God’s sake?
Had they come across a stash of abandoned gold — or something almost equally valuable — and decided between them to keep it for themselves? Had Fortesque changed his mind about it, leaving the others with no choice — in their own minds, at least — but to kill him? And had those gold bars been in the coffin that Maude, Soames and Hatfield had stolen from the warehouse in Calais?
Or was that all just wild speculation — a fantasy he had dreamed up himself to explain away something which simply couldn’t be explained?
Blackstone forced all these speculations to the back of his mind, and focussed, instead, on what might possibly have happened in the dugout.
‘I’ve examined my conscience, and I now see, more clearly than ever, that while it will be damaging to all of you, I really have no choice but to come clean,’ Lieutenant Fortesque says.
Soames is not a complicated man. He has been brought up with a simple set of rules and a simple set of prejudices which are perfectly adequate to carry a chap through life, and, as far as he is concerned, a conscience is quite unnecessary. Besides, he has just lost a man — and nearly been killed himself — and his nerves are worn ragged.
‘I can’t allow you to do it,’ he says.
‘I’m sorry, but you can’t stop me,’ Fortesque replies.
But that’s just where Fortesque is wrong. There is a way to stop him — just one — and this is the way that the three musketeers have been discussing among themselves for some time. And it is the way Soames takes now — well ahead of the planned schedule — when he picks up the nearest blunt object and smashes it down on his friend’s skull.
He probably panics when he realizes what he’s done, but then his instinct for self-preservation takes control.
If he walks away now, it will be obvious he killed Fortesque, he argues. But if he leaves it for half an hour, and then ‘discovers’ the body, he might have just muddied the waters enough to get away with it.
‘I’m assuming that Soames then left the section, and came back later for the dawn inspection,’ Blackstone said.
‘No,’ Mick replied. ‘He didn’t come out of the dugout again until the Morning Hate started.’
Then what was left of the theory was crumbling before his eyes, Blackstone thought.
Because if Soames had killed Fortesque, there would have been absolutely no way to avoid getting blood spattered all over his uniform.
And if he’d had blood all over his uniform, the men he was inspecting would have noticed it!
‘What’s the matter?’ Mick asked.
‘I’m thinking,’ Blackstone said, more sharply than he’d intended.
And he was — thinking furiously, in a desperate attempt to square the circle.
Perhaps Soames had taken all his clothes off before he’d attacked Fortesque — but if anything could have put Fortesque on his guard, it would have been the sight of his friend stripping naked.
Perhaps Soames had covered himself with a blanket or a sheet before launching the attack — but smashing in a man’s skull is a very messy business, and however careful he was, there would have been some blood on his uniform.
There was really only one way Soames could have done it without drenching himself in blood, Blackstone realized.
And in accepting that, he was forced to accept that all the assumptions he had made so far were completely — grotesquely — wrong.
TWENTY
If there was one point in the day that the Tommy could usually call his own, then it was the time between late afternoon and early evening.
All his routine tasks had been completed. He had cleaned his rifle and his bayonet. He had refilled the sandbags that had to be refilled. He had shored up the crumbling sections of the trench which needed shoring up, and had repaired the duckboards which needed repairing. Thus, until dusk began to fall and he was called to evening stand-to, he was at perfect liberty to do whatever he wished — as long as what he wished to do was no more than write a few letters home, catch up on sleep, or play cards.
Yet even this small luxury was being interrupted in that particular section of the trench on that particular afternoon, because Captain Carstairs would be visiting the section, and though he seemed completely oblivious to their presence, they had been ordered by their sergeant to stand at attention until he had passed by.
Carstairs was not alone. As well as the sergeant, he was accompanied by a tall thin civilian in a shabby brown suit.
And just why am I here? Blackstone wondered, as they progressed along the trench.
The most straightforward answer to the question was that he was there because he had been told — or rather, ordered — to be there.
But why would Captain Carstairs — who plainly couldn’t stand the sight of him — want to see him at all, unless it was to give him a rocket for some minor infringement of military etiquette?
And if he was to be given a rocket, why should it be delivered in the trench, rather than in the company’s command dugout?