Blackstone and the Great War (31 page)

‘Was it as terrible as this?' the soldier wanted to know.

‘All wars are terrible.'

‘But was it as terrible
as this
?' the soldier insisted.

The man had lost a limb defending his country, and deserved an honest answer, Blackstone decided.

‘No,' he said, ‘if only by the sheer scale of the carnage, no war has
ever
been as terrible as this – and I hope to God that no war ever is again.'

Behind him – and amidst all this misery and suffering – he heard someone singing. He recognized the song. It was a ditty which was very popular in the music halls, and told the story of a patriotic young woman, who, furious at seeing a young man standing alone, marches up to him, and demands to know why he is not ‘fighting for your country as it's fighting for you?'

Blackstone turned around. The singer was sitting alone in the corner. He had only a stump where his right arm had once been, and it was this stump that he was serenading.

He had reached the point in the song at which the young man answers the young woman's question.

‘I would if I'd the chance,' he crooned, in a cracked voice,
‘but my right arm's in France; I'm one of England's broken dolls.'

As Blackstone took the stairs back up to the deck, he resolved to track down the writer of that sickly, sentimental song and give him just a little idea of what real pain was like by bloodying his nose for him.

The White Cliffs of Dover had drawn much closer while he'd been below deck, and the boat would soon be docking in the port.

There were two very important things he had to do as soon as he got back to England, he reminded himself, and it was only when he
had
done them that this bloody episode in his life would finally be over.

They were in General Fortesque's study, looking out on to the gardens and watching an old man examining a hoe and wondering what he should do with it.

‘I've failed you, General,' Blackstone said. ‘I can tell you that your grandson was a fine officer and that his men would have followed him anywhere, but I can't tell you who killed him.'

‘Can't?' the General asked sharply. ‘Or won't?'

It came to the same thing, Blackstone thought. The old man had already suffered enough, without heaping any further heartbreak on him.

‘I'm not sure I understand what you mean,' he said aloud.

‘Was my grandson a homosexual?' the General demanded.

‘Why would you ask that?'

‘Charlie used to play with Danvers' grandson when he was a boy. The rest of the family disapproved – including his parents – but I didn't want him growing up believing that the working man is nothing but scum, and so I overruled them.' He smiled wistfully. ‘I could do that, you know – I was the head of the family.'

Blackstone returned his smile. ‘And the head of the family is always right,' he said.

‘I thought so at the time, and sometimes I still think it,' General Fortesque said. ‘But then I also thought that as the two boys grew older, they would also grow apart. Yet even once Charlie had gone to Eton – and had a wide circle of friends drawn from his own class – he still found time for young Danvers. Of course, I never allowed myself to even contemplate the notion that there was anything improper or unnatural in their relationship. In fact, if you'd asked me only a few days ago, I would still have said that though it was a somewhat unusual friendship, that was still all that it was – a friendship. I would have said it, and I would have believed it – or, at least, I would have
believed
that I believed it.'

‘But you're not so sure now that you
did
believe it?'

‘No, I am not.'

‘So what happened?' Blackstone asked gently.

The General sighed. ‘I caught myself writing a letter to young Charlie's commanding officer, asking him to see to it that young Danvers' body was repatriated,' he said.

‘I know about that letter,' Blackstone told him.

‘I may not have been to the front myself, but I have some idea of what it's like out there,' the General continued. ‘I knew that recovering Danvers' body from No Man's Land would be a hazardous business, and that men might be injured – or even killed – in the process. I myself had no particular wish to see the body returned to England – and as for old Danvers, he's reached the point now where he probably doesn't even remember
having
a grandson. Yet I sent the letter anyway. Why was that, Sam?'

There was no point in pretending any longer.

‘Because you knew, deep inside, that that's what Charlie would have wanted you to do,' Blackstone said.

‘Because I knew, deep inside, that that's what Charlie would have wanted me to do,' the General agreed. ‘So I'll ask you again, Inspector Blackstone, was my grandson a homosexual?'

‘Yes, he was.'

‘And now we've got that out of the way, perhaps you can tell me why he died – and who killed him.'

Blackstone outlined the whole story, and as it drew to a close, he cautioned, ‘But you'll never get anyone in the army to admit that's what actually happened, you know.'

‘Of course I won't,' the General agreed. ‘Nor would I even try. The Soames, Maude and Hatfield families have all lost sons – young men who, whatever else they might have done, did give their lives for their country – and it is not for me to add to the anguish that they are already suffering.'

‘I think you're right,' Blackstone agreed.

The General hesitated before speaking again, and when he finally did, he said, ‘Was this thing that went on between my Charlie and young Danvers merely an expression of their animal urges, or was there more to it than that?'

‘If it had been merely sexual, he would have kept quiet about it,' Blackstone said. ‘But he had decided to come clean, even though he knew it would cost him almost everything he had ever held dear. I think you can draw your own conclusions from that.'

‘My late wife and I loved each other deeply, but true love doesn't come to every young man,' the General said.

‘No, it doesn't,' Blackstone agreed.

‘But when it
does
come, it is a glorious gift,' the General continued. ‘And that, I think, is true whatever form that love may choose to take.' He paused again. ‘Do you agree with me, Sam?'

‘I do,' Blackstone told him.

The General looked at him quizzically. ‘You can be honest with me. I'm strong enough to take it.'

‘I am being honest,' Blackstone said firmly.

‘Then there is still the question of the reward I offered you,' the General said, suddenly businesslike. ‘It was five thousand pounds, wasn't it?'

‘Give the money to Dr Barnardo's Orphanage,' Blackstone said.

‘All of it?'

‘All of it.'

‘Well, if that is your wish  . . .'

‘It is.'

‘And there is nothing at all that you want for yourself?'

‘Nothing,' Blackstone said.

And then he suddenly realized that, though he didn't want it for himself, there
was
something he wanted – and wanted quite badly.

The long narrow street, standing in the shadow of a stinking tannery, was lined with terraced houses. The houses themselves were crumbling and neglected, owned by landlords who knew they need do nothing to them, because their tenants had no choice but to put up with the conditions and pay the rent every Friday.

The street was only a mile or so from one the finest parks in London, and not much further from Buckingham Palace itself, but it was in another world – a world which Blackstone knew well, a world he regarded as his own.

He knocked on the front door of No. 16, and a woman answered. She was only in her late-thirties, Blackstone guessed, and must once have been quite pretty, but the hard life she had led meant that she was already old.

‘Mrs Flowers?' he asked.

‘Yes?'

Blackstone smiled inwardly. Mick had never told him his surname was Flowers, but that was more than understandable. For a hard lad from the slums – a lad whose whole sense of self-esteem was based on being tougher than his mates – the surname must have been a real curse.

‘My name's Blackstone. I've come about your son, Mick,' he told the woman.

‘Mick's  . . . Mick's dead,' Mrs Flowers said. ‘He was killed on the Western Front.'

‘I know,' Blackstone agreed. ‘Do you think I might come in for a few minutes?'

‘Of course,' Mrs Flowers said. ‘Where
are
my manners?'

She led him into the front parlour. There was not much furniture, but there was a large pile of cardboard sheets in one corner, and a number of cardboard cylinders in the other.

‘Sorry about the mess,' she said, indicating he should sit on one of the two chairs. ‘I make hat boxes, as you can see for yourself. And when there's no call for them, I make paper flowers or scrubbing brushes. It's what they call a cottage industry, but I just think of it as cheap labour.'

‘The money's not very good then?' Blackstone asked, though he already knew the answer.

‘You're wrong there,' Mrs Flowers said. She chuckled. ‘The money's wonderful – but there's just not much of it.' She sat down opposite Blackstone, then stood up again immediately. ‘Would you like a nice cup of tea?'

‘I'm fine,' Blackstone assured her. ‘Please sit down again.'

Mrs Flowers sat. ‘So what do you do for a living, Mr Blackstone?'

‘I'm a policeman – a detective inspector from Scotland Yard – but I'm not here on police business.'

‘If you were, you wouldn't be the first policeman who's ever been in here for that purpose, you know. They were always calling round about our Mick. Not that I can blame them – I loved him, but even I have to admit he was a bit of a tearaway.'

‘He doesn't sound much like the bloke I met in France, then,' Blackstone said. ‘
That
Mick was a fine young man.'

‘Are you sure that it's my Mick you're talking about?' Mrs Flowers asked suspiciously.

‘It was your Mick,' Blackstone confirmed. ‘He helped me solve a murder – I'd never have been able to do it without his assistance – but he was killed before I had time to thank him, so I'm doing the next best thing, and thanking you.'

‘It was good of you to take the trouble to come,' Mrs Flowers said gratefully.

‘And that's not the
only
reason I came,' Blackstone said. ‘I wanted to inform you that they're going to give Mick a Distinguished Conduct Medal, and you'll probably have to go to Buckingham Palace to collect it.'

‘You're not joking, are you?' Mrs Flowers asked, the suspicion back in her voice. ‘Because if you was, it would be a very
cruel
joke.'

‘I'm not joking,' Blackstone promised her.

‘But there's thousands of our poor brave lads die in France every month, and they don't all get medals,' Mrs Flowers said.

‘You're right in everything you've just said,' Blackstone agreed. ‘They
are
brave lads, they
do
die in their thousands, and they
don't
all get medals – but, by God, they all bloody well should.'

‘So what's so special about our Mick?' Mrs Flowers wondered.

‘Just before he died, he captured an enemy machine-gun post,' Blackstone said. ‘That one action saved the lives of a lot of other lads just like him. He died a hero.'

And maybe it was even true, he thought.
Somebody
had captured the machine-gun post that Carstairs had ordered his men to attack, and it might easily have been Mick. Even if it
hadn't
been him – even if he'd been cut down by a bullet the second he left the trench – he would certainly have had both the character and the courage to have done it if he'd survived. And, if all that was true, why shouldn't his mother have the consolation of a medal, which wouldn't fill the aching void she'd been left with, but was at least better than
nothing?

‘You're not telling the whole story,' Mrs Flowers said. ‘There's something else you've left out.'

Blackstone smiled. ‘I told Mick he would have made a good detective – and I can see where he got it from now.'

‘Let's have it,' Mrs Flowers said firmly.

‘There is an element of influence in him getting the medal,' Blackstone admitted. ‘Mick had a very good friend—'

‘That would be you,' Mrs Flowers interrupted – though she was clearly finding it hard to believe that her tearaway son could have had a good friend who was a police inspector from New Scotland Yard.

‘That would be me,' Blackstone confirmed. ‘And not only was I a very good friend of Mick's, but I just happen to know an old man who was once a general – and who still has influence in some very high places.'