Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the Great War

‘So the plan — as you saw it — was to take me out of action for at least a week or so?’

‘Exactly.’

Blackstone laughed. ‘You’re not even close to the truth,’ he said. ‘Maude didn’t particularly want me out of action, because he was rather enjoying playing games with me.’

‘That’s not true,’ Hatfield protested. ‘We all agreed. .’

‘Ask yourself one question,’ Blackstone suggested. ‘If Maude had really wanted me thoroughly worked over, why didn’t he send Soames instead? Soames wouldn’t have run like a scared rabbit the moment something went wrong. He would have stayed and finished the job. But the whole point of the exercise was never to hurt me — it was to muddy the waters a little.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Hatfield said.

‘Of course you don’t,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘What Maude wanted was to link the two crimes firmly together in my mind. I’d been attacked with a mallet, so I’d naturally think it was the same mallet which had been used to kill Fortesque. And the reason that would have muddied the waters is because Fortesque wasn’t killed with a mallet at all — he wasn’t even killed by a blow to the head!’ He paused for a moment. ‘Maude didn’t explain that particular line of thought to you, did he? But then why should he have done? You weren’t his co-conspirator — you were nothing more than an instrument.’

‘I. . we. .’ Hatfield stuttered.

‘Don’t you see, you’ve always been Maude’s dupe?’ Blackstone asked. ‘Why, even back in your schooldays, in good old Eton College-’

‘That’s enough!’ Maude said, suddenly.

Blackstone laughed again, ‘Well, well, well, whoever would have thought it?’ he asked. ‘I’ve frightened you, haven’t I, William? Here I am, tied up in a chair, and completely helpless, and I’ve still succeeded in frightening you.’

A look of black anger crossed Maude’s face, and then was quickly replaced by his customary sardonic smile.

‘You don’t frighten me, Blackstone,’ he said. ‘A man like you could never frighten me.’

‘Prove it,’ Blackstone challenged.

For an instant, caution fought out a battle with arrogance on Maude’s face, but then — as Blackstone had known it would — arrogance won a decisive and overwhelming victory.

‘All right,’ the young lieutenant agreed. ‘You carry on with your clever little speech, Blackstone — and then you’ll see for yourself just how little good it does you in the end.’

‘You must have felt unworthy from the first day you set foot in the hallowed grounds of Eton College,’ Blackstone told Hatfield. ‘What right had you to be there, you asked yourself — a tradesman’s grandson, rubbing shoulders with the descendants of men who fought with William the Conqueror? But despite feeling unworthy, you still desperately wanted to fit in, didn’t you? You would have done anything to turn these wonderful people into your friends. You weren’t to know — how could you? — that all your attempts were doomed to failure, right from the start.’

‘That shows just how little you know,’ Hatfield said, in a voice which probably even he didn’t find convincing. ‘I. . I made some very good friends at Eton. And you’re in this dugout with two of them now.’

‘You didn’t have friends then, and you don’t have friends now,’ Blackstone countered. ‘All you’ve ever had is people who were prepared to use you for their own convenience, in much the same way as they might have used a groom — or a whore.’

‘You’re wrong. I-’

‘When you were at Eton, did you take the blame for things you hadn’t done?’ Blackstone ploughed on, remorselessly. ‘Were you ever given beatings that should rightfully have been administered to your “friend” Maude?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Of course you do!’

‘It’s the kind of thing that friends do for one another,’ Hatfield said. ‘If you can spare a friend by taking the punishment on yourself, you do it without a second’s thought.’

‘And did Maude take any beatings for you, in return?’

‘I. . he may have done.’

‘He didn’t! My sergeant talked to your old housemaster — Edward Harrington Cardew — and Cardew told him that Maude was never beaten the whole time he was at Eton.’

‘He. . he was lucky.’

‘No, he wasn’t. He avoided punishment by using you as his whipping boy,’ Blackstone said. ‘And it didn’t stop once you’d left your schooldays behind you, did it? Here in France, you did something for him that was far worse than anything you’d ever done for him before — you shot down a man in cold blood.’

‘I did it for the honour of the regiment.’

‘You might tell yourself that now, but the real reason you did it was simply because Maude asked you to,’ Blackstone said harshly. ‘You did it because you thought it might make him like you a little more. But it hasn’t. If anything, it’s only increased the depth of his contempt for you.’

‘That’s not true!’ Hatfield protested.

‘Not true! Look at his face, and tell me it’s not true!’

Hatfield was so desperate for reassurance that it would have taken only the slightest effort on Maude’s part — the smallest expression of insincere approval — to convince the tradesman’s grandson that the man who he admired so much admired him in return.

But it was never going to happen. Maude’s pride would not let it happen — especially with Blackstone looking on — and the expression that both the policeman and the young lieutenant saw on his face was one of open contempt.

Hatfield turned as pale as death. ‘I. . I have to go outside,’ he gasped. ‘I need some air.’

He rushed to the doorway, and stepped out into the trench. Once he was there, they could hear him retching.

‘I was wrong in what I said earlier,’ Maude told Blackstone. ‘Your clever little speech has had some effect, after all. But, if I were you, I would draw no comfort from that.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘Most certainly not. By holding up a mirror to Hatfield — and letting him see himself as I have always seen him — you have caused me some little inconvenience. And I will not easily forgive you for that.’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Blackstone asked. ‘Kill me? That was always your intention anyway.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Maude agreed. ‘But perhaps now I might not make your death as merciful as it could otherwise have been.’

Blackstone fought off the urge to look at the door.

Hatfield had finished being sick. He was now completely silent, and was probably trying to work out, in his turmoil of a mind, what he should do next.

If he decided to come back into the dugout, the inspector told himself, then the game was as good as over.

But if Hatfield didn’t come back, then he himself still had a small chance of emerging from this dugout alive.

A minute passed — a long, drawn-out minute, in which each second felt as momentous and heavy as a tent peg mallet being smashed down on an unsuspecting skull. And when that minute did finally end, another followed on, beginning the same slow journey into a future of its own making.

Tick-tock. . tick-tock. .

Blackstone was still resisting the urge to look towards the door, though Soames had glanced in that direction several times.

Maude, for his part, was looking vaguely into the middle distance, with the sort of expression on his face that he might have worn if he’d been umpiring a rather boring cricket match.

It was Maude who finally broke the silence, as they’d all expected that it would be.