Blackstone and the Great War Read Online Free PDF

the Germans.
    â€˜Lieutenant Fortesque was murdered less than twenty-four hours before the offensive was due to begin,’ Captain Carstairs said. ‘I realized immediately that the Assistant Provost Marshal needed to be called in to investigate the matter, but you were away on official business, weren’t you, Geoffrey?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Captain Huxton said, begrudgingly.
    â€˜I sent him a telegram immediately,’ Carstairs continued, ‘but it took some time to reach him, and even when it had, getting back here, in the middle of the preparations for an offensive, wasn’t easy.’
    In other words, the killer had chosen just the right time to strike, Blackstone thought.
    â€˜Captain Huxton arrived here late in the evening, a few hours before the men were due to go over the top,’ Carstairs continued. ‘He did not ask if he could question the men at that time, and I could not have permitted it even if he had.’
    Huxton shot him a look of pure hatred. ‘Now look here, old chap, I’m the Assistant Provost Marshal, and if I’d wanted to question them, I damn well would have done, whether or not—’
    â€˜You’re perfectly correct, Geoffrey, and I apologize,’ Carstairs said – though he did not sound the least apologetic. ‘If you’d wanted to interrogate the men, you would have been quite within your rights. But you realized, even without my having to point it out to you, that questioning them just before an offensive would have been bad for morale.’
    â€˜Well, as long as that’s clear,’ Huxton muttered.
    â€˜What I don’t understand is why the platoon wasn’t questioned earlier in the day,’ Blackstone said.
    â€˜For God’s sake man, can’t you follow even a simple argument?’ Huxton demanded. ‘You’ve already been told I wasn’t here.’
    â€˜Couldn’t some of your corporals have done it?’
    â€˜ I was not here ,’ Huxton said, speaking the words very slowly, perhaps in the hope that Blackstone would finally understand, ‘and because I was not here, they did not have the authority.’
    Ah yes, he’d forgotten momentarily that this was the army, Blackstone thought – they did not have the authority, and so they had done nothing.
    â€˜The offensive did not go well,’ Carstairs said. ‘The gas-company commander told divisional headquarters that the gas couldn’t be discharged, because there was no wind, and divisional headquarters said he should discharge it anyway. So they did discharge it, and it just bloody hovered there, right in front of our bloody trench. Some of it even blew back in, so we were gassing ourselves.’
    Huxton smirked. ‘If I were in your shoes, I think I’d choose my words a little more carefully, old boy,’ he said. ‘After all, you don’t want an inspector of police – who is also General Fortesque’s personal representative – thinking that your chaps simply don’t know their job.’
    But Carstairs, caught up in a wave of genuine anger, was not about to exercise caution.
    â€˜At any rate, we did send the men over eventually, once some of the gas had cleared,’ he continued, ‘and it was a disaster. The shelling hadn’t cut the barbed wire properly, Fritz had had plenty of time to prepare for us – if he hadn’t picked up on any other clues, the gas was all the confirmation he needed – and once the men were in No Man’s Land, it was like a bloody pheasant shoot.’
    â€˜Has your plodding policeman’s brain managed to grasp the point, Blackstone?’ Captain Huxton asked.
    â€˜What point?’
    â€˜That with over half Fortesque’s platoon killed that morning, there’s a very good chance that his murderer – and anyone else who might have assisted us in our investigation – is already dead.’
    â€˜So you’re