Hardcastle's Soldiers (15 page)

‘I don't know why you can't do what your sister's doing,' said Hardcastle testily. ‘That's woman's work.' His other daughter, Maud, had taken voluntary work as a nurse, and was based at one of the large houses in London that had been given over to the care of the war wounded. Although only nineteen years of age, Maud's nurse's uniform coupled with her harrowing tales of wounded soldiers – some of whom had died while she was tending them – had caused her to grow up very quickly.

‘And I suppose you're still working overtime, Wally.' Realizing that, as always, he had lost his argument with his eldest daughter, Hardcastle turned his attention to Walter. Now seventeen, he was a telegram boy working out of the local post office.

Walter, whose job had also matured him beyond his years, looked at his father. ‘I delivered ten telegrams yesterday telling folk that one of the men of the family had been killed,' he said. ‘And that's only for the area covered by my post office.'

‘Thank God you're too young to join up, Wally,' said Hardcastle, as he finished carving the joint.

‘Only another six months, and I can go,' said Wally enthusiastically. Despite his experience of delivering harrowing news to the bereaved, he still maintained a romantic view of the war. In his mind, it was all derring-do and winning medals. ‘I rather fancy the navy.'

‘Please God, the war will be over by then,' said Alice. She was convinced that, if Walter joined the forces, he would be dead within weeks. But her wish was granted. Although Walter applied for the Royal Navy on his eighteenth birthday in January 1918, the fatherly chief petty officer at the recruiting centre had told him that the war was nearly over, and they had enough men. ‘Get on with delivering your telegrams, lad,' he had said. ‘That's important war work.'

‘Don't forget what happened to Arthur, Mrs Crabbe's boy,' said Hardcastle. ‘He put up his age and enlisted. On his first day in the trenches he was killed by a sniper. One of his pals wrote and told the boy's mother how he'd died. And her husband had been killed the year before.'

‘I know,' said Walter moodily, ‘I delivered the telegrams. Both of them.' He skewered a piece of meat, and put it in his mouth. ‘On the other hand I might join the police. I rather fancy the City of London force.'

‘Over my dead body!' exclaimed Hardcastle, nearly choking.

‘Don't talk with your mouth full, Wally,' said his mother.

Although Hardcastle was a loving husband and father, he was nonetheless pleased to be back at work on Monday morning. After inspecting the crime book, he went upstairs to his office to find that Marriott was waiting for him.

‘Good morning, sir.'

‘Morning, Marriott. You got something for me?'

‘Yes, sir. A message from Colonel Frobisher. He's double-checked the information about Second Lieutenant Nash, and—'

‘Who the hell's Nash?' demanded Hardcastle, looking up from the task of filling his pipe.

‘Second Lieutenant Adrian Nash is the Army Service Corps officer who failed to arrive at his new unit in Boulogne, sir. We went to see his mother at Forest Hill.' Marriott suspected that his chief was playing another of his little games in pretending not to know who Nash was.

‘Oh, that Nash. Yes, I remember. What about him?'

‘Colonel Frobisher has had his clerk check with Buller Barracks, and there was definitely no mistake in the movement order that required Nash to report to 143 Mechanical Transport Company. So he's adrift, sir. And then there was Bryant whose people live at Fulham …' Marriott glanced up. ‘We saw his parents too, sir. But Bryant hasn't arrived either. The colonel also checked the other two – Morrish and Strawton – and they still seem to be unaccounted for as well.'

Hardcastle finished filling his pipe, lit it, and dropped the match into the ashtray. He expelled a long plume of smoke, and leaned back with a satisfied smile on his face. ‘I do believe things are coming together, Marriott,' he said. ‘Any one of those officers would've been in a position to steal those items of clothing that went missing from Stacey's barrack room. Give Captain McIntyre a call, and ask him if he'd be so good as to ask Stacey if there were any officers in the pub where he lost his cap.' After a further moment's thought, he shot forward in his chair. ‘Where do Mansfield's people live?'

‘Er, I don't know, sir. We never thought to ask.' Marriott was unconcerned that he was including the DDI in this lapse. He regarded it as a just return for all the occasions that the DDI had blamed Marriott for his own shortcomings. But Hardcastle chose not to notice.

‘Mmm! Perhaps it would be as well to find out. Get one of the men to look into it.'

‘But what do we hope to learn, sir?' asked Marriott, who could not understand why Hardcastle attached so much importance to the Mansfield family, particularly as it had been proved that Geoffrey Mansfield was not the man they had spoken to at Victoria Station.

‘Think about it, Marriott. It's no coincidence that the officer we saw at Victoria Station claimed to be Lieutenant Geoffrey Mansfield of the North Staffordshire Regiment. It means that whoever he was must've known Mansfield, and knew which regiment he was in. I don't believe that he just conjured that name out of thin air.'

‘But we'll not find anything out from Mansfield's parents, surely, sir.'

‘We shan't know until we ask, Marriott. On the other hand, this tale about Mansfield going back the day before the murder might be all my eye and Betty Martin. I know what that officer at Lichfield said about Mansfield going back from leave on the tenth of July, but I'm more inclined to believe the Chief Constable of Lichfield when he told us that Mansfield had gone back on the fourteenth. I know I don't think much of country coppers, but policemen don't usually make a mistake about dates. I'm beginning to have grave doubts about the efficiency of the military machine, Marriott. And despite what Frobisher and Punchard said, I'm still not convinced that our four officers are adrift. In fact, I'm certain they'll turn up somewhere.'

‘But where do we start, sir?' asked Marriott, once Hardcastle had finished his diatribe about the army. He was still unsure that his DDI was steering the enquiries in the right direction. But he had known Hardcastle for long enough to know that he frequently went off at a tangent, and had solved many a murder as a result of having done so. ‘We can't travel to the places where they were supposed to have been posted.'

Hardcastle had no intention of leaving England. But instead of responding to Marriott's statement, he said, ‘Have you got a telephone number for that chap we saw in Lichfield, Marriott? The adjutant, I think he called himself.'

‘Captain Murdoch, sir. Yes, we have.'

‘Good. Speak to him on the instrument and find out Mansfield's home address.' He put his pipe in the ashtray. ‘Let's just hope his people don't live in Cornwall or the Hebrides, or some equally wild sort of place.'

‘Yes, sir.' Marriott glanced at the telephone on the DDI's desk and wondered why his DDI did not make the call himself. But then he recalled what Hardcastle had said about not barking yourself if you had dogs to do it for you.

Nearly three-quarters of an hour had passed before Marriott was able to report back to the DDI.

‘Well?' Hardcastle looked up expectantly.

‘Lieutenant Mansfield's family lives in Twickenham, sir.'

‘At least that's in the Metropolitan Police District,' muttered Hardcastle.

‘His father, Major Oscar Mansfield, is an instructor at the Royal Military School of Music, and he and his wife live in officers' quarters at the school.'

‘How do we get there?' Hardcastle stood up, and seized his hat and umbrella.

‘Train from Waterloo, sir,' said Marriott, prepared, as ever, for the question he knew the DDI would ask.

‘Good. And get someone to have a look in the records of births and marriages at Somerset House. See what he can find out about the Mansfields. Who's available?'

‘There's Catto, sir.' Marriott could not understand why the DDI was taking so much interest in the Mansfield family. The photograph of her fiancé that Billie Harcourt had shown them proved conclusively that Lieutenant Geoffrey Mansfield was not the officer to whom they had spoken at Victoria Station.

‘Not Catto,' said Hardcastle, who, unreasonably, had no great faith in the young detective. ‘Send a sergeant.'

‘There's Bert Wood, sir.'

‘He'll do.'

Once Marriott had instructed DS Wood, he returned. ‘There's a message from DI Collins, sir.'

‘Oh, and what does he have to say?'

‘He says that Mr Fitnam at Wandsworth got Captain McIntyre to take Stacey's fingerprints, and that they match some of those found in the van.'

‘Well, what a surprise,' said Hardcastle, and leading the way downstairs, strode out into Whitehall and hailed a taxi.

The cacophonous sound of musical instruments being tuned greeted the two detectives as they arrived at Kneller Hall.

The pompous custodian manning the main gate loftily enquired their business – to which he did not get an answer – and then directed them to Major Mansfield's quarters.

Hardcastle was surprised that a private soldier answered the door.

‘Yes, sir?'

‘You're not Major Mansfield, are you?' asked the DDI, thinking that he had been directed to the wrong house, despite the custodian's air of efficiency.

‘I'm Major Mansfield's batman, sir. Private Hobbs is my name.'

‘Good,' said Hardcastle. ‘We're police officers, and we'd like a word with Major Mansfield.'

‘It's not about the lieutenant is it, sir?' asked the soldier, a worried expression on his face. ‘He hasn't been killed, has he?'

‘He's quite safe, as far as I know,' replied Hardcastle. ‘It's an enquiry about another matter.' The DDI did not intend to tell this man why he was there.

‘I think the major's across in one of the band blocks, sir, but Mrs Mansfield's here.'

‘Perhaps a word with her, then,' said Hardcastle.

‘Won't keep you a moment, gents.' Leaving the detectives on the doorstep, the soldier retreated to another part of the house. He returned moments later. ‘If you come this way, sir, Mrs Mansfield's in the parlour.'

The woman who rose from a chintz-covered settee was in her late forties or early fifties. Her blonde hair was swept up in the prevailing fashion, and Hardcastle's immediate impression was that she was – or had been – an actress.

‘I'm Carrie Mansfield,' said the woman, a quizzical expression on her face. ‘Hobbs tells me you're from the police.'

‘That's correct, ma'am. Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle of the Whitehall Division, and this here is Detective Sergeant Marriott.' The DDI indicated his sergeant with a wave of the hand.

‘Do sit down, both of you, and tell me how I can help you.'

‘Your son, Lieutenant Mansfield—'

‘But he's all right, isn't he?' asked the officer's mother. ‘Hobbs told me that you haven't come about him.'

‘As far as I'm aware, your son is quite safe, ma'am, but I have come about him, in a manner of speaking. While he was on leave, Lieutenant Mansfield witnessed a man leaving a money-changing kiosk in Victoria Station where a man had been murdered.'

Marriott was amazed at Hardcastle's statement. Not sharing the DDI's doubts about the army's efficiency, or lack of it, he was satisfied that their enquiries had proved conclusively that Geoffrey Mansfield was not the man they were seeking. Added to which Billie Harcourt's photograph of her fiancé confirmed that he was not the ‘witness' they had spoken to at Victoria Station. But he knew that Hardcastle was capable of deviousness when it suited him, or more particularly, when it suited the enquiry that he was conducting.

‘Really? He never mentioned it.'

‘He stayed here for a while, did he, then?'

‘No, he was staying with his fiancée – a Miss Isabella Harcourt – at Westbourne Terrace in central London. But he brought Isabella to see us on the second day of his leave. A charming girl. She has a Spanish mother, you know.'

‘When did he come on leave, Mrs Mansfield?' asked Hardcastle, casually glancing around the room, and, in particular, studying a series of framed photographs on top of a bookcase.

Marriott could not understand why Hardcastle was persisting with this fiction, and did not visualize that anything the woman might say would be of any assistance in discovering who had murdered Herbert Somers, the Victoria Station cashier.

‘It must've been the end of June, I suppose, and he went back—'

But the conversation was interrupted by a disturbance in the hall.

‘That'll be my husband,' said Carrie Mansfield.

The door to the sitting room opened, and a portly man entered. He was wearing khaki uniform with a major's crown insignia on the cuffs, not yet being one of those officers who wore his rank on his shoulder straps, known to the rank and file as ‘wind-up' badges.

‘I'll have to get a new lead trombonist, Carrie. The one I've got's bloody hopeless, and—' Major Oscar Mansfield paused as he caught sight of the two detectives. ‘Oh, I'm sorry, love. I didn't know you'd got company. I didn't want to disturb Hobbs, so I let myself in.'

‘These gentlemen are from the police, Oscar.'

‘It's not about Geoff, is it?' A brief look of concern crossed Mansfield's face, as he unbuckled his Sam Browne belt and handed it to Hobbs, who had suddenly appeared in the doorway.

‘No, Major, it's not,' said Hardcastle, and introduced himself and Marriott. ‘I was just explaining to your wife about the murder I'm investigating.' The DDI repeated what he had told Mrs Mansfield.

‘Sounds a bit of a rum do, Inspector.' Major Mansfield rubbed his hands together and advanced on a side table upon which was a collection of bottles and glasses. ‘Can I tempt you to a drink, Inspector?'