Hardcastle's Soldiers (6 page)

Astounded at having witnessed this aerial combat, Hardcastle still had time to hope that the crippled German bomber would crash on the south side of the river and, thus, become the responsibility of the Lambeth Division of the Metropolitan Police. Divisional CID officers were responsible for the initial interrogation of prisoners of war before handing them over to the military.

Half an hour later, as Hardcastle waited at the tram stop, a policeman cycled along Victoria Embankment bearing a placard on his chest that read ALL CLEAR. At the same time, the DDI spotted a Boy Scout on Westminster Bridge sounding a call on his bugle. He remembered reading a police order that stated it was one of several efforts by the authorities to indicate that the raiders had passed.

Eventually, the tram driver, his conductor, and a few passengers returned to their tram.

‘Think it'll be safe enough to get under way now?' asked Hardcastle acidly.

‘Can't afford to take a chance, guv'nor,' said the conductor, tugging at his moustache. ‘One of our single-deckers got a direct hit the other day, not a few yards from here. The crew and all the passengers were killed,' he added mournfully.

Hardcastle's tram crossed Westminster Bridge and moved into Westminster Bridge Road. As it passed the Bethlehem Royal Hospital on the corner of Lambeth Road and Kennington Road, it was evident that the DDI's hope had come true. In the hospital grounds was the smoking wreckage of the Gotha bomber, now surrounded by firemen and policemen. The DDI later learned from George Lambert, his opposite number on L Division, that all three members of the crew – pilot, observer and rear-gunner – had perished.

As a result of the delay caused to his tram by the air raid, it was past four o'clock by the time that Hardcastle let himself into his house in Kennington Road. It was the house into which the Hardcastles had moved immediately following their marriage twenty-four years ago, and was not a great distance from number 287, where the famous Charlie Chaplin had once lived.

Alice Hardcastle was sitting in an armchair in the parlour, knitting cap comforters for the soldiers in the trenches. Resting her knitting on her lap, she looked up as her husband entered the room.

‘You're early, Ernie. Run out of things to do at your police station?' It was usually about seven o'clock, at the earliest, before Hardcastle made an appearance at home, even on a Saturday.

‘For the moment,' said Hardcastle, who made a point of never discussing cases with his family. He was still irritated that his enquiries were being held to ransom by the military. ‘Where are the girls?'

‘Kitty's on duty,' said Alice. For some time now, Kitty Hardcastle had been working as a bus conductress. Against her father's wishes, she had taken the job with the London General Omnibus Company ‘to release a man to join the army', she had said. ‘Maud's gone out shopping up West, and Walter's at the post office.'

‘He seems to spend a lot of time there,' muttered Hardcastle, seating himself in the armchair opposite Alice.

‘Well, of course he does. Being a telegram boy means that he's always taking those little yellow envelopes to the bereaved. I must say I wouldn't care for his job. Have you ever noticed how the curtains twitch whenever a telegram boy cycles down the road? They're all terrified that it's their man who has been killed. That Mrs Wainwright from across the road has never been the same since her husband was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. And that was over a year ago. And it was Wally who took the telegram. He asked her if there was a reply – which he has to do because it's the regulations – and she just burst into tears.'

‘I saw an air raid today,' commented Hardcastle conversationally, deciding to change the subject, albeit slightly.

‘Oh, really?' said Alice as she resumed her knitting. ‘I thought I heard the maroons go off.'

‘I saw one of those big German Gothas drop a bomb in the river. It didn't do any damage.'

‘Their eyesight never was much good, Ernie,' said Alice. ‘Have you noticed how many Germans wear glasses?'

‘And then one of ours came from nowhere and shot it down.'

‘Where did it crash?'

‘On L Division's ground.'

‘Pah!' snorted Alice, putting down her knitting again. ‘How d'you expect me to know where that is?'

‘I saw it in the grounds of the Bethlehem Hospital. Still on fire, it was.'

‘You could have said that in the first place, Ernie. I'm not in your precious police force, and I don't know where L Division is.'

‘L Division is where we live, Alice,' rejoined Hardcastle, scoring a point. At least, in his own mind. ‘Anyway, it's that precious police force, as you call it, that pays me enough to put our food on the table, my girl.'

Alice carefully pushed her knitting needles into the ball of wool she was using, and placed them on a side table. ‘I suppose that's a heavy hint that you'll be wanting a cup of tea,' she exclaimed as she stood up.

‘I'm not too happy about our young Kitty being on the buses,' said Hardcastle, ignoring his wife's comment, and returning to their previous conversation. ‘My tram conductor told me that one of their trams got a direct hit the other day. Everyone on it was killed.'

‘Well, you won't stop Kitty, Ernie. Direct hits on trams or not. She's got a will of her own, that girl.' And with that comment, Alice disappeared to the kitchen to make the tea. ‘Just like her father,' she called over her shoulder.

I might be a DDI at work
, thought Hardcastle,
but it doesn't count for much at home.

Alice returned with a tray of tea things. ‘I was lucky enough to get some of your favourite ginger snaps today, Ernie.' She poured the tea, and sat down opposite her husband. ‘I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't more of those air raids,' she said. ‘Mr Squires reckons that if there was ever another war, it'd all be with just aeroplanes.'

‘Huh!' snorted Hardcastle. ‘What the blue blazes does he know about warfare?' Squires was the red-faced and self-opinionated grocer whose shop was at the end of Kennington Road, and which was patronized by Alice Hardcastle.

‘And he says that those tanks they had at the Somme would be the weapon of the future, with no more men dying in the trenches.'

‘Does he indeed?' said Hardcastle. ‘Well, my girl, Field Marshal Haig reckons that once this war is over, tanks will be done with, and aeroplanes, too, I wouldn't wonder. He said that the army will use cavalry again in the future, and as he's a field marshal, I should think he knows more about it than Mr Squires the grocer.'

A fretful Hardcastle had spent Sunday reading the
News
of the World
, and mooning about the house, occasionally doing the various odd jobs that Alice had lined up for him.

When Monday morning came, he could not get to work fast enough, and arrived at the police station at eight o'clock.

Following his usual practice, he sat down at the station officer's desk and examined the crime book.

‘The winter patrols nicked a couple of tea leaves breaking into a house in Esterbrooke Street, sir,' said the station officer. ‘DS Wood's dealing with them. Up at Bow Street Court this morning.'

‘Good,' said Hardcastle, idly wondering why aspirant detectives continued to be called winter patrols in the height of summer. Satisfied that none of the other entries in the crime book were of immediate interest to him, he stood up.

‘Another raid on Saturday, sir,' said the station officer. ‘One of our lads brought down a Fritz bomber. Landed in the grounds of the Bethlehem Hospital in Lambeth Road, so I heard.'

‘I know. I saw it when I was on my way home,' said Hardcastle curtly, and went upstairs to his office, calling for Marriott on the way.

‘Did you hear about the raid on Saturday, sir? Must've been about the time you left.'

‘Yes, I saw it, Marriott,' said Hardcastle wearily. He could envisage a day of people asking the same question.

Unabashed, Marriott continued. ‘The bomber was brought down on L Division's ground apparently, sir. I hope it wasn't anywhere near your house.'

‘No, it wasn't,' said Hardcastle, ‘and I can tell you that Mrs Hardcastle would've been extremely annoyed if it had been. She had the curtains down last week and washed them.' And following that somewhat lame attempt at humour, the DDI took out his pipe and began to fill it. ‘We'll get off down to Aldershot, then, Marriott, and see what these leery soldiers have got to tell us about the mystery of their missing kit.'

Hardcastle, a stickler for timekeeping, had ensured that he and Marriott arrived at Aldershot railway station at ten minutes to ten. Once again a military police corporal was waiting with a staff car, and, at ten o'clock precisely, Hardcastle and Marriott walked into Captain McIntyre's office at Salamanca Barracks.

‘I've arranged for you to meet Lieutenant Colonel Valentine Fuller at a quarter to eleven, Inspector. He's the commanding officer of the battalion where Stacey is undergoing training. In the meantime, gentlemen, perhaps you'd care for a cup of coffee.'

‘Thank you,' said Hardcastle. He did not want a cup of coffee, and would much have preferred to get on with the job. As a seasoned detective, he knew that the farther away one got from a crime, the less chance there was of solving it. It seemed to him that the army was a bit lackadaisical in its approach, and he hoped that it adopted a more purposeful attitude to prosecuting the war on the other side of the Channel. But he should have known that was the case; senior officers at Scotland Yard never seemed to possess the same urgency as those in the front line of policing.

Once the unnecessary – in Hardcastle's view – social niceties of coffee and biscuits were completed, McIntyre took the DDI and Marriott out to his staff car, and together they drove up Queen's Avenue to Buller Barracks.

‘Colonel, this is Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle of the Metropolitan Police, and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Marriott.'

Lieutenant Colonel Valentine Fuller was at least sixty years of age, if not older. He had a grey complexion, a drooping grey moustache and a stooped posture. As he crossed his office to shake hands with Hardcastle, the DDI noticed that he had a pronounced limp.

‘Valentine Fuller, Inspector,' said the colonel in what proved to be a deceptively soft and croaking voice. ‘I'm what they call a “dugout”. I retired from the army in the year ten, but I was called back in 1914 to replace a fitter officer who went off to the war and got himself killed.' Fuller punctuated this comment with a brief, bitter laugh. ‘Incidentally, the limp is thanks to some damned fool of a subaltern who shot me in the leg on a tiger shoot in India years ago. He wisely resigned his commission sometime later, and went off to do something with stocks and shares in the City. The last I heard of him he was a millionaire. Do sit down, gentlemen.'

Hardcastle, Marriott and McIntyre took seats on the hard-backed chairs that the army provided for the colonel's guests. The DDI glanced around the austere office, taking in the photograph of a group of officers wearing tropical kit and pith helmets. In front of them was a dead tiger.

Fuller noticed Hardcastle's interest. ‘Taken at Poona in oh-one,' he commented. A faraway look came into his eyes. ‘Those were the days,' he said. ‘Now, Inspector, how may I help you?'

Hardcastle explained the circumstances surrounding the murder he was investigating.

‘Well, surely, that's a matter to be dealt with by the military, ain't it, eh what?' Fuller appeared to be somewhat nonplussed by the DDI's presence in his office, and glanced at the military police officer. ‘General court martial, eh what, McIntyre? I mean the cashier at this, er, booth or whatever it was, was quasi-military, so to speak, and if the man's killer was a soldier, well, there you have it.'

‘Not so, Colonel,' said McIntyre. ‘The Army Act is quite clear on the subject. It states categorically that if one soldier kills another soldier in England, even on military property, and even in time of war, it is still a matter for the civil police. And, in any event, this murder was on Victoria railway station, and the cashier was a civilian.'

‘Really?' Fuller sounded disbelieving, but he had never been very conversant with
King's Regulations
or the
Manual of Military Law
. ‘Well, in India that sort of thing would have been dealt with by a field general court martial, eh what?'

‘I agree, Colonel,' said McIntyre patiently, ‘but we're not in India, sir.'

‘Oh, well, I suppose you military police wallahs know about these things,' mumbled Fuller. ‘So what d'you want me to do about it, eh, Inspector?' he said, directing his question to Hardcastle with a raised eyebrow.

‘I should like to interview the soldiers that Captain McIntyre has identified as having been with Private Stacey the night his cap was stolen.'

‘Very well. If you think that'll help.' Fuller shook his head, stood up, and limped across to open the door of his office. In a surprisingly loud voice, he bellowed, ‘Sarn't-major.'

‘Sir!' came a distant reply from down the corridor.

Moments later, the regimental sergeant-major appeared on the threshold. Magnificently turned out in immaculate service dress with a highly polished Sam Browne belt, he snapped to attention with a crash of his black glass-like ammunition boots and saluted. Both his highly burnished brass crown-in-laurel-leaves rank badge and his regimental cap badge shone in the shaft of sunlight coming through the commanding officer's window.

‘You wanted me, sir?'

‘Yes, Mr Punchard. These gentlemen are from the civil police. They wish to ask some of our recruits questions regarding a matter that I'm sure they'll tell you about.' Fuller turned to Hardcastle. ‘RSM Punchard will take care of everything, Inspector. Anything you need, he'll deal with.'