Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

It was interesting, Laurence mused, reading on, how some people were beginning to feel they could say these things now without their patriotism being caled into question. Charles had told him that another MP—Lambert Ward—whose own recent service with the Royal Naval Reserve had provided him with a shield of valour, had demanded executed deserters be buried in military graves with al the other falen soldiers. Charles himself was surprisingly indifferent.

'Who cares?' he said. 'One way or another, they're al gone.'

Until John Emmett rose from the dead into his life, Laurence had almost convinced himself the war was history but now he saw that its aftershocks rumbled on and on, and that peace had nothing to do with signatures and seals on a paper.

He started to read about the paper poppies they were making for Armistice Day this year. It was a new idea—started in America. He couldn't imagine wearing one; he even disliked fresh poppies—but perhaps some families wanted a visible sign of al they had lost.

The wind had got up and the windows rattled. He tore a strip off the page and wedged the frame fast. He returned to the mutilated newspaper and started on an obituary of a centenarian who had fought under Elphinstone in the First Afghan War and survived the massacre at the Gandamak Pass. His last thought as the paper slipped to the floor was how smal wars used to be.

Over the next week his own eagerness to get going was matched by a lack of any action elsewhere and yet he couldn't settle to writing. Charles had bought a car and had been trying it out by motoring from one friend's house to another across the southern counties. He wouldn't be back for a day or so. There was no further word from Mary. What was she doing, he wondered. How did she pass the weeks in Cambridge?

After a couple of days' reluctant progress on his book, a letter finaly brought good and bad news. Dr Bertram Chilvers, Holmwood Nursing Home, Fairford, Gloucestershire (proprietors Dr B.G.S. Chilvers MD, and G.H. Chilvers) would be delighted to show him round his establishment and discuss possible treatment for Captain Robert Bartram. Trains ran from Paddington to Fairford, changing at Oxford. The station was on the outskirts of town but it was only a ten-to fifteen-minute walk. If Mr Bartram let them know what train he would be catching, a car could be sent to fetch him. If he required accommodation overnight, it could be arranged at the local hotel. It would be helpful, it concluded, if he could obtain a letter from Captain Robert Bartram's doctor to assist in an assessment of his condition.

'Damn,' said Laurence aloud. 'Damn, damn, damn.'

He considered forging a letter of referral but realised almost as soon as he'd hit on the idea that it was hopeless. Doctors al knew each one another and anyway he was sure to get the vocabulary wrong and they'd smel a rat. At the very least he would have to account for the absence of such a letter.

Suddenly he thought of Eleanor Bolitho. Could she help him construct a plausible document? While she had as good as asked him not to disturb Wiliam again, he could, under the guise of answering her letter to him, ask for help. He dashed off a note to her before dining at Charles's club.

When he arrived in Pal Mal, he could tel Charles was eager to talk, but they got dragged into a smal group digging in on their positions on the gold standard.

Finaly, as brandy was brought into the smoking room, Charles, who had been fidgeting with impatience throughout the latter part of their dinner, could describe his attempted pursuit of Mrs Lovel's son.

'Truth is, old chap, he doesn't exist. Bought this new book, fresh off the press—bound to come in handy: Officers Died in the Great War. Five dead Lovels in there. Not a lucky name. But not our man. The first...' He counted off on his fingers: 'Colonel Frederick Lovel: career soldier and far too old from what you've told me.

Number two: Captain M. St J. Lovel RFC—a possibility, but then we have number three: his brother Lieutenant H.B.E. Lovel. He died in 1917, but I think you said our boy's an only son. Four, Captain Bruce Lovel, went down with Kitchener on the Hampshire en route to Archangel in 1916. Best hope,' his finger hovered, 'was five: another subaltern, Royal Fusiliers, enlisted in London, nineteen years old: Richard Ranelagh Lovel. Promising but he's too early: missing in action, Mons, 1914.'

'Missing?' Laurence said.

'Yes, missing, but it's pretty certain what happened to him. I checked. Was seen badly wounded but pressing on. Seen to be shot again and faling, and by his adjutant. Know that man myself, as it happens. Married to a cousin. Third cousin, realy. I'm off to see him for the weekend. Two soldiers in his platoon saw this Lovel's body but they had no chance to bury him. Body gone by the time anyone got back there. Whole place was unrecognisable by then. Him too, no doubt. So it's simple,' he concluded dramaticaly. 'Your Master Lovel didn't die in the Great War.'

Laurence responded slowly, without pointing out that it wasn't his Lovel. 'Perhaps, though I can't think how, he isn't dead, then? Perhaps he survived?'

Charles was beaming before he had finished the sentence. Laurence had gone exactly where he intended.

'No suitable Lovel dead or alive, old chap. Al checked. Friends plus Army List. Of eight surviving Lovels, four left the army: one's a barrister; one lives on an annuity; two returned home north of the border; one went to South Africa; one, a Lovel-Brace, is a Hampshire landowner. One Lovel is stil serving and currently head of the Staff Colege. No dead commissioned Lowels in the right place either. I remembered you weren't sure of the speling the first time you mentioned him, or rather her, the heiress of Parliament Hil. Perhaps the lady's a fraud?'

Laurence thought that Charles was much cleverer than he let on and that he also had a great deal too much time on his hands.

'No,' he said, 'I'm quite certain that she had a son and that he was kiled. She thought John might be a friend of his.' To manufacture grief like hers, he thought, would have required the skils of a consummate actress.

He left late, declining Charles's invitation to bring Mary Emmett to the Savoy next week. He knew Charles would try to pick up the bil, which Laurence would indeed have trouble meeting, but he also wanted to keep Mary to himself for the time being. As he walked home briskly in the cold he realised that his one certainty—

that the deaths of Emmett and Lovel were connected—had been obliterated by Charles's energetic enquiries.

That night he wrote to Mary and remembered to ask whether he could have the photograph of the soldiers in the farmyard. He wanted to see if Wiliam Bolitho could identify any of those in it. He told her that he had not realy advanced his search and he hoped she wouldn't be disappointed. Even so, there were some things he kept to himself.

Chapter Ten

In the morning a letter came from Eleanor Bolitho. She agreed to meet him the next day in a teashop he'd suggested near the British Museum. She would have to leave spot on four to fetch her son, she said.

When he arrived she was already waiting, her elbows on the table, reading a book. He read the spine of it as he struggled for a moment to pul his arm from his coat before sitting down. It was John Galsworthy's The Man of Property.

'Helo,' she said evenly, putting the book to one side.

Eleanor didn't seem a person for light chatter or any degree of deception, so he simply expanded on the explanation in his letter and the need to fabricate a medical history for a mythical brother. But first he told her what he knew of John's deterioration once he got home. It seemed only fair. He explained Mary Emmett's fear that her brother had been mistreated at Holmwood and added some of the ideas he'd had about John's death.