Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

Wiliam turned slightly so that natural light fel on the picture. 'Wel, that's John, you may have realised that?'

Laurence nodded; it confirmed his guess.

'And the others, wel, that's odd—it's the MO, Major Fortune. Good man. A volunteer who never even had to be there. Must have been fifty if he was a day: a perfectly good career as a surgeon at St Thomas' Hospital. And, oh, there's Sergeant Tucker—the man I told you about, looking pleased with himself.'

He held the photograph out to Laurence and pointed at the figure leaning back against a log pile. Tucker was a sinewy, almost feral man. The others looked pretty miserable as they puled on cigarettes or gazed down at their feet, but Tucker just looked calm.

'I don't know any of the others; at least—no, the one on the end there, I don't know what he's doing here, but he's the man who helped pul John out of the tunnel colapse. The sapper major's servant. I was thinking about him after we spoke last time and I remembered that he could do the most astonishing tricks with numbers. Give him fifty numbers and he could add them, subtract them, whatever you liked, in seconds, or work out sequences: you know, one—three—five and so on, only much harder ones. The lads used to try to catch him out. He was there while Major Whoever-it-was was bileted with us. He was a prodigy, though he and his officer reminded me a bit of a circus ringmaster and a performing elephant. Wonder what happened to him?'

From the hal, they heard someone come in. The front door closed. Laurence could hear Eleanor talking and the voice of a smal child. The door to the room opened. A smal boy with dark-auburn curls rushed in and climbed on to Wiliam's lap. When he saw Laurence, he buried his face in his father's chest. Eleanor folowed her son, her expression drawn and irritated.

'Mr Bartram,' she said, tightly, as if she'd caught him out in some peccadilo.

'I'm sorry,' he began.

' What a surprise,' she said. 'I'm sorry I wasn't here, although perhaps you'd anticipated that, but as you can see we're quite busy this afternoon. Perhaps you could come back another time? If you let us know beforehand we might arrange an easier day?'

'Eleanor...' Wiliam began, while the boy turned to look shyly at Laurence, but his wife ignored his attempt to head her off.

'I'd like to give Nicky his tea now and Wiliam is tired.'

She looked fixedly at Laurence and under the intensity of her gaze he finaly said 'I'm realy very sorry. I shouldn't have come without warning.'

'But he needed me to identify a photograph,' Wiliam interrupted firmly. 'I wasn't much help, but I got a couple of the men, though I've no idea where it was taken.'

Eleanor put her hand out and he gave it to her. She looked at it briefly. 'John Emmett,' she said. 'Of course. He must be getting more attention dead than he ever did alive.' She handed the picture back.

'Eleanor...' Wiliam began.

'Wel, it's true,' she said, 'when he was alive he was an embarrassment. His moods, his obsessions, his unpredictability: al too difficult. Not a modest hero adding lustre to a county drawing room, but a man who couldn't cope, shut away in some rotten asylum. Now he's dead we can al think about how we wish we could have helped him, or, if we couldn't, how it would have been better if he'd been blown to smithereens with his reputation intact.'

Wiliam said less mildly, 'I don't think that's entirely fair.'

Laurence thought again how wel she knew John Emmett and wondered whether Wiliam noticed or minded her evident loyalty to the dead man. He decided now was not the time to defend Mary.

'No, I'm sorry,' she said. 'Whatever my feelings, I'm being rude. But I realy must go and get Nicholas's tea now.'

She hung back and Laurence realised she was expecting him to go first. He tucked the picture in his walet, said a hasty goodbye to Wiliam, who seemed diplomaticaly unaware of the degree of tension in the room, and he smiled at Nicholas, stil on his father's knee. The little boy smiled back. Eleanor led him out and closed the door behind him.

By the front door she stopped, looked up at him and spoke quietly but fiercely. 'Just because Wiliam's stuck here and can't get out doesn't mean you can just come and go as if he had no life except to assist you. I helped you as much as I could. Wiliam did too but we want to move on. John's dead. We're not. We're very grateful for the money but it doesn't buy you or Miss Emmett a right to our lives.'

***

He got to the Café Royal first that evening. Charles arrived, slightly late, ful of apologies and long technical explanations about the Alvis. He seemed quite good-humoured as if having it break down was al part of the fun. When finaly they were settled, Laurence regaled Charles with his brief and difficult visit to the Bolithos.

Charles seemed hugely amused.

'Oh Mrs Bolitho, that Bolshevik firebrand. She's famous for it. Not a girl to cross. Joly clever. Good person to have on your side, though.' He picked up his glass and held it up to a candle so that its garnet-like depths glowed. 'Ask Mr Lenin.'

'Is she realy?' Laurence asked. 'A Bolshevik, I mean?'

'Wel, she's certainly a fighter. Damn good nurse, I hear, but my mama wouldn't have had her in the house before the war. Suffragette, Fabian, bluestocking: that kind of thing. Not that my mama knew her not to have her, of course. Didn't have her sort in Warwickshire, but Mama read about them in her paper and always said she wouldn't receive anybody who thought females should have the vote.' He sighed. 'Poor Mama. She must be turning in her grave. Stil bending Father's ear in paradise and al that. Not paradise for him realy. Stil, I should think Mrs Bolitho's politics would make even Ramsay MacDonald's hair stand on end.'

'Good Lord.' Laurence found he was ful of admiration rather than shocked. 'And Wiliam?'

'Heaven knows. Never met him. Not likely to now, realy. Suppose he must go along with it if only for a quiet life. But he's probably counting his blessings: Mrs Bolitho was always a bit sought after. Healing hands, that kind of thing. Pretty too. General surprise when she married old Bolitho but then nurses do that: marry their patients and so on, even without legs. There's a child, isn't there? So his wounds haven't stopped him enjoying the benefits.'

He beamed at Laurence. In anyone else such a statement of the obvious would seem prurient but Charles simply seemed happy for his felow officer.

'Lucky man,' he added.

Laurence was just about to ask him more about the circumstances of the Bolithos' marriage when Charles dropped his own thunderbolt.

'Motored down to Lewes last week and guess who I met there?'

He left a pause for Laurence to go through the motions of guessing.

'Surprise me,' Laurence said, slicing into his turbot.

'Wel, I was staying at Frant, you know, Toly Pitt's house. Third cousin. He married a lovely girl—not realy a girl, she must be twenty-eight if she's a day. She was engaged to some cavalry man who got it right at the start, but then she meets Toly, love at second sight, a year or so back and then she inherits Frant off one of those useful aunts these girls have, and it turns out Toly loves her too. We had a spot of dinner and a joly good walk along the coast. You know how these weekends go.'

Charles was momentarily diverted by his pheasant, but after another mouthful he went on.

'Anyway, this Octavia is a lot of fun but keen on church, that kind of thing. So we were off for luncheon in Tunbridge Wels with someone Toly knew from the regiment when Octavia decided we should al go to church there rather than in the vilage. To cut a long story short, halfway through the service Octavia obviously sees someone she knows across the way: lots of looks, little smiles, fingertip wiggling—delight, surprise: that thing they do—and she whispers to me during the interminable sermon that it was a girl she'd known from driving some sort of canteen lorry for returning soldiers at Victoria Station in the war. Steaming tea, fragrant English girls—