Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

'They were right too about not letting him out alone,' said Laurence. 'Though, in fact it was churchgoing that was to give him the chance to escape. So perhaps the Holmwood people knew him better than she did.' He kept to himself Eleanor's assurance that she had not met John after the war. 'And actualy, I found Dr Chilvers quite impressive. 'It was the son I took a dislike to.'

'Even my complainant says the old man's a decent chap, dedicated to his patients, if a bit on the zealous side. But he's not wel, goes up to London for treatment. Probably a hopeless case, he reckons. Says the doctor's lost stones in the last year. It's when he goes away that young Chilvers gets to impose his stamp on the place: changes treatment, sacks people at wil. The old man rarely stands up to him. And of course the staff know it wil al be his when his father shuffles off his mortal, so they mostly toe the line. Not many jobs in these parts.'

Laurence thought that if he'd been less focused on his own deceptions, he would have guessed Chilvers was il from his palor and thinness.

Charles was gaining momentum. 'And he was shot with a Luger.'

Laurence looked up, sharply. 'Wel, that should have made it easier,' he said. 'To track down, I mean. Not many of those in circulation. No recuperating German officers in Holmwood. Plenty of our lot got hold of them but it was a side arm for the flashy type.'

'I had a Luger,' said Charles, after a momentary pause. 'Stil have, in fact.'

'How?' said Laurence and immediately wished he hadn't.

'I captured it.' His eyes caught Laurence's momentarily. 'Off a dragoon Hauptman to be precise. I was a good shot, it was the best side arm around and I was keen to live.'

'But did John have a Luger—or any gun at al?'

'Al the witnesses thought not. But they would, wouldn't they?'

There was a long silence.

'You're stil thinking he wasn't the Luger type,' said Charles.

Laurence didn't answer. He was thinking that George Chilvers was precisely the sort of man who would have a Luger, had he not been the sort of man who avoided military service completely, but he felt irritated with himself for both pointless thoughts.

'Wel, lots of us weren't the type for lots of things, but we changed,' said Charles.

There was another, longer silence.

'In fact the records showed he'd turned in a perfectly regulation Webley at the end of the war. It came up at the inquest, of course. Which was in Oxford, by the way. Doesn't mean he hadn't acquired anything else, though. But what did you make of the place? How do they fix them up?' Charles looked hopeful.

'Straightforward, realy,' Laurence said, thinking back. 'Dr Chilvers believes routine splints the broken mind in the same way that a splint holds a broken leg.' He realised he was quoting him almost verbatim. 'They have to get up at the same time each day, they have to take meals. They're alowed a short rest after lunch, otherwise they're not alowed to return to their rooms and sleep during the day. Chilvers said this is partly to counteract the insomnia that's a major problem. Church on Sundays.'

Thinking of church brought him back to Eleanor's complaints.

'Chilvers said he didn't care whether they believed in God or not.' He remembered this clearly, because it seemed quite a worldly view from an otherwise old-fashioned man. 'He said it was good for them to have the pattern established. They have to confront the outside world—some of them have huge problems with people, apparently—and church services give an opportunity for this within a familiar context. And he said they didn't realy have enough to do on Sundays. 'A bit of a walk and some singing is good for them; it's al exercise, in its way, Chilvers had said.'

'Not surprisingly one or two are quite angry with God, but, as a general principle, we like to have these things out at Holmwood,' the doctor had added. He had been close to a smile, Laurence had thought.

Charles was uncharacteristicaly silent.

'There's a ward, I suppose you cal it, holding two men at present, for those whose physical condition is poor,' Laurence continued. 'Some patients are injured, but young Chilvers explained that some melancholics simply cease to eat. Here they are fed and treated for physical ilnesses before they get the mind stuff. These two both looked pretty sick to me. One had a tube taped to his cheek. I couldn't wait to get out of there, to be honest.

'Apart from that, it was like any officers' convalescent home. Piano, comfortable drawing room, newspapers, though Dr Chilvers told me earlier that occasionaly they withheld these if current events were likely to distress occupants. A smal library; actualy I didn't think it looked too bad, though I didn't do an inventory of the titles.' He smiled at the thought of Eleanor's inspection. 'Tennis court. A couple of inmates helped with the garden from time to time, young Chilvers said.

Found it calming. Both Chilverses referred to treatment rooms, but I was shown only one. It has a bath, water nozzles, sitz baths, hydrotherapy, al rather old-fashioned, it seemed to me.'

'My man says they have al the latest electrical stuff,' Charles interrupted, 'though I suppose they don't want to frighten a potential paying customer.'

Laurence remembered that Eleanor had talked of electric shocks being given to those with false paralysis of limbs. She talked as if it were fairly standard.

'I realy didn't see anything like that. Sorry, Charles. But what was interesting is that young Chilvers told me that al comforts were withheld for what he caled

"misbehaviour". They have to earn them. And there's a secure floor: the top floor, where patients in a state of agitation are confined. The windows were barred, I noticed, from the outside. Presumably that's where John was incarcerated. I was shown only an empty room on the second floor, made up ready for a new arrival. Nice enough.'

'Why not keep them downstairs if they think they're going to leap out?'

'I suppose downstairs they could escape more easily?'

'Did they say anything about suicide to you?' Charles asked.

'Wel, only in a general way. I mean, for God's sake, Charles, I could hardly interrogate them on their failures. Young Chilvers said that it had happened, though very rarely, in the twenty years that Dr Chilvers had been running the place. It seemed rude to ask what "very rarely" meant in numbers.'

He had been quite pleased with how he'd raised the question of his fictional brother's threats of suicide. George Chilvers hadn't looked particularly surprised.

'Six,' said Charles.

'Six?'

'Suicides. Four since the war. One other was actualy just discharged, and one was before the war, but, listen to this: that one was a girl of twenty. She got out somehow, lay down on the tracks just outside Fairford Station and waited for some hapless train driver to chop her in three. Her family asked for a post-mortem, which the coroner granted, and, as it turned out, she was five months pregnant.'

'Was that why she was depressed?'

'It might be why she kiled herself but it wasn't why she was melancholic in the first place. She'd been admitted eight months earlier. Nearly a scandal, certainly there were nasty rumours. Staff reckoned she was sweet on young Chilvers; a single man then, of course. One female nurse—now dismissed—had said Chilvers had been found with the naked patient in a bathroom. He was using a high-pressure hose on her: she was soaked and squealing. Chilvers insisted it was treatment for hysteria. A different attendant, who went up to check her room when the alarm was first raised, says he saw a letter addressed to Chilvers in an envelope on her desk.

At that point, naturaly, nobody knew she was dead, but when he went back to check later, no letter.'

As there had been no letter after John's death, Laurence thought, though the incidents must have been years apart.