Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

'Lambert Ward?' Laurence echoed.

'The MP. The parliamentary questions man. I was doing this big piece on him; I can probably find it. Certainly got the goat up plenty of our regulars. Letters came pouring in.' He looked happy. 'Especialy from those who'd never fought, of course. Very keen on the ultimate sanction, our older readers. But the rest was pure coincidence. We were talking about the bee he's got in his bonnet about burying executed men alongside their more valiant comrades in arms. He's very old school in his ways but strangely vehement about keeping our dead together.'

He stopped, got up again, walked to a cabinet and puled out a drawer. He seemed to find what he wanted almost immediately, ran his eyes over it and handed it to Laurence.

'Quotes. They were for my piece, he said. I could hardly improve on their words. From Hansard or public speeches.'

Laurence looked down at the transcript. Two speeches had been marked in pencil.

'The first is Philip Morrel. The former MP. Liberal. I'd like to do a piece on him too. And this is the colonel,' said Brabourne. '"These men, many of them volunteered in the early days of the war to serve their country. They tried and they failed ... I think that it is wel that it should be known and the people of this country should understand ... that from the point of view of Tommy up in the trenches, war is not a question of honours and decorations, but war is just hel."'

Laurence nodded. He sat back. Just hel. He was glad someone had spoken this truth in parliament.

'He told me that there was utter silence in the Commons after he'd spoken, and nobody would meet his eyes,' Brabourne added. 'But what I found interesting when I met him was his conviction that intolerable fear pushed some men into extraordinary acts of courage, and others into cowardice quite out of keeping with their characters. I think he was saying both extremes were a sort of madness. I liked him.

'I mentioned that I'd been personaly involved in a court martial and a firing squad. He seemed quite interested—wel, he would, of course. Much more so when he found the condemned man was an officer. He was the first person I'd spoken to about it since the war. Even my brother doesn't know. I didn't tel Lambert Ward about the photograph at first. Partly because it's not of the execution itself, thank God, but mostly it didn't seem fair to the other men involved, who didn't have any choice about being there.' He held the tiny stub of his cigarette between finger and thumb, inhaling before discarding it. 'And I felt that it looked a bit like a souvenir. That wasn't how it was, but I wasn't proud of it.'

Laurence asked, 'Are Lambert Ward and Morrel working together?'

'Loosely, yes. The colonel, Morrel, General Somers, and the man who's the member for North-West Lanarkshire, whose name I can't remember. Pringle? No, Thirtle; al good men of absolute probity, no axes being ground, I think. Somers and Lambert Ward were military heroes themselves in their time, which probably helped. The war and the public making subsequent attacks on them al were playing hel with Lambert Ward's health. But then there's Horatio Bottomley.'

Laurence watched, puzzled, as Brabourne slid his matchbox open and tipped his matches out on to the desk.

The name rang a bel with Laurence. 'Another MP?'

Brabourne gave him a wry look. 'Yes. "The Soldier's Friend". Among other things. Including being owner-editor of John Bull. It puts me in a difficult position.

The Bull is a bit of a rag and Bottomley would stop at nothing to support his causes. And there's no end to the causes that support Bottomley. Our editor loathes him.

He's had some murky dealings and he's rabid about Germany. I just thought the next thing would be that those men in my picture who had a right to remain anonymous would be plastered al over Bottomley's front page, and I'd also be in deep trouble here for not letting The Chronicle have the story. But I trusted the colonel. In the end when I sent him my meagre notes on Hart's defence, I also sent the photograph, which was with the file. He wrote back and said he'd like to talk to me properly about the execution. After al, on the previous occasion he was there for me to interview him, not vice versa.'

Brabourne was arranging matchsticks into an elaborate snowflake pattern. He nudged the final one into position and looked up.

'We agreed that we would meet again. In the event, he was unwel; an ulcer apparently. Morrel was down in the country so it was Somers who contacted me and suggested we meet at a hotel, the Connaught. Lambert Ward had passed on the photograph. But I trusted him just as much as the colonel, who had given me his word that it would be seen only by him. Somers gave me an equaly solemn assurance. Not that the picture was very informative in itself but I was confident that there was no possibility of it emerging in any public way. I didn't trust Bottomley an inch but I trusted Lambert Ward; he understands modern soldiering. Somers is utterly honourable, although from a different generation and a different war. And he'd lost two sons in ours so he had some idea of its realities. I knew one of his boys. At Welington. You know how schools yoke you for life, wily-nily? Why you're here for Emmett, realy.'

Was that true, Laurence wondered?

'I told him who was involved, the names of the officers, at least. Again, Somers said he would never make them public. I couldn't remember those of the soldiers, apart from young Byers, if I ever knew them. To tel you the truth, I didn't particularly want to remember any of it. I didn't want the photograph. It's history now.'

Laurence watched with regret as Brabourne's elbow came down in the middle of his fragile matchstick creation. The sticks scattered.

'Somers listened, took a few notes.' Brabourne brushed a matchstick off his coat. 'Told me the Germans executed only a handful of men. Fifty or so. Makes you think, doesn't it?'

Laurence was astonished. Were British soldiers so much less disciplined than Germans? Everybody said they were the best army in the world.

He was about to speak when Brabourne said, 'I did in the end tel him about Emmett—that whole ghastly botch-up.' Brabourne looked straight at Laurence when he didn't respond. 'You think I shouldn't have said anything?'

Laurence shook his head vigorously. 'You were the one who was there.'

'I thought about it after meeting Lambert Ward and decided it was the details that make a cause. Told him it was idiotic to mix up the rifles. Which was worse?

Having to shoot him, or finding they'd mostly missed? Somers looked grim, although he said he'd seen men flogged and hanged in the war in Africa and he himself had even confirmed their sentences. But that was in the last century.'

He tapped out a further cigarette from the pack but held it without lighting it.

'He asked me a bit about Hart's background. He already had his name from the records but said he was interested because so few officers were executed on any side. He had details of one other case, a Lieutenant Poole. There wasn't much I could tel him except about the indecent haste of it al. And I tried to explain how the other officers took against Hart, and the tension between Tucker and Emmett, but it al sounded a bit thin if you hadn't seen it. I was biased in Emmett's favour probably. Perhaps one of the other committee members had the photograph afterwards? Not Bottomley, I hope.' He grimaced. 'But I'l check I didn't have any more of them. It was al a muddle back in the war!'

'May I think about it for a while?' Laurence said. 'I'm going to try to trace Tucker—he seems to be the lynchpin for so much of this. He lives in Birmingham.'

Brabourne looked at him. 'You should be careful.'

'Because?'