Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

Briefly Laurence wondered whether there was any way to check the truth of the story, although it felt real enough. The description of Tucker's first assailant fitted John but then it fitted him too, come to that. Yet Mary had spoken of an assault that had led to John's arrest.

Suddenly the whole scenario he'd constructed, with Tucker as a stealthy and methodical kiler, seemed ridiculous. He was just a semi-criminal local down-and-out. He would never have had the means to travel to Devon and to Oxfordshire to kil former comrades, much less the ingenuity. Deflated, Laurence felt a fool for alowing himself to believe in the dangers of chasing Tucker.

He looked at Charles. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'What a wild-goose chase.'

Charles stil looked interested. He turned to their companion. 'Thank you,' he said. 'Very helpful.'

He handed him the promised sixpence and a further shiling. The man nodded, touched his cap, hovered for a few seconds and started to walk off before he turned and added, 'Tucker might quite have liked being caled a murderer but then the man said Bert forced himself on some girl. No way Bert was going to take that one—used to fancy hisself with the ladies way back.'

'So,' said Charles, as they walked the slightly uphil route back towards the station, 'I assume we agree the man in the fight was John?'

Almost certainly.'

'How did John find Tucker?'

'He got hold of his address, like us, I suppose. Florence Place—Florence Street was written down on a note in John's effects. He had Byers' original address too. It was in his pocket when they found him.'

'You're with our friend and think Tucker was kiled deliberately? But was it the same man who did for the chap in Devon?'

'Jim Byers?'

'Yes, Byers Two. The cousin of Byers One. And Inspector Mulins? Or, just possibly, John Emmett?'

' If they were al murders,' Laurence answered. 'Yes, it's a huge coincidence. I can't think it's worth checking with the police here or trying to track down the couple who might have seen Tucker's assailant. The whole damn thing is vague.'

And, he thought, if the facial injuries in al the deaths, bar John's, were intended as a message, whom was the message for?

As they climbed on to the homeward train, Laurence said, 'You know, I'm completely losing sight of what I set out to do.'

'Find out what on earth the fair Mary Emmett's brother was thinking of when he puled the trigger,' replied Charles as they were puling out of the station in a carriage that smeled strongly of old tobacco. 'Al pretty straightforward when you started. What a man wil do for love.'

Laurence felt tired and irritated. 'I hardly knew her when I agreed to look into it,' he said. 'I just wanted to help her with a horrible event in her life. Tie up loose ends. I didn't know it wasn't going to be so simple. It isn't like your storybook sleuths. Everybody isn't either good or bad, with clues and a tidy solution to be unraveled. Everything here goes round in circles. There isn't going to be the clear answer she wants answered: why did John die? And if there was, it wouldn't be the sort of answer she'd understand. He died because he was born at the wrong time. Or he died because he crossed the wrong person. Bad luck. No more. For God's sake, we stil don't even know there was a murder or a kiler. Or if there was, only of a farmhand, and a policeman, both of whom might have nothing to do with anything. If we did, we'd have told the police.'

'Point taken,' said Charles. 'Though you underestimate Mrs Christie, by the by. It's not individuals but combinations of circumstances that lead to catastrophe in her books. A fatal colision of character and events.' He beamed. 'But I suppose Emmett's sister would be happiest with clarity. It was So and So's fault—George Chilvers, the late Sergeant Tucker, General Haig. If you could find a murderer, that would help everyone. Wel, not the murderer; perhaps it wouldn't help him. But it would be simple. Emmett didn't kil himself. Someone else, the embodiment of evil, did. A homicidal maniac. Which means there was nothing anyone could have done and Miss Emmett doesn't have to feel guilty.'

'Why on earth should she feel guilty?' Laurence jumped in. 'She's the last person who should feel guilty. John was off in Germany before the war, then he was fighting in France, then he became il. She'd hardly talked to him properly for years.'

'I rest my case!'

Laurence gazed out of the window. He didn't want to continue the conversation. But Charles, apparently oblivious that he was treading on eggshels, went on,

'The thing is that a murderer wouldn't realy help. Murderers have their stories too. Their reasons. The people they crossed. The people who did them down. Mrs Christie can leave their world behind on the last page but a real murderer's story doesn't end on the galows.'

'Extreme violence changes everything for ever,' Laurence said, and then, in a more conciliatory tone he added, 'There is one loose end, though. Tresham Brabourne gave me another name—the junior officer who sneaked on Hart to their superior officer and got him charged. If I could track him down and if he survived the war, that would be informative. Man was caled Liley, Ralph Liley.' He looked at Charles expectantly.

Charles shook his head. 'Never heard of him. But I'l ask around.' He sounded tired. He fumbled for his pipe and then gazed out at the darkening day.

Laurence rested his aching neck against the back of the seat. He couldn't think straight. Was it possible the man who told them the news of Tucker's death had deliberately misled them to put them off the track? He thought not. He realised now that the landlord had been amused when they'd been making their not very subtle enquiries.

Charles had been right, of course, Tucker had provided the easy solution. But if Tucker was out of the picture, then the murder of Jim Byers and any possibility of John having been murdered became much harder to link.

On the blank margin of his paper he wrote down the name of everybody connected with the execution of Edmund Hart. It was an untidy list because in some instances he either didn't know the name or had only a rank or a partial name. He drew a line through those he knew were dead or disabled. The list became much shorter. He wrote down a second list of everyone he knew of who'd been there when John was trapped in the trench fal and repeated the process. Again, it was not a long list, though he had less information this time. Only Leonard Byers was on both lists. Then he added Eleanor Bolitho. She was not there but she'd nursed John at both periods in his life.

Finaly he set down the names of anyone else he could think of who had been significant in John's life in recent years. After Eleanor this had just six names on it: Mary, Mrs Emmett, Doctor Chilvers, George Chilvers, Mrs Chilvers and an unknown army friend who had visited him in Holmwood. He added Minna's name at the top with two question marks. She was dead, but she was the only possible link with the word 'Coburg' on John's note.

Obviously John was the man who had attacked Tucker but it had happened wel before Tucker's death. Could John have returned to Birmingham after the initial fight and kiled him before kiling himself? Everyone agreed Tucker had enemies but one of them was certainly John. Instead of looking for Tucker as a potential kiler of John Emmett, what if he discovered it was the other way around? It was John who had been arrested for assault, John who had been put in a nursing home to avoid prosecution.

What if these enquiries turned up something worse for Mary? He knew that was one reason he'd avoided going to the police in Birmingham. When John went absent, could he have traveled al the way to Birmingham to deal with Tucker? Was that where he was in those missing days? If Tucker had died in January or February, it was too late, but if he'd died earlier, it was just possible John could have been involved and he certainly had a motive. It would help if he had the dates, which meant he would have to contact the police after al, although he would be surprised if they hadn't made their own inquiries as to whether the dates fitted, given the earlier attack.