Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

'Hold on,' he said.

The chair jerked forward, slewing to the side, and Wiliam coughed, but then it came under control. Laurence kept going rather than risk it stopping. It must always be quite a heavy task, even without the snow, which had brought the couple close to disaster on this occasion, and Eleanor was far slighter than he. He manhandled the chair off the pavement and across the road, with Eleanor beside him. On the far side she took off her sodden gloves and stopped as he tipped the chair back a little, then helped guide the wheels to the pavement. Her knuckles were raw and red.

Finaly they reached the bottom of the steps. There were only three but the snow had piled up against them. Laurence couldn't imagine how the Bolithos got in and out, even at the best of times. Should he try to lift Wiliam again? But Eleanor turned to the side, where there was a smal tradesman's gate he'd hardly noticed before. He helped her pul it open against the snow and, once through, they were in a narrow but more sheltered passage. It led to a bolted door with two sturdy planks nailed to the step. For the first time Eleanor looked a little more cheerful.

'Ingenious, don't you think?'

It was a relief to get inside. No fires were lit but it was warm compared with the street. Wiliam removed his gloves and scarf with stiff arms.

'Go and sit down,' Eleanor said as she spun the chair round towards the hal. 'I'm going to heat water and help Wiliam get into some dry clothes.' Wiliam made vague gestures of protest.

'Do you need any help?' Laurence said.

'Could you light the fire? Hang your coat there.' She gestured at a row of hooks.

He wandered into the dark drawing room and pressed his face to the window. The snow seemed to be stopping. He picked up some matches from a brass holder, turned on the gas tap and lit the mantles. They popped for a minute, then began to glow as he knelt to light the paper spils and ignite the coal already laid in the grate. He could hear Eleanor and Wiliam talking although their words were indistinct. The fire flickered and caught.

Even as the day outside finaly disappeared, this room looked as bright and warm as when he had first come here. He looked at the drawings that had created such an impression on him on his first visit. There was a good head and shoulders one of Eleanor. Standing by it now, he saw that Wiliam had sketched her in red pencil. It was dated only the year before. On an oak side table his eye was caught by a snap of her that he hadn't noticed either; it was taken a while back—she was with a smal group of nurses standing outside a building that from its shutters looked French or Belgian. He had to look hard to pick her out with her linen veil low on her forehead. On the other side of the table was a formal photograph of her and her son. He bent over to see Nicholas looking rather solemn as he sat on his mother's knee.

Eleanor, too, looked a little sombre as she gazed down at her child, her arms encircling him. Laurence focused on her image: she was quite different in stilness. In the flesh, the impression she gave was dominated by animation and inteligence and, of course, her striking colouring. In repose and in monochrome, she looked quite ordinary: just a mother with her son.

He didn't hear her when she came in the door behind him. There were spots of colour high in her cheeks and he waited to gauge her mood. She fiddled with a smal silver brooch that held her blouse colar together at the neck.

Eventualy she said, 'Thank you. I've helped Wiliam to bed to rest with a hot-water bottle.' A smile flickered. 'Do sit down, Laurence. I'm not about to show you the door this time. We wouldn't have got back without you.'

She sat down heavily in a deep chair with her legs straight out in front of her and her head back against the cushions. Her shoulders slumped. She gave him a rueful look.

'Obviously I would never have left the house with him if I'd thought it was going to snow, but these shorter days drive Wiliam mad—just sitting at the window watching the moving world. He needs to get out. He can go short distances on his own but only in fine weather. Winters are long for us.'

'It must be hard,' Laurence said, meaning for her, but she took it as referring to her husband.

'It is. Very. Wiliam is only thirty-two. He's inteligent, curious. What's he supposed to do with the rest of his life?' She jumped up, as if putting an end to reflection. 'Now, I'l fetch you some tea. I expect you're as cold as the rest of us.'

She was gone for another ten minutes or so. He puled his chair nearer the fire and held out his hands to the flames, though there was no real heat in them yet. He stood up when she came back and took the tray from her. She poured from an old ironstone teapot and they sat opposite each other.

'He's asleep, thank heavens,' she said. She stil looked very pale. Her eyes were red-rimmed. 'Now—presumably you were trying to find us at home this afternoon?' she said. 'Unless, of course, you've got other friends in the area?'

He nodded. 'Yes, I'm sorry. I know you don't want to speak to me. I don't usualy pester people but I just sense you know more about John Emmett than I do.

Probably, more than anybody and I don't even know what kind of thing it might be and now's not the time.'

This evidently amused her. 'Wel, I'm hardly going to attack you now, am I? And obviously you are never, ever going to give up. You're deceptively determined, Laurence. You must have made a formidable soldier.'

Laurence explained briefly about finding Calogreedy and then Byers. He didn't protect Eleanor from the details and he could tel that she had not known the whole story. Her face twisted in shock and disgust but then she surprised him.

'"We were together since the War began,/ He was my servant and the better man."'

He must have looked perplexed because she said, 'It's Kipling. Your Calogreedy and Byers. They reminded me of it.'

It lightened the atmosphere. He liked the lines.

'Look,' she went on, 'I'l try to help you although there are things you simply have to swear not to share unless I say. But I don't know where to start. Why don't you ask me questions?'

He thought for a minute.

'Did you know about the execution?'

'Only the fact of it. No details. Not that it was an officer. He told me once and never spoke of it again. He didn't speak much by then.'

'Do you think John kiled himself?' he asked, after another pause.

'No, the war kiled him,' she answered quickly, 'whoever puled the trigger. In himself, I think he was getting better. Next?'

'Did something happen at Holmwood?' he said and then added, because it seemed unfair to mislead her, 'I know you visited him.'

'Yes, I did,' she said, without hesitation. 'He asked me to, so I did. Twice. As for Holmwood itself, I hated him being there but honestly it was no worse than many places and better than some. The old chap—'

'Chilvers.'

'Yes, Chilvers. At heart he genuinely cared, I think. I mean, he liked having his own little kingdom but, unlike his son, he wasn't interested in the things money could buy—and, believe me, money there was, aplenty; they charged a fortune, based on a few good results. I think Chilvers believed in what he was doing. He was interested in them al, which is a good start.'

'I thought you'd complained.'

'It was young Chilvers and poor staff that let him down. I suspect they didn't pay wel enough to find the right men after the war. Chilvers fils was too greedy and Chilvers père too oblivious to the realities. George Chilvers caused problems that his father was too blind or too weak to see and which the staff were too intimidated to bring to his notice. He was an unpleasant man. He loved the luxuries but, unlike his father, he didn't give a moment's thought to the inmates. In fact...' she stopped and seemed to consider her next words. 'I think he actualy enjoyed their predicament. I mean, I didn't see him with them very much but what I did see, I didn't like. You get a feeling for such things in my line of work. You'd think everyone working with the sick would be kind, or at least decent, but there's something about vulnerability that attracts the rotten sort too. He was rotten through and through.'