Elizabeth Speller: The Return of Captain John Emmett

She stopped and breathed in deeply. They were both so stil that a sparrow hopped on to the table and pecked at crumbs. As she began to speak again, it flew a few feet away to perch on a chairback.

'She never did, of course. She never saw him again. That Christmas Day he was taken il in church or pretended he was. A Holmwood attendant folowed him out but John either knocked him out or just pushed him out of his way—it depends which version you believe. And John ran off and ended up dead in a wood. Heaven knows how long he'd been there. He could have lived rough for a while, I suppose. It was an awful, awful shock.

Anyway, apparently Dr Chilvers told the inquest—we didn't go; my mother would have been terribly distressed and I couldn't face it on my own—there was a blot on John's copybook at Holmwood: he'd "absconded" only weeks earlier. Absconded! When he'd gone to Holmwood voluntarily.'

She was sitting forward now, her elbows on the table. Sun filtered through the brim of her hat on to her skin. She was beautiful, he thought.

'After that they'd been keeping him under closer confinement for a bit,' she went on. 'That alone would have driven him mad. No wonder he broke out. But Chilvers' slimy son backed up the doctor and one of the attendants said John was volatile.' She looked upset and paused as if waiting for him to see the injustice of it al.

As if the rest of their patients were models of composure. They kept referring to what they caled a violent attack on their warder outside the church. Not pointing out it was the only way John could get away.'

Laurence must have looked puzzled because Mary added, 'Of course, men like John do kil themselves sometimes. I know that. In fact there'd been another death there—right in the house itself—only a few months before John arrived. But on the day John disappeared, they didn't cal the police out for twelve hours while young Mr Chilvers drove around, trying to retrieve their lost patient with minimum fuss. If they'd got others involved they might have found John before he did it.'

Although her hand was trembling slightly her voice remained very calm. She ran her finger down the side of her glass.

'But it was a stranger who died, you see. He'd left us years ago.'

Laurence wished he could tel her he had heard from him, wished he could have explained that stranger to her. He wanted to believe he would have made contact if he'd known John was in trouble, but he feared that he wouldn't. He should never have lost his friend in the first place.

'Look,' he began, unsure what he was about to commit himself to and whether he was complicating a simple, if sad, event. 'I could see if I could find out anything. I mean, I don't know if I would be able to do any more than you have, but I could at least ask around people he and I both knew. At school, mostly, possibly at Oxford. See whether any of them had heard anything from him since the war. I have the time.'

Even as he said it, he knew he was only setting himself up to disappoint her. So many in their year were gone now and John had had no intimates, anyway.

'People at school' would simply mean Charles Carfax. But her face brightened irresistibly, so he continued, 'At a pinch I suppose I could talk to the people at Holmwood, see if they come up with anything.' As he said it, he thought how unlikely it was that he would be any match for the professionaly discreet.

'When John died—afterwards—they sent a trunk with his things,' she said. 'There's not much in it, just clothes and books. Little things.'

A look of such extreme sadness came over her that he was embarrassed to be faced with her emotion and uneasy remembering his own reactions to Louise's possessions.

'But there might be something you'd make sense of. There are sketches and writings, a few photographs. You might see something, knowing a different side of John to us.'

He didn't know how to tel her that he felt he had never realy known her brother at al.

It was getting cooler. Laurence paid for tea and they walked back to the punt, now alone on its moorings. Light breezes made the return journey faster but chily. Mary sat, eventualy accepting Laurence's offer of his coat, while he made what seemed like interminable progress downstream. After a bit she took over and he surrendered the pole with gratitude. His shoulder muscles were burning with exertion but he was damp with sweat and soon felt cold. They were both weary by the time they were back on land again.

They walked the short distance to the Emmetts' new house in silence. Laurence, remembering their Suffolk home from years back, was surprised by the dul meagreness of the tal, narrow house they lived in now. The brick was greyish-yelow, the proportions of the windows cramped. Below the railings, ferns and mosses had encroached on the damp basement. What had happened to their leisured existence before the war?

Chapter Five

An elderly woman opened the door. Was it the same maid he remembered from long ago, Laurence wondered; she wasn't in uniform but few domestics were now. He smiled encouragingly but she just motioned to them to come in.

'My aunt, Miss Virginia Peel,' said Mary. He hoped his smile hadn't been patronising.

Mary took him into a smal drawing room where, despite the warmth outside, Mrs Emmett sat by a fire. To cross the room and shake her hand, he had to squeeze between occasional tables and around a large chiffonier. Every bit of furniture that had looked at home in an affably neglected manor house appeared to have accompanied them to Cambridge. The effect was oppressive, the pieces heavy and grandiose. Weak light filtered in through thick lace curtains under a velvet pelmet.

Even Mary seemed to wilt. Her mother sat on a button-back chair like a relic of another age.

'Laurence,' she said and held out a soft hand, 'how good to see you again.'

He would not have recognised Mrs Emmett. She was much smaler than he recaled and a certain excitability, which had amused him when he was a boy, was entirely gone.

'How good of you to come al this way and see Mary. She doesn't get out nearly enough.' She looked towards her daughter. 'She doesn't see much of her old friends. I don't know why. Everybody used to love Mary.'

They talked politely, touching on her son for only a second, and then only to locate them al in time.

'That was before John died, of course,' Mrs Emmett had replied to Laurence's asking when they had moved to Cambridge.

Mary jumped in at this opportunity. 'I thought it might be nice to let Laurence have one of John's books. You remember we discussed it. As a keepsake.' He could tel that Mrs Emmett actualy remembered nothing of the sort and it crossed his mind that there had never even been a conversation on the subject, but Mrs Emmett smiled again vaguely.

'Oh yes, lovely. What a good idea. Certainly he should have something. Do you like poetry? John was very keen on poetry, you know.'

Laurence had worried that they would have to sit and have a second, awkward, tea, but Mary's mother seemed unconcerned with such social niceties and after a few minutes they were able to back out of the room.

John's things had been put in one of two smal rooms under the eaves. As they climbed the three flights of stairs, Mary said over her shoulder, 'You don't have to take anything. I simply wanted an excuse to show you John's things without having to explain.'

Their feet clattered up a last uncarpeted flight into a smal, peaceful room with a casement window. It held an iron bed, a wooden chair and a washstand. On the bed lay a trunk and a box. It reminded him a bit of school.

'We never used to come up here,' Mary said, as if the room stil surprised her. 'But my aunt needed John's old room, and now this is al that's left of him ... It's hard.'