Elizabeth Speller: The Return of Captain John Emmett

'But this is what I wanted to show you.'

Mary puled out a lined schoolbook. Again she opened it and handed it to Laurence. There were fewer words than in the earlier books, large, single ones or short phrases scrawled across the page. One read Göttes Mühle mahle langsam, mahle aber trefflich klein, but he had no idea what it meant.

The pictures were no longer portraits and smal landscapes. Ghoul-like faces—eyeless, formless—rose, dripping, out of some viscous glue. He turned a few more pages: bodies, German soldiers by the look of the uniform, thrown outwards by a central explosion. A rat was crouched on the corner of the next page, a subaltern's pips hanging from its claws and a human grin on its mouth. He turned over the page. A man slumped away from a post, almost on his knees but restrained by a rope with his hands behind him, a blindfold over his eyes. Dark, shiny penciling over his shirt indicated mortal injury. The lead had pierced the page at one point. Six soldiers were standing with their guns half raised. Along the bottom on both sides of the next double-page spread men walked, single file, with bandaged eyes, one hand on the shoulder of the man in front. They'd been gassed, Laurence assumed, or were prisoners. It was hard to tel from the uniforms. The quality of drawing was stil very fine, which made their impact acute.

Laurence turned the page again; he hated seeing al these nightmarish images here in front of Mary. Until now he had been unable to reconcile the boy he had known at school, as wel as the man revealed by his possessions and whose sister loved him, with the kind of person who would blow his brains out in a winter wood.

Now he had become privy to the preoccupations of a different sort of man.

There were a few blank pages, then one last drawing, in pencil. In it a girl lay apparently dead across some sacks, one arm thrown behind her, the other across her chest. Her head was turned to one side, her hair was tangled. What was most shocking was that her skirts were raised, showing her nakedness underneath. One stocking was torn, the other leg was bare, her foot turned outwards.

He suddenly realised that he had been silent for some time. When he glanced up, Mary had moved to the window and was half turned away from him, looking out. She stil clutched the striped scarf. There were tears on her cheeks but her crying was silent. She pressed one end of the scarf to her eyes. He left the book on the bed and went over to her, putting his arm clumsily round her shoulders. She stayed immobile for a second before turning towards him. He held her for a minute, conscious of the scent of her, and of the scarf, and of her hair against his face, the slightness of her body against his chest. It was the first time he had touched another human being, apart from trying to comfort injured men, he thought, since he had last held Louise in the darkness of their bed. But then he remembered the whore in Soho just as Mary broke away, covering her embarrassment by puling a handkerchief out of her sleeve.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I can't bear thinking what must have happened to him out there. After I found it I was going to burn it so that Mother never saw it, but it turned out she didn't want to look at John's things. She has his photo by the bed and that's enough for her. A tidy relationship.' She raised her eyes to his. 'She always did like everything to be nice and everybody to be happy. She can't cope with complicated things. I'm quite sure she wishes John had simply died in action like half the other officers in his regiment.'

It occurred to Laurence that Mary must feel suffocated in this claustrophobic house with two prematurely old women.

'Look,' he said, 'I'm happy to do anything I can to help but you're wrong in thinking I knew your brother wel. I knew him. I liked him. I liked him a lot. But that was a long time ago.'

Mary looked at him. 'You probably knew him as wel as any of us, then.'

She rummaged through the trunk, under the heavy layers of clothing, then sat back on her heels.

'No, wait a minute,' she said, hurriedly, 'I've got something in my room I want you to see. You stay here.'

Laurence sat on the chair, hearing her clatter down the second flight of stairs. It was stuffy under the roof, and moving John's things about had raised dust, which shimmered in the light. He walked to the window, lifted the latch and pushed. The window seemed stuck fast. Dead flies lay on the sil. He banged on the frame with the side of his clenched fist and then harder with his hand protected in the sleeve of his jacket. It burst free, explosively, and swung wide to alow in a rush of fresh air. Old moss and flakes of paint fel on to the floor; God knows when it had last been opened. The light beyond the slate roofs showed that evening was not far away. He looked at his watch. It was getting late. He was standing at the window when Mary returned with a manila envelope.

'Look, I'm going to have to be off soon if I'm to catch my train,' he said. Her face fel instantly. 'We can meet again,' he went on hurriedly, 'but I'm supposed to be at dinner in London tonight.' It was only with Charles but he had left it too late to change the arrangements. 'I've got half an hour.'

'John was engaged once, you know.'

Laurence found himself surprised, not because he couldn't imagine John liking women, but simply because he couldn't imagine him being that intimate with anyone.

'She was German, her name was Minna. She lived near Munich. A lawyer's daughter, I think. He met her before the war, presumably when he was traveling.

Wel, obviously before the war.' She shrugged. 'We'd never got to meet her. Her family had been going to come over in 1913 but then everything caught up with us and they never came. My father died late that year. John came home for the funeral and he never went back to Germany. Then, when war seemed inevitable, Minna's father forced her to cal off the engagement. A good thing probably. She was very young. It was made worse because she died not long afterwards. Appendicitis, John said.'

'There's no picture of her?'

'No. He did have one once although I never saw it after they separated. He took her death quite hard. But there may have been other people in his life that we knew nothing of. He left a wil before he went to France; they al did. When he came back from the war he made another wil. We didn't know anything about it and it wasn't with the family solicitors. He used a smal London firm. They sent us a copy. It wasn't very different—he provided for my mother and me—but there were three individual bequests as wel. One was to a Captain Wiliam Bolitho whose address was a convalescent home. One was to a Frenchman, a Monsieur Meurice of ...

somewhere that sounded like Rouen. Doulon—no, Doulens, I think—and the other was to a married woman. I've got her name downstairs. Sadly the Frenchman and al his family were untraceable. Even the vilage was gone. The solicitors are holding money in case he is found. There were no reasons given for any of the bequests.

'Captain Bolitho was in John's regiment. He survived although apparently he lost his legs. But nobody knew anything about the Frenchman or the woman. I wondered whether they had been...' She paused. 'Wel, whether they had been close, I suppose, and whether he would have written to her if they were. In the end I never tried to speak to her and she never contacted us, though the solicitors could have passed on any letter to us.'

She looked at him with an expression he found hard to read. Her eyes were steady and almost on a level with his.

'Look,' he said, quickly, aware of the clumsiness of his timing, 'I'm realy sorry but I do have to go very soon.' He glanced at his watch again. He was going to be lucky to catch the half past six train. 'But if you want me to try to contact Bolitho or this woman, I'l gladly make enquiries. Nothing that would embarrass you, enough to put your mind at rest.'