Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

Gwen shuddered. Laurence thought she might faint, but she clung to Somers' arm.

'I wanted more information. I wanted him. Told them al at Holmwood that I'd arrived by train. Gave Emmett the directions to the car. Young Chilvers, an egregious braggart, even took me to catch a train home.

'Nobody to notice at home whether I had or hadn't got the car: one of the few advantages of having lost your entire family. Told my gardener it was being repaired. Agreement was that Emmett would get away when he could, pick up the motor car and drive over to my place at Fawler. He was stil confined to his room, more or less, or under constant supervision, but this suited me, as he was hardly likely to tel anyone of our plan. He thought Christmas Day would be his only chance to get away as he knew they'd al be taken to church. As far as I was concerned, Christmas was ideal as anybody who had a family would be with them. He thought I'd drive him back eventualy, of course. I left a map in the car but he said he'd been at school not so far away and knew the area.'

'Yes,' said Laurence. 'We were at Marlborough together.' Then he suddenly remembered. 'May I get something?' Gwen nodded. Laurence went over to his coat, felt in the deep pocket and puled out a grubby striped scarf. 'This was yours, wasn't it?'

Somers looked down and touched it. 'Miles's scarf, from Welington. His team colours.' He turned back the corner, looked at the school number, then took the scarf in both hands. 'Thank you,' he said. 'I'm glad to have it.' Laurence could see him making connections. 'Was it with John Emmett when he died?'

Laurence nodded. 'I came here on my way to see Tresham Brabourne—taking it to see whether he could confirm the school and identify the initials.'

Somers didn't respond for a while. Finaly he said, 'I gave it to Emmett as we left the house because he looked so cold. Miles didn't need it. I wasn't going to need it again.'

Gwen made no move to touch Somers. Laurence felt indecent, watching her world colapse.

'I don't believe John had to die. I don't understand why,' Laurence said.

'It isn't hard,' Somers replied. 'He died because he kiled my son.'

Laurence was struggling to see this rational, decent man as an unstable, flawed avenger. He thought to himself that, if anything, John had died because he had not kiled Hart.

'There was no connection in al this with a Frenchman caled Meurice?' he asked on the spur of the moment. Somers' expression was uncomprehending and his head shook almost imperceptibly.

As they reached the front door, Laurence turned to Gwen Lovel. She hadn't put on the light in the hal and in the open doorway her face was dark.

'Your son was a wonderful poet,' he said. 'He had a magical gift and he spoke for al of us. He should have lived.'

She was silent.

He folowed Charles down her chequerboard path and didn't look back. Even as he shut the gate behind him, he stil wasn't sure he had made the right decision.

Would Somers have shot him but for Gwen Lovel and Charles's adventitious arrival? How close had Somers been to shooting Mrs Lovel?

He stood for a second, feeling the weight of Somers' gun in his pocket, and looked in through the open curtains. Somers and Mrs Lovel were sitting opposite each other in the front room. They could have been any middle-aged couple about to make cocoa and go to bed.

As he and Charles trudged up the street towards the car he spoke. 'So, what made you come and find me?'

'Saved by an old soldier. You were hardly through Mrs Lovel's door,' Charles said, 'when I noticed Nicholas Bolitho had left his wooden guardsman in the footwel of the car. I thought I could just whizz back and give it to Mrs Bolitho and stil get to Savile Row. But Mrs Bolitho—Eleanor—wanted to give me a message for you. It was something she'd remembered. She thought she might have come across the man in the photograph. She was thrown when you showed it to her because he was so much thinner in the picture than when she'd nursed him, and she'd known him as Harry not Edmund. But it was the name that niggled at her, because Hart was a German name as wel as a British one, and that made her think, because she'd once had a British patient with a German name. And she thought it was him. She remembered that, because they'd had prisoners of war as temporary orderlies and she had heard Hart joking with them. Harry spoke perfect German, she said. When she warned him to be careful who overheard him—feelings were running high after some bad losses—he told her his mother was half German and had been a classical singer in Berlin and that he'd been born in Germany. Wel, after we'd left—what a mind that woman has—Eleanor starting putting two and two together. Almost as good as Mrs Christie. Apparently you'd told her Mrs Lovel had once been a singer in Germany?'

'I've no idea. I may have done.'

'So I said, "But our Hart was born in England. We checked. In Winson in the Cotswolds. Can't get much more British than that." She gave me a very long, teacher-like look and said, "Winsen is a city in Lower Saxony." But the next bit's interesting. She said that ilness and long, sleepless nights often had the effect of causing men to unburden themselves of secrets. At one point, the lad had also told her that his father was a famous British military man, but that he had never met him and that his mother didn't even know that he'd found out. Eleanor thought it was a fantasy—a product of fever and unhappiness.'

'He knew Somers was his father al along?'

'Wel, possibly not al along. But he knew. It can't have been that hard for a enquiring boy.'

Laurence thought of that other enquiring boy, John Emmett, who had discovered that his sister was not his father's child. He also remembered puzzling over Brabourne's account of Hart's dying words. So the boy died believing that his father, the courageous officer, would be ashamed of him. Laurence was glad Somers need never know.

'Once she'd remembered the name,' Charles said, 'she recaled that, like Emmett, he was something of a poet. She didn't know whether they'd met but thought John might have seen some of Hart's work.'

'Dear God. But what made you break in?'

'Wel, Eleanor was suddenly uneasy. Mostly because she was sure you were going to blunder in, oblivious, waving your waiting-for-dawn photograph at the mother of a dead man, which of course was precisely what you did.' Charles looked smug. 'But partly she, and I, just had a bad feeling about it. About Mrs Lovel, to be honest. Had a hard time stopping Eleanor coming along. Thought I might as wel come to the house, gun in pocket; knew you wouldn't approve if you saw it. If al was wel, or you'd just got yourself in an emotional pickle with Mrs L, I could have done my "can't sit freezing my bolocks off in the car any longer" speech. If al was not wel, then I could weigh in. QED. Looked in through the window, saw Somers. A famous military man, no less, in Mrs L's parlour. And then I saw the gun in his hand. Pointing at you.'

'Thank you. You may just have saved my life.'

'I don't think so for a minute,' said Charles. 'I don't think he ever intended to hurt you and I'm certain he wouldn't have done anything more to hurt Mrs Lovel. I think you just caught them unexpectedly. He improvised while he decided what to do. The gun simply gave him time, although I thought better of announcing myself by the front door once I'd seen it. Went round the back. Found Mrs Lovel sitting at the pantry table, al these papers and photographs spread out around her, and her head on her arms, weeping. I just tapped, smiled. She jumps up, very embarrassed to be caught red-eyed and wild-haired, and lets me in, easy as you please. Neither of them exactly has a criminal bent. My guess is she wanted it stopped.'

'Your rescue mission could have gone hideously wrong.'