Elizabeth Speller: The Return of Captain John Emmett

'Hard to see Somers as a kiler.'

'I think he saw himself as a warrior. Soldiers at war aren't murderers. They're heroes. Somers was fighting a battle.'

'I don't expect Mrs Lovel knew?'

'Not at first. Later she may have suspected something was amiss but it's not as if Somers was living with her or as if the news of each death was a headline murder until Mulins. She didn't even know the names of the men involved in her son's execution. She didn't even know he'd been shot at dawn. I think Somers only told her when Brabourne contacted him about where the photograph was.'

'But she knows now,' Charles said grimly. 'She heard much of your conversation.'

'I think she already knew. She may have found out only recently. But she knew.'

He remembered the sad but calm, candid woman he had met a matter of weeks ago. Since he first saw her, her spirit had been crushed.

'But what I want to know,' Charles went on, more slowly, 'is how did the general persuade Emmett to break bounds and meet him, then go off to some godforsaken wood in the middle of winter?'

'The meeting was easy. He simply asked him to come. Said Gwen Lovel would be there. John could tel her everything, as he longed to do. Why John then went with him to such a remote spot, I don't think we'l ever know. He knew the Foly from school, of course.'

'When did Somers shoot him?'

Laurence shook his head, stil unable to understand why it had ended there. Somers obviously wanted to kil him away from the house and presumably John just trusted him.

'Probably a couple of days after they met. He didn't want to interrogate John at Holmwood, apart from anything else. He certainly didn't want him reaching Gwen and giving her every miserable detail. He'd promised she'd be at his house. How long could he stal, even when he'd told John the truth about his son? Yet John was torn apart with remorse, did what he could to make some kind of restitution. Was honest with Somers himself. I should think Mrs Lovel was horrified to know Somers kiled him. I don't think she knew that until tonight. After al, Emmett had only wanted to help her.'

Nevertheless, he reflected that Somers, who had gone out of his way to mutilate the men he'd kiled, had been careful to leave John's face untouched.

'What are you going to tel Mary?'

'The truth, I suppose. Before anyone else does.'

'And the police?'

'I'l give him his twenty-four hours.'

Charles shrugged. They sat in the car and stil he made no move to go. Three girls passed them, arm in arm, singing a Christmas carol.

'You don't realy believe that there'l ever be a trial?' Charles said.

'No.'

'Wil he do the decent thing?'

'Possibly.'

'So you think that him putting an end to himself would be a better outcome than the galows?'

'Yes, I do, actualy. A trial would only injure more people.'

'And you don't think there's a risk to Mrs Lovel and the girl?'

'No,' said Laurence, trying to suppress a flicker of uncertainty. 'He had his chance and he couldn't face it.'

Nevertheless, whatever happened to Somers, he thought, the future looked bleak for the Lovels, both mother and daughter.

Charles started the car and they drove on slowly out on to the main road, folowing a tram into the heart of the city, and in al that time they never exchanged another word.

Chapter Thirty-eight

Laurence lay awake for hours, going over and over the previous evening, trying to understand what had happened. He had a profound sense of having made a serious mistake. Was it a failure to imagine the impact of his questioning on those he spoke to? He had been too ready to treat them as one-way conduits of information, never considering that the flow of information might run both ways. Why hadn't he caled the police? Although he had felt reasonably certain that Somers was of no further danger, it was a huge and possibly dangerous assumption. He had been numb and exhausted at the time but now anxiety crept in.

Laurence would never be sure whether he had acted correctly. And what would Somers do now? For al his chivalric instincts to unravel John's death for Mary, it was she who had asked the one question he should have looked into early on: where were Edmund Hart's family? There was in itself nothing sinister about anglicising German names in war. It was common sense. The Coburg Hotel, the Bechstein Hal; even the royal family had dispensed with Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in favour of Windsor. Anyone with British loyalties or interests shed a name that tied them to an enemy.

However, even if he'd laid his hands on every bit of information; even if he had persuaded the police in the beginning that there was a link between the deaths—

and perhaps he should have done this—they would only ever have succeeded in tracking down Somers slightly earlier than they had. Almost al the kiling had already been done. Charles and Laurence had, perhaps, saved the life of General Hubert Gough, a man for whom Laurence had little respect. He wondered whether, had Somers' intended ultimate victim been anybody other than Gough, he would have been so wiling to walk away the evening before.

His thinking was cut short by a hammering on the street door.

'Telegram,' the lad said, handing over the familiar envelope. 'Your bel needs to be fixed.'

Laurence's heart raced for a moment. Telegrams were always bad news. He walked back into the bedroom and sat on the edge of his bed, just holding it. He dreaded finding that it was from India.

Finaly he tore it open and forced himself to look. It was from Mary. PLEASE MEET TOMORROW EASTBOURNE STATION MIDDAY REPLY ONLY IF NOT AVAILABLE

M.

Sitting there, al alone, he beamed.

Traveling to the south coast was easy. The day was clear, the train was on time, the carriages half empty. As he stepped from the train, seaguls were wheeling and screeching overhead. Even on this December day he could smel salt in the fresh air.

Mary was waiting outside in a smal car.

'See, I drive and punt,' she said, as he slipped into the passenger seat and finaly succeeded in shutting the door after banging it three times. 'I was taught during the war.' The car smeled of leather and mould and her. It creaked every time he moved. 'And I've borrowed my doctor friend's car so that we can get about. We've got it for only two hours, though, while he's on duty at the cottage hospital.'

She leaned over and gave him a kiss. He nuzzled into her hair and tried to clasp her neck beneath the folds of scarf. She twisted round awkwardly, burying her face in his coat with her arms around his neck. The embrace was bulky and marvelous and safe. Then she pushed him away from her slightly.

'You've got things to tel me,' she said. 'Important things. I can see it in your face. I'd asked you here because I had something to show you but now you must tel me what's happened.'

And so, not at al as he had planned, he sat in the Austin on the station forecourt and told her everything that had unfolded and much, though not al, of what he knew. She didn't stop him; indeed, her expression scarcely changed. Mostly she gazed ful at him, a little anxiously but concentrating. After a while she looked down at her gloved hands on the wheel and moved them to her lap.

'I'm not sure whether my intervention helped, realy,' said Laurence. 'I'm afraid the truth is as dismal in its way as how things originaly looked.'

'Not for me,' she said.

Laurence didn't respond.

'Which doesn't mean it isn't just as horrible and sad. In fact, because it involves more people and more destroyed lives, it's sadder realy. But, in a selfish way, for me, it's a kind of easing of the heart. An enemy kiled John as surely as they might have done at any time in the war. The motive was desperately unfair.' Her voice was slightly hoarse. 'But this way I can think about John without struggling with the fact that after al he'd been through he chose to leave us.'