The Return of Captain John Emmett

by Elizabeth Speller

  'Wel, it was always possible he might have drifted into something through Minna. Or through other people he met through her in Germany.'

  'Possible, Laurence, but not realy very likely,' said Eleanor. 'Did he seem like a spy to you? Minna died young and, anyway, he didn't meet her in Germany; he was at university with her brother.'

  At Oxford?'

  'Yes. Her brother was a philosopher, I think. The two men met through a love of rowing, as far as I can remember. There were plenty of Germans there before the war and the Baumeisters were a very pro-English family, John said. Minna was visiting her brother, she met John and they fel in love.'

  'I hadn't realised.'

  Laurence was thinking that, if they had met in England, the fact that none of the Emmetts had ever met John's fiancee spoke of a wider estrangement than he'd understood from Mary.

  'Minna died not long after they broke off their engagement. He felt very bad about it. And her brother was kiled in the war. John felt bad about that too. But then he'd reached the point of carrying the whole world's troubles on his shoulders. And there were plenty to carry.'

  'There was something else, in German,' he said, trying not to sound defensive. '" Gottes Mühle mahle..." is al I can remember now.'

  '" Gottes Mühle mahle langsam ..." I expect?' Laurence smiled at her. 'It's a film,' she said. 'But also a German proverb that means something like God comes at last when we think him furthest off.'

  He sensed she was about to speak again but they heard Wiliam coughing from down the corridor, so she left the room. Although he had been caught out by the relevance of the name Coburg having a more innocent explanation than he'd dreamed, the location connected it unequivocaly with the execution of Edmund Hart. Was John giving evidence as Brabourne had? It was the same hotel.

  He heard Eleanor open a door down the corridor, but although he listened carefuly, he couldn't hear her speaking. After a while a door closed and a few minutes later she came back holding a steaming jug.

  'Hot water,' she said. 'I could do with more tea.'

  When they'd sat back in their chairs she spoke again. 'I expect you're wondering why I didn't marry John.'

  'I suppose I was.'

  'I was terribly in love with him. I always was from when I first nursed him. I think he was remarkable, quite different from anyone else I'd met. He was inteligent and kind and aware. He was a man of the world in the real sense and he was a man quite outside his time. Solitary, self-sufficient, but not, or not yet, shut away. I nursed him again when he had pneumonia and he had his breakdown. I expect you know that one of his men raped and murdered a young girl and nobody would bring the man to book? Then that execution. He would never discuss it but I think it finished him realy. The two things just preyed on his mind al the time. That the guilty lived and the innocent died and al because of the war.

  'He could never have married. He felt he was too damaged and there was something, an absolutely impenetrable barrier, that no one could break through. He said he was cursed. That people who came too close to him suffered and he couldn't make things right. He said everyone he'd ever loved had died. I think he was fond of Minna, and he had been close to his father, though not to his mother or, I suppose, his sister.' She glanced at Laurence. 'I'm sorry; it's not what you want to hear. In many ways he was so rational but in others he had a dark, almost medieval sense of guilt and self-denial. He was quite ascetic. I think he could have lived contentedly in a hermitage or a cave by the sea or even a monastery.

  'Our relationship was never going to exist in the world beyond the two of us and the present. I was posted to the Second London General Hospital. When he came home he didn't want to see me. He never answered my letters. Meanwhile, I had started visiting Wiliam in a convalescent home. I liked him a lot. He made me laugh; he too was inteligent, although less complicated than John. After a bit it was obvious he had feelings for me but he was never going to say because of his condition and also it was such a cliché to fal in love with your nurse. But Wiliam brought me serenity and, despite everything, a sense of optimism.'

  'But you did see John again?'

  'Wel, obviously,' she said. 'Eventualy he got back in touch with me. I think perhaps he felt he had to. I'd nursed him and we'd been lovers.' She delivered this nugget in an absolutely matter-of-fact way. 'Perhaps he felt he owed it to me. He was nervous, diffident. Not like himself at al. A stranger to be seduced. I saw myself as a sort of Orpheus to his Eurydice, fetching him back from the underworld.' Suddenly she laughed—the first time he'd heard her do so. 'No, that does sound preposterous. But I hoped that some kind of intimacy, warmth, might break through to him. It didn't, of course. He wasn't even realy there.

  'I must have been mad myself, or at least terribly naive to prescribe myself like some quack medicine, but then I loved him. Quite quickly, I realised I was pregnant. Not part of my cure. In some ways finding I was pregnant made me less desperate to be with John. I couldn't care for a child as wel as him and by then I knew he would break my heart. I would never be able to have him, you see.

  'I spent ages trying to decide whether to tel him, to tel Wiliam, or to run away and tel neither. In the event I told Wiliam first and he immediately offered to marry me. Then, a little later, I thought John should know; I'd been worried he was in too precarious a state to hear the news—he'd been arrested for assault by then—

  but in his way he was pleased, I think. And very relieved when I said I intended to marry Wiliam—not because he was off the hook,' she added hurriedly, 'but because the baby and I were safe.

  'I saw him three times after I had Nicholas. He was like an uncle, I suppose, rather than a father to him. Wiliam was and is Nicholas's father. But then John left us the money. He'd never mentioned it. It's sad. Al of it.' Her head dropped.

  By the time he left, stepping out under a sky ful of stars, Laurence felt he had finaly grasped the mood of John's last months, and the man he had become between leaving Oxford and dying. He crunched off down the street as briskly as he could, hoping to find a cab on the main road.

  He was determined to find out why John had gone up to London. The reason was apparently so compeling that he would risk a return to the draconian regime that young Chilvers had imposed on him before and which he so loathed. Whatever it was, the fact was that, once in London, away from Holmwood, John could have done or met anybody, and so soon before his death. It had to be significant. Obviously he could hardly write to Holmwood himself to ask what Dr Chilvers knew about John's visit to London. But Mary could.

  Chapter Thirty

  It took only a day or so for Laurence to decide to return to Fairford. He had already written to Mary, suggesting that she ask Dr Chilvers for more information about John's visit to London. He tried to convince himself that it was simply the possibility that George Chilvers had useful information that necessitated the journey to see him face to face but underneath he was driven by his fury at Chilvers' treatment of Eleanor and John. He knew that he'd transferred his anger, anger which he had rarely alowed himself to feel, from the dead Tucker to George Chilvers. He didn't want to tel him he was coming as he suspected he'd simply decline to see him. He decided to catch a train down to Fairford and risk George Chilvers being away.

  On his way out to Paddington he picked up his post. Until recently correspondents had been few and far between. Now there were invariably letters for him.

  The first was a complete surprise. It was from Westminster School. They were seeking a temporary replacement history master for the Lent term, with the possibility of a permanent position thereafter. His name had been suggested to them by an old boy, Wiliam Bolitho. Although completely out of the blue, an offer that he would have rejected out of hand a few months ago suddenly seemed like a godsend; he knew he could not and should not pursue a dead man indefinitely. It was time he left the confines of his flat and a book he doubted he would ever finish. He would go and see the school. He was also strangely touched by Wiliam's recommendation.
/>   He remembered teling him briefly about his pre-war enjoyment of teaching but was surprised Bolitho had taken it in.

  There was also a letter forwarded from Mary. Dr Chilvers had written by return in answer to her enquiry. He was brief, she said, but there was no sense of him withholding anything. He confirmed that John had wanted to go to London in late autumn the previous year. The reason John had given was that he had been asked to appear before members of Colonel Lambert Ward's commission. However, Dr Chilvers felt that revisiting the circumstances in which he had first become unwel would be less than helpful for John at this stage of his recovery. Nevertheless, Dr Chilvers had said (and Mary had scrawled beside his comment, 'Oh, one's disappointment at the ingratitude of one's patients!'), Mr Emmett had taken advantage of a delivery of provisions to hide in the back of a lorry and had managed to catch a train to London. In the event he had returned in his own good time and in equable spirits, but it was felt he should be more closely watched after that. However, Dr Chilvers had taken the liberty of writing to Colonel Lambert Ward, who assured him no meeting had been requested, nor had one taken place. Dr Chilvers had not confronted John with this by the time of his death. And although he could not have answered if it had breached confidentiality, in answer to her second question he could tel her that he had never had a patient caled either Lovel or Hart. Chilvers ended his reply, pleasantly enough, by hoping that Mary was in good health.

  Laurence grinned at Mary's initiative. Her enquiry resolved one loose end. Neither Lovel nor Hart had ever been treated at Holmwood. But neither had John seen Lambert Ward. Had he met Somers like Brabourne had, or possibly seen Morrel or Bottomley? Or had that simply been a plausible excuse?

  On impulse he decided to telephone Brabourne. He went into a hotel on Russel Square on the way to the station. The lobby was silent and the desk was unattended but after a few minutes' wait a porter arrived and made the connection for him. Brabourne soon answered.

  'I've put together some cuttings,' he said. The line was crackling. 'You can pick them up any time you're passing. But there's not a lot to add. The Darling Committee presented its findings two years ago now—I was one of the last contributors, although Lambert Ward is certainly stil heavily involved in al kinds of issues connected with military justice. Bottomley's stil out there, shouting the odds through the mouthpiece of his paper. Quite brave; they al come under assault, even from felow MPs. For Bottomley it's part of his trade, but some quite nasty stuff comes Lambert Ward's way, and Morrel's and Somers' too.'

  'Do you think it's possible John Emmett was giving evidence in much the same way that you were?'

  'Possible. As I said, the Darling people wrapped up their report at the end of 1919. The Southborough Committee is stil taking evidence. Perhaps I should be in touch with them myself. Might be a new story brewing.'

  Laurence thanked him, then added, 'John never mentioned a man caled Meurice? French?'

  'No, I'm pretty sure not. Very faint bel but not in that context. By the way, a snippet for you. I got hold of Jim Byers' photograph. Pre-war but he's as like cousin Leonard as peas in a pod. Could just be someone mistook one for the other, don't you think?'

  'Thank you,' Laurence said. 'Interesting.' He paused briefly while he considered whether he was leaning too heavily on a new acquaintance, then continued, 'I've got something for you too but there's a snag, I'm afraid. Could you check one other thing for me? I think you'd know how to get the information I need without having to give too much in return. Tucker was kiled last winter. In Birmingham.'

  'Was he, by God?'

  'I need to know the date but I don't want a fuss.'

  He expected Brabourne to question him, to try to see a story in the enquiry, but he simply said, 'Al right. Not difficult.'

  Laurence wrote a short message to Charles before leaving the desk, and paid a boy to take it straight to his club. Yet again he had a feeling that he was getting further away from a simple answer to Mary's question, which was probably just: 'What was my brother like?' or 'Why did he die?' Instead, he was folowing wild-goose chases: intruding into lives that were already bruised, seeing anomalies where there was only the discontinuity of lives disrupted by the chaos of the war.

  Laurence walked out into Russel Square. Even though it was milder again and the sun was shining, the brief outburst of prematurely wintry weather had left the trees bare. He liked this time of year when the bones of London appeared, no longer hidden by foliage. Now the shape of the square was plain. Tal, red-brick houses stood solidly around the huge area of gardens with every detail of arch, balcony and portico seen as the architect intended. A haze of branches stil stopped him being able to see right across the square as he set off across it. At the far corner, cabmen were drinking tea by a dark-green hut. They nodded in response to his greeting.

  The journey to Fairford seemed much shorter when traveling by train than it had done driving in Charles's car and he made the connecting train at Oxford with quarter of an hour to spare. There was even a carrier at Fairford Station who agreed to take him to George Chilvers' house for a smal sum.

  'It's not far,' he said. 'Just out of the vilage.'

  The cabman offered Laurence a blanket smeling strongly of horse, which he refused; it wasn't cold. The horse plodded on as if it had done the journey a thousand times. There were two possibilities looming and Laurence considered them both: either Chilvers wouldn't be there and his journey was wasted or, if he was, there would be a row. As they bumped along, he steadied himself with his hand on the edge of the seat, realising he was looking forward to the confrontation. Would George Chilvers recognise him, he wondered? If he was able to extract the letters or garner the smalest piece of information it would be a bonus but he was quite content just to rile him.

  The house had pretensions to grandeur but lacked charm. Laurence guessed it had been built within the last century. The front was dressed in Bath stone, from which a heavy wooden porch protruded outwards, its supports painted a dul green. It looked out of place on its site: neither within a vilage nor clearly at home in a fold of countryside. To either side were rather desolate flower beds, tidy but understocked. Laurence remembered Eleanor teling him how Chilvers' wife, Vera, had loved roses. He presumed her money had bought the house.

  A maid in uniform opened the door. She was very thin and very young, probably no more than fifteen, and sounded as if she had a cold. Mr Chilvers was at the hospital, she told him, but if he liked he could wait in the drawing room; Mr Chilvers usualy came back for tea. Laurence looked at his watch. He had plenty of time; the train connecting to the Oxford line didn't leave until five-thirty.

  'Would you like tea?'

  'No, thank you.'

  The maid took him into a room with parquet flooring and half-height, varnished-oak paneling. There were some brocade chairs with crimson cushions arranged carefuly on their tasseled corners. He chose the chair nearest the unlit fire with its bright brass scuttle of wet coal. The chair scraped on the floor as he sat down and his foot clanged against the fender. This was a room in which nobody could ever move about silently. The girl went out, sniffing. He gazed out at the desolation of the lawn and wished he had brought a paper.

  He was miles away in thought when a woman's voice said, rather breathily, 'Are you al right? Have you come to see George? I don't know where he is, he's usualy back by now.'

  Laurence jumped up. The figure in the doorway was slight; a girl, he thought. She looked more surprised to see him than he was to see her.

  'I'm Mrs Chilvers,' she said.

  She was older than he had supposed. Her figure, voice and bearing were of a young woman but her face, though pretty, was not. Fine lines crossed her forehead and her lips were chapped. She had mousy, straight hair and was dressed in a rather smart, long-sleeved blue dress with a wrapper. He wondered whether she had just come in. Then, as she stepped forward, the fabric dropped a little and, under a string of plump pearls, he could see what looked like an old bruise, yelow and viol
et, between her neck and her shoulder blade. She sensed him looking and shrugged the wrapper up again, clutching it to her as if she were naked underneath.

  Tiny blotches of pink blossomed on her cheeks.

  'I'm sorry. I was asleep,' she said. 'George wil be back soon.'

  She was stil framed in the doorway, apparently uncertain as to whether to come in.

  He put his hand out. 'Laurence Bartram,' he said, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone.

  She stepped forward and put out her hand awkwardly to shake his. 'Vera,' she said. 'I'm Vera.'

  She was staring at him while keeping hold of his hand. His glance flickered downwards to register long pale scars between the buttoned cuff and her hand as she puled it away.

  Almost immediately, and while he was just beginning to wonder whether he could ask Vera about her friendship with John, he heard a car outside. Vera seemed startled and looked behind her to the doorway although there was nothing she could possibly have seen yet. A few minutes later a door slammed and George Chilvers strode into the room. He made no attempt to disguise his irritation at finding her there.

  'Shouldn't you be resting?' he asked his wife. 'Haven't you taken your medicine? Where's Rose?'

  'I have. I have rested. Rose gave me the new cordial at lunch. Sorry, sorry. I just heard Rose let someone in and I came down because I thought it might be you—'

  'Wel, as you can see now it is me. So there's no need for you to hang about.' George raised his eyebrows at Laurence, inviting him to share his amused exasperation. Vera had hardly left them when he said, 'Women, eh? But I'm afraid my poor wife suffers from her nerves. Scared of her own shadow but what can one do?'

  He smiled, man to man. Laurence did not smile back.

  'I didn't catch your name,' George said, extending his hand, evidently more relaxed now his wife had gone. 'But don't I know you already?' He looked puzzled.

  'Yes and no. My name is Laurence Bartram. We met when I came to look round your father's nursing home. But the person you met was, to a certain extent, a fiction.' He had decided to come clean about his original visit. 'I was ostensibly looking for residential care for my brother then. That brother doesn't exist. The person I am now is a friend of the late John Emmett.'