The Return of Captain John Emmett (27 page)

Brabourne laughed. Then he said, more seriously, 'I managed to get Hart his books; it was the least I could do.'

Laurence hardly took in what Brabourne was saying as the implications of the situation at the time of Hart's execution had suddenly hit home.

'So John knew who Hart was before that morning?' he said.

'No, not really. In fact, it should have been another officer who commanded the detail but he fell ill. The CO let him off and decided Emmett, who had just joined us, but was senior, could take it. A good thing too. The way they carry on, you'd think soldiers would jump at shooting an officer but of course the talk's all blather. I'm sure Emmett had previously never met him face to face.' Brabourne appeared to be thinking. 'No, I'm certain of it. Hence the shock...'

'Shock?'

'When he realised who he was. He knew the name, of course, but it's not that rare and he'd got his orders very late in the day.' Brabourne stopped, deep in thought. 'He was tired and it was all very tense. He might not have taken it on board. It was "unsatisfactory", that's the military term, but pretty bloody dreadful is more accurate. Hart found all the courage he'd hoped for when it came to it. The rest of us were novices except for the APM—Mullins—who couldn't be bothered to stay and see the sentence carried out. A couple of the men were in Hart's own company. I really thought the padre might faint. He'd been there only a month. I suppose I wasn't much better. The MO was grim-faced. He had to pin the traditional bit of flannel on Hart's chest—all that medical training to identify a route for a bullet to the heart.' Brabourne's lips twisted. 'The squad was subdued but hopeless, and apart from anything else they couldn't shoot straight. The sergeant was a nasty bit of work.'

'So did John know who Hart was afterwards?'

'He put two and two together. I'm not sure at what point. Do you know what happened? That day, I mean?' he asked cautiously.

'He wasn't killed outright.'

'I'll say he wasn't,' said Brabourne. 'But Emmett should have put him out of his misery instantly and the sergeant should have marched the detail off swiftish the minute they'd fired. Instead of which, everybody stood and watched. And Emmett ... he would have done better by an injured dog. He dithered. No, that's not entirely fair: Hart was obviously trying to speak. Emmett was a decent chap. Probably his instinct was to let a dying man have his say.'

'Did John tell you this?'

'Well, afterwards he asked me whether I knew that the dead man had been a poet and I said yes. He seemed very cast down but then he was shaken to the core by what had happened. Literally shaking. I had to give him brandy. Emmett said Hart seemed to be saying that he loved his mother, and that his father would have been ashamed, or something along those lines. Not remarkable last words.'

Brabourne pointed to his tankard. Laurence shook his head. 'No, I really must go. But what about Tucker?'

Brabourne looked surprised at the use of the name. 'Tucker. Of course, he was the sergeant. You know him?' he said.

'No. But I know more than I like about him.'

'Well, he was cool as a cucumber. In control. Nasty, as I said. Walked up, took the gun off Emmett. Blasted young Edmund between the eyes. Hell of a mess. Deliberately, I don't doubt. One of the lads was retching. Extreme insubordination, I suppose. But somebody had to finish it. I'm not sure Emmett was going to fire at all.' The journalist was pale.

'That afternoon it was business as usual and having buried Hart we went off on a practice attack. Emmett spoke to me again a day or so later. I was on the point of going off for home leave. He asked if I knew anything else about Hart. I said I didn't know anything about his home life. Like Emmett, I knew much more about his poetry, but then I'd had years to read his poetry and only two days to familiarise myself with the case, much less the man. And I can't say Hart was very talkative. Not even in an attempt to save his own life. He no longer cared, I think.'

'I'm sorry to take you back to this.'

Brabourne shrugged. 'It's not something I was ever likely to forget. I gave evidence to an inquiry two years ago. Though I was mostly being questioned about being a Prisoner's Friend. It's said if you defended, you sentenced yourself along with the accused man.'

'So I heard. Was it true?'

Brabourne opened and shut his matchbox a couple of times. 'I'm still here. Though I think my CO was quite glad to have seen the back of me for a while. Whereas a month or so later his golden boy, the prosecuting officer, went out on a routine patrol and never came back. By the time I got back from leave the CO was happy to have any officer with experience.'

He glanced behind Laurence at a man coming in from the street. Although he was just a dark shape in the doorway, Brabourne waved. Laurence took this as his cue.

'I'll be off he said. 'Thank you for everything. It's been tremendously helpful. Perhaps we'll meet again.'

He felt sleepy from too much beer and longed to be outside. He nodded at Brabourne's friend who was buying himself a drink, still wearing his court wig and gown.

'Come back if there's anything else at all,' Brabourne said, standing up and shaking Laurence's hand.

As he was walking away Laurence turned.

'There is one other thing. Did you know that Byers' cousin had been murdered? Same surname, same home village?'

He knew instantly that this was news to Brabourne. The journalist became suddenly alert. At the door Laurence looked back and saw Brabourne still watching him. He stepped out into light that seemed astonishingly bright.

The next day he woke up with a headache and couldn't face his planned morning in the library. Eventually he decided to catch a bus to Marble Arch; he would go to his barber's and get some fresh air by walking in Hyde Park.

A couple of hours later he sat on a bench, relishing the crisp morning, watching the ducks on the ornamental lake and some elegant women on horses, trotting along the bridleways. Having now heard two versions of the events around the death of Hart, he thought he had a full picture.

He wondered how many executions by firing squad had taken place in the field. This made him think back to routine orders and how often he'd just passed over the notification of an execution. Hundreds, certainly, must have been shot. He hoped five hundred was too many. Say it was two or even three hundred soldiers. Only three officers in total, Brabourne had said. It seemed very few, yet he'd never heard of any until he had looked into John's troubled war.

Each execution would involve six officers or more for the court martial, officers for the prosecution and the defence, two or three senior officers to ratify the sentence, the assistant provost marshal, and six to ten soldiers on the firing detachment. An officer commanding the execution, medics, padres, guards, the burial party. Twenty or so men involved in despatching a single soldier of their own side. Even allowing for some duplication, four to five thousand or so men must have been involved between 1914 and 1918.

The only unusual element in Hart's case was that the condemned man held a commission. Did that make it harder for everyone involved, he wondered? He thought it probably did. Even so, the numbers of men caught up in trying and executing Hart made the notion that there was some sort of curse ludicrous. There was no reasonable way to check, but they couldn't all be dead. Nonetheless he wondered what had happened to the other subaltern who had reported Hart for walking away. Ralph Lilley. He, almost more than anyone else, would seem to be responsible for Hart's predicament. If Lieutenant Lilley was still alive, that would virtually confirm that the nexus of deaths, including John's, did not have Hart at its centre.

He was getting cold so he walked fairly briskly along the Bayswater Road. The Hyde Park Hotel loomed up behind the mottled plane trees and on impulse he turned in past the doorman. He asked to use the telephone and the concierge made the connection for him. Of course it was a ridiculous time to try to catch Charles at his club but he left a message with the porter, simply saying that he had a lot to tell him and that he planned to go to Birmingham the following morning. He felt slightly melodramatic as he ended, saying that he expected to return on the same day.

On the spur of the moment he decided to jump on a bus to Victoria. From there he crossed the river. Although Brabourne's account had hardly mentioned Byers, Laurence had been bothered by something in the way Byers told his own story. Now he had an excuse to speak to him again, even if a pretty feeble one.

It took him forty minutes to reach the lock works. The watchman came out.

'You looking for the major?'

'No, Mr Byers.'

'Not here, sir. Won't be until later.'

'How much later?' Not that he could hover in the yard to ambush him.

'Search me.'

Very briefly he considered leaving a note, asking Byers to contact him, but he was sure that he wouldn't do so. He might be able to prevail upon Calogreedy to speak to Byers again, but the reason for his visit was pretty tenuous. It had been a ridiculously impulsive detour and he knew it was largely because he had too much time on his hands.

He set off for home. The street outside the works was empty. He was approaching the bridge when, as he turned to cross the road, he almost collided with a man on a bicycle coming round the corner. He stumbled back over the kerb. The man half stopped and half fell off. As he picked up his cap from the road and straightened himself up, the cyclist apologised.

'Sorry, sir. Not usually anyone about. I should of looked. You all right?'

It was Byers. Slowly his expression changed. 'Mr Bartram.'

Laurence's reason for being there suddenly seemed even flimsier.

'I had some news.' He felt a fool as he said it. 'You might like to know the man you told me about—Tresham Brabourne, who defended Lieutenant Hart—he's alive and well.'

It sounded ridiculously thin. Why should Byers care? Byers stared at him, gripping the handlebars tightly.

'So not everyone's under a fatal curse,' Laurence said, trying to sound light-hearted.

Only a slight tension of his jaw showed that Byers had heard but he didn't move on. He looked more uneasy than relieved at this information. One foot remained on the pedal, the other pressed down on the road surface as if he was about to push off and cycle away.

'Did he say anything?' Byers asked eventually, still wary.

'Well, more or less what you said. A bad business.'

'About me?'

Laurence thought back. 'Nothing in particular. I mean, apart from you, because you'd been with him before, he didn't even know the name of anyone in the firing squad.'

Byers looked as if he was engaged in one of his famous computations of figures. When he finally spoke, his voice was flat. 'Just before, when they were tying him up, Tucker leans towards me and hands me his pocket knife. He nods towards Hart and for a minute I think he's telling me to cut his throat but he just says, "Cut off his pips, son." I didn't get it at first and Tucker gives me a push. I look to the officer, that's your friend, the captain. But he doesn't seem to see what's going on. I stumble out towards the man. Half afraid someone's going to give the order to fire while I'm out there. Then I'm standing in front of him—the officer we're going to shoot—and I'm not looking at him and I think I says something like, "I'm sorry," very quiet so that Tucker can't hear, and I reach forward and sawed the pip off one shoulder and then he turns so I can get the other one. And I'm looking for the other badges when Emmett suddenly wakes up and shouts, "Byers, what the hell do you think you're doing, get back in position," so I do. I scarper back, clutching these pathetic bits of stuff in my hand. And when I get back, Tucker's there with his hand out and I just put them in his palm. I felt bad about it after because I thought it was a proper order, but later I heard that they didn't take the rank off a condemned man.'

He caught Laurence's eyes briefly.

'It was just another little game of Tucker's. Probably he sold them for a mint.' His shoulders slumped. 'I'm sorry. I am. I didn't know any better.'

Laurence wanted to reach out and touch Byers' nearest arm, stiff on the handlebar. But even before he could tell him that he had nothing to be sorry for, Byers was moving off, pedalling away without looking back.

Laurence got home feeling cold and dispirited. He had a glass of brandy to warm himself, then managed to settle to his own work. He wrote until evening before assembling his notes. As he tidied up, he gathered up his recent letters. He glanced down to Eleanor's, lying on top. Her handwriting was as determined as her character. Suddenly, he tipped out the odds and ends that Mary had given him. On top was the note about the birdwatching. His eyes went to the bottom and then to the letter. He was almost certain that the comments about somebody dislikeable in the guise of a bird were in Eleanor Bolitho's handwriting, as he had guessed. Eleanor had obviously been seeing John long after the war and had a close friendship with him. But she had chosen to lie about it to Laurence. Could the N be Nicholas Bolitho? Did William know that they'd both gone to Holmwood? He picked up the scrap and put it and Brabourne's photograph in his wallet.

When he'd left Brabourne the day before, he was reeling with all the new information but as he slotted each element into place he realised there were crucial questions he might have asked. Now he also wondered: why hadn't Brabourne mentioned Byers' actions?

Fresham Brabourne seemed keen to see Laurence again, although he made it clear that his time was limited. He suggested Laurence find his way up to the office he'd visited last time. Although the door was ajar, Laurence knocked. The floor was covered in open newspapers and Brabourne was kneeling in the middle.

'I'm checking your Byers bombshell, about his cousin,' he said. 'Turns out Mullins was looking into it. Curiouser and curiouser. There has to be a connection. A story.' He looked excited.

'There were two things I wanted to check myself,' Laurence said. 'Why on earth did John Emmett ask for a copy of your photograph?' He took it out of his pocket.