The Return of Captain John Emmett (33 page)

He placed his arms round the man's waist, but when the weight of him started to shift, he staggered slightly before regaining his balance. The unfamiliar distribution of William's legless body caught him by surprise and he felt a twinge of pain in his back. Suddenly he was standing, bracing himself, legs apart, with William pressed against him and his arms round his waist almost as if they were dancing. He could feel the slight roughness of the man's cheek, the dampness of his scarf. Eleanor had got the chair upright; the edge of the tartan blanket seemed to have caught in the wheels and she tugged it angrily. Laurence lowered William onto the seat while she held the handles. He had always thought how well William looked but now he saw the invalid in him: his eyes were closed, his face grey and his lips blanched, only the tip of his nose a bluish red. Eleanor glanced at Laurence and for a moment there seemed to be unfeigned gratitude in her face. Though her eyes were fierce, there was something else there; she was biting her lip and looked close to tears.

William's eyes jerked open. 'Hello.' The bleakness of his appearance disappeared as he tried to smile. 'A knight in damp but shining armour,' William said. 'We hadn't quite foreseen the weather changing so swiftly. Stupid of us. Felt a bit like Captain and Mrs Oates. Noble but foolish.'

The snow was settling on him and the tracks behind them showing where they had come to grief were already vanishing. Laurence took the handles from Eleanor. She nodded.

'Hold on,' he said.

The chair jerked forward, slewing to the side, and William coughed, but then it came under control. Laurence kept going rather than risk it stopping. It must always be quite a heavy task, even without the snow, which had brought the couple close to disaster on this occasion, and Eleanor was far slighter than he. He manhandled the chair off the pavement and across the road, with Eleanor beside him. On the far side she took off her sodden gloves and stopped as he tipped the chair back a little, then helped guide the wheels to the pavement. Her knuckles were raw and red.

Finally they reached the bottom of the steps. There were only three but the snow had piled up against them. Laurence couldn't imagine how the Bolithos got in and out, even at the best of times. Should he try to lift William again? But Eleanor turned to the side, where there was a small tradesman's gate he'd hardly noticed before. He helped her pull it open against the snow and, once through, they were in a narrow but more sheltered passage. It led to a bolted door with two sturdy planks nailed to the step. For the first time Eleanor looked a little more cheerful.

'Ingenious, don't you think?'

It was a relief to get inside. No fires were lit but it was warm compared with the street. William removed his gloves and scarf with stiff arms.

'Go and sit down,' Eleanor said as she spun the chair round towards the hall. 'I'm going to heat water and help William get into some dry clothes.' William made vague gestures of protest.

'Do you need any help?' Laurence said.

'Could you light the fire? Hang your coat there.' She gestured at a row of hooks.

He wandered into the dark drawing room and pressed his face to the window. The snow seemed to be stopping. He picked up some matches from a brass holder, turned on the gas tap and lit the mantles. They popped for a minute, then began to glow as he knelt to light the paper spills and ignite the coal already laid in the grate. He could hear Eleanor and William talking although their words were indistinct. The fire flickered and caught.

Even as the day outside finally disappeared, this room looked as bright and warm as when he had first come here. He looked at the drawings that had created such an impression on him on his first visit. There was a good head and shoulders one of Eleanor. Standing by it now, he saw that William had sketched her in red pencil. It was dated only the year before. On an oak side table his eye was caught by a snap of her that he hadn't noticed either; it was taken a while back—she was with a small group of nurses standing outside a building that from its shutters looked French or Belgian. He had to look hard to pick her out with her linen veil low on her forehead. On the other side of the table was a formal photograph of her and her son. He bent over to see Nicholas looking rather solemn as he sat on his mother's knee. Eleanor, too, looked a little sombre as she gazed down at her child, her arms encircling him. Laurence focused on her image: she was quite different in stillness. In the flesh, the impression she gave was dominated by animation and intelligence and, of course, her striking colouring. In repose and in monochrome, she looked quite ordinary: just a mother with her son.

He didn't hear her when she came in the door behind him. There were spots of colour high in her cheeks and he waited to gauge her mood. She fiddled with a small silver brooch that held her blouse collar together at the neck.

Eventually she said, 'Thank you. I've helped William to bed to rest with a hot-water bottle.' A smile flickered. 'Do sit down, Laurence. I'm not about to show you the door this time. We wouldn't have got back without you.'

She sat down heavily in a deep chair with her legs straight out in front of her and her head back against the cushions. Her shoulders slumped. She gave him a rueful look.

'Obviously I would never have left the house with him if I'd thought it was going to snow, but these shorter days drive William mad—just sitting at the window watching the moving world. He needs to get out. He can go short distances on his own but only in fine weather. Winters are long for us.'

'It must be hard,' Laurence said, meaning for her, but she took it as referring to her husband.

'It is. Very. William is only thirty-two. He's intelligent, curious. What's he supposed to
do
with the rest of his life?' She jumped up, as if putting an end to reflection. 'Now, I'll fetch you some tea. I expect you're as cold as the rest of us.'

She was gone for another ten minutes or so. He pulled his chair nearer the fire and held out his hands to the flames, though there was no real heat in them yet. He stood up when she came back and took the tray from her. She poured from an old ironstone teapot and they sat opposite each other.

'He's asleep, thank heavens,' she said. She still looked very pale. Her eyes were red-rimmed. 'Now—presumably you were trying to find us at home this afternoon?' she said. 'Unless, of course, you've got other friends in the area?'

He nodded. 'Yes, I'm sorry. I know you don't want to speak to me. I don't usually pester people but I just sense you know more about John Emmett than I do. Probably, more than anybody and I don't even know what kind of thing it might be and now's not the time.'

This evidently amused her. 'Well, I'm hardly going to attack you now, am I? And obviously you are never, ever going to give up. You're deceptively determined, Laurence. You must have made a formidable soldier.'

Laurence explained briefly about finding Calogreedy and then Byers. He didn't protect Eleanor from the details and he could tell that she had not known the whole story. Her face twisted in shock and disgust but then she surprised him.

'"We were together since the War began,/ He was my servant and the better man."'

He must have looked perplexed because she said, 'It's Kipling. Your Calogreedy and Byers. They reminded me of it.'

It lightened the atmosphere. He liked the lines.

'Look,' she went on, 'I'll try to help you although there are things you simply have to swear not to share unless I say. But I don't know where to start. Why don't you ask me questions?'

He thought for a minute.

'Did you know about the execution?'

'Only the fact of it. No details. Not that it was an officer. He told me once and never spoke of it again. He didn't speak much by then.'

'Do you think John killed himself?' he asked, after another pause.

'No, the war killed him,' she answered quickly, 'whoever pulled the trigger. In himself, I think he was getting better. Next?'

'Did something happen at Holmwood?' he said and then added, because it seemed unfair to mislead her, 'I know you visited him.'

'Yes, I did,' she said, without hesitation. 'He asked me to, so I did. Twice. As for Holmwood itself, I hated him being there but honestly it was no worse than many places and better than some. The old chap—'

'Chilvers.'

'Yes, Chilvers. At heart he genuinely cared, I think. I mean, he liked having his own little kingdom but, unlike his son, he wasn't interested in the things money could buy—and, believe me, money there was, aplenty; they charged a fortune, based on a few good results. I think Chilvers believed in what he was doing. He was interested in them all, which is a good start.'

'I thought you'd complained.'

'It was young Chilvers and poor staff that let him down. I suspect they didn't pay well enough to find the right men after the war. Chilvers
fils
was too greedy and Chilvers
père
too oblivious to the realities. George Chilvers caused problems that his father was too blind or too weak to see and which the staff were too intimidated to bring to his notice. He was an unpleasant man. He loved the luxuries but, unlike his father, he didn't give a moment's thought to the inmates. In fact...' she stopped and seemed to consider her next words. 'I think he actually enjoyed their predicament. I mean, I didn't see him with them very much but what I did see, I didn't like. You get a feeling for such things in my line of work. You'd think everyone working with the sick would be kind, or at least decent, but there's something about vulnerability that attracts the rotten sort too. He was rotten through and through.'

The vehemence of her words left Laurence expecting more but she lapsed into silence.

'Did he hurt John in some way?' he asked.

'Not physically. Even at his worst John had a sort of strength. He had a dignity that never left him. George Chilvers' sort go for the weak.'

Laurence found himself hoping George Chilvers had never known about John's failures during the execution of Hart.

'Of course Chilvers hated the fact that they'd all seen active service,' Eleanor said, pulling on a spiral of hair, 'while at the same time gloating over his own cleverness at avoiding it and somehow believing he would never have crumpled as they did. I know for a fact that where procedures were unpleasant or painful, Chilvers would always be overseeing them or pushing the limits: straitjackets, electrotherapy, cold hoses, enemas, that kind of thing. He'd use therapeutic treatments devised by his father as weapons against the most fragile. Of course, then they'd come to dread them. In fact, one poor young man threw himself off the roof when he'd thought he was going to be discharged but his family insisted he stay a little longer for more treatment.' She sat forward, her cup cradled in both hands. 'I loathed George Chilvers. Did you know that Chilvers has a wife—Vera?'

Laurence nodded. 'She was a patient once, wasn't she?'

'Had been. Before the war, when they took women as well. She was only young, delicate, and had the misfortune to be an heiress with no living parents. Her uncle had her committed after a suicide attempt and George Chilvers moved in on her. Poor little thing basked in this worldly young man's interest, no doubt. Eventually, around the time she turns twenty-one, Chilvers
père
is prevailed upon to pronounce her of sound mind and discharge her, just in time for Vera to use that sound mind to pledge herself to his son. She was away from home when John was first there. In Switzerland in an institution, he thought—all very circumspect. When she returned, John met her a few times. She was sweet, he said, and liked to pick the roses and so on in the gardens.

'He was kind to her; John was always so nice to anyone in trouble; that was his downfall. I don't think Chilvers was treating her very well. That's what John thought. He said she was like a child in many ways and terribly lonely. But his help misfired as poor Vera fell madly in love with him and trailed around after him, posting billets-doux under his door. Of course it soon became obvious. George Chilvers was furious. He might not have been interested in his wife beyond her fortune but he wasn't about to be humiliated by her flagrant obsession with John. John, of course, couldn't go off anywhere else so he was a sitting duck, first for Vera and then for that vile man.

'George had restrictions put on John's movements. That's why he was pushed up to the poky rooms on the top floor under constant supervision. The ones where the lights were left on all night. Where doors were locked from six to six. It wasn't because he was at risk. It was to punish him and to stop Vera getting to him.'

She leaned forward and her voice became more indignant.

'John wasn't that ill when he was sent up there. But he deteriorated. He was in a room where the previous patient had been driven to kill himself. They removed everything with which he could hurt himself, from shoelaces to china plates to tin spoons—even his pen. The sheets up there were made of canvas, which couldn't be shredded. It was definitely not a situation that John in particular should have found himself in; George knew it, too. It wasn't about an illicit trip to London.'

Brabourne had said much the same thing about Tucker, Laurence thought. The deadly intuition of a sadist.

'But it was more than that,' she went on. 'Chilvers actually threatened him. His weapons were formidable: restraint, drugs. Some of the other staff were kind but Chilvers held the power.'

'But you went out with John?' Laurence was sure Eleanor had accompanied John on his birdwatching walk down the river.

'On my first visit we could walk about—even outside. I took Nicholas with me, but on my last visit there was nothing like that. No freedom.'

'Did George Chilvers speak to you?' Laurence said.

She waited a long time before answering. He had the impression she was trying to decide whether to tell him the truth.

'Yes. He had seen us walking in the gardens the first time I went and something in our demeanour made him suspect that I wasn't John's sister. He had an eye for these things.'