The Return of Captain John Emmett (41 page)

First, however, he wanted to show the photograph to the Bolithos and Mrs Lovell. Even if they didn't recognise Edmund Hart, that would at least clearly exclude him from certain places and events. Tomorrow he intended to show it to Major Calogreedy, although he hoped to avoid Leonard Byers. Dr Chilvers could wait a week or so.

Before Charles started the car, Laurence handed the photograph to his friend without speaking.

'And this is?'

'You don't know?'

'Presumably it's Hart?' He shot a look at Laurence. 'Poor bugger. But no, I didn't know him, I'm glad to say.'

They reached the Bolithos' house at three. As he hadn't warned them he was coming, Laurence went in alone, leaving Charles in the car. For once Eleanor seemed as pleased to see him as William was. She took him into the sitting room, and there, playing with a toy car, was Nicholas, who looked up curiously as Laurence came in. He stood up, knocking over a line of painted toy soldiers as he did so. One rolled under a chair; another was clasped in his small hand. The boy's sturdy legs emerged from corduroy shorts, his socks had fallen down and he wore a blue cardigan that emphasised the colour of his eyes. Laurence bent and picked up the car.

'Aha, an Alvis. Now, if you look out of the window you'll see a big one.'

Nicholas ran to the window. Eleanor lifted him on to a chair where he could gaze out at Charles's car parked in the street. Laurence watched him for a few seconds. He had the shape of John's brow and chin, yet his eyes were unquestionably Eleanor's. But above all, Nicholas Bolitho was simply himself, pointing and chattering away excitedly.

While Eleanor held Nicholas up to see the Alvis, Laurence spoke to William.

'I'm sorry to rush in and out,' he said, 'but I simply wanted to see if you recognised a photograph. A man called Edmund Hart.'

He saw that Eleanor had her eyes on them, even as she was responding to her son. William nodded, took the picture, looked at it in silence and finally shook his head.

'I don't think so. I'm pretty certain not, but of course there were so many faces. And because of the blanket you can't see what regiment he is in here.'

'He wasn't there when the trench collapsed?'

'No. Not that I saw.'

Eleanor came over, leaving Nicholas with his face pressed to the windowpane. Laurence scanned her face closely as she took the picture from her husband, but she gave no indication that she recognised the man in the photograph, though she took longer than William to shake her head.

'I was wondering if I'd nursed him,' she said. 'For a minute I thought it was a boy I'd cared for in France. But there were so many who looked like this. Schoolboys.' She tipped it to the light. 'Sorry. No. Anyway, I would have remembered the name—when I was at Cambridge just before the war I toiled for hours over
King Lear.
I'd remember an Edmund.' She looked up at Laurence. 'Is he the one?'

'I'm afraid so.'

Eleanor's first reaction was to look over at her son, still kneeling on a chair, staring into the street, one small hand still clutching a solitary red guardsman. When she turned back she had tears in her eyes.

He felt embarrassed at marching in and then leaving so abruptly, and he would have liked a chance to see more of Nicholas, but he didn't want to arrive at Gwen Lovell's house too late or miss Brabourne at his office. He wished he'd taken Brabourne's home address.

When he left, Eleanor brought Nicholas down to see Charles's car. Charles shook her hand in greeting and then swung the little boy into the passenger seat. Although Nicholas's lower lip wobbled for a moment, he was smiling within seconds as Charles flicked switches on and off. Eleanor looked chilly; she wrapped her arms around herself and took her eyes off her son only briefly.

'Laurie,' she said, in a low voice, leaning towards him. 'It was one thing to tell you a secret of my own after I'd judged you could keep it but there's something else I ought to tell you if you want to understand John. Because it's someone else's secret, I hope you can give me your word, even though it involves someone you know, that it will go no further?'

Laurence could only nod agreement to her solemn entreaty. Her glance flickered to her son and Charles, tactfully engrossed in the dashboard.

'John loved his father very much—you may have gathered. But when he was still a boy—thirteen or fourteen—he discovered a letter from his grandfather to his mother in his father's gunroom, of all places. It was hidden; he was young and curious. I don't know the exact contents but it made it clear that Mrs Emmett had had an affair in which she conceived her daughter. The father of Mrs Emmett's child was John's grandfather, Mr Emmett Senior.'

Laurence was stunned for a minute. 'But I gathered the older Emmetts were against the marriage?' he said.

'Well, unsurprisingly, if Emmett Senior was in love with his prospective daughter-in-law he didn't want his son marrying her. But there was no living grandmother. John's mother had been a housekeeper to his widowed grandfather and probably rather more.'

'Good God.'

'She married, impulsively, her family thought, then had a child who died in infancy. Born prematurely, John said, but it makes you wonder who its father was. Then she had John, unequivocally his father's son, the letter confirmed...'

Laurence was glad of that, remembering the bond between the two.

'And then at some point soon after that the marriage evidently cooled and the relationship with John's grandfather resumed. She bore him a daughter—Mary. John's father was not Mary's father.'

'How dreadful for John finding out, though. Did he tell his father he knew?'

'No. Impossible. But it was a terrible burden for a young boy to bear. It ruined his relationship with his mother.'

And his sister, Laurence thought. The living evidence of what had gone wrong with their family. He was certain Mary did not know. Did the maternal grandparents know or suspect? Was that why all their money had been left to John?

'Look, I have to go in,' Eleanor said. 'I'll keep in touch but it's too cold for Nicholas to be out.' She leaned forward and kissed Laurence on the cheek. 'I'd like to meet your Miss Emmett,' she said. 'Perhaps it's time she was introduced to Nicholas. If you want to tell her I knew John, well, you can, of course. If it would help.'

Then she bent over the car and exchanged a couple of words with Charles as she retrieved her son to wails of protest.

Charles was obviously delighted to have met Eleanor whilst simultaneously disappointed that she had not exploded into anarchy on her own doorstep. He had kept shaking her hand until she had had to withdraw it. As they drove away Laurence knew what Charles was going say next, but it was not until they had turned the corner that he finally spoke.

'You know what they say about redheads?' he muttered, his teeth clenched on his pipe.

When they drew up at the Lovells' small house, Charles let him out on the opposite side of the road, a little way down the street. Charles suggested waiting in the car but it was far too cold and Laurence had no idea how long he might be. If Mrs Lovell was in, he hoped the photograph might serve as an excuse to ask her some more questions. What regiment her son had been in, for a start.

Laurence braced himself. He crossed the road and walked up to the front door. The house was almost in darkness although a very dim light shone from a small window that he thought must light the stairs. He knocked, waited. Knocked again. Listened.

The paint was peeling on the front door. The passage to the side was shut. He had a sudden vision of her standing on the doorstep with pistols stuck in her sash and a dagger between her teeth like a pirate queen. At the same time he knew that if he really believed she was a murderer, he would hardly be here alone on a late winter's afternoon. He took two steps back to look up at the upper windows. He looked back over the road. Charles had gone. As he was about to knock again, he heard footsteps inside. Somebody was coming slowly down the stairs. The chain was removed and finally the door opened.

Gwen Lovell stood framed in the doorway, her face in shadow. For a split second he took her for her daughter, but it was an impression caused by Mrs Lovell's hair falling loose over her shoulders. As soon as he saw her, reality hit him. She was just one of tens of thousands of mourning women.

'I'm sorry. It seems as if I've come at a bad time.'

'No,' she said vaguely, but made no attempt to ask him in. She rubbed her face. He wondered whether she had been asleep. When he had first met her, her melancholy had had a sort of vigour. That was all gone now. His visit began to seem thoughtlessly impulsive.

'I'm really sorry to bother you, but I have a photograph and it's possible it might be someone your son knew—you said you'd met a few of his friends—and I wanted to check with you. I could come back at some other time.'

'No. Come in, Mr Bartram.'

Her voice was quiet. She motioned to him to follow her into the front room and lit the lamps, leaving the curtains open. He put his coat down over a chair. Finally, a smile flickered briefly, although it was as if she was having to make an effort.

'Are you well?' She said it with a tone of genuine concern.

'Quite well, yes, thank you. And you?'

She shrugged. 'Well, you know ... it is not easy. Not at all. Do you have any news of your friend?'

'I think I know some of what happened to him,' he said. It was too complicated and too private to start to explain it to her. She seemed to understand this and inclined her head slightly, but her eyes were alert.

'But you have something to show me?'

He pulled out the photograph. She sat down and picked up some half-moon spectacles from a small table. He watched her face as he had Eleanor's but was absolutely unprepared for what followed. She put her hand up to her mouth. Her eyes opened wide. Her silence was unnerving.

Finally she spoke. 'Oh my God. What is this? Where did you get it?'

'I was given it.' He knew the answer was inadequate—she was so pale he was afraid she was about to faint.

'Harry,' she said.

Laurence's head spun. Was the condemned man not Edmund Hart but Harry Lovell after all? Had Brabourne lied and, if so, why? Why hadn't he checked first with Leonard Byers that this was indeed Edmund Hart?

'Harry?'

Gwen Lovell gazed at the picture.

'Where have you got this?'

'Is it really your son?' It was a ridiculous question. She was so obviously shocked. 'Can I get you a drink of water? I'm terribly sorry, I hadn't realised for a minute...' He felt cold with horror and angry with himself. Did she even know the man in the picture had been executed? But then, had he?

'Harry,' she said, then was silent. He became aware she had started to cry only when some of her tears fell on the picture. He heard a faint noise upstairs. Catherine was obviously at home; he hoped she wouldn't come down.

'You can keep it,' he said hurriedly, regretting it immediately when she threw him a look of disbelief.

She pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose. 'Who did you think it was?'

'Actually I thought it was a man called Edmund Hart.'

She looked at him, pityingly, he thought. Her shoulders lifted as she took a breath.

'It is. This is my son—Hans Edmund Hart. He was never Lovell. Only Catherine is Mr Lovell's child.' She brought out the words slowly. 'My name was Hart before my marriage. I named him after my father. My father was German. I am German, although my mother was Welsh. We came to call him Harry. A diminutive. But also because—Hans—well, living in England, you can imagine; it would not have been easy.'

'And when he took a commission, he used his second name for every formality?'

She nodded. 'He had been brought up in England. He felt English. He was prepared to fight as an Englishman. But not as Hans.'

'You have no other photographs of him.' It was a statement but she took it as a question.

'I have pictures of Harry. I see him before I go to sleep and when I first wake up. When you have a child, they are your calendar, your measure of time passing. I see him in his christening robes, I see him as a little boy with his hoop. I see him building castles on the sand. I see him play the piano. I see him at school. And now,' she glanced at the photograph again, 'I see him at the end ... No, don't explain. I know what I am seeing. I am seeing what I already know.'

Laurence stood just inches away but with a continent of distance between them. He noticed that her accent was stronger in her distress. He wondered how he could have thought it insignificant before. He could think of nothing to say.

Yet as he stood there and watched her stroke the image of her son's face with her finger, it dawned upon him that if she had known all along how Edmund Hart had died, then she also had a much stronger motive for killing John than he had thought. Had he made a sentimental misjudgment?

After a long time he spoke. 'Did you know how he'd died?'

She shrugged. 'Not at first. Not for a long time. Not when your friend Mr Emmett wrote to me or when he left me the money. Not when I first met you. But now, yes. I know it all.'

'And Edmund's—Harry's—real father is dead?'

She looked up, alarmed, not by his question, but by something she had seen beyond him.

'Captain Emmett.'

The words came from behind Laurence's back. A man stood in the doorway to the room. Laurence hadn't heard him. He stepped forward and stood beside Gwen Lovell. In the better light, Laurence guessed he was in his late fifties. He was of medium height, strongly built and had an authoritative presence. He was familiar yet Laurence couldn't identify him. Where had he seen him before and why, given that he had obviously been in the house all the time, did Gwen look worried to see him?

'May I have it?'

Gwen Lovell handed her guest the picture. He looked at it, his expression impossible to read. Finally he looked up. All the while, Laurence watched Gwen Lovell who was shaking her head almost imperceptibly. The man handed the picture back to her. Although Laurence knew he was on the point of placing the stranger, he was sure he had come across him in a completely different context.