The Return of Captain John Emmett

—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 hel 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 tel him that he had nothing to be sorry for, Byers was moving off, pedaling 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 Wiliam know that they'd both gone to Holmwood? He picked up the scrap and put it and Brabourne's photograph in his walet.

When he'd left Brabourne the day before, he was reeling with al 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?

Chapter Twenty-six

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 bombshel, about his cousin,' he said. 'Turns out Mulins 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.

'He didn't. Nobody saw me use the camera. More than my life was worth.'

'But you gave it to him?'

'No. God, no. Hardly. Last thing I'd want him to know about.'

'Wel, somebody gave it to him,' said Laurence. 'Are you sure this is yours?' He handed it to him. 'Could anyone else have been taking pictures that day?'

'Very unlikely,' said Brabourne, examining the picture. 'No, this is mine. Was mine. Look—my monogram on the back. I stil have that stamp. P is my first name, Peregrine. Not very surprisingly, I opted to use one of my other names—Tresham. It was that or my third name, Everard, which wasn't a great improvement on Peregrine.' He looked down at the photograph in his hand. 'But God knows where the negative is.'

'When did you last see the picture? Do you have any sense of when it was lost?'

'No. I mean, no, it wasn't lost. It was hardly something I gazed at every day but it was with my things until I met Colonel Lambert Ward. I set up an interview with him a couple of years ago. Do you remember the Darling Committee? Suggesting reforms for courts martial?'

'Lambert Ward?' Laurence echoed.

'The MP. The parliamentary questions man. I was doing this big piece on him; I can probably find it. Certainly got the goat up plenty of our regulars. Letters came pouring in.' He looked happy. 'Especialy from those who'd never fought, of course. Very keen on the ultimate sanction, our older readers. But the rest was pure coincidence. We were talking about the bee he's got in his bonnet about burying executed men alongside their more valiant comrades in arms. He's very old school in his ways but strangely vehement about keeping our dead together.'

He stopped, got up again, walked to a cabinet and puled out a drawer. He seemed to find what he wanted almost immediately, ran his eyes over it and handed it to Laurence.

'Quotes. They were for my piece, he said. I could hardly improve on their words. From Hansard or public speeches.'

Laurence looked down at the transcript. Two speeches had been marked in pencil.

'The first is Philip Morrel. The former MP. Liberal. I'd like to do a piece on him too. And this is the colonel,' said Brabourne. '"These men, many of them volunteered in the early days of the war to serve their country. They tried and they failed ... I think that it is wel that it should be known and the people of this country should understand ... that from the point of view of Tommy up in the trenches, war is not a question of honours and decorations, but war is just hel."'

Laurence nodded. He sat back. Just hel. He was glad someone had spoken this truth in parliament.

'He told me that there was utter silence in the Commons after he'd spoken, and nobody would meet his eyes,' Brabourne added. 'But what I found interesting when I met him was his conviction that intolerable fear pushed some men into extraordinary acts of courage, and others into cowardice quite out of keeping with their characters. I think he was saying both extremes were a sort of madness. I liked him.

'I mentioned that I'd been personaly involved in a court martial and a firing squad. He seemed quite interested—wel, he would, of course. Much more so when he found the condemned man was an officer. He was the first person I'd spoken to about it since the war. Even my brother doesn't know. I didn't tel Lambert Ward about the photograph at first. Partly because it's not of the execution itself, thank God, but mostly it didn't seem fair to the other men involved, who didn't have any choice about being there.' He held the tiny stub of his cigarette between finger and thumb, inhaling before discarding it. 'And I felt that it looked a bit like a souvenir. That wasn't how it was, but I wasn't proud of it.'

Laurence asked, 'Are Lambert Ward and Morrel working together?'

'Loosely, yes. The colonel, Morrel, General Somers, and the man who's the member for North-West Lanarkshire, whose name I can't remember. Pringle? No, Thirtle; al good men of absolute probity, no axes being ground, I think. Somers and Lambert Ward were military heroes themselves in their time, which probably helped. The war and the public making subsequent attacks on them al were playing hel with Lambert Ward's health. But then there's Horatio Bottomley.'

Laurence watched, puzzled, as Brabourne slid his matchbox open and tipped his matches out on to the desk.

The name rang a bel with Laurence. 'Another MP?'

Brabourne gave him a wry look. 'Yes. "The Soldier's Friend". Among other things. Including being owner-editor of John Bull. It puts me in a difficult position.

The Bull is a bit of a rag and Bottomley would stop at nothing to support his causes. And there's no end to the causes that support Bottomley. Our editor loathes him.

He's had some murky dealings and he's rabid about Germany. I just thought the next thing would be that those men in my picture who had a right to remain anonymous would be plastered al over Bottomley's front page, and I'd also be in deep trouble here for not letting The Chronicle have the story. But I trusted the colonel. In the end when I sent him my meagre notes on Hart's defence, I also sent the photograph, which was with the file. He wrote back and said he'd like to talk to me properly about the execution. After al, on the previous occasion he was there for me to interview him, not vice versa.'

Brabourne was arranging matchsticks into an elaborate snowflake pattern. He nudged the final one into position and looked up.

'We agreed that we would meet again. In the event, he was unwel; an ulcer apparently. Morrel was down in the country so it was Somers who contacted me and suggested we meet at a hotel, the Connaught. Lambert Ward had passed on the photograph. But I trusted him just as much as the colonel, who had given me his word that it would be seen only by him. Somers gave me an equaly solemn assurance. Not that the picture was very informative in itself but I was confident that there was no possibility of it emerging in any public way. I didn't trust Bottomley an inch but I trusted Lambert Ward; he understands modern soldiering. Somers is utterly honourable, although from a different generation and a different war. And he'd lost two sons in ours so he had some idea of its realities. I knew one of his boys. At Welington. You know how schools yoke you for life, wily-nily? Why you're here for Emmett, realy.'

Was that true, Laurence wondered?

'I told him who was involved, the names of the officers, at least. Again, Somers said he would never make them public. I couldn't remember those of the soldiers, apart from young Byers, if I ever knew them. To tel you the truth, I didn't particularly want to remember any of it. I didn't want the photograph. It's history now.'

Laurence watched with regret as Brabourne's elbow came down in the middle of his fragile matchstick creation. The sticks scattered.

'Somers listened, took a few notes.' Brabourne brushed a matchstick off his coat. 'Told me the Germans executed only a handful of men. Fifty or so. Makes you think, doesn't it?'

Laurence was astonished. Were British soldiers so much less disciplined than Germans? Everybody said they were the best army in the world.

He was about to speak when Brabourne said, 'I did in the end tel him about Emmett—that whole ghastly botch-up.' Brabourne looked straight at Laurence when he didn't respond. 'You think I shouldn't have said anything?'

Laurence shook his head vigorously. 'You were the one who was there.'

'I thought about it after meeting Lambert Ward and decided it was the details that make a cause. Told him it was idiotic to mix up the rifles. Which was worse?

Having to shoot him, or finding they'd mostly missed? Somers looked grim, although he said he'd seen men flogged and hanged in the war in Africa and he himself had even confirmed their sentences. But that was in the last century.'

He tapped out a further cigarette from the pack but held it without lighting it.

'He asked me a bit about Hart's background. He already had his name from the records but said he was interested because so few officers were executed on any side. He had details of one other case, a Lieutenant Poole. There wasn't much I could tel him except about the indecent haste of it al. And I tried to explain how the other officers took against Hart, and the tension between Tucker and Emmett, but it al sounded a bit thin if you hadn't seen it. I was biased in Emmett's favour probably. Perhaps one of the other committee members had the photograph afterwards? Not Bottomley, I hope.' He grimaced. 'But I'l check I didn't have any more of them. It was al a muddle back in the war!'

'May I think about it for a while?' Laurence said. 'I'm going to try to trace Tucker—he seems to be the lynchpin for so much of this. He lives in Birmingham.'

Brabourne looked at him. 'You should be careful.'

'Because?'

'Because your friend John Emmett told me a couple of things about Tucker that were al too plausible, having seen him in action myself. I don't think Emmett was trying to exonerate himself. He knew he'd messed things up—it was undoubtedly a terrible burden—but he was trying to explain Tucker. Ostensibly he hoped that because of my paltry experience at the Bar I might be able to advise him. Realy, he just needed to get it off his chest, I think. He was a man obsessed. Also—and it sounded a bit melodramatic—he wanted to pass on the information in case anything should happen to him. Not at the hands of Jerry but of Tucker.'

'Anything I should know?'

'Tucker and Captain Emmett met long before. Perhaps you knew that? Emmett joined the West Kents. Tucker was a sergeant. Tucker had a chum whose name I can't remember, a corporal. The two had joined up at the same time. Tucker was brighter than the average soldier and did wel. But Emmett said he was a bad influence over his weak pal.'

'Perkins?' Laurence said, remembering the name Wiliam Bolitho had given.

'Possibly.' Brabourne shrugged. 'They were vaguely implicated in lots of minor trouble-making but none of it was pinned down. But then, in spring the folowing year, not long before things got realy sticky, apparently they were running out of wire. As they were everywhere. Two details went to get wire from farms in the area.

Tucker headed up one lot, John said. They found precious little; the French were already hiding stuff by then. Three days later a girl on one of the farms is raped and murdered. She's very young: fourteen or fifteen. Emmett said it was just possible the death itself had been an accident—caused by an attempt to subdue her. But it was now the third rape that had occurred near their positions.

'The French police discovered an army-issue canteen outside the barn when her body was found. Tucker claimed he'd never been near that farm, but the mother gave a description of a belt buckle and insignia she'd seen when the soldiers had come before. Her husband and son were serving with the French so she could identify the uniforms.'

Brabourne stopped and appeared to be thinking back.

'I think Tucker eventualy conceded he might have been there—he took the line that one smal farm was much the same as any other and al the French were devious, English-hating peasants. But of course he said he hadn't gone back. Emmett has a bad feeling about it al. Cals the friend in and it's obvious the soldier—

Perkins, if that's his name—is uneasy. Keeps contradicting himself and both men are the only alibis for one another for part of the day in question.'

'I'm surprised that was enough to exonerate them; it sounds more a cause for suspicion, I'd have thought.'

'Indeed. To you, me and, especialy, John Emmett. But not to a harassed CO, it appears. Emmett said he just knew, increasingly, that Tucker was involved and probably this Perkins too. And Tucker knew he knew and it amused him. The French gendarmes thought two men had raped her. Technicaly, one rape and one act of sodomy.' He looked up. 'Emmett must have spoken good French?'

He waited for Laurence to reply.

'Yes, he spoke nearly perfect French.'

'Emmett was the liaison officer. Perhaps he was more convinced by the police than his tired CO, who was trying to prepare his men for the next attack. And Emmett saw the body in situ; her own neckerchief stuffed in a mouth choked with vomit, though death occurred when her throat was crushed, possibly by a forearm during the act...'

Brabourne tailed off, stubbing out his cigarette in his overflowing tin ashtray.

'I'm sorry, this is probably more than you want to know about something that happened a long time ago,' he said. 'But when I met him, it had worn Emmett's nerves down. I think that the circumstances show that Emmett's failure in commanding the execution detail wasn't weakness and Tucker's promptness to step in wasn't courage. And Hart was going to be shot one way or the other.'

'It's helpful,' Laurence said. 'The whole picture, the way it fits together. John's state of mind. It's what I've been trying to get a grasp of.

'The fact that he told me al these details is some indication that things weren't good. Though we did share a bilet for a while and some wine—increasing quantities of wine, in his case. Emmett told me there were items missing off the girl's body: a comb, some ribbons and so on. It also seemed as if someone had cut off some of her ... pubic hair.'

When Laurence looked surprised, Brabourne added matter-of-factly, 'I had actualy come across this in my time at the Bar. These men ... they do sometimes colect items from their victims.'

'But wasn't that incredibly risky?' asked Laurence. 'It was murder, after al, and the men al lived on top of each other, and were often on the move and had few personal possessions. Anyway, the colonel would have had a right to search Tucker's things at the time.'

'He might have done but it was hardly likely. Tucker was a sergeant; he wasn't some spotty private. And I do wonder if for Tucker it was the risk that made it attractive.

'So the gendarmes leave Emmett with a list of pathetic missing personal items. He took al the information to the colonel, but there was no other evidence. They were preparing for the big push and the colonel said Tucker was a good enough NCO not to be antagonised by excitable French women with vague accusations.

"Against the general good" was the line, Emmett said.

'The colonel let it go. He refused to release the men for possible identification by the girl's mother, because that would merely confirm what Tucker had already given them: that he'd been at the farm in the preceding week. Emmett tried to take it further up the chain of command but the CO was getting increasingly fed up with the whole business and what he was beginning to consider as questioning his orders. Not long after, the Somme goes up and one dead French girl pales into insignificance beside fifty thousand British casualties on day one.'

Brabourne stopped again. He chewed on a matchstick.

'I have to say, it al sounded pretty circumstantial. I don't think there was ever a case, but Emmett was certain Tucker was the man, together with his faithful sidekick. And things changed between him and Tucker from then on, he said. Perkins stayed out of Emmett's way as far as possible but Tucker was always in the way, always hovering this side of insolence, but chalenging him in subtle ways, always making things difficult. You know how it was? A good NCO and your problems were halved. With a bad one, life became hard: messages didn't get passed on, maps were out of date or dropped in the mud. Telegraph lines were damaged. Men were unavailable when Emmett needed them. Always smal things, but they disrupted the running of the company and made Emmett's life thorny.

'Then, a month or so later, there was an outbreak of pilfering. Tobacco, sweets, smal change—but causing trouble. There was bad feeling and some suggestion that a young soldier was being picked on as a possible culprit. Emmett and another subaltern decided to do a spot check of accommodation. Tucker was excluded from al this by virtue of rank; indeed, he was part of the checking. No sign of the stolen goods, but in his chum's knapsack there was a comb—a woman's hair comb.

Ordinary, cheap thing, gilt, but Emmett said there was something distinctive about it.'

Brabourne closed his eyes for a second.

'I know. It was a unicorn. The pattern. Just like the one missing from the dead girl. Emmett thought it even had her initials on it. It was on the list the gendarmes had given him. He said Perkins was obviously shocked to the core. Swore blind he'd never seen it before. Tucker suggested to him that he might have bought it for a lady friend back home and the man eventualy agreed. But Emmett said it was wel worn. He knew the colonel thought he'd simply got a down on Tucker and it wasn't enough.'

'What about the corporal?'

'Tucker was naturaly devious—Emmett thought he'd planted the comb to keep his friend in line—but he sensed Perkins was frightened and out of his depth.

Over the next couple of weeks, Emmett kept Perkins in sight. By now the man looked haunted, and he and Tucker were no longer the mates they'd always been. In fact, Emmett thought he was trying to avoid Tucker. Then, right out of the blue, Perkins asked to speak to Emmett privately. Tucker was out of camp. The corporal wasn't specific but he hinted that it was to do with the murder. Perhaps he was going to confess; perhaps he thought he could turn King's evidence.'

'Didn't he say?'

'No. Emmett, who is off up to HQ, says he'l see him the folowing afternoon. But Tucker gets back earlier than expected—perhaps he didn't trust his old friend.

The folowing morning, they're repairing trenches when, oh so conveniently for Tucker, you might think, there's a colapse and his chum dies unpleasantly but without a word. Emmett is sent off to the regimental first-aid post and then hospital, and the CO is kiled within weeks.'

'I hadn't realised,' Laurence began. 'I knew about the individuals involved in the trench fal. A man caled Bolitho told me. An officer. He was there.' He recaled Byers' sense that Tucker had let his friend die. 'But Tucker rescued John. Why would he do that if John had wanted to tie him to a murder?'

'God knows. Game playing? Power? Perhaps he was being watched too closely to finish him off when the fal didn't kil him. Emmett, of course, thought that the whole episode was about Tucker trying to murder him. And he was near as certain that Tucker had engineered Perkins' death. It wouldn't have been hard. Those old trenches were pretty unstable. But, of course, his accusations were in danger of sounding like paranoia. He kept the comb, the only evidence of the rape, in his pocket al the time. He said one day he would show it to the girl's mother for identification. But it would only have tied Perkins to the murder and he was dead. He showed it to me. I have to say, you needed to know what you were looking for to see any initials.'

'But John didn't mention a Bolitho?'

Brabourne shook his head.

'Being trapped was John's nightmare.'

'That fits,' said Brabourne. 'The good criminal mind is adept in sensing the weakness of others. Perhaps that was al Tucker intended—to torment rather than kil, and, by getting in there for the rescue, to have al the pleasure of watching Emmett suffer.'

'I think I know how the story went on from there,' said Laurence, as Brabourne put his feet on the desk. 'John was injured. Sent to hospital. His battalion took heavy casualties. John went home until he was declared fit for active service again and then, finaly, in 1917, his path and Tucker's crossed again.'

Brabourne shook his head and tapped his ash just short of the ashtray. 'With the subtle addition that Tucker had officialy saved your friend's life.'

They both lapsed into silence. Laurence looked over Brabourne's shoulder to the window, trying to gauge the time by the light outside.

'Did you know that in John's account of the accident—if it was an accident—in the trenches, it was a Captain Bolitho who saved his life?' Laurence asked.

Brabourne shook his head. 'I can't swear to it but he didn't actualy talk much about the incident at al, except to explain how Perkins ceased being a danger to Tucker. You have to understand that for Emmett it was al about the French girl's murder.'

'He left him some money. Quite a lot,' said Laurence after a short pause.

'Tucker?' Brabourne looked astonished.

'No. Bolitho.'

Laurence alowed this to sink in for a moment.

And Byers,' Laurence said, more cautiously, 'seemed uneasy about the lead-up to the execution.'

It wasn't the whole truth but he wanted to let Brabourne tel him about Byers himself.

But Brabourne just looked blank. 'Byers?' he said. He seemed puzzled. But after a few seconds' thought, he seemed to realise what Laurence meant. 'Cutting off the badges? Poor man.'

Laurence wasn't sure whether he meant Byers or Hart.

'I imagine he thought he was supposed to for some reason,' Brabourne said. 'He wasn't a chancer of any sort. Emmett should have stopped him, of course.'

After a moment's further thought, Laurence asked, 'The article you did on the murder: the policeman? Did you think then that it could be connected to Hart or Tucker or John?'

'It honestly never entered my head. I didn't even put two and two together when the story first came in. I mean, I knew he'd served in France. I suppose it's odd that there are no leads and that it was so efficiently and cooly done. But if you want the truth, to start with I thought Mulins would have been on the take and had crossed some criminal bigwig. If there's anything that didn't fit, I suppose it's that, in military life, Major Mulins had a reputation of acting right by the book. A very tough man. I would have thought corruption would have been anathema to him.'

'Your piece said he was "mutilated"?'

'Newspaper dramatics. The second shot got him in the face. Very nasty. As much for onlookers as for Mulins, who could hardly have cared by then.

Personaly, I'd rather there wasn't a connection,' he went on thoughtfuly, 'as the numbers of those present at the time of Hart's death seem to be diminishing rapidly.'

'Byers is wel.' Having said that, Laurence was stil nagged by the fact that Leonard Byers' cousin had been murdered.

'But his cousin was shot in the face. Like Mulins.' Brabourne indicated the papers on the floor.

Laurence nodded. He could see that Brabourne's newspaperman instincts sensed a connection. 'Perhaps you'l find the link,' he said. 'In the meantime, I'l let you know how I get on with Tucker.'

'Yes. Do. And be careful. I don't want to be running a piece on another mysterious but violent demise.'

Brabourne felt in his waistcoat pocket. More cigarettes, Laurence assumed, but instead he brought out a fine fob watch and opened the case.

'I'm going to have to...'

Laurence jumped up. 'I'm realy sorry, I keep returning and seem to have tried to extract from you an entire history of the war. One thing seemed to lead to another.'

'That's the joy of my job,' said Brabourne. 'Connections. So many things do seem to link together so often.' He tapped the watch and turned it so that Laurence could see it. It was old and handsome.

'It was my grandfather's. He fought at Balaclava. Mind you, although I'm very attached to it it's not much good for actualy teling the time.'

He smiled broadly, giving off the boyish energy that Byers had commented upon. He tapped it again, then started rummaging through one of the piles on his desk. Several leaflets and loose sheets slipped to the floor but he seemed unbothered.

'Take this.'

He handed Laurence a magazine. It had stark red and black print on the front and a title, Post-Guard: The New Review.

'Myself, I've given up writing poetry in favour of photography. If I get a lucky break I'd like to move into film. Movement: speed, machines, that's the future. But for now...' He gestured around him extravagantly. 'This might pay for my dreams. Realy I'm better on murders, but I do bring out this periodical in my free time. It's subscription only and we haven't got it going regularly but one or two of the wordsmiths in the copy of Constellations that you've got are in my mag too. Writing very different stuff now, of course. None of that morbid sentimentality: summer, lilac, ancient warriors. None of that, thank God. Do you remember Frances Cornford on Brooke? "A young Apolo, golden-haired,/ Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,/ Magnificently unprepared/ For the long littleness of life." I mean, Brooke was hardly unprepared. He was at King's, Cambridge, for heaven's sake. And no innocent, one hears. And he worshipped the heroic littleness of life, clutching his Homer closer than his gas mask. I've nothing against the dead and nothing against Cornford: "the long littleness of life"—lovely line. Wish I'd written it. She was in love with him, of course, wasn't everybody? Perfect poetry. Means nothing and so everything. That's why people like it. Not everyone could cope with Sassoon.'

Laurence, who had known Sassoon at school and hadn't liked him much, didn't want to say so.

'There's stil a taste for that sort of thing, of course. Nostalgic de la guerre. But not in this.' Brabourne tapped his magazine. 'This is not for everybody.' He looked proud. 'Not sure we've got the title right—it was supposed to be a pun on avant-garde.' He made a face. 'Picking up where Kandinsky and Co. left off.'

Laurence hoped he looked inteligently non-committal.

'I put two of Hart's in pride of place and there's one of Emmett's too. Of course we're not making a profit yet, but he deserved to be published. We're getting reviews.' Brabourne looked worried. 'I hope his sister won't mind. If a miracle occurs and the public suddenly develops a passion for proper poetry, then we'd pay his heirs, of course.'

They shook hands. Laurence walked down the stone stairs and out on to Fleet Street. Away from the heavy air of ink and machine oil and paper, London smeled light and cold. There was heavy traffic: trams and cars held up by a brewer's dray unloading near St Bride's. He looked up the street towards St Paul's and then up at the sky.

Sometimes he was not sure whether he was more disoriented by al that had altered or by how much had not. The view he had now—of the pale, graceful lines of St Bride's and then the uncompromising dome of the cathedral, rising grey above the City—was little changed since Wren built them. That, at least, was permanent.

And yet this was also the street from which the great business of the nation's newspapers had told the modern world how it was changing.

As he walked back towards Aldwych, he turned on impulse towards the Temple church, almost hidden in its peaceful square. Finding no one else inside, he sat for a while, watching the faint sunlight warm the stone effigies of the Knights Templar.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Having arrived at the station wel before the train to Birmingham was due to leave, Laurence paused outside to look at the war memorial. Had it been here the last time he passed? Similar monuments were suddenly appearing everywhere, but the bare earth around this one suggested it had been unveiled only in the last few weeks. New roses, just a few dormant winter stalks and thorns, had been planted around it. For a second he tried to imagine his own name being chiseled out by a busy mason. But what place would have claimed him as its son and remembered him in death?

He went inside to the ticket office. The steam hanging over the platforms was mirrored in miniature above the large tea urn at the station café, where he sat at a corner table, clutching a cup of tea while he waited for his train. Strong and sweet, it was bitter with tannin. He held it more to keep warm than to wake himself up. He'd brought The Times to read and Brabourne's Post-Guard. He was just rereading one of Hart's poems when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned round to find Charles standing there, with an identical copy of The Times under his arm, the brim of his hat puled down low, a dark paisley scarf round his neck and the rest of him swathed in a vast tweed coat that must have belonged to his grandfather.

'How the hel...?' Laurence began, but swiftly realised that he was neither particularly surprised nor unhappy to see Charles. Had he hoped for this when he'd left his message? His smile acknowledged the possibility.

'It's good to see you.'

'Wel, I wasn't having you setting out on a solitary encounter with Sergeant Tucker, old chap.'

'Oh God. You haven't brought a gun, have you?'

Theatricaly, Charles opened the front of his voluminous coat, reached into a deep poacher's pocket and brought out a short, thick truncheon with a leather loop. He placed the loop around his wrist and slapped the truncheon down against the palm of his hand a couple of times. Laurence frowned.

'It's a priest,' said Charles. 'For despatching fish. I've gone off fishing but found this in a cupboard; better than nothing, I thought. And less provocative than a gun. I do have one or two other useful things here.'

He reached into another pocket, brought out a hip flask, which he waved vaguely and then put away, and finaly dragged out a buff-coloured folded map.

'Birmingham,' he said, 'but I suppose you've got one already?'

Laurence smiled and shook his head.

'But you know where to find your man's drinking den?' Charles asked. 'It's a big place.'

'I know its name, according to his friend who told Leonard Byers. And I know it's a long shot,' he added, not that Charles had protested. 'It's not unreasonable to assume he'l be traceable from there.'

Charles raised an eyebrow. 'And you think his pals are going to tel you, just like that?'

'They might.'

Charles rummaged about in yet another pocket. This time he withdrew a thin, folded bundle of one-pound notes.

'Money?' Laurence looked puzzled.

'Quite right, old chap. Wel done. See your detective skils are coming on.'

'You can't give him money. Wel, it's very decent of you, of course, but I can't let you. I'd thought I might offer a very smal amount, but if Tucker is half the rogue he's said to be, it might make the situation more dangerous, not less, if he thinks we've got ful walets.'

'My guess is that Tucker may have had his finest hours as a soldier,' said Charles. 'Once home without any real power, he's probably no threat at al. His sort need war. Stil, I could be wrong. That's why I'm here.'

They walked down alongside two carriages of the train—handsome in its dark purple and cream. A gleaming peacetime train, Laurence thought, remembering the dinginess of trains in the war years. When they found an empty compartment, Charles struggled out of his coat and threw it up into the luggage rack. Laurence wondered briefly, and disloyaly, how Charles's plus fours would blend into a working-men's pub in Birmingham.

The whistle blew and the train puled out slowly, gathering momentum once it was clear of the first bend. They passed by the water tower, then under a viaduct and between high warehouse wals, al red brick and flaking painted advertisements. After a quarter of an hour they were carried over a bridge above an anonymous parade of shops. Then came row after row of terraces: narrow houses, their yards and washhouses a depressing patchwork of black and grey below the track. A solitary washing line bore dingy sheets that drooped heavily in the drizzle. The train had stil not taken on much speed. A canal ran alongside the line for a while but, beyond the weeds in the crevices of decaying brickwork, there was no vegetation anywhere.

Only as they moved outwards from the heart of the city did larger houses appear, comfortably set amid gardens and parks. On a summer's day the prospect might be quite fine. Laurence suddenly recaled a childhood smel of suburban lilac and sticky lime trees. He had once lived and played in places like these. They roared on, passing a long strip of potato fields marking the transition from urban to rural landscape. Most of the holdings were tidy dark patches but others appeared long abandoned. The train speeded up across level earth fields as north London was left behind. Near the line the bushes were blackened with soot while further away the few bare trees were so misshapen, presumably by the prevailing winds across the open terrain, that they were unidentifiable. A smal factory stood neatly to one side of the line at the edge of a smal town. He wondered what county he might be in: Hertfordshire? Bedfordshire? Rain and smuts soon obscured even the monotony of the view.

They sat in companionable silence. Above Charles's head was a cheerful print of the Lake District. A man, a woman and a terrier strode forward under a perpetualy blue sky with fluffy clouds. Charles was reading. Eventualy Laurence must have falen asleep because he was startled by the ticket inspector opening the door. Looking at his watch, he saw that they were halfway to Birmingham. The weather had improved slightly and they seemed to be passing through gentle hils. Laurence tilted his head to read the title of Charles's book: The Mysterious Affair at Styles. On the cover, three or four figures, dressed in their nightclothes, their faces iluminated by hand-held candles, peered into the darkness. Laurence smiled. No wonder Charles had a taste for intrigue.

Soon they had outrun the rain and the sky showed patches of brightness. The train passed some ruins on one side and a large signal box on the other. They were making proper speed now and occasional sparks shot past the window. As they entered a long tunnel, the train started to slow. Charles put down his book.

'Good?' asked Laurence.

'Quite excelent. Mrs Agatha Christie. You think you know who did it and then you think, no, that's what she means you to think, and then, of course, it's going to be someone quite different. Which it is but not the one you've thought. Wonderful stuff. Haven't you read it?'

Laurence shook his head. It seemed ages since he'd read a novel and even then it was mostly Hardy or Trolope, al favourites of his father.

'A bit more thriling than poor old John's death. Pure escapism. Strychnine, femmes fatales, lost wils, violent death. And it al hinges on chemistry. Stepson saved from the rope by a cunning Belgian.'

'But you haven't finished it,' said Laurence. 'How do you know?'

'Oh, I've read it twice before. First time, she had me believing it had to be the Belgian himself. Mind you, I've a lot of respect for the Belgians. Extraordinarily brave man, their king. You can't quite see our King George commanding a front-line action, can you?'

Chapter Twenty-eight

They arrived at Rugby on time and from Rugby, crossing pastureland, the train soon reached Birmingham. The city seemed to appear quite suddenly. Laurence had never seen England's second city before. His first impression was of redness and solidity, dark bricks and heavy architecture. A new city, not like London with its layers of existence, of squalor and beauty: its fine squares, slums, parks and palaces spreading out either side of the muddy grey Thames. Did Birmingham even have a river?

He didn't know. Almost al the buildings they passed were smal factories and workshops, although there were some distant spires, grey-white and more graceful than the buildings by the railway.

Charles pointed towards a clock tower in the same uncompromising style as the rest of the city. 'University,' he said. 'The tower's supposed to be like the one in Siena. Can't see it myself, but it looks better on a summer's day.'

Laurence laughed. 'How on earth do you know?'

'Family,' said Charles. 'We had a factory here. I thought I told you.'

Laurence felt guilty. Had he known? Charles was probably his oldest surviving friend. Charles was straightforward, growing more bluff with the years, where Laurence had become increasingly intense, even melancholy. If he had to characterise the relationship, he would have said it was simultaneously sturdy but superficial.

He could never imagine discussing anything about Louise, or even the war except as a sort of historic event. He'd never even had the sense of shared experience that he'd briefly felt with the injured Wiliam Bolitho or Tresham Brabourne. Yet the very fact that their friendship was one of the few that had accompanied him since childhood had its own power.

'You hardly need the map, then?'

'Actualy I haven't been to Birmingham for years. The old man used to bring me, trying to get me interested. My birthright of housemaids' boots and gentlemen's cufflink boxes. Had the opposite effect: couldn't wait to distance myself. Every time we came up here and saw the factory—much the same colour as pickled beetroot

—or the men: either cowed and overly respectful or surly and monosylabic—my heart sank. He'd make me handle the slimy hides as they hauled them slopping out of the tanks. My father liked to feel he was in touch with it al, so we'd end each visit by going to a tripe and pig-heel shop. Absolutely foul, and al the while his man would be waiting in the car outside. But it was the smel at the works that was so truly appaling. Perhaps people who spent their lives there became hardened to it but it was the most disgusting stink. I could recognise a tannery a mile off. Probably shal, today.'

As if to make his point he stood up and loosened the window strap.

'When my father died, and I came into my kingdom, the first thing I could think of was: thank God I could rid myself of it. Mama was al for it, of course, she'd never quite got over marrying into trade. And in the war half the men in the works had gone to join the Warwickshires, while the underage ones and the women were off making ammunition at Kynoch's, and at the end few wanted to come back any more than I did. Though I got a good price for the place.'

Before he'd even finished speaking, the train was juddering to a halt, puling in under the long glass station roof. Charles heaved himself into his coat; Laurence put on his hat and scarf. They went out into the corridor, stepped down and walked briskly along the platform and up the stairs, emerging on to a busy street.

Charles breathed in ostentatiously. 'Ah—best ladies' calfskin gloves,' he said. 'Now, as I recal, it's this way. We can walk,' he said. 'I don't think it's far at al.'

Although Laurence had no idea where Charles was heading, he was swept along by his confidence. As a tram clattered down the rise, a horse-drawn coal cart converged on it at an alarming angle, but one passed easily behind the other. It had turned into a crisp day and there were plenty of people about.

They walked for ten minutes between buildings that emanated an acrid smel of hot oil and coal fires against a continual din of metalic hammering and driling.

Through open doors they could see men working over benches and the glow of furnaces. They passed one courtyard that appeared to be ful of prison griles, until Laurence realised he was looking at bedsteads, piled up against every wal.

'You do know it's the Woodman we're looking for?' Laurence asked Charles.

Instead of replying, Charles rifled through an inner pocket, puled out a leather-bound book—the sort they'd al had in the army—and undid a stained brown strap. He turned the pages to the end and tipped it towards Laurence to show him an address.

'Tucker's home when he enlisted,' he said.

For once he resisted looking pleased with himself. Charles's careful writing read 'Florence Place'. It rang a bel but Laurence couldn't think why.

'Doesn't mean he'l be there or ever was, but it's a start. And it's not far away,' Charles said.

They seemed to be zigzagging across main streets. In one smal road two or three establishments sold nothing but hosiery, while another offered mostly household wares, with a cooper's sign over the door of the adjacent double-fronted store. Charles was moving steadily to the right. The shops displayed fewer wares in grubbier windows as the successive streets grew poorer, the houses in worse repair. Roofs bowed. Broken windows were papered over. Children playing in the street, some with bare legs in laceless boots, and women in dirty aprons over old coats, al stopped and stared at the two men. Charles occasionaly said 'Good morning'

briskly, but there was little response beyond a few nods of the head. There was a marked contrast between the poverty here and the busy industry only a few roads away.

Laurence was glad when they turned into a street at a right angle, away from the stares, but Charles stopped in surprise. The road ended in a bleak wasteland of rubble, laths and rubbish. Charles looked at his map.

'Wel, I'l be...'

'What's happened?'

'He should be here. At least, Florence Place should be here but it's not.'

A few yards away an old woman leaned against the last standing building: a boarded-up tavern. She was wrapped in a shawl and had a clay pipe in her hand.

She could have been a figure from fifty years before.

'Knocked 'em down ten years back. Pretty, in't it?' she said.

'Damn,' said Charles under his breath. 'We'l have to try the drinking den after al.'

Laurence felt something didn't quite fit. 'But if she's right, then this couldn't have been Tucker's address when he signed up, either.'

'No. Wel, nobody checked, I suppose. But then nobody would have been able to notify the next of kin, either.'

'Which wasn't necessary in Tucker's case.'

'No, or he didn't care.'

'Or he didn't have any next of kin.'

However, Laurence remembered Byers saying bitterly that there was a Mrs Tucker somewhere.

'Or he didn't like people knowing where he lived. Even then!' said Charles.

A handful of children started to gather round. One smal and grubby girl puled hard on Laurence's sleeve, silently but holding out her other hand. He slipped her a penny, hoping the others wouldn't see.

Charles walked less confidently back up the road, then stopped. The children folowed noiselessly.

'We can ask in there.' He pointed to the isolated public house. It was propped up by two wooden buttresses where neighbouring houses must have been torn down.

'It's closed,' said Laurence.

'I don't think so,' Charles replied.

There was no sign or brewery notice. Laurence crossed the road, walked up to the building and tried the door; it opened easily. Charles folowed him in. Three men were drinking beer around an upended crate, while two others and a drably dressed woman sat at a window seat. The landlord stood behind a rudimentary bar. A dog snarled at them from beside a stove, but made no effort to get up.

Laurence didn't feel threatened; the drinkers looked guarded rather than intimidating. Al talk had ceased as they came in. From what he could see of the landlord, he seemed to be dressed in part of a uniform: khaki trousers, topped with a colarless shirt and a waistcoat.

Laurence ordered two pints of beer. It came from a single unmarked keg. He handed over a shiling for the two. He doubted anyone else in there was paying the going rate. The landlord's unease might have been because the pub was open before drinking hours.

As if to read his mind, the man said defiantly, 'We keep to pre-war drinking in here, now it's not an official house.' Surprisingly, he had a London accent.

'I'm sorry to bother you,' Charles said firmly, 'but we're looking for an acquaintance.'

There was a snigger from the woman in the window.

'Tucker, Tucker's the name. Knew him in the war.' Laurence got out the photograph and put it on the bar. 'Used to live in Florence Place.'

The silence continued. Nobody looked at the photograph. Laurence looked round. No one met his eye.

Finaly the landlord spoke.

'And you think your old army mate drinks in here?'

'So we've been told. Him or his friends,' Laurence said.

'Lots of Tuckers.'

'He was a sergeant.'

' Sergeant Tucker.' The landlord looked amused. Anybody know this Sergeant Tucker?' he said and without waiting for an answer asked, 'What makes you think he comes here?'

'Wel, he said he used to live over there.' Laurence gestured to the derelict plot of land.

The woman in the window snorted again.

Laurence looked at her. She was smal, probably not more than twenty. Her face, as she gazed at him frankly, was pinched and either bruised or dirty.

'You knew him?' he asked her.

'Nah. Jest he came from a stinking rotten place. Gone now. It's al going now. Even this home from home.' She grimaced at her own surroundings.

The landlord looked irritated. 'We're providing a service. Just for the last weeks,' he said. 'No point wasting the building before the wrecking bal cals time.

After al, there's no sign yet of al their municipial improvements out there.' Although he mispronounced the word, he sounded angry as he gestured towards the door.

'They can take the houses away but where are people supposed to live? Even now they've had the exterminators in and taken out a few of our lads. Germans got the wrong people if you ask me.'

'You and the Bolshies,' a man muttered as he got up. As he wrenched the door open, a cold draught knifed in. The door banged shut behind him.

'Do you happen to know a pub caled the Woodman?' Laurence asked in the silence that folowed.

For some reason this seemed to amuse the group at the table.

'You could say so,' said the landlord. 'There's ten or so Wood-mans around. God knows why. Munitions Man, Metal-Roling Man, Lime-Kiln Man, or even No-Fucking-Chance-of-a-Job Man, you'd understand. Not much cal for woodmen in good old Brummagem. Stil, what's in a name?' He picked up the dirty mug on the bar, dipped it in a bowl of murky water, puled it out and rubbed it with a rag. 'This used to be the Royal Oak.' He looked up towards the men at the table. 'Fred, Ivor, you were soldiering men. Did you know this Tucker?'

One man was shaking his head before he even got to the end of the sentence, as if to deflect any involvement with strangers. The other appeared not to have heard at al.

'Sorry. Can't help you,' the landlord said. 'Me, I got a chest.' He thumped on his sternum. 'Missed the chance of a scrap. Was in stores. Never left the country.

But good luck to you. Though I doubt you'l find him.'

They stepped out into the fresh air. A man stood against a boarded shopfront opposite, roling a cigarette. Otherwise the street was empty. Charles was feeling in his pocket, obviously intending to return to his map. Laurence felt heavy after a pint of unfamiliar ale.

'What made you think that place was stil in use?'

'Grey cels.'

'Grey cels?'

'That's what Mrs Christie's little Belgian has.'

Laurence thought Charles was fearless, reliable and like a child in some respects. He wasn't sure whether he was useful or a liability.

'And I saw a thread of smoke coming from the chimney. So somebody was in there. And there are two jugs hanging on a hook outside. That's a sign of a place to drink in these parts—and I imagine they'd have been long taken if they were simply there as ornament on a ruin.'

'I forgot you were the Sir James Frazer of local customs. They'd heard of Tucker al right, don't you think?'

As Laurence spoke, the man across the road detached himself from the wal. As he came towards them Charles looked momentarily puzzled but Laurence recognised him from the bar a few minutes before. He'd been the first one to leave.

As he reached them he said, 'This Sergeant-as-was Tucker you're after? What's he worth to you?'

Charles and Laurence briefly exchanged looks.

'My cigarettes?' Charles said, holding them out. The man looked doubtful. He rubbed his nose with his hand and pushed his cap back.

'Looks to me like you'se come a long way,' he said. 'Not from these parts, anyway. So you must be wanting this Tucker a mite more than a Frenchie fag or two. Price of beer's enough to turn you temperance around these parts.'

'You're right, of course,' said Charles. 'So what do you think would be fair payment, assuming you actualy know where our man is, or have some pretty solid information as to where he lives now?'

'Oh, I know where he is right enough,' the man replied. 'I'l take you to him toot sweet. Mind you, can't guarantee he'l welcome you with open arms.'

'A shiling. How does that sound?' asked Charles.

Laurence thought of the fold of pound notes in Charles's inner pocket. The man looked doubtful but nervous, as if he didn't want to see Tucker but wanted more money. Finaly he seemed to decide on tactics.

'Look, I'm out of work, three babbies at home. Wife's about to drop another. I did my bit in France and al and I reckon you did too, sir, so you know what I'm talking about. It in't easy. So how's about two bob? Something for the wife an' a bag of suck for the little'uns? For that I take you right to him. Nasty bit of work he is and al. Though not the scrapper he was, you'l find. Mind you, I'm not hanging around while you try and talk to him.' He barked—something between a laugh and a cough.

'Done,' said Charles. Laurence was surprised; he'd expected him to drive a harder bargain.

'This now'—he held out a florin—'and sixpence when we get there.'

The man tucked the coin away and puled his cap forward.

'It's not far. 'Course, they al knew Bert Tucker,' he nodded back towards the Public House, 'though it was his ma's address you had and she's been dead since for ever. But landlord barred Tucker a year back and he don't do that easy. Would serve Dr Crippen if he dropped by with smal change. Same at the Woodman.

Barred.'

He was walking slowly and obviously enjoying himself.

'But that lot don't like strangers even more than they don't like your man.'

They took a mean-looking street to the right and then, swiftly, a second, which passed under an archway into an aley so narrow that Laurence couldn't imagine it ever got sunlight. The cobbles beneath their feet were dark and damp. At smal, irregular intervals, there were shalow doorways. Washing was strung across the street; despite the lack of light or warmth, people obviously lived here. A woman stood at a single water pump, talking to a young girl with a grizzling baby on her hip. They al fel silent as the men passed. Laurence hoped they weren't being led into some kind of dead end where the man or his friends would swiftly relieve Charles of the rest of his money, but eventualy the aley came out in a wider, cleaner street with a neat row of smal vilas on one side.

They crossed over. To their left a cemetery spread out, covering a sizeable area of ground. Whilst there was no sign of a church, an apparently abandoned mortuary lodge stood at the entrance and beyond it sooty stones were arranged in tidy rows, with the occasional rusting iron cross or hefty stone angel. The man looked pleased with himself and pointed through the open gateway.

'There you are,' he said. 'There he is. And not likely to be leaving.'

'He's dead?' said Laurence, after a split second's confusion. 'You're teling us he's dead?'

He felt irritated but largely because it had never entered his head that Tucker might have died. Al his reasoning needed Tucker alive. The man stepped away slightly as if nervous one of them would take a swing at him, yet stil hoping for the sixpence.

Laurence was lost in thought. Somehow he felt the unknown Tucker would always have been protected by his own opportunism. He was trying to recalibrate every assumption he'd made. Even if Tucker wasn't directly implicated in John's shooting, he had associated him with the other violent deaths. Tucker's malevolence had been a fixed point in the story Laurence had built up.

Finaly he asked, 'When?'

'Bert? Back last winter. December? January? February mebbe?'

'So where's his grave?' said Charles, looking towards the dismal rows of stones.

The man looked at them, almost amused. He waved towards the left of the grounds. 'Resting in the arms of Jesus. Bert's hardly one for a fancy stone. Not the type and not the money any more. He was peddling his own wife the last months.' He looked momentarily uneasy. 'Offered her to me once but you never knew with him what was a joke. But no way she was about to get him al the fancy trimmings when he copped it. No, there he is and there he'l stay, but I expect even she doesn't know exactly where he is. No change there.'

'How did he die?' Laurence beat Charles to it.

'Drowned.'

'Drowned?' said Laurence. 'What, here?' It seemed unlikely.

'In the canal. Down by the basin. Beyond the Tap and Spile. Near the Mission. He'd been drinking. Fel in or pushed in. Depends who you talk to.' He looked pleased at the effect of his information.

Laurence looked at Charles.

'Which?' Charles asked.

'Wel, the police says fel. Drunk and drowned. They don't give a farthing. He was a bit of a vilain and so, likely, was the man who done for him, so what should they care? Bert was a mean bastard, begging your pardon, but he knew the area and he looked after hisself. When he'd had too much—when he could afford to have too much—other people came out of it the worse. He didn't. More likely, somebody had enough of his schemes. His wife, mebbe?' He coughed. 'No, she's had al the nerve beaten out of her as wel as her teeth. Would never have the guts to do him in. Besides she was wailing al night, they say, and what's she going to do now with her little 'uns?'

'So it's just you who thinks he was murdered?'

'Nah. Everybody knows it round here. For starters the kiler was seen by a local. Police weren't having it because the man—bloke caled Victor—was on the job with a part-timer, a girl caled Betty Carew, and they'd been drinking half the evening. But not so drunk they don't remember a man hanging about. They were round the back of Mathieson's warehouse and they saw this stranger looking like he was up to no good, they tel it. A bit later they heard Bert singing as he went home. He was drinking in the Tap after he'd been banned from his usual. It was a pretty miserable night, they said—raining on and off. 'Course they didn't recognise him spot on—

he had his cap and scarf on and head down, but it was him. He was a great man for a song, Bert. Few minutes later, Betty, not quite as occupied as old Victor, if you know what I mean, says she heard a cry and then a splash. Police said if she did, why didn't the two of them go see, but she was earning and it was a bad night and too cold not to get on with it.' He leered. 'Old Bert didn't look his best when they got him out.'

'These two found his body?'

'Some bargee the next day shifting pig iron. He was down by the lock. Face mashed up a bit. His own mum wouldn't hardly of known him if she ever did, but who knows whether he'd been thumped before he went into the water.'

'Was there any idea who did it?' Laurence interrupted.

The man shrugged. 'Like I said, there was plenty was glad to see him gone. That's not the same thing as knocking him off, though.'

'Had there been any trouble beforehand?'

Always in trouble was Bert since the war. Never the biggest but he was the toughest before the drink started to get to 'im.' The man beamed—his pleasure in Tucker's malignity was obvious. 'Even 'is own officer hated him.'

Charles and Laurence looked at each other.

'He come up here, just like you, and gave him a drubbing. Wiliams—in the pub today but knows to keep his mouth shut—was in the same regiment, recognised the man. Bloke asked around like you have. One of the reasons no one's speaking: we aren't after more trouble. Specialy after Bert's gone and got himself kiled. Found him in the Woodman, the stranger did. He weren't barred then. Talked for a bit. Shouting the odds. Bert tels him to fuck off for a coward, 'scuse my French, dragged him outside. The landlord shouts he's barred. The gent cals Bert this and that and lays one on him. He's good.' The man's eyes sparkled in recolection.

'Time was, Bert would have put up a fight but he just goes down. Blood everywhere. The gent gets a bloody nose but Bert comes off worse. 'E's spitting teeth and tels him he'l get him. But as it turns out someone gets him first. I'm not saying it was him, though. This officer wasn't the only one had grudges against Bert, and him sorting out Bert was months before somebody sorted him out for good.'

'Did you actualy see him get in the fight then?'

' Course I did. He didn't look much, the officer, but he laid Tucker out right and good. Some old grudge from army days, like I says. Friend of yours, was he?'

'He might have been. Can you describe him?'

'Middling height. Middling looks. Dark hair. Gent, like I said. Would've sorted out Bert right and proper if a copper hadn't been passing, nosing about, heard the racket. Bert was too pissed to fight proper. This bloke cals Bert a blinkin' murderer but he looked fit to do Bert in hisself. Made a mistake laying one on the copper, though, because then they took him in.'

Briefly Laurence wondered whether there was any way to check the truth of the story, although it felt real enough. The description of Tucker's first assailant fitted John but then it fitted him too, come to that. Yet Mary had spoken of an assault that had led to John's arrest.

Suddenly the whole scenario he'd constructed, with Tucker as a stealthy and methodical kiler, seemed ridiculous. He was just a semi-criminal local down-and-out. He would never have had the means to travel to Devon and to Oxfordshire to kil former comrades, much less the ingenuity. Deflated, Laurence felt a fool for alowing himself to believe in the dangers of chasing Tucker.

He looked at Charles. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'What a wild-goose chase.'

Charles stil looked interested. He turned to their companion. 'Thank you,' he said. 'Very helpful.'

He handed him the promised sixpence and a further shiling. The man nodded, touched his cap, hovered for a few seconds and started to walk off before he turned and added, 'Tucker might quite have liked being caled a murderer but then the man said Bert forced himself on some girl. No way Bert was going to take that one—used to fancy hisself with the ladies way back.'

'So,' said Charles, as they walked the slightly uphil route back towards the station, 'I assume we agree the man in the fight was John?'

Almost certainly.'

'How did John find Tucker?'

'He got hold of his address, like us, I suppose. Florence Place—Florence Street was written down on a note in John's effects. He had Byers' original address too. It was in his pocket when they found him.'

'You're with our friend and think Tucker was kiled deliberately? But was it the same man who did for the chap in Devon?'

'Jim Byers?'

'Yes, Byers Two. The cousin of Byers One. And Inspector Mulins? Or, just possibly, John Emmett?'

' If they were al murders,' Laurence answered. 'Yes, it's a huge coincidence. I can't think it's worth checking with the police here or trying to track down the couple who might have seen Tucker's assailant. The whole damn thing is vague.'

And, he thought, if the facial injuries in al the deaths, bar John's, were intended as a message, whom was the message for?

As they climbed on to the homeward train, Laurence said, 'You know, I'm completely losing sight of what I set out to do.'

'Find out what on earth the fair Mary Emmett's brother was thinking of when he puled the trigger,' replied Charles as they were puling out of the station in a carriage that smeled strongly of old tobacco. 'Al pretty straightforward when you started. What a man wil do for love.'

Laurence felt tired and irritated. 'I hardly knew her when I agreed to look into it,' he said. 'I just wanted to help her with a horrible event in her life. Tie up loose ends. I didn't know it wasn't going to be so simple. It isn't like your storybook sleuths. Everybody isn't either good or bad, with clues and a tidy solution to be unraveled. Everything here goes round in circles. There isn't going to be the clear answer she wants answered: why did John die? And if there was, it wouldn't be the sort of answer she'd understand. He died because he was born at the wrong time. Or he died because he crossed the wrong person. Bad luck. No more. For God's sake, we stil don't even know there was a murder or a kiler. Or if there was, only of a farmhand, and a policeman, both of whom might have nothing to do with anything. If we did, we'd have told the police.'

'Point taken,' said Charles. 'Though you underestimate Mrs Christie, by the by. It's not individuals but combinations of circumstances that lead to catastrophe in her books. A fatal colision of character and events.' He beamed. 'But I suppose Emmett's sister would be happiest with clarity. It was So and So's fault—George Chilvers, the late Sergeant Tucker, General Haig. If you could find a murderer, that would help everyone. Wel, not the murderer; perhaps it wouldn't help him. But it would be simple. Emmett didn't kil himself. Someone else, the embodiment of evil, did. A homicidal maniac. Which means there was nothing anyone could have done and Miss Emmett doesn't have to feel guilty.'

'Why on earth should she feel guilty?' Laurence jumped in. 'She's the last person who should feel guilty. John was off in Germany before the war, then he was fighting in France, then he became il. She'd hardly talked to him properly for years.'

'I rest my case!'

Laurence gazed out of the window. He didn't want to continue the conversation. But Charles, apparently oblivious that he was treading on eggshels, went on,

'The thing is that a murderer wouldn't realy help. Murderers have their stories too. Their reasons. The people they crossed. The people who did them down. Mrs Christie can leave their world behind on the last page but a real murderer's story doesn't end on the galows.'

'Extreme violence changes everything for ever,' Laurence said, and then, in a more conciliatory tone he added, 'There is one loose end, though. Tresham Brabourne gave me another name—the junior officer who sneaked on Hart to their superior officer and got him charged. If I could track him down and if he survived the war, that would be informative. Man was caled Liley, Ralph Liley.' He looked at Charles expectantly.

Charles shook his head. 'Never heard of him. But I'l ask around.' He sounded tired. He fumbled for his pipe and then gazed out at the darkening day.

Laurence rested his aching neck against the back of the seat. He couldn't think straight. Was it possible the man who told them the news of Tucker's death had deliberately misled them to put them off the track? He thought not. He realised now that the landlord had been amused when they'd been making their not very subtle enquiries.

Charles had been right, of course, Tucker had provided the easy solution. But if Tucker was out of the picture, then the murder of Jim Byers and any possibility of John having been murdered became much harder to link.

On the blank margin of his paper he wrote down the name of everybody connected with the execution of Edmund Hart. It was an untidy list because in some instances he either didn't know the name or had only a rank or a partial name. He drew a line through those he knew were dead or disabled. The list became much shorter. He wrote down a second list of everyone he knew of who'd been there when John was trapped in the trench fal and repeated the process. Again, it was not a long list, though he had less information this time. Only Leonard Byers was on both lists. Then he added Eleanor Bolitho. She was not there but she'd nursed John at both periods in his life.

Finaly he set down the names of anyone else he could think of who had been significant in John's life in recent years. After Eleanor this had just six names on it: Mary, Mrs Emmett, Doctor Chilvers, George Chilvers, Mrs Chilvers and an unknown army friend who had visited him in Holmwood. He added Minna's name at the top with two question marks. She was dead, but she was the only possible link with the word 'Coburg' on John's note.

Obviously John was the man who had attacked Tucker but it had happened wel before Tucker's death. Could John have returned to Birmingham after the initial fight and kiled him before kiling himself? Everyone agreed Tucker had enemies but one of them was certainly John. Instead of looking for Tucker as a potential kiler of John Emmett, what if he discovered it was the other way around? It was John who had been arrested for assault, John who had been put in a nursing home to avoid prosecution.

What if these enquiries turned up something worse for Mary? He knew that was one reason he'd avoided going to the police in Birmingham. When John went absent, could he have traveled al the way to Birmingham to deal with Tucker? Was that where he was in those missing days? If Tucker had died in January or February, it was too late, but if he'd died earlier, it was just possible John could have been involved and he certainly had a motive. It would help if he had the dates, which meant he would have to contact the police after al, although he would be surprised if they hadn't made their own inquiries as to whether the dates fitted, given the earlier attack.

He recaled the various descriptions of John as much improved in the last weeks before his death. He was talking more, he seemed to have had a burden lifted from him. Might it have been because he'd finaly dispensed his own sort of justice? If John had kiled Tucker, then his own suicide became more comprehensible.

By the time they puled into London, Laurence was hungry and thirsty, and Charles was snoring. The air felt wintry. They shared a cab, which dropped Charles off first before going on up to Bloomsbury.

'Thank you,' Laurence said. 'It was much better having you there. If ever I can reciprocate...'

'You can,' said Charles, patting his pocket. 'Two tickets for the Varsity Match. First time at Twickenham. New beginnings. Come with me and cheer for the dark blues.'

Laurence smiled. 'Of course.' Then before Charles went in, he remembered one thing that had been on his mind since the morning. 'Is there a river in Birmingham?'

'The Rea, not one of the great waterways of the world or, indeed, England. Not, I'm afraid, one of which poets sing. Or can pronounce, realy.'

Chapter Twenty-nine

Delicate ice crystals radiated across the inside of Laurence's bedroom window when he woke late the next day. As he waited for some water to heat for shaving—it must be the coldest day of the year so far, he thought—he picked up a monograph on the church of St Alfrege but soon found his thoughts drifting back to Birmingham.

The violence of Tucker's end added to a list of possible murders, yet removed the most likely perpetrator. It was just feasible that John could have kiled Tucker, although the deaths of Byers' cousin and Mulins had taken place wel after John's own. Laurence found himself more rather than less determined to get to the bottom of things.

When he reread the list he'd made on the train, his instinct was that Eleanor Bolitho was the key to it al. The more he thought about it, the more he saw a discrepancy between Eleanor's insistence that Wiliam must be protected from reminders of the war, and the feeling he got from the man himself who appeared to welcome company. Was Eleanor worried that Laurence might let slip something that she would rather her husband didn't know, or that Wiliam might tel him something she wanted to keep hidden? Eleanor had lied about how wel she'd known John. What else had she lied about?

He decided that the only way to make sense of this was to try to see her again and tel her he knew she had been to Holmwood. If he could put pressure on Eleanor to help him, things might start to fal into place. Nevertheless, when he left his flat, he almost changed his mind. The sky was heavy; freezing rain was turning fast to snow and by the look of it there was much more to come. By the time he was on the bus, the snow was coming down heavily and they made slow progress.

He had come to assume that Wiliam, at least, would always be at home. But nearly an hour after he set out, he stood on the doorstep outside their flat, having rung the bel three times, feeling that certainty, among others, seep away from him. He had been fired up with a determination to confront Eleanor. She had, of course, a right to privacy, but he needed to be certain what her part was in John's death. What did she know? What had she guessed? He was convinced that she was withholding knowledge about John from him and, more importantly, from John's family. From Mary.

The weather continued to deteriorate. He stepped back to look up at the three-storey building; the Bolithos' windows were dark. He had been prepared for Eleanor to be angry or even to refuse to let him in, but not for her absence. He felt in his pockets for a piece of paper, but as the only pencil he had on him was broken, there was no way he could leave a message. Anyway, he had wanted to catch her without her being forewarned. The snow flurries were now obscuring the view to the end of the street: he couldn't just stand between the pilars of the stone porch and wait in the cold. The black-and-white lozenge-shaped tiles beneath his feet were already partly obscured by white and the street itself was completely covered.

He puled the brass bel knob one more time. He thought he could hear it jangling somewhere in the building, but he moved away immediately, knowing it was no good. He slipped on the lower step and swore loudly.

Eventualy he puled up his colar and set off back towards Kensington High Street. An absolute peace descended as he walked by. He gazed into a bay-fronted room where a woman was already drawing the curtains. Smoke and snow bilowed over a chimney. He turned the corner, into a street that bore slightly downhil, becoming aware that he had to be careful not to fal. He looked down at his feet. He could already feel the wet seeping in and cursed the fact he had not worn sturdier boots. As he trudged on, he wondered again why he was pursuing al this. There was nothing to pursue realy. A man had died, one of milions in the last seven years or so. He had no moral imperative to find out exactly why or how; despite what everyone assumed, he had not been a close friend of John Emmett. There had already been a perfectly thorough judicial examination by the police and coroner. He felt cross with himself, with the situation and with the weather so early in the winter.

As he looked up, a cumbersome shape caught his eye between the swirls of snow. Whatever it was, it was moving slowly and unevenly towards him, though many yards away on the other side of the street. Thinking it was a woman caught out with a perambulator, he moved to help her, but even as he speeded up, the shape twisted, then seemed to sprawl sideways and stop. He tried to run towards what was evidently some kind of accident. As he got closer it dawned upon him that it was a wheelchair and before he could identify the faces he realised it must be Eleanor and Wiliam. Eleanor didn't see him, even when he was only a few yards away from where the chair had tipped over. Wiliam was stil half in it and seemed to be trying to pul himself clear. Eleanor had her arms under Wiliam's and her elbows were tucked into her sides as she tried to move him. Her boots were slipping and she heard Laurence only when he spoke their names. He looked first at Eleanor. Her face was grim and determined, but was lightened by relief as she recognised him.

'Could you steady the chair?' he said as he leaned forward and checked that Wiliam was simply stuck, not injured.

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 Wiliam'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 Wiliam 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 Wiliam onto the seat while she held the handles. He had always thought how wel Wiliam 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.

Wiliam's eyes jerked open. 'Helo.' The bleakness of his appearance disappeared as he tried to smile. 'A knight in damp but shining armour,' Wiliam 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 Wiliam 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.

Finaly 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 Wiliam again? But Eleanor turned to the side, where there was a smal tradesman's gate he'd hardly noticed before. He helped her pul 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. Wiliam removed his gloves and scarf with stiff arms.

'Go and sit down,' Eleanor said as she spun the chair round towards the hal. 'I'm going to heat water and help Wiliam get into some dry clothes.' Wiliam 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 spils and ignite the coal already laid in the grate. He could hear Eleanor and Wiliam talking although their words were indistinct. The fire flickered and caught.

Even as the day outside finaly 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 Wiliam 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 smal 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 stilness. In the flesh, the impression she gave was dominated by animation and inteligence 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 smal silver brooch that held her blouse colar together at the neck.

Eventualy she said, 'Thank you. I've helped Wiliam 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 Wiliam 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. Wiliam is only thirty-two. He's inteligent, 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'l 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 puled 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 stil 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 usualy 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. 'Wel, 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 tel 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'l 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 kiled himself?' he asked, after another pause.

'No, the war kiled him,' she answered quickly, 'whoever puled 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 al, 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 wel 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 actualy 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 physicaly. 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 al seen active service,' Eleanor said, puling 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 wel. 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. Eventualy, 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—al 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 downfal. I don't think Chilvers was treating her very wel. 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 fel madly in love with him and trailed around after him, posting bilets-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 al 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 il when he was sent up there. But he deteriorated. He was in a room where the previous patient had been driven to kil 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 ilicit 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 actualy 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 tel 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.'

'What did you say?'

'I protested and played the outraged relative. Wel, it was either that or tel the truth and I wasn't about to gratify him with that. But I was nervous that his real sister—your Mary—would turn up and he'd mention me to her. I could imagine him forbidding me from visiting.'

He had the impression she was about to say more but when she didn't Laurence finaly brought himself to say what he'd come for.

'It was you John left the money to realy, wasn't it? I mean, it was nominaly left to Wiliam, because he could justify that, but it was because of you, I think. You and Wiliam were a married couple. It didn't matter who got it, you'd both have the benefit of it without Wiliam being humiliated.'

'What on earth gave you that idea?'

'Because the incident in the trench colapse was nothing in the scale of things. I kept thinking it felt wrong. Men were dying or being injured, horribly, every day.

Trenches colapsed pretty often. Probably the death of a man caled Perkins, Sergeant Tucker's partner in crime, was the most significant aspect of that accident. And Wiliam's part in puling John out was prompt and efficient, but he didn't do most of the digging. In fact, it was Tucker, John's enemy, who extracted him and saved his life. I kept thinking, why did Wiliam get left money when Tucker didn't. And then I thought—forgive me, Eleanor, but it's true—it was simply because Wiliam was married to you. John wanted you to benefit, either because you nursed him when he was injured or, perhaps quite simply, because he loved you.'

She didn't answer at first. Then she looked up and, to his surprise, she said, 'No. He didn't leave it for me. I promise that wasn't why.'

He was embarrassed. He'd been certain John was in love with her and she with him.

'I'm awfuly sorry,' he said.

'No, don't be. There's some truth in what you think, but the bequest wasn't because of me, or only obliquely.'

'Did he write you a letter? At the end?' It was a sudden guess. Could he have posted one to her before he died?

She sighed. 'Yes. Yes, he did, although I never read it fuly. I saw it only when George Chilvers brandished it at me some weeks after John's death. He'd stolen it somehow. I think he half hoped I would try to seize it and then he could have al the fun of seeing how far I'd go to read it. Perhaps he was hoping I'd end up wrestling him for it. Odious, odious man.' Her apparent sarcasm was belied by the slight wobble in her voice.

'I think other letters may have gone missing. Correspondence to him as wel as from him.'

'Of course they have,' she said. 'When John absconded, I imagine Chilvers was terrified he'd tel people outside what had been happening. About Chilvers'

personal vendetta. John stil had contacts. Visitors. I'd posted letters for him once. Probably his sister did too. Ones he didn't want to leave in the hal at Holmwood for posting.'

She paused and poured them both out some more tea.

'John was melancholy, damaged, but extremely rational. He believed in justice. So I bet Chilvers made a clean sweep of John's belongings. Then when John was found dead, wel, Chilvers probably destroyed them to save Holmwood's reputation. They'd already had a couple of suicides apart from the one I've told you about. And what if John revealed Chilvers' treatment of his wife or Vera's love letters to John turned up? George Chilvers might even have seemed like a suspect. Not for murder, necessarily, but it would seem like provocation. John kept a diary from time to time too when I knew him. Do you think his sister has that?'

Laurence was almost certain she didn't. 'How do you know al this?' he said.

'Because the letter Chilvers was taunting me with was one John had left for me, and not yet posted. Chilvers was almost proud of his daring. He never even let me see it properly, just one paragraph while he kept hold of it, so I don't know if it talked of suicide. On the whole, I think it was just a letter. I'd had others. Because if it was a suicide note, the coroner would have had a right to it and its contents would have become public and there were things that John had written in that paragraph that he wouldn't have wanted revealed publicly. But Chilvers stole it and blackmailed me with the contents. That's the kind of man he is.'

'Blackmail?' Laurence was startled.

'Yes. Plain and simple.'

'But you were supposed to be John's sister—or was he blackmailing you because he'd discovered you weren't?'

She gave him a slightly pitying look. 'Wel, hardly, I don't think it's a crime to claim to be someone's sister.'

'But you hadn't got any money, then,' he said.

'He didn't want money. He wanted me. To take me to his bed. He wasn't put off by my hatred. He was aroused by the idea of my loathing him and stil having to give myself to him. That's how he was. I only agreed to meet him because he led me to understand that he had held back some letters of John's to protect the family.

He thought he could coerce me because there was information in the letter that was potentialy very damaging to someone I love.' She blushed, but not at the revelation that Chilvers desired her, Laurence thought, but with anger.

Laurence frowned. 'Wiliam?' he said, slowly, wondering what on earth John might have known about Wiliam that might be damaging.

'You're dogged but you're not a natural detective, Laurence,' she said. 'If it wasn't for the simultaneous pursuit of true love—I assume you are in love with Mary Emmett?—I'd suggest you gave it up. No. Not Wiliam. Or Wiliam only in part. Nicholas. My son, Nicholas.'

Suddenly he understood. How stupid he had been. But he waited for her to tel him.

'Nicholas isn't Wiliam's son. He's John's. John was acting as a father in providing for a son. He saw him only a couple of times but he did love him. In that paragraph Chilvers was brandishing, John said that loving me and becoming Nicholas's father, even though it had not been intentional, had been the one good thing in his life. Chilvers was jubilant to have that knowledge.'

'Does Wiliam...?'

'Does Wiliam know? Wel, yes, of course he does or I wouldn't be teling you.' She looked amused. 'Nicholas looks pretty much like his father.'

Laurence thought back to his brief glimpse of the child and the photograph on the table. Nicholas was darker haired than Wiliam or Eleanor, certainly, but perhaps you saw what you expected to see. However, his overwhelming feeling was one of happy surprise. She obviously noticed because she looked more relaxed than he'd ever seen her. The fiery intensity faded from her eyes.

'I think there's a picture of him with John's things,' he said. 'I'd assumed it was John himself, but it is probably Nicholas.'

She nodded. 'I gave him that the last time I saw him. I'm glad he had it.' Then she added, 'The discretion is for Wiliam's sake, you see, not mine. That was the mistake George Chilvers made. He thought I'd deceived Wiliam. But Wiliam and I could never have had children. His injury was widespread to his back as wel as his legs. We can never have a marriage in that sense. But in other ways, we are very happy. He has been immensely kind to me. I was pregnant. He was an invalid. We take care of each other and he loves Nicholas as his own. He understood my feelings for John. He is an exceptional man and I am very lucky.' Her face was calm.

'I caled George Chilvers' bluff,' she said. 'Refused point blank. Told him there was no secret there. Threatened to report him to the police, and like al of his sort his threats melted away. I wouldn't have reported him, of course. Wiliam knows, but everyone else believes Nicky to be his own son. I don't imagine Wiliam ever told you I knew John Emmett? He wouldn't have wanted to you to make any connection.'

Laurence thought how open and frank Wiliam had seemed. But now it appeared even he had things to hide.

'You never wrote to the Emmetts after John died, did you?'

'No.' She looked embarrassed. 'Wiliam asked me to but I couldn't risk contact.'

'But if George Chilvers panicked and drove around for hours searching, before caling the police, it does suggest that even though he might have worried that blame for John's death might be laid at his feet, he certainly wasn't directly responsible for his death,' Laurence said.

Then, realising that he had never told her of his suspicions, he explained, as simply as he could, the strange coincidences that he had uncovered while trying to understand John's state of mind. She did not look scornful as he would have feared before today; instead she was obviously concentrating.

'In fact you were the first person to suggest he might not have kiled himself deliberately,' he said. 'An accident, you thought.'

She smiled. 'An accident I hoped, I think. Even murder would, oddly, be a lot better than having to accept that someone at the centre of your world, your son's father, would rather be dead.'

'So you don't see Chilvers as a murderer?'

'Much as I'd like to lay it al at his door, I don't. He's greedy and a buly, not a kiler, though his actions might wel have contributed to John's state of mind.'

'When did you hear from John for the last time?'

She thought for a minute. 'I had a letter from him about this time last year. He sounded better. I think because he was in London, meeting someone who he thought would help him. He'd been moved or disturbed—I'm not sure which realy—by al the hoo-ha in the papers about the Unknown Warrior. He was more open, more reflective. I was surprised he'd got away though.'

'Was that alowed, generaly?'

'Rarely, I think. It must have meant he'd eased himself from George Chilvers' clutches. Dr Chilvers used to encourage patients to walk localy with family or friends who visited, as long as they were wel. We had gone out to walk along the river together on that first visit eighteen months ago. Nicholas was very little. It was lovely. George was away.'

Again, Laurence found this picture of normality comforting.

'But of course they were very careful at Holmwood and I can't think they would have countenanced a trip away unless it was crucial—a family funeral, perhaps

—and, I imagine, accompanied by a trusted family member. I suppose he simply picked his moment and left.'

'Do you know what he was doing in London at al?'

'No. I have a sense that the other person wasn't a close friend but I don't think that's because of anything specific. He thought it would be a turning point. But who knows what of?' She screwed up her eyes, thinking, then jumped to her feet. 'Wait. I've got some letters in the other room.'

She disappeared out of the door but was gone only a short time. She came back carrying a smal box, set it down on the table and began rifling through it. She took out a tied packet of letters, puled out one, then another, read a couple of lines and smiled. Laurence longed to be able to read some but knew he couldn't ask.

They were part of an intimacy she had struggled to maintain. She held one up and he saw the large, slightly childish script.

'He had pretty dreadful writing,' she said. Very quickly she picked one out. 'He went to a hotel, I remember now, though I've no idea if he actualy got there.

The Connaught. That's it. Hotel writing paper.' She looked down. 'He just says he's looking forward to a good tea. He's almost joly. But then I never heard from him again and he kiled himself a few weeks later.'

Laurence could hear in her voice her attempt to be matter-of-fact.

'He could have been seeing lawyers or something, I suppose?' he said, although Mary had said he'd remade his wil after the war and there was no indication he had revised it. He tried to picture the hotel. 'Where is it?' he said. The name rang a bel.

'Carlos Place, it says, Mayfair.'

He shook his head, trying to remember where Brabourne had been interviewed about Hart's execution.

'It's caled the Connaught now, after some useless princeling,' she said. 'But before the war it was the Coburg. Do you remember? They had to change it because it was German. Pretending al the time that the veins and arteries of our own dear royal family weren't running with German blood. I stil think of it as the Coburg, though.'

'The Coburg?' he said.

Eleanor was stil looking at the letters.

'The Coburg. Of course.' He almost laughed. 'John wrote down the name on a note in his room at Holmwood—Mary had it—and there I was dreaming up an international conspiracy.'

'You idiot,' she said, visibly amused.

'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 violet, 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.'

For a few seconds Chilvers looked genuinely surprised, but he recovered fast. 'Of course. I thought there was something fishy about you then. I'd guessed you might be a newspaper journalist but perhaps you're simply a habitual fantasist, Mr Bartram?"

'I represent the family of John Emmett and, to a secondary degree, Mrs Eleanor Bolitho.' Laurence ignored George Chilvers' raised eyebrow. 'It is possible I made a mistake in approaching your father in the way I did but my motives were to clear up some questions that remain over the circumstances of Captain Emmett's death. I'm sorry that I felt it was necessary to deceive him. It was not lack of respect but necessity. As it happens, I thought him a good man doing an important and difficult task. I don't want to have to tel him of my fears that a patient's belongings were misappropriated.'

Chilvers stil looked comfortable. 'Good he may be, indeed, a saint he may be, but a businessman he is not,' he replied smoothly. 'But actualy it's irrelevant. The thing is, my father's dying. He's not likely to see the summer. A large tumour. Quite untreatable in the long term. Wel, in the short term, to tel the truth. Once he dies I might just sel the whole place as a going concern, and go abroad. Or I might let it continue to bring me in a tidy income. Though some things wil have to change. I haven't decided, but either way you running to my father is hardly going to hurt me. It might hurt him, of course. Perhaps that would be satisfaction enough for you, having already led this "good man" down the garden path?'

When Laurence didn't reply, George Chilvers went on, 'The thing about my father is that, despite his strange passion for invisible ilnesses, he's a traditionalist at heart. Takes everybody's story at face value. Gives hours of his time, even now that he is a very sick man. Indulges the deluded, the weak, the malingering, the storytelers: he never discriminates. Has been known to reduce fees for long-term favourites. Al very noble but, in the end, this isn't an order of nursing nuns. And too much coddling makes it far too easy for a man to stay il.

'So, take the matter of suicide, which I am sure you intend to do sooner or later. Almost al the suicides connected with Holmwood have been patients who had been forced out into the considerably less tolerant world outside. It wasn't Holmwood they had a problem with, it was returning to their so-caled nearest and dearest.

Or they loved melodrama, as many of these types do, and simply miscalculated.'

Laurence remembered the description of the young man throwing himself head first over the banisters on to the flagged halway. It seemed al too carefuly calculated to him.

'But mostly they could see eviction from our little Eden looming and couldn't face it,' Chilvers went on. 'After al, they were men who had already proved themselves unable to face adversity in other spheres. I'd include your friend Captain Emmett in this. My father seemed to think he was turning a corner. He was certainly getting restive and becoming a damned nuisance, frankly.'

'He went to London,' Laurence interrupted.

'He went to London and caused us al a hel of a bother. We were responsible for him. Puling these stunts was the sort of selfish act Emmett specialised in. His suicide was al of a piece with this. My father was il in hospital in London. I had to deal with Emmett and keep Holmwood running.'

'What was Captain Emmett doing in London, do you think?'

'I have no idea and, frankly, I don't care. Picking up a tart and taking her to a hotel? Fornicating with another man's wife? His sort preyed on women. He even brought Mrs Bolitho to Holmwood, trying to pass her off as his sister while she slavered over him. He must have thought we were fools. Wel, my father may react like a fool through his own innocence, but I am no man's patsy. Then she had the impertinence to complain about our treatment.'

Laurence was determined to keep his temper. What he needed was information. He recognised nothing of John in Chilvers' view of him but he remembered Eleanor describing Vera Chilvers' crush on him.

'Treatment?'

'We kept him in the custody of his room. If he couldn't be trusted to respect our boundaries, then he needed to be restrained. It wasn't the first time. He was always chalenging our decisions.'

'Restrained?'

'Not a straitjacket, I'm afraid, if that's what you were hoping for. Locked in. Constantly supervised. He cut up about it, of course. For a period of time—a very short period of time—I had to sedate him with veronal. He could get quite violent when crossed.'

'You had the training to make such decisions?'

'I hardly feel I need to justify our regime to a self-confessed liar,' Chilvers retorted, and to Laurence's satisfaction he now appeared to be only just keeping his temper under control. 'Each patient has a broad range of medication and treatments written up by my father at admission, which covers al conceivable possible future requirements. The day-to-day treatment plans are a matter of discussion and we tend to pick and choose from what was prescribed in the patient's file. There can't be a doctor here every minute of the day.

'In this case, when my father returned to Holmwood he reversed the treatment decision. He likened Emmett's troublesomeness to pins and needles in a dead leg when circulation returns. My father's trade lends itself to metaphor. Unfortunately, and foolishly in my opinion, my father always had a soft spot for the man, but you only have to see what Emmett was capable of when he attacked our attendant outside the church. He may wel have been your friend, but he was violent, dangerous even.

Assault is what saw him admitted in the first place. You would have thought he would have had a better war.'

'You knew him in the war?' Laurence said, attempting to sound surprised. 'I hadn't realised. Were you in France?'

Chilvers flushed. He recovered almost immediately but Laurence knew he'd scored a hit. 'I knew of his war. It precipitated his ilness,' said Chilvers. 'Much to my regret I was unable to fight myself; I have a degree of scoliosis.' His hand curved towards his spine. 'One has to accept the limitations it imposes and move on.'

'It must be hard.'

'I fear I'm revealing a side of your friend that you didn't know?'

'I didn't actualy know him at al wel,' said Laurence. 'I know his sister.'

Something approaching amusement crept into Chilvers' voice but it made him if anything less attractive. 'Ah, yes. Emmett's sister. Or should I say "sisters"? I'm reminded of that little ditty: "The bible says to love my brother but I so good have grown,/ That I love other people's brothers better than my own." So are we discussing his real sister or the one who prefers other people's brothers?'

'If you mean Mrs Bolitho then, yes, I know both women. I count them as friends.' Laurence was stil trying to keep his voice under control. 'But at present it is Captain Emmett's possessions I am interested in.'

'Al returned to his family, such as they were.'

'Not al, I think. I believe you retained some letters.'

'And your belief rests on what facts?'

'Because Mrs Bolitho tels me you have some correspondence from Captain Emmett to her and possibly from her to him.'

'Wel, I hardly think Mrs Bolitho can set up her camp on the high ground. Both of you playing your charades, but I imagine you're aware she's an adulteress, as wel as an impostor. A woman ful of tales and accusations. I hope she hasn't wrapped you around her little finger, Mr Bartram. Are you a married man?'

'The letters?' said Laurence, crisply. 'They are legaly the property of the family.'

He wanted to protest that Eleanor had had no further physical relationship with John once she decided to marry Wiliam but sensed that Chilvers would be more gratified than rebuked by any discussion of Eleanor's private life.

'No letters, I can assure you,' Chilvers said. 'Why should I lie? Violet ink and lascivious thoughts are hardly my reading of choice. If there ever were any letters, I can assure you they must have been long destroyed.'

'If there were letters, they should have been put before the coroner after John's death.'

'Indeed? I do have some grasp of the law, including that of defamation. Perhaps you have forgotten, or didn't know, despite the richness of your information, that I am a solicitor?'

'Does the Law Society know of the wils you've drawn up for patients and the bequests profiting you or your father?'

Chilvers shook his head. 'Clutching at straws, I think, Mr Bartram. The few wils I made are al quite in order, I think you'l find. The legal position of lunatics is entirely clear. No wils were made when any testator was of unsound mind. But some legal assistance with al kinds of matters is part of our service to our unfortunate guests.'

'And your wife?'

'My wife? Mr Bartram, are you now going to insult my wife? Or are you simply going to continue to insult me?'

'You drafted her wil?'

'I certainly did. And it was witnessed. You are obviously aware she was, for a while, a patient of my father's: a delicate woman, Vera, but, as you can see, she is stil very much alive. Because she is my wife, and as we have no children, if she died intestate her property would come to me in any case. However, any wil I drafted initialy for her was made void by our marriage. I fear I may be missing some point here?'

'You were blackmailing Mrs Bolitho,' Laurence said, nettled that the conversation was not going as he intended.

'That is quite an offensive accusation to make against a professional man. I'l let it pass but I think it is time you went, Mr Bartram. Quite why I would want to blackmail a woman like that escapes me.'

As Chilvers turned away, Laurence said, 'You wanted to blackmail her firstly because you were anxious that your cruelties at Holmwood should not be given any publicity, particularly by an experienced nurse. Even the most indulgent father might think twice about leaving an enterprise that he had built up with care and kindness in the hands of a cruel, dishonest owner. Secondly, your wife's attachment to John Emmett, though unreciprocated except in terms of friendship, might have provided him with evidence of your shabby treatment of a woman you had a duty to protect. Thirdly, and crucialy, I believe you had a strong physical attraction to Mrs Bolitho, which you wished to consummate in any way you could. You were yourself a married man at the time. Mrs Bolitho might have needed coercion, even had she not found you repelent.'

He looked steadily at Chilvers, who stepped forward, clenching and unclenching his left hand as it hung by his side. Laurence was wiling him to lash out. It was twelve years since he had won his house cup at boxing, but he was leaner and perhaps fitter than the man opposite him. Chilvers may wel have made the same judgment, as he stepped back slightly.

'I am not going to stand for one more minute of this. You may have been bewitched by Mrs Bolitho and her bastard child, but I most certainly have not. You have no proof of the existence of any letters. Al this is conjecture. Fantasy. I might remind you that the first time I met you, it was you, not I, who were acting under false pretences. Kindly leave my house. If you return I shal cal the police.' He rang the smal bel on the table.

'I'm not sure you would actualy want the police here and I may wel visit them myself as Miss Emmett's representative, but I'm leaving anyway,' Laurence said, more calmly than he felt. 'Should you want to reconsider your statements, here is my card.' He laid one down on the table. 'Should you remember that, after al, you do have any of Captain Emmett's possessions, perhaps you would contact me?'

Chilvers picked up the card, looked at it briefly and threw it on to the coals.

Laurence had an overwhelming urge to punch Chilvers, regardless. His fingers curled into a fist as he measured up the precise spot on Chilvers' jaw where he would land it. Chilvers licked his lips and the corner of his eye twitched.

'I warn you to stay wel away from Mrs Bolitho,' Laurence said, taking a smal step forward. 'You may be right in thinking I could not make my accusations stick. You may wel have destroyed the letters, once they were no use to you as an implement to batter Mrs Bolitho into surrendering. You may not be a thief and a predator, but, I think, colectively these accusations might do you harm if brought to the attention of the right people. A fusilade. It's a military term. You won't know much about its effects. Wise men under such fire keep their heads down.'

Chilvers started to speak but Laurence wouldn't let him interrupt.

'John Emmett was unwel and unable to defend himself. Mrs Bolitho is al too able to defend herself, but vulnerable because of her circumstances. I, however, am neither unwel nor vulnerable. I have absolutely nothing to lose, whereas you, I think, do. I can assure you I shal do the very best I can to bring you down without a moment's hesitation if you cause Miss Emmett or Mrs Bolitho any further distress. I shal speak to your father, the police, the Law Society and my friends in the national newspapers.'

Laurence wondered briefly whether he could indeed presume upon his very new acquaintance with Tresham Brabourne.

And you may find that the reputation of Holmwood and, indeed, its history come under intense scrutiny. Maybe even enough to make your dying father reconsider his disposition of his property and save his patients from your attentions.'

Laurence reached the front door before the maid who was hovering uncertainly with his things. His last words had been pure bluff, a performance fired by adrenalin, and his heart was beating heavily and fast. As he took his hat and scarf from the girl, he was unable to resist looking back to see whether Chilvers was stil in view. The man had folowed him into the hal but now stood with his back to him, looking upwards. His spine, Laurence noticed with a smal satisfaction, seemed straight. At the top of the stairs he caught a flash of blue on the upper landing. It was Mrs Chilvers, he thought, moving out of sight before her husband could see her.

Chapter Thirty-one

As he strode down the drive he wasn't sure whether he had achieved anything, yet he felt invigorated. He was quite happy to walk the distance to the station in the fresh air. Having taken such an instant dislike to Chilvers the first time he'd met him, there was a sort of gratification in finding his first impressions borne out by everything Chilvers had said during this encounter. Laurence had accomplished nothing of substance, yet he felt pleased with the day. He suspected Chilvers was a man few people stood up to. His only worry was whether the man was capable of taking out his il temper on his wife. Laurence recaled Vera Chilvers' bruises. The thought of her husband with his hands round her neck was too imaginable, but how could she escape from him and would she want to?

He had clarified to his own satisfaction that there had been a letter or letters belonging to John; that Chilvers had indeed appropriated them; that he had discovered the nature of John and Eleanor's relationship as wel as Nicholas's parentage; and that, once the letters had failed to bring about the desired outcome with Eleanor Bolitho, he had probably destroyed them. Whether they gave any insight on John's state of mind would never now be known. Yet George Chilvers' very hostility made his depiction of John convincing. If John was restless, chalenging the staff, wanting to go to London, and had risked being imprisoned in his room, then he was no longer the withdrawn, silent man Mary had spoken of. Things had changed. Laurence was glad that old Dr Chilvers, at least, had seen something special in John, that he had moderated his harsh treatment and had perceived an improvement. Al this would be happily received by Mary.

Yet his triumph began to fade as he realised that any doubts as to John's death being suicide were borne out by this new account of his last weeks. George Chilvers had made no effort to hide his dislike of John. Was that dislike sufficient for him to have wished him dead? Mary had said that Chilvers had driven around in his car looking for John after he got away. Was it possible that, far from intending to take him back to Holmwood, he had set out to remove him permanently? Could Chilvers have taken a gun from a previous patient?

By the time the train came, the adrenalin had subsided. He dozed, off and on, much of the way back to London. Feeling more or less revived when the train drew in, he decided on the spur of the moment to take a diversion past the Daily Chronicle's offices. He knew it was a gamble. It was far too late to find Brabourne there but the paper itself was presumably open at night and it would be worth the cab fare to pick up the cuttings the journalist had promised. Brabourne had been as good as his word and the doorman handed him a plump brown envelope. Opening the flap, Laurence saw it contained several folded pages of newsprint. He tucked it into the inside pocket of his coat.

His flat was cold when he got in and the larder was distinctly bare, but he prepared a plate of cold mutton, some pickles and bread. He picked up a solitary pear, trying not to notice how shriveled it looked. Just as he was settling back in his chair to eat it, he heard a knocking downstairs. He listened again. He so rarely had a visitor that he had never bothered to mend the broken bel pul. The knocking grew more insistent. He opened his door and went down the stairs to the street door. It was even less likely that any visitor would be for his downstairs neighbour. On the doorstep stood Charles. Wordlessly, he folowed Laurence back up to his flat.

'Sorry, old chap. You did say you wanted to see me. Were you in the middle of dinner?' He looked over Laurence's shoulder at his plate. Laurence pushed the half-eaten pear deep into his pocket.

'Come in. It's not very warm, I'm afraid.'

'Hel's bels, man. Are you in training for an Antarctic expedition? No, I'l keep my coat on, thank you.'

Laurence poured out two tumblers of whisky as Charles riddled the grate and shoveled the coal over bals of screwed-up newspaper in the fireplace. He bent over with his lighter.

'Shan't stay long,' Charles said as he got to his feet again. 'But I wanted to tel you what I've been up to. Had to hurry round. Great news. Significant news, that is. You asked me to find out about Liley. Lieutenant Ralph Liley, principal author of Edmund Hart's misfortunes. It wasn't hard to find out that he made it through the war. He left the army, hale and hearty, in 1918, and went back to his parents. Only child. His mother was a Berridge—one of the Shropshire Berridges, so plenty of money coming young Liley's way. Father has a smal estate and officialy Liley returned to manage it. A keen sportsman, our boy, who became youngest ever master of foxhounds of the local hunt. In fact, along with shooting and fishing, that's how he mostly passed his time.'

Laurence spotted the past tense and felt a flicker of anticipation.

'Until?'

'Laurence, you bad man. You're already wishing harm to come to young Liley. Wel, you won't have to wait long. I found he was in the Ox and Bucks. So I started asking around and hit gold with my second cousin, Bim.'

Laurence marveled, not for the first time, at the names of individuals in Charles's circle, names that rarely indicated their sex.

'Bim's wife, Didi, is quite a horsewoman. Marvelous seat, side-saddle. Formidable in top hat and veil. And she hunts with the Old Berks. As does—or did—

their late lamented master, Ralph Liley. Didi was terrificaly happy to find someone who didn't already know the story.'

Laurence knew the hunt from his school days.

'The Old Berks have their stables at Faringdon. The Liley estate is near by; it stretches along the Vale of the White Horse. In fact, do you remember when we used to take picnics out from school and go to Dragon Hil?'

Laurence nodded, memories suddenly flooding in. Legend had it that the hil and guly were where St George had finaly slain the dragon and no grass had grown there since the dragon's blood soaked into the earth. When he was thirteen he had believed this to be fact. Even when he knew it wasn't, the place was stil atmospheric.

'But what's the connection?' he said.

'No connection with Dragon Hil, per se, except that the Lileys lived close by. But also near by, as I'm sure you've realised, is the spot where John Emmett died.' Charles drank his whisky very slowly. Laurence knew he was savouring the moment to come.

'Faringdon Foly.' Laurence said.

'And, indeed, near the smal station at Chalow where, early last spring, Ralph Liley fel to his gruesome death under the London-bound train.'

'Good Lord.'

'Of course you're wondering: did he fal, jump or was he pushed?'

'I suppose so. Which, then?'

'Rather as with Tucker, the official verdict was that it was an accident. They said he fel when somewhat under the influence. He went up most Wednesdays, quite late, to dine with friends in London. It was getting dark. He'd been hunting and had had a stirrup cup or two. There was certainly no hint of suicide. Far too much self-regard, young Liley, and life was going wel for him. He'd just got engaged to the younger daughter of Lord Fitzhardinge, though Didi implied he had rather an eye for women. Plural.'

'But?'

'But there were only four witnesses of any kind. Six, if you count the driver and fireman, though the engine was past the spot by the time Liley went under its wheels. Train almost empty and nobody on that side of that carriage. On the station: a pregnant woman and her mother. Neither woman actualy saw him fal and the one who was with child passed out. The porter was inside and the elderly stationmaster was at the near end of the platform, looking at the engine, not at the people waiting to board, when Liley tumbled on to the line.'

'That's three,' said Laurence.

'Yes. But there's the rub. Liley was talking to another chap just before the accident. That same man jumped down to help the mortaly injured Liley after he fel.

He wasn't yet dead but was not a pretty sight. The driver and fireman stepped down too and the stationmaster ran off to cal for a doctor, though there wasn't much a medic could do with a man who'd gone under a train. By the time they returned, Liley was dead. The doctor had his work cut out, dealing with the pregnant woman and the distressed driver. The stationmaster was trying to keep the few passengers on the train and eventualy the local bobby arrived. By then the other man was nowhere to be seen.

'I actualy drove over on my way back from Bim's to London and had a word with the stationmaster. Both he and the two women had been able to give only the vaguest of descriptions of this other man, and although the stationmaster had a faint feeling he'd seen him travel from there before, he was utterly unable to add to the basic description they al put forward. You'd probably be able to provide it yourself by now: a man in a British Warm and hat. A gentleman, the stationmaster thought.

A soldier, the women had thought. The fireman saw that someone was crouched over, dealing with Liley, but he couldn't describe him at al. He thought it might be the young porter. Nobody got a clear look at his face. The stationmaster thought he was middle-aged, the women that he was quite old.'

'So not an octogenarian grandmother, at least, then?'

'Quite honestly, Laurence, it could wel have been a giraffe for al the powers of observation of those on the platform. The stationmaster said the mystery man hadn't bought a ticket. Not that day, anyway, but he could have had one already.'

'Then Liley wasn't shot in the face?'

'No, but his legs were cut off by the train.'

'So,' Laurence summed up, finding himself indifferent to Liley's horrible end, 'if we assume that Liley was no accident, and that the same man was involved in Liley's death as with the others, which is a bit of a leap but not a huge one, then it seems he manages to avoid attention because he has no particular distinguishing features and he dresses in clothes worn by half the men in England.'

'It has the feel of your man. Your unknown man. Although the police would have liked to speak to him, of course, they believed it was just the typical modesty of a decent Englishman, slipping away to avoid thanks, having done al he could. But this is a smal station. Not many people use it. Liley did, regularly, but did the unknown man know this? And if he did, how did he know it? It could be that he lives near by.'

'And it could, just possibly, be why John ended up where he did.' Laurence heard the excitement in his own voice. 'But this man, he couldn't have used the station regularly or the stationmaster would have recognised him.'

'He did recognise him, of course,' said Charles, 'if only slightly. Perhaps he's got a motorcar.'

Laurence thought for a minute. 'The murder of Jim Byers seems likely to have been committed by a man with a car. No other way, realy. That bit of Devon's pretty isolated. He wouldn't have needed one for Mulins or Tucker. I think we do have to include those two on our list.'

Laurence began to calculate the distance from Fairford to Chalow: fifteen miles or so, he guessed. George Chilvers had a car. Could the fact that the presumed murderer had always been seen in a military greatcoat be a clever ruse? Unlike most men of his age, Chilvers had never been in the forces. However, in al other ways Chilvers seemed an unlikely kiler. He was too fastidious and although a buly and a thief, he didn't seem like a man with the ruthlessness to carry out so many murders and, with some regret, Laurence had to accept that he had no conceivable link with any of the other dead men.

'I'm too tired to think al this through,' he said finaly. 'But I don't think there's much doubt that we're looking at murder now. Probably four murders, maybe more. I'm going to go back and talk to Mrs Lovel. She must know more than she's letting on. To start with, I wondered whether Hart could be her son, but it doesn't fit. Al the same, I do think her son's story may be mixed up with the execution and its aftermath. I might get a picture out of her on some pretext, though I can't think of any now, and she won't be letting any photographs far out of her sight, I imagine.'

Charles nodded, holding his glass with both hands. 'You could say you thought you might have known him, I suppose?'

It was obvious, yet Laurence had more of a problem with the idea of lying to Gwen Lovel than to the others he had deliberately misled. He didn't answer.

'You're thinking, what if the old girl is excited at being able to exchange recolections of her boy?' said Charles.

'Yes, I suppose I am. But also we aren't even absolutely certain he was ever in the army. The records don't show it.'

'Difficult one. Perhaps Lovel lied to his mama? Ran away to avoid being caled up? Perhaps she lied to you? Not impossible. If you want me to come along to see Mrs Lovel, I wil.' He looked at Laurence expectantly.

Although tempted for a moment, Laurence sensed he would get more out of Mrs Lovel if he were alone. Force of numbers might cause her to be suspicious and he thought Charles's jocular confidence might grate on her. Nevertheless, if her son had not been a soldier and she knew it, then she had lied persuasively about receiving the telegram.

Just as Charles put his glass down and stood up, Laurence said, 'Why do you think Somers, if it was him, took Emmett to the Connaught instead of his club?

It's a bit furtive.'

'The Connaught is hardly a Limehouse opium den. And skulking about is not realy in his character, I'd say,' Charles replied.

'You know Limehouse wel, then?' Laurence asked, keeping his face expressionless.

'Of course.' Charles was struggling into one arm of his coat. 'Opium dens—just the sort of place the realy depraved murderer plots his crimes. Ask Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Or there's Fu Manchu—you don't have to have smoked an opium pipe to know where to find trouble. To get inside the mind of a drug fiend in his lair, you just need to read a few books. After al, you haven't been to the Connaught either but you know how it'l be in there. Palms. Tea. Cocktails. A grand piano.

And plenty of people who don't know one another. That's the key to anonymity.' He finaly heaved his coat over his shoulders. Actualy a chap I knew from Birmingham days—Arthur Ward—his father was our works foreman—he wrote the Fu Manchu stories.'

'I could have sworn the author was—'

'Rohmer. Sax Rohmer. German name, but not his real one. "Arthur Ward" carried too much of the smel of the tannery for tales of the Orient. Taking a German pseudonym was an odd sort of choice, but there we are. Damn good yarns.'

Chapter Thirty-two

For a while Laurence had considered it just possible that the tensions between John and Sergeant Tucker had become lethal. Now that he knew that so many of those involved were dead, the situation seemed unreal, something out of Charles's detective novels. Leonard Byers' rueful comment about a curse was close to the truth but there was nothing supernatural about these deaths. Neither John nor Tucker could have kiled al three men: Liley, Jim Byers and Mulins, because both were by then dead themselves. So who else knew them al and could have done?

He realised now that what they ought to be looking for was not a message but a motive. A motive should lead him to the man to whom this violence made sense. A sense driven by hatred or greed or jealousy, perhaps, or even a sort of biblical retribution, but a sense that Laurence currently couldn't begin to grasp. If the motive was to remove everyone connected with the firing squad, then he needed, urgently, to find out more about young Hart himself.

Yet not everyone connected with the execution was dead. With a suddenness that made his hair stand on end, he realised how stupid he had been. John had died at the end of December. Tucker had died the same winter, Liley in April, Byers in early summer. Mulins had been murdered in August. Whoever was carrying out these kilings had not necessarily stopped. The arrangements just took time. The kiler needed to track down his quarry, to undertake his mission and then return to normal life without arousing suspicion. It was not necessarily over.

Who else might be on the list? Was the lost legatee of John's wil, the Frenchman, Meurice, already one of the victims or could he have been the assailant al along? More than ever, he was aware that his enquiries had always been patchy.

What about Leonard Byers? Was he in any danger now? Laurence also had an increasing sense of unease about the safety of Tresham Brabourne, even faintly considering whether he might be at risk himself. Had he even met the murderer already as he lumbered around with his questions?

Thinking about Brabourne, it occurred to him that Charles's unexpected visit had diverted him from looking at the bundle of cuttings he'd picked up at the Chronicle. He laid them out on his table. There were articles on parliamentary debates, a few letters, mostly from The Times rather than the Chronicle. There was a profile of Colonel Lambert Ward and blurry photographs accompanied an older article on General Somers when he was fighting in Africa. There was a vast front-page headline from Horatio Bottomley's John Bull: TRAGEDY OF A BOY OFFICER. The only bit of the page not covered by the headline was an advertisement for Excelda handkerchiefs.

He turned over and skimmed through the article. It concerned the death of one of the other two officers executed. The journalist was in ful flow but the case against the hapless lieutenant of the Naval Reserve seemed as weak as the one against Hart. What surprised him was that the piece had been published in March 1918, before the war had even ended. He imagined the fury it must have caused in the War Office.

He read through the letters. Despite a few enraged denunciations, there was nothing here that hinted at future violence. Laurence noticed that several of the letters were from the fathers of sons who had been kiled while obeying orders and they didn't want their boys buried next to a coward. While he could understand their point of view, he didn't think their sons would agree, were they to rise from their ranks of stone in France. What had John wanted to add to al this?

Brabourne, who had known John Emmett as a felow officer, was the one person who seemed to accept al along that John might wel have kiled himself. He was an inteligent observer and had seen John at his worst. Laurence had liked Brabourne—he was a man facing forward, he thought, and for that reason he had an energy that Laurence could only recently detect in any measure in himself. He thought of Brabourne dressed for the outdoors in his bitterly cold office with its il-fitting window, or striding down Fleet Street at one with his world, but otherwise apparently immune to his surroundings.

Something had rung a bel when he'd seen him and it burst upon him suddenly what it was. The scarf Brabourne was wearing was, he was almost certain, a school sporting colours scarf, but he was equaly certain it was the same colours as the one John had with him at his death. The one that had been returned to the Emmetts, not his own school scarf, but another man's.

Another man's school. It meant nothing: hundreds of boys had joined up from schools like Eton and Harrow, Rugby and Welington—Brabourne's school—

and, indeed, like John, Charles and Laurence himself, from Marlborough. Brabourne too had commented on this. No doubt this was how it had always been: he had read the memorials to the battle dead of the Crimean and Boer Wars during interminable sermons in the colege chapel. As a schoolboy he would try to make anagrams of their names to pass the time. But each of these previous conflicts accounted for only a handful of old boys. The memorial boards erected now would list tens of names for every house in the school. And there was Brabourne—not, as Byers had predicted, dead in the mud, a casualty of his own sense of invincibility, nor reduced to gold letters on a plaque to create wonder in generations of boys to come, but moving on, away from the war. One day he would be an old man, with no doubt a fine career behind him, while those three or four years in uniform would be no more than one brief, if distressing, episode in a life rich in adventures, chalenges, sorrows and joys. It wouldn't be the first and the last thing he thought of every day. Laurence doubted it was, even now. It would be history. Brabourne would tel his grandsons about it.

He realised that it was quite possible that Brabourne had lent John a spare scarf, though it was unusual to have two, and in peacetime no public schoolboy would wear the colours of another school. War, however, was a colder, more pragmatic way of life. It was even easier to imagine that Brabourne would have given his own scarf to Edmund Hart. Laurence remembered Brabourne commenting on the cold in the room where they had imprisoned the condemned man as they waited to hear his fate.

He reflected just how many young officers had known one another. He was always amused by Charles's social networks but they formed the web that both trapped and supported people like him; people like himself, too, Laurence supposed. It was that society that men like Edmund Hart were excluded from. Even as the war progressed and more officers had been promoted from the ranks, there was a gulf between the traditional officer class and those on whom war had bestowed a grudging commission. If Edmund had been to Eton or Marlborough or Harrow, he might wel not have died for his offence. It was a chiling thought.

When he picked up the envelope to replace al the cuttings, he could feel something stil inside. He had missed a rough note from Tresham Brabourne, folded round a photograph. It was of a very young, light-haired man, with a blanket round his shoulders; he was sitting at a table with what appeared to be a plate of bread and cheese. The background was very indistinct but, although the photograph was quite dark, the man's fatigue was obvious. He looked solemnly at the camera. Along the top of the scrap of paper Brabourne had scrawled in pencil, 'Vis Tucker's death. Police records state it was in late February.' Laurence registered that it let John off the hook for Tucker's murder and that he owed Brabourne a drink. Then al other thoughts drained away as he read the note that had enclosed the photograph. Brabourne had written:

I checked again if I had another photograph of the firing squad. The one you have is definitely the only one and was previously in my possession (not that I want it back). I had absolutely forgotten I also had this picture. It's Edmund Hart on the night I told you about: bitter cold, poetry, a mistaken, though shared, belief that his sentence would be commuted, and al the rest. I took this at his request; he wanted to reassure his ma. A day later he was shot. The film hadn't even been developed. I could hardly give it to the padre to send home with his effects—and yet it seemed wrong to destroy it. You might find that it makes the whole affair more real to have a likeness of a man much more sinned against than sinning.

Laurence could not take his eyes off the picture in his hand. Hart looked about seventeen. His hair was tousled, his eyes wide. Laurence immediately grasped that his task had become easier. Here was a picture he could show to people. Somebody out there who might not have known his name might yet recognise his face.

He would show the Bolithos, Mrs Lovel, even Charles. Either of the Bolithos might have come across him in France. Mrs Lovel had said her son had brought home a friend or two and it was possible this man was one of them. Although Charles was a remote chance, he seemed to know so many more people in the army than one war would normaly make possible. Laurence would take it to Holmwood and try Dr Chilvers; after al, Brabourne had said Hart had been treated for shel-shock in England. He might just have been at Holmwood despite Chilvers' assurance that he'd never treated a Hart. Could it have been under an assumed name? Some family shame protected?

He hadn't expected to hear from Mary with any speed. Yet on the Friday he received a letter by the afternoon post, postmarked Sussex, saying that she would be in London on the Tuesday and why didn't they catch up. He felt a familiar pang of jealousy at her continued journeys to see an unknown friend and was irked by her casual offer to fit him in with her existing engagements in London, folowed by an equaly familiar irritation with himself.

But a second letter soon took al his attention. The envelope was larger with round, neat writing. Inside were two sheets of writing paper. It was, to his astonishment, from Vera Chilvers.

Dear Mr Bartram,

I couldn't help but overhear you talking with my husband yesterday and afterwards when George had gone out I found your card in the grate. Please don't tel him I have written to you or he would be very angry with me and the post-boy for taking my letter.

You were right, he did take some of Captain Emmett's things. There was a watch on a chain and the letters I think you were looking for. I hadn't realised why he took the letters. I thought it might be that John was complaining about how my husband treated him and it might have got him (George, I mean) into trouble. George can be quite unkind.

He hated John because John was kind to me. John Emmett was my only friend, when he came it was the best time in my life. I miss him al the time. He just talked to me and he gave me a poem he'd written in the war but George tore it up. He gave the pieces back to John. I think George has burned al the letters a while back and now the watch is gone from its usual place so you must have scared him. He was in a furious mood after you had gone.

Before the letters disappeared, they were in his desk. It was the day John went missing and there was such a brouhaha and George was in and out, but he had left these on the top when he was suddenly caled away. I only had time to read the one which seemed to have been by John because he had that odd writing. Mostly they were to him from a woman caled Ely.

I didn't dare take any. They had gone by the evening. I never saw any of them again.

John didn't complain about his treatment in that letter. In fact he said after he'd been up to London he'd got a lot of things off his chest. He'd been in touch with a man he needed to speak to and also a woman he'd done a great wrong to, he said. He talked about hoping his son would never see the things John had seen. John never told me that he had a little boy or even that he'd been married and I was sad that he hadn't. I didn't know he loved someone caled Ely. I would have kept his secrets whatever George did. I hope you wil tel his little boy that his father was a very special person.

I had nothing else left of John since George tore up my poem so I hope you wil not think wrong of me that I read them.

I just wanted to have him for a bit. But don't let George know.

Yours sincerely,

Vera Elizabeth Chilvers

As he read her rather childlike letter, Laurence felt overwhelmingly sorry for Vera whose life, he thought, must be hel. He wished he could report the theft of the watch, which Mary had said right at the start was missing, though it would probably simply make Vera's life worse. He had been unable to question her as he'd wished, yet she had stil come up with crucial new information.

Vera implied that John had met a woman while he was in London. Had this been Eleanor? Was John's inability to marry her when she was pregnant this 'great wrong'? He didn't think Eleanor saw it that way. It could have been Gwen Lovel. But then he stopped himself; John's world was infinitely larger than the fragment he had been exploring. There could have been many women wronged, though he smiled to think of John as a voracious seducer.

Nevertheless, the train of thought this opened up, no matter how fantastic, raised one other question. Was there any possibility, however unlikely, that the kiler, if there was one, could have been a woman? Al the accounts of the deaths came down to a faceless figure in a heavy coat. Eleanor, as fearless as any man, seemed quite capable of subterfuge and, given her experience in the war, was almost certainly familiar with guns. Gwen Lovel, who had once been on the stage, was tal and wel built with a low voice. He tried to imagine either woman in a greatcoat and hat with their hair up, and visualise whether they could possibly have masqueraded behind the anonymously familiar outfit. It was not impossible. What might drive them to it? The answer was the same for both of them: to protect their sons. But the image that returned to his mind's eye was of Hart, friendless and alone as he went to his death.

Chapter Thirty-three

The first person he showed the photograph to was Mary, whom he had arranged to meet in the Lyons teashop in Piccadily in the early afternoon. He thought it would be very hard for her to see a picture of the man her brother had been ordered to shoot. He had found it hard himself, gazing on that boyish face while it stil held a little hope. When it came to it, he held back despite Charles's admonition not to treat her as a child.

From the teashop they took a cab as rain was faling heavily. The driver insisted on dropping them at the end of Lamb's Conduit Street. They half walked, half ran down the street, trying to avoid the deepest puddles, and when they reached his flat they were cold to the bone. Mary had a bag with her and he hoped that meant she intended to stay.

He lit the fire and brought her a towel. Her hair fel in dark curls about her face and the tip of her nose was as pink as her cheeks but her eyes were bright and she looked amused. He hung her coat over a chair near the fire. When he came out of the kitchen she was sitting on a hard chair with her back half to him, roling down a woolen stocking. She looked up.

'I hope you don't mind,'she said, easing it over her foot and wriggling her toes before hanging the sodden stocking over the arms of the chair seat next to her coat. Her calf was slim and white.

He sat down on the floor. She rubbed her leg with the towel, then reached up under her skirt and undid the other stocking. Her hair tumbled forward. Laurence was transfixed by the curve of her nape and the taut wool of her cardigan across her back. Her hands smoothed the stocking down over her knee. She sat up abruptly and he thought she had caught the intensity of his gaze before he looked away.

'I like being up here in your eyrie,' she said, rubbing her hair briskly. 'It's simple and it's cosy by night and the light pours in during the day. If you were reduced to a couple of trunks—like poor John—you'd be al nicely bound books and sheet music from Chopin to 'Roses of Picardy'—yes, you have, Laurie,' she said, as he shook his head, 'I saw it—and some impressively obscure pamphlets on churches plus those heavenly watercolours of Arabia'—she pointed to the far wal—'a good Persian carpet, worn but serviceable, French linen and the basic ingredients for a gin sling. What a cultured man he must have been, they'd say. How eclectic. Whereas I'd be al party frocks from before the war and too many hats and unsuitable novels and solidified paint brushes I forgot to clean and ticket stubs for Oh! Oh! Delphine and so on. Hmm, they'd think. What a flibbertigibbet.'

He felt his heart lurch as she tugged at the knots in her hair. She had regained some of the spirit he remembered from years ago, and with her hair loose, she looked young and vulnerable.

'You've never showed me any of your paintings,' he said.

'Ah, the man of culture speaks. You don't want to see my hats, I notice. But I can do better than paintings. I'l draw you. You've got a handsome face—good bones. I'd enjoy it. I like doing people I know wel, whose layers can be explored.'

'It sounds a bit forensic.'

'Oh it is. You'l be squirming under my al-seeing eye.'

She puled her bag towards her and put away her comb, then took out a wooly scarf. For a second he was puzzled, until she said, 'It's the one John had. I thought you might be able to find who owned it? From the number,' she added eagerly.

He took it. 'I can try.' Of course he could. Brabourne might be able to tel, he thought. But where did it get them?

He had hesitated to show her the photograph, not wanting to break into her happy mood, but as she drank her tea he finaly passed over the picture.

'I've never seen him,' she said, quietly, without him having to explain who it was. 'He doesn't look old enough to be caled up, let alone shot.' She shook her head slowly. 'Poor him. Poor John. It's not the way we were told things were.' She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, like a smal child. 'They're past caring now, I suppose, but for every one of them there's a family who are destroyed too. And how could you bear it if your son hadn't been kiled by a German but in cold blood by his own side? You'd have a lifetime of nightmares, I would have thought.'

Laurence nodded and took back the photograph. 'I suspect nightmares were what broke John,' he said.

'Do you know anything about his parents?' Mary looked back at the photograph in his hand. 'Lieutenant Hart's? Perhaps he had brothers? Or a sister?'

'It's a good question. We know the area he came from but it's quite hard to find out. Even families often weren't told for ages.'

It sounded feeble, even to him. He urgently needed to find Edmund Hart's family. Once he'd shown the picture around, he would focus on that single task.

Nevertheless he felt uneasy. What right had he to intrude on grief or shame or anger? Even if the parents were alive, what if they were trying to hide the truth from neighbours or friends and he blundered in? He recognised that it was this that had previously deterred him from trying harder.

'There are lots of things no one can ever know,' she said. 'I'm only getting to accept that now. John was always so self-contained, the more so when he went away to school. He was probably fond enough of us al but, except for my father, he never let us in. John dying was almost a part of that: not leaving a note, not letting us even try to understand.' There was a trace of bitterness in her voice. 'You probably know more about John now than any of us ever did.'

'I'm sure that's not...'

'Oh, not from want of trying, just because John didn't want to be known. Not in life. Not in death. Probably my father understood him, though even he didn't always. Take his engagement. He wrote back to my father a few times when he was traveling and then the next thing we hear is that he has got engaged to a German girl. We didn't even know about her and there was already a lot of bad feeling against Germans. So my parents either kept it quiet, as if they were ashamed of it, or found themselves defending someone they'd never met. Then somebody told my mother that John's fiancée was in England, had visited him, yet he had never brought her home. It felt like a rejection. And by the time we knew, he'd left Oxford without a degree and they were both back in Germany, staying with her parents.

'And while he was away things had got realy difficult at home. It was al to do with money. My grandfather—my mother's father—died when John was abroad with Minna's family and left John quite a large bequest. I think neither my mother nor my father had realised none of it would come to them. John hadn't expected it either, of course. He hardly knew him. My grandfather was born a working man but had become rich in later life from buying and seling metals. But neither side approved of my parents' marriage, my father's family being higher class than my mother's. Ironicaly my father was much poorer than my grandfather became. We seldom saw either grandfather; there'd been some faling-out when we were young. But stil, my grandfather must have liked the idea of a grandson. What with my parents and Minna, and my grandfather and John, we seem to be a family where the most powerful relationships exist only at a distance.'

'Given I didn't have a proper home myself, I would never have noticed,' he said. 'I thought it was just a bit...' He paused to think of a word that wouldn't hurt her.

'Bohemian. You thought we were charmingly bohemian, from the uncut grass to our apparent imperviousness to cold, the leaking roof, the lack of staff for a biggish house, our old-fashioned dress sense and the strange potato, windfal and scrag-end aspect of our diet? No, we simply had no money.'

Laurence didn't reply. What she said was more or less true. The intermittent metalic echo of rainwater, dripping into three or four zinc bowls in the conservatory, and the women being swathed in Indian shawls on chily summer evenings had had no significance to him then. He had liked the silent long-case clock, minus its hands. He had thought it al rather romantic. A smal part of him was disappointed when Louise didn't seem to want that sort of life.

'...and of course John was a long way away,' Mary was saying, 'but he did have money after grandfather's death. I think he was just caught up in Germany and Minna and so forth. But my father, though kind in every way, was so hopeless, and in the end had to ask John for help when creditors threatened to overwhelm us. And John didn't reply. Of course, he may never even have got the letter. But, urged on by my mother who was realy upset, my father wrote him a second, very hard letter.

Although John paid off their debts then, for a while there was a kind of a rift. My father was humiliated and who knows what John felt? He'd always looked up to my father, was almost oblivious to his weaknesses, and suddenly there he was, begging, and my mother resentful that they should have to. My father was walking the dog one evening soon afterwards and he didn't come back. He'd had a heart attack. They found him dead in a field the next day. The dog had stayed with the body. John had never seen him again to make up. After that the war began.'

'I'm sorry. I didn't know.' He paused. 'I would never have guessed John would be someone who'd be queuing to volunteer. He never seemed the sort.'

'Not a fighter, you mean.' She smiled. 'Or not a patriot?'

'Not taken in by politicians. Certainly not the sort who might have thought war was an adventure. Particularly as he had German friends, had been going to marry a German girl.'

'I suppose,' Mary said, obviously stil thinking aloud, 'that he might have reached a point in his life when he wasn't sure which way to go. His pieces of writing from Germany weren't seling any more. His relationship with Minna ended when hostilities became inevitable. War had come and, having been in Germany, he'd probably got a better view of what it was likely to mean for us. Because he'd traveled, his German was pretty wel flawless—he was an internationalist in lots of ways—

so maybe that made him try to pre-empt the inevitable? He hadn't just hidden in Minna's pro-British circle; he'd written in the papers about the clamour of the Prussian warmongers. I don't think he ever thought it was just going to be a short thing. But he never explained directly.' She looked puzzled and he guessed it was the first time she'd ever considered John's early volunteering. 'I hope it wasn't because he didn't care what happened to him.'

'People admired the first men to go,' he said.

'Yes,' she said eagerly. 'We were proud you know, in an unthinking way. But now, looking back ... You know, even though my father loved it, John would never go shooting. He didn't like kiling things. Not even wasps.'

Her eyes flicked back to the photograph. For a moment she looked distressed, then went on, 'If my father had lived he would have been fearfuly proud. He always said he'd wanted to join the army himself when he was young, but his heart wasn't good from a fever he'd had as a boy. The only books he read were always about battles and heroes. Ancient Greece, Agincourt, Waterloo and the most dreadful memoirs by stuffy old generals.'

The silences that fel between them now were companionable, Laurence thought, not the awkward breakdowns in conversation or head-on colisions when both had talked at once when they were trying to get to know each other. Now silence seemed more of a measure of closeness than speech.

Eventualy he said, 'So that's where the bequests came from? John was wealthy?'

'Fairly. He supported my mother after my father died. And when John died himself he left my mother provided for and left me enough to ensure I could be reasonably independent. If I didn't have commitments here, I'd go to Italy and study in Florence. Art. Italian. I'd always hoped to do that before the war but it wasn't possible.' She seemed to rush past this reflection as if it pained her. 'And now I'm not free to go.'

He was surprised by the degree of her loyalty to her mother.

'I don't know why John left money to Mrs Lovel, but I'm glad he remembered Wiliam Bolitho,' she said.

'I imagine he liked him, and Eleanor Bolitho befriended him when she was his nurse. Also, he probably wanted to help someone who had ended up in poor shape.'

He stil didn't tel Mary that Eleanor had seen John at Holmwood and had passed herself off as his sister. She might even have been the last visitor he saw before he died. Nor did he mention Nicholas. He felt uncomfortable lying by default but he had made a promise.

'That must have made a difference to them,' said Mary. 'I mean, it must have given them hope. Especialy for Wiliam Bolitho, given he was unlikely to work again. They at least had something to live for. That little boy.'

Laurence looked down and Mary took it for distress.

'Oh my God, Laurence, I'm so sorry. I forgot. I mean, it's awful that I forgot.'

'It's al right. I forget myself sometimes. It seems a long time ago. But I just can't imagine it. It's not real. I can hardly remember what Louise's face looked like and I never even saw the baby.'

'Your son.'

'I wish I had,' he heard himself saying without acknowledging her. 'I wish I knew what he looked like. Though he would have looked like al babies, of course.

Smal. Round. Cross.' He attempted a laugh.

'Did he have a name?

'Christopher Joseph Laurence. Christopher after my father and Joseph after hers. We were going to cal him Kit. For short.'

He stopped, the brevity of everything concerned with his unknown son suddenly overwhelming him.

He took a couple of deep breaths. 'He did al right at first. Louise was virtualy unconscious by the time he was delivered. She had a massive haemorrhage, though she did see him, or so her mother likes to believe. He just succumbed. No wil to live. A big baby,' he added. 'No real reason for him to die. Not enough oxygen, perhaps, they thought.'

'Oh Laurie,' said Mary, moving to sit on the floor next to him and rubbing his hand. 'You must have been so sad. To lose them both. You must have loved your wife very much.'

'That's the realy awful bit of it. I'm not sure I ever did. Not enough. I married her because I was lonely. That wasn't what I thought at the time but looking back I think that's why. I didn't have a family so I thought I could share hers. She was utterly without malice but she was just a girl, unformed. I couldn't talk to her.' He stopped. 'And she didn't like me, not as a husband. Not in a physical way. She liked me as a friend, as someone to be beside her, to sit in a nice house, to tease her and admire her. But me as a man she found very difficult. She was young. She knew nothing at al realy about the realities of love or marriage. I think part of her couldn't believe I could want to do something so horrible to her. I didn't have time to get to know her before she was pregnant. Then she lost the baby and was devastated. Al she wanted was another baby. When she knew she was pregnant again, that made her happy. Totaly, utterly happy.'

He wondered whether he was entering territory that was far too personal to discuss with a woman he had not known long, however intensely he had felt a connection, but he kept on talking. Mary looked interested but not shocked at his openness.

'Once she was pregnant she didn't want me to share a room with her. Of course she was terrified about losing this baby too but it was more than that. I think it al revolted her. Al the same, I hated myself for being dissatisfied with her, and yet wanting the comfort of her so much. And meanwhile the war had come.

'When I came back on leave the gulf between us was even greater. Al she talked about was the baby or if she discussed the war it was simply how we were winning every battle. She wouldn't hear anything that contradicted that. She wouldn't see what was right in front of her eyes. A couple of times I read reports to her from The Times: al highly watered-down versions of what I'd been part of, but she actualy put her hands over her ears.'

'Perhaps she was frightened to bring a baby into a world where victory wasn't a certainty?'

Mary stood up as she spoke and he thought she was going into the kitchen. For a second he thought his frankness had disappointed her or even repeled her.

However, she leaned over to touch the side of his face. When he didn't pul back she put out her other hand and raised his face to look at her. Then, astonishingly, she bent down and kissed him gently on the lips. 'I'm so sorry,' she whispered.

He looked back at her and her gaze didn't waver. She walked on into the tiny sculery and ran herself a glass of water. He loved watching her take his rooms for granted.

'It was the war,' she said as she came back through the door, 'and it was like nothing else. It complicated things. Not just for soldiers.'

He sensed she was pondering whether to continue.

'I wasn't honest with you,' she said finaly. 'Sins of omission and al that.'

His heart sank. He wasn't sure whether, after al this time, he wanted to know any secrets she'd been holding back.

'There was somebody.'

Laurence felt a terrible sadness, then simultaneously—and, he knew, demeaningly—a hope that the past tense meant just that.

'He was married,' she said, sitting down next to him on the floor, her back against a chair. 'It was a very unhappy marriage. Among other things, his wife found she couldn't have children. Very sad for them both. Although she found someone else, they were Catholic; hers was a very old recusant family so the world turned a blind eye. Richard found himself sort of in limbo. He loved the estate—just two farms and a beautiful Tudor house, though a very dilapidated, very cold house.'

She smiled, apparently in recolection, and Laurence's heart sank again.

'My father was dead. My mother, wel, you've seen her. She seldom thinks of anyone or anything outside the effort of just living her life. So there was nobody to inveigh against my unsuitable relationship.'

She looked straight at Laurence but he found it hard not to avoid her eyes, hoping she didn't mistake jealousy for disapproval.

'Nobody to tel me that my reputation would be besmirched or that I'd never find a decent husband. Of course we didn't know there'd be a war, but if we had, we'd probably just have seized the day.'

Although the grin she gave him was partly bravado, he thought, it made her look like a schoolgirl.

'Anyway, Richard was as much a husband as I can imagine any man being. Not at first, not for a long time—I was quite young, of course, and he was dreadfuly anxious about protecting me from scandal, whereas I didn't realy give a fig myself—but, in the end.'

Laurence desperately wanted to swalow but she was looking at him too closely. She seemed to be testing his response despite her apparent certainties.

'Anyway he stayed in the country in Sussex, in the old, cold house overlooking the Downs. He'd been born in that house. His wife, Blanche, lived in their flat in London. He was lonely but he loved the countryside. The cloud shadows over the hils, the foam of hawthorn in spring: he used to say the whole landscape echoed the sea. His house was a bit like an old ship, stranded inland. It was al faded reds and silver wood, overhanging upper storeys, barley-sugar chimneys.

'We met at the house of mutual friends one weekend. I think we each sensed loneliness in the other. We took to meeting just to walk and talk. Over the next months and years we must have explored the whole county in every season and every kind of weather. He liked the crumbling cliffs, the sea mists and the rattle of the sea on the shingle; he tried to go into the navy when he saw the way things were going, but it was quicker'—she grimaced—'and easier to get a commission in the army.

My own favourite place was the Long Man of Wilmington—a huge chalk figure with a stave in each hand—and a little medieval priory or something near by. A place of ancient peace. I often go back there now.'

Laurence felt the tiny satisfaction of incorporating another bit of her life into his understanding of her. This was the scandal Charles had spoken of and also why he had bumped into her in Sussex. He wanted to ask the identity of the man she had met but not introduced him to at the Wigmore Hal, but it stil wasn't the right moment.

'I expect people talked,' she said. 'But it was a long, long time until he asked me if I would consider being his. He was such an extraordinarily decent man. He told me he could never offer me marriage. Never bring me to his house as its chatelaine. Not in his wife's lifetime. That people might despise us and we would have to be terribly careful not to have a child. But he loved me. He loved me and I loved him, so it was an easy decision. And I was never happier.' She stopped. 'Do you think the less of me?' she said almost triumphantly.

'Of course not,' he said. His chest hurt with it.

'Wel, it's different now. Since the war. These times we live in. But it was a bigger thing then. My mother wouldn't speak to me when the penny dropped. Not for about three weeks. Which is ages in her book.' Her lips twitched and a smal dimple showed that she was trying not to smile.

'What happened to him?' asked Laurence. 'Was he lost in the war?'

'Yes.' Her animated face seemed to freeze.

Then, seeming to think this inadequate information, she added, At Vimy Ridge. Just a tiny piece of shrapnel. A lethal sliver of hot metal burning its way through his brain. He wasn't touched otherwise.' She seemed momentarily lost. 'He was very ... beautiful,' she said.

Her head was resting on his shoulder. He stroked her hair with his right hand and absent-mindedly tucked a strand behind her ear. She turned her face towards him just as his arm gave way and they both fel to the floor. He was more or less on his back, rubbing his arm to restore circulation. She pushed herself up to a half-sitting position, leaning over him. For a second she just looked at him. The fire popped. Then she reached out and dragged a cushion off the chair, putting it behind his head. The top of her own was framed by the window and the light of the sinking sun iluminated individual hairs like fine copper wires. He puled her towards him and kissed her. It was clumsy, the adjustment of unfamiliar bodies. Her mouth was little and controled at first and then became softer as he kissed her. His hand curved round the back of her neck and he moved it downwards, feeling the depressions of her colarbone, sliding under the neckline of her dress with his fingertips.

She puled away slightly but stil lay with the top of her body over his. Her eyes were grey and solemn, her eyelashes surprisingly dark. He noticed she had tiny freckles on her nose, so faint he had never seen them before. He watched himself touch her. She had looked so boyish, yet felt al curves and pliancy in his arms. This time she kissed him.

'This isn't about Richard,' she said after a long time. 'It isn't even about John. It's certainly not about Louise or the war or either of us feeling sorry for the other one. It's just about you and me.'

She traced his lips with her fingers. She was smiling.

Many hours later he woke in bed feeling cold. It was just light and at some point in the night they'd moved from the floor to his bed. Mary was nestled, fast asleep, between him and the wal, with his arm under her neck and her back curved into him, but the blanket had barely covered them both and his naked shoulders were cold.

He propped himself up awkwardly on one elbow and looked down at her. His fingers hovered over her ear; although he longed to touch her, he didn't want to wake her up. Her curls lay flat against her cheek. He felt a charge of happiness. It was as if the intensity of his gaze reached her because suddenly she gave a sigh, turning over and nearly knocking him out of bed. He held on to her and her eyes opened. She blinked a couple of times.

'Ooh, you're cold. You'd better kiss me.'

'Such self-sacrifice,' he said, puling her towards him.

She smeled warm and musky. His hand folowed the contours of her neck and shoulder. Moving to her breast he was filed with joy as wel as desire when he felt her nipple harden again beneath his fingers.

It was nearly lunchtime when they finaly got up. As she sat on the edge of the bed she picked up his copy of The Jungle Book. He was about to justify it being there when she said, 'I love these stories. I've stil got mine. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi was my favourite. That's why I kept a ferret; it was the nearest I could get to a mongoose in Suffolk.'

Once out of bed he felt slightly awkward, although Mary seemed completely at home, both with him and with the acceleration of their relationship. He'd intended to make breakfast but by the time he had washed and shaved she had already puled the bed together, gathered up their discarded clothes off the floor, cooked scrambled eggs on toast and made a pot of tea. She was walking around in his dressing gown. He picked up a piece of hot bacon between his fingers. They had eaten nothing the evening before and he was famished.

'This is a good thing that's come out of al this unhappiness,' she said, her knife and fork clattering on the plate. 'One realy good thing. Us finding each other.'

He looked at her but didn't speak. He was happier than he could remember being in ten years but despite it al he felt an underlying disquiet.

When he returned from seeing her off at the station, the flat seemed quiet without her, yet it stil held echoes of her presence. He felt calm and hopeful. He was able to settle to work for most of the day. For the first time he could see that he might write his book and return to teaching. Al the while he deliberately left the washing-up, the two plates, two teacups, two knives and teaspoons, on the side.

Chapter Thirty-four

Charles's disappointment at finding that Laurence had dealt with Chilvers by himself was palpable. As a result, he insisted on accompanying him around during his next day's errands. Despite Laurence's half-hearted protestations that it would be too cold and too boring for Charles to drive him to the Bolithos', he was glad to have him as a chauffeur. Charles could even take him on to see Mrs Lovel, leave him there and stil have time to see his tailor as he'd apparently planned, while Laurence could go on to Fleet Street by bus. He had woken up determined to catch Brabourne at the paper at the end of the day.

First, however, he wanted to show the photograph to the Bolithos and Mrs Lovel. 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 Wiliam 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 roled under a chair; another was clasped in his smal hand. The boy's sturdy legs emerged from corduroy shorts, his socks had falen 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'l 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 al, Nicholas Bolitho was simply himself, pointing and chattering away excitedly.

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

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

He saw that Eleanor had her eyes on them, even as she was responding to her son. Wiliam nodded, took the picture, looked at it in silence and finaly 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 colapsed?'

'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 Wiliam 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, stil kneeling on a chair, staring into the street, one smal hand stil clutching a solitary red guardsman. When she turned back she had tears in her eyes.