The Return of Captain John Emmett (37 page)

'I'm not sure you would actually want the police here and I may well 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 all, 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 well away from Mrs Bolitho,' Laurence said, taking a small step forward. 'You may be right in thinking I could not make my accusations stick. You may well 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, collectively these accusations might do you harm if brought to the attention of the right people. A fusillade. 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 unwell and unable to defend himself. Mrs Bolitho is all too able to defend herself, but vulnerable because of her circumstances. I, however, am neither unwell nor vulnerable. I have absolutely nothing to lose, whereas you, I think, do. I can assure you I shall 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 shall 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 still in view. The man had followed him into the hall but now stood with his back to him, looking upwards. His spine, Laurence noticed with a small 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.

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 ill temper on his wife. Laurence recalled 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 well 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, challenging 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. All 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 shrivelled 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 bell pull. 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 followed 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.'

'Hell's bells, man. Are you in training for an Antarctic expedition? No, I'll keep my coat on, thank you.'

Laurence poured out two tumblers of whisky as Charles riddled the grate and shovelled the coal over balls 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 tell you what I've been up to. Had to hurry round. Great news. Significant news, that is. You asked me to find out about Lilley. Lieutenant Ralph Lilley, 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 Lilley's way. Father has a small estate and officially Lilley 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 Lilley. Well, 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 marvelled, 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. Marvellous 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 Lilley. Didi was terrifically 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 Lilley 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 Hill?'

Laurence nodded, memories suddenly flooding in. Legend had it that the hill and gully were where St George had finally 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 still atmospheric.

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

'No connection with Dragon Hill, per se, except that the Lilleys 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 Folly.' Laurence said.

'And, indeed, near the small station at Challow where, early last spring, Ralph Lilley fell to his gruesome death under the London-bound train.'

'Good Lord.'

'Of course you're wondering: did he fall, 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 fell 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 Lilley, and life was going well 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 Lilley 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 actually saw him fall 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 Lilley tumbled on to the line.'

'That's three,' said Laurence.

'Yes. But there's the rub. Lilley was talking to another chap just before the accident. That same man jumped down to help the mortally injured Lilley after he fell. He wasn't yet dead but was not a pretty sight. The driver and fireman stepped down too and the stationmaster ran off to call 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, Lilley 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 eventually the local bobby arrived. By then the other man was nowhere to be seen.

'I actually 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 all 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 Lilley, but he couldn't describe him at all. 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 well have been a giraffe for all 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 Lilley wasn't shot in the face?'

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

'So,' Laurence summed up, finding himself indifferent to Lilley's horrible end, 'if we assume that Lilley was no accident, and that the same man was involved in Lilley'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 all he could. But this is a small station. Not many people use it. Lilley 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, really. That bit of Devon's pretty isolated. He wouldn't have needed one for Mullins or Tucker. I think we do have to include those two on our list.'

Laurence began to calculate the distance from Fairford to Challow: 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 all other ways Chilvers seemed an unlikely killer. He was too fastidious and although a bully 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.