The Return of Captain John Emmett (34 page)

'What did you say?'

'I protested and played the outraged relative. Well, it was either that or tell 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 finally brought himself to say what he'd come for.

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

'What on earth gave you that idea?'

'Because the incident in the trench collapse was nothing in the scale of things. I kept thinking it felt wrong. Men were dying or being injured, horribly, every day. Trenches collapsed pretty often. Probably the death of a man called Perkins, Sergeant Tucker's partner in crime, was the most significant aspect of that accident. And William's part in pulling 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 William get left money when Tucker didn't. And then I thought—forgive me, Eleanor, but it's true—it was simply because William 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 awfully 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 fully. 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 all 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 well as from him.'

'Of course they have,' she said. 'When John absconded, I imagine Chilvers was terrified he'd tell people outside what had been happening. About Chilvers' personal vendetta. John still had contacts. Visitors. I'd posted letters for him once. Probably his sister did too. Ones he didn't want to leave in the hall 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, well, 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 all 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. 'Well, 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 still 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 potentially very damaging to someone I love.' She blushed, but not at the revelation that Chilvers desired her, Laurence thought, but with anger.

Laurence frowned. 'William?' he said, slowly, wondering what on earth John might have known about William 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 William. Or William only in part. Nicholas. My son, Nicholas.'

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

'Nicholas isn't William'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 William...?'

'Does William know? Well, yes, of course he does or I wouldn't be telling 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 William 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 William's sake, you see, not mine. That was the mistake George Chilvers made. He thought I'd deceived William. But William and I could never have had children. His injury was widespread to his back as well 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 called George Chilvers' bluff,' she said. 'Refused point blank. Told him there was no secret there. Threatened to report him to the police, and like all of his sort his threats melted away. I wouldn't have reported him, of course. William knows, but everyone else believes Nicky to be his own son. I don't imagine William ever told you I knew John Emmett? He wouldn't have wanted to you to make any connection.'

Laurence thought how open and frank William 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. 'William asked me to but I couldn't risk contact.'

'But if George Chilvers panicked and drove around for hours searching, before calling 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 killed 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 all at his door, I don't. He's greedy and a bully, not a killer, though his actions might well 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 really—by all 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 allowed, generally?'

'Rarely, I think. It must have meant he'd eased himself from George Chilvers' clutches. Dr Chilvers used to encourage patients to walk locally with family or friends who visited, as long as they were well. 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 all?'

'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 small box, set it down on the table and began rifling through it. She took out a tied packet of letters, pulled 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 actually 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 jolly. But then I never heard from him again and he killed 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 will 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 bell.

'Carlos Place, it says, Mayfair.'

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

'It's called 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 all the time that the veins and arteries of our own dear royal family weren't running with German blood. I still think of it as the Coburg, though.'

'The Coburg?' he said.

Eleanor was still 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.

'Well, 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 really 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 fell 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 killed 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 all 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 William 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 unequivocally with the execution of Edmund Hart. Was John giving evidence as Brabourne had? It was the same hotel.