The Return of Captain John Emmett (43 page)

Laurence was silent; there was nothing he could say.

'But it took a chance meeting to make me see the way ahead. You might describe it as an act of God.'

'I hadn't been idle since the war. I'd needed to do something. I'd met Philip Morrell many years before. My wife was a distant relation of Lady Ottoline, Morrell's wife. He had odd views, frankly, but was well meaning and well connected. He talked to me round about the time of the Darling Committee. Asked if I'd be involved. They needed reliable fact-gatherers. People who could talk to people.'

He looked up as if checking whether Laurence knew what he was talking about.

'I was an experienced military man, I'd lost sons in the war, but I was broadly in sympathy with his views. Horatio Bottomley, the newspaperman, was with us. Obnoxious, but a force to be reckoned with. His interest was not simply altruism, of course; for him every cause had material value. Cruelty and injustice sold papers. He was raising questions before the war even ended. Damn lucky he wasn't prosecuted. But he correctly gauged a slight shift in mood and he's a useful man—he ensured we stayed in the public eye. Colonel Lambert Ward kept us respectable and we had Ernest Thirtle, the MP, as a parliamentary link to the ordinary man.'

Somers could have been speaking to an anonymous interviewer, now that he had gained momentum.

'Morrell was asking questions in the House about the military handling of capital sentences before the war ended. Just a year later the Darling Committee accepted that there were grave problems in the system. Rather too late, of course, for those affected by it.'

'Yes, of course.' Laurence tried to feel soothed by this account of public service.

'And when the Southborough Inquiry reports next year, it will certainly confirm the validity of shell-shock. Not before time. The government are currently refusing to pay pensions to men who have broken down mentally without also having been physically injured.'

Somers was animated by indignation.

'They invited me to be a member of the board. And that's how I first encountered the journalist.'

Laurence was startled. For a moment he thought he'd lost the thread.

'Journalist?' he asked, with a shiver of apprehension.

'He'd contacted Lambert Ward while researching an article for his newspaper but when he let slip that he'd witnessed a firing squad, Lambert Ward persuaded him to talk at the Darling Committee sessions about the experience of being a Prisoner's Friend. He gave Lambert Ward a photograph of an incident he'd been involved in. For him, I gather, images speak louder than words. Eighteen months or so ago, we thought he might have further information for us, so Lambert Ward asked to see him again. Lambert Ward fell ill. I didn't trust Bottomley. Morrell was abroad. Thirtle was in his constituency so I said I'd see him. The colonel gave me the photograph and his file.'

Laurence was becoming increasingly puzzled. Where was the story going now?

'God sent his messenger in the form of Mr Tresham Brabourne. A man who bore witness, who watched my son go to his death. A man who'd been to school with Miles and Hugh. You've met him, I know.'

Somers looked straight at Laurence, who felt a degree of foreboding.

'Keen young chap,' said Somers. 'Reminded me a bit of Miles, to be honest. But now, slowly, agonisingly, I really learned about Harry's death. I began to get some idea of the paucity of what passed for evidence, of the flimsiness of the case against Harry. Of the carelessness with which they took his life. Speaking to Mr Brabourne took me to the firing line, as it were. But Brabourne was—and remains—quite oblivious of my connection with the man he knows as Edmund Hart. I very much doubt he would have supplied so much detailed information if he'd realised he was speaking to Edmund's father.' He gave a wry smile.

'Young Brabourne had excellent recall of the trial but he couldn't give me all the names, only those he'd served with. However, he did identify Emmett in the photograph.

'Until I spoke to Brabourne, I had no idea who the officer who commanded the firing squad was, or even if he'd survived the war. But just as I was moving towards Captain Emmett, he was moving towards me.

'The final reckoning began in November last year,' Somers said, pre-empting with his slightly raised hand Laurence's attempt to interrupt. 'The homecoming of the Unknown Warrior. A warrior still fighting, it seems. Rising from his grave, journeying home, welcomed by the greatest in the land, sleeping among kings? Moving stuff, fine spectacle: caught the mood of the nation.'

Laurence nodded. It had all happened at a time when he was scarcely reading the papers, yet the event had slowly seeped into that selfish, armoured part of his life. Although he hadn't been inside Westminster Abbey since then, he did sometimes think, as he walked past, of the anonymous, broken corpse in the vault.

'I went and stood by the track at some small Kentish station,' Somers said, 'and I watched the train pass from Dover to London. Five seconds of light in the darkness. He was in his box of oak, known only to God and certainly never to be known to anyone on earth. Maybe he was one of the criminal, idle sort: stealing food, cheating at cards, clipped with his head down, trying to keep out of it. Maybe he was a hero who laid down his life for his friend. All the same, I thought my wife might have liked me to be there. Three-quarters of a million or more British dead, ten of thousands of bodies never found, and just one man on the train. They weren't good odds but there he was, for a fragment of time, hurtling past in the dark. The possibility of Miles. The shadow of Hugh and Harry. It was foolish, of course, but I was in good company. I stood there and a made a vow to myself: Harry's death would not go unanswered.

'I wasn't the only one who had fancies after that dead man's journey,' Somers said, still matter-of-fact. 'There was Gwen getting more concerned that she knew so little about Harry's death. But then there was Emmett himself. Things were unravelling. The turning point came when she received this letter—'

'From John Emmett,' Laurence broke in.

'Captain Emmett, on his own inexorable crusade for truth and justice,' Somers said bitterly. 'Emmett had pored over the hullabaloo in the papers. He too had been thinking about the unknown dead. In fact, it turned out he seldom thought of anything else, although at the point of contact with Gwen he was vague and said only that he had information about Harry's death.

'Gwen wrote to me. She assumed, rightly, that it was a fairly standard communication from a surviving comrade in arms, but she was puzzled by the intensity of the tone. I realised the letter's significance immediately and told her I would contact him. I didn't know what to do. I hadn't even told her the truth yet, but it was obvious Emmett fully intended to do so. I knew then that I couldn't bear the thought of her finding out about her dear boy's sordid end yet.'

In the few minutes' silence that followed, Laurence strained to hear movement. Wherever Gwen had gone, she was silent. He was cold and his back was stiff; his leg was going dead. He had a feeling that a dark shadow was falling on them all.

'I had waited two decades to do the right thing by Gwen and Harry. It was too late now, of course, so all I could do was intercept Emmett. So I wrote to him, expressing an official interest in his actions. I threw the names in—Darling, Southborough. Mentioned Lambert Ward,' Somers explained. 'Said that I had his name on record as commanding a firing squad. I hoped I might draw his focus away from Gwen for a while. I claimed his testimony would be invaluable.

Laurence could only imagine the effect this interrogation would have had on John, whose memories had never left him. His heart sank.

'I wrote to his Cambridge address—it was on the letter to Gwen—and he replied. I asked him to meet me in London. When he arrived and revealed that he was currently incarcerated, I was surprised. His letters were untidy but rational, and the man himself anxious but entirely sane.

'I had arranged the meeting at the Coburg—somewhere I had taken Gwen, long ago. Nicely anonymous place. I did promise him discretion. A promise I suppose you could say I broke?'

Just for a second his eyes met Laurence's.

'He told me everything. I promised him a meeting with Mrs Lovell—I said I'd met her in the course of building up a file for the committee—meeting her was the thing he most wanted. What I wanted was information. He provided it. After he was dead, I was left to deal with the guilty men. But I still couldn't tell Gwen the truth about Harry's death. I dreaded an official letter coming. I hoped my interview at the War Office had pre-empted the possibility. But then came Emmett's letter and then, afterwards, you came too.'

He stopped, then said, abruptly, 'Do you know about how Harry died, Bartram?'

'Yes, I think so. Tresham Brabourne told me.'

'My boy was ill. In mind and body. He'd been treated for shell-shock and for dysentery. He'd not long been back from sick leave. Do you know what condition he was in when they arrested him, Captain Bartram?'

Laurence thought he detected a slight tremor in Somers' voice.

'He was very distressed, I think.'

'The official report says he had discarded part of his uniform,' said Somers. 'He had taken off his Sam Browne and his tunic. They argued that he was trying to hide the fact he was an officer. His CO said Harry had been jittery beforehand. They'd been close to a shell burst. The men dispersed into foxholes. Harry had blood and bone fragments on his uniform, on his face. Another man's blood and bone. A witness had seen him rubbing at his jacket, spitting on a handkerchief, like a mother wiping her child's mouth. Another junior officer, a bumptious young subaltern, Lilley'—he spat out the name—'told him to pull the rump of his group together and continue the march forward. Harry told him that he didn't have to take orders from him. It was a schoolboy spat—not the stuff of heroes, but neither was it desertion.

'Harry turned on to open land and walked away towards HQ. There was no protection and constant German shelling. It was hardly the act of a man running for safety. If anything, it was suicide. The other subaltern reported his disappearance the next morning but by that time Harry had come in, half dressed. There'd been sleet all night. He'd got lost, disoriented. He'd spent the night half naked in the mud. He had to be treated for exposure.'

Somers came to a halt. He looked tired, Laurence thought, although he still held himself erect. They sat, almost companionably, their knees only inches apart.

'My whole career was about making correct military decisions.' Somers shook his head disbelievingly. 'I was a soldier myself, damn it. Some of the men were animals: looting, pillaging, making brutal assaults on each other—worse, on the local population. Rape. Murder. They'd have hanged in England and we despatched them just as soundly overseas. Hard men. A hard life. Swift justice, often as not. But we gave even them a hearing.'

His legs were set wide apart, his fingertips splayed deep into the arms of the chair.

Laurence was about to speak, but Somers stopped him again. It was as if he was anxious that he might lose track if he was interrupted.

'I imagine Brabourne told you about the sergeant—Tucker?'

Somers didn't wait for a reply.

'He was a bully and, Emmett believed, a rapist, probably a murderer, who found entertainment in an execution. If anyone should have been before a firing squad, it was Tucker. The minute it was done, Tucker should have got the men out of sight and marched them away. This is the army. Executing soldiers is nothing new. There's a procedure for all these things. But Tucker wanted to relish it. Harry's suffering, the soldiers' suffering and Emmett's destruction.'

'Tucker was killed.'

Somers nodded. 'Vermin,' he said. 'Emmett had already tracked him down. Gave me the details of his whereabouts. But the Tuckers of this world enjoy violence and degradation. Why should Tucker repent? I didn't have to shoot him. He was so drunk that he put up no kind of fight. I did little more than destroy his face as he destroyed my son's, then I rolled him into the canal. He deserved worse.'

Somers' confirmation that he had killed a man was delivered so matter-of-factly that it took some seconds for it to sink in. It had long been obvious what Somers was leading up to but it was so hard for Laurence to absorb that a deadly curiosity now overwhelmed the enormity of what he had been told.

'The police officer in London?'

'Mullins? Yes, of course.'

'And Byers?' he asked, slowly. 'In Devon?'

'Yes.'

'It was your revenge for your son?' said Laurence. 'That was why?'

Outside the window, on the other side of the tidy hedge, lay a small London street where darkness had fallen. Across it, under the streetlight, two women walked by and their animated chat was quite audible through the window. Laurence thought the room seemed too ordinary to contain the man in front of him.

'Yes,' said Somers, finally. Then he repeated himself, 'Yes. Wasn't that enough?'

Wasn't that enough?
Leonard Byers had said that the last time Laurence had seen him. It was an epitaph for the whole grim mess. He waited for the other man to collect himself.

'Tucker died too easily,' Somers went on. 'Corporal Byers, too: a man more used to making beds and heating an officer's canteen than putting his life on the line. Your friend Captain Emmett said Byers was fussing about his wet feet while they were waiting to shoot my son and then he walked up to my boy, a condemned man within seconds of death, and tore off his badges. It was simply an act to humiliate him. Gratuitous.'

He was white-faced.

'As for Inspector—late Assistant Provost Marshal—Mullins, he was a cold, hard man who believed the worst of everybody. From my committee work I know that more men, whether guilty or simply unfortunate, were ensured of capture, arrest or execution under Mullins' aegis than any other. Although I took enormous risks in shooting him in broad daylight, so close to Scotland Yard, it was worth it. I was never worried for myself but simply that I would be prevented from finishing off my work.'