The Return of Captain John Emmett (16 page)

Before Laurence could respond, and while he was still trying to disguise his relief that his improvisation had succeeded, there was a knock on the door and a man, probably in his middle thirties, came in. Though the newcomer was slimmer and lighter-haired than Dr Chilvers, the similarity was such that Laurence realised it must be his son. There was a certain formality in their response to each other but presumably that was because Laurence was there.

'George,' the doctor said. 'This is Captain Bartram.'

Laurence shook hands with George Chilvers. Even-featured and of average build, he was as handsome as had been reported and in a way Laurence suspected would be attractive to women. His reddish-gold hair was slicked to a sheen and his trim figure was enhanced by expensive tailoring.

'Perhaps you could show Captain Bartram around?' the older man suggested. 'After that, we might meet to discuss any further questions he might have.'

They moved into the hall. A slight man in his twenties was crossing it from one room to another. His trousers were so loose, Laurence noticed instantly, that they had been gathered in deep folds and were held up by an old tie used as a belt. The man stopped when he saw them and started to go back into the room he had just left. Doctor Chilvers moved towards him and placed a reassuring hand on his arm, nodding towards his son and Laurence. Laurence observed Chilvers' firm but comforting demeanour: while he talked, he kept his hand gently where it had lain and looked the man in the eye. Eventually the younger man smiled slightly and glanced at Laurence.

'How do you do?' he said softly and then hurried into the next doorway.

Laurence was surprised how exhausted he felt when he got back to the Bull. If he had been able to admit his real interest to Chilvers, he felt the doctor could undoubtedly have helped him. Except that if he had mentioned John, Chilvers would probably have disappeared behind a screen of professional reticence. Seeing the place had been helpful and fairly reassuring, but Chilvers' own perceptions had both disturbed and moved him.

A couple of hours later, he and Charles were exchanging information: his incomplete impressions for Charles's more substantial progress.

'Well, apart from the fact that our disgruntled one-armed friend and his chum could drink both of us under the table, it's been a useful exchange, ale for ill-will. I was glad when the landlord called time, though,' Charles said. 'But to start with: there's something his sister either didn't know or didn't tell you. Emmett was front man on a firing squad. Dr Chilvers told the coroner that his patient had been very troubled by the execution.'

'Neither Mary nor her mother attended the inquest,' Laurence said. He was certain Mary had no idea. 'But, God, poor man.' He'd known one young officer who was ashamed that he'd faked illness to get out of presiding over a firing squad but, as the subaltern said, he would have felt ashamed either way.

'And another odd thing,' Charles remembered. 'This was probably just a straightforward bit of trouble-making but the sacked employee commented in passing that given that one of Emmett's main symptoms was paralysis of the right arm, it was strange that he'd managed to shoot himself with it.'

Laurence sat forward. 'Are you sure?' Although the symptom tied in with what he already knew.

'Sure he said it, sure Emmett had it or sure that he was naturally right-handed? All three. I can remember him on the cricket pitch. Good bowler. Chilvers' evidence stated that Emmett's right arm was useless. Police surgeon was equally certain that he couldn't have done it with his left. Perhaps because it would have been the wrong angle? Anyway, my man had been involved in the treatment, which at the subtler end was a matter of trying to trick John into forgetting his arm didn't work: handing him a book, or whatever came to mind. They tried tying his other hand behind his back for days at a time, and, at the more dramatic end, giving him electric shocks to stimulate the muscles.'

Laurence grimaced.

Charles said ghoulishly, 'Regular Dr Frankenstein. Are you sure you didn't see wires?' But he didn't wait for an answer. 'Strangely, he'd shot himself through the heart, not the head.'

'Less messy. Definitely no letter?'

'Nothing much at all, I think. I did ask. A few bits and pieces and our jolly old school scarf near by. Faithful till death and all that. Neatly folded. Coroner saw the deliberation as evidence of intent. Removed it to be sure of his shot. Much what you'd expect except for no note. Damn hard on the family, not having a letter. I suppose they got the scarf. Not much consolation.'

'It wasn't Marlborough colours actually—Mary showed it to me—and hardly his sort of thing anyway, I'd have said. But where was he between-times?'

Charles shrugged. 'There were any number of barns and outhouses he could have holed up in until the hue and cry had died down, they say. They reckoned if John could have got hold of some food, he could have survived a week or two before he emerged and sauntered off to get a train. Perhaps not from Fairford, where they'd probably circulated his picture, but from a neighbouring village perhaps.'

'Do you know exactly where they found him?'

'The Folly. On the hill. We passed it yesterday. I pointed it out—at Faringdon. Well, obviously we all knew it from school.'

The location came as a shock. Folly Wood had been such a strange place, always in shadow. But it made it much more likely that John had gone there of his own volition. Why was it more painful to think of him seeking out somewhere familiar to end it all, Laurence wondered? He thought of the young Holmwood patient who had died in his mother's bed. Was that a last frenzied act of rage or a final refuge in the safest place he knew?

'Frankly, when I realised both the degree of disaffection even in the man currently employed there, and the fact that we are never likely to be coming back, since I for one would certainly choose an alternative therapeutic establishment if I were to suddenly believe that I was Napoleon Bonaparte,' Charles said, 'I came clean, or cleanish. That's when I learned some interesting facts about Emmett's time there. Most interesting of all, he had visitors. An army friend and two members of the family.'

'"Army friend" could be anybody,' Laurence said, although he recalled that Mary had given the impression he had few left. And Mary visited, but I thought that his mother stayed away.'

Charles lowered his voice, although the room was empty. 'Yes, Mary did visit. In fact,
two
sisters did. More than once.' He paused. 'One was dark-haired and cross, though a bit of a looker, as the man who still works there tells it: presumably your Miss Emmett; and the other was red-haired and crosser.'

'Eleanor Bolitho?' said Laurence, astonished, simultaneously realising that there could be any number of redheads in John's life.

'That's my guess,' said Charles. 'Do you think it's true that redheads always have tempers?'

'Charles,' Laurence butted in, 'when did these so-called sisters come, did you ask him that?'

'It
was
Eleanor,' said Charles, 'because one time she brought her boy with her. Moreover, in addition to my deductive guesswork, and though both girls gave their name as Emmett, our man overheard John saying his fond farewells and he called her Elly. He remembered thinking it was a rather sweet, feminine name quite at odds with her personality.'

Laurence laughed. 'What had she done?'

'Well, the only thing she approved of was the food, I gather. Demanded that arrangements should be made for John to be accompanied on daily walks, if they weren't prepared to let him out on his own. She took him out once but they wouldn't allow it the other time she visited. Dr Chilvers was away and they needed his permission, they said. She was impressively furious and all else followed. She inspected the library and declared it inadequate. Was incensed that all the patients well enough were made to go on church parade. Harangued Chilvers Junior about John's room; he had been moved to one of the barred ones. She said he was hardly likely to jump out, although my man pointed out, with a certain degree of satisfaction, that jumping out, in a manner of speaking, was exactly what he did when he got the chance. But she was angriest of all to hear that John had been put in close confinement simply for leaving the building without permission. Close to tears in her fury, apparently.'

'They were right too about not letting him out alone,' said Laurence. 'Though, in fact it was churchgoing that was to give him the chance to escape. So perhaps the Holmwood people knew him better than she did.' He kept to himself Eleanor's assurance that she had not met John after the war. 'And actually, I found Dr Chilvers quite impressive. 'It was the son I took a dislike to.'

'Even my complainant says the old man's a decent chap, dedicated to his patients, if a bit on the zealous side. But he's not well, goes up to London for treatment. Probably a hopeless case, he reckons. Says the doctor's lost stones in the last year. It's when he goes away that young Chilvers gets to impose his stamp on the place: changes treatment, sacks people at will. The old man rarely stands up to him. And of course the staff know it will all be his when his father shuffles off his mortal, so they mostly toe the line. Not many jobs in these parts.'

Laurence thought that if he'd been less focused on his own deceptions, he would have guessed Chilvers was ill from his pallor and thinness.

Charles was gaining momentum. 'And he was shot with a Luger.'

Laurence looked up, sharply. 'Well, that should have made it easier,' he said. 'To track down, I mean. Not many of those in circulation. No recuperating German officers in Holmwood. Plenty of our lot got hold of them but it was a side arm for the flashy type.'

'I had a Luger,' said Charles, after a momentary pause. 'Still have, in fact.'

'How?' said Laurence and immediately wished he hadn't.

'I captured it.' His eyes caught Laurence's momentarily. 'Off a dragoon Hauptman to be precise. I was a good shot, it was the best side arm around and I was keen to live.'

'But did John have a Luger—or any gun at all?'

'All the witnesses thought not. But they would, wouldn't they?'

There was a long silence.

'You're still thinking he wasn't the Luger type,' said Charles.

Laurence didn't answer. He was thinking that George Chilvers was precisely the sort of man who would have a Luger, had he not been the sort of man who avoided military service completely, but he felt irritated with himself for both pointless thoughts.

'Well, lots of us weren't the type for lots of things, but we changed,' said Charles.

There was another, longer silence.

'In fact the records showed he'd turned in a perfectly regulation Webley at the end of the war. It came up at the inquest, of course. Which was in Oxford, by the way. Doesn't mean he hadn't acquired anything else, though. But what did you make of the place? How do they fix them up?' Charles looked hopeful.

'Straightforward, really,' Laurence said, thinking back. 'Dr Chilvers believes routine splints the broken mind in the same way that a splint holds a broken leg.' He realised he was quoting him almost verbatim. 'They have to get up at the same time each day, they have to take meals. They're allowed a short rest after lunch, otherwise they're not allowed to return to their rooms and sleep during the day. Chilvers said this is partly to counteract the insomnia that's a major problem. Church on Sundays.'

Thinking of church brought him back to Eleanor's complaints.

'Chilvers said he didn't care whether they believed in God or not.' He remembered this clearly, because it seemed quite a worldly view from an otherwise old-fashioned man. 'He said it was good for them to have the pattern established. They have to confront the outside world—some of them have huge problems with people, apparently—and church services give an opportunity for this within a familiar context. And he said they didn't really have enough to do on Sundays. 'A bit of a walk and some singing is good for them; it's all exercise, in its way, Chilvers had said.'

'Not surprisingly one or two are quite angry with God, but, as a general principle, we like to have these things out at Holmwood,' the doctor had added. He had been close to a smile, Laurence had thought.

Charles was uncharacteristically silent.

'There's a ward, I suppose you call it, holding two men at present, for those whose physical condition is poor,' Laurence continued. 'Some patients are injured, but young Chilvers explained that some melancholics simply cease to eat. Here they are fed and treated for physical illnesses before they get the mind stuff. These two both looked pretty sick to me. One had a tube taped to his cheek. I couldn't wait to get out of there, to be honest.

'Apart from that, it was like any officers' convalescent home. Piano, comfortable drawing room, newspapers, though Dr Chilvers told me earlier that occasionally they withheld these if current events were likely to distress occupants. A small library; actually I didn't think it looked too bad, though I didn't do an inventory of the titles.' He smiled at the thought of Eleanor's inspection. 'Tennis court. A couple of inmates helped with the garden from time to time, young Chilvers said. Found it calming. Both Chilverses referred to treatment rooms, but I was shown only one. It has a bath, water nozzles, sitz baths, hydrotherapy, all rather old-fashioned, it seemed to me.'

'My man says they have all the latest electrical stuff,' Charles interrupted, 'though I suppose they don't want to frighten a potential paying customer.'

Laurence remembered that Eleanor had talked of electric shocks being given to those with false paralysis of limbs. She talked as if it were fairly standard.

'I really didn't see anything like that. Sorry, Charles. But what was interesting is that young Chilvers told me that all comforts were withheld for what he called "misbehaviour". They have to earn them. And there's a secure floor: the top floor, where patients in a state of agitation are confined. The windows were barred, I noticed, from the outside. Presumably that's where John was incarcerated. I was shown only an empty room on the second floor, made up ready for a new arrival. Nice enough.'