The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller Page A

without pointing out that it wasn't
his
Lovell. 'Perhaps, though I can't think how, he isn't dead, then? Perhaps he survived?'
    Charles was beaming before he had finished the sentence. Laurence had gone exactly where he intended.
    'No suitable Lovell dead
or
alive, old chap. All checked. Friends plus Army List. Of eight surviving Lovells, four left the army: one's a barrister; one lives on an annuity; two returned home north of the border; one went to South Africa; one, a Lovell-Brace, is a Hampshire landowner. One Lovell is still serving and currently head of the Staff College. No dead commissioned Lowells in the right place either. I remembered you weren't sure of the spelling the first time you mentioned him, or rather her, the heiress of Parliament Hill. Perhaps the lady's a fraud?'
    Laurence thought that Charles was much cleverer than he let on and that he also had a great deal too much time on his hands.
    'No,' he said, 'I'm quite certain that she had a son and that he was killed. She thought John might be a friend of his.' To manufacture grief like hers, he thought, would have required the skills of a consummate actress.
    He left late, declining Charles's invitation to bring Mary Emmett to the Savoy next week. He knew Charles would try to pick up the bill, which Laurence would indeed have trouble meeting, but he also wanted to keep Mary to himself for the time being. As he walked home briskly in the cold he realised that his one certainty—that the deaths of Emmett and Lovell were connected—had been obliterated by Charles's energetic enquiries.
    That night he wrote to Mary and remembered to ask whether he could have the photograph of the soldiers in the farmyard. He wanted to see if William Bolitho could identify any of those in it. He told her that he had not really advanced his search and he hoped she wouldn't be disappointed. Even so, there were some things he kept to himself.

Chapter Ten
    In the morning a letter came from Eleanor Bolitho. She agreed to meet him the next day in a teashop he'd suggested near the British Museum. She would have to leave spot on four to fetch her son, she said.
    When he arrived she was already waiting, her elbows on the table, reading a book. He read the spine of it as he struggled for a moment to pull his arm from his coat before sitting down. It was John Galsworthy's
The Man of Property.
    'Hello,' she said evenly, putting the book to one side.
    Eleanor didn't seem a person for light chatter or any degree of deception, so he simply expanded on the explanation in his letter and the need to fabricate a medical history for a mythical brother. But first he told her what he knew of John's deterioration once he got home. It seemed only fair. He explained Mary Emmett's fear that her brother had been mistreated at Holmwood and added some of the ideas he'd had about John's death.
    For a few seconds her face showed no discernible emotion. Then she said, simply, 'I don't doubt she's right. There are far too many greedy, amoral people taking advantage of sick men and of their families, who are bankrupting themselves to have their loved ones looked after. Or,' she added darkly, 'so they believe. I've heard about a couple of such places. Something should be done about them. This government should do right by ordinary people. We should have a different sort of politics now that everything's changed so much. We shouldn't be trying to do things the same way, which ended up killing and mutilating half the men in Europe.'
    She paused just long enough for Laurence to signal a waitress. Her pale, creamy skin was flushed.
    'Did you ever read any of John Emmett's poetry?' she asked abruptly.
    Laurence's heart sank. He didn't want any diversion at this point. 'Not really. Only the one that was published in the paper.'
    'Do you like poetry?'
    'Yes. Some of it, anyway,' Laurence said, hoping she wouldn't ask him to explain which bits.
    'Well, John's poems, his early ones, were very much a young man's work: