Laurence had a sense that there was something Byers had withheld from his account. 'And there's nothing else you want to tel me?' he asked.
Byers was rotating a pencil in his fingers; it twirled like a propeler. Suddenly he lost control of it and it spun across the room. Momentarily Laurence folowed its trajectory with his eyes. It hit the wal. When he looked back, Byers seemed not to have noticed; his fingers were stil moving.
'Isn't that enough?' he said.
Laurence put his hand out and after a moment's hesitation Byers shook it. The rain had stopped and men were struggling to get a large safe on to a palet as Laurence walked across the yard. There was no sign of Major Calogreedy.
He strode out through the open gates and turned left. The Thames was brown, with foam from one of the industrial works forming a pale scum along the pilings.
It was chily down by the river. Laurence could smel the dankness of the water and the smoke of a thousand afternoon coal fires.
As he walked back along the Thames, he found himself hoping that Leonard Byers' marriage was a comfort to him. On the point of leaving he'd asked him whether he would ask Mrs Byers' brother-in-law where Tucker could be found. Byers doubted he knew—but he gave him the name of the pub he'd been told Tucker drank in: The Woodman.
'I've never been there, never been north of London, but he said that's where to go if I was ever up in our Birmingham works and wanted to look Tucker up.
That was his idea of a joke.'
Chapter Nineteen
He was impatient to see what Charles could unearth so rather than wait until their usual rendezvous, Laurence scrawled a note to him with the few details he had about Hart and Brabourne in the hope Charles might find out something by Thursday, when they were due to meet. He didn't even know Hart's first name. He kept the thrust of the story to himself; he was interested to see its effect on Charles when he retold it in person.
Seeing Calogreedy and Byers caught up in their working lives, Laurence had felt guilty. Recently he'd hardly picked up his own work. That was the trouble with his research: too solitary, too quickly set aside. His publishers were easy on him and, in a sense, the smal income Louise's money had provided was a trap. It was time he did something more demanding. Not in business like Calogreedy and Weatheral, and certainly not a return to coffee trading. What did begin to attract him was going back to a classroom, not the tutoring he'd done after leaving Oxford, but something more structured. He wondered whether he could get a beak's job at a good school.
On Thursday night Charles's club was almost empty. They both chose lamb chops with Cumberland sauce. The lamb was beautifuly tender and sweet but Laurence scarcely noticed as he struggled to recal every detail of what Byers had told him. When he had finished, his friend whistled through his teeth.
'We had a private who faced the death penalty for sleeping at his post but the colonel was never going to let it be carried out. It was enough the lads thought it could be. Kept the rest awake. But bad for morale, these things. Shooting an officer. Rotten luck that old Emmett drew the short straw. They usualy made a subaltern do the dirty work. As always. Byers give you anything else?'
'That was it,' Laurence said. 'Resentful but frank.'
Charles said, 'I heard there was a point when the powers that be wanted to quash the rumours that there was one rule for officers and another for the men.
From what you say, this Hart seems to have been the best they could do for an example. Don't imagine it would have happened if his people had known the right people.' He stopped and gave it some thought, then said, 'Damn odd about the batman's cousin, don't you think?'
'There's something odd al round. I keep thinking there's something I'm missing,' said Laurence. 'John seems to have been making amends for things that happened in the war. Leaving money to Bolitho after his terrible injury, unburdening himself to Dr Chilvers. Various people seem to have noticed an improvement in his mental state towards the end of his life. It seems unlikely Mrs Lovel's son was part of either the trench colapse or the execution of Lieutenant Hart, although he might have been involved in the court martial, I suppose. But he was apparently close to his mother, and never told her about it. So what is John's connection with Lovel—or even Mrs Lovel herself? It's quite possible there was something else there that he was trying to put right. John served for over three years. God knows what else happened. And what about the unknown Frenchman?'
Eventualy Charles spoke again. 'Wel, there's another possible line of enquiry re Hart. Young Tresham Brabourne's alive, you'l be surprised to hear. Or he was when he came out of the army in December 1918.'
Laurence found his spirits lifting. He'd instinctively taken to the unknown Brabourne and was glad he was stil around. His survival disproved Byers' gloomy predictions. If they could find him, Brabourne's account of John's state could be invaluable. He might even know of a connection with a Lovel.
'But no idea where he is, I'm afraid. There's his mother's name as next of kin.' He puled out a bit of paper from an inner pocket. 'Fulvia—they go in for funny names, these Brabournes. Mind you, she's not Brabourne, either. She's Green. Mrs Fulvia Elizabeth Green. Must have remarried. But the only address is Beverley, Yorkshire. Brabourne joined up in 1915. Profession, pupil in chambers. Al of which is a fat lot of good to us. Leave it with me and I'l see what other sleuthing I can do.
Or we can go north to find him?'
'So he was training at the Bar? That's why he defended Hart.'
'Possibly. Poor disgraced Hart. My cousin in the War Office clammed up about Hart, or any execution. Papers not public and they're currently sensitive to parliamentary concerns. Whatever that means. But the records are in chaos anyway. He just gave me the enlistment details. His name was Edmund. A Londoner when he joined up, if this Hart is our boy. Which he probably is, though it's quite a common name, but the date's right. Born in Winson...'
'What kind of place is that?' Laurence asked.
'A smal place,' Charles replied. 'In Gloucestershire, I think. A coincidence? No profession given, which is not so surprising as he was only eighteen. Parents, Mr and Mrs P. Hart. Very informative,' he said dryly. 'At least there's a street this time, but no name or number and you can hardly go from door to door saying, excuse me, was your son shot as a coward? Families try to cover these things up. In fact, they often don't find out until they begin to smel a
