The Return of Captain John Emmett

'Look,' she said, 'these were things I found in the bedside cupboard in John's room. They were just odds and ends that came back with his things from Holmwood, so we shoved them in there and forgot about them. Nothing very exciting. A couple of laundry lists, notes of some birds he'd seen in the garden. You see,'

she said, puling out a lined sheet, 'he did have some interest in what was going on.'

Laurence took the bit of paper. The writing was uncontroled but the content was clear: H'wood

Blackbird.

Mistle thrush, M. and F.

Great tit.

Blue tit (nesting in garage wal?)

Beside it John had sketched a blue tit, a coal tit and a great tit, and labeled them.

Chaffinches.

Woodpecker (heard, but never seen).

Hedge sparrow —lots.

Pipit? Chiffchaff.

Wren (in honeysuckle outside music-room window)

Red kite. A pair. Just once, walking out. Mewling over the river valey. Wonderful. N. was a little frightened at first.

Larks. 'Al the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.' Went as far as river watching them through Dr C's glasses. As agreed did not throw myself in!

Another, much neater hand, had added:

Greater puff-chested yellow fiddler. Fine plumage; watchful demeanour. Mates prolificaly with weaker females.

Harsh and irritating repetitive cry. Minemineminemine. Moneemoneemonee. Rarely leaves his natural habitat, where he is king of his tattered little flock, for the open countryside where the woodland animals might tear him apart.

They looked at each other.

'It's nice, isn't it?' said Mary, hopefuly.

Laurence, lost in the last sentence, was startled for a second but realised she meant the birdwatching. It was true, he could feel John's old enthusiasm. The quote was Edward Thomas, he thought. This was the first he'd seen of a John he recognised in anything he'd heard about him since the war. It went a smal way to dispeling the image of him as just an angry and unstable officer. Nor had he been alone, from the sound of it. Could his timid companion, frightened by birds of prey, have been the fragile Mrs George Chilvers, he wondered?

'But who do you think wrote this?' he asked, pointing to the foot of the page.

'Wel, I assumed it was about the younger Chilvers. Not an actual bird, obviously. I suppose it could be anybody. Briefly I thought it might be John writing about himself; it has his sort of wit, and even caling himself a coward ... but nothing else fits. He was never puffed up and couldn't give an earthly for money. He worried about my father when Daddy kept putting too much on the horses—Daddy was a bit of an optimist where racing was concerned and our mother used to rage at him—

but I don't think he was happy when he discovered that my maternal grandparents' wealth had always been entailed to him.'

Laurence mentaly ticked off one question: which was how John had had any money to leave Bolitho and Mrs Lovel, and how the Emmetts came by their current house. Had John got everything simply because he was the male heir, he wondered?

'And the bottom bit's not John's writing,' she said. 'He had to use his left hand because his right was paralysed. And al those tails like umbrela handles on the Ys, not him. If not Mrs Chilvers, another inmate, perhaps?'

Even as she spoke, Laurence felt certain the unknown companion must have been Eleanor but he didn't want to raise this with Mary yet.

'A disaffected member of staff?' she suggested. 'And it could be about anybody. But my money's on Chilvers. Did you see the man's driving gloves?'

'What were they?' John asked, trying to sound light-hearted and disguise his discomfort at withholding information. 'Mink, studded with emeralds, or spiked metal gauntlets to incapacitate any motorist who impedes his way?'

'Wel, nearer the mink. Bright-yelow kid, fine and soft. Must have cost a fortune. I know because when we met, he had just got out of that car of his and rather creepily he shook hands—wel, he squeezed hands—without taking them off. It was like warm loose skin against my own flesh. Disgusting. Had his poor wife with him.

Like a mannequin. Al the latest fashions—French probably. Perfect hair. Perfect marcasite earrings. Enviable hat. Wel, I was envious. Fox stole. Just the thing for a madhouse in some rural back of beyond.'

She stopped and seemed to consider what she'd said.

'Poor woman. She didn't say a word and he didn't introduce us. A life sentence, however many hats.'

'Rumour has it, she was the one with hats in the first place. It's he who wasn't in gloves until she came along.'

Mary summoned a half-hearted expression of scorn, but she was focused on puling a pamphlet out of the manila envelope. It was poor-quality paper that had obviously been roled up at some time. She tried to smooth it out on the table, weighing down one end with the sugar bowl. The front cover had an ink drawing of a cluster of stars and across it, in what might almost have been potato print, the word Constellations.