anything should happen to him. Not at the hands of Jerry but of Tucker.'
'Anything I should know?'
'Tucker and Captain Emmett met long before. Perhaps you knew that? Emmett joined the West Kents. Tucker was a sergeant. Tucker had a chum whose name I can't remember, a corporal. The two had joined up at the same time. Tucker was brighter than the average soldier and did wel. But Emmett said he was a bad influence over his weak pal.'
'Perkins?' Laurence said, remembering the name Wiliam Bolitho had given.
'Possibly.' Brabourne shrugged. 'They were vaguely implicated in lots of minor trouble-making but none of it was pinned down. But then, in spring the folowing year, not long before things got realy sticky, apparently they were running out of wire. As they were everywhere. Two details went to get wire from farms in the area.
Tucker headed up one lot, John said. They found precious little; the French were already hiding stuff by then. Three days later a girl on one of the farms is raped and murdered. She's very young: fourteen or fifteen. Emmett said it was just possible the death itself had been an accident—caused by an attempt to subdue her. But it was now the third rape that had occurred near their positions.
'The French police discovered an army-issue canteen outside the barn when her body was found. Tucker claimed he'd never been near that farm, but the mother gave a description of a belt buckle and insignia she'd seen when the soldiers had come before. Her husband and son were serving with the French so she could identify the uniforms.'
Brabourne stopped and appeared to be thinking back.
'I think Tucker eventualy conceded he might have been there—he took the line that one smal farm was much the same as any other and al the French were devious, English-hating peasants. But of course he said he hadn't gone back. Emmett has a bad feeling about it al. Cals the friend in and it's obvious the soldier—
Perkins, if that's his name—is uneasy. Keeps contradicting himself and both men are the only alibis for one another for part of the day in question.'
'I'm surprised that was enough to exonerate them; it sounds more a cause for suspicion, I'd have thought.'
'Indeed. To you, me and, especialy, John Emmett. But not to a harassed CO, it appears. Emmett said he just knew, increasingly, that Tucker was involved and probably this Perkins too. And Tucker knew he knew and it amused him. The French gendarmes thought two men had raped her. Technicaly, one rape and one act of sodomy.' He looked up. 'Emmett must have spoken good French?'
He waited for Laurence to reply.
'Yes, he spoke nearly perfect French.'
'Emmett was the liaison officer. Perhaps he was more convinced by the police than his tired CO, who was trying to prepare his men for the next attack. And Emmett saw the body in situ; her own neckerchief stuffed in a mouth choked with vomit, though death occurred when her throat was crushed, possibly by a forearm during the act...'
Brabourne tailed off, stubbing out his cigarette in his overflowing tin ashtray.
'I'm sorry, this is probably more than you want to know about something that happened a long time ago,' he said. 'But when I met him, it had worn Emmett's nerves down. I think that the circumstances show that Emmett's failure in commanding the execution detail wasn't weakness and Tucker's promptness to step in wasn't courage. And Hart was going to be shot one way or the other.'
'It's helpful,' Laurence said. 'The whole picture, the way it fits together. John's state of mind. It's what I've been trying to get a grasp of.
'The fact that he told me al these details is some indication that things weren't good. Though we did share a bilet for a while and some wine—increasing quantities of wine, in his case. Emmett told me there were items missing off the girl's body: a comb, some ribbons and so on. It also seemed as if someone had cut off some of her ... pubic hair.'
When Laurence looked surprised, Brabourne added matter-of-factly, 'I had actualy come across this in my time at the Bar. These men ... they do sometimes colect items from their victims.'
'But wasn't that incredibly risky?' asked Laurence. 'It was murder, after al, and the men al lived on top of each other, and were often on the move and had few personal possessions. Anyway, the colonel would have had a right to search Tucker's things at the time.'
'He might have done but it was hardly likely. Tucker was a sergeant; he wasn't some spotty private. And I do wonder if for Tucker it was the risk that made it attractive.
'So the gendarmes leave Emmett with a list of pathetic missing personal items. He took al the information to the colonel, but there was no other evidence. They were preparing for the big push and the colonel said Tucker was a good enough NCO not to be antagonised by excitable French women with vague accusations.
'Against the general good' was the line, Emmett said.
'The colonel let it go. He refused to release the men for possible identification by the girl's mother, because that would merely confirm what Tucker had already given them: that he'd been at the farm in the preceding week. Emmett tried to take it further up the chain of command but the CO was getting increasingly fed up with the whole business and what he was beginning to consider as questioning his orders. Not long after, the Somme goes up and one dead French girl pales into insignificance beside fifty thousand British casualties on day one.'
Brabourne stopped again. He chewed on a matchstick.
'I have to say, it al sounded pretty circumstantial. I don't think there was ever a case, but Emmett was certain Tucker was the man, together with his faithful sidekick. And things changed between him and Tucker from then on, he said. Perkins stayed out of Emmett's way as far as possible but Tucker was always
