The Return of Captain John Emmett

first. I'm not saying it was him, though. This officer wasn't the only one had grudges against Bert, and him sorting out Bert was months before somebody sorted him out for good.'

'Did you actualy see him get in the fight then?'

' Course I did. He didn't look much, the officer, but he laid Tucker out right and good. Some old grudge from army days, like I says. Friend of yours, was he?'

'He might have been. Can you describe him?'

'Middling height. Middling looks. Dark hair. Gent, like I said. Would've sorted out Bert right and proper if a copper hadn't been passing, nosing about, heard the racket. Bert was too pissed to fight proper. This bloke cals Bert a blinkin' murderer but he looked fit to do Bert in hisself. Made a mistake laying one on the copper, though, because then they took him in.'

Briefly Laurence wondered whether there was any way to check the truth of the story, although it felt real enough. The description of Tucker's first assailant fitted John but then it fitted him too, come to that. Yet Mary had spoken of an assault that had led to John's arrest.

Suddenly the whole scenario he'd constructed, with Tucker as a stealthy and methodical kiler, seemed ridiculous. He was just a semi-criminal local down-and-out. He would never have had the means to travel to Devon and to Oxfordshire to kil former comrades, much less the ingenuity. Deflated, Laurence felt a fool for alowing himself to believe in the dangers of chasing Tucker.

He looked at Charles. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'What a wild-goose chase.'

Charles stil looked interested. He turned to their companion. 'Thank you,' he said. 'Very helpful.'

He handed him the promised sixpence and a further shiling. The man nodded, touched his cap, hovered for a few seconds and started to walk off before he turned and added, 'Tucker might quite have liked being caled a murderer but then the man said Bert forced himself on some girl. No way Bert was going to take that one—used to fancy hisself with the ladies way back.'

'So,' said Charles, as they walked the slightly uphil route back towards the station, 'I assume we agree the man in the fight was John?'

Almost certainly.'

'How did John find Tucker?'

'He got hold of his address, like us, I suppose. Florence Place—Florence Street was written down on a note in John's effects. He had Byers' original address too. It was in his pocket when they found him.'

'You're with our friend and think Tucker was kiled deliberately? But was it the same man who did for the chap in Devon?'

'Jim Byers?'

'Yes, Byers Two. The cousin of Byers One. And Inspector Mulins? Or, just possibly, John Emmett?'

' If they were al murders,' Laurence answered. 'Yes, it's a huge coincidence. I can't think it's worth checking with the police here or trying to track down the couple who might have seen Tucker's assailant. The whole damn thing is vague.'

And, he thought, if the facial injuries in al the deaths, bar John's, were intended as a message, whom was the message for?

As they climbed on to the homeward train, Laurence said, 'You know, I'm completely losing sight of what I set out to do.'

'Find out what on earth the fair Mary Emmett's brother was thinking of when he puled the trigger,' replied Charles as they were puling out of the station in a carriage that smeled strongly of old tobacco. 'Al pretty straightforward when you started. What a man wil do for love.'

Laurence felt tired and irritated. 'I hardly knew her when I agreed to look into it,' he said. 'I just wanted to help her with a horrible event in her life. Tie up loose ends. I didn't know it wasn't going to be so simple. It isn't like your storybook sleuths. Everybody isn't either good or bad, with clues and a tidy solution to be unraveled. Everything here goes round in circles. There isn't going to be the clear answer she wants answered: why did John die? And if there was, it wouldn't be the sort of answer she'd understand. He died because he was born at the wrong time. Or he died because he crossed the wrong person. Bad luck. No more. For God's sake, we stil don't even know there was a murder or a kiler. Or if there was, only of a farmhand, and a policeman, both of whom might have nothing to do with anything. If we did, we'd have told the police.'

'Point taken,' said Charles. 'Though you underestimate Mrs Christie, by the by. It's not individuals but combinations of circumstances that lead to catastrophe in her books. A fatal colision of character and events.' He beamed. 'But I suppose Emmett's sister would be happiest with clarity. It was So and So's fault—George Chilvers, the late Sergeant Tucker, General Haig. If you could find a murderer, that would help everyone. Wel, not the murderer; perhaps it wouldn't help him. But it would be simple. Emmett didn't kil himself. Someone else, the embodiment of evil, did. A homicidal maniac. Which means there was nothing anyone could have done and Miss Emmett doesn't have to feel guilty.'

'Why on earth should she feel guilty?' Laurence jumped in. 'She's the last person who should feel guilty. John was off in Germany before the war, then he was fighting in France, then he became il. She'd hardly talked to him properly for years.'

'I rest my case!'

Laurence gazed out of the window. He didn't want to continue the conversation. But Charles, apparently oblivious that he was treading on eggshels, went on,

'The thing is that a murderer wouldn't realy help. Murderers have their stories too. Their reasons. The people they crossed. The people who did them down. Mrs Christie can leave their world behind on the last page but a real murderer's story doesn't end on the galows.'

'Extreme violence changes everything for ever,' Laurence said, and then, in a more conciliatory tone he added, 'There is one loose end, though. Tresham Brabourne gave me another name—the junior officer who sneaked on Hart to their superior officer and got him charged. If I could track him down and if he survived the war, that would be informative. Man was caled Liley, Ralph Liley.' He looked at Charles expectantly.