Charles shook his head. 'Never heard of him. But I'l ask around.' He sounded tired. He fumbled for his pipe and then gazed out at the darkening day.
Laurence rested his aching neck against the back of the seat. He couldn't think straight. Was it possible the man who told them the news of Tucker's death had deliberately misled them to put them off the track? He thought not. He realised now that the landlord had been amused when they'd been making their not very subtle enquiries.
Charles had been right, of course, Tucker had provided the easy solution. But if Tucker was out of the picture, then the murder of Jim Byers and any possibility of John having been murdered became much harder to link.
On the blank margin of his paper he wrote down the name of everybody connected with the execution of Edmund Hart. It was an untidy list because in some instances he either didn't know the name or had only a rank or a partial name. He drew a line through those he knew were dead or disabled. The list became much shorter. He wrote down a second list of everyone he knew of who'd been there when John was trapped in the trench fal and repeated the process. Again, it was not a long list, though he had less information this time. Only Leonard Byers was on both lists. Then he added Eleanor Bolitho. She was not there but she'd nursed John at both periods in his life.
Finaly he set down the names of anyone else he could think of who had been significant in John's life in recent years. After Eleanor this had just six names on it: Mary, Mrs Emmett, Doctor Chilvers, George Chilvers, Mrs Chilvers and an unknown army friend who had visited him in Holmwood. He added Minna's name at the top with two question marks. She was dead, but she was the only possible link with the word 'Coburg' on John's note.
Obviously John was the man who had attacked Tucker but it had happened wel before Tucker's death. Could John have returned to Birmingham after the initial fight and kiled him before kiling himself? Everyone agreed Tucker had enemies but one of them was certainly John. Instead of looking for Tucker as a potential kiler of John Emmett, what if he discovered it was the other way around? It was John who had been arrested for assault, John who had been put in a nursing home to avoid prosecution.
What if these enquiries turned up something worse for Mary? He knew that was one reason he'd avoided going to the police in Birmingham. When John went absent, could he have traveled al the way to Birmingham to deal with Tucker? Was that where he was in those missing days? If Tucker had died in January or February, it was too late, but if he'd died earlier, it was just possible John could have been involved and he certainly had a motive. It would help if he had the dates, which meant he would have to contact the police after al, although he would be surprised if they hadn't made their own inquiries as to whether the dates fitted, given the earlier attack.
He recaled the various descriptions of John as much improved in the last weeks before his death. He was talking more, he seemed to have had a burden lifted from him. Might it have been because he'd finaly dispensed his own sort of justice? If John had kiled Tucker, then his own suicide became more comprehensible.
By the time they puled into London, Laurence was hungry and thirsty, and Charles was snoring. The air felt wintry. They shared a cab, which dropped Charles off first before going on up to Bloomsbury.
'Thank you,' Laurence said. 'It was much better having you there. If ever I can reciprocate...'
'You can,' said Charles, patting his pocket. 'Two tickets for the Varsity Match. First time at Twickenham. New beginnings. Come with me and cheer for the dark blues.'
Laurence smiled. 'Of course.' Then before Charles went in, he remembered one thing that had been on his mind since the morning. 'Is there a river in Birmingham?'
'The Rea, not one of the great waterways of the world or, indeed, England. Not, I'm afraid, one of which poets sing. Or can pronounce, realy.'
Chapter Twenty-nine
Delicate ice crystals radiated across the inside of Laurence's bedroom window when he woke late the next day. As he waited for some water to heat for shaving—it must be the coldest day of the year so far, he thought—he picked up a monograph on the church of St Alfrege but soon found his thoughts drifting back to Birmingham.
The violence of Tucker's end added to a list of possible murders, yet removed the most likely perpetrator. It was just feasible that John could have kiled Tucker, although the deaths of Byers' cousin and Mulins had taken place wel after John's own. Laurence found himself more rather than less determined to get to the bottom of things.
When he reread the list he'd made on the train, his instinct was that Eleanor Bolitho was the key to it al. The more he thought about it, the more he saw a discrepancy between Eleanor's insistence that Wiliam must be protected from reminders of the war, and the feeling he got from the man himself who appeared to welcome company. Was Eleanor worried that Laurence might let slip something that she would rather her husband didn't know, or that Wiliam might tel him something she wanted to keep hidden? Eleanor had lied about how wel she'd known John. What else had she lied about?
He decided that the only way to make sense of this was to try to see her again and tel her he knew she had been to Holmwood. If he could put pressure on Eleanor to help him, things might start to fal into place. Nevertheless, when he left his flat, he almost changed his mind. The sky was heavy; freezing rain was turning fast to snow and by the look of it there was much more to come. By the time he was on the bus, the snow was coming down heavily and they made slow progress.
He had come to assume that Wiliam, at least, would always be at home. But nearly an hour after he set out, he stood on the doorstep outside their flat, having rung the bel three times, feeling that certainty, among others, seep away from him. He had been fired up with a determination to confront Eleanor. She had, of course, a right to privacy, but he needed to be certain what her part was in John's death. What did she know? What had she guessed? He was convinced that she was withholding knowledge about John from him and, more importantly, from John's family. From Mary.
The weather continued to deteriorate. He stepped back to look up at the three-storey building; the Bolithos' windows were dark. He had been prepared for Eleanor to be angry or even to refuse to let him in, but not for her absence. He felt in his pockets for a piece of paper, but as the only pencil he had on him was broken, there was no way he could leave a message. Anyway, he had wanted to catch her without her being forewarned. The snow flurries were now obscuring the view to the end of the street: he couldn't just stand between the pilars of the stone porch and wait in the cold. The black-and-white lozenge-shaped tiles beneath his feet were already partly obscured by white and the street itself was completely covered.
He puled the brass bel knob one more time. He thought he could hear it jangling somewhere in the building, but he moved away immediately, knowing it was no good. He slipped on the lower step and swore loudly.
Eventualy he puled up his colar and set off back towards Kensington High Street. An absolute peace descended as he walked by. He gazed into a bay-fronted room where a woman was already drawing the curtains. Smoke and
