Free The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller Page A

he returned to Mary, expecting her to explain, but as he helped her into her coat she simply said, 'Wasn't that fun!' Her face, however, was serious and pale.
    All the way to the station he wanted to ask her who the man was but could think of no way to raise it that didn't seem clumsy. He told himself that if the meeting had been insignificant, surely she would have explained. As the wish to know loomed larger, the opportunity to do so receded. He could think of nothing else to say. Mary kept looking at her watch in the dark of the cab. From time to time she gave him a nervous and, he thought, slightly distant smile. She was no longer eager to talk but anyway they made it with just minutes to spare. As she stepped up into the carriage, she placed a hand on his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. He waited until her train had gone, waving with a jolliness that he didn't feel.

    He decided to clear his head by walking back. The city was quiet. The monumental architecture of the great financial institutions rose up either side of him, dark and oppressive. He supposed they had fought to protect these as much as they had the idea of village greens or royal palaces, had fought to keep things as they were. The dome of St Paul's came into view against the night sky, its silhouette softened by a veil of cloud. The night was cool and slightly damp; autumn was well on its way now with leaves beginning to fall from the plane trees. He felt indescribably sad.
    That night was the first bad one for a while. The banshee scream of shells. The distant crump of other men's catastrophes. The stink of burning and sweat, and all the time his heart pounding. He placed his hand on his chest to steady himself but his heart pulsed loudly through the dream. He put the whistle in his mouth. He was supposed to blow but couldn't get enough breath. Then somehow he was alone in the remains of a traverse, digging as fast and as desperately as he could. It was raining and Louise was there, under the earth. The wet soil made his hands ache with cold. His fingers found first her face and then her nose, entered her open mouth, felt the edges of her teeth. As fast as he dug, earth fell on her from above. Rain pooled in the crater he had dug to let her breathe and slowly, though he held her muddy hair, it filled up and she slipped away from him.

Chapter Eight
    Finding a man in France was obviously far beyond his resources, so Laurence mentally set Monsieur Meurice on one side. Kentish Town was another matter entirely. He had decided not to write to Mrs Lovell but simply to go to her house on the chance he would find her in.
    At four o'clock he arrived at the address given in John's will. It was a small, slightly shabby, dark-brick house, one of thousands like it in London. He noticed grass sprouting in the gutter and that a single spindly rose needed deadheading. Rain was pattering on a faded canvas screen hanging over the door and when he knocked, several tiny spiders were dislodged. No one came. He looked up at the grimy windows and thought how Mrs Lovell must have welcomed John's bequest. He knocked again and called out self-consciously. 'Mrs Lovell.' He waited for a while and then turned away. A woman in a print pinafore was watching him from over a bowing fence.
    'They're long gone,' she said. 'Those Lovells. Four—five years? She kept it nice but there's been another lot since and they've gone too. Bad drains.'
    'Do you have an address?'
    'No, but my daughter might. Used to help with the children. She liked her.'
    She turned and went into her own house, leaving the door open. He heard no voices but a few minutes later a skinny younger woman came out with a baby in her arms. She handed him a grubby bit of paper with an address written in capital letters.
    'That's where they were, last I heard.'
    It was a fifteen-minute walk, through increasingly heavy rain, to a modest street, but one much less drab than the first address. The semi-detached house sat back