Mrs. Spearman was happily preparing for her baby's baptism. She was staying at a hotel in Calcutta, India, and was hoping that her half-brother, Captain Eldred Bowyer-Bowyer would be able to attend. After all, he was to be the child's godfather.
Mrs. Spearman was tending to the baby's needs. As she picked up the little one, she was at once shocked and delighted to see Eldred standing there in the hotel room. He was a pilot for the British Royal Air Force and the First World War was raging in Europe, so she was especially enthralled that he was able to be transferred to India in time for the baptism.
She turned and set the baby down so she could embrace her brother. But as she turned again… he had vanished. Thinking he was just playing around, she called and searched for him, but he was nowhere in the hotel room. Perplexed and disappointed, she went on with the baptism, forced to use a surrogate godfather in her brother’s name.
On that very day in England, March 19, 1917, Eldred's young niece excitedly ran up the stairs to her mother with the glad news that "Uncle Alley Boy" had come for a visit. He was downstairs, she squealed. The mother reminded her daughter that it was quite impossible because Eldred was in France. The girl was insistent, however, that he was in fact downstairs. When the mother checked the girl's claim, Eldred was not there.
Had he been there? If so, how could he have also been seen half a world away in India on the same day?
As his relatives who saw him on that day would later learn, pilot Captain Eldred Bowyer-Bowyer was shot down and killed over France on March 19, 1917.
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