A Duty to the Dead

by Charles Todd

  Moving on, I came to the comment “Mrs. Graham departed for London this morning, and I shall have my choice of the offertory hymn while she is away. Very kind of her.” I thought that last was a dry commentary rather than an expression of real gratitude.

  I was already learning that the rector, Mr. Craig, had a tendency toward tongue-in-cheek remarks. And so I was prepared to see an additional remark on the first Sunday of her absence, where he wrote, “The service went smoothly and there were several people who spoke kindly about the anthem. If I were a betting man…”

  I interpreted that to mean that the people who spoke kindly would also say something to Mrs. Graham on her return.

  There were more entries, and then a lapse of a day, and when the writer took up his pen again, it was with shock and disbelief.

  The most ghastly thing has happened. Mrs. Graham returned from London, bringing her sons with her, and she asked me if I would keep Peregrine at the Rectory, under lock and key, while she spoke to Inspector Gadd and Lady Parsons. I could see that the entire family was in great distress, and I was grateful when Robert Douglas offered to take the other boys home and see them put to bed. He came back after that was accomplished, expecting to find Mrs. Graham here, but she hadn’t returned. I asked him what in the name of God had brought them back to Kent in such a state, for I had also seen the bloody clothing Peregrine wore, and no one had thought to bring the child a change. Douglas told me that he and Mrs. Graham had returned from a dinner party to find no servants in the house. They went in search of the housemaid and finally came upon her in her own quarters. And Peregrine was there as well, striving to remove a knife from the poor girl’s throat. It was his pocketknife, a handsome large one that had belonged to his father. The girl was quite dead. The only conclusion, considering his condition, was that he must have killed the girl in some fit or other. He’d never been well, but no one had ever expected such a turn of events, and the police asked Peregrine what he was about. He said he wanted his knife back, and that the girl wouldn’t give it to him. After much discussion and consideration, the London police agreed that the boy should be admitted to an asylum as soon as feasible, and that trying him, with his limited range of understanding and emotional response, would be difficult. I have never seen a child so ill and shocked as he was—he hardly knew where he was or why, and though Lady Parsons had questioned him most forcefully, he was in no state to answer her. Inspector Gadd took Peregrine into my study and questioned him privately but had no more success than Lady Parsons. The doctor had come in the meantime, and he was in agreement that this boy was both exhausted and in a state bordering on catatonic. It was nearing morning, and Douglas took Mrs. Graham and the doctor to Barton’s, to speak with the staff there. Before noon, Douglas returned with the doctor, who had prescribed a sedative for Mrs. Graham and left her at her house to rest. The two men then took the dazed lad into the carriage, and I never saw him again.

  And then in an addendum dated some weeks later:

  On several occasions, I went to the asylum to offer pastoral care to Peregrine Graham, and I was told that the doctors had determined that it was best if he continued the regimen of care they had devised, and that the chaplain at the asylum would see to the lad’s spiritual needs. I have no such faith in Mr. Newcome, and although I spoke to Mrs. Graham about this, she told me that the London police had told her that Peregrine shouldn’t have visitors of any sort. I left it there, though I was very distressed. The other Graham boys have seemed to come through this nightmare with few scars, but Arthur was very subdued when first he came home from London. Some time afterward, he was sent away to school, and I saw him only on holidays.

  I thumbed through some twenty ensuing pages, but there was nothing more about Peregrine Graham.

  I was disappointed that the rector had only been able to describe events as he was told them by the Grahams, but his remark about Arthur cut me to the quick. Subdued…

  Peregrine read the sections again. “I don’t recall much about any of this, I was half sick and too dazed to take in what was happening to me.”

  “Had you been sedated—given anything to calm you?”

  “I don’t know, I hardly remember my conversations with the police. My stepmother brought me a cup of sweet tea that made me drowsy. Still, I can recall that Inspector Gadd was very kind. He asked me why I had done such a thing, and then again, what Lily had done to me that made me want to harm her. I could only stare at him, but he didn’t shout as the London police did. He put his hand on my knee, and told me not to worry, that I would be all right. But I wasn’t, was I?”

  I was nearly sure that Peregrine had been drugged. To keep him quiet on the journey to London, and while he was there, so he wouldn’t trouble anyone. But then why take him? There had been the excuse of seeing a doctor, but nothing had come of it. I was left with the only logical answer. If he was left at home alone with only the servants, someone might have discovered that the public view of Peregrine Graham was not the real truth.

  Whatever my feelings about Mrs. Graham, this was a horrible supposition, that she would have treated her stepson so cruelly. But then I remembered something else—something Peregrine had told me.

  He had found his stepmother in bed with her cousin Robert Douglas.

  I sat back in my chair.

  “My good God,” I whispered.

  Peregrine looked at me. “What is it?”

  “I—it’s nothing. Just—look, I need to be by myself for a while. Do you mind?”

  “I’d like to take these to my room and read the passage again. Is that all right?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m tired, Peregrine, that’s all.”

  I thought he saw through me, but he turned and went to his room, and I sat there staring out the window, not seeing the traffic in and out of the shops, not seeing the sun fade behind gray clouds, looking inward at something rather terrible.

  Peregrine believed that Jonathan or Timothy—or both—were the sons of the liaison between Mrs. Graham and her cousin Robert Douglas.

  Was Timothy’s clubfoot the mark of that liaison? I had no idea if a clubfoot was a result of inbreeding. But it might be, for all I knew. It might also run in families.

  I tried to picture each of the sons in turn. That got me nowhere. I hadn’t been looking for indications of their ancestry when I was speaking to them face-to-face. But even if they weren’t Robert’s offspring, Mrs. Graham might have been so frightened that Peregrine would tell his father what he’d seen, she’d done her best to destroy his credibility. And what better way to do that than by indicating he wasn’t really right in the head? However cruel that was, it would be nothing to what she might have done years later to protect her own child and blame Peregrine for a crime he hadn’t committed.

  Everyone agreed she had been terribly distressed by the death of Lily Mercer—and she’d paid the girl’s family handsomely to leave England. Would she have felt so strongly about protecting Peregrine, or gone to such lengths to hide what had been done? She had kept him out of prison, not from kindness but because his brothers would have suffered the shame of being related to a murderer. And I hardly thought Mrs. Graham was the first person to send an unwanted family member to an asylum. Little better than a prison in some ways, it could at least provoke a measure of sympathy for the family of the afflicted.

  I thought about the young Prince John who had had seizures, and how he’d been removed from the public eye very quietly, until he’d been nearly forgotten. Mrs. Graham had succeeded in doing much the same with Peregrine.

  I was still trying to understand the full impact of my thinking when there was a knock at the door. It was Peregrine, and he held one of the rector’s journals in his hand.

  “I think you ought to read this,” he said, and walked into my room.

  I took the book and carried it to the window, reluctant to turn up the lamp. Peregrine followed me and pointed to an entry some years after the murder of Lily Mercer.

  I r
ead it quickly, and then again.

  Inspector Gadd died this morning in spite of everything the doctor could do to save him. He had gone very early to one of the outlying farms to investigate a rash of small fires and other destruction that had been plaguing Herbert Meadowes for several weeks. The inspector had hoped to catch the culprit in the act, and was lying in wait for him. He must have seen the culprit and given chase, but as he tried to climb the stile, a blood vessel in his brain burst from the effort he was making, and he died where he fell. Meadowes found him there some hours later. God be with him, he was a good man.

  I turned to Peregrine. “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with your situation?”

  “None. Except that I know Jonathan boasted that he’d raided Herbert Meadowes’s henhouse for eggs, and not been caught. “He thought it was a fox,” he told me, “I’m as sly as a fox.” And Arthur had said, “That’s not brave. You must give him a fair chance to catch you. You must do it three times.” This was in London.”

  “And how did Jonathan answer him?”

  “He didn’t. I think he was put out. Timothy taunted him too, saying, “No, it must be six times, to be fair.’ And Arthur said, ‘Six it is, then.’ Timothy asked him, ‘When will you try? When we go back to Owlhurst?’ But Arthur answered him, ‘Not then. When I’m ready.’”

  “But that’s not proof of anything. Boys boast, striving not to be outdone.” Even the young subalterns under my father’s command took foolish risks and accepted dares, to prove they were brave. More than one was given a dressing-down for imprudent conduct. Come to that, I’d heard my father and Simon Brandon wager on the outcome of a fight between a mongoose and a cobra.

  “But no one came forward to admit to being there. And no one got help for the inspector, when he went down.”

  For fear of being punished for trespassing.

  “You’re telling me that Arthur did this?”

  “No. Now read this.”

  He held out another diary, and I saw that it was some six months after Inspector Gadd had died.

  Doctor Hadley coming home from the bedside of Daniel Furston died when a startled horse ran away with his carriage, overturned it, and threw him out on the roadside, where he broke his neck. He was a good man. We shall miss him. God rest his soul.

  “I don’t know, Peregrine, you’re leaping to conclusions. Accidents happen—”

  “Read this.”

  He had marked another passage in that same diary.

  Lady Parsons had had a close call. She had been out riding in the woods where the owls lived, when her horse stumbled and rolled on her.

  She broke her collarbone, her right arm, and her right leg in the fall, and the wonder was, she wasn’t killed outright.

  So ran the rector’s account.

  “No, Peregrine, you’re trying to make connections that aren’t there.”

  “Indeed.” He retrieved the book from my hand and left the room with a final comment. “I lost track of events here in Owlhurst. These journals make for interesting reading.”

  I thought, He’s playing mind games. He offered me that pistol, knowing I wouldn’t take it then or later. He’s trying to show me other deaths that he couldn’t possibly have been responsible for. He knows I suspect Arthur, though. And that will be his salvation.

  I returned the journals to the rector just after dusk had fallen. He thanked me formally, and then asked, “Have these set your mind at rest?”

  “They were very informative. While I was a guest in her house, I could hardly ask Mrs. Graham to relive what must have been a very painful past. And Peregrine Graham was too ill to tell me anything, even if I’d asked. I don’t much care for mysteries; I just used whatever skill I possessed to see him well again.”

  “And the same for Ted Booker, I think. Only he was beyond human help.”

  “Sadly,” I agreed.

  “I’m glad you came to see me, my dear Miss Crawford. It’s why I am here.”

  “Tell me,” I asked, “how did the man who wrote these die?”

  His eyebrows went up. “Are you suggesting he wasn’t in his right mind when he made his entries here?”

  “No, no. I just—I felt I came to know him, a little, through his words. I was told that he had nearly worn himself out, caring for his flock.”

  “That’s true. He was in the church one morning, and went up into the pulpit to find something he’d left there. He tripped over his own feet and went down the stairs headfirst. He lived for several months afterward but hardly knew where he was or what had happened to him. It was a blessing for him when he died. He wouldn’t have wanted to linger. He’d put a note with these journals years earlier, that they should go to his successor for guidance. A very thoughtful gesture.”

  I said, “An unfortunate mishap. Like the burst blood vessel that killed Inspector Gadd, like the carriage overturning and killing the doctor. The fall that injured Lady Parsons so badly. Have there been other incidents of this nature since the war began?”

  He pursed his lips, thinking. “In fact, no. Unless you count young Peter Mason. But that’s ridiculous—”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was swimming in the pond on his father’s farm, when he apparently got a cramp. He drowned. Arthur was at home, just before being sent to France, and he and his brothers swam in that murky water looking for the body. Jonathan found it, but it was hours too late. He was a promising lad, Peter was, and my first service for one so young.”

  I thanked him and said good-bye. But I couldn’t go back to the hotel straightaway. There was too much on my mind. Peregrine’s doing.

  I walked in the wood where the owls nested. The trees were tall and sturdy, the last of the ancient forest that had once covered this part of Kent. The forest that had stood at Harold’s back in the Battle of Hastings, on the main track that led from the sea to London.

  I counted. Inspector Gadd. Lady Parsons. The doctor. The rector. But surely not the boy Peter. Without him, Lily Mercer made five.

  Six, Timothy had suggested, and Arthur agreed. But that was six times taunting the farmer Meadowes, to give him the chance to catch the culprit. Not six murders. Or near murders, if we counted Lady Parsons among them.

  But to look at it another way, six opportunities for the police to catch their man. And Peregrine locked away in his room at the asylum could only have been blamed for one of them.

  It was dark under the trees, but peaceful. A little wind rustled the dry, bare branches, and once I thought I heard an owl glide past me, after other prey. They are silent, owls are, as they fly, but there’s something, a disturbance in the air, a sixth sense, that catches one’s attention sometimes.

  It was time to turn back. I was nearly out of the wood when someone stepped from the shadow of a tree trunk and confronted me.

  I drew in a breath, I was so startled, and he could hear that. He laughed, and then my eyes adjusted to the barest glimmer of ambient light, and I saw that it was Timothy Graham.

  “It is you,” he said then. “I thought I saw you walking toward the wood, but I told myself it was impossible. What brings you back to Owlhurst?”

  “You gave me such a fright!” I declared.

  “Guilty conscience, I’ll be bound.”

  That was too close to the mark for comfort. I laughed, more an admission than a denial, I was certain.

  “I—a personal matter brought me back. And so I stayed the night. But I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  He fell in step beside me. “I saw you coming from the rectory. If I were to guess, I’d say it was Ted Booker who has been on your mind.”

  “I’d rather not discuss Lieutenant Booker.”

  “You tried to help him. I think it was unfinished business on Ted’s account.”

  I answered. “Sometimes when you try to save a patient, and you fail—even if it isn’t your fault, you still take it more personally than you should.”

  “As you did in Arthur’s case.”


  Surprised, I answered, “In a way, yes. He sent me here with a message, and I felt honor bound to bring it. However it might be received.”

  “I can understand that.” He hesitated, then asked, “What did you make of Arthur? I don’t mean what you told my mother, but what you really felt?”

  “He was a good patient. We often talked—I’d be coming off my shift, and I’d stop by his cot and he’d tell me what he’d been reading. Or I would tell him about some part of my day. He was restless, his foot hurting him like the very devil, and I knew that any distraction was welcomed.”

  “Did he talk to you about Owlhurst or his family?”

  “Only in the most general terms. You see, the wounded often live in the present, because they’ve been very badly frightened, even if they refuse to admit it. And so they hold on to the present. The past is still too—I don’t know—precious.”

  “Did he tell you about his brothers?”

  “I knew he had three, and no sisters. That was all.”

  “Not that I was lame, or that Jonathan has a cold streak in him that I’ve never fathomed, and I doubt if Arthur did either? Or that Peregrine had been clapped up for murder?”

  “In a hospital ward, with other ears hearing every word, men seldom bring up such personal things. I knew Jonathan was also in the army—I heard Arthur telling someone that.”

  “Yet you came all this way…”

  “I made a promise, Mr. Graham. I have told you.”

  “And so you’d have traveled to Yorkshire, if a patient asked you to.”

  “Kent was much easier. But yes. I’d have tried.”

  He nodded. “Yes, that’s honorable. I’m angry that I’m not allowed to join the army. I resent the bonds that soldiers share. Arthur and Jonathan wrote often to each other, but less often to me. Or to my mother. It was as if we didn’t exist because we weren’t there.”

  I could sympathize with what he was saying. My father, during his years as a commanding officer, cared for his men like a stern but loving father. I doubt they saw it that way, especially those who felt the sharp edge of his tongue, but my mother and I did. We sometimes felt pangs of jealousy, and my mother would say, “I married a regiment, my dear. If you are looking for single-minded love, find yourself someone in civilian life. A nice banker, perhaps.”