A Duty to the Dead

by Charles Todd

  “I’d rather go away now, and not look back.”

  “But you’re a witness, Peregrine. You can’t disappear, if there’s to be any justice at all.”

  This time I found Simon at his club and asked him to drive me back to Kent. Peregrine was determined to go, but I didn’t want him taking the risk. Or to have to explain to Simon.

  Curious, Simon agreed, and he took me to the flat long enough to fetch my bag. Peregrine, in Elayne’s room, didn’t come out, though I was nearly certain he’d call my bluff and find a way to accompany us. I expect if he’d had any uniform but that of my father’s old regiment, he might have tried to do just that.

  I half expected to find him gone from London by the time I got back. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. What if it was all taken out of my hands, and I didn’t have to face what Arthur might have done?

  Simon was silent for most of the journey, and I was grateful, lost in thought as I was.

  We found Lady Parsons just outside Cranbrook in a very lovely old Jacobean house with a pedimented porch and graceful stonework around the windows. The estate was called Peacocks, and on the gates were two magnificent stone peacocks, the hen demure and the male with raised head, above the spread of that glorious tail.

  I remembered Lady Parsons from the inquest. But I had forgotten how formidable she was.

  She received me in her drawing room, austere in mourning black, with jet beads and only a touch of white at her collar and at her cuffs. A pince-nez on a silver chain was pinned at her shoulder.

  “You’re the young woman who worked with Dr. Philips trying to save Lieutenant Booker. What brings you here, second thoughts about your testimony? As I recall, it was an impassioned plea for understanding. Remarkable, I thought. We have no room for compassion in a war such as this one. A shame.”

  “I’m afraid that it’s another matter that I wish to discuss, Lady Parsons. The fate of Peregrine Graham.”

  The door opened, and a little dog trotted into the room, taking his place at Lady Parsons’s feet.

  “Peregrine Graham, is it? You do have a taste for lost causes, my girl. The odds are, he’s dead.”

  “So I’ve been told. But I happened on information that confused me—I’d heard that the body of Lily Mercer had been—er, butchered, for want of a better word.”

  “We did not ask for such unpleasant details, Miss Crawford. Mrs. Graham was nearly incoherent with shock by the time she reached Owlhurst. I was summoned, along with Inspector Gadd, because she was unable to continue at that hour to the asylum and attend to all the details of admitting her son. Inspector Gadd and I decided the boy was safest at the rectory until he could be moved again, and the doctor determined that he was stable enough to wait a few more hours.”

  “According to the information that Scotland Yard has in hand, Lily Mercer died of a single stab wound to her throat.”

  “And how did you come by such information, Miss Crawford?” Her voice had taken on a chilly note, and the dog stirred at her feet.

  “My father, Colonel Crawford, was able to discover it for me.”

  “And is he aware of the use you are now making of this information?”

  “He—is aware of my interest in the fate of Lily Mercer.”

  “I see.”

  “I believe there might have been a miscarriage of justice, Lady Parsons. And I am seeking advice from you on how to proceed in this matter.”

  “My advice, if you will take it, is to leave police business to the police. As I did. Inspector Gadd handled a most difficult matter with admirable skill and discretion. That’s all there is to say. It does you credit to want to set the world to rights, my dear, but as Peregrine is dead, I see no point in investigating a tragedy that lies in the past where it belongs. Fifteen years is a long time, witnesses die, attitudes change, and it is almost impossible to make a judgment on new facts when the old ones can’t be reconstructed.”

  “I’m not asking you to make a judgment. I’d simply like to know if you were aware of a discrepancy in important details.”

  “The nightmare here, Miss Crawford, was that of a child committing murder. We were appalled, and we did what we could to make Mrs. Graham’s hideous duty as simple as humanly possible. You cannot know her state of mind at the time. I witnessed it. I saw the young man myself, and his own state was pitiable. It was I who suggested that Mrs. Graham’s cousin, acting in loco parentis, remove the child the next morning to Barton’s while the doctor treated Mrs. Graham for exhaustion. She had done more than any woman might be expected to do in such circumstances, and I admired her courage in seeing the matter through. But she had three other sons who were in desperate need of her care, and her place was naturally with them. A man’s steadying hand was what Peregrine Graham most needed, and that is what we were able to provide for him.”

  “What did Peregrine have to say for himself?” I asked.

  “Very little. He was quite naturally dazed by the turn of events, and on that score, it isn’t surprising. I asked him how he had come to kill, and his answer was that he wanted his father’s knife returned to him, he was quite upset that it had been taken away. I asked him how he felt about what he’d done, and he said that he didn’t care for the smell. I asked him if he’d liked the unfortunate victim, and he replied that she was spiteful when no adult was present, and that he had disliked her for it. All very consistent, according to the doctor, with the boy’s inability to tell right from wrong. He couldn’t seem to grasp the severity of his actions. There was no malice, no cunning, no viciousness. There was no doubt in my mind, as there was no doubt in the minds of the London authorities, that prison was inappropriate and that Barton’s Asylum was the proper choice, where he could be evaluated.”

  “Why not a London hospital?”

  “I believe that the doctor, a man called Hepple, who was a specialist in mental derangement in children, had recently removed to Barton’s. Mrs. Graham was very persuasive. She felt that her stepson had no prior history of violence, no indications of a violent nature, and that it had most likely been a disagreement over a pocketknife, about which he was obsessive, that might have triggered this event. In supervised circumstances, it was likely he would never kill again.”

  I could see that I was speaking to a wall. Lady Parsons had made up her mind that night, and she was not accustomed to changing it. I could also see that Mrs. Graham had been terribly distressed but had somehow kept her wits about her as well. And that would be indicative of a shocked and horrified mother who had to fight for a child she loved with every tool at her disposal. Nothing else mattered, not even her own near collapse.

  I thanked Lady Parsons for her time and prepared to take my leave.

  She said, “My dear, when one is young, one sees dragons everywhere, and one is prepared to fight them. That’s an admirable trait. But as one ages, one often sees that injustice is rare, and that what had appeared to be dragons are merely the shadows the mind creates when it wishes to avoid a bitter truth.”

  I stood there for a moment, then asked, “Did you feel I was fighting dragons when I made the plea for Lieutenant Booker?”

  “In a way, I did. Shell shock is little understood, although I believe that in young Booker’s case, it was clear that both Dr. Philips and you had fought hard against his dragons. But the dragons won, and that was neither justice nor injustice, but the simple fact that in the end, he didn’t have the strength to endure.”

  She hadn’t used the word courage, but it hung in the air between us.

  The little dog accompanied us to the door of the drawing room, either ready to defend his mistress or hoping for a walk, it was hard to say.

  Which brought me to another matter I hadn’t intended to broach.

  “I understand you had a terrible fall from your horse some years ago, Lady Parsons.”

  “Oh, my dear, I was frightened to death that I wouldn’t walk again! I don’t know why the horse fell—my groom found cuts on the mare’s knees, and he ver
y rightly called in Constable Abbot, but I could swear that there was nothing on the path that might have tripped up Henny. We had ridden through high grass before we reached the wood, and she might well have encountered something there that I couldn’t see. I don’t wear my spectacles when I ride.”

  And that was Lady Parsons’s dragon—that no one would dare touch her or her horse. She was sacrosanct.

  Simon said as I walked out to the waiting motorcar, “You don’t appear to be happy with the outcome of your visit.”

  “I’ve been fighting dragons. Or so I’m told.”

  Simon put the motorcar into gear and drove several miles until he came to a place wide enough for us to pull to the side of the road. The view across the Downs was wonderful in the cold light of a winter’s day.

  He said, simply, “What can I do?”

  “Dear Simon, I thank you, but it isn’t a position the army can take with full cavalry charge in support of the infantry.”

  “Try.”

  I shook my head.

  “Bess—”

  “Do you remember some twenty years ago, there was a scandal about a steeplechase where a favorite lost to a horse with no record of winning—and suddenly in this one race, he was a phenomenon, ahead of the field by some ten lengths? And much later, it was discovered that the horse who won had actually taken the place of the one legally entered in that race? My father was angry when the truth came out. He’d had a wager on the favorite.”

  “As I remember the substitution wasn’t discovered for five years.”

  “Exactly. I think this must have happened when Lily Mercer was found dead. The wrong boy was blamed, because it served everyone’s purpose for him to be sent to an asylum.”

  “That’s a rather strong accusation. The police don’t often get things wrong.”

  “And they didn’t. It was a child in that house. Only, the real killer was protected, and the scapegoat was not missed by anyone.”

  Simon was silent for some time. And then he asked, “Has this boy—the real murderer—killed again?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Circumstantial evidence says he may have. I’m not a policeman, I can’t prove what I believe.”

  “You’re too close to the people involved—too close to be objective.”

  “And if I’m sent to France in a fortnight, it will all be swept under the carpet again, and an innocent man will continue to be blamed for something he didn’t do.”

  Simon turned to look at me. “Are you in love with this innocent man?”

  I laughed. “Hardly.” The laugh faded. “But I see the injustice here, and I’m helpless to change it. And what about the dead girl? What does she deserve? Even her family abandoned her, in a way. She wasn’t the victim, she was the problem, to be swept under the carpet as quickly as possible.”

  “You were ever taking pity on the halt and the lame and the lost.”

  “I know. I’ve seen so much death, Simon. I’m glad I took up nursing—I’ve been able to do something about the war by saving the lives of wounded men—but there are things I’ll remember until I die, and memories that come in the dark, when I’m trying to sleep.”

  He got out to crank the motor. “You should have been a son, Bess Crawford. It would have made life much easier for the rest of us.”

  “No, it wouldn’t have done any such thing. You’d have been following me into battle to keep me safe.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I TOLD PEREGRINE that shifting Lady Parsons’s belief in her own judgment was going to be an uphill struggle. “And one I don’t think we’re likely to win.”

  He got up and began to pace. “I don’t even know what I believe. Logic tells me I could have done it. Honesty says I probably killed her. The problem comes back to what I remember. And memories are difficult to refute.”

  “That’s probably because you were drugged to keep you out of the way and manageable while in London. And it turned out to be a godsend, that you were acquiescent to whatever was asked of you.”

  Stopping at the window, he lifted the edge of the white lace curtains that my flatmates and I had hung there, idly glancing out. And then his interest sharpened, and he stood there, watching something or someone in the street below.

  After a moment, he said, “Come here, will you?”

  I went to stand beside him, reaching to pull the curtain wider so that I could see the street. But he caught my hand, pulled me in front of him, and said, “No. Through this crack. Don’t disturb the curtain!”

  I could feel him behind me, tense as a steel rod, and the hand on my shoulder was gripping it hard.

  “I don’t see anything,” I said uneasily. “The street. The houses opposite, the carriages and motorcars and people—”

  “There. At the house across the way. There’s a man loitering there. See, the one with the cane.”

  The house he spoke of was closed up. The children had been taken to the country for safety from the zeppelin raids, staying with their grandparents for the duration of the war. Mrs. Venton was nursing burn victims at her sister’s country house near Winchester. Her husband was serving in the Navy, the gunnery officer on a cruiser.

  I looked again at the man. He was moderately well dressed, but the cane he was carrying caught my eye. “That’s not a cane,” I said, intrigued. “Well, it is, if you like, but I recognize it. My grandfather had one—it’s a sword stick. A twist of the handle, and the blade slides out.”

  “Your father has set someone to watch over you. What have you told him?”

  “Nothing—truly, I haven’t betrayed you. I wouldn’t. Besides, the general view is that you must be dead.”

  Just at that moment, Mrs. Hennessey came out of our house and crossed the street, her market basket on her arm. The man stepped out of the shelter of the Venton porch and tipped his hat to her.

  I could see then that he was older than he looked, his head bald save for a ring of graying hair like a laurel wreath worn rather long. He looked more like a hopeful poet than he did a menace. And perhaps that was by design.

  Mrs. Hennessey listened to him for a moment, then shook her head. He asked other questions, and she again told him no. After that he let her go, walked in the other direction from the one she took—and just as he was about to pass out of sight, he turned and came back again to the porch across from us.

  I moved away from Peregrine and the window. “I’ll collect my coat and walk out. See what he does. Whether he follows me or stays where he is. We need buns for our tea, and the bakery is just in the next street. You’ve been there.”

  “What if he stops you, as he stopped Mrs. Hennessey?”

  I smiled as I pulled on my gloves and reached for the market basket we kept in the flat. “I’m forewarned, aren’t I?”

  Peregrine was uneasy with my going. “I still don’t like this idea.”

  “No, I want you to see that I had no part of this watcher, and that we’re both beginning to imagine things.”

  Before he could argue, I was out the door and down the stairs.

  This house had four floors, three of them let to people like my flatmates and me—in need of a base in London but seldom there to enjoy it.

  I went down the stairs and out the door without looking in the direction of the watcher—if that is what he was. Instead, I walked briskly to the corner of our street, turning toward the small shops huddled together on the main road.

  When I got to the corner, I risked a glance behind me, and to my surprise, no one was following me—and the watcher had vanished.

  “Tsk. I’ve come out into the cold for nothing,” I said to myself. But I had come this far, and I went to the bakery to see what was available. We were all doing without the niceties by this time, and it depended entirely on what the baker had been able to find in the way of sugar and flour and eggs as to what was for sale. He put all his resources into bread, which everyone needed, and what was left over went into the tea cakes and buns and an occasional su
rprise, like the Sally Lunns on sale last week.

  We weren’t as fortunate today. I bought bread and looked at the pathetically thin arrangement of sweets on trays that now dwarfed the selections and that used to be filled to overflowing with good things. There was a little white gingerbread left, and I bought two cakes of that for our tea.

  Mr. Johnson, serving me, said, “You aren’t at the Front yet, Miss Crawford, nursing our lads? They must be heartsick without your sunny presence.”

  He was a string bean of a man with thick white hair, black brows, and a pleasant disposition. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him in a foul mood.

  “Alas, they must wait another week, Mr. Johnson. I’ve no word yet on where I’ll be sent.”

  “If you see my grandson, God forbid he should be hurt, but if you do, tell him I send him my love.”

  It was his greatest fear, that his grandson would die in the war. A fear that too many people shared.

  “I promise,” I told him as he handed me my tidy little square of cakes. And then someone else was holding his attention, and I went out the door.

  The man, when I approached the flat, was walking back up the street, toward me. But he stopped to watch a small boy trying to make a toy horse set on wheels crest the uneven cobbles of the street. I went on to our flat and opened the door.

  Peregrine was standing there, his face a thundercloud.

  “He came into the house,” Peregrine said before I’d even crossed the threshold. “I watched him cross the street, heard him climb the stairs, and he went to each door, listening and then trying the latch. I’d locked your door. But I could hear him fumbling with it.”

  “Then he wasn’t sent by my father. My father knows which flat I occupy. He must be looking for someone else.”

  “You saw Jonathan in Tonbridge. You saw Timothy in Owlhurst. You called on Lady Parsons, the rector, and the doctor. Someone set a watch on you.”