Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

It was as good an epitaph as any.

“It’s so sad, isn’t it?” I said to Mr. Montgomery. “What war does to families.”

Mr. Montgomery replied, “You mustn’t take our burdens on your shoulders, Miss Crawford. I was warned when I went to France as chaplain not to dwell on all I saw or heard. It was a hard lesson. But it has stayed with me here in my parish. I am the better for it.”

But I thought he mended his church because he couldn’t mend the broken lives and minds brought to him for comfort.

We walked in silence for a time, and then he asked, “Did you want to save Ted Booker because you couldn’t save Arthur Graham?” His eyes were on my face. “Dr. Philips has told me how hard you tried. And you worked a miracle, saving Peregrine Graham. You must count your debt paid in full.”

“I-don’t know if that’s true or not. I won’t know until I’ve left here, when there’s distance between me and Owlhurst,” I said, unwilling to discuss my feelings with him. Then I heard myself admitting, “I kept putting off coming here, oddly enough.”

As if acknowledging my confession, Mr. Montgomery made one of his own. “I wasn’t cut out to be a chaplain, although I did all I could for the men who came to me. I just didn’t let them see the cost of helping them.”

We walked on in silence, and I said good-bye to him near the rectory, before turning in the direction of the Graham house.

Something he’d said earlier came back to me. That he’d seen Jonathan leaving the surgery later in the evening. I thought grimly, Had he undone all that Dr. Philips and I had tried to accomplish? Jonathan hadn’t shown any sympathy toward Ted Booker. Why the need to visit him? Timothy I might have understood. But Jonathan…

And speak of the devil-

Here he was coming toward me.

I stopped a few paces from him, and asked the question that was on my mind. “I didn’t know you’d visited Ted Booker last evening. I wonder-was he in better spirits? Or had the depression settled over him again? How did he strike you?”

Jonathan looked at me with a frown between his eyes. “I didn’t go to the surgery last night. Why should I? I had nothing to say to the man.”

He nodded and walked on. I stood there, staring after him. The rector had just told me-But perhaps he was wrong, and it was someone else. He might have assumed…That made no sense either. I somehow hadn’t had the impression that the rector was guessing at the visitor’s identity.

A little unsettled, I had just reached the Graham house to find a man turning away from the door and coming toward me. He was lifting his hat to me, as if he knew me.

“Miss Crawford, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Yes?” I didn’t know him. Tall, middle-aged, dark hair already thick with gray, and blue eyes that were pale with a darker rim. Disconcerting.

“Sorry to have to introduce myself here in the street. I’m Inspector Howard. I was just asking for you. Susan told me you were having a walk. I must speak to you. Would you be more comfortable in the house with Mrs. Graham present?”

Of course I wouldn’t, but I couldn’t say so. “Perhaps we might continue to walk a little,” I said.

“Certainly. Thank you.” He seemed relieved at my suggestion. We turned back the way I’d come, along the church wall, toward The Bells. “I’m here, as you might have gathered, to ask you about Lieutenant Booker. Dr. Philips tells me you had a good grasp of his medical situation, and that you had spoken to him several times, in fact just after his initial attempt at suicide.”

A formality? What was I to say, that Ted Booker had been driven to his death by well-meaning people who believed that a stiff upper lip, and all that it entailed, would set him right again? That a good husband and father ought to know what was expected of him and do his duty, however painful?

Inspector Howard waited.

Finally I said, “I don’t think he wanted to die. He just didn’t know how to go about living. It was too overwhelming. I was just speaking to Mrs. Clayton, and she told me how close the two-Ted and his brother, Harry-had been all their lives. Do you have a brother, Inspector?”

He grimaced. “Three sisters.”

I had to smile. “Then you can’t very well put yourself in Lieutenant Booker’s place.”

“Do you feel that Dr. Philips did everything possible to prevent Booker’s death?”

So that was the way the wind was blowing. Mrs. Denton must have said something to leave the impression that Dr. Philips was to blame. On the heels of her own spoken wish that her son-in-law would die! How like her now to try to make a case for neglect, so that her daughter wouldn’t be burdened with the stigma of a suicide.

We had come to The Bells and walked on past their garden gate toward the cricket pitch.

“Not only was he convinced that Lieutenant Booker was on the mend, that his word could be trusted, I was as well. Neither of us would have left him if there had been any doubt in our minds. He was contrite about frightening everyone-he said as much.”

“Then why the turnaround?” He kept his pace matched to mine, and watched my face without appearing to do it. “It must have taken some determination to tear off the bandages and reopen his wounds. I take it the restraining straps had been removed.”

“When he was calmer, yes.”

I could have told Inspector Howard that according to the rector and Dr. Philips, there had been a late visitor to the surgery. But there was no proof that whoever it was had even spoken to Ted Booker. The police would believe Jonathan Graham if he claimed he was nowhere near the doctor’s house. And it would add tinder to the fires of doubt regarding Dr. Philips, that his surgery was not properly secured.

I knew I had felt my own share of guilt for what had happened. But it was emotional, not rational. Dr. Philips must have experienced the same thing. People died, however much you tried to save them…

“Sometimes,” I said, “Lieutenant Booker was unable to tell the present-today, his wife, his son, his responsibilities-from the past-his duty to the men serving under him. He could easily have awakened, confused, not understanding where he was, or why he was bandaged, and tried to return to his unit. Not realizing that in the attempt, he was going to die.”

We stopped, and the inspector stood there, his eyes on the cricket pitch. “You think it was confusion about where he was and what he was doing, that led to his death?”

Remembering how hard Ted Booker had fought to save Harry, I nodded. “He would have done anything, sacrificing himself if need be, to keep his brother alive. It’s the only explanation I can offer. As for Dr. Philips, I’ve known him only a very short time, but he’s well trained and compassionate. I’d trust him with my own life.”

“And yet I understand that when Mrs. Graham’s son Peregrine was very ill, she didn’t call in Dr. Philips to oversee his care.”

The gossips had been busy.

“You are well informed,” I said.

“Well, yes, the asylum notified us that Mr. Graham was ill and in the care of his family. There were constables within call as long as he was in Owlhurst. It was reported that Dr. Philips came to the house once but was turned away.”

“Hardly turned away. Not really needed is closer to the mark,” I answered, my voice nearly betraying my surprise at news of the constables. “I was in charge of the sickroom.” I didn’t add that Peregrine Graham’s case had been such a near run thing that I’d had my hands full. Dr. Philips’s presence would have been reassuring. Besides, the Grahams weren’t turning him away as much as they were keeping Peregrine behind closed doors. Out of sight and out of mind.