Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

Small wonder no one in the family wanted to see or speak to Peregrine Graham while he was there, ill. Even after all these years, the memory of what he’d done must still be raw.

It explained too why there were constables on watch. And why at the first sign of recovery, Peregrine had been sent directly back to the asylum. While he was still too weak to do anything frightful again.

T HE MAGISTRATE, THEaging relict of the man who had held that position before her, was nearing seventy, hunched and sharp-tongued. Dr. Philips pointed her out seated nearest the roaring fire, one of her grandsons beside her.

She had commanded that we hold the inquest at once, so that she could visit her granddaughter in Canterbury in time for the birth of her first great-grandchild. And everyone, from the Grahams to the police, agreed without argument.

It was the day after poor Ted Booker had been buried. Indecent haste, I thought, but perhaps no more than a duty to Lady Parsons.

I didn’t know the Coroner, a dour man of fifty, who, according to Dr. Philips, had come down from Tonbridge to conduct the proceedings.

I listened to the evidence given about Theodore Russell Booker’s state of mind, as if he were a stranger the witnesses barely knew. An embarrassment, something to put behind us quickly, so that we get on with living.

Dr. Philips gave a very clinical report on his mental state, and then added, “I think perhaps we haven’t considered the whole man. He and his brother were close, and Harold’s death must have been appalling. Theodore Booker was not in another part of the Front, word coming secondhand, he was there, a witness, he held his brother in his arms as Harold died. We must accept as well our failure as a member of the medical profession to find a cure for horror and heartbreak. If Theodore Booker took his own life while in the grip of such painful memories, it was not his fault. It was the fault of war and of our inability to understand how to save him.”

There was silence as he stepped down and walked to his place next to me. We were in The Bells, in a parlor that was more often the scene of parties and filled with laughter, not talk of death. The dark beams over our heads and the dark paneling of the walls, added to a dreary day with rain coming down in sheets, fit our somber mood.

I reached out to touch the doctor’s arm as he sat down, then heard my own name called to give evidence.

I did so, to the best of my ability, remembering that I was under oath. But I also told the truth as I’d observed it: on the night of his death, I had felt so strongly that Lieutenant Booker had turned a corner. Then, like Dr. Philips, I added more than I was required to tell. “He loved his wife very much. He told me that. He tried to heal for her sake. I felt a great pity for him, because he wanted to be a good husband.”

There were two questions for me-one to do with my training and whether or not I knew enough about such cases to judge the circumstances surrounding Ted’s death, and the other to do with whether or not Theodore Booker was, in my view, of sound mind.

I answered, “Grief is difficult to bear at the best of times. Ted Booker was perfectly sane but so overwhelmed by what he saw as his responsibility for his brother’s death that he couldn’t find his way back to the man he was.” I wanted to add that a little more understanding from his mother-in-law might have gone far in saving him. But I held my tongue.

She was seated in the front row with her daughter, her face smug with satisfaction that the troublesome man was dead. Sally was so shrouded in widow’s weeds that her feelings were hard to read. There was no way of knowing whether she felt relief or despair. Indeed, most of the people attending the hearing seemed to be unsympathetic to the dead man. I had a fleeting thought that the poor man was well out of it. These were neighbors and friends, they had known him since he was a boy, and yet they had turned away from him when he most needed them.

Was that what had happened to Peregrine Graham in his own hour of need?

In the end, the finding was that Theodore Booker, while not in his right mind due to grief over his brother’s death, had taken his own life. The stigma of suicide had been lifted from the survivors. That was all Mrs. Denton had wished for.

No mention was made of Dr. Philips or his skill as a physician. I hoped that my conversation with Inspector Howard had well and truly spiked those guns.

As I was walking out of The Bells, glad to be away from the crowded room inside, I looked out at the rain and thought about going back to the Graham house, then decided to sit in the church for a few minutes until I felt a little more tolerant. Jonathan Graham had said nothing about going to see Ted Booker, and the Coroner hadn’t called on him to give evidence. I had seen Mr. Montgomery look at him several times, as if expecting him to add what he knew, but he didn’t speak up. And neither did the rector.

I had closed the churchyard gate behind me and was walking toward the stained-glass windows of saints, when I heard someone shouting. I turned to see who it was.

It was a rider, coming fast, and calling to Jonathan Graham as he was escorting his mother home. They had reached the large trees that overhung the churchyard wall-not twenty yards from where Ted had been buried-when they heard the shout.

They turned as one, and the rider came up to them, reaching down to hand them a letter. As Jonathan opened the envelope, his mother was questioning the man on horseback. I realized then that it was Robert Douglas, holding the horse steady as he answered.

Jonathan’s face was flushed with something very like fury, but he nodded curtly, passed the letter to his mother, and she bent over it, trying to see it in the shadows cast by the bare limbs and her black umbrella. I thought for an instant she was going to faint, but she steadied herself, said something more to Robert, who wheeled his horse and went back toward the stragglers just coming out of The Bells. I realized that he was looking for Timothy, who was speaking to Mrs. Denton while Sally was being handed into a carriage by the young man I’d seen with Lady Parsons during the proceedings.

Timothy broke off, excused himself, and spoke sharply to Robert, who answered and pointed. Timothy Graham turned toward where his brother and his mother were standing and without a word of farewell to Mrs. Denton, strode away to join them, rigid with emotion.

Robert lifted his hat to Mrs. Denton, with a brief word, then put his horse to a trot to follow Timothy.

No one had seen me there by the church nave. And I stood watching the little scene play itself out as Timothy also read the letter and then passed it back to his mother. The Grahams walked briskly toward home, Robert riding ahead to stable his horse.

From their posture, heads together, backs rigid, I knew that the news was bad.

All I could think of was that the journey back to the asylum had been too much for Peregrine Graham, and that he had got his wish-he’d succumbed to his pneumonia after all.

I HURRIED INTOthe church and sat down in a corner near the pulpit, where no one could see me, huddled into my cloak for warmth and comfort.

This wasn’t the right moment to go to the house. Let them have their time to grieve. But it was cold in the church, as cold as the tomb, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking, and so after a time, though the rain was coming down hard, I left the church and crossed to the rectory, my shoes wet to my ankles, and the hem of my skirt dragging.

A middle-aged woman opened the door when I knocked and ushered me into the hall, clucking over how wet I was.