Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

The rector wasn’t to home, she informed me. He’d gone to speak with the widow, to offer what comfort he could after the inquest.

At first I thought she meant Mrs. Graham, and then I realized she was speaking of Sally Booker. I turned away, wondering where I could go now, and she said, “No, you mustn’t leave here so wet as you are, Miss! The kitchen is warm, I’ll dry your shoes and your cloak while you have a bite of something. I’ve a nice bit of soup that’s just the right thing on such a day. Rector wouldn’t like me to send you away just because he’s not to home.” She glanced at the sky. “I don’t think this will last for more than a quarter of an hour. See, it’s brighter to the west.”

I smiled, trying to hold back tears of gratitude. “Thank you-”

“There’s nothing to thank me for. It’s Rector says turn away no one in need.”

Was I in need? Yes, in a way. I wanted to go home, to see Colonel Sahib, to listen to my mother being sensible and comforting at the same time. Right now, being tucked into bed with a glass of warm milk would have been the epitome of happiness. Ted Booker was dead, there was nothing I could do to change that, and now Peregrine Graham had died, because he had been sent back to the asylum over my objections. Coming to Kent had been a bad decision-I was sure no one would carry out Arthur’s last wishes. Nothing would be done about whatever it was he wanted set right.

I tried to come to grips with my despondent mood, and couldn’t.

The housekeeper took me down the passage to the kitchen, and as I glanced over my shoulder, I could see the two china dogs in the parlor window, staring back at me. I’d glimpsed them on my first night in Owlhurst, and this was most likely my last night.

She introduced herself as Mrs. Oldsey, housekeeper here for many years, because the last two rectors hadn’t been married. “Not that I’ve lost hope for Rector,” she added as she helped me out of my heavy wet cloak and draped it in front of the kitchen fire. “He’s young yet. We’ve six bedchambers in this house, did you know that? And only one of them being used. I long to see children about the house. I wasn’t blessed with any myself, but I sincerely do love the little ones.”

She bustled about, setting the kettle on to boil as I removed my wet shoes and looked around.

It was an old-fashioned kitchen, with no wife to complain and have it redone. But Mrs. Oldsey seemed not to mind.

“What brought you out on such a morning as this?” she asked as she set down cups and saucers from the cupboard.

“I was at the inquest-”

“Yes, the poor Booker lad. Sad. I didn’t have the heart to go. I remember him and his brother. Imps, they were, but good-hearted. What was the verdict brought in?”

“Death by his own hand in the throes of grief for his brother.”

“Ah, well, best that way. He can be buried in holy ground, and his widow doesn’t have his memory hanging about her neck like something to ward off the plague.”

Amused by her way of seeing life, I said, “That’s what her mother hopes as well.”

“Mrs. Denton? A piece of work, that one, though it isn’t Christian of me to say so. But a spade’s a spade, for all that.”

I kept my opinion to myself, but the twinkle in Mrs. Oldsey’s eyes told me she suspected I shared her views.

She fed me tea and toast and a cup of soup warmed up from the night before. I ate because I was hungry, and because I dreaded going back out in the rain to the Graham house.

Mrs. Oldsey rambled on, sitting across from me as if we were old friends having a gossip.

I found the courage to ask her about Peregrine.

She frowned. “That was another tragedy. He used to come to services with his father. A handsome child with good manners. And then he stopped coming, and later the whispers began that he wasn’t quite right in the head. I thought, often enough, that Mrs. Graham was ashamed of him. Else she’d have seen to it that he lived as normal a life as possible, gossip or no gossip. But she didn’t, and as I never set eyes on him again until he was almost fourteen, who’s to say what was right and what was wrong?”

“You saw him when he returned from London?”

“Oh, yes, they brought him here. He was in such a state of shock-white as his shirt, shaking with fright, and unable to utter a word-that I thought he ought to be in his own home and his own bed. But Mrs. Graham wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I’ve three boys to think of,’ she told me, ‘and I can’t go to them until I’ve settled Peregrine. I’ve sent Robert for Inspector Gadd, and Dr. Hadley. Can you find the rector for me, please?’ And she asked me to send for Lady Parsons, Sir Frederick’s widow. I kept the boy down here in the kitchen, trying to warm him up a little, and wash his hands, but he wouldn’t let me touch him, whatever I said. Then they insisted on locking him in one of the bedchambers, without so much as a word of comfort to him. After a bit, they went up for him and took him away, him still all bloody and without a coat, and Rector told me later he was in the asylum. I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy in a place like that, not to speak of my own child. I didn’t learn until later that he’d killed someone. I thought somehow he’d done himself an injury, all that blood. They never said who he’d killed, and when I asked Rector, he told me it was best I didn’t know. That it was horrible beyond human imagination. I never forgot that. Horrible beyond human imagination.”

She repeated it, as if the words had been imprinted in her memory.

“Most folks have forgotten Mr. Peregrine, you know. Perhaps that’s for the best.”

But they’d remember all the whispers soon enough, when he was brought back to Owlhurst to lie next to his father. I had a feeling it would be a brief graveside service, with few mourners, though the curious would be there to gawk.

She went on with other stories about her years as housekeeper, and after a while, since the rector hadn’t returned, I put on my still-damp shoes and my cloak and set out for the Graham house. The rain had let up, just as Mrs. Oldsey had prophesized, and I was grateful.

I let myself in the front door. There were no sounds to greet me-no conversation somewhere in the downstairs rooms, and no voices on the first floor as I quietly went up the staircase. I wanted to find Susan and ask her what was happening. But she too seemed to have vanished. I expect she had gone to visit her mother and give her the outcome of the inquest. She had one afternoon off a week.

I sat by the fire in my room and waited. There was nothing else I could do.

But it wasn’t Mrs. Graham who came to speak to me-it was Robert. He knocked at my door, and when I opened it, he said gruffly, “Mrs. Graham’s apologies, Miss Crawford, but there’s been terrible news. Mrs. Graham would take it as a favor if you could be in Tonbridge in time for the six o’clock train tonight. I’ll be taking you myself, as soon as you’re ready.”

I had expected this-and I hadn’t.

All I could manage to say was, “I can be ready in an hour. I’d like to say my farewells-”

“Mrs. Graham begs you to forgive her if she isn’t able to wish you a safe journey. I’ll ask Susan to pack a box of sandwiches for you, and a Thermos of tea, to see you as far as London. I’m to send a telegram to your father to meet you there.”

I could hardly tell him that I would rather leave in the morning than arrive in London so late. Instead I thanked him and added, “I’ll write Mrs. Graham as soon as I reach Somerset. Please tell her she’s been more than kind.”

I didn’t know what else to add.

He nodded, and was gone.

I packed my belongings for a second time, and looked around for Elayne’s letter to me, to read again on the train. I’d forgot the name of the man she was so sure she’d marry. But it wasn’t in my case, and it wasn’t in the little desk between the windows. I’d last seen it in the sickroom, and I went there to find it. It wasn’t on the table by the bed nor on the mantelpiece, and I knew that if Susan had found it, she’d have brought it to me. As a last resort, I got down on my knees and lifted the coverlet to look under the bed. And there it was, the three pages scattered there. I chuckled. Susan hadn’t used the carpet sweeper-my fingers came up with dust clinging to them. I looked again for the envelope, but it wasn’t with the pages. That she might well have found, without the enclosed letter, and tossed it in the grate. I took the letter back to my room, and after closing my case, I left it outside my door with my valise for Robert to take down.