Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

“Miss Crawford. I know you mean well. But let me tell you this. I only saw the body briefly, but the girl was covered in blood. Mrs. Graham told me later that Lily Mercer had been disemboweled. I also saw Peregrine Graham kneeling there beside her, splattered with her blood. What conclusion would you have drawn, in my place?”

Peregrine Graham flinched, shutting his eyes for an instant.

“But I understand that Arthur also had blood on his nightshirt.”

I could tell from his reaction that this was something he was unaware of.

But he said, “You can’t change history, Miss Crawford, however good your intentions. I think you should go now.”

“Mr. Appleby, I’m not trying to change history. I’m trying to get to the truth, and decide in my own mind what the message Arthur charged me with really meant. I have given this message to Jonathan Graham. But I bear some responsibility in seeing that Arthur’s wishes are carried out.”

“That’s your personal choice, my dear. If you cared anything for Arthur Graham, you will put this behind you and move on with your life. Arthur was a fine young man, and it is to his credit that he was concerned for his brother. He went to the asylum one year, learned that Peregrine was not allowed either books or writing implements, and complained to the doctors. They refused to give him either pen or pencil, but they brought Peregrine books to read. I was surprised that he even grasped what was in them-he had shown no aptitude as a child.”

“What do you mean, no aptitude? Was he-mentally incapable of reading?”

“No, Miss Crawford. I’m surprised no one has told you that Peregrine Graham was unable to focus his attention on anything for more than a few minutes at a time. His father’s death had been a great shock to him, and by the time I arrived when he was seven, he was nearly unmanageable. We felt it best, Mrs. Graham and I, to separate him from his brothers and try to keep him as calm as possible. I made every effort to teach him, but I was never sure how well he had comprehended his studies. He wouldn’t answer my questions, he wouldn’t write out an examination, and he refused to accept my guidance.”

And yet the man that Peregrine had become could read.

“Did you like Peregrine Graham, Mr. Appleby?”

“As to that, there was little likable about the child. Mrs. Graham had warned me that I would find him difficult, a liar, and given to throwing tantrums. I was not surprised to discover that she was correct.”

“And for this reason you were able to believe that a boy who had been kept from his family for-what? Seven, eight?-years was capable of murder?”

“Miss Crawford. The boy’s father had given him a very nice pocketknife as his last birthday gift. It was a man’s knife, Peregrine’s grandfather’s-and Mr. Graham insisted that he be allowed to keep it. The boy used it incessantly-to carve any wood that came to hand, whether the table at which he sat or a bit of tree branch that he found in the garden. He wished to use it to carve his meat but was forbidden. It was taken away, but he managed to find it again, and hid it. But he took it to London with him, and that knife was in the body when it was found.”

“Yes, so I was told-”

“And his only remorse was that the knife was taken from him for good. No feeling for that pitiful young woman.”

“I’m a nurse, Mr. Appleby. I can’t believe that a pocketknife could do the sort of-butchery-that you described.”

Appleby’s face was unfriendly. “I’m not a fool, Miss Crawford. There was of course another knife, one from the kitchen, that did the butchery as you called it. But it was Peregrine’s knife in Lily Mercer’s throat that mattered. She couldn’t have screamed if she’d wanted to.”

No one had told me such details. I felt a surge of nausea but collected myself and said, “Everyone knew that this knife was a favorite of Peregrine’s-”

Appleby was on his feet.

For an instant, I thought Peregrine, also rising, was going to strike him down.

And then Peregrine had taken my arm in a firm grip and said, “Miss Crawford. You’re getting nowhere. I suggest we leave now.”

I thanked Mr. Appleby, for manners insisted that I should. But I was furious with him.

He didn’t say good-bye, nor did he see us to the door. We were outside, shutting the door behind ourselves, and standing in the street before I could say anything.

Peregrine spoke first. “I took that knife to London,” he said in a tightly controlled voice. “But I gave it to Arthur when I got there, in exchange for a promise that he would speak to his mother and ask her to allow me to go with my brothers to the Tower.”

I stared at him. “Peregrine? Are you certain?”

“I hadn’t remembered what happened to it. I saw it in Lily’s throat and wanted it back. I told you, I don’t remember much about that night. It comes in bits and pieces, like a puzzle. But I gave that knife to Arthur. I’d swear to it. On my life.”

I could feel my heart turning over in my chest. It was medically impossible, and yet I felt it.

He was a murderer. He had every reason to lie. Even Mr. Appleby had told me that Peregrine lied.

And yet-and yet. I looked into his eyes and knew he was telling me the truth.

“You’ve had years to remember this. Why now?”

“I shut it all out of my mind for years. When I refused to talk to the doctors, and they finally decided that I was mute, that shock had robbed me of my voice, they left me alone. If I couldn’t answer their questions, how could they judge my progress? They tried for the first two years to bring me to a sense of my own guilt, but I’d had that drummed into me by the London police, everyone in Owlhurst-my own family. I was dazed when they found me. I admitted to everything, to make them leave me alone. You don’t seem to understand-I could smell drying blood, it was everywhere, all over my hands, me, and I couldn’t escape it. But no one would let me wash my face or my hands. They hired a carriage and drove me back to Owlhurst, still covered in blood. I would have agreed to everything in the hope that they would let me go to my own room and shut the door.”

“You’re saying you didn’t kill her.”

“No. I’m saying that there must be more to this than I’ve remembered so far. Something happened that night. Something appalling. I can’t think why I walked into that room and killed Lily Mercer. But there must have been a reason.”

He turned to look up at the church, his face hidden from me. “I want there to be a reason. I want to believe that I didn’t suddenly run amok, striking down the first person who got in my way. What if it had been Arthur? Or Timothy? That’s madness of a different order, don’t you see?”

“It never happened before that night. Or since that night.”

He turned back to me. “Since that night, my dear Miss Crawford, I was locked in a room, put into a straitjacket to be taken to the offices where my doctors examined me, and given nothing sharper than a spoon. I was handed a sedative as soon as I’d had my tea, because my history of violence occurred at night. I couldn’t have killed again. They saw to that.”

“Did you ever want to-to kill?”

“I spent most of my childhood alone. I saw my brothers sometimes, Mr. Appleby, the housekeeper, my stepmother, Robert. And that was it. It never occurred to me to hurt them.”

“Have you felt the urge to do violence since you left the asylum?”

He smiled suddenly. “Just now. Speaking to that fool. I was afraid of him as a child. He could decide whether or not I’d deserved my dinner or was to be denied it. He could allow me to sit in the garden for an hour every afternoon, while my brothers were at their lessons, or leave me locked in my room. It was Appleby who refused to take the responsibility for me to accompany my brothers to the Tower. I heard him tell my stepmother that the night before. He was a bully, but I wasn’t to know that, was I?”