Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

He walked on, and I hurried to catch him up. “If it had been my tutor who was found butchered, I could understand it. I would have reveled in it.”

Mr. Owens was waiting for us, stamping his feet and clapping his hands together to keep warm.

“This is a pretty town,” he said as we came up the lane and into the square. “Look at those houses, now. If old Queen Bess was to walk through here this minute, she’d feel right at home.”

Peregrine helped me into the motorcar, and then seated himself beside Mr. Owens.

“I’m sure she would,” I answered him, my mind elsewhere. The black and white buildings with their beautiful diamond-shaped windowpanes reminded me of the rectory in Owlhurst.

“It’s the oak,” he went on. “Good English oak, that’s kept them so fine. Nothing like it, I say. Would you care for a cup of tea to warm you, Miss, before we start back?”

I thanked him for his kindness and told him I was warm enough. All I wanted was to be back in London, a place I knew, where the world made sense.

We drove back down the hill, looking across the Juliberrie Downs toward Canterbury, and wove our way through the countryside toward Tonbridge. We made a stop along the way at a tiny village where the pub offered tea for me and ale for Mr. Owens. Peregrine took nothing, his face gray with fatigue. I saw Mr. Owens glance at him once or twice, concern in his eyes.

A rainstorm on the way delayed us, but we reached Tonbridge just before dusk.

After I’d settled my account with Mr. Owens, I went to my room but felt smothered there, as if the walls were closing in. A certain sign of fatigue and worry. Nevertheless I caught up my coat and went out to walk, past the boys’ school and up to the handsome gatehouse to what was once Tonbridge Castle. The gatehouse, part of the curtain wall, and a broken tower were all that was left, but I walked through and into the grounds, crossing to the cliff that looked down on the Medway and another part of the town.

I hadn’t been there long when someone came up behind me. It was nearly dark now, the dusk fading quickly in an overcast sky. I turned, and found myself face-to-face with Peregrine.

“You should be resting,” I said.

“I could say the same for you.”

We stood in silence, staring down at the lower part of the town, watching a pair of ducks paddling along the quiet river.

“Are you still afraid of me?” he asked.

“I wasn’t in Owlhurst. I was in London. You threatened Mrs. Hennessey, remember, and then any three strangers you met on your way out the door.”

“I was more afraid of you. I didn’t think you’d help me. And I needed that help. I had to trust you, and I wasn’t certain I could.”

“Would you have shot Mrs. Hennessey?”

“I’d have shot myself, I think, if the police came to take me away.”

“I haven’t had many dealings with murderers. Though there was one I knew in Rajasthan. An old man who would sometimes let me ride his camel around the market. He was hanged for killing his young wife’s lover. I didn’t know that until much later. I just wondered why he never came to market again.”

Peregrine was silent for a time. Then he said, “What next? I want to see those journals.”

“I’ve lost my nerve. I don’t want to go back to Owlhurst.” I straightened and turned back the way I’d come. Peregrine fell into step beside me.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to learn any more. About you. About Arthur. About the Graham family.”

“Arthur didn’t kill Lily Mercer. If that’s what worries you.”

But I couldn’t be sure. The way he had made me learn his message by heart-the intensity behind demanding my promise, the refusal to write anything down…It had seemed unimportant then, I’d been too worried to ask questions, prepared to do anything to bring him peace of mind at the end. The Arthur I thought I knew would have confessed, he’d have written it and had his letter witnessed, and sent it to someone-Lady Parsons? He’d have stood up to everyone and cleared Peregrine’s name.

Wouldn’t he?

Why had he told Jonathan that he’d lied? Surely Jonathan already knew about the pocketknife? And what had to be set right, if it wasn’t clearing his brother’s name?

Neither Jonathan nor his mother seemed to be disturbed by the message-that made me wonder if Arthur had tried before this to make his feelings known, and found his mother dead set against changing the status quo. That was a rather chilling thought. That they had made up their minds to ignore any protestations on Arthur’s part long before I’d appeared on the scene.

And where did Robert stand in all this?

It made sense that Mrs. Graham and Jonathan had agreed to let the matter end with Arthur’s death.

But when had she confided the truth to Jonathan? Or had it been Arthur himself?

Look, Jonathan-if anything happens to me…

No, it wouldn’t have been that way. There was too much passion in Arthur’s determination to set matters right. As Death came to collect him, he tried to clear his conscience in the only way left to him.

But when was Jonathan told the truth-and why?

All I could think of was that he’d known from the start, and said nothing.

It was more comfortable not to. Everyone looked up to Arthur, everyone called him a fine young man, even the tutor. After all, Peregrine had been found beside the body. Why look any further? Yet until the moment Peregrine had been taken to the asylum for testing, Mrs. Graham had been distraught with fear. Not for what was to become of him but because somehow the truth might slip out and wreck all her careful plans. I sighed.

Peregrine, a dark, looming shadow beside me, said, “What is it?”

“I was thinking that truth is a very illusive thing.”

He was silent for a moment, and then he answered me, his voice muffled. “I’m not sure truth exists. Perhaps we only think it does. But in reality it’s only what you believe and I believe and Mr. Owens believes-the rest is merely compromise.”

I couldn’t sleep that night. At every sound my eyes flew open and I waited-for what?

My door was locked. Peregrine couldn’t get into my room without waking half the guests on this floor. And yet I was on edge, unable to feel safe.

At one point, on the brink of slipping finally into a drowsy peace, I thought I heard Arthur calling me. It was so real my heart leapt, and I was wide awake again. That was the last straw.

It was nearly dawn by then, and I got up, dressed, and for a time walked the dark, silent streets of Tonbridge.

At one point a constable stopped me, asking if anything was the matter, if I needed help. I told him the truth-I was too troubled to sleep.

He said, “Aye, my daughter’s husband’s at the Front. I find her out and about at all hours. But mind where you go, Miss. There’s not much to worry you here, but one never can tell what’s lurking in the shadows.”

I watched the night turn into a gray dawn, I watched candles flicker into life in attics where servants dressed in the cold. I watched the milk cart making its rounds, watched as sluggard schoolboys made their way to their lessons, and then watched merchants unlock their doors and set out their goods for the day. I saw the gate of the castle rise above the mists of the river, and quiver there, like a disembodied vision.

It was nearly time for breakfast when, cold and courting sleep, I turned back to the hotel at last. I was just walking up the steps of The Checquers, when someone came bounding through the doors, nearly bowling me over.

“I beg your pardon, madam-” he started to say, and then broke off in astonishment.

Beneath the officer’s cap, above the scarf, I recognized the bandaged face of Jonathan Graham. Or to be more precise, I recognized the bandaging.