Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

Simon greeted me warmly, as if he hadn’t seen me in many months, though I’d had lunch with him in his cottage a few days before I’d left for Kent.

He helped me into the rear seat, and my father followed me. Simon closed the door, resumed his place behind the wheel, and my father asked, “Where would you like to dine, my dear?”

“Your choice. Most of the restaurants are struggling to survive these days.”

He gave Simon instructions, and we drove off. The streets were crowded, and the weather was fair for a change, though cold.

“In your haste,” my father was saying, “you forgot your gloves.”

I grimaced. So I had. Depend on the Colonel Sahib to notice.

“Tell me about the visit to Kent.”

“It went very well. I honed my nursing skills on a man with pneumonia-who lived-and another with shell shock, who didn’t.”

He raised his eyebrows at that. “And how did you find the Grahams? Did they take your message in the spirit Arthur had intended?”

“I don’t think they did,” I said honestly. “I was disappointed in that.”

“Perhaps they disagreed with young Arthur.”

“It appeared they did.”

“Bess.”

I knew what was coming.

“You don’t look well. I think Kent was perhaps too much too soon. How is the arm?”

“Healing. I can do a little more each day.”

“Then if it isn’t your arm that’s worrying you, what is?”

Oh, yes, I could hear myself now telling my father of all people that I was harboring an escaped lunatic in my flat and that we’d had a brief journey back to Kent in each other’s company to find out what had possessed him to do bloody murder when he was only fourteen.

Instead I said, “I’m learning that you can’t save everyone in this world. I thought that my shell-shocked patient was convinced that he could heal. And I was wrong.”

“Yes, well, sometimes there are miracles, and sometimes there are not.”

Peregrine surviving had been a miracle. And I was paying for it even now.

I said, “Let’s not talk about guessing wrong.”

He said nothing more until we’d reached the small restaurant not far from St. Paul’s. I’d been to The Regent’s Table only once, and the food had been good. That was before the war.

Women had been warned that they must do their part against the Hun. That they must sacrifice their men, their comfort, their necessities, and anything that brought them pleasure. That included most foodstuffs. God knew what even the chef at such a restaurant could do with the only cuts of meat available in wartime.

Simon joined us as soon as he’d seen to the motorcar, and we enjoyed a table set in one of the windows, with a view down to the street below. My father ordered for me, and Simon made his own choices.

I’d been right. The mutton was as old as the Kaiser and nearly as difficult, but the wine sauce was exquisite.

My father waited until we were nearly finished with our meal, and then said to me, “I want to take you back to Somerset with me. Will you come? I find it hard to know what could be keeping you in London. I can understand that after such a difficult time in Owlhurst, you might need a day or two to settle yourself. Your mother wants your opinion on cuffs and collars and God knows what.”

“I can’t leave just at the moment,” I told him. “Please don’t ask me why.”

“Why not? Bess, you can talk to me. Simon will leave if you wish, and you can tell me what’s put those circles under your eyes and the strain in them. I’m not imagining things-and if you’re fair, you’ll understand my concern.”

I went rapidly through all the problems facing me at the moment and chose the one least likely to worry either the Colonel Sahib or Simon Brandon.

“I want to find someone. The family of a girl who died in service nearly fifteen years ago. And I don’t know how to begin.”

My father’s eyes met Simon’s across the table. “And if I help you find this family, you’ll come home with me?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. It will depend on many things.”

“Does this have to do with Arthur and his message?”

“Arthur must have been all of eleven at the time Lily died,” I replied, evading his question.

“I see.” I don’t think he did. But one could never be sure with my father.

Finally he added, “All right. Simon knows people. Give me the name of the family and we’ll see what he can discover.”

“I think it’s hopeless. But I have to try. The girl’s name was Lily. Lily Mercer. And she was murdered in a house on Carroll Square, Number 17. I want to know what became of her family.”

Simon had finished his flan. “I’ll leave the motor with you, then, shall I?” he said to my father, and then to me, “I’ll bring whatever I can learn to the flat. Tomorrow morning. Will that do?”

“How are you going about this?” I asked, more than a little alarmed.

He grinned. “One of the lads in the regiment is now a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police.”

Before I could ask him to be circumspect, he was gone-a tall, slender man striding through the restaurant as if he were about to lead the regiment into battle.

“Who is Lily Mercer?”

I turned quickly to face my father. “Let me do what needs to be done. And afterward, I’ll tell you what I can.”

“I don’t care to find you involved in a murder, even an old one.”

“I’m not involved. I just want to know what became of this girl’s family afterward. Whether they were satisfied that justice had been done.”

“Why is it so important to you? Tell me that?”

“You’ll learn soon enough, if Simon speaks to the police. It had to do with the Graham family.”

“You told me it had nothing to do with the message you carried.”

“No, I told you that Arthur was only eleven at the time.”

He smiled. “You are no better at lying to me now than you were at seven.”

“I don’t want you taking charge and doing it all your way. I want to satisfy myself in my own fashion. I can’t do anything about the past, I can’t bring back the dead, but I think Arthur was-changed by what happened in Carroll Square, and perhaps he’ll rest a little easier at the bottom of the sea if I finish what he never could.”

“All right. That’s fair enough.” He signaled to the waiter, and we left the subject of Lily Mercer until we reached the street. As we walked to where Simon had left the motorcar, my father said, “We’ll say nothing of this to your mother. Is that agreed?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“And if you should find yourself in over your head in this business, you’ll remember to call in the cavalry, won’t you?”

“I promise.” He handed me into the motorcar, and as he walked around to the driver’s side, I thought, This is my chance. I could tell him about Peregrine, and let him see to finishing what I’d inadvertently begun in Owlhurst.

But I couldn’t. It wasn’t clever to deal with a murderer, let alone a man who has spent years in an asylum. It wasn’t clever to hide an armed man with a history of murder in his background. It wasn’t at all clever to think I could do what I’d set out to do, alone and in the dark.

Yet if I sounded the alarm now, Peregrine would be returned to the asylum to live out his life there. And the truth would be locked away with him.

If Arthur had had any part in what had happened to Lily Mercer, I wanted to know.

He was only eleven, the little voice in my head reminded me.

Who was I to say that a child of eleven could or couldn’t kill. I didn’t even know if a child that age really understood the significance of killing.

I remember one summer morning in India when the box wallah came to tell the cook that his favorite grandson was dead. The boy had been bitten by a cobra that had been called out of its hole in the roots of a tree near the river by the boy’s own cousin with a flute he had made for himself from a reed. It was called an accident, a tragic accident, but other children told me later what the adults hadn’t known, that the cousin had been eaten up by jealousy and wanted the boy out of the way. They were both nine.