Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

I had told my ayah, my Indian nanny, what I’d learned, but she said to me, “It was the boy’s time to die, don’t you see? If it hadn’t been, the cobra would never have come, no matter how much the cousin had played his flute.”

Her fatalism had frightened me far more than the death of the boy. It claimed that the universe I knew wasn’t run by a benevolent God, as I’d been taught, but by Chance, a system where one’s turn was dictated by forces over which one had no control.

My father was saying, “You must get this altruistic nature from your mother, not me.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “That indicates a choice in the matter,” I told him. “This wasn’t so much choice as it was thrust in my face when I wasn’t looking.”

The Colonel dropped me at my flat.

As I watched him drive away, I wished I’d had the forethought to ask him to stay in London, within reach, and not return to Somerset just yet.

Then I turned and hurried into the flat, where Peregrine and Diana were comfortably discussing a visit she’d made to Rochester shortly before the war. But his eyes as I came through the door flicked to my face on the instant, searching for any sign of betrayal.

Diana went out that night to dine with friends, and I made dinner for Peregrine and myself.

“What did you tell your father?”

“That I was in London to discover what had become of Lily Mercer’s family.”

He started up, sensing betrayal.

“Sit down. I can’t track them alone. Nor can you. The best chance we have is to use my father’s connections. You don’t know the Army, Peregrine-the regular Army. It’s as tightly knit a group as the Knights Templar-or the Masons or the Catholic Church. If there’s a way to find them, my father will.” I had left out Simon Brandon. Don’t muddy the waters too far, my girl.

Besides, no military plan should be without a line of retreat.

But Peregrine was nothing if not astute.

“Who was the man with your father? The one waiting with the car?”

I would have sworn, if I’d been my father’s son instead of my father’s daughter. As it was, I was sorely tempted.

The windows of Elayne’s room looked down on the street. I had forgot.

“His batman. My father retired as a Colonel. Simon had risen to sergeant major. But they served together when my father was a lowly lieutenant, and the bond has lasted all these years. Simon drives my father, he always has.”

“But he didn’t drive you back here, did he?”

The temptation to swear was overwhelming now.

“He had other business to attend to. He left us while we were still in the restaurant.”

Peregrine wasn’t convinced, though he said nothing more. But I could feel him watching me for the rest of the evening, speculation in his eyes.

Diana left the next day, and I was grateful not to have to consider her in my dealings with Peregrine. She gave him a good-bye kiss on his cheek, though, a dancing dervish in her eyes, and blew me one, then was gone, back to France, leaving silence behind her. I saw that Peregrine was staring at the door with an unreadable expression on his face.

At teatime, Mrs. Hennessey brought up a folded note. “From your father, dear,” she said.

I thanked her and read it quickly.

Lucy Mercer’s family had emigrated to New Zealand soon after she was killed. Their passage had been paid for them by the Graham solicitors.

They had traded their daughter’s death for a better life for themselves.

I turned to Peregrine as he came up from Elayne’s room. “Not the best of news,” I said, and gave him the message.

He read it and swore.

“A dead end,” he said, finally.

“But it’s odd, isn’t it? That they should take the money offered them, and leave England on the heels of their daughter’s murder.”

“Desperate people. She wasn’t coming back, and something good-for them, at any rate-had come of it.”

“I expect so.” But I couldn’t rid myself of doubts. Still, I had no children, and I couldn’t judge whether a grieving mother might well take the chance to better the lives of her remaining children while she could, even at the hands of the murderer’s family, or whether she had been willing to sacrifice one for the good of the others, making the best of what life had brought her.

Had that been the bribe? Had the family accepted a new life in lieu of demanding that Peregrine be sent to prison? The police of course had decided Peregrine’s fate, but without the Mercers demanding an eye for an eye, they might have been more easily persuaded to be lenient with a disturbed boy.

“I’m going back to Carroll Square,” I said on my way to my room to fetch my coat and hat. “I’ll see if anyone there still remembers Lily.”

He was at the door before me, his own coat over his arm as I came out of my room.

“No, Peregrine-”

“Yes. They aren’t going to know me, for God’s sake. Why shouldn’t I accompany you?”

Reluctantly I let him come with me. We found a cab and arrived at Number 17 as a few early flakes of snow began to fall.

An elderly maid answered our knock, and I asked her if there was anyone still employed in this house who remembered a maid here some fourteen years ago, by the name of Lily Mercer.

She stared at me for a moment, and said, “You must ask Mrs. Talbot, Miss.”

And so it was that we were admitted to the presence of Mrs. Talbot, a formidably fat woman in her later years, swathed in shawls and seated like a toad in the largest chair in a very fashionable drawing room. Her trim feet rested on a stool.

She had an eye for Peregrine and asked him where he’d been wounded.

“On the Somme,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.

She nodded. “Indeed. I lost a son at Mons and another at Ypres. I didn’t want to live myself, at first, but it’s not in my nature to die. Which of my many committees and sponsorships brings you to my door tonight?”

“I’m afraid it’s none of them, Mrs. Talbot. We’re trying to find anyone who might have known a young woman by the name of Lily Mercer. She worked here in this house as an upstairs maid for a time some fourteen years ago.”

“And why do you wish to find this young person?” Mrs. Talbot asked, her eyes narrowing. “Is it in her interest or yours, this search?”

“Mine,” I admitted. “I never knew Lily Mercer. But her family moved to New Zealand, and so I’m unable to contact them. I was hoping one of your present staff might remember her. Lieutenant Philips is as interested as I am to learn more about the girl. One of his friends was accused of harming her, you see, and I’d like to know if it is true, or if he was falsely accused.”

We had discussed in the cab coming here what to admit to and what not.

Mrs. Talbot considered us a moment, then picked up the silver bell at her elbow. The maid who had admitted us answered the summons. Mrs. Talbot sent the maid belowstairs to question the staff.

Mrs. Talbot, meanwhile, turned her attention to me.

“You are doing nothing to help with the war, Miss Crawford?”

I could see myself leaving here as part of any number of committees, or dispatched to Hampshire to grow vegetables on the lawns of some great estate.

“I was serving on Britannic, Mrs. Talbot, when she went down, and my arm was broken when she was struck. I can’t return to duty until it’s fully healed.”

She nodded approvingly. At that moment there was a tap at the door, and the maid was back.

“There’s the laundress, Mrs. Talbot. She remembers the young person in question.”

“Then bring her here.”

“If you’ll forgive me, she might be more comfortable speaking to us in the servants’ hall,” I suggested quickly.