Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

“I think you ought to read this,” he said, and walked into my room.

I took the book and carried it to the window, reluctant to turn up the lamp. Peregrine followed me and pointed to an entry some years after the murder of Lily Mercer.

I read it quickly, and then again.

Inspector Gadd died this morning in spite of everything the doctor could do to save him. He had gone very early to one of the outlying farms to investigate a rash of small fires and other destruction that had been plaguing Herbert Meadowes for several weeks. The inspector had hoped to catch the culprit in the act, and was lying in wait for him. He must have seen the culprit and given chase, but as he tried to climb the stile, a blood vessel in his brain burst from the effort he was making, and he died where he fell. Meadowes found him there some hours later. God be with him, he was a good man.

I turned to Peregrine. “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with your situation?”

“None. Except that I know Jonathan boasted that he’d raided Herbert Meadowes’s henhouse for eggs, and not been caught. “He thought it was a fox,” he told me, “I’m as sly as a fox.” And Arthur had said, “That’s not brave. You must give him a fair chance to catch you. You must do it three times.” This was in London.”

“And how did Jonathan answer him?”

“He didn’t. I think he was put out. Timothy taunted him too, saying, “No, it must be six times, to be fair.’ And Arthur said, ‘Six it is, then.’ Timothy asked him, ‘When will you try? When we go back to Owlhurst?’ But Arthur answered him, ‘Not then. When I’m ready.’”

“But that’s not proof of anything. Boys boast, striving not to be outdone.” Even the young subalterns under my father’s command took foolish risks and accepted dares, to prove they were brave. More than one was given a dressing-down for imprudent conduct. Come to that, I’d heard my father and Simon Brandon wager on the outcome of a fight between a mongoose and a cobra.

“But no one came forward to admit to being there. And no one got help for the inspector, when he went down.”

For fear of being punished for trespassing.

“You’re telling me that Arthur did this?”

“No. Now read this.”

He held out another diary, and I saw that it was some six months after Inspector Gadd had died.

Doctor Hadley coming home from the bedside of Daniel Furston died when a startled horse ran away with his carriage, overturned it, and threw him out on the roadside, where he broke his neck. He was a good man. We shall miss him. God rest his soul.

“I don’t know, Peregrine, you’re leaping to conclusions. Accidents happen-”

“Read this.”

He had marked another passage in that same diary.

Lady Parsons had had a close call. She had been out riding in the woods where the owls lived, when her horse stumbled and rolled on her.

She broke her collarbone, her right arm, and her right leg in the fall, and the wonder was, she wasn’t killed outright.

So ran the rector’s account.

“No, Peregrine, you’re trying to make connections that aren’t there.”

“Indeed.” He retrieved the book from my hand and left the room with a final comment. “I lost track of events here in Owlhurst. These journals make for interesting reading.”

I thought, He’s playing mind games. He offered me that pistol, knowing I wouldn’t take it then or later. He’s trying to show me other deaths that he couldn’t possibly have been responsible for. He knows I suspect Arthur, though. And that will be his salvation.

I returned the journals to the rector just after dusk had fallen. He thanked me formally, and then asked, “Have these set your mind at rest?”

“They were very informative. While I was a guest in her house, I could hardly ask Mrs. Graham to relive what must have been a very painful past. And Peregrine Graham was too ill to tell me anything, even if I’d asked. I don’t much care for mysteries; I just used whatever skill I possessed to see him well again.”

“And the same for Ted Booker, I think. Only he was beyond human help.”

“Sadly,” I agreed.

“I’m glad you came to see me, my dear Miss Crawford. It’s why I am here.”

“Tell me,” I asked, “how did the man who wrote these die?”

His eyebrows went up. “Are you suggesting he wasn’t in his right mind when he made his entries here?”

“No, no. I just-I felt I came to know him, a little, through his words. I was told that he had nearly worn himself out, caring for his flock.”

“That’s true. He was in the church one morning, and went up into the pulpit to find something he’d left there. He tripped over his own feet and went down the stairs headfirst. He lived for several months afterward but hardly knew where he was or what had happened to him. It was a blessing for him when he died. He wouldn’t have wanted to linger. He’d put a note with these journals years earlier, that they should go to his successor for guidance. A very thoughtful gesture.”

I said, “An unfortunate mishap. Like the burst blood vessel that killed Inspector Gadd, like the carriage overturning and killing the doctor. The fall that injured Lady Parsons so badly. Have there been other incidents of this nature since the war began?”

He pursed his lips, thinking. “In fact, no. Unless you count young Peter Mason. But that’s ridiculous-”

“What happened to him?”

“He was swimming in the pond on his father’s farm, when he apparently got a cramp. He drowned. Arthur was at home, just before being sent to France, and he and his brothers swam in that murky water looking for the body. Jonathan found it, but it was hours too late. He was a promising lad, Peter was, and my first service for one so young.”

I thanked him and said good-bye. But I couldn’t go back to the hotel straightaway. There was too much on my mind. Peregrine’s doing.

I walked in the wood where the owls nested. The trees were tall and sturdy, the last of the ancient forest that had once covered this part of Kent. The forest that had stood at Harold’s back in the Battle of Hastings, on the main track that led from the sea to London.

I counted. Inspector Gadd. Lady Parsons. The doctor. The rector. But surely not the boy Peter. Without him, Lily Mercer made five.

Six, Timothy had suggested, and Arthur agreed. But that was six times taunting the farmer Meadowes, to give him the chance to catch the culprit. Not six murders. Or near murders, if we counted Lady Parsons among them.

But to look at it another way, six opportunities for the police to catch their man. And Peregrine locked away in his room at the asylum could only have been blamed for one of them.

It was dark under the trees, but peaceful. A little wind rustled the dry, bare branches, and once I thought I heard an owl glide past me, after other prey. They are silent, owls are, as they fly, but there’s something, a disturbance in the air, a sixth sense, that catches one’s attention sometimes.

It was time to turn back. I was nearly out of the wood when someone stepped from the shadow of a tree trunk and confronted me.

I drew in a breath, I was so startled, and he could hear that. He laughed, and then my eyes adjusted to the barest glimmer of ambient light, and I saw that it was Timothy Graham.

“It is you,” he said then. “I thought I saw you walking toward the wood, but I told myself it was impossible. What brings you back to Owlhurst?”

“You gave me such a fright!” I declared.

“Guilty conscience, I’ll be bound.”

That was too close to the mark for comfort. I laughed, more an admission than a denial, I was certain.

“I-a personal matter brought me back. And so I stayed the night. But I’m leaving tomorrow.”