Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

The kettle was beginning to boil, I could hear the soft rumble of bubbles forming in the bottom.

“She found you by the body, trying to retrieve your knife from the wound-is that when you see the entrails?”

“I don’t remember.” He crossed the room to sit down heavily in the nearest chair. I was pouring the hot water into the teapot now, splashing a little on my hands, unaware of the pain.

Remember Ted Booker-a little voice in my head reminded me.

Shock can do terrible things to the mind. And a fourteen-year-old boy with limited experience of life might easily be made to remember something that wasn’t real. But how? With words?

I couldn’t quite grasp what had been done. Or how Mrs. Graham could have allowed it to happen. But a mother will do anything to protect her own child, and destroying Peregrine Graham was the surest solution to the thorny problem of presenting Arthur or Jonathan or even Timothy to the police as the murderer.

I cudgeled my wits, but no brilliant solution offered itself.

Handing Peregrine his cup, I sat down across from him with my own. The hot, sweet tea was reviving. “Peregrine? You asked me if I’d sacrifice you to save Arthur’s good name. But the facts point to Arthur as the killer-he was Mrs. Graham’s favorite, he was next to you in age, you were already damaged, and so it was a short step to substituting you for him. But I need to know why Arthur would kill?”

“To protect one of his brothers?” But he was unconvinced.

I on the other hand leapt for that explanation.

“It could happen. If Lily, in the house alone with you and resenting that she couldn’t have the evening off with the other staff, taunted the four of you for being in her way-”

He shook his head. “Don’t.”

“Peregrine. I’m being ordered back to active duty within the week. Time is slipping through our fingers.”

“It doesn’t matter. I can go somewhere else and start another life. The Mercers must have done that in New Zealand, and it would have been harder for them than for me. After all these years in Barton’s, I don’t need much. I could survive.”

Peregrine was already thought to be dead. There were ways it could be made to happen, this new life. There were people in India I could send him to-

But it solved nothing. There was Lily, deserted by her family, however desperate they’d been to accept the offer of passage away from England. If I had thought it was my duty to Arthur to bring his message home, what duty was still owed to Lily Mercer?

“Talk to me, Peregrine. Please-if you didn’t kill her, someone else did. Do you remember what you told me about that conversation where Arthur and Jonathan discussed doing something six times to give the victim-or perhaps the police-a fair chance to catch you?”

“I’ve already considered that. Lily. The policeman Gadd. The doctor. The rector. Lady Parsons.”

“You can’t count her. She survived.”

“The boy who drowned, then. That’s five. And about as farfetched as a fairy tale.”

“Add Ted Booker. Six.”

“Arthur couldn’t have killed Booker.”

“To my knowledge, Jonathan was the last person to see him alive.” Unless I was wrong, and Mrs. Denton went to the surgery.

“Jonathan?”

Unless Jonathan had completed Arthur’s six. It would have to be Jonathan. But he was never Mrs. Graham’s favorite.

He was her son, all the same. And she would be rabid to protect him.

Could he kill at that age? He must have been what, ten? A little younger, perhaps. If he’d caught Lily off guard, he could have struck her with the knife, just happening to find the right place to kill her. Or lashed out and was unlucky enough to cut an artery.

I hadn’t liked Jonathan very much, but that didn’t matter. The truth did.

But what if it was not the boys? What if it was Mrs. Graham? Or Robert? If he’d tried to seduce Lily, and she’d told him she’d complain to Mrs. Graham, he might have been in a panic. Or to twist it another way, if Lily had seen Mrs. Graham and Robert together-or perhaps guessed that one of the Graham children was his-she might have been killed if she threatened blackmail. What were the laws on inheritance, if it could be shown that a child might not be the legal father’s son?

The trouble was, I hadn’t known Lily Mercer, and I hadn’t been able to speak to her family. I was blind when it came to her nature, her way of seeing life, and what she wanted from it.

Daisy had claimed she was ambitious, and that fit nicely with the theory of blackmail. But Lily might well have been innocent of any wrongdoing. I mustn’t make her the villain without evidence.

“I’m going back to Owlhurst. I’ll speak to Lady Parsons, and see if she had any doubts about what happened to you. If Mrs. Graham had already received permission from the London police to take you directly to Barton’s, why did she call in so many people after she reached Owlhurst? The doctor-the police-the magistrate-the rector. To erase any doubt in the minds of people whose opinion mattered in Owlhurst? Or to make certain that you, Peregrine Graham, were seen with blood all over your hands and shirt, so that she and not her stepson would be the object of their sympathy?”

“I’d rather go away now, and not look back.”

“But you’re a witness, Peregrine. You can’t disappear, if there’s to be any justice at all.”

This time I found Simon at his club and asked him to drive me back to Kent. Peregrine was determined to go, but I didn’t want him taking the risk. Or to have to explain to Simon.

Curious, Simon agreed, and he took me to the flat long enough to fetch my bag. Peregrine, in Elayne’s room, didn’t come out, though I was nearly certain he’d call my bluff and find a way to accompany us. I expect if he’d had any uniform but that of my father’s old regiment, he might have tried to do just that.

I half expected to find him gone from London by the time I got back. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. What if it was all taken out of my hands, and I didn’t have to face what Arthur might have done?

Simon was silent for most of the journey, and I was grateful, lost in thought as I was.

We found Lady Parsons just outside Cranbrook in a very lovely old Jacobean house with a pedimented porch and graceful stonework around the windows. The estate was called Peacocks, and on the gates were two magnificent stone peacocks, the hen demure and the male with raised head, above the spread of that glorious tail.

I remembered Lady Parsons from the inquest. But I had forgotten how formidable she was.

She received me in her drawing room, austere in mourning black, with jet beads and only a touch of white at her collar and at her cuffs. A pince-nez on a silver chain was pinned at her shoulder.

“You’re the young woman who worked with Dr. Philips trying to save Lieutenant Booker. What brings you here, second thoughts about your testimony? As I recall, it was an impassioned plea for understanding. Remarkable, I thought. We have no room for compassion in a war such as this one. A shame.”

“I’m afraid that it’s another matter that I wish to discuss, Lady Parsons. The fate of Peregrine Graham.”

The door opened, and a little dog trotted into the room, taking his place at Lady Parsons’s feet.

“Peregrine Graham, is it? You do have a taste for lost causes, my girl. The odds are, he’s dead.”

“So I’ve been told. But I happened on information that confused me-I’d heard that the body of Lily Mercer had been-er, butchered, for want of a better word.”

“We did not ask for such unpleasant details, Miss Crawford. Mrs. Graham was nearly incoherent with shock by the time she reached Owlhurst. I was summoned, along with Inspector Gadd, because she was unable to continue at that hour to the asylum and attend to all the details of admitting her son. Inspector Gadd and I decided the boy was safest at the rectory until he could be moved again, and the doctor determined that he was stable enough to wait a few more hours.”