Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

“According to the information that Scotland Yard has in hand, Lily Mercer died of a single stab wound to her throat.”

“And how did you come by such information, Miss Crawford?” Her voice had taken on a chilly note, and the dog stirred at her feet.

“My father, Colonel Crawford, was able to discover it for me.”

“And is he aware of the use you are now making of this information?”

“He-is aware of my interest in the fate of Lily Mercer.”

“I see.”

“I believe there might have been a miscarriage of justice, Lady Parsons. And I am seeking advice from you on how to proceed in this matter.”

“My advice, if you will take it, is to leave police business to the police. As I did. Inspector Gadd handled a most difficult matter with admirable skill and discretion. That’s all there is to say. It does you credit to want to set the world to rights, my dear, but as Peregrine is dead, I see no point in investigating a tragedy that lies in the past where it belongs. Fifteen years is a long time, witnesses die, attitudes change, and it is almost impossible to make a judgment on new facts when the old ones can’t be reconstructed.”

“I’m not asking you to make a judgment. I’d simply like to know if you were aware of a discrepancy in important details.”

“The nightmare here, Miss Crawford, was that of a child committing murder. We were appalled, and we did what we could to make Mrs. Graham’s hideous duty as simple as humanly possible. You cannot know her state of mind at the time. I witnessed it. I saw the young man myself, and his own state was pitiable. It was I who suggested that Mrs. Graham’s cousin, acting in loco parentis, remove the child the next morning to Barton’s while the doctor treated Mrs. Graham for exhaustion. She had done more than any woman might be expected to do in such circumstances, and I admired her courage in seeing the matter through. But she had three other sons who were in desperate need of her care, and her place was naturally with them. A man’s steadying hand was what Peregrine Graham most needed, and that is what we were able to provide for him.”

“What did Peregrine have to say for himself?” I asked.

“Very little. He was quite naturally dazed by the turn of events, and on that score, it isn’t surprising. I asked him how he had come to kill, and his answer was that he wanted his father’s knife returned to him, he was quite upset that it had been taken away. I asked him how he felt about what he’d done, and he said that he didn’t care for the smell. I asked him if he’d liked the unfortunate victim, and he replied that she was spiteful when no adult was present, and that he had disliked her for it. All very consistent, according to the doctor, with the boy’s inability to tell right from wrong. He couldn’t seem to grasp the severity of his actions. There was no malice, no cunning, no viciousness. There was no doubt in my mind, as there was no doubt in the minds of the London authorities, that prison was inappropriate and that Barton’s Asylum was the proper choice, where he could be evaluated.”

“Why not a London hospital?”

“I believe that the doctor, a man called Hepple, who was a specialist in mental derangement in children, had recently removed to Barton’s. Mrs. Graham was very persuasive. She felt that her stepson had no prior history of violence, no indications of a violent nature, and that it had most likely been a disagreement over a pocketknife, about which he was obsessive, that might have triggered this event. In supervised circumstances, it was likely he would never kill again.”

I could see that I was speaking to a wall. Lady Parsons had made up her mind that night, and she was not accustomed to changing it. I could also see that Mrs. Graham had been terribly distressed but had somehow kept her wits about her as well. And that would be indicative of a shocked and horrified mother who had to fight for a child she loved with every tool at her disposal. Nothing else mattered, not even her own near collapse.

I thanked Lady Parsons for her time and prepared to take my leave.

She said, “My dear, when one is young, one sees dragons everywhere, and one is prepared to fight them. That’s an admirable trait. But as one ages, one often sees that injustice is rare, and that what had appeared to be dragons are merely the shadows the mind creates when it wishes to avoid a bitter truth.”

I stood there for a moment, then asked, “Did you feel I was fighting dragons when I made the plea for Lieutenant Booker?”

“In a way, I did. Shell shock is little understood, although I believe that in young Booker’s case, it was clear that both Dr. Philips and you had fought hard against his dragons. But the dragons won, and that was neither justice nor injustice, but the simple fact that in the end, he didn’t have the strength to endure.”

She hadn’t used the word courage, but it hung in the air between us.

The little dog accompanied us to the door of the drawing room, either ready to defend his mistress or hoping for a walk, it was hard to say.

Which brought me to another matter I hadn’t intended to broach.

“I understand you had a terrible fall from your horse some years ago, Lady Parsons.”

“Oh, my dear, I was frightened to death that I wouldn’t walk again! I don’t know why the horse fell-my groom found cuts on the mare’s knees, and he very rightly called in Constable Abbot, but I could swear that there was nothing on the path that might have tripped up Henny. We had ridden through high grass before we reached the wood, and she might well have encountered something there that I couldn’t see. I don’t wear my spectacles when I ride.”

And that was Lady Parsons’s dragon-that no one would dare touch her or her horse. She was sacrosanct.

Simon said as I walked out to the waiting motorcar, “You don’t appear to be happy with the outcome of your visit.”

“I’ve been fighting dragons. Or so I’m told.”

Simon put the motorcar into gear and drove several miles until he came to a place wide enough for us to pull to the side of the road. The view across the Downs was wonderful in the cold light of a winter’s day.

He said, simply, “What can I do?”

“Dear Simon, I thank you, but it isn’t a position the army can take with full cavalry charge in support of the infantry.”

“Try.”

I shook my head.

“Bess-”

“Do you remember some twenty years ago, there was a scandal about a steeplechase where a favorite lost to a horse with no record of winning-and suddenly in this one race, he was a phenomenon, ahead of the field by some ten lengths? And much later, it was discovered that the horse who won had actually taken the place of the one legally entered in that race? My father was angry when the truth came out. He’d had a wager on the favorite.”

“As I remember the substitution wasn’t discovered for five years.”

“Exactly. I think this must have happened when Lily Mercer was found dead. The wrong boy was blamed, because it served everyone’s purpose for him to be sent to an asylum.”

“That’s a rather strong accusation. The police don’t often get things wrong.”

“And they didn’t. It was a child in that house. Only, the real killer was protected, and the scapegoat was not missed by anyone.”

Simon was silent for some time. And then he asked, “Has this boy-the real murderer-killed again?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Circumstantial evidence says he may have. I’m not a policeman, I can’t prove what I believe.”

“You’re too close to the people involved-too close to be objective.”

“And if I’m sent to France in a fortnight, it will all be swept under the carpet again, and an innocent man will continue to be blamed for something he didn’t do.”