Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

There were two ways to reach Owlhurst, or the road leading to it, where Barton’s stood. Jonathan would have taken the more direct. And so would I.

I cleared my head of every thought, concentrating on the road. If I could catch them up before they reached Barton’s-surely Peregrine would wait until they were almost there. He’d be searched at the door, and then it would be too late. Somewhere before the asylum. I could picture that lonely stretch of road just before one saw the walls around the property. There? Sooner?

The roads were winter poor, and in daylight it would have been mad enough to drive at this speed, but I kept it up. They had a head start of what? Twenty minutes? Thirty? Thirty was too long. I’d never make that up.

I narrowly missed a ewe wandering across the road, and again someone on a bicycle, who yelled imprecations in my wake. I prayed I wouldn’t meet anything larger. At this speed, I couldn’t stop in time. Is it worth taking your life in your hands?

I had no answer to that. Would I have agreed to carry a message to Arthur’s brother, if I’d been able to look ahead into the future?

I had no answer to that either.

I was within five miles of Barton’s, cursing under my breath, knowing I was too late, far too late. And then, over the soft murmur of the Rolls motor, I heard shots echoing across the fields. I’d been close to the fighting. I’d fired side arms myself. I could recognize their sharp reports.

Gripping the wheel hard to hold back my fears, I tried to determine where the sounds had come from. To my right-and surely just ahead.

But to my right was only a tangle of briars and dead stalks of last summer’s wildflowers, and on the far side of that, out of range of my headlamps, the flat blackness of what appeared to be a fallow hop field.

I lifted my foot from the accelerator, prepared to find the Graham motorcar stopped in the middle of the road, and I put out my hand for the brake, to keep myself from plowing into it.

But the road ahead was empty…

I was about to pick up speed again when, peering through the windscreen, I noticed that beside me, the tall winter-dry brush along the verge had been flatted by something heavy passing over them and crushing them.

I hadn’t even had time to react to that when from the same direction I caught the sound of raised voices, angry and rough.

Barely a minute had passed since I’d heard those first shots, and now there were two more in rapid succession, hardly distinguishable, and someone cried out in anguish.

I WAS ALREADYbraking hard, with all my strength, weaving across the road and slewing sideways as the motorcar came to a halt that felt as if it had jarred my very teeth.

Peregrine had walked away from the asylum-he could have remembered this stretch-

Pausing only to pick up the torch that had been sliding wildly about beneath my feet, I was out of the motorcar and running toward the hop field. But the torch’s beam was weak, and I had to concentrate on the broken stalks, which caught at my ankles and threatened to pitch me headlong. Then I reached the plowed ground, stiff with frost, and at last could cast my light toward the dark, quiet shape that was a motorcar, barely silhouetted against the sky.

In the silence I could hear my own labored breathing and the muffled sound of my boots as I ran and from somewhere what I thought was someone weeping.

At last my torch illuminated the shining metalwork of the Graham Rolls, the motor still ticking over. But there was no sign of Jonathan or Peregrine or the policemen. Something was glittering in the rear seat, and I lifted the light for a better look.

It caught the buttons of a constable’s uniform. The man didn’t stir, and I could see as I came closer that he was slumped to one side, as if he were badly hurt.

Oh, Peregrine…why didn’t you trust me?

But he had never been taught trust.

I shone my light full in the constable’s face and realized that he was unconscious, his jaw slack. I could hardly see his features for the spreading mask of blood, almost black in this light, that ran down from a long furrow at his temple and dripped onto his tunic. His helmet was askew, knocked to one side, strap dangling. It was Constable Mason. I pulled off my driving gloves and probed the wound, touching bone. I could even see it briefly, white-and not splintered.

Four bullets … That’s what Peregrine had said: he had four shots, and he could kill three other people before he turned the pistol on himself.

The poor, unsuspecting Constable Mason must have been the first victim. But Peregrine had missed his shot, thank God, and the man would live.

Where were the others?

I reached into the motorcar for the headlamp switch, and suddenly there was a brightness that opened up the night.

The other constable was just ahead of the motorcar, perhaps ten feet from the bonnet, as if he’d been trying to follow his attacker. He lay on his face, not moving. I bent over him. He was dead, there was nothing more to be done for him. I moved on.

That made two…

Where was Jonathan? Where was Peregrine?

I turned to scan the fan of light, my own shadow cast like a black monster far ahead of me.

Something moved, then rose from the ground, hunched over as if in pain, and then the figure dashed out of the glow of the motorcar’s headlamps, into darkness.

“Peregrine-!” I cried. “No, please wait-”

But he was gone, vanished into the night.

I ran forward to where I’d first seen him, and there was Jonathan, lying on his side on the ground, his military greatcoat almost blending into the trampled earth around him. One arm was flung across his face, concealing it. Falling to my knees beside him, I gently lifted it, and he rolled over onto his back with a grunt that told me he was still alive.

More than anything at that moment, I wished I could bring Mr. Appleby here and make him look at the consequences of his spiteful telephone call. I wanted him to see what men do to each other when goaded beyond what they could bear.

I ran my hands over Jonathan’s chest, looking for a wound, and I found it, bleeding freely but not heavily. Pulling off my scarf, I wadded it in a ball, unbuttoned his coat and then his tunic. I shoved the scarf against his shirt, jamming it as best I could against the place where the bleeding was heaviest, then buttoned the tunic over it to hold it in place.

As I worked, I realized that something was hurting my knee, and looked down. There was Jonathan’s service revolver-it had been drawn and was lying under him. He must have tried to defend himself and the two unarmed constables.

I had to get these men to a doctor as quickly as possible. And there was no one to help me.

I sprang to my feet, trying to judge whether I could bring the motorcar this far without bogging down, and how best to loop back to the road. And only then did I notice that someone else was lying in the field, outside the perimeter of the headlamp’s reach. I could only make out the shape of a man’s boot and a lump beyond it that was his body.

I blinked.

Peregrine hadn’t made it to safety after all. As I hurried toward where he lay in a crumpled heap, wounded or dead, I knew that Jonathan wouldn’t have missed his own shot. He was too good a soldier for that.

Then I was beside him, kneeling in the hard earth again, calling his name. His face was in deep shadow, but as I shone my torch into it, his eyelids fluttered, and he said, quite clearly, “Diana?”

“It’s Bess Crawford, Peregrine.”

“So it is.” He winced and lay still.

I could smell burnt wool, sharp and strong. Setting down the torch to search for a wound, I felt blood warm on my hands on both sides of his shoulder, high up. The bullet must have gone through. To get to his coat buttons, I had to turn him over. He cried out, and said something I couldn’t catch. His breathing was fast but steady, and there was no froth of blood on his lips that I could see. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed that he would live.