A Duty to the Dead

by Charles Todd

  We moved on, and I found it soothing to watch him at work. And I think he enjoyed the companionship as well.

  My mind wandered in the stillness, my eyes on the memorial brass that caught the early-morning sun.

  Arthur. Ted Booker. Peregrine Graham.

  Three men to whom Fate had not been kind. Arthur should have lived, Ted Booker should have been given time to heal, and as for Peregrine—as for Peregrine, he had been lost at fourteen, and there was no way to bring him back.

  I sighed, and Mr. Montgomery said, over his shoulder, “That’s the point of working with one’s hands, you see. It gives the mind something else to do besides worry.”

  “That’s a very comforting philosophy when you enjoy mending and carpentry.”

  He laughed and gave me the end of a cushion to hold while he repaired a seam. The needlepoint pattern was floral, nasturtiums and petunias entwined in a vine of leaves. A subaltern in my father’s last command had been fond of gardening, and his mother had sent seeds for him to plant. Only the nasturtiums survived the heat. I wondered where Linford might be now. Dead?

  The rector had set aside two cushions that were beyond his skill. He put away his needle and said, “There, enough for today.” Collecting the cushions he said, “You’re concerned for Peregrine. That does you credit.”

  I hadn’t realized that I’d spoken the three names aloud.

  Then something occurred to me. There was a new rector, a new doctor. Was there as well a new policeman here in Owlhurst?

  I asked the rector, and he said, “Yes, how did you know? Inspector Gadd, a wonderful man, died of a brain injury some two years after Peregrine was taken away. Inspector Howard is our man now. Not as sharp as Gadd, you know, but early days. Early days.”

  All of which meant that those who might have had some part in sending Peregrine to the asylum had died—policeman, doctor, rector. “And what about the magistrate? Is he still here?”

  “She. Yes, of course. If you’re concerned about the coming inquest, it shouldn’t be terribly difficult for you. Would you like to go with me while I deliver these cushions? It’s partly pastoral call and partly a way of dispensing charity in a way that doesn’t offend. Mrs. Clayton needs the money, and she’s a wonderful seamstress. And I think she might be glad to hear about Arthur from you.”

  Dr. Philips had mentioned her name.

  “I’ve nothing else to do,” I agreed. “If you don’t think she’ll mind my coming along.”

  “She’ll be delighted. You’ll see.”

  We walked from the churchyard down past The Bells, and along the cricket pitch, to a cottage tucked away down a narrow lane. It sat with five of its neighbors in a tiny cul-de-sac that time had passed by. The cottages were, like the rectory, Tudor in style, their roofs running together and almost swaybacked with age. Mrs. Clayton had just stepped out to sweep the large stone that was her stoop, and Mr. Montgomery hailed her.

  She looked up and said, “What brings you calling, Rector? Discovered my secret sins, have you?” And she cackled like one of the hens scratching in the grassy patch of land at the end of the lane.

  Her eyes were watering in the cold air, her teeth had gone, and she was as wrinkled as a prune, but her spirit was still young.

  “I’ve brought more work for you, Mrs. Clayton. And a visitor.”

  She passed from her inspection of him to me, standing a little behind the rector, and said, “Is this the lass who came about poor dear Arthur?”

  News travels fast in small villages.

  “Yes, it’s Elizabeth Crawford, Mrs. Clayton. How are you this morning?” From the start he’d raised his voice a little, to accommodate her loss of hearing. “Is there anything you need?”

  “I’m poorly, but still breathing, thankee.” She turned to me. “Was it you nursed Mr. Peregrine when he was sent home with that pneumonia?”

  “It was fortunate I was there. He had a close call.”

  If she knew and repeated this much gossip, how was I to ask her about Peregrine?

  But I needn’t have worried. She invited us in for tea, took the worn cushions from Mr. Montgomery, and then as she set cups in front of us, followed by the teapot, she said, “I was once maid in that house. I knew Mr. Graham, and his first wife, Margaret. Now there was a lovely one, was Miss Margaret. She died in childbirth, you know. They feared for his sanity. But men are fey creatures, six months later he was in love again, this time with the present Mrs. Graham. A Montmorency she was, before her marriage. And they had three sons of their own, in quick succession. Hardly one lying in past, and it was near time for the next. It was a house full of joy. But it didn’t last. First Mr. Graham was taken, and then Peregrine, you might say, and now Arthur. He was so like his father, Mr. Peregrine was, and may still be for all I know. I’d say that Arthur favored his father as well. I can’t say as much for the other two. Very like their mother, both of them. Then Mr. Graham died after his carriage horse bolted and threw him out on his head. A Gypsy woman had foretold his death, you know. “A horse will kill you, and you will not see the hand that sends you to your death.” Well, it was a child with a hoop run out in the road that startled the horse into bolting, and I doubt Mr. Graham saw her until she was under the hooves of his horse. It was all too quick. Both dead in the blink of an eye.”

  Mrs. Clayton loudly sipped her tea through pursed lips, and sighed. “I always did like a nice Darjeeling. Susan sends me a packet now and again.”

  “Tell me about Robert,” I said, curiosity getting the better of me.

  “Robert? He came to Owlhurst with Mrs. Graham. It was said, to look after her. Her father didn’t want her moving to Kent. If you ask me, if that was his fear, he shouldn’t have given her a London season. But the Montmorency family comes from Northumberland, and whatever nonsense they get up to there, it makes them a suspicious lot. It’s been whispered that Robert was a poor cousin and Mr. Montmorency was looking for a way to keep him employed. Mr. Graham took him on to run the farm.”

  The rector smiled into his cup, and I thought perhaps I ought to drop the subject of Robert.

  I needn’t have worried. Mrs. Clayton was off again. When she learned I had lived in India for much of my childhood, she said, “And I’ve never been as far as Chatham, though I came that near to seeing London, once.”

  She pinched her fingers together to indicate how close it was. I didn’t need to prod her, she launched into the story of her own accord.

  “Mrs. Graham was to take a house in London, to show her sons the sights and so forth. We’d heard she was having Mr. Peregrine seen by a specialist as well, but nothing came of that. I was to accompany her, and I was that excited I told all my acquaintance they could write to me at Number 17, Carroll Square.”

  She spoke the address as if it were a talisman, grinning toothlessly at me, then went on. “I should have saved my breath. Mrs. Graham changed her mind and decided to keep the servants who came with the property, and leave us behind. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such disappointment, because that chance wasn’t likely to come my way again.”

  I wanted to ask if this was the visit to London that had turned out so disastrously but I’d reckoned without Mrs. Clayton’s sense of drama.

  She added, “Now that was when Mr. Peregrine was said to have killed one of the London maids, and I was grateful it was none of us dead at his hands. Still, I’ve always been of the opinion he wouldn’t have harmed someone brought from Owlhurst. He was used to us and our ways.”

  Comment was expected from me, I could see it in her face.

  “How terrible for everyone,” I said. “Did the poor girl have any family?”

  “I never heard of any.”

  “How sad. Was Mr. Peregrine considered dangerous, before this murder?”

  “Not dangerous, that I was ever told, no. But given to anger sometimes, and not clever at his studies. Mr. Jonathan, he was younger, but he’d torment Mr. Peregrine when no one was looking. And Mr. Peregrine, he’d fight back,
then Mr. Appleby, the tutor, would send him to his room as punishment. It was Mrs. Graham who decided they should be taught separately, so that Mr. Peregrine wouldn’t hold the other lads back in their studies.”

  We had finished our tea and had no excuse to linger. We thanked Mrs. Clayton and rose to leave.

  She said, “A shame about poor Mr. Ted, isn’t it? I was that fond of him and of Harry. Have they set the day for the services, Rector?”

  “Not yet. I’ll be sure to let you know, Mrs. Clayton.”

  I hadn’t considered the fact that she would have known the Bookers as well as the Grahams. I said, “Would you tell me a little about Harry? What he was like? How the two boys got on together?”

  We were standing at the door, the rector with his hand on the latch.

  Mrs. Clayton said, “They was so alike you couldn’t tell one from the other. What one did, the other was his shadow. And close? They could read each other’s thoughts, I’ll be bound. I remember once, Ted was in the greengrocer’s talking to me, and almost in the middle of a sentence he said, ‘I must go, Mrs. Clayton. Harry wants me.’ And I said, ‘Where is he, then?’ And Ted told me, ‘He’s over by the cricket pitch.’ I followed the boy out of the shop, and he was walking straight toward the cricket pitch. I could see Harry in the distance, standing there watching for him. So I said to him, when he came back from France, you must miss your brother something fierce, and Ted answered, ‘He’s still there, inside my head, and he calls and calls, but he can’t find me.’ I wanted to weep for the two of them. Nasty war!”

  I shivered. “I’m surprised they were allowed to serve together.”

  “I don’t see how anyone, even the Army, could have kept them apart.” She thanked us for coming to visit and, as we stepped out the door, wished me a safe journey home, adding, “Perhaps it’s a kindness that now they are together again, those two.”

  It was as good an epitaph as any.

  “It’s so sad, isn’t it?” I said to Mr. Montgomery. “What war does to families.”

  Mr. Montgomery replied, “You mustn’t take our burdens on your shoulders, Miss Crawford. I was warned when I went to France as chaplain not to dwell on all I saw or heard. It was a hard lesson. But it has stayed with me here in my parish. I am the better for it.”

  But I thought he mended his church because he couldn’t mend the broken lives and minds brought to him for comfort.

  We walked in silence for a time, and then he asked, “Did you want to save Ted Booker because you couldn’t save Arthur Graham?” His eyes were on my face. “Dr. Philips has told me how hard you tried. And you worked a miracle, saving Peregrine Graham. You must count your debt paid in full.”

  “I—don’t know if that’s true or not. I won’t know until I’ve left here, when there’s distance between me and Owlhurst,” I said, unwilling to discuss my feelings with him. Then I heard myself admitting, “I kept putting off coming here, oddly enough.”

  As if acknowledging my confession, Mr. Montgomery made one of his own. “I wasn’t cut out to be a chaplain, although I did all I could for the men who came to me. I just didn’t let them see the cost of helping them.”

  We walked on in silence, and I said good-bye to him near the rectory, before turning in the direction of the Graham house.

  Something he’d said earlier came back to me. That he’d seen Jonathan leaving the surgery later in the evening. I thought grimly, Had he undone all that Dr. Philips and I had tried to accomplish? Jonathan hadn’t shown any sympathy toward Ted Booker. Why the need to visit him? Timothy I might have understood. But Jonathan…

  And speak of the devil—

  Here he was coming toward me.

  I stopped a few paces from him, and asked the question that was on my mind. “I didn’t know you’d visited Ted Booker last evening. I wonder—was he in better spirits? Or had the depression settled over him again? How did he strike you?”

  Jonathan looked at me with a frown between his eyes. “I didn’t go to the surgery last night. Why should I? I had nothing to say to the man.”

  He nodded and walked on. I stood there, staring after him. The rector had just told me—But perhaps he was wrong, and it was someone else. He might have assumed…That made no sense either. I somehow hadn’t had the impression that the rector was guessing at the visitor’s identity.

  A little unsettled, I had just reached the Graham house to find a man turning away from the door and coming toward me. He was lifting his hat to me, as if he knew me.

  “Miss Crawford, if I’m not mistaken?”

  “Yes?” I didn’t know him. Tall, middle-aged, dark hair already thick with gray, and blue eyes that were pale with a darker rim. Disconcerting.

  “Sorry to have to introduce myself here in the street. I’m Inspector Howard. I was just asking for you. Susan told me you were having a walk. I must speak to you. Would you be more comfortable in the house with Mrs. Graham present?”

  Of course I wouldn’t, but I couldn’t say so. “Perhaps we might continue to walk a little,” I said.

  “Certainly. Thank you.” He seemed relieved at my suggestion. We turned back the way I’d come, along the church wall, toward The Bells. “I’m here, as you might have gathered, to ask you about Lieutenant Booker. Dr. Philips tells me you had a good grasp of his medical situation, and that you had spoken to him several times, in fact just after his initial attempt at suicide.”

  A formality? What was I to say, that Ted Booker had been driven to his death by well-meaning people who believed that a stiff upper lip, and all that it entailed, would set him right again? That a good husband and father ought to know what was expected of him and do his duty, however painful?

  Inspector Howard waited.

  Finally I said, “I don’t think he wanted to die. He just didn’t know how to go about living. It was too overwhelming. I was just speaking to Mrs. Clayton, and she told me how close the two—Ted and his brother, Harry—had been all their lives. Do you have a brother, Inspector?”

  He grimaced. “Three sisters.”

  I had to smile. “Then you can’t very well put yourself in Lieutenant Booker’s place.”

  “Do you feel that Dr. Philips did everything possible to prevent Booker’s death?”

  So that was the way the wind was blowing. Mrs. Denton must have said something to leave the impression that Dr. Philips was to blame. On the heels of her own spoken wish that her son-in-law would die! How like her now to try to make a case for neglect, so that her daughter wouldn’t be burdened with the stigma of a suicide.

  We had come to The Bells and walked on past their garden gate toward the cricket pitch.

  “Not only was he convinced that Lieutenant Booker was on the mend, that his word could be trusted, I was as well. Neither of us would have left him if there had been any doubt in our minds. He was contrite about frightening everyone—he said as much.”

  “Then why the turnaround?” He kept his pace matched to mine, and watched my face without appearing to do it. “It must have taken some determination to tear off the bandages and reopen his wounds. I take it the restraining straps had been removed.”

  “When he was calmer, yes.”

  I could have told Inspector Howard that according to the rector and Dr. Philips, there had been a late visitor to the surgery. But there was no proof that whoever it was had even spoken to Ted Booker. The police would believe Jonathan Graham if he claimed he was nowhere near the doctor’s house. And it would add tinder to the fires of doubt regarding Dr. Philips, that his surgery was not properly secured.

  I knew I had felt my own share of guilt for what had happened. But it was emotional, not rational. Dr. Philips must have experienced the same thing. People died, however much you tried to save them….

  “Sometimes,” I said, “Lieutenant Booker was unable to tell the present—today, his wife, his son, his responsibilities—from the past—his duty to the men serving under him. He could easily have awakened, confused, not understanding where he was
, or why he was bandaged, and tried to return to his unit. Not realizing that in the attempt, he was going to die.”

  We stopped, and the inspector stood there, his eyes on the cricket pitch. “You think it was confusion about where he was and what he was doing, that led to his death?”

  Remembering how hard Ted Booker had fought to save Harry, I nodded. “He would have done anything, sacrificing himself if need be, to keep his brother alive. It’s the only explanation I can offer. As for Dr. Philips, I’ve known him only a very short time, but he’s well trained and compassionate. I’d trust him with my own life.”

  “And yet I understand that when Mrs. Graham’s son Peregrine was very ill, she didn’t call in Dr. Philips to oversee his care.”

  The gossips had been busy.

  “You are well informed,” I said.

  “Well, yes, the asylum notified us that Mr. Graham was ill and in the care of his family. There were constables within call as long as he was in Owlhurst. It was reported that Dr. Philips came to the house once but was turned away.”

  “Hardly turned away. Not really needed is closer to the mark,” I answered, my voice nearly betraying my surprise at news of the constables. “I was in charge of the sickroom.” I didn’t add that Peregrine Graham’s case had been such a near run thing that I’d had my hands full. Dr. Philips’s presence would have been reassuring. Besides, the Grahams weren’t turning him away as much as they were keeping Peregrine behind closed doors. Out of sight and out of mind.

  “And Jonathan Graham isn’t attended by Dr. Philips, in spite of a rather nasty war wound.”

  “Dr. Philips isn’t a surgeon, Inspector Howard. Lieutenant Graham’s bandages haven’t been removed, and he may require more surgery before he’s fully healed. I daresay he’ll remain with the medical staff in charge of his case until they are satisfied that there is no infection.”

  “I see.” He nodded, as if he did.

  I ventured one last remark. Let the crows come home to roost. “I’m sure Mrs. Denton is distraught over her son-in-law’s death, but it’s unkind to blame Dr. Philips. In my opinion, for what it’s worth, she was not as sympathetic as she might have been during Lieutenant Booker’s illness, and perhaps that’s weighing on her mind now.”