A Duty to the Dead

by Charles Todd

  He smiled. “You are very forthright, Miss Crawford.”

  I knew then the crows had found their rightful nest. Yes, Mrs. Denton had been busy protecting her daughter. That was as it should be. But she had also been partly responsible for Ted Booker’s plight. I wasn’t about to let her ruin Dr. Philips’s reputation as well.

  “I spent several hours in Mrs. Denton’s company one afternoon while we watched over Mr. Booker. I had the opportunity to witness her feelings about him.”

  A little silence fell. Finally Inspector Howard turned back toward the church. “Let me walk you home, Miss Crawford. You’ve been very helpful.”

  He asked what had brought me to Owlhurst, and I told him. He said, “It’s a great sadness, this war. So many young men lost to us. My sister’s son, for one. He was a bright boy. He could have made something of his life. Now we’ll never know what it might have been.”

  “Are you married, Inspector?”

  “Indeed I am. And I’ve been blessed with three young daughters.”

  We laughed together.

  “Will you speak at the inquest?” He appeared to be offering me a choice.

  “If my opinion carries any weight, of course I shall.”

  Ahead of us was the church. He said, “Would you mind if I left you here? You know your way, I think?”

  “I’ll be fine. Thank you.”

  He turned to go and then had one last question for me. “In your opinion, was Ted Booker mad?”

  “Not mad, no.” I looked toward the church steeple, thinking about Peregrine Graham. “Not as we think of madness. He was as wounded in spirit as Jonathan Graham is wounded in the flesh.”

  Inspector Howard touched his hat to me as he thanked me, and then walked on toward the High Street of Owlhurst.

  Looking after him, I wondered how much good I had really done—and how much harm. On the whole, I thought the Colonel Sahib would have been pleased with his daughter’s handling of that interview. Inspector Howard was no fool.

  When I reached the house, I could almost sense the curiosity welling behind that front door, and the questions I’d be asked about what the inspector had had to say to me. The very thought was enough to make me keep on walking. I wasn’t ready to answer them, and I refused to add to any speculation about police interest in Dr. Philips. And so, with nowhere else to go, and my feet feeling like numb blocks of ice, I called on Susan’s mother. It was the only other sanctuary I could think of where there was a fire and a warm welcome.

  No one had told her the sad news about Ted Booker, and tears came to her eyes as she sat down in the nearest chair.

  “Oh, my good Lord. No.”

  I tried to comfort her, but she took his death hard. “I was that fond of the Booker twins. The truth is, I liked them better than the Graham boys, barring Arthur of course. Steady lads, honest and caring, that’s what they were. Sons a mother could be proud of.”

  I was surprised. But then Peregrine was a murderer, Jonathan seemed to be callous and uncaring, and Timothy—Timothy I hadn’t really understood yet. He seemed to be open and honest, but sometimes that appeared to be what was expected of him. As if to show he bore no ill will to Fate for having given him a clubfoot. Again, that English insistence on stiff upper lip, pretending nothing is wrong.

  Susan’s mother sat there for a time reminiscing about the Booker twins, and then said, “I don’t know how many more shocks I can bear. First Arthur and then Harry, and now Mr. Ted.” She shook her head. “I ought to count poor Mr. Peregrine as well. He’s as good as dead, isn’t he?”

  “I was talking to Mrs. Clayton earlier. She told me she had expected to go to London with the family, until plans were changed at the last minute. Were you to go as well?”

  “I was to stay here. I can tell you, I was more than a little envious of Hester Clayton, at the time. As it turned out, I was glad I wasn’t there. It was a terrible shock. I heard Mrs. Graham speaking to Inspector Gadd, describing how he’d ripped that poor girl to pieces in an orgy of lust and blood. Very like Jack the Ripper, it was, that’s how she put it. I didn’t sleep for two nights, picturing it. And Mrs. Graham walking in to find the body and Peregrine there with blood all over him. It’s a wonder she didn’t lose her mind.”

  Shocked, I said, “I thought—” But I don’t know what I thought. A nice quiet killing with no blood and the victim someone I didn’t know and never would? Appalling and all that, but somehow until now, not real.

  “Mrs. Graham cried all night, saying she wished he’d died there and then, so she could bury him beside his father and have done with it, and never have to think about it again. Ever.”

  There were tears in her eyes again, and she bit her lip to hold them back. “I was that fond of him, as a boy. Very like his father, he was, when he was young. I tell you, it was such a blow. But then he went away, and we all tried to go on as if nothing had happened. It wasn’t as if we’d seen him every day, even when he was young, running about and coming in from some lark, muddy and looking for a bite to eat. I used to save a little treat for him, setting it aside, before he was found to be different. After that he never came down to the kitchen, and his tutor told us that he must be quiet, or it would damage his brain.”

  “Damage—” Medically, unless he was subject to seizures, that didn’t make much sense. But of course the tutor was not trained to deal with such a child, and he probably meant well.

  “I never liked that tutor,” Susan’s mother was saying. “Sly, he was, and not much one for conversation in the servants’ hall. He took his meals separately, a step above the rest of us. But he would come down sometimes and speak to one of us about Mr. Peregrine’s needs. As if the Prince of Wales was wanting something, mind you, and the tutor was the Lord Chamberlain. I never resented it, knowing what the poor boy must be suffering. His brothers running and shouting about the house, or in the back garden, while he must sit by his window and watch. There was talk that little Prince John had such seizures and was sent away. I remember that. And I thought, Poor Mr. Peregrine, and wondered if he was to die young too.”

  She seemed to tire, her face drooping a little. “I should never have told you such things. You won’t let on to Susan, or to Mrs. Graham, will you?”

  “No, I wouldn’t dream of speaking of it—truly. I wouldn’t wish to remind any of them—”

  “You’re kind, Miss. It’s been bottled up in me all these years, and I thought I’d carry it to my grave, but I’ve been that upset over Mr. Ted.”

  “Will you be all right, if I leave you?”

  “Yes, go, if you don’t mind. I need to rest. Thank you for coming, Miss.”

  I made my farewells and slipped out. The cat jumped into her lap as I latched the door, and she bent her head, as if nodding.

  I walked back to the house and went up to my room without meeting anyone. I was grateful for the respite.

  Small wonder no one in the family wanted to see or speak to Peregrine Graham while he was there, ill. Even after all these years, the memory of what he’d done must still be raw.

  It explained too why there were constables on watch. And why at the first sign of recovery, Peregrine had been sent directly back to the asylum. While he was still too weak to do anything frightful again.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE MAGISTRATE, THE aging relict of the man who had held that position before her, was nearing seventy, hunched and sharp-tongued. Dr. Philips pointed her out seated nearest the roaring fire, one of her grandsons beside her.

  She had commanded that we hold the inquest at once, so that she could visit her granddaughter in Canterbury in time for the birth of her first great-grandchild. And everyone, from the Grahams to the police, agreed without argument.

  It was the day after poor Ted Booker had been buried. Indecent haste, I thought, but perhaps no more than a duty to Lady Parsons.

  I didn’t know the Coroner, a dour man of fifty, who, according to Dr. Philips, had come down from Tonbridge to conduct the proceedings
.

  I listened to the evidence given about Theodore Russell Booker’s state of mind, as if he were a stranger the witnesses barely knew. An embarrassment, something to put behind us quickly, so that we get on with living.

  Dr. Philips gave a very clinical report on his mental state, and then added, “I think perhaps we haven’t considered the whole man. He and his brother were close, and Harold’s death must have been appalling. Theodore Booker was not in another part of the Front, word coming secondhand, he was there, a witness, he held his brother in his arms as Harold died. We must accept as well our failure as a member of the medical profession to find a cure for horror and heartbreak. If Theodore Booker took his own life while in the grip of such painful memories, it was not his fault. It was the fault of war and of our inability to understand how to save him.”

  There was silence as he stepped down and walked to his place next to me. We were in The Bells, in a parlor that was more often the scene of parties and filled with laughter, not talk of death. The dark beams over our heads and the dark paneling of the walls, added to a dreary day with rain coming down in sheets, fit our somber mood.

  I reached out to touch the doctor’s arm as he sat down, then heard my own name called to give evidence.

  I did so, to the best of my ability, remembering that I was under oath. But I also told the truth as I’d observed it: on the night of his death, I had felt so strongly that Lieutenant Booker had turned a corner. Then, like Dr. Philips, I added more than I was required to tell. “He loved his wife very much. He told me that. He tried to heal for her sake. I felt a great pity for him, because he wanted to be a good husband.”

  There were two questions for me—one to do with my training and whether or not I knew enough about such cases to judge the circumstances surrounding Ted’s death, and the other to do with whether or not Theodore Booker was, in my view, of sound mind.

  I answered, “Grief is difficult to bear at the best of times. Ted Booker was perfectly sane but so overwhelmed by what he saw as his responsibility for his brother’s death that he couldn’t find his way back to the man he was.” I wanted to add that a little more understanding from his mother-in-law might have gone far in saving him. But I held my tongue.

  She was seated in the front row with her daughter, her face smug with satisfaction that the troublesome man was dead. Sally was so shrouded in widow’s weeds that her feelings were hard to read. There was no way of knowing whether she felt relief or despair. Indeed, most of the people attending the hearing seemed to be unsympathetic to the dead man. I had a fleeting thought that the poor man was well out of it. These were neighbors and friends, they had known him since he was a boy, and yet they had turned away from him when he most needed them.

  Was that what had happened to Peregrine Graham in his own hour of need?

  In the end, the finding was that Theodore Booker, while not in his right mind due to grief over his brother’s death, had taken his own life. The stigma of suicide had been lifted from the survivors. That was all Mrs. Denton had wished for.

  No mention was made of Dr. Philips or his skill as a physician. I hoped that my conversation with Inspector Howard had well and truly spiked those guns.

  As I was walking out of The Bells, glad to be away from the crowded room inside, I looked out at the rain and thought about going back to the Graham house, then decided to sit in the church for a few minutes until I felt a little more tolerant. Jonathan Graham had said nothing about going to see Ted Booker, and the Coroner hadn’t called on him to give evidence. I had seen Mr. Montgomery look at him several times, as if expecting him to add what he knew, but he didn’t speak up. And neither did the rector.

  I had closed the churchyard gate behind me and was walking toward the stained-glass windows of saints, when I heard someone shouting. I turned to see who it was.

  It was a rider, coming fast, and calling to Jonathan Graham as he was escorting his mother home. They had reached the large trees that overhung the churchyard wall—not twenty yards from where Ted had been buried—when they heard the shout.

  They turned as one, and the rider came up to them, reaching down to hand them a letter. As Jonathan opened the envelope, his mother was questioning the man on horseback. I realized then that it was Robert Douglas, holding the horse steady as he answered.

  Jonathan’s face was flushed with something very like fury, but he nodded curtly, passed the letter to his mother, and she bent over it, trying to see it in the shadows cast by the bare limbs and her black umbrella. I thought for an instant she was going to faint, but she steadied herself, said something more to Robert, who wheeled his horse and went back toward the stragglers just coming out of The Bells. I realized that he was looking for Timothy, who was speaking to Mrs. Denton while Sally was being handed into a carriage by the young man I’d seen with Lady Parsons during the proceedings.

  Timothy broke off, excused himself, and spoke sharply to Robert, who answered and pointed. Timothy Graham turned toward where his brother and his mother were standing and without a word of farewell to Mrs. Denton, strode away to join them, rigid with emotion.

  Robert lifted his hat to Mrs. Denton, with a brief word, then put his horse to a trot to follow Timothy.

  No one had seen me there by the church nave. And I stood watching the little scene play itself out as Timothy also read the letter and then passed it back to his mother. The Grahams walked briskly toward home, Robert riding ahead to stable his horse.

  From their posture, heads together, backs rigid, I knew that the news was bad.

  All I could think of was that the journey back to the asylum had been too much for Peregrine Graham, and that he had got his wish—he’d succumbed to his pneumonia after all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I HURRIED INTO the church and sat down in a corner near the pulpit, where no one could see me, huddled into my cloak for warmth and comfort.

  This wasn’t the right moment to go to the house. Let them have their time to grieve. But it was cold in the church, as cold as the tomb, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking, and so after a time, though the rain was coming down hard, I left the church and crossed to the rectory, my shoes wet to my ankles, and the hem of my skirt dragging.

  A middle-aged woman opened the door when I knocked and ushered me into the hall, clucking over how wet I was.

  The rector wasn’t to home, she informed me. He’d gone to speak with the widow, to offer what comfort he could after the inquest.

  At first I thought she meant Mrs. Graham, and then I realized she was speaking of Sally Booker. I turned away, wondering where I could go now, and she said, “No, you mustn’t leave here so wet as you are, Miss! The kitchen is warm, I’ll dry your shoes and your cloak while you have a bite of something. I’ve a nice bit of soup that’s just the right thing on such a day. Rector wouldn’t like me to send you away just because he’s not to home.” She glanced at the sky. “I don’t think this will last for more than a quarter of an hour. See, it’s brighter to the west.”

  I smiled, trying to hold back tears of gratitude. “Thank you—”

  “There’s nothing to thank me for. It’s Rector says turn away no one in need.”

  Was I in need? Yes, in a way. I wanted to go home, to see Colonel Sahib, to listen to my mother being sensible and comforting at the same time. Right now, being tucked into bed with a glass of warm milk would have been the epitome of happiness. Ted Booker was dead, there was nothing I could do to change that, and now Peregrine Graham had died, because he had been sent back to the asylum over my objections. Coming to Kent had been a bad decision—I was sure no one would carry out Arthur’s last wishes. Nothing would be done about whatever it was he wanted set right.

  I tried to come to grips with my despondent mood, and couldn’t.

  The housekeeper took me down the passage to the kitchen, and as I glanced over my shoulder, I could see the two china dogs in the parlor window, staring back at me. I’d glimpsed them on my first night in Owlhurst, and this wa
s most likely my last night.

  She introduced herself as Mrs. Oldsey, housekeeper here for many years, because the last two rectors hadn’t been married. “Not that I’ve lost hope for Rector,” she added as she helped me out of my heavy wet cloak and draped it in front of the kitchen fire. “He’s young yet. We’ve six bedchambers in this house, did you know that? And only one of them being used. I long to see children about the house. I wasn’t blessed with any myself, but I sincerely do love the little ones.”

  She bustled about, setting the kettle on to boil as I removed my wet shoes and looked around.

  It was an old-fashioned kitchen, with no wife to complain and have it redone. But Mrs. Oldsey seemed not to mind.

  “What brought you out on such a morning as this?” she asked as she set down cups and saucers from the cupboard.

  “I was at the inquest—”

  “Yes, the poor Booker lad. Sad. I didn’t have the heart to go. I remember him and his brother. Imps, they were, but good-hearted. What was the verdict brought in?”

  “Death by his own hand in the throes of grief for his brother.”

  “Ah, well, best that way. He can be buried in holy ground, and his widow doesn’t have his memory hanging about her neck like something to ward off the plague.”

  Amused by her way of seeing life, I said, “That’s what her mother hopes as well.”

  “Mrs. Denton? A piece of work, that one, though it isn’t Christian of me to say so. But a spade’s a spade, for all that.”

  I kept my opinion to myself, but the twinkle in Mrs. Oldsey’s eyes told me she suspected I shared her views.

  She fed me tea and toast and a cup of soup warmed up from the night before. I ate because I was hungry, and because I dreaded going back out in the rain to the Graham house.