by Charles Todd
“I don’t want to relive it,” he said, his voice tense. “I want to understand it.”
“I’m going back to Kent. There are some things I must do, information I must find. Will you stay here with Diana, and not harm her? She’ll do your marketing, and she’ll be my hostage, if I betray you.”
“I can’t sit here waiting. I’ll go with you.”
“If you do, and you’re recognized—”
“I’ll chance it,” he told me grimly.
And so that evening we set out for Kent again. When we reached Tonbridge, I found a hotel on a side street, bespoke two rooms, and asked if there was anyone who could take me to Owlhurst in the morning. They found a man who was willing, and after breakfast, I left Peregrine cooling his heels in his room while I set out, wondering what I was going to say to anyone.
I watched the villages come and go in silence, for I hadn’t slept well, worried about Peregrine taking it in his head to walk away. He was two people, the sick man I had watched over day and night for nearly a week, and a man obsessed with a bloody moment in his childhood.
I tried to shut out Peregrine, but he was there, a dark figure in the back of my mind. I turned to the middle-aged man driving me. His name was Owens.
“Do you know Owlhurst?”
“Oh, yes. My Aunt May lived there for a time,” he said. “I visited her often enough, boy and man.”
Oh, dear. Mind your tongue, I warned myself.
“Did you know an Inspector Gadd?” It was the first name that came to me, other than the Grahams and Dr. Philips. After all, the man had been dead for some time. It should be safe enough to claim acquaintance there.
To my surprise, Mr. Owens replied, “He lived next house but one to my aunt. Taught me how to ride my first bicycle. Shame about his dying so young. A good man.”
“Yes. Er, do you know if his widow is still living in Owlhurst?”
“She went to stay with her brother in Rye. She couldn’t bear that house afterward.”
Rye.
I said hastily, “Will you take me to Rye instead?”
He turned to look at me. “You said Owlhurst.”
“Yes, but that was before I knew Mrs. Gadd now lived in Rye. Will you take me there, and bring me back again?”
We settled on a new price for his trouble and were soon on our way south to the small town that had once been a Cinque Port, one of the five major harbors during the great days of the wool trade.
It was a journey of several hours by motorcar, but I soon found myself at the foot of a high bluff on which sat a gray stone church. We looked for the local police station, and I went in to ask the desk sergeant if by chance he knew where I could find a Mrs. Gadd. Oh, yes, he said, he knew her well.
“Go up to the church, Miss, and turn to your right. At the corner of the churchyard, turn left, and at the next corner, turn right again. You’ll have a lovely view of the water from there. Her house is on the left, the small one with black trim and an anchor for door knocker.”
I thanked him, went back to the patient Mr. Owens, and passed the directions on to him. We climbed the hill, went around the large, gray stone church, and found ourselves on a street that seemed to be eager to run straight down into the sea. From the heights, we had a wonderful view of gray water, rough with the turning of the tide. I located the house easily and told Mr. Owens to find himself tea and something to eat while I went inside.
“Knock at the door before I go,” he suggested. “She might not be to home.”
Good thinking. If I was as brilliant in questioning Mrs. Gadd, we might actually accomplish something, I told myself ruefully.
Using the anchor, I tapped briskly. After a moment someone came to the door. She was not young, perhaps in her middle fifties, but her hair was still fair, and her face unlined. She’d been a pretty woman in her youth, and that hadn’t faded with time.
Before I could speak, she peered over her spectacles at the man in the motorcar. “Is that you, Terrence Owens?” she asked.
“Yes, Mrs. Gadd, it is. How are you faring? I haven’t seen you in a good many years.”
“Well enough. Harry died, you know.”
“Your brother? That’s sad news. My aunt is gone as well.”
“Oh, my dear. I’m sorry to hear it. Won’t you come in?”
“I think this young woman would prefer to speak to you privately. But I’ll step in when I come to fetch her.”
“Fair enough.” She turned to me, frowning. “I don’t believe we’ve met, my dear.”
“My name is Elizabeth Crawford. I’ve come to speak to you about something that happened in the past. While you were living in Owlhurst.”
There was the briefest hesitation.
She knows what I’m here to ask her….
“Do come in out of the cold, then. The wind is brisk here on the bluff.”
Indeed it was. I followed her inside, and after she had taken my coat and gloves, we sat by the fire. My fingers and toes were instantly grateful for the warmth.
“I was a nurse on Britannic,” I began, “and one of the men in my care was Arthur Graham. You probably remember him as a child. I knew him as a man, a very brave one. He died of his wounds, and I was with him until the end. I spent some time in Owlhurst until a week ago. A guest of the Graham family, in fact. What I’ve learned about Peregrine Graham during my visit has been confusing—contradictory. I didn’t like to ask his family more than they were willing to tell me. But it has become rather important to me to understand about the murder of the girl called Lily.”
Mrs. Gadd spread her hands to the fire, and at first I was sure she wouldn’t answer me. Then she said, “Is it just idle curiosity that brings you here?”
“No. You see, I carried a message from Arthur Graham to his brother. No one told me what the message meant, but I came to believe it might have something to do with Peregrine. And I had the strongest impression that the family chose to ignore what amounted to Arthur’s last wish. Were they right to do so? I’ll tell you something else in confidence. While I was visiting the Grahams, Peregrine was brought to the house suffering from pneumonia. I nursed him back to health. He was so different from what I’d expected—I couldn’t—he seemed normal. As normal as Arthur or Jonathan or Timothy Graham. That troubled me.”
“What will you do with this knowledge, once you have it?”
“I’ve come back to Kent, and now here to Rye, to settle my own conscience. I have no right to pry, and I respect the possibility that you have no reason to confide in me.”
I’d tried to be honest—just leaving out the fact that Peregrine had fled from the asylum and only I knew where he was.
“Your concern does you credit, my dear. A duty to the dead is a sacred matter.” It was an echo of what my father had said to me. “What is it you want to hear?”
“What do you recall about Peregrine and the decision to send him to the asylum? How much did your husband tell you?”
“Very little at first. He came home that night shocked and grieving, refusing to tell me anything. Several months later, he was reminded of that night. We’d just finished our tea, and it was beginning to rain when Mrs. Graham sent for my husband. He was gone for hours. It seems that young Timothy went missing. We learned afterward that he’d set out on his own to find Peregrine. I have no idea how Mrs. Graham explained the situation to her other children, but it appeared that Timothy really didn’t know what had become of his half brother. Come to that, most of us weren’t told in the beginning where Peregrine was or why. And to tell you the truth, the boy was so seldom seen by that time that few of us thought twice about his absence. But back to Timothy Graham. My husband learned that Timothy was very upset that day. He’d been sent to his room for disobeying Robert Douglas, and some time in the late afternoon he left the house without being seen and simply vanished. Everyone was frantic; they had no idea where he was or why he’d told no one where he was going.”
“There were search parties?”
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“Oh, yes, as many men as my husband could muster. Mr. Craig rang the church bell to gather them. And they were out until late into the night. Finally someone came from one of the outlying farms—a man named Hutter—to say that Timothy had been found in his barn, asleep in one of the horse stalls. My husband asked the boy why he’d run away, and he said that he wanted to find Peregrine and stay with him. It was after he was brought in that Mrs. Graham finally admitted to her sons where their brother was and that he would never come home.”
“How sad!”
“When Henry finally walked in the door, he couldn’t sleep. He paced for two hours, he was that upset. And because he couldn’t put it all behind him, he told me about Peregrine.”
“Did he tell you about how they’d gathered—your husband, Mr. Craig, Lady Parsons, and Dr. Hadley, together with Mrs. Graham—to decide Peregrine’s fate? And then apparently London accepted their decision? Did Inspector Gadd believe it was a just solution?”
“Yes, and I’m sure he felt it was, or he wouldn’t have been a party to it. Still, I was horrified. I’d known those boys, you see, most of their lives.”
“Can you tell me anything about the tutor? Nathan Appleby?”
“I didn’t know him well, but I was of the opinion that he didn’t have the character to rule four lively boys. But Mrs. Graham appeared to be satisfied with him.”
“What do you mean, the character?”
“He was rather pompous, for one thing, and I—well, to put it bluntly, I overheard the rector question Mr. Appleby’s qualifications, when the Grahams could afford the best. Mr. Graham replied that his wife—the present Mrs. Graham—had selected him, and there was no more to be said.”
Why would she willingly choose an incompetent tutor? Unless she felt he would do as she asked?
“Did he stay with the Graham family, after Peregrine was taken away?”
“Yes, until the boys went off to school, and then he moved to Chilham, to a family there.”
“Did your husband tell you the name of the girl who was—murdered?”
“How could I ever forget it? Lily Mercer.”
“Did anyone ask her family how they felt about Peregrine going to the asylum rather than standing trial?”
Mrs. Gadd looked surprised. “I—I don’t believe they were consulted—nothing was said—the London police were in agreement about the asylum. Even though there were no witnesses, the evidence spoke for itself. Peregrine’s bloody hands and clothes, his mental confusion, told their own story. And of course there was his youth. No one wanted the boy sent to prison, if treatment was available at Barton’s.”
“Yes, but no one has explained why he should have killed Lily.”
“I doubt that anyone knows except perhaps Peregrine himself, if he’s able to understand his own actions.”
“You said the evidence pointed strongly to Peregrine.”
“Mrs. Graham and her cousin had gone out to dine that evening. They came home to find the other boys in bed. Lily wasn’t waiting for them, as she was supposed to be. Mrs. Graham went to Lily’s room and found Peregrine on the floor by her body. They asked him, of course—the London police, Lady Parsons, the rector, my husband—everyone. He seemed dazed. And all he would say to them was he wanted his knife back again, the one his father had given him. And of course they couldn’t give it to him, the police had taken it away because it was a murder weapon.”
I swallowed hard. “And his brothers? They hadn’t seen or heard anything?”
“Apparently not. But we had the same laundress, Mrs. Graham and I. And I heard her tell my cook that when Susan’s mother unpacked the boys’ luggage, the night they returned to Owlhurst, she found blood all along the cuff of Arthur’s nightshirt. She pointed it out to Mrs. Wallace—the laundress—and asked if such a stain would come out.”
“Arthur’s? Are you sure of that?” My voice was sharp, I couldn’t make it behave.
“Yes, I’m certain. He’d had a nosebleed, he said. It seems he was prone to them as a child.”
Mr. Owens chose that moment to knock at the door, and Mrs. Gadd went to let him in.
I sat by the fire, cold to the bone. And all I could think of was the message I had carried home for Arthur.
Tell Jonathan that I lied. I did it for Mother’s sake. But it has to be set right.
I was silent on the long drive back to Tonbridge. Mr. Owens tried once or twice to draw me into conversation, but I told him I was tired.
The truth was, I was tormented by what I’d learned.
I should have risked everything and turned Peregrine over to the police the first chance I had. The police could have disarmed him before he’d killed anyone. Surely—
And then I would never have come to Rye to hear Mrs. Gadd’s account of what had transpired in London. I would have gone instead to Somerset, my father’s daughter, and been told I’d been very brave and very foolish at the same time, and I could have forgot Peregrine Graham in a few months. I’d have gone back to war, and put him out of my mind.
Instead I’d taken up the challenge of finding out more.
Arthur hadn’t wanted to put his last wishes into a letter. He’d trusted to his brother to set things right for him. He’d been certain that Jonathan would understand his message and see that justice was done.
But neither Jonathan nor his mother had seemed to understand it—Mrs. Graham had asked me questions about it.
To find out how much Arthur had told you, my mind retorted. To see if you were aware of what ought to be set right.
Had she let me nurse Peregrine because she thought I would fail to save him? A young nurse, where a doctor’s training was needed? She’d turned away the doctor when he came to the door. And the rector as well. Or had she only been afraid that in his delirium, Peregrine might remember more than he ought?
I was condemning her because of my own hurt, and that was hindsight, and not fair at all.
Arthur couldn’t have killed that girl. Not the man I’d known on Britannic, not the man everyone remembered as brave and stoic? He was his mother’s favorite, she’d said as much.
But then she’d protect her favorite, the dead son’s memory, with all her might, wouldn’t she? Peregrine had always been blamed, why do anything now?
Surely she couldn’t have known from the start—
I huddled in my seat, listening to the cold wind whistling by, my fingers already stiff with cold, my feet barely warmed by the tiny heater. Even the rug Mr. Owens had handed me for my knees wasn’t enough.
I was reminded of that dreadful ride in the dogcart from Tonbridge to Owlhurst, when the cold knifed through my coat and the rugs, no motorcar to break the wind or offer a modicum of protection.
The cart had nearly dumped me on the verge of the road, on my broken arm, when Robert fell asleep and the wheels went into a ditch. Had that been deliberate, and then he’d changed his mind at the last possible second and held me on the seat?
My mind was running away with me.
But in a short time I would have to face Peregrine Graham, and I had no idea what I was going to tell him.
There’s no proof that Arthur—You’ve jumped to conclusions, my girl, and you’re paying the price of it, I lectured myself.
I’d wondered why Peregrine had killed. I could ask the same question about Arthur—or any of the other Graham sons. Why kill Lily?
It was useless, I was going around in circles for nothing.
What was it Arthur felt must be set right? What did he lie to his mother about? Or to put it differently, since he too was only a child at the time, what lie did he let his mother tell to protect the son she loved best?
We were pulling into the outskirts of Tonbridge. I roused myself to thank Mr. Owens for taking me to Rye, and I counted out the money I owed him for the journey. As I gave it to him in front of the hotel, he said, “I have you to thank as well. I’d not have visited Mrs. Gadd, else. It was good to see her again.”
And all th
e while I wished I’d never heard her name spoken this day.
Peregrine was pacing the floor when I tapped at his door and stepped into his room.
When I’d left that morning, I’d feared he might do something foolish, perhaps walk away and never be seen again. Now I wished he’d done just that.
“Where the hell have you been?” he was demanding. “You couldn’t have been in Owlhurst all this time!”
“I didn’t go to Owlhurst after all. I went to Rye instead.”
“Rye? What were you doing in Rye?”
“Do you remember the policeman who talked to you that night?”
“Inspector Gadd? Yes. He was kind. I think he believed I was some sort of monster, but he treated me gently.”
“Well, I’ve just spent half an hour with his widow. She gave me the name of the girl who died. Lily Mercer.”
“Yes, that’s right. I don’t know why I couldn’t recall her last name.”
“Did she like Arthur more than anyone else? Did she seem to favor him?”
“I have no earthly idea. I was in my own room most of the time. I don’t know how they got on.”
I took a deep breath. “I was just wondering. Peregrine, I want to go back to London tonight. I want to see if I can find Lily Mercer’s family.”
“What could they know that would be helpful? They weren’t there.”
“But they knew their daughter, I expect. They knew what manner of girl she was. A person of your background doesn’t just decide from one minute to the next to strike down a servant in his household. I mean to say, there must be more to the murder than we know—than you can remember.”
“She teased Timothy about his clubfoot. I heard her, in the passageway. She asked me what was wrong with me, why I was left behind when my brothers had gone to the zoo and to see the Tower.”
Timothy was the youngest. Vulnerable. Would Arthur defend him? But you don’t go round murdering someone just because she’s cruel. Unless this was the first time Timothy had been tormented in such a way and Arthur—
No, he’d have spoken to Robert—to his mother. Wouldn’t he have?
“What else do you recollect?”