A Duty to the Dead

by Charles Todd

  Simon joined us as soon as he’d seen to the motorcar, and we enjoyed a table set in one of the windows, with a view down to the street below. My father ordered for me, and Simon made his own choices.

  I’d been right. The mutton was as old as the Kaiser and nearly as difficult, but the wine sauce was exquisite.

  My father waited until we were nearly finished with our meal, and then said to me, “I want to take you back to Somerset with me. Will you come? I find it hard to know what could be keeping you in London. I can understand that after such a difficult time in Owlhurst, you might need a day or two to settle yourself. Your mother wants your opinion on cuffs and collars and God knows what.”

  “I can’t leave just at the moment,” I told him. “Please don’t ask me why.”

  “Why not? Bess, you can talk to me. Simon will leave if you wish, and you can tell me what’s put those circles under your eyes and the strain in them. I’m not imagining things—and if you’re fair, you’ll understand my concern.”

  I went rapidly through all the problems facing me at the moment and chose the one least likely to worry either the Colonel Sahib or Simon Brandon.

  “I want to find someone. The family of a girl who died in service nearly fifteen years ago. And I don’t know how to begin.”

  My father’s eyes met Simon’s across the table. “And if I help you find this family, you’ll come home with me?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. It will depend on many things.”

  “Does this have to do with Arthur and his message?”

  “Arthur must have been all of eleven at the time Lily died,” I replied, evading his question.

  “I see.” I don’t think he did. But one could never be sure with my father.

  Finally he added, “All right. Simon knows people. Give me the name of the family and we’ll see what he can discover.”

  “I think it’s hopeless. But I have to try. The girl’s name was Lily. Lily Mercer. And she was murdered in a house on Carroll Square, Number 17. I want to know what became of her family.”

  Simon had finished his flan. “I’ll leave the motor with you, then, shall I?” he said to my father, and then to me, “I’ll bring whatever I can learn to the flat. Tomorrow morning. Will that do?”

  “How are you going about this?” I asked, more than a little alarmed.

  He grinned. “One of the lads in the regiment is now a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police.”

  Before I could ask him to be circumspect, he was gone—a tall, slender man striding through the restaurant as if he were about to lead the regiment into battle.

  “Who is Lily Mercer?”

  I turned quickly to face my father. “Let me do what needs to be done. And afterward, I’ll tell you what I can.”

  “I don’t care to find you involved in a murder, even an old one.”

  “I’m not involved. I just want to know what became of this girl’s family afterward. Whether they were satisfied that justice had been done.”

  “Why is it so important to you? Tell me that?”

  “You’ll learn soon enough, if Simon speaks to the police. It had to do with the Graham family.”

  “You told me it had nothing to do with the message you carried.”

  “No, I told you that Arthur was only eleven at the time.”

  He smiled. “You are no better at lying to me now than you were at seven.”

  “I don’t want you taking charge and doing it all your way. I want to satisfy myself in my own fashion. I can’t do anything about the past, I can’t bring back the dead, but I think Arthur was—changed by what happened in Carroll Square, and perhaps he’ll rest a little easier at the bottom of the sea if I finish what he never could.”

  “All right. That’s fair enough.” He signaled to the waiter, and we left the subject of Lily Mercer until we reached the street. As we walked to where Simon had left the motorcar, my father said, “We’ll say nothing of this to your mother. Is that agreed?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  “And if you should find yourself in over your head in this business, you’ll remember to call in the cavalry, won’t you?”

  “I promise.” He handed me into the motorcar, and as he walked around to the driver’s side, I thought, This is my chance. I could tell him about Peregrine, and let him see to finishing what I’d inadvertently begun in Owlhurst.

  But I couldn’t. It wasn’t clever to deal with a murderer, let alone a man who has spent years in an asylum. It wasn’t clever to hide an armed man with a history of murder in his background. It wasn’t at all clever to think I could do what I’d set out to do, alone and in the dark.

  Yet if I sounded the alarm now, Peregrine would be returned to the asylum to live out his life there. And the truth would be locked away with him.

  If Arthur had had any part in what had happened to Lily Mercer, I wanted to know.

  He was only eleven, the little voice in my head reminded me.

  Who was I to say that a child of eleven could or couldn’t kill. I didn’t even know if a child that age really understood the significance of killing.

  I remember one summer morning in India when the box wallah came to tell the cook that his favorite grandson was dead. The boy had been bitten by a cobra that had been called out of its hole in the roots of a tree near the river by the boy’s own cousin with a flute he had made for himself from a reed. It was called an accident, a tragic accident, but other children told me later what the adults hadn’t known, that the cousin had been eaten up by jealousy and wanted the boy out of the way. They were both nine.

  I had told my ayah, my Indian nanny, what I’d learned, but she said to me, “It was the boy’s time to die, don’t you see? If it hadn’t been, the cobra would never have come, no matter how much the cousin had played his flute.”

  Her fatalism had frightened me far more than the death of the boy. It claimed that the universe I knew wasn’t run by a benevolent God, as I’d been taught, but by Chance, a system where one’s turn was dictated by forces over which one had no control.

  My father was saying, “You must get this altruistic nature from your mother, not me.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “That indicates a choice in the matter,” I told him. “This wasn’t so much choice as it was thrust in my face when I wasn’t looking.”

  The Colonel dropped me at my flat.

  As I watched him drive away, I wished I’d had the forethought to ask him to stay in London, within reach, and not return to Somerset just yet.

  Then I turned and hurried into the flat, where Peregrine and Diana were comfortably discussing a visit she’d made to Rochester shortly before the war. But his eyes as I came through the door flicked to my face on the instant, searching for any sign of betrayal.

  Diana went out that night to dine with friends, and I made dinner for Peregrine and myself.

  “What did you tell your father?”

  “That I was in London to discover what had become of Lily Mercer’s family.”

  He started up, sensing betrayal.

  “Sit down. I can’t track them alone. Nor can you. The best chance we have is to use my father’s connections. You don’t know the Army, Peregrine—the regular Army. It’s as tightly knit a group as the Knights Templar—or the Masons or the Catholic Church. If there’s a way to find them, my father will.” I had left out Simon Brandon. Don’t muddy the waters too far, my girl.

  Besides, no military plan should be without a line of retreat.

  But Peregrine was nothing if not astute.

  “Who was the man with your father? The one waiting with the car?”

  I would have sworn, if I’d been my father’s son instead of my father’s daughter. As it was, I was sorely tempted.

  The windows of Elayne’s room looked down on the street. I had forgot.

  “His batman. My father retired as a Colonel. Simon had risen to sergeant major. But they served together when my father was a lowly lieutenant, and the bond has lasted
all these years. Simon drives my father, he always has.”

  “But he didn’t drive you back here, did he?”

  The temptation to swear was overwhelming now.

  “He had other business to attend to. He left us while we were still in the restaurant.”

  Peregrine wasn’t convinced, though he said nothing more. But I could feel him watching me for the rest of the evening, speculation in his eyes.

  Diana left the next day, and I was grateful not to have to consider her in my dealings with Peregrine. She gave him a good-bye kiss on his cheek, though, a dancing dervish in her eyes, and blew me one, then was gone, back to France, leaving silence behind her. I saw that Peregrine was staring at the door with an unreadable expression on his face.

  At teatime, Mrs. Hennessey brought up a folded note. “From your father, dear,” she said.

  I thanked her and read it quickly.

  Lucy Mercer’s family had emigrated to New Zealand soon after she was killed. Their passage had been paid for them by the Graham solicitors.

  They had traded their daughter’s death for a better life for themselves.

  I turned to Peregrine as he came up from Elayne’s room. “Not the best of news,” I said, and gave him the message.

  He read it and swore.

  “A dead end,” he said, finally.

  “But it’s odd, isn’t it? That they should take the money offered them, and leave England on the heels of their daughter’s murder.”

  “Desperate people. She wasn’t coming back, and something good—for them, at any rate—had come of it.”

  “I expect so.” But I couldn’t rid myself of doubts. Still, I had no children, and I couldn’t judge whether a grieving mother might well take the chance to better the lives of her remaining children while she could, even at the hands of the murderer’s family, or whether she had been willing to sacrifice one for the good of the others, making the best of what life had brought her.

  Had that been the bribe? Had the family accepted a new life in lieu of demanding that Peregrine be sent to prison? The police of course had decided Peregrine’s fate, but without the Mercers demanding an eye for an eye, they might have been more easily persuaded to be lenient with a disturbed boy.

  “I’m going back to Carroll Square,” I said on my way to my room to fetch my coat and hat. “I’ll see if anyone there still remembers Lily.”

  He was at the door before me, his own coat over his arm as I came out of my room.

  “No, Peregrine—”

  “Yes. They aren’t going to know me, for God’s sake. Why shouldn’t I accompany you?”

  Reluctantly I let him come with me. We found a cab and arrived at Number 17 as a few early flakes of snow began to fall.

  An elderly maid answered our knock, and I asked her if there was anyone still employed in this house who remembered a maid here some fourteen years ago, by the name of Lily Mercer.

  She stared at me for a moment, and said, “You must ask Mrs. Talbot, Miss.”

  And so it was that we were admitted to the presence of Mrs. Talbot, a formidably fat woman in her later years, swathed in shawls and seated like a toad in the largest chair in a very fashionable drawing room. Her trim feet rested on a stool.

  She had an eye for Peregrine and asked him where he’d been wounded.

  “On the Somme,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.

  She nodded. “Indeed. I lost a son at Mons and another at Ypres. I didn’t want to live myself, at first, but it’s not in my nature to die. Which of my many committees and sponsorships brings you to my door tonight?”

  “I’m afraid it’s none of them, Mrs. Talbot. We’re trying to find anyone who might have known a young woman by the name of Lily Mercer. She worked here in this house as an upstairs maid for a time some fourteen years ago.”

  “And why do you wish to find this young person?” Mrs. Talbot asked, her eyes narrowing. “Is it in her interest or yours, this search?”

  “Mine,” I admitted. “I never knew Lily Mercer. But her family moved to New Zealand, and so I’m unable to contact them. I was hoping one of your present staff might remember her. Lieutenant Philips is as interested as I am to learn more about the girl. One of his friends was accused of harming her, you see, and I’d like to know if it is true, or if he was falsely accused.”

  We had discussed in the cab coming here what to admit to and what not.

  Mrs. Talbot considered us a moment, then picked up the silver bell at her elbow. The maid who had admitted us answered the summons. Mrs. Talbot sent the maid belowstairs to question the staff.

  Mrs. Talbot, meanwhile, turned her attention to me.

  “You are doing nothing to help with the war, Miss Crawford?”

  I could see myself leaving here as part of any number of committees, or dispatched to Hampshire to grow vegetables on the lawns of some great estate.

  “I was serving on Britannic, Mrs. Talbot, when she went down, and my arm was broken when she was struck. I can’t return to duty until it’s fully healed.”

  She nodded approvingly. At that moment there was a tap at the door, and the maid was back.

  “There’s the laundress, Mrs. Talbot. She remembers the young person in question.”

  “Then bring her here.”

  “If you’ll forgive me, she might be more comfortable speaking to us in the servants’ hall,” I suggested quickly.

  But Mrs. Talbot wouldn’t hear of it. “Nonsense. Bring her here, Mattie.”

  And in due course, Mattie returned with the laundress. She might have been young and pretty fourteen years ago, but hard work had toughened her skin and reddened her hands and taken away her youth.

  Her name, Mattie informed us, was Daisy.

  “Hallo, Daisy,” I said. “It’s kind of you to speak to us. We’re concerned about Lily Mercer. Did you know her?”

  “She’s dead,” Daisy answered bluntly. She was clearly ill at ease.

  “Yes, I know that. But as her family has left England, I’m hoping to find someone who can tell me a little about her.”

  “We was employed here, when this house was let to visitors to London. That was when Mr. Horner owned it, and didn’t want to live here anymore. He said it was haunted by his wife’s ghost. Which is absurd, o’ course. But he believed it. And so we stayed on as staff, those that chose to stay, and went with the house, so to speak. When Mr. Horner died of his grief, the house was sold to Mrs. Talbot’s brother, and then she inherited it from him.”

  “What happened to the rest of the staff?”

  “Some stayed. Others gave in their notice.”

  “Tell me about Lily?”

  “There’s nothing to tell. She died here—” Her eyes slid toward Mrs. Talbot’s face. “And soon after, her family went away. Like you said.”

  I tried another approach, but Daisy remained tight-lipped. I was surprised that she’d even admitted she knew Lily. I thought it likely that curiosity had got the better of her, and she was here to satisfy it. Or see if there was anything in it for herself?

  “Speak up, Daisy, the lady and the gentleman want to hear what you have to say.”

  But Daisy stuck to her story, and that was that.

  We thanked Mrs. Talbot after she was dismissed, and Mattie came to see us to the door.

  “Damn!” Peregrine said as it shut behind us.

  The snow was a little thicker, but not intending to last. I thought the temperature had eased up a very little.

  We were about to walk toward the corner in search of a cab when the tradesman’s door opened and closed quietly, and there was Daisy, a shawl thrown over her head, coming quickly toward us.

  “Miss!”

  I stopped, my hand on Peregrine’s arm. “Daisy?”

  “Yes, Miss. I’m sorry, but we were all sworn to secrecy when Lily died. Mr. Horner didn’t want the story getting about, scaring off people wanting to let the house for the Season. I couldn’t tell Mrs. Talbot, could I?”

  “No, of cou
rse not.” I looked around, searching for somewhere we could stand and talk without freezing to death. But there was no place except the square and we didn’t have a key.

  “Did you like Lily?” I asked, trying to learn as much as possible while Daisy was in the mood to talk to us. But she hesitated, and I said, “There’s five pounds for you, as a reward for helping us.”

  Her eyes lit with avarice. “Thank you, Miss, I could use the money.”

  I took a five-pound note from my purse but held on to it.

  Daisy said, her words coming quickly, “She didn’t just die here, did she? She was murdered. The staff had the evening off, except for Lily, who was set to looking after the little boys. But she was to meet the young man she was walking out with, and she wasn’t happy about missing him. Still, she went upstairs to see the lads to bed. It was the last time I saw her. She hadn’t come back down again, by the time I was leaving. Later we heard that one of the lads had killed her, that he’d used his pocketknife on her, mutilating her something fierce. But I don’t see how that can be, do you? A pocketknife? He must have come down to the kitchen for something larger. At any rate, the family left London sudden-like, and Mr. Horner paid off any of us that wanted to leave, but swore us all to secrecy. Bad for business, he said. That’s what murder was.” She finished, eyeing the five-pound note.

  “What was Lily like?”

  “She was always out for herself. Always looking to better herself. She’d study the photographs in the London Gazette, and carry herself like them, head up, back straight, and copy their style of clothes for her day off. Silk purse out o’ a sow’s ear, that’s what it was, and her telling me that my hands were too big and my fingers too thick. And how was I to help that, I ask you, when I was the laundress!” Her grievance might have been old but it was fresh. “She had a temper too.”

  “Was Lily good to the children in her care?”

  Daisy shrugged. “I can’t say. But I remember one of the lads leaned over the upstairs railing one day and called her a nasty name, and she told him he was a monster and God would see to him one day.”

  I could feel Peregrine stirring beside me.