by Charles Todd
“No, I was circumspect. Except with the rector and Lady Parsons. I don’t see either of them running to Mrs. Graham, telling tales. I gave your brothers—and Dr. Philips—the impression that I was still concerned about Ted Booker’s unhappy death.”
And then it occurred to me that we had counted Ted Booker among the six dead. Because Lady Parsons had survived.
“Dear God. Peregrine, what if we were right about the killing continuing? And I let it be known I was concerned about the Booker suicide….”
He said nothing, but behind his dark eyes, his mind was racing. I could see it in his face.
“Then I’m still in the clear,” he said finally. “That is, if they still consider me dead as you said. But you are most definitely in danger.”
He tried to persuade me to go home, where my parents could protect me until I left for France. Here, alone in London, I was vulnerable. If, that is, the man watching the flat was indeed here because of me.
And before long, through me, someone would surely discover that Peregrine wasn’t dead in Winchelsea but alive and in London. That would never do.
“Don’t you see?” I said to Peregrine. “The first order of business is to get you safely out of London, and I don’t know where to put you. Not at home—I won’t involve my father or Simon in this business. They’ll do something rash.”
I wouldn’t put it past either of them to kidnap our watcher and make him tell who had hired him, and why. They had served on the Khyber Pass—kidnapping there was something of a local pastime. Not among the British, but the wild tribesmen who lived on either side of the pass had no compunction about treating their foes as they were accustomed to being treated in their turn.
“I can protect myself.”
“With the doctor’s pistol? And this time you will hang. Be sensible.”
He rubbed his face. “I wanted nothing so much as to leave that asylum and get at the truth about that night in London. Afterward—well, if I didn’t like what I learned, there was a way out. And then when I was free of the gates, trudging through the cold night, I was tempted to turn back. Much as I hated the asylum, I was afraid. Of the night, of myself, of what lay ahead. I told myself I might never have another chance, and so I kept walking. It took more courage than I ever knew I had. And I don’t know much more now than I did when I started this search. You’ve done all you can—all anyone can do. But there are more questions than answers still.”
I asked, “If you could prove you were not the murderer, and you were set free, what would you do?”
He dropped his hands. “I don’t think I’d ever considered the future. But then I met Diana. I’m not in love with her. But I saw in her what I’d missed.”
“You know that if you were cleared, and you could return to Owlhurst, the army would be on your doorstep tomorrow. And you’d be sent to France or somewhere to fight.”
He considered what I was saying. “I’m not afraid of dying.”
“War isn’t about dying so much as it is about horror.”
He shrugged. “Living in an asylum, I knew what horror was.”
We came back, then, to the man standing patiently in the cold, waiting.
For what? For me, for Peregrine, for answers?
“I came to believe it was Arthur who had killed Lily. I didn’t want to, but the facts pointed almost as strongly to him as to you. Now I have to ask myself if he could also have killed the others—if it’s true they were murdered. But if we count Ted Booker among the six, it couldn’t have been Arthur, could it? If it wasn’t one of your brothers, who, then? Robert Douglas? But he was with your mother the night Lily died. I’m not a policeman, Peregrine, I’m not trained to sort out the sheep from the goats.”
“Robert Douglas?” Peregrine’s voice was bitter. “He’s no murderer. He’s just made a habit of looking the other way. That’s his failing, if you like. He swallowed his pride and his self-respect when he followed my stepmother to Kent, and he knows the price he’s paid to stay near her. He’s willing to live with that. He was kind when he knew she wouldn’t care. He sat with me at my father’s funeral, and held my hand when I cried. He brought me cake on my birthday. When he took me to the asylum in her stead, he told them that if I was mistreated, she would see that they answered for it. He persuaded Inspector Gadd to insist on a warm meal, a bath, and fresh clothes straightaway. Little things. But he wouldn’t take my part to her face.”
It had been Robert who had insisted that the dying Peregrine be cared for at home.
“Then we can’t expect him to be an ally. All right, we’ll set any other suspicions aside and concentrate on Lily. Why was her family given money to leave England so quickly? So they wouldn’t make a fuss and bring you to trial? And why was Mrs. Graham so persuasive, convincing London that you should be committed to the asylum for observation as soon as possible? Because she feared that once the shock wore off, you’d remember too much? And why bring in Lady Parsons and the others, unless it was for the same reason—to see you in such a state that they were convinced beyond any doubt that you were the killer?
“What’s more, I begin to wonder why you were drugged to keep you quiet in London. You could have been shut up in your room there, just as you had been in Owlhurst. The only explanation is that your stepmother really did want you to see a specialist, with an eye to having you committed, even before the murder. And you wouldn’t have been in your right mind. Another thing—her own state just after the murder. If you’d really been guilty, she’d have jumped at the chance to be rid of you. She was beside herself because it was one of her sons, and in the midst of her horror and grief, she saw the only way out of her nightmare was to put the blame on you. And if you’re right about Robert, he stood there and let her do it.”
He had listened carefully. But at the end he said, “She told me that if I caused any trouble, then or in the asylum, that I’d be taken away and hanged. I believed her. I didn’t know any better.”
“In prison, they wouldn’t have kept you drugged. And at the asylum, if you tried to tell anyone that she’d slept with Robert Douglas or that one of your brothers was not your father’s son, they would put it down to your madness. And if you remembered too much about London, they wouldn’t listen. After all, the police had what amounted to your own confession, that you wanted your knife back after using it to kill the girl. You said yourself that little effort was made to help you get well. You were in that place for a lifetime, and even if they had restored you to sanity, the only option was a prison cell.”
Peregrine shook his head. “You make it sound logical. But how do you explain the dreams?”
“I don’t know,” I told him truthfully. “But tomorrow we’re leaving London. In the dark before dawn, if we have to. There’s one person I can think of who would keep you safe. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before. And I promise you, as soon as I have leave again in France, I’ll find a way to prove what I just told you. And the watcher will have nothing to tell whoever hired him. He’ll be called off.”
“I dragged you into this at the point of a gun.”
“That’s water over the dam. Let it go.”
“Do you still brace your door with a chair at night?”
I opened my mouth to deny I ever had done, and then said, “No. Not now.”
Peregrine smiled, and this time it reached his eyes, but he said nothing.
We ate what I’d brought from the bakery, and I cleared away the dishes. Peregrine watched me, and as I dried the cup that I’d used for my tea, he reached out and took it from my hands.
It was the cup with Brighton Pavilion on it, that exotic palace that the Prince Regent had built for himself not so very far from here, his cottage at the seaside.
“I’d like to see that,” he said wistfully. “It’s very un-English.”
“If we can clear your name,” I answered him, “I’ll take you there myself.”
When Mrs. Hennessey returned later in the day, I went down to ask h
er what the man who had accosted her earlier had wanted with her.
“He was looking for a flat to rent for his daughter. He thought I looked to be the sort of person who would keep her from getting herself in trouble.”
“When you were away, he came into the house and went up the stairs to try every door.”
“Did he, indeed!” She was quite angry. “Is he looking to murder us in our beds? Or to rob us blind?”
“I thought perhaps you ought to know. Especially since I’ll be leaving quite early in the morning—”
She was quite exercised at the thought of someone coming into her castle and threatening it. It made me feel guilty for frightening her. But it was true.
“Is he still out there?” She went to her window and peered through a slit between the curtains. “By Judas, so he is. Just you wait—when Constable Brewster comes by on his rounds I’ll have a word with him, see if I don’t! And we’ll see then who is the clever one.” She let the curtains come together again. “Did you say you were leaving? Oh, my dear girl, you will be careful, won’t you? Those Huns are cruel, they shot that poor Edith Cavell, just for staying at her post with the wounded. And look how they sank Britannic. A hospital ship! You must stay as far away from them as you can.”
“I’ll keep myself as safe as possible. We’re behind the lines, it will be all right.” I didn’t tell her that sometimes when the shelling began, we were too close.
She embraced me, saying, “Of all my girls, you are the closest to my heart.”
I left her with tears in her eyes and went back up the stairs, feeling a certain elation.
The constable would see to our watcher just long enough for Peregrine and me to slip out of London.
There was no one watching when Peregrine and I quietly let ourselves out the door an hour before dawn. I had spent most of the evening removing any trace of Peregrine’s presence from the flat. The sheets were set out for the woman who did Mrs. Hennessey’s wash and ours, all the cups and dishes we’d used were in their accustomed places, and Elayne’s bed had fresh linens from our cupboard.
I’d borrowed a valise from another of my flatmates for Peregrine’s belongings, and repacked my own. When we crept down the stairs, I could hear Mrs. Hennessey snoring gently from her rooms, the house was so quiet.
There was a misting rain this morning, cold and wet on the face, as we walked several streets over in search of a cab to take us to the station. I had thought of everything, and I was rather pleased as we stepped into the train at Victoria Station, on our way to Rochester.
I had even fashioned a bandage for Peregrine’s head, so that he wouldn’t be required to speak, and I’d told him he was my brother, going home from hospital to complete his recovery. He had looked in the mirror and said, “It’s more believable than the bandage I contrived.”
“Well, of course, what did you expect?” I demanded.
We left the train at Rochester, walking up the hill to the old heart of the city. The squat, powerful Romanesque cathedral and the keep of the castle across from it were floating in disembodied splendor above the fog that had swept up from the Medway’s estuary. I needed transportation to my final destination, the home of a woman my parents had known for some years. The best place to find a driver was at an hotel. The long winding High Street was still nearly empty, though it was close on nine o’clock in the morning, but the shops had opened, and a chimney sweep walked by, whistling.
We were just by a butcher’s shop when I saw coming toward me an officer I knew, now a captain in my father’s old regiment.
I clutched Peregrine’s arm and steered him into the shop. “Wait here,” I said, in a low voice. “Whatever you do, don’t come out.”
To the astonished butcher, I said, “We’re eloping—can my fiancé wait in a back room? Someone who knows my parents is coming up the street!”
The butcher, a burly man with thick graying hair, nodded, and beckoned to Peregrine as I stepped out of the shop and walked on.
Captain Raynor recognized me, waved, and we met in front of a milliner’s, well beyond the butcher’s shop.
“Bess? Is that you?”
“Of course. What on earth are you doing in Rochester?” I asked. “I thought you were the terror of the Hun?”
“I could ask you the same. Your father isn’t here with you, by any chance. I thought I saw you with an officer.”
“Someone who was my patient on Britannic. He walked a little way with me, catching up on news. But tell me, how is Margaret?”
He grinned from ear to ear. “We’ve a son! I was here for the birth—nasty shoulder wound, and they sent me home. I never thought I’d ever be glad of German marksmanship. His name is William, and he’s beautiful.”
“I’m so happy for you.” I embraced him lightly. “That’s for Margaret. Tell her she’s wonderful.”
His eyes were bright with pride. “So she is. She could ask for the moon tomorrow, and I’d do my best to reach it for her.”
“How long is your leave?”
The brightness faded. “Ten days, and I’m off again. I don’t know how I can bear to go. I never hated the Germans until William came. And now I’m not very happy with the French either. And what about you?” he asked, quickly changing the subject. “I heard what happened. Are you all right? Are you returning to duty? The Colonel must have been beside himself.”
“I survived with nothing more than a broken arm,” I said. “And I expect my orders will be here next week.”
“I’m sure this break from blood and death has been good for you. But I must say you still look a little tired.”
If only he knew!
“The arm was slow to heal.”
“Don’t tell me. They worked on this shoulder of mine until I wished it had been blown off. But see, I can almost reach above my head.” And he demonstrated how far he’d come.
I made congratulatory noises, all the while praying that he’d be spared and come home safe to William and Margaret.
He asked after my father and Simon, and sent his dearest love to the Colonel’s Lady, and then we parted. He embraced me warmly, saying, “Keep safe, Bess. I’ll do the same, trust in that.”
And he was gone. I walked on as far as a small bookshop, stopping there to look in the window while surreptitiously watching Captain Raynor turn a corner and disappear.
Weak with relief, I hurried back the way I’d come, and opened the door to the butcher shop, still smiling at our close call.
The butcher was nowhere to be seen, nor was Peregrine.
But at the sound of the bell above the door tinkling its warning, the butcher appeared from the back, his ruddy face nearly as white as his shirt.
“You’d better come,” he said, and gestured toward the back.
I had no idea what was wrong, but I almost ran through the shop to follow him.
In the room behind the shop where the butcher worked, out of sight, there was a long wooden table, a block for a top, and beside it an assortment of knives and other tools.
Peregrine was on the far side of the table—rigid with shock, his face a mask of horror.
“I don’t know what’s wrong—I was cleaning a brace of geese—what happened to him in the war, then?”
I had nearly forgot that Peregrine was in uniform.
“I—a head wound—” I managed to say, and then my training asserted itself, and I put my hand on the butcher’s arm. “Could you leave us, please? For a little while? I’m a nurse….”
The butcher all but fled the workroom. I looked at the blood on the worktable, the entrails of the geese lying in an ugly heap. That hint of rusty iron that was the smell of blood caught in my throat.
I went around the table without speaking. I was afraid to touch Peregrine, and the shared knowledge of war that had helped me deal with Ted Booker was no use to me here.
“Peregrine?” I spoke softly. “It’s Bess Crawford. What’s wrong?”
He started back as I spoke. “No, I won’t
put my hands there—you can’t force—”
I looked from his staring eyes to the bloody entrails, and my heart turned over.
I hadn’t been there when Mrs. Graham found Lily Mercer. But I was seeing the scene now as Peregrine must have seen it.
“Peregrine—” I reached out for his arm, to turn him away, but he flung his arm out at me, knocking me halfway across the room, where I ended up next to a large basket of live chickens, their startled cackling adding to the nightmarish scene. This wasn’t a slim, dazed, and frightened fourteen-year-old. He was a fully grown man, and I was winded from the blow.
He was screaming, “No, don’t touch me! I won’t, I tell you, I won’t—!”
I had helped Ted Booker by taking part in his nightmare. I tried it now.
“But this is what you did, Peregrine. Do you hear me?” I said in a voice as near to that of Mrs. Graham as I could make it.
“I didn’t touch her. I only wanted my knife—”
“You can’t have it. The police must take it. Look at what you did. Put your hands in her body, Peregrine, and touch what you have done! Your father would despise you, if he’d lived to see this. Here, hold out your hands, and I’ll show you how it feels to be ripped apart—”
He screamed and went on screaming, and then began beating at the front of his uniform, as if frantically trying to rub something off, his eyes wide with horror and revulsion. And he kept on beating at his chest before turning with such loathing in his face that I nearly fell back again into the basket of chickens.
“I hate you,” he said, no longer screaming, his voice cold and hard and young. “I have always hated you—”
He broke off, as if he’d been slapped, his head jerking.
And then to my astonishment, he began crying, silent tears of anguish rolling down his cheeks, and with a bravado I hadn’t thought possible, he reached out and buried his hands in the bloody mass.
“There,” he said. “I’m my father’s son, which is more than my brothers can say.”
I hurried to him, caught his hands, and with a cloth that hung from a hook by the table, I cleaned them as best I could. Then I made him dip them in a bucket of water standing beside a sheep’s carcass. I was crying myself now, tears of pity for a child who hadn’t been able to defend himself, tormented beyond bearing.