A Duty to the Dead

by Charles Todd

  “If it wasn’t Arthur—and Arthur couldn’t have killed Ted Booker—then it must be you. Or Timothy. You were the last person to see Ted Booker alive—”

  “You are as mad as Peregrine is.”

  “‘Tell Jonathan that I lied. I did it for Mother’s sake. But it has to be set right,” I quoted. “What had to be set right? What had Arthur lied about, for his mother’s sake? Had he lied about who had possession of Ambrose Graham’s pocketknife at the time Lily Mercer was killed? Did Arthur know and cover it up for your sake or for Timothy’s? And what about those other deaths—Inspector Gadd, the rector, the doctor. All the people who had acquiesced to sending Peregrine to the asylum. Which one of you decided to right that balance, rather than confess to the truth? Or was it done just to see that no one ever changed his mind about Peregrine’s guilt?”

  He shook me off so forcibly that I fell back against the doorjamb. And then he was gone, up the stairs in the wake of the constables.

  “Peregrine!” he shouted, his voice reverberating through the house.

  Where was the pistol? What had Peregrine done with it? Was that what he was after? I couldn’t stand there, listening for the shots. I was at Jonathan’s heels, trying to stop a tragedy that was about to happen.

  But Peregrine never used his pistol. He simply ran out of breath, and they caught him as he leaned, coughing harshly, in the doorway of his room.

  It was too late to persuade the constables that they had got the wrong man. They would believe Jonathan, not me. There was nothing I could do.

  I watched them bring Peregrine down the stairs, without a coat, without a hat, and I could see that someone—Jonathan?—had struck him across the face.

  How did they know? How could they have possibly known he was here—unless Mr. Appleby had recognized Melinda Crawford’s chauffeur and maliciously set Jonathan Graham on my heels?

  He stood there in the hall, triumphant, cold. “I was on my way out the door. My orders have arrived. I would have been gone in another hour, and then the message came.”

  “Where are you taking him?”

  Jonathan didn’t answer, but one of the constables said, “He’s to be returned to the asylum, Miss.”

  “He won’t remain there for very long,” I warned the constable. “There’s some doubt now that he killed anyone.”

  “He’s lied to you, Miss,” the other constable said. “The police don’t make such mistakes.” He looked at Peregrine, standing there helpless between them, no color in his face, and something in his eyes that I didn’t want to see. “Handsome fellow. Easy to get around a young lady. And here we’d all thought he was dead.”

  “How dare you—” I began, but Melinda stopped me.

  “You aren’t taking him from here without his hat and coat,” she said, her voice stern. “If he’s to be taken back to that place, it’s a long drive. Will you fetch Mr. Graham’s things, Shanta?”

  And Shanta moved out of the shadows and went quietly up the stairs. Peregrine’s gaze followed her, and I knew what he was thinking, that the pistol was in his greatcoat pocket.

  I held my breath when Shanta returned with the coat. And then I realized what was in Peregrine Graham’s mind. He had no intention of using the weapon on his captors, but somewhere between here and his destination, he would find a way to use it on himself.

  I said urgently, “Peregrine. This isn’t the end of the matter. Do you understand me? I have connections, I’ll see to it that this business is settled.”

  He gave me an odd smile. “Tell Diana I’m sorry I won’t be there to see her on her next leave.”

  And then they were dragging him out of the house and into the motorcar that had brought them here.

  Jonathan was the last to go.

  I turned on him as he stood on the top step, watching Peregrine being shoved into the backseat, jammed between the two constables.

  “Mr. Appleby knows the truth,” I said. “He didn’t want to admit to it, but he knows. And I know the truth, and my father, and Melinda Crawford, and too many people to be dealt with. It’s only a matter of time, Jonathan Graham, before your brother’s last wishes are finally carried out.”

  “Knowing and proving,” he said, “are two entirely different matters. Who is Diana?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “Not that it signifies,” he said into my silence.

  And with that, he cranked the motorcar, got behind the wheel, and drove off down the drive.

  I was so helplessly angry that I burst into tears.

  Melinda, behind me, said, “I think we should call Simon. Not your father. Not in this case. Simon will know what to do.”

  I shut the door on the cold evening air, and turned to her.

  “It will be too late,” I said. “By the time Simon can get here, Peregrine Graham will be dead by his own hand.”

  I put in the call to Simon Brandon anyway.

  But there was no answer at the other end. He’d gone to dine with my parents, I thought. He did at least once a fortnight.

  That was that. The cavalry wouldn’t come in time.

  I went back into the sitting room. Shanta was taking away the now cold pot of tea, and I stood before the fire on the hearth, trying to warm myself.

  “It was Appleby,” I said again. “It couldn’t have been anyone else. He saw your motorcar and Ram. I was careful, so very careful to keep Peregrine out of sight, except on our first visit to the tutor. And he told Jonathan how to find me, out of spite. The penny must finally have dropped.”

  “It wasn’t very clever of me to offer you my car.” Melinda sat down, one arm on the table in front of her, a frown between her eyes. “I don’t think it was Jonathan who killed that girl. Your tutor, this Mr. Appleby, wouldn’t have called him, if he was. Don’t you see? He would have been afraid to let anyone know he had guessed the truth. That is, if you are right and the tutor had seen more than he was willing to tell.”

  “And Arthur sent his message to Jonathan. That completes the circle, doesn’t it? As for the other killings—they didn’t include Appleby, because he was out of reach in Chilham.”

  “That leaves Timothy, I should think. The only other choice is Mrs. Graham herself. And I find that hard to believe,” she answered, musing. “She was devastated, you said, when the murder was discovered.”

  I hadn’t really wanted it to be Timothy. I had disliked Jonathan from the start and could have comfortably concluded that he was the killer.

  I said suddenly, realizing the full impact of what we were saying. “It wasn’t Arthur. It wasn’t Arthur.”

  “Yes, I should think that would be quite a relief. But how to prove any of this? It won’t be easy. The police had convinced themselves that their case was strong enough to send Peregrine Graham to Barton’s. They won’t wish to reopen the case.”

  “But it was Jonathan the rector saw leaving the doctor’s surgery the night that—”

  I stopped. I’d believed all along that it was unlikely that Jonathan had visited Ted Booker. And of course he hadn’t. That was why he hadn’t spoken up at the inquest.

  It must have been Timothy in Jonathan’s borrowed greatcoat—and Jonathan had lied for his brother. Again.

  Shanta came in with a fresh pot of tea and a fresh pitcher of milk.

  She poured two cups, passed them to us, and then said, “You are looking very glum. Drink your tea and have something to eat. It will do you both a great deal of good.”

  I said, “Shanta. What did you think of Peregrine Graham?”

  She considered the question and then answered me. “There is a darkness that follows him like a shadow. I’m very glad that you weren’t eloping.”

  I couldn’t touch my tea. The feeling that Peregrine would die before he could be taken back to the asylum grew stronger with every passing minute.

  Every wasted minute…

  “Melinda.” I was on my feet and heading for the door. “I must borrow your motorcar. I’m sorry, I can’t wait for
Ram. I must go.” Ram drove sedately, not the way I intended to drive. Before she could say anything, I went up the stairs nearly as fast as Peregrine had done, caught up my hat and coat and gloves, and was on my way down the back steps to the barn where the motorcar was kept. I heard Melinda calling to me from a doorway, but I didn’t stop to hear what she had to say.

  The motor was still warm and turned over with only one revolution of the crank. I drove out of the barn, leaving the doors wide behind me, and went down the drive at a clip that was reckless in this light. I kept my attention on the headlamps as they swept the road while I went through the map of Kent in my head.

  There were two ways to reach Owlhurst, or the road leading to it, where Barton’s stood. Jonathan would have taken the more direct. And so would I.

  I cleared my head of every thought, concentrating on the road. If I could catch them up before they reached Barton’s—surely Peregrine would wait until they were almost there. He’d be searched at the door, and then it would be too late. Somewhere before the asylum. I could picture that lonely stretch of road just before one saw the walls around the property. There? Sooner?

  The roads were winter poor, and in daylight it would have been mad enough to drive at this speed, but I kept it up. They had a head start of what? Twenty minutes? Thirty? Thirty was too long. I’d never make that up.

  I narrowly missed a ewe wandering across the road, and again someone on a bicycle, who yelled imprecations in my wake. I prayed I wouldn’t meet anything larger. At this speed, I couldn’t stop in time. Is it worth taking your life in your hands?

  I had no answer to that. Would I have agreed to carry a message to Arthur’s brother, if I’d been able to look ahead into the future?

  I had no answer to that either.

  I was within five miles of Barton’s, cursing under my breath, knowing I was too late, far too late. And then, over the soft murmur of the Rolls motor, I heard shots echoing across the fields. I’d been close to the fighting. I’d fired side arms myself. I could recognize their sharp reports.

  Gripping the wheel hard to hold back my fears, I tried to determine where the sounds had come from. To my right—and surely just ahead.

  But to my right was only a tangle of briars and dead stalks of last summer’s wildflowers, and on the far side of that, out of range of my headlamps, the flat blackness of what appeared to be a fallow hop field.

  I lifted my foot from the accelerator, prepared to find the Graham motorcar stopped in the middle of the road, and I put out my hand for the brake, to keep myself from plowing into it.

  But the road ahead was empty….

  I was about to pick up speed again when, peering through the windscreen, I noticed that beside me, the tall winter-dry brush along the verge had been flatted by something heavy passing over them and crushing them.

  I hadn’t even had time to react to that when from the same direction I caught the sound of raised voices, angry and rough.

  Barely a minute had passed since I’d heard those first shots, and now there were two more in rapid succession, hardly distinguishable, and someone cried out in anguish.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I WAS ALREADY braking hard, with all my strength, weaving across the road and slewing sideways as the motorcar came to a halt that felt as if it had jarred my very teeth.

  Peregrine had walked away from the asylum—he could have remembered this stretch—

  Pausing only to pick up the torch that had been sliding wildly about beneath my feet, I was out of the motorcar and running toward the hop field. But the torch’s beam was weak, and I had to concentrate on the broken stalks, which caught at my ankles and threatened to pitch me headlong. Then I reached the plowed ground, stiff with frost, and at last could cast my light toward the dark, quiet shape that was a motorcar, barely silhouetted against the sky.

  In the silence I could hear my own labored breathing and the muffled sound of my boots as I ran and from somewhere what I thought was someone weeping.

  At last my torch illuminated the shining metalwork of the Graham Rolls, the motor still ticking over. But there was no sign of Jonathan or Peregrine or the policemen. Something was glittering in the rear seat, and I lifted the light for a better look.

  It caught the buttons of a constable’s uniform. The man didn’t stir, and I could see as I came closer that he was slumped to one side, as if he were badly hurt.

  Oh, Peregrine…why didn’t you trust me?

  But he had never been taught trust.

  I shone my light full in the constable’s face and realized that he was unconscious, his jaw slack. I could hardly see his features for the spreading mask of blood, almost black in this light, that ran down from a long furrow at his temple and dripped onto his tunic. His helmet was askew, knocked to one side, strap dangling. It was Constable Mason. I pulled off my driving gloves and probed the wound, touching bone. I could even see it briefly, white—and not splintered.

  Four bullets…. That’s what Peregrine had said: he had four shots, and he could kill three other people before he turned the pistol on himself.

  The poor, unsuspecting Constable Mason must have been the first victim. But Peregrine had missed his shot, thank God, and the man would live.

  Where were the others?

  I reached into the motorcar for the headlamp switch, and suddenly there was a brightness that opened up the night.

  The other constable was just ahead of the motorcar, perhaps ten feet from the bonnet, as if he’d been trying to follow his attacker. He lay on his face, not moving. I bent over him. He was dead, there was nothing more to be done for him. I moved on.

  That made two….

  Where was Jonathan? Where was Peregrine?

  I turned to scan the fan of light, my own shadow cast like a black monster far ahead of me.

  Something moved, then rose from the ground, hunched over as if in pain, and then the figure dashed out of the glow of the motorcar’s headlamps, into darkness.

  “Peregrine—!” I cried. “No, please wait—”

  But he was gone, vanished into the night.

  I ran forward to where I’d first seen him, and there was Jonathan, lying on his side on the ground, his military greatcoat almost blending into the trampled earth around him. One arm was flung across his face, concealing it. Falling to my knees beside him, I gently lifted it, and he rolled over onto his back with a grunt that told me he was still alive.

  More than anything at that moment, I wished I could bring Mr. Appleby here and make him look at the consequences of his spiteful telephone call. I wanted him to see what men do to each other when goaded beyond what they could bear.

  I ran my hands over Jonathan’s chest, looking for a wound, and I found it, bleeding freely but not heavily. Pulling off my scarf, I wadded it in a ball, unbuttoned his coat and then his tunic. I shoved the scarf against his shirt, jamming it as best I could against the place where the bleeding was heaviest, then buttoned the tunic over it to hold it in place.

  As I worked, I realized that something was hurting my knee, and looked down. There was Jonathan’s service revolver—it had been drawn and was lying under him. He must have tried to defend himself and the two unarmed constables.

  I had to get these men to a doctor as quickly as possible. And there was no one to help me.

  I sprang to my feet, trying to judge whether I could bring the motorcar this far without bogging down, and how best to loop back to the road. And only then did I notice that someone else was lying in the field, outside the perimeter of the headlamp’s reach. I could only make out the shape of a man’s boot and a lump beyond it that was his body.

  I blinked.

  Peregrine hadn’t made it to safety after all. As I hurried toward where he lay in a crumpled heap, wounded or dead, I knew that Jonathan wouldn’t have missed his own shot. He was too good a soldier for that.

  Then I was beside him, kneeling in the hard earth again, calling his name. His face was in deep shadow, but as I shone my to
rch into it, his eyelids fluttered, and he said, quite clearly, “Diana?”

  “It’s Bess Crawford, Peregrine.”

  “So it is.” He winced and lay still.

  I could smell burnt wool, sharp and strong. Setting down the torch to search for a wound, I felt blood warm on my hands on both sides of his shoulder, high up. The bullet must have gone through. To get to his coat buttons, I had to turn him over. He cried out, and said something I couldn’t catch. His breathing was fast but steady, and there was no froth of blood on his lips that I could see. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed that he would live.

  I rocked back on my heels, thinking. I could do nothing more here, in the dark, without bandages or good light.

  But where to find help?

  Peregrine had told me once that there was only a skeleton medical staff at the asylum in the evening. Would anyone come back with me? It would take too long to drive to Owlhurst and bring Dr. Philips here.

  The best I could do was try to ease the motorcar forward and somehow manage to get everyone in it.

  Beside me, Peregrine stirred. “Watch—”

  I took his hand. “It’s Bess Crawford, Peregrine. Can you stand? If I help you, can you get to your feet?”

  “Where’s my brother?” His voice was terse, angry.

  “Just there. He’s badly hurt. Please, Peregrine, you must help me.”

  He frowned, dark lines across his forehead, giving him a sinister look in the torch’s light. I’d seen the same shadows once in his sickroom. “No—”

  I turned and hurried back to the motorcar. It was my only hope now. When I got there, I looked at Constable Mason. He was awake, his eyes wide and frightened in the light of my torch. I didn’t think he knew where he was, and proof of that came quickly as he lost consciousness again.

  No help there. I got behind the wheel, and just barely touching the accelerator, I felt the tires bite and the motorcar move forward. Thank God. A month or so earlier, and the earth would have been soft enough that I wouldn’t have made it.

  I’d have to leave the other constable. It would be nearly impossible to get the two living men into the motorcar, much less a dead man. But I guided the car toward him and examined him again to be certain.