A Duty To The Dead Part 24

"Did you speak to the rector?"

"No. He's not-worldly?-and would feel obliged to go to Mrs. Denton and pray over the state of her soul. What good would that do either of them?"

"I take your point," I answered slowly. "And you can't go to the police." I sighed and watched a small boy racing down the street, spirits high as he and his dog chased a goose that had escaped from the farmer's wife lumbering in their wake. "Ted Booker is dead. Nothing is going to bring him back again. And he'd probably refuse to come, even if by some miracle he could be offered the chance. And Sally is probably better off. She'd never learn to cope with his moodiness, even if he tried to heal."

"Are you saying I should just keep my mouth shut and try to forget this whole business?"

"No, of course you can't do either. But since the only proof is a footprint that was there then and now isn't, there's nothing concrete to support your suspicion. And you did give testimony at the inquest that Ted Booker was not in his right mind. You'd be changing that, in a sense. I don't see that you can accomplish anything by raising the issue. In time, Mrs. Denton's conscience might get the best of her."

"A deathbed confession? I was hoping you might have a brilliant idea I could use," he said. "I've exhausted even my own patience."

"If Mrs. Denton meant no harm," I said, "then while it was foolish to visit Ted so soon after his attempt at suicide, she might have wanted a.s.surances." I added, "However glad she might be now, to have him dead, it will come to haunt her."

But Dr. Philips was more realistic. "I doubt it. Well, I've burdened you, and neither of us has come up with a solution. Still, I'm relieved in a way. It helps to talk through one's troubles."

I wished I could talk through my own. But I dared not tell this man that the missing Peregrine Graham was alive and probably standing at a window not fifty yards from where we sat.

He paid for our tea and he saw me as far as the rectory before returning to his surgery.

The rector was quite surprised to find me at his door. He offered me tea, but I refused as politely as I could.

"What brings you here, my dear? I know a troubled spirit when I see it. If I can help-"

"I've been thinking," I said, careful how I began, "about the journals your predecessor kept. Do you think-would you mind if I read them? I attended Peregrine Graham when he was ill, and now they tell me he's dead. It would do no harm if I learned more about the crime that put him where he was."

"They reported that he'd stolen a pistol from the asylum," the rector said, "and they feel he must have used it on himself. How sad. I asked Mrs. Graham if perhaps she would consider a memorial of some sort-a private service, a marker in the churchyard, whatever might suit the family. But she felt that it would be rather-a reminder of something the family preferred to leave as a closed subject."

"You mean the family didn't wish to inter the-er-remains?"

"Jonathan Graham couldn't be sure, you see. I expect Mrs. Graham felt that a memorial would be rather-premature."

And the family of Lily Mercer had been paid to emigrate to New Zealand. I wondered suddenly if they had prospered there, or if the change had made them wretched.

"I can appreciate the Graham family's feelings, though I don't share in them," I replied. "But for the sake of my own conscience, I'd like to know why I felt that the man I treated had-er-paid for his sins and deserved credit for that."

"I see." He hesitated. "The journals were solely for the purpose of guidance. I'm reluctant to take a broader view of my charge to keep them private."

"And private they should remain. I'll be taking up my new a.s.signment shortly, and there's no harm I could do, surely-even inadvertently."

After a moment he went up the stairs and I sat there, looking across the churchyard to what I could see of the Graham house. Timothy limped through the gate at the far end of the churchyard and paused for a moment at a fresh grave, the earth still raw, waiting for spring to give it new life. And then he went back the way he'd come.

Ted Booker's grave? Or a friend who'd died in the war? At this distance, it was hard to tell.

The rector returned with several bound books in his hands and said, "These cover a longer period before and after the time you're interested in. But short of tearing out the pages, there is little I can do but to trust to your good faith."

"It won't be misplaced, I promise you."

After a few more minutes of conversation, he gave me a small case to carry the books, and I took my leave.

He saw me to the door, and I could feel him gazing after me as I walked back the way I'd come.

Peregrine must have seen me walking in his direction, and as I waited to cross the High Street he must have come to meet me, because I found him waiting at the top of the hotel stairs, his gaze going directly to the box under my arm. I shook my head, and he followed me in silence to my room, where we pulled the tea table to the window and I opened the box.

The bound books were a little musty, as if they'd been stored on a study shelf for years.

I opened the first, after asking Peregrine if he knew the date of the murder. And of course he did, it was seared in his memory forever. But the volume I opened was a later date, and so I tried the second in the stack.

It covered the right period. I skimmed over comments about the births and deaths and marriages of various Owlhurst inhabitants, about the business of the parish, and a brief record of whatever had happened on a particular date that was notable. I saw that the owner of The Rose and Thorn had died and his son had taken over management of the hotel, that the man who cleaned the stained gla.s.s in the church had fallen to his death one morning, as his ladder tipped over. Many rectors were amateur historians, more pa.s.sionate than trained, and their privately published works were often very readable.

Moving on, I came to the comment "Mrs. Graham departed for London this morning, and I shall have my choice of the offertory hymn while she is away. Very kind of her." I thought that last was a dry commentary rather than an expression of real grat.i.tude.

I was already learning that the rector, Mr. Craig, had a tendency toward tongue-in-cheek remarks. And so I was prepared to see an additional remark on the first Sunday of her absence, where he wrote, "The service went smoothly and there were several people who spoke kindly about the anthem. If I were a betting man..."

I interpreted that to mean that the people who spoke kindly would also say something to Mrs. Graham on her return.

There were more entries, and then a lapse of a day, and when the writer took up his pen again, it was with shock and disbelief.

The most ghastly thing has happened. Mrs. Graham returned from London, bringing her sons with her, and she asked me if I would keep Peregrine at the Rectory, under lock and key, while she spoke to Inspector Gadd and Lady Parsons. I could see that the entire family was in great distress, and I was grateful when Robert Douglas offered to take the other boys home and see them put to bed. He came back after that was accomplished, expecting to find Mrs. Graham here, but she hadn't returned. I asked him what in the name of G.o.d had brought them back to Kent in such a state, for I had also seen the b.l.o.o.d.y clothing Peregrine wore, and no one had thought to bring the child a change. Douglas told me that he and Mrs. Graham had returned from a dinner party to find no servants in the house. They went in search of the housemaid and finally came upon her in her own quarters. And Peregrine was there as well, striving to remove a knife from the poor girl's throat. It was his pocketknife, a handsome large one that had belonged to his father. The girl was quite dead. The only conclusion, considering his condition, was that he must have killed the girl in some fit or other. He'd never been well, but no one had ever expected such a turn of events, and the police asked Peregrine what he was about. He said he wanted his knife back, and that the girl wouldn't give it to him. After much discussion and consideration, the London police agreed that the boy should be admitted to an asylum as soon as feasible, and that trying him, with his limited range of understanding and emotional response, would be difficult. I have never seen a child so ill and shocked as he was-he hardly knew where he was or why, and though Lady Parsons had questioned him most forcefully, he was in no state to answer her. Inspector Gadd took Peregrine into my study and questioned him privately but had no more success than Lady Parsons. The doctor had come in the meantime, and he was in agreement that this boy was both exhausted and in a state bordering on catatonic. It was nearing morning, and Douglas took Mrs. Graham and the doctor to Barton's, to speak with the staff there. Before noon, Douglas returned with the doctor, who had prescribed a sedative for Mrs. Graham and left her at her house to rest. The two men then took the dazed lad into the carriage, and I never saw him again.

And then in an addendum dated some weeks later: On several occasions, I went to the asylum to offer pastoral care to Peregrine Graham, and I was told that the doctors had determined that it was best if he continued the regimen of care they had devised, and that the chaplain at the asylum would see to the lad's spiritual needs. I have no such faith in Mr. Newcome, and although I spoke to Mrs. Graham about this, she told me that the London police had told her that Peregrine shouldn't have visitors of any sort. I left it there, though I was very distressed. The other Graham boys have seemed to come through this nightmare with few scars, but Arthur was very subdued when first he came home from London. Some time afterward, he was sent away to school, and I saw him only on holidays.

I thumbed through some twenty ensuing pages, but there was nothing more about Peregrine Graham.

I was disappointed that the rector had only been able to describe events as he was told them by the Grahams, but his remark about Arthur cut me to the quick. Subdued...

Peregrine read the sections again. "I don't recall much about any of this, I was half sick and too dazed to take in what was happening to me."

"Had you been sedated-given anything to calm you?"

"I don't know, I hardly remember my conversations with the police. My stepmother brought me a cup of sweet tea that made me drowsy. Still, I can recall that Inspector Gadd was very kind. He asked me why I had done such a thing, and then again, what Lily had done to me that made me want to harm her. I could only stare at him, but he didn't shout as the London police did. He put his hand on my knee, and told me not to worry, that I would be all right. But I wasn't, was I?"

I was nearly sure that Peregrine had been drugged. To keep him quiet on the journey to London, and while he was there, so he wouldn't trouble anyone. But then why take him? There had been the excuse of seeing a doctor, but nothing had come of it. I was left with the only logical answer. If he was left at home alone with only the servants, someone might have discovered that the public view of Peregrine Graham was not the real truth.

Whatever my feelings about Mrs. Graham, this was a horrible supposition, that she would have treated her stepson so cruelly. But then I remembered something else-something Peregrine had told me.

He had found his stepmother in bed with her cousin Robert Douglas.

I sat back in my chair.

"My good G.o.d," I whispered.

Peregrine looked at me. "What is it?"

"I-it's nothing. Just-look, I need to be by myself for a while. Do you mind?"

"I'd like to take these to my room and read the pa.s.sage again. Is that all right?"

"Yes, of course. I'm tired, Peregrine, that's all."

I thought he saw through me, but he turned and went to his room, and I sat there staring out the window, not seeing the traffic in and out of the shops, not seeing the sun fade behind gray clouds, looking inward at something rather terrible.

Peregrine believed that Jonathan or Timothy-or both-were the sons of the liaison between Mrs. Graham and her cousin Robert Douglas.

Was Timothy's clubfoot the mark of that liaison? I had no idea if a clubfoot was a result of inbreeding. But it might be, for all I knew. It might also run in families.

I tried to picture each of the sons in turn. That got me nowhere. I hadn't been looking for indications of their ancestry when I was speaking to them face-to-face. But even if they weren't Robert's offspring, Mrs. Graham might have been so frightened that Peregrine would tell his father what he'd seen, she'd done her best to destroy his credibility. And what better way to do that than by indicating he wasn't really right in the head? However cruel that was, it would be nothing to what she might have done years later to protect her own child and blame Peregrine for a crime he hadn't committed.

Everyone agreed she had been terribly distressed by the death of Lily Mercer-and she'd paid the girl's family handsomely to leave England. Would she have felt so strongly about protecting Peregrine, or gone to such lengths to hide what had been done? She had kept him out of prison, not from kindness but because his brothers would have suffered the shame of being related to a murderer. And I hardly thought Mrs. Graham was the first person to send an unwanted family member to an asylum. Little better than a prison in some ways, it could at least provoke a measure of sympathy for the family of the afflicted.

I thought about the young Prince John who had had seizures, and how he'd been removed from the public eye very quietly, until he'd been nearly forgotten. Mrs. Graham had succeeded in doing much the same with Peregrine.

I was still trying to understand the full impact of my thinking when there was a knock at the door. It was Peregrine, and he held one of the rector's journals in his hand.

"I think you ought to read this," he said, and walked into my room.

I took the book and carried it to the window, reluctant to turn up the lamp. Peregrine followed me and pointed to an entry some years after the murder of Lily Mercer.

I read it quickly, and then again.

Inspector Gadd died this morning in spite of everything the doctor could do to save him. He had gone very early to one of the outlying farms to investigate a rash of small fires and other destruction that had been plaguing Herbert Meadowes for several weeks. The inspector had hoped to catch the culprit in the act, and was lying in wait for him. He must have seen the culprit and given chase, but as he tried to climb the stile, a blood vessel in his brain burst from the effort he was making, and he died where he fell. Meadowes found him there some hours later. G.o.d be with him, he was a good man.

I turned to Peregrine. "I don't understand. What does this have to do with your situation?"

"None. Except that I know Jonathan boasted that he'd raided Herbert Meadowes's henhouse for eggs, and not been caught. "He thought it was a fox," he told me, "I'm as sly as a fox." And Arthur had said, "That's not brave. You must give him a fair chance to catch you. You must do it three times." This was in London."

"And how did Jonathan answer him?"

"He didn't. I think he was put out. Timothy taunted him too, saying, "No, it must be six times, to be fair.' And Arthur said, 'Six it is, then.' Timothy asked him, 'When will you try? When we go back to Owlhurst?' But Arthur answered him, 'Not then. When I'm ready.'"

"But that's not proof of anything. Boys boast, striving not to be outdone." Even the young subalterns under my father's command took foolish risks and accepted dares, to prove they were brave. More than one was given a dressing-down for imprudent conduct. Come to that, I'd heard my father and Simon Brandon wager on the outcome of a fight between a mongoose and a cobra.

"But no one came forward to admit to being there. And no one got help for the inspector, when he went down."

For fear of being punished for trespa.s.sing.

"You're telling me that Arthur did this?"

"No. Now read this."

He held out another diary, and I saw that it was some six months after Inspector Gadd had died.

Doctor Hadley coming home from the bedside of Daniel Furston died when a startled horse ran away with his carriage, overturned it, and threw him out on the roadside, where he broke his neck. He was a good man. We shall miss him. G.o.d rest his soul.

"I don't know, Peregrine, you're leaping to conclusions. Accidents happen-"

"Read this."

He had marked another pa.s.sage in that same diary.

Lady Parsons had had a close call. She had been out riding in the woods where the owls lived, when her horse stumbled and rolled on her.

She broke her collarbone, her right arm, and her right leg in the fall, and the wonder was, she wasn't killed outright.

So ran the rector's account.

"No, Peregrine, you're trying to make connections that aren't there."

"Indeed." He retrieved the book from my hand and left the room with a final comment. "I lost track of events here in Owlhurst. These journals make for interesting reading."

I thought, He's playing mind games. He offered me that pistol, knowing I wouldn't take it then or later. He's trying to show me other deaths that he couldn't possibly have been responsible for. He knows I suspect Arthur, though. And that will be his salvation. He's playing mind games. He offered me that pistol, knowing I wouldn't take it then or later. He's trying to show me other deaths that he couldn't possibly have been responsible for. He knows I suspect Arthur, though. And that will be his salvation.

I returned the journals to the rector just after dusk had fallen. He thanked me formally, and then asked, "Have these set your mind at rest?"

"They were very informative. While I was a guest in her house, I could hardly ask Mrs. Graham to relive what must have been a very painful past. And Peregrine Graham was too ill to tell me anything, even if I'd asked. I don't much care for mysteries; I just used whatever skill I possessed to see him well again."

"And the same for Ted Booker, I think. Only he was beyond human help."

"Sadly," I agreed.

"I'm glad you came to see me, my dear Miss Crawford. It's why I am here."

"Tell me," I asked, "how did the man who wrote these die?"

His eyebrows went up. "Are you suggesting he wasn't in his right mind when he made his entries here?"

"No, no. I just-I felt I came to know him, a little, through his words. I was told that he had nearly worn himself out, caring for his flock."

"That's true. He was in the church one morning, and went up into the pulpit to find something he'd left there. He tripped over his own feet and went down the stairs headfirst. He lived for several months afterward but hardly knew where he was or what had happened to him. It was a blessing for him when he died. He wouldn't have wanted to linger. He'd put a note with these journals years earlier, that they should go to his successor for guidance. A very thoughtful gesture."

I said, "An unfortunate mishap. Like the burst blood vessel that killed Inspector Gadd, like the carriage overturning and killing the doctor. The fall that injured Lady Parsons so badly. Have there been other incidents of this nature since the war began?"

He pursed his lips, thinking. "In fact, no. Unless you count young Peter Mason. But that's ridiculous-"

"What happened to him?"

"He was swimming in the pond on his father's farm, when he apparently got a cramp. He drowned. Arthur was at home, just before being sent to France, and he and his brothers swam in that murky water looking for the body. Jonathan found it, but it was hours too late. He was a promising lad, Peter was, and my first service for one so young."

I thanked him and said good-bye. But I couldn't go back to the hotel straightaway. There was too much on my mind. Peregrine's doing.

I walked in the wood where the owls nested. The trees were tall and st.u.r.dy, the last of the ancient forest that had once covered this part of Kent. The forest that had stood at Harold's back in the Battle of Hastings, on the main track that led from the sea to London.

I counted. Inspector Gadd. Lady Parsons. The doctor. The rector. But surely not the boy Peter. Without him, Lily Mercer made five.

Six, Timothy had suggested, and Arthur agreed. But that was six times taunting the farmer Meadowes, to give him the chance to catch the culprit. Not six murders. Or near murders, if we counted Lady Parsons among them.