A Duty To The Dead Part 20

"Miss Crawford. I know you mean well. But let me tell you this. I only saw the body briefly, but the girl was covered in blood. Mrs. Graham told me later that Lily Mercer had been disemboweled. I also saw Peregrine Graham kneeling there beside her, splattered with her blood. What conclusion would you have drawn, in my place?"

Peregrine Graham flinched, shutting his eyes for an instant.

"But I understand that Arthur also had blood on his nights.h.i.+rt."

I could tell from his reaction that this was something he was unaware of.

But he said, "You can't change history, Miss Crawford, however good your intentions. I think you should go now."

"Mr. Appleby, I'm not trying to change history. I'm trying to get to the truth, and decide in my own mind what the message Arthur charged me with really meant. I have given this message to Jonathan Graham. But I bear some responsibility in seeing that Arthur's wishes are carried out."

"That's your personal choice, my dear. If you cared anything for Arthur Graham, you will put this behind you and move on with your life. Arthur was a fine young man, and it is to his credit that he was concerned for his brother. He went to the asylum one year, learned that Peregrine was not allowed either books or writing implements, and complained to the doctors. They refused to give him either pen or pencil, but they brought Peregrine books to read. I was surprised that he even grasped what was in them-he had shown no apt.i.tude as a child."

"What do you mean, no apt.i.tude? Was he-mentally incapable of reading?"

"No, Miss Crawford. I'm surprised no one has told you that Peregrine Graham was unable to focus his attention on anything for more than a few minutes at a time. His father's death had been a great shock to him, and by the time I arrived when he was seven, he was nearly unmanageable. We felt it best, Mrs. Graham and I, to separate him from his brothers and try to keep him as calm as possible. I made every effort to teach him, but I was never sure how well he had comprehended his studies. He wouldn't answer my questions, he wouldn't write out an examination, and he refused to accept my guidance."

And yet the man that Peregrine had become could read.

"Did you like Peregrine Graham, Mr. Appleby?"

"As to that, there was little likable about the child. Mrs. Graham had warned me that I would find him difficult, a liar, and given to throwing tantrums. I was not surprised to discover that she was correct."

"And for this reason you were able to believe that a boy who had been kept from his family for-what? Seven, eight?-years was capable of murder?"

"Miss Crawford. The boy's father had given him a very nice pocketknife as his last birthday gift. It was a man's knife, Peregrine's grandfather's-and Mr. Graham insisted that he be allowed to keep it. The boy used it incessantly-to carve any wood that came to hand, whether the table at which he sat or a bit of tree branch that he found in the garden. He wished to use it to carve his meat but was forbidden. It was taken away, but he managed to find it again, and hid it. But he took it to London with him, and that knife was in the body when it was found."

"Yes, so I was told-"

"And his only remorse was that the knife was taken from him for good. No feeling for that pitiful young woman."

"I'm a nurse, Mr. Appleby. I can't believe that a pocketknife could do the sort of-butchery-that you described."

Appleby's face was unfriendly. "I'm not a fool, Miss Crawford. There was of course another knife, one from the kitchen, that did the butchery as you called it. But it was Peregrine's knife in Lily Mercer's throat that mattered. She couldn't have screamed if she'd wanted to."

No one had told me such details. I felt a surge of nausea but collected myself and said, "Everyone knew that this knife was a favorite of Peregrine's-"

Appleby was on his feet.

For an instant, I thought Peregrine, also rising, was going to strike him down.

And then Peregrine had taken my arm in a firm grip and said, "Miss Crawford. You're getting nowhere. I suggest we leave now."

I thanked Mr. Appleby, for manners insisted that I should. But I was furious with him.

He didn't say good-bye, nor did he see us to the door. We were outside, shutting the door behind ourselves, and standing in the street before I could say anything.

Peregrine spoke first. "I took that knife to London," he said in a tightly controlled voice. "But I gave it to Arthur when I got there, in exchange for a promise that he would speak to his mother and ask her to allow me to go with my brothers to the Tower."

I stared at him. "Peregrine? Are you certain?"

"I hadn't remembered what happened to it. I saw it in Lily's throat and wanted it back. I told you, I don't remember much about that night. It comes in bits and pieces, like a puzzle. But I gave that knife to Arthur. I'd swear to it. On my life."

I could feel my heart turning over in my chest. It was medically impossible, and yet I felt it.

He was a murderer. He had every reason to lie. Even Mr. Appleby had told me that Peregrine lied.

And yet-and yet. I looked into his eyes and knew he was telling me the truth.

"You've had years to remember this. Why now?"

"I shut it all out of my mind for years. When I refused to talk to the doctors, and they finally decided that I was mute, that shock had robbed me of my voice, they left me alone. If I couldn't answer their questions, how could they judge my progress? They tried for the first two years to bring me to a sense of my own guilt, but I'd had that drummed into me by the London police, everyone in Owlhurst-my own family. I was dazed when they found me. I admitted to everything, to make them leave me alone. You don't seem to understand-I could smell drying blood, it was everywhere, all over my hands, me, and I couldn't escape it. But no one would let me wash my face or my hands. They hired a carriage and drove me back to Owlhurst, still covered in blood. I would have agreed to everything in the hope that they would let me go to my own room and shut the door."

"You're saying you didn't kill her."

"No. I'm saying that there must be more to this than I've remembered so far. Something happened that night. Something appalling. I can't think why I walked into that room and killed Lily Mercer. But there must have been a reason." reason."

He turned to look up at the church, his face hidden from me. "I want there to be a reason. I want to believe that I didn't suddenly run amok, striking down the first person who got in my way. What if it had been Arthur? Or Timothy? That's madness of a different order, don't you see?"

"It never happened before that night. Or since that night."

He turned back to me. "Since that night, my dear Miss Crawford, I was locked in a room, put into a straitjacket to be taken to the offices where my doctors examined me, and given nothing sharper than a spoon. I was handed a sedative as soon as I'd had my tea, because my history of violence occurred at night. I couldn't have killed again. They saw to that."

"Did you ever want to-to kill?"

"I spent most of my childhood alone. I saw my brothers sometimes, Mr. Appleby, the housekeeper, my stepmother, Robert. And that was it. It never occurred to me to hurt them."

"Have you felt the urge to do violence since you left the asylum?"

He smiled suddenly. "Just now. Speaking to that fool. I was afraid of him as a child. He could decide whether or not I'd deserved my dinner or was to be denied it. He could allow me to sit in the garden for an hour every afternoon, while my brothers were at their lessons, or leave me locked in my room. It was Appleby who refused to take the responsibility for me to accompany my brothers to the Tower. I heard him tell my stepmother that the night before. He was a bully, but I wasn't to know that, was I?"

He walked on, and I hurried to catch him up. "If it had been my tutor who was found butchered, I could understand it. I would have reveled in it."

Mr. Owens was waiting for us, stamping his feet and clapping his hands together to keep warm.

"This is a pretty town," he said as we came up the lane and into the square. "Look at those houses, now. If old Queen Bess was to walk through here this minute, she'd feel right at home."

Peregrine helped me into the motorcar, and then seated himself beside Mr. Owens.

"I'm sure she would," I answered him, my mind elsewhere. The black and white buildings with their beautiful diamond-shaped windowpanes reminded me of the rectory in Owlhurst.

"It's the oak," he went on. "Good English oak, that's kept them so fine. Nothing like it, I say. Would you care for a cup of tea to warm you, Miss, before we start back?"

I thanked him for his kindness and told him I was warm enough. All I wanted was to be back in London, a place I knew, where the world made sense.

We drove back down the hill, looking across the Juliberrie Downs toward Canterbury, and wove our way through the countryside toward Tonbridge. We made a stop along the way at a tiny village where the pub offered tea for me and ale for Mr. Owens. Peregrine took nothing, his face gray with fatigue. I saw Mr. Owens glance at him once or twice, concern in his eyes.

A rainstorm on the way delayed us, but we reached Tonbridge just before dusk.

After I'd settled my account with Mr. Owens, I went to my room but felt smothered there, as if the walls were closing in. A certain sign of fatigue and worry. Nevertheless I caught up my coat and went out to walk, past the boys' school and up to the handsome gatehouse to what was once Tonbridge Castle. The gatehouse, part of the curtain wall, and a broken tower were all that was left, but I walked through and into the grounds, crossing to the cliff that looked down on the Medway and another part of the town.

I hadn't been there long when someone came up behind me. It was nearly dark now, the dusk fading quickly in an overcast sky. I turned, and found myself face-to-face with Peregrine.

"You should be resting," I said.

"I could say the same for you."

We stood in silence, staring down at the lower part of the town, watching a pair of ducks paddling along the quiet river.

"Are you still afraid of me?" he asked.

"I wasn't in Owlhurst. I was in London. You threatened Mrs. Hennessey, remember, and then any three strangers you met on your way out the door."

"I was more afraid of you. I didn't think you'd help me. And I needed that help. I had to trust you, and I wasn't certain I could."

"Would you have shot Mrs. Hennessey?"

"I'd have shot myself, I think, if the police came to take me away."

"I haven't had many dealings with murderers. Though there was one I knew in Rajasthan. An old man who would sometimes let me ride his camel around the market. He was hanged for killing his young wife's lover. I didn't know that until much later. I just wondered why he never came to market again."

Peregrine was silent for a time. Then he said, "What next? I want to see those journals."

"I've lost my nerve. I don't want to go back to Owlhurst." I straightened and turned back the way I'd come. Peregrine fell into step beside me.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to learn any more. About you. About Arthur. About the Graham family."

"Arthur didn't kill Lily Mercer. If that's what worries you."

But I couldn't be sure. The way he had made me learn his message by heart-the intensity behind demanding my promise, the refusal to write anything down...It had seemed unimportant then, I'd been too worried to ask questions, prepared to do anything to bring him peace of mind at the end. The Arthur I thought thought I knew would have confessed, he'd have written it and had his letter witnessed, and sent it to someone-Lady Parsons? He'd have stood up to everyone and cleared Peregrine's name. I knew would have confessed, he'd have written it and had his letter witnessed, and sent it to someone-Lady Parsons? He'd have stood up to everyone and cleared Peregrine's name.

Wouldn't he?

Why had he told Jonathan that he'd lied? Surely Jonathan already knew about the pocketknife? And what had to be set right, if it wasn't clearing his brother's name?

Neither Jonathan nor his mother seemed to be disturbed by the message-that made me wonder if Arthur had tried before this to make his feelings known, and found his mother dead set against changing the status quo. That was a rather chilling thought. That they had made up their minds to ignore any protestations on Arthur's part long before I'd appeared on the scene.

And where did Robert stand in all this?

It made sense that Mrs. Graham and Jonathan had agreed to let the matter end with Arthur's death.

But when had she confided the truth to Jonathan? Or had it been Arthur himself?

Look, Jonathan-if anything happens to me...

No, it wouldn't have been that way. There was too much pa.s.sion in Arthur's determination to set matters right. As Death came to collect him, he tried to clear his conscience in the only way left to him.

But when was Jonathan told the truth-and why?

All I could think of was that he'd known from the start, and said nothing.

It was more comfortable not to. Everyone looked up to Arthur, everyone called him a fine young man, even the tutor. After all, Peregrine had been found beside the body. Why look any further? Yet until the moment Peregrine had been taken to the asylum for testing, Mrs. Graham had been distraught with fear. Not for what was to become of him but because somehow the truth might slip out and wreck all her careful plans. I sighed.

Peregrine, a dark, looming shadow beside me, said, "What is it?"

"I was thinking that truth is a very illusive thing."

He was silent for a moment, and then he answered me, his voice m.u.f.fled. "I'm not sure truth exists. Perhaps we only think it does. But in reality it's only what you believe and I believe and Mr. Owens believes-the rest is merely compromise."

I couldn't sleep that night. At every sound my eyes flew open and I waited-for what?

My door was locked. Peregrine couldn't get into my room without waking half the guests on this floor. And yet I was on edge, unable to feel safe.

At one point, on the brink of slipping finally into a drowsy peace, I thought I heard Arthur calling me. It was so real my heart leapt, and I was wide awake again. That was the last straw.

It was nearly dawn by then, and I got up, dressed, and for a time walked the dark, silent streets of Tonbridge.

At one point a constable stopped me, asking if anything was the matter, if I needed help. I told him the truth-I was too troubled to sleep.

He said, "Aye, my daughter's husband's at the Front. I find her out and about at all hours. But mind where you go, Miss. There's not much to worry you here, but one never can tell what's lurking in the shadows."

I watched the night turn into a gray dawn, I watched candles flicker into life in attics where servants dressed in the cold. I watched the milk cart making its rounds, watched as sluggard schoolboys made their way to their lessons, and then watched merchants unlock their doors and set out their goods for the day. I saw the gate of the castle rise above the mists of the river, and quiver there, like a disembodied vision.

It was nearly time for breakfast when, cold and courting sleep, I turned back to the hotel at last. I was just walking up the steps of The Checquers, when someone came bounding through the doors, nearly bowling me over.

"I beg your pardon, madam-" he started to say, and then broke off in astonishment.

Beneath the officer's cap, above the scarf, I recognized the bandaged face of Jonathan Graham. Or to be more precise, I recognized the bandaging.

"Miss Crawford-"

"Good morning, Lieutenant Graham," I managed to say. "How is your family?"

"My family? Yes, well enough. What-brings you back to Tonbridge?"

"A personal matter," I replied. I wanted very much to ask him the same. We stood there, confronting each other, neither willing to give the other satisfaction.

Finally Jonathan said, "Will you be returning to Owlhurst?"