A Duty To The Dead Part 5

I said nothing. Arthur had told me that he had turned away from the law as a profession. I tried to remember his words.

"There's evil in goodness and goodness in evil," he'd said. he'd said. "I've seen too much of the evil in the law to be comfortable with it." "I've seen too much of the evil in the law to be comfortable with it."

"What would you like to do, then, when the war is over?"

"I think I'd like to grow coffee in East Africa. Somewhere new where I could start over."

"Why should you wish to start over?"

"Because there would be no memories of the past infringing on the present."

I'd thought he meant memories of the war. Now I wondered.

"Lieutenant Graham, I'd like very much to ask you a question. Though you needn't answer if you don't wish to."

"Of course. What is it?"

"Can you right this wrong for your brother? Is it in your power?"

"Why should you doubt me?" His voice was cold.

"It isn't doubting you so much as wanting to believe that his faith in both of us wasn't misplaced. I saw his distress. This was on his conscience, if you will. He was helpless to rectify what lay in the past. But he thought you might be able to do that for him. I'd like to leave here with the feeling that Arthur will rest easier now."

"Your sense of duty does you credit, Miss Crawford. You can rely on me to see to it that Arthur's last wishes are treated with the greatest respect."

"Indeed. Thank you, Lieutenant."

We made our way back to the house in silence, and I tried to tell myself that I had faithfully kept my promise. There was, after all, nothing more I could do or say. And if Arthur had trusted his brother, I must believe he knew he could.

Then why did I have this feeling that treating Arthur's last wishes with the greatest respect wasn't the same as promising to carry them out?

I could almost hear the Colonel Sahib's voice: Walk away, Bess. If Arthur had wanted more from you, he'd have told you more. Bess. If Arthur had wanted more from you, he'd have told you more.

The question really was, would Arthur Arthur have felt satisfied? have felt satisfied?

Well, to be fair, it was possible that Jonathan Graham knew what it was Arthur wanted but not how to go about it. After all, he'd had only a matter of minutes to digest my message.

Who are you to talk? my conscience demanded. my conscience demanded. After leaving your duty to the eleventh hour. What would you have done, my la.s.s, if Lieutenant Graham had died of his own wounds? After leaving your duty to the eleventh hour. What would you have done, my la.s.s, if Lieutenant Graham had died of his own wounds?

I sighed as we walked through the door and would have liked to go directly to my room for a bit.

But Mrs. Graham was standing there waiting for us, as if she'd watched our progress from a window, and she rushed me into the sitting room the instant I'd handed my cloak over to Susan.

"You must be freezing, my child. Come and sit by the fire. Would you like something warm to drink?"

"No, I'm fine, Mrs. Graham, thank you."

"You saw the memorial?"

"It was-touching," I said, trying to think how to answer.

"Yes. I think he'd have been glad of it."

Jonathan had gone to some other part of the house, and I wondered if he would tell his mother any or all of that message. Or what he would tell her. I was just grateful now that she hadn't brought up the subject again.

After lunch, she asked if I'd care to walk around the village. "For the sun is stronger now, and it will be more comfortable."

It was the last thing I wanted. The cold, after the Mediterranean Sea, was penetrating. My arm preferred to sit by the fire. But I smiled and said that I would, and she sent me up for my coat.

m.u.f.fled once more in scarf and gloves, I followed her down the lane and into the churchyard. I thought at first she was going to take me back to see the memorial.

Instead we walked a little way among the gravestones, and I could admire the lovely mellowed stone of the church above us. Its air of age was comforting, like an anchor-or a rock-that spoke of centuries past and centuries to come.

Neither of us mentioned the raw graves marking where men had come home to die. Arthur might have been among them, if his leg had waited another few weeks to turn septic.

In the sea there were no markers for the dead. No place in the deep to mourn, no place to leave flowers. Just degrees of lat.i.tude and longitude on a chart.

Mrs. Graham nodded toward the rectory. "We have a new rector now. And a new doctor. Times are changing. But then nothing stays the same forever, does it? Even one's children grow up and go off to die."

"You're worried for Jonathan," I said.

"Dr. Philips tells me the bandages will be off in another fortnight. After that, it will be a matter of days before his orders come." I could hear the pain in her voice and for once was thankful that my own mother had not had a son.

"They're in desperate need of men," I said.

It was not what she wanted to hear.

She gave me a sharp glance and didn't answer. We walked on down the street, where brick houses lined the road. One of them, set back a little, was covered in what would be honeysuckle and roses in summer. Their bare branches arched across the front of the house, trembling in the wind.

Mrs. Graham caught the direction of my interest and said, "That's the doctor's surgery. And just down there is the house that Arthur would have had, if he'd lived. It's part of our property, going to the eldest son on his marriage. There's a caretaker now, one of my school friends who fled London at the start of the war. She was that certain the Kaiser would sail up the Thames before she could pack her boxes."

It was a handsome house, with a front garden set off by a low wall and a cat curled on the doorstep, waiting to be let in. I smiled without realizing it, and she said, "Yes, the cat goes with the house. It or its ancestors have always lived there. Arthur was fond of cats, did you know?"

But he hadn't said anything to me about cats or dogs. I would have replied, if anyone had asked me, that we'd spoken of everything under the sun. I realized now that "everything" hadn't included his childhood or his family. How much had I told him about the Colonel? I couldn't remember.... We'd lived in the present. It turned out to be all there was, though he'd wanted a future.

At the next corner, where a row of shops began, we paused. "Did you know this was once a famous smuggling area? Goods were brought up from the coast and hidden wherever the Hawkhurst Gang believed they were safe. There's a hotel now where the inn stood-it provided the horses and wagons for the smuggled goods, and the story has come down that an underground pa.s.sage ran between The Rose and Thorn and the church. We couldn't find Arthur and his brothers one afternoon-he must have been twelve or thirteen at the time. We finally discovered them in the church, searching for the secret door to the tunnel. I had to explain to them that nearly every village with a smuggling past has such stories of underground pa.s.sages. They were sorely disappointed."

I smiled as we turned back the way we'd come. "It was probably a story the smugglers themselves invented to keep Customs officials busy searching in the wrong places."

A little silence fell. I could sense that Mrs. Graham was on the point of asking me about what I'd told Jonathan, and I was bracing myself to meet her pleas. I was grateful when a young man came out of one of the other houses we'd just pa.s.sed and called a greeting to her, heavy with relief.

"Just the person I was after. Could I borrow your Susan, Mrs. Graham? I've got an emergency on my hands, and Betsy is with Mrs. Booth, awaiting the baby." He caught up with us, nearly out of breath and flushed with worry.

"Certainly not," Mrs. Graham answered him. "We have a guest at present, and Susan is indispensable." She turned to me, her face stiff with disapproval. "Miss Crawford, this rude young man is Dr. Philips."

"My pleasure, Miss Crawford. And my apologies. But I'm shorthanded, and there's little time for polite exchanges-"

I interrupted him. "I'm a trained nurse," I said. "Can I help in any way?"

The doctor stopped short. "Are you indeed? Oh, thank G.o.d. Will you come with me?" He hesitated. "You aren't put off by swearing, are you?"

"Not at all."

"Then I must take her, Mrs. Graham, and return her to you later in the day. Forgive me, but it's urgent."

Mrs. Graham wanted no part of this arrangement. She said, "Dr. Philips. Miss Crawford will not accompany you. You may have Susan-under protest-but you must make certain she's back in time to serve our luncheon."

He glanced at me and then said, "Miss Crawford volunteered, I believe. I'll have her back to you, no harm done, as soon as possible. Come along, there's no time to waste."

"Dr. Philips-" Mrs. Graham was indignant.

"It's quite all right, Mrs. Graham. I have a duty to help. Forgive me, but I must go." I could see the anger in her eyes. I'd disappointed her in some way, but there was nothing I could do about it now. "Dr. Philips?"

He touched his nonexistent hat to her, then took my arm and led me away, his strides twice the length of mine.

"I expect I've caused you no little trouble, Miss Crawford. But I'm rather desperate, and my patient comes first. I'll do my best to smooth matters over for you."

He was a tall man, prematurely graying, with dark eyes. A strong odor of pipe tobacco swirled in his wake as I tried to keep pace with him. We'd reached the house he'd just come from and were hurrying up the walk. "What's the matter with your patient?"

As I spoke I looked back. Mrs. Graham was standing where we'd left her, staring after us. I turned away and followed Dr. Philips through the door of the house.

Dr. Philips was saying, "This is a man who suffers from sh.e.l.l shock. You don't have any preconceived notions about that, do you? Cowardice, and all that? No? That's good. He terrifies his poor wife, but there's nothing she can do when he has one of his spells. I'll give him an injection and he'll calm down. But you'll be there to see to it that he does himself no harm meanwhile."

I had had some experience with sh.e.l.l shock. None of it the sort of thing I wanted to walk into the middle of, not knowing the circ.u.mstances.

"Who is in the house with this man-besides his wife?" I asked.

"No one at the moment, worst luck. It's the housemaid's day off, and she's gone to Cranbrook to visit her sister." We stepped into the cold entry, went through the inner doors, and turned down a pa.s.sage on the left side of the stairs.

A harried young woman stepped out of the nearest room. She had been crying. She said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't know what else to do-I left him there, I couldn't watch him any longer."

"You did just the right thing, Mrs. Booker. Now run along to your mother's house and let her take care of you. Miss Crawford and I will see to Ted."

He was walking on as he spoke, opening the last door along the pa.s.sage, pus.h.i.+ng it wide for me to enter. It was a small back parlor where a man sat in a chair in front of the windows, a shotgun across his knees.

I stopped, surprised. I hadn't expected to find him armed. Small wonder the man's wife had been terrified.

"Come along, Ted," Philips said in a strong voice. "You aren't going to kill yourself here, in the house. Certainly not in front of this young woman. You don't want to upset her, do you? Let me take the gun and give you something for the pain."

From across the room Ted Booker stared at him, unaware who the doctor was. I could see the blankness in his eyes. Ignoring us, he went on talking to invisible companions, men he he could see clearly and appeared to know well. could see clearly and appeared to know well.

He was arguing, vehement and insistent and profane. It appeared that a sniper had already killed three of his men, and he was on the field telephone, asking someone to do something about it.

"I can give you his range, d.a.m.n it." His voice was ragged, close to the breaking point. "We can't hold out much longer. I tell you, the Hun's got us in his sights-"

He ducked then, swearing, and shouted, "Someone stop that b.a.s.t.a.r.d! No, not you, Harry-" No, not you, Harry-" There was a garbled exchange, as if he were struggling with another man, the shotgun jerking wildly in his grip. And then he cried out, screaming Harry's name over and over again, springing to his feet and finally bending to someone lying there in front of him, pleading with the man not to die. There was a garbled exchange, as if he were struggling with another man, the shotgun jerking wildly in his grip. And then he cried out, screaming Harry's name over and over again, springing to his feet and finally bending to someone lying there in front of him, pleading with the man not to die.

I said quietly to Dr. Philips, "Who is Harry?"

"His brother."

Dear G.o.d, no wonder this poor soul was distraught!

The doctor tried again, but I could see he wasn't getting anywhere asking the man to buck up and put the past behind him. Ted Booker was in a dark place no one else could reach. But there might be a way....

Ignoring the shotgun, I crossed the room to take Booker's arm. "We must get him to the dressing station," I told him urgently. "Hurry, he's bleeding badly."

He shook me off. "Harry, speak to me, for G.o.d's sake, speak to me."

"If you wait any longer, he'll die." I reached out and took the shotgun away as his hands flexed open, trying to help the wounded man. I put the weapon behind me, and Dr. Philips was there, I could feel his grip above mine, then he stepped back. I held on to Booker's arm. "What rank was he? Do you know?" I asked Dr. Philips in a low voice.

"Er-lieutenant, I think."

"Don't stand there staring, Lieutenant Booker! Here, take his shoulders, I'll get his feet."

He seemed to rouse himself, looking up at me, then telling Harry it would be all right, there was help now.

And then between us, we lifted the wounded man I couldn't see, and Booker started out the door and down the pa.s.sage with him between us, urging me in his turn to hurry, hurry. hurry.

Confused as we entered the pa.s.sage by the stairway, Booker hesitated.

I said, "That cot. Over there. Doctor! This case is critical." Doctor! This case is critical." We put Harry down at the foot of the stairs, with Dr. Philips hovering in the background. We put Harry down at the foot of the stairs, with Dr. Philips hovering in the background.

"Well done, Lieutenant. Look, here's someone to see to Harry now. Sit down over there-yes, out of the way." I led him to a chair against the opposite wall, put out a hand, and Dr. Philips set the needle into my palm. "Here, you're exhausted. You must be calm when you see him again. Let me give you this-" The needle went home, and Ted Booker started up. I thought for an instant he was going to strike me. "Steady, young man, or I'll make you wait outside the tent," I said harshly, the voice of Matron and not to be trifled with. "Now sit down and be quiet while we do our work."

But he shook me off, still calling to Harry.

Dr. Philips came up, took his arm as I had done, and said, "Soldier, you're in the way. I can't work-sit down. See, you're distressing the wounded man-"

I turned my head to stare at him-it didn't sound like Dr. Philips's normal voice at all. It sounded like a medical orderly giving orders. We had found ourselves swept up in Ted Booker's nightmare, playing our roles to an invisible audience.

Booker, distraught, clung to him. "Harry-" he began.

"Harry's in good hands. You mustn't let your men down, you know. Good example and all that."

We finally got through to Booker, and then he sat down on the floor and began to cry, holding his dead brother in his arms and rocking him like a child. It wouldn't be long now before the injection took effect.

I said softly to Dr. Philips, "The shotgun. Get rid of it."

He turned to do as I'd asked, and I bent over to touch Booker's shoulder.

"Lieutenant. Come in here, out of the rain."

Ted Booker got up, stumbling a little, and let me lead him toward the dining room.

Halfway there, he twisted free and went back, calling for Harry. But his words had already begun to slur, and it was just a matter of minutes before he was half conscious and easily led up the stairs to the nearest bedroom. We got him onto the bed, his shoes off, his collar loosened, and a blanket over him against the chill. By that time he was out, and snoring from the drug.

Dr. Philips said, "Thank you for your help. You must have done this before-you got through to him."