A Duty to the Dead (26 page)

I shook off that train of thought and went back to my probing. I wasn’t sure how far to press.

Then I remembered something that Daisy, the laundress in London, had said.
“Someone had tried to clean away most of the blood—”

That hadn’t been what I needed to learn at the time, and so I had ignored the words. But now I began to see a picture of such hideous behavior that I felt ill.

Mrs. Graham had so terrified Peregrine that he had never really
recovered from it—as much a victim of shock as Ted Booker cradling his dying brother in his arms. The dreams—

How could a woman commit such an act of betrayal? But there had been a choice. Peregrine—or her own son. And so she had destroyed her husband’s child with a cold and malicious trick.

And then she had displayed him to the London police and after that to everyone who mattered in Owlhurst—Inspector Gadd, the rector, Mr. Craig, Dr. Hadley, and Lady Parsons—to leave them in no doubt that Peregrine was a monstrous boy whom she had saved from prison but lost to the asylum. And all the while, the child who had really killed was safe at home with Robert Douglas.

He must have loved Mrs. Graham very much to allow himself to be used as he was—or perhaps it
was
his own child he was protecting, at any price?

I’d guessed what she must have done that night—but I couldn’t have imagined the cruelty of the scheme she had used to make the changeling work.

I said to Peregrine, “What were you served at the noon meal the day of the murder?”

He gazed at me as if I’d lost my mind. Then he said, “I don’t remember.” He sat there for several minutes, his thoughts elsewhere. And then he said, “Yes. Yes, I do, it must have been a goose, because there was a fricassee of goose for dinner. It made my stomach queasy. I couldn’t finish it. And later I lost it, and Lily told me I ought to be made to clear the vomit up myself. Timothy told her to smear it on my face, the way one shows a dog he mustn’t soil the carpet. She was angry with all of us because she had so badly wanted the night off. She felt that Mr. Appleby ought to have been forced to give up his evening instead.”

His eyebrows rose. “I hadn’t thought about that. I heard her call Arthur a spoiled mama’s boy, and later she told Timothy that a cripple ought not be so prideful, that he had only to look at his ugly, misshapen foot to know that he had an ugly, misshapen nature. I
don’t know what she said to Jonathan, but he slammed his door and wouldn’t unlock it again, however much Lily wheedled, until she threatened to send for Robert.”

A girl disappointed because she couldn’t have an anticipated free evening, four boys teased and called names—and then some final exchange that must have triggered fury and finally murder.

But if it wasn’t Peregrine, someone had had the forethought to use his pocketknife.

Someone, perhaps, who was jealous that it had been given to the eldest son, and wanted to punish Peregrine for being his father’s firstborn.

I said, breaking the stillness, my voice almost overloud in the quiet cathedral, “Peregrine. You were very young at the time. Do you know how your father died?”

“My father? He’d gone to Cranbrook. On the way home his horse bolted and the carriage overturned. He was dead when he was brought to the house and laid on his bed. All I knew at the time was that he lay there with his eyes open, and I couldn’t understand why, when someone tried to close them, they wouldn’t stay closed.”

“Who found him?”

“I don’t remember that, if ever I was told. Later I overheard my stepmother talking about Gypsies, but it was a child who ran under his horse’s hooves.”

Peregrine remembered his father’s corpse with sadness but without terrors. He’d have remembered Lily Mercer’s in that same way, if he hadn’t been made to put his hands in what he’d thought was her bloody body. It had never occurred to him in those few minutes with Mrs. Graham that the offal was not a human being’s, and she’d counted on that—counted on his state of mind warping all he saw.

“Let’s find the hotel,” I said, getting to my feet. It was cold as a tomb in here, with the stone walls and stone flooring locking in the frigid January air. “We could use a cup of tea while the hotel finds someone to drive us.”

A
M
R.
F
REEMAN
agreed to conduct us to the home of Melinda Crawford.

She was a connection on my father’s side, her ancestors army officers who’d fought at Yorktown with Cornwallis, followed Old Duro through Spain, and danced with my own great-grandmother—so the story went—on that fateful eve of Waterloo.

As a child in India she had lived through the siege of Lucknow, where the British were nearly wiped out during the Great Indian Mutiny. She had seen death and disease close-up, and survived to marry her own cousin against all advice—and been extraordinarily happy with him. When he died, she returned to England by a roundabout route that would have made the hardiest explorer blanch to contemplate. At least those were the stories I’d been brought up on, and I’d believed them. When one knew Melinda, one did.

With that past, I was hoping she’d accept an escaped lunatic with equanimity if not precisely with enthusiasm.

I’d omitted the polite telegram signaling my imminent arrival. She just might take it into her head to telephone the Colonel Sahib and ask him if he knew what his errant daughter was up to.

She still might.

But it was worth the risk. No one would think to look for Peregrine Graham in Melinda Crawford’s lair, and if they tried, she was more than capable of dealing with them.

Her house was closer to Tonbridge than to Rochester, but I was wary now of Tonbridge, after our encounter with Jonathan Graham there. Better a long drive across Kent than the worry of a confrontation at the train station or the hotel.

A cold rain had started again as we set out, and the countryside, winter bleak, was colorless and dreary: muddy roads leading through brown, fallow fields, apple trees raising twisted limbs to the gray sky, sheep huddled wherever they could find shelter. And any people out in the weather were hurrying about their business with heads down.

Not far from Marling, we found the turning that led to the Crawford house, and shortly after that, the stone gates with their elephant lanterns loomed through the mists. As the drive wound up the knoll, the views were shrouded in rain.

I had heard many British exiles in India describe the “cottage” they would have when at last they could go home. Roses and daffodils and wisteria and all the beauty that the brown and tan and cream shades of Indian dust made impossible out there. Melinda’s gardens were beautiful in season, and she indulged herself with arrays of color. Not for her single beds of pinks and red, beds of yellow and gold, beds of blues and lavenders. Here flowers mingled in rampant glory, a rainbow of blues nodding to cream and yellow, lavenders touching rose and pink and dark blue, golds indulgently shoulder to shoulder with white and purple and red, all striking to the eye and visible from every window. Now of course the beds were dormant, but a bank of holly trees and a dramatic cedar and the leathery green of rhododendron softened the scene.

To a child, coming home on leave from India, this was heaven.

All the way here I’d debated with myself what I should tell Melinda Crawford, and how to explain Peregrine. Nothing believable came to mind.

We rang the doorbell, huddling close under the small porch. I had paid off the driver but asked him to wait until we were certain someone was at home.

The door opened, and in it stood Shanta, the Indian woman who
had served Melinda for so long she could speak her mind without reprimand.

Now she took one look at the orphans of the storm on her doorstep and raised her eyebrows.

“I do hope,” I said, mustering a smile that had more of Cheshire cat in it than I’d have liked, “that Melinda is at home. It’s been a wretched drive!”

“Miss Elizabeth,” she said severely, “if you are eloping, you can go home now and be sensible.”

Thank God I’d warned Peregrine that the household was a little eccentric, but still I felt myself flushing.

“I’m not eloping. The lieutenant here is a patient, and he has nowhere to go. Er—the zeppelins destroyed his flat in London—”

He did look every inch the wounded hero—his eyes dark-circled and tired, his shoulders thin from fever, and his skin without much color. I found myself thinking that as my choice for eloping hero, he was off the mark.

“If that is the case, come inside and be warm.”

I turned to wave good-bye to Mr. Freeman and followed Shanta inside, taking Peregrine’s arm and ushering him ahead of me. I could feel his silent resistance—the muscles in his arm were corded bands.

We were taken to the study, where a fire blazed on the hearth and the room was suffocatingly hot. Melinda Crawford’s blood still yearned for the heat of India, and I could remember as a child thinking that all old people must be on the verge of freezing to death. Two other widows my father had visited over the years, wives of officers who had died out there, lived in the same tropical environment. They were the only people I knew who kept roaring fires in high summer. One had suffered from malaria on and off and was always feverish.

Melinda was seated in a chair, draped in lovely silk Paisley shawls, and she registered no surprise at seeing me in her doorway. I wondered why.

“I’ve had a letter from your mother,” she said, rising to kiss me.
“She was worried about you. She said you haven’t been the same since you went to visit the Grahams.”

I kissed her cheek and smelled the scent of sandalwood and roses in her hair.

She was tall and straight, with the bearing of a soldier.

“And this is…” She turned to Peregrine and held out her hand like an empress greeting a new and interesting courtier.

Before I could stop him, Peregrine gave her his real name.

She turned to me again. “I thought the Graham boy you were so fond of died aboard
Britannic?”

I could feel my heart fluttering into my throat. “This is his eldest brother,” I said, trying to appear nonchalant.

Melinda nodded. “Welcome to my house, Lieutenant Graham. Come and sit by me. I see you’re in the colonel’s old regiment. My husband’s as well. Wounded in France, were you?”

We sat down as far from the fire as was polite.

The room hadn’t changed much, crowded as it was with Melinda’s Indian souvenirs as well as objects she’d discovered on her travels. There was a tall porcelain Russian stove in the left corner of the room, a gigantic ceramic affair in blue and cream that she’d seen in Leningrad and shipped home. A samovar from Moscow—often used to brew her tea—stood on a table between the windows, and above it were two great African elephant tusks that curved around a Garuda mask from Bali.

I couldn’t help but wonder what Peregrine made of it all. If he’d thought the Prince Regent’s Pavilion intriguing, this must seem exotic in the extreme.

Melinda was asking him how much action he’d seen, and he was answering, “More than I care to recall,” and she nodded, satisfied.

“What brings you here, my dear girl?” she asked me next. “Your mother says your orders have been cut and should arrive at any moment. And I’ve yet to thank you for the letter you sent from Athens. Most reassuring, let me tell you.”

I said almost bluntly, “Peregrine needs somewhere to stay. Would you mind? He doesn’t wish to go home, and there are no beds to be had in London. He’s good company, and as soon as he’s well enough to manage on his own, he’ll be rejoining his regiment.”

“Of course he may stay. We’re a quiet house. If he doesn’t heal here, he never shall.”

I felt distinctly uneasy. Had she heard about Peregrine’s escape? Surely not. Truth was, I’d expected more resistance on her part. Damn Peregrine for not remaining Lieutenant Philips.

It was much later, after a light luncheon, that Peregrine was shown to his room by Shanta, leaving Melinda to cross-examine me at her leisure.

“Child, what are you playing at? The truth, if you please!”

“There’s nothing—”

“Balderdash. I’m not senile yet, Bess Crawford, and I’ll thank you to give me credit for knowing you well enough to see through your happy little charade. I do read the papers, you know. That man’s an escaped lunatic, and here you are roaming the countryside in his company.”

“He’s escaped from the asylum, but he’s not mad—you have talked with him for two hours or more, Melinda. Tell me you believe he’s crazy, much less a murderer!”

“What I believe is beside the point. There’s his family to consider. The world believes he must be dead. You can’t leave them to grieve. It’s unconscionable.”

“No, it isn’t. Not when everyone is glad to be rid of him at last. I don’t think he killed anyone. Did you know his father? Ambrose Graham? He was twice married, and Peregrine is his son by his first wife….”

I found myself telling her everything, trying my best to make what I’d done seem reasonable and logical under the circumstances. And all the while her dark eyes seemed to bore into my head to look beyond my words and find the truth.

“So you now think it must have been Arthur who did these terrible things? Except for the fact that someone else died after Arthur himself was dead.”

“I don’t know. It must be one of the sons. Everyone else was away that evening. Robert Douglas had accompanied Mrs. Graham to a dinner party. Lily Mercer was still alive, then. As she was when the tutor left the house. Peregrine feels he was persecuted by his stepmother after he found her in bed with her cousin Robert. I think she took Peregrine to London because she was afraid to leave him at home. Not because he was dangerous, but because someone might discover that he wasn’t what everyone thought he was and perhaps believe what he had to say. He was angry and violent sometimes, I’m sure, but not in that way—more frustrated and unhappy than mad or murderous. And I strongly suspect he was drugged part of the time he was in London, to keep him quiet. Especially between the time of Lily’s death and his arrival at the asylum.”

“So you would like very much to believe.”

“What else is there to believe?”

She sat there, thinking it over.

“Did it occur to you, my dear, that Peregrine was taken to London to die?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again.

“Yes, I know. But consider. He was desperately unhappy, his brothers were being treated to the sights, and he was left alone with a staff no one knew well. What was to prevent him from walking out the door and disappearing? But in London, without money or friends, where would he go and what would become of him? His chances of surviving were not good. How long would they have waited before calling in the police? Do you think this Robert Douglas could be counted on to see that Peregrine’s disappearance was permanent?”

I shook my head. “No. Robert is easily led, but he isn’t cruel. He lets things happen without demur, but he doesn’t initiate such things.”

“Then he must love Mrs. Graham very much indeed. Or know which of her children he fathered. Another point. Why was the maid Lily left in charge that fatal night? She was young for such responsibility—she couldn’t have been much older than Peregrine. Add to that, she was angry, rude to the young gentlemen, and she retired to her room, rather than remain belowstairs on duty, as she should have done. Peregrine could have been gone for hours before anyone noticed. It’s the only explanation, you see. But Lily went too far in her rage at being left in charge, and she was murdered. What a shock for Mrs. Graham, to come home and find Peregrine still there. You must ask Peregrine, indirectly, what his thoughts are about this view. It could be enlightening.”

I was still trying to digest her comments. I wanted to go straightaway and speak to him. But she put her hand on my arm and said, “No, let him rest. Is there no one else you could ask about events in London?”

“The tutor. Mr. Appleby. He was in London with the family. He
must
know more than he was willing to tell me earlier.”

“Well, of course, you must visit him again,” Melinda said.

“I let Mr. Freeman go—”

“I have my own motorcar, my dear, and Ram Desikhan to drive it. Leave Mr. Freeman and his like out of this.” She looked at the little watch she wore on a diamond brooch pinned to the left shoulder of her gown. “Too late today to make the journey—it will be dark soon. But tomorrow you shall go to Chilham and ask him. But carefully. Remember that.”

“But who killed Lily? If it wasn’t Peregrine?” I told her about events this morning in the butcher shop, expecting her to be as horrified as I was.

She said, “It’s an old trick. Carried to extremes here, of course. I remember once on the Northwest Frontier that a Pathan rebel was led to believe he’d killed one of his own family by mistake. It saved a feud, you see. The eye that offended was his, not ours. My husband
was very pleased with the outcome. He was rid of two birds with only one bullet, as it were.”

“What became of the Pathan rebel?” I asked, intrigued.

“He went home and kept to his tent, like Achilles at Troy. They said his first child after that incident was born deformed and lived only a few hours, and he believed it was his curse for killing his own blood. He put away his wives, went into the hills, and died many years later as a hermit.”

“But surely there was someone to take his place?”

“Sadly there always is. But the point remains, my dear, that the brain can be fooled. I’m not saying it was in Peregrine Graham’s case, but if you introduce a horror that the mind can’t cope with, it runs away.”

“Shell shock,” I said, thinking of Ted Booker.

“Precisely. There were women at Lucknow who weren’t right in their heads afterward. We all thought we were going to die, but what was far worse, we knew it would be a ghastly death, an insupportable horror.”

Like watching the lifeboats being sucked into the screws of
Britannic,
and knowing that it could be one’s own fate as well. I shivered.

“I will keep your Peregrine Graham here. But this situation must be resolved. Tomorrow morning, go and see this tutor. If he can’t help you, then you must go home and leave your black sheep with me for the duration. You can’t take him to Somerset, and you can’t avoid your duty when your orders come. You owe your parents a little time with you, with no worries.”