“I came to believe it was Arthur who had killed Lily. I didn’t want to, but the facts pointed almost as strongly to him as to you. Now I have to ask myself if he could also have killed the others-if it’s true they were murdered. But if we count Ted Booker among the six, it couldn’t have been Arthur, could it? If it wasn’t one of your brothers, who, then? Robert Douglas? But he was with your mother the night Lily died. I’m not a policeman, Peregrine, I’m not trained to sort out the sheep from the goats.”
“Robert Douglas?” Peregrine’s voice was bitter. “He’s no murderer. He’s just made a habit of looking the other way. That’s his failing, if you like. He swallowed his pride and his self-respect when he followed my stepmother to Kent, and he knows the price he’s paid to stay near her. He’s willing to live with that. He was kind when he knew she wouldn’t care. He sat with me at my father’s funeral, and held my hand when I cried. He brought me cake on my birthday. When he took me to the asylum in her stead, he told them that if I was mistreated, she would see that they answered for it. He persuaded Inspector Gadd to insist on a warm meal, a bath, and fresh clothes straightaway. Little things. But he wouldn’t take my part to her face.”
It had been Robert who had insisted that the dying Peregrine be cared for at home.
“Then we can’t expect him to be an ally. All right, we’ll set any other suspicions aside and concentrate on Lily. Why was her family given money to leave England so quickly? So they wouldn’t make a fuss and bring you to trial? And why was Mrs. Graham so persuasive, convincing London that you should be committed to the asylum for observation as soon as possible? Because she feared that once the shock wore off, you’d remember too much? And why bring in Lady Parsons and the others, unless it was for the same reason-to see you in such a state that they were convinced beyond any doubt that you were the killer?
“What’s more, I begin to wonder why you were drugged to keep you quiet in London. You could have been shut up in your room there, just as you had been in Owlhurst. The only explanation is that your stepmother really did want you to see a specialist, with an eye to having you committed, even before the murder. And you wouldn’t have been in your right mind. Another thing-her own state just after the murder. If you’d really been guilty, she’d have jumped at the chance to be rid of you. She was beside herself because it was one of her sons, and in the midst of her horror and grief, she saw the only way out of her nightmare was to put the blame on you. And if you’re right about Robert, he stood there and let her do it.”
He had listened carefully. But at the end he said, “She told me that if I caused any trouble, then or in the asylum, that I’d be taken away and hanged. I believed her. I didn’t know any better.”
“In prison, they wouldn’t have kept you drugged. And at the asylum, if you tried to tell anyone that she’d slept with Robert Douglas or that one of your brothers was not your father’s son, they would put it down to your madness. And if you remembered too much about London, they wouldn’t listen. After all, the police had what amounted to your own confession, that you wanted your knife back after using it to kill the girl. You said yourself that little effort was made to help you get well. You were in that place for a lifetime, and even if they had restored you to sanity, the only option was a prison cell.”
Peregrine shook his head. “You make it sound logical. But how do you explain the dreams?”
“I don’t know,” I told him truthfully. “But tomorrow we’re leaving London. In the dark before dawn, if we have to. There’s one person I can think of who would keep you safe. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before. And I promise you, as soon as I have leave again in France, I’ll find a way to prove what I just told you. And the watcher will have nothing to tell whoever hired him. He’ll be called off.”
“I dragged you into this at the point of a gun.”
“That’s water over the dam. Let it go.”
“Do you still brace your door with a chair at night?”
I opened my mouth to deny I ever had done, and then said, “No. Not now.”
Peregrine smiled, and this time it reached his eyes, but he said nothing.
We ate what I’d brought from the bakery, and I cleared away the dishes. Peregrine watched me, and as I dried the cup that I’d used for my tea, he reached out and took it from my hands.
It was the cup with Brighton Pavilion on it, that exotic palace that the Prince Regent had built for himself not so very far from here, his cottage at the seaside.
“I’d like to see that,” he said wistfully. “It’s very un-English.”
“If we can clear your name,” I answered him, “I’ll take you there myself.”
When Mrs. Hennessey returned later in the day, I went down to ask her what the man who had accosted her earlier had wanted with her.
“He was looking for a flat to rent for his daughter. He thought I looked to be the sort of person who would keep her from getting herself in trouble.”
“When you were away, he came into the house and went up the stairs to try every door.”
“Did he, indeed!” She was quite angry. “Is he looking to murder us in our beds? Or to rob us blind?”
“I thought perhaps you ought to know. Especially since I’ll be leaving quite early in the morning-”
She was quite exercised at the thought of someone coming into her castle and threatening it. It made me feel guilty for frightening her. But it was true.
“Is he still out there?” She went to her window and peered through a slit between the curtains. “By Judas, so he is. Just you wait-when Constable Brewster comes by on his rounds I’ll have a word with him, see if I don’t! And we’ll see then who is the clever one.” She let the curtains come together again. “Did you say you were leaving? Oh, my dear girl, you will be careful, won’t you? Those Huns are cruel, they shot that poor Edith Cavell, just for staying at her post with the wounded. And look how they sank Britannic. A hospital ship! You must stay as far away from them as you can.”
“I’ll keep myself as safe as possible. We’re behind the lines, it will be all right.” I didn’t tell her that sometimes when the shelling began, we were too close.
She embraced me, saying, “Of all my girls, you are the closest to my heart.”
I left her with tears in her eyes and went back up the stairs, feeling a certain elation.
The constable would see to our watcher just long enough for Peregrine and me to slip out of London.
There was no one watching when Peregrine and I quietly let ourselves out the door an hour before dawn. I had spent most of the evening removing any trace of Peregrine’s presence from the flat. The sheets were set out for the woman who did Mrs. Hennessey’s wash and ours, all the cups and dishes we’d used were in their accustomed places, and Elayne’s bed had fresh linens from our cupboard.
I’d borrowed a valise from another of my flatmates for Peregrine’s belongings, and repacked my own. When we crept down the stairs, I could hear Mrs. Hennessey snoring gently from her rooms, the house was so quiet.
There was a misting rain this morning, cold and wet on the face, as we walked several streets over in search of a cab to take us to the station. I had thought of everything, and I was rather pleased as we stepped into the train at Victoria Station, on our way to Rochester.
I had even fashioned a bandage for Peregrine’s head, so that he wouldn’t be required to speak, and I’d told him he was my brother, going home from hospital to complete his recovery. He had looked in the mirror and said, “It’s more believable than the bandage I contrived.”
“Well, of course, what did you expect?” I demanded.
We left the train at Rochester, walking up the hill to the old heart of the city. The squat, powerful Romanesque cathedral and the keep of the castle across from it were floating in disembodied splendor above the fog that had swept up from the Medway’s estuary. I needed transportation to my final destination, the home of a woman my parents had known for some years. The best place to find a driver was at an hotel. The long winding High Street was still nearly empty, though it was close on nine o’clock in the morning, but the shops had opened, and a chimney sweep walked by, whistling.
We were just by a butcher’s shop when I saw coming toward me an officer I knew, now a captain in my father’s old regiment.
I clutched Peregrine’s arm and steered him into the shop. “Wait here,” I said, in a low voice. “Whatever you do, don’t come out.”
To the astonished butcher, I said, “We’re eloping-can my fiance wait in a back room? Someone who knows my parents is coming up the street!”
The butcher, a burly man with thick graying hair, nodded, and beckoned to Peregrine as I stepped out of the shop and walked on.
