A Duty to the Dead

“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.”

It was early when I set out for Chilham. Ram, Melinda Crawford’s majordomo and chauffeur, was tall, graying, and very protective of his mistress.

He said over his shoulder as we turned into the main road, “This man you have brought, he is no danger to the Memsahib?”

“I wouldn’t have brought him if he was.” But Peregrine still possessed his pistol…

“It’s as well to ask. There is something in his eyes.”

We drove in silence after that, and as I watched the countryside pass by, I thought about the fact that Peregrine Graham was the heir to his father’s estate, but he didn’t have the wherewithal to buy a loaf of bread or a pair of shoes. I’d leave money with him, if I had to go. Whether he wished it or not.

We drove into Chilham late in the morning. I couldn’t send Ram into The White Horse for tea. He wouldn’t be welcomed there. But I brought him a cup and asked him to wait while I went to speak to Mr. Appleby.

“I shall be here in the car, if anything untoward happens. You have only to call,” Ram reminded me.

I thanked him and went down the lane between the pub and churchyard, trying to decide how best to approach the Grahams’ tutor.

And met him coming out his door as I started up the walk.

He wasn’t best pleased to see me.

I said, “Mr. Appleby. If you would walk with me for a little? In the churchyard perhaps? We won’t distress your wife.”

“I have told you, I have nothing more to say to you, Miss Crawford.”

“I’ve learned a great deal more about the events that put Peregrine Graham into Barton’s Asylum. I think it might be wise to hear me out.”

He had no choice but to fall in step with me as he turned the way I’d just come. At the head of the lane, he saw Melinda’s Rolls, and the Indian driver.

“Who is that, and what is he doing here?” He stopped short, staring.

“Waiting for me.”

“I see.” We continued into the square and paced toward the Jacobean manor house at the opposite end. “What is it you want to know, Miss Crawford? And why?”

“I’m just trying to understand the sequence of events that led to Lily Mercer’s death. Mrs. Graham and her cousin were attending a dinner party. You were given the evening off-”

“I was given no such thing. It was my usual day and evening free.”

“I see. And the servants were also given the evening off, since there was no one to dine at home except the four boys. Is that true?”

“Yes, yes, what’s your point?”

“It seems rather odd, to leave four active boys in the house with only a young housemaid to supervise them.”

“She had merely to serve their dinner, which was already prepared, and draw their baths. They weren’t small children, Miss Crawford, in need of tucking in and a bedtime story. They could see to their own needs. They were the sons of a gentleman, after all, not barrow boys.”

“But one of them, Peregrine, was known to be-difficult. He was fourteen, not ten, and Lily couldn’t have been more than eighteen?”

We had reached the gates of the manor house and turned to walk the other way. Even in the dreary light, the lovely Tudor houses gleamed white and black.

“It was Mrs. Graham’s decision to make, not mine. It was my usual free day.”

“Peregrine could have walked out, rather than attacking Lily. He could have gone anywhere. Anything might have happened to him. He wasn’t used to being on his own.”

Appleby stopped short.

“You are pressing your luck, Miss Crawford. We can’t change the past. Why rake through it? I should think that you would find the subject unpleasant enough to leave it.”