the saints were taking the war in stride. I see now that he was pleased. I’d taken his remarks to be rather- irreverent.”
She got up to poke at the fire, though it didn’t need it.
“Perhaps I ought to ask Robert to speak to him. To offer help, if he’ll accept it. Robert has been my right hand for so many years I don’t know how I could have survived without him.” There was a warmth in her voice that conveyed the closeness of that relationship. “He was always my favorite cousin, you know, and the only one who stepped forward in my time of need. I was so young when my husband died, and the responsibility was overwhelming. The estate to run, my sons to care for. I hardly knew where to begin. And all these years later, Arthur’s loss to endure.”
I wondered where she was going with this unexpected confession of vulnerability. She was a strong woman, I’d felt that from the beginning. I should have guessed what her purpose was.
Turning from the fire, she came to sit by me. “Jonathan has spoken to me. Are you sure Arthur didn’t tell you the circumstances surrounding his message?”
“Absolutely. He entrusted me with that, and nothing more.” I didn’t add that my imagination had been busy filling in the blanks.
“Yes, well, it’s rather a mystery. Was he perhaps being given morphine? Or was he out of his head with fever?”
“He’d been given something for pain, but he knew what he was saying. I think he died more comfortably, knowing his duty was done.”
“Duty. That’s an odd way of putting it.” She sighed. “I really don’t know what to make of it.”
I found myself wondering if that was true and she was intentionally blinding herself to what Arthur wanted. On the other hand, I couldn’t help the growing suspicion that she was probing to discover how much I knew about the matter. It was hard to judge what lay behind her sad smile as she stared into the fire, and I was feeling rather uncomfortable.
What surprised me was that Jonathan had confided in his mother. Had she importuned him until he had given in?
I couldn’t stop myself from commenting, “Perhaps he expected Jonathan to understand. The message was meant for him, after all.”
“I did it for Mother’s sake…” She repeated the middle of it, as if trying to work it out. “But what was that?”
“Sometimes it’s a girl…”
Her eyes flicked to my face.
“What makes you think such a thing?”
“I’ve sat with many wounded men, Mrs. Graham. And some of them were in love when they went off to war. But their family or the girl’s family refused to let them marry. That sometimes weighed heavily on their minds, at the end. They often wanted the girl to know that they regretted not marrying her.”
“My sons haven’t been involved with any young women.” Her voice was harsh. I’d met that resistance before. Mothers who believed that their sons had formed no attachments because they were too young…I knew better, I’d written passionate letters to sweethearts from men barely old enough to enlist.
“I didn’t mean to suggest-we were speaking of what men at war talk about at the end. When they know they’re dying.”
She smiled. “That was pompous of me, my dear. Certainly there was no one in Owlhurst for whom Arthur and Jonathan had feelings, and it was natural to assume…” There was a brief hesitation. “Of course there’s Sally Denton. Timothy was quite taken with her for a time. But I can’t believe it was a serious attachment.”
“Then perhaps it was something left undone, something that he’d expected to set right when he came home again.”
“Undone? No, surely not. Typical of Arthur, he’d put everything in order before he sailed. Well. I expect we’ll never know what was in his mind. You must be tired, my dear, after your experiences with Dr. Philips’s patient, and I’ve selfishly kept you sitting here talking. Would you like to go up and lie down for a while?”
I wouldn’t, but it was a dismissal, as if she preferred to be alone with her thoughts, and I was very happy to escape this conversation. I said, “Yes, that’s very kind of you. If you don’t mind…”
“Not at all.” She put out her hand to take mine. “I can’t tell you how happy it has made me to have you here.”
I closed the sitting room door behind me and walked toward the stairs. Timothy was standing in the shadows of the hall, and he turned as he heard me approach.
“How is Booker?” he asked.
“Resting quietly when I left.”
“What a nightmare it must be. Is there nothing to be done for him?”
“I’m afraid not. Somehow he must find the will and determination to let go of the past. And often even that isn’t enough. His wife is afraid of him, which doesn’t help matters. They say time…” I let my voice trail off. We didn’t know enough about shell shock to offer hope. But I didn’t want to admit that.
“We were friends before the war. I’ve seen little of him since he came back.”
“Perhaps he needs his old friends,” I suggested tentatively. “To take his mind off his brother.”
“What do I know about war?” Timothy asked bitterly. “It’s not something I could share with him, is it? The experience of the trenches, the fear of dying when you go over the top.”
“It isn’t war he needs to talk about, you see. It’s ordinary things, the life that was.”
“I’d have married Sally, if she hadn’t chosen Ted. There’s that as well.”
Men and their wretched self-importance.
“If Ted Booker shoots himself, there may be another chance for the two of you.”
That shocked him, and he looked at me with surprise and distaste. “I don’t want her that way.”
“Well, think about Ted Booker in his dark world, will you? An effort on your part to save her husband’s sanity will be a gift to her. If you loved her, you’d want to do that.”
He swore under his breath.
“I wasn’t trying to distress you. But I just spent several hours watching a man who wants to die. There are too many dead, Mr. Graham, and I’m heartily sick of bodies to be buried.”
I turned to walk away, and he called to me, “Did you see through Arthur as easily as you see through me?”
“I don’t know that there was anything to see through. He was dying, and that tends to sweep away the trivia of living. He wanted something done, and that’s why I came, because it was so important to him.”
“Were you in love with him? Most of the girls were. He was the pick of the Grahams, you know. Better than all of us.”
I answered carefully. “I liked your brother very much. Perhaps more than I should, but I watched him believe in his future, and then I watched him give up all hope. That made me feel something for him, compassion, pity, affection. Sometimes you see briefly into someone’s heart, and it becomes a bond between you that goes beyond friendship. But not as far as passion.”
“You’re blunt.”
I smiled. “Am I? It’s my training, I suppose.”
And this time I walked on. He didn’t stop me from going.
My intent was to go up to my room, but the house seemed airless, suffocating. I went to the kitchen instead and begged Susan for a cloak from the entry pegs, and walked out again.
This time I didn’t turn in the direction of the rectory but went down the lane on which the Graham house stood. It ran for a short distance, then split, and I took the left fork. The houses here were comfortable, but not as fine as the Grahams’. At the end of this lane, where another crossed it, I found myself in a row of small cottages, some of them very old but well kept up.
I had walked almost to the end of these when a door opened and someone called, “Susan, is that you?”
I turned to see an elderly woman peering out at me, squinting to make out who I was. It was then that I realized that Susan must have lent me her cloak.
“No, I’m afraid not,” I answered. “I’m staying at the house and borrowed her coat to walk a bit.”
“Then you must be half frozen. Come in to the fire, do, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
