No mention was made of Dr. Philips or his skill as a physician. I hoped that my conversation with Inspector Howard had well and truly spiked those guns.
As I was walking out of The Bells, glad to be away from the crowded room inside, I looked out at the rain and thought about going back to the Graham house, then decided to sit in the church for a few minutes until I felt a little more tolerant. Jonathan Graham had said nothing about going to see Ted Booker, and the Coroner hadn’t called on him to give evidence. I had seen Mr. Montgomery look at him several times, as if expecting him to add what he knew, but he didn’t speak up. And neither did the rector.
I had closed the churchyard gate behind me and was walking toward the stained-glass windows of saints, when I heard someone shouting. I turned to see who it was.
It was a rider, coming fast, and calling to Jonathan Graham as he was escorting his mother home. They had reached the large trees that overhung the churchyard wall-not twenty yards from where Ted had been buried-when they heard the shout.
They turned as one, and the rider came up to them, reaching down to hand them a letter. As Jonathan opened the envelope, his mother was questioning the man on horseback. I realized then that it was Robert Douglas, holding the horse steady as he answered.
Jonathan’s face was flushed with something very like fury, but he nodded curtly, passed the letter to his mother, and she bent over it, trying to see it in the shadows cast by the bare limbs and her black umbrella. I thought for an instant she was going to faint, but she steadied herself, said something more to Robert, who wheeled his horse and went back toward the stragglers just coming out of The Bells. I realized that he was looking for Timothy, who was speaking to Mrs. Denton while Sally was being handed into a carriage by the young man I’d seen with Lady Parsons during the proceedings.
Timothy broke off, excused himself, and spoke sharply to Robert, who answered and pointed. Timothy Graham turned toward where his brother and his mother were standing and without a word of farewell to Mrs. Denton, strode away to join them, rigid with emotion.
Robert lifted his hat to Mrs. Denton, with a brief word, then put his horse to a trot to follow Timothy.
No one had seen me there by the church nave. And I stood watching the little scene play itself out as Timothy also read the letter and then passed it back to his mother. The Grahams walked briskly toward home, Robert riding ahead to stable his horse.
From their posture, heads together, backs rigid, I knew that the news was bad.
All I could think of was that the journey back to the asylum had been too much for Peregrine Graham, and that he had got his wish-he’d succumbed to his pneumonia after all.
CHAPTER TEN
I HURRIED INTO the church and sat down in a corner near the pulpit, where no one could see me, huddled into my cloak for warmth and comfort.
This wasn’t the right moment to go to the house. Let them have their time to grieve. But it was cold in the church, as cold as the tomb, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking, and so after a time, though the rain was coming down hard, I left the church and crossed to the rectory, my shoes wet to my ankles, and the hem of my skirt dragging.
A middle-aged woman opened the door when I knocked and ushered me into the hall, clucking over how wet I was.
The rector wasn’t to home, she informed me. He’d gone to speak with the widow, to offer what comfort he could after the inquest.
At first I thought she meant Mrs. Graham, and then I realized she was speaking of Sally Booker. I turned away, wondering where I could go now, and she said, “No, you mustn’t leave here so wet as you are, Miss! The kitchen is warm, I’ll dry your shoes and your cloak while you have a bite of something. I’ve a nice bit of soup that’s just the right thing on such a day. Rector wouldn’t like me to send you away just because he’s not to home.” She glanced at the sky. “I don’t think this will last for more than a quarter of an hour. See, it’s brighter to the west.”
I smiled, trying to hold back tears of gratitude. “Thank you-”
“There’s nothing to thank me for. It’s Rector says turn away no one in need.”
Was I in need? Yes, in a way. I wanted to go home, to see Colonel Sahib, to listen to my mother being sensible and comforting at the same time. Right now, being tucked into bed with a glass of warm milk would have been the epitome of happiness. Ted Booker was dead, there was nothing I could do to change that, and now Peregrine Graham had died, because he had been sent back to the asylum over my objections. Coming to Kent had been a bad decision-I was sure no one would carry out Arthur’s last wishes. Nothing would be done about whatever it was he wanted set right.
I tried to come to grips with my despondent mood, and couldn’t.
The housekeeper took me down the passage to the kitchen, and as I glanced over my shoulder, I could see the two china dogs in the parlor window, staring back at me. I’d glimpsed them on my first night in Owlhurst, and this was most likely my last night.
She introduced herself as Mrs. Oldsey, housekeeper here for many years, because the last two rectors hadn’t been married. “Not that I’ve lost hope for Rector,” she added as she helped me out of my heavy wet cloak and draped it in front of the kitchen fire. “He’s young yet. We’ve six bedchambers in this house, did you know that? And only one of them being used. I long to see children about the house. I wasn’t blessed with any myself, but I sincerely do love the little ones.”
She bustled about, setting the kettle on to boil as I removed my wet shoes and looked around.
It was an old-fashioned kitchen, with no wife to complain and have it redone. But Mrs. Oldsey seemed not to mind.
“What brought you out on such a morning as this?” she asked as she set down cups and saucers from the cupboard.
“I was at the inquest-”
“Yes, the poor Booker lad. Sad. I didn’t have the heart to go. I remember him and his brother. Imps, they were, but good-hearted. What was the verdict brought in?”
“Death by his own hand in the throes of grief for his brother.”
“Ah, well, best that way. He can be buried in holy ground, and his widow doesn’t have his memory hanging about her neck like something to ward off the plague.”
Amused by her way of seeing life, I said, “That’s what her mother hopes as well.”
“Mrs. Denton? A piece of work, that one, though it isn’t Christian of me to say so. But a spade’s a spade, for all that.”
I kept my opinion to myself, but the twinkle in Mrs. Oldsey’s eyes told me she suspected I shared her views.
She fed me tea and toast and a cup of soup warmed up from the night before. I ate because I was hungry, and because I dreaded going back out in the rain to the Graham house.
Mrs. Oldsey rambled on, sitting across from me as if we were old friends having a gossip.
I found the courage to ask her about Peregrine.
She frowned. “That was another tragedy. He used to come to services with his father. A handsome child with good manners. And then he stopped coming, and later the whispers began that he wasn’t quite right in the head. I thought, often enough, that Mrs. Graham was ashamed of him. Else she’d have seen to it that he lived as normal a life as possible, gossip or no gossip. But she didn’t, and as I never set eyes on him again until he was almost fourteen, who’s to say what was right and what was wrong?”
“You saw him when he returned from London?”
“Oh, yes, they brought him here. He was in such a state of shock-white as his shirt, shaking with fright, and unable to utter a word-that I thought he ought to be in his own home and his own bed. But Mrs. Graham wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I’ve three boys to think of,’ she told me, ‘and I can’t go to them until I’ve settled Peregrine. I’ve sent Robert for Inspector Gadd, and Dr. Hadley. Can you find the rector for me, please?’ And she asked me to send for Lady Parsons, Sir Frederick’s widow. I kept the boy down here in the kitchen, trying to warm him up a little, and wash his hands, but he wouldn’t let me touch him, whatever I said. Then they insisted on locking him in one of the bedchambers, without so much as a word of comfort to him. After a bit, they went up for him and took him away, him still all bloody and without a coat, and Rector told me later he was in the asylum. I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy in a place like that, not to speak of my own child. I didn’t learn until later that he’d killed someone. I thought somehow he’d done himself an injury, all that blood. They never said who he’d killed, and when I asked Rector, he told me it was best I didn’t know. That it was horrible beyond human imagination. I never forgot that. Horrible beyond human imagination.”