“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.”
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.”