I TURNED AWAY, looking at the gleaming white walls of the rectory in their black framework, the tiny panes of glass set into the windows like small diamonds glittering in the morning sun.

“Go on.” There was impatience beneath the urging.

I took several seconds to think. To wonder if I’d done the right thing in coming here. The message seemed different suddenly. Futile, and somehow infringing on something I didn’t understand.

I tried to set the stage, so that Jonathan Graham could see what I had seen. “He had finished his medicines, and he took my hand, pulling me closer. I thought at first that he was having difficulty seeing me, but it was only to drop his voice so that no one else could hear him. He asked me if I’d carry a message to his brother for him. It was very brief, I had no difficulty remembering it. ‘Tell Jonathan I lied. I did it for Mother’s sake. But it has to be set right.’ And afterward, he made me promise to deliver the message to you in person.”

He was watching me, his gaze intent.

“Tell Jonathan I lied. I did it for Mother’s sake. But it has to be set right.”

“Yes, exactly as he told me.”

“And what did you make of his request?”

I could feel my face flushing. I could hardly say what had gone through my mind over the weeks that had passed. It would have sounded presumptuous even to hint at it. I answered only, “I don’t know, Lieutenant Graham. I’d hoped you would.”

“And he didn’t explain to you what it was he was trying to convey?”

“No. To be frank, I don’t think he would have said anything at all, if he hadn’t realized he was dying. But something was preying on his mind, I could see that. And it was disturbing enough for him to try to do something about it while he could still speak.”

“Then why not write it in your letter?”

“I don’t know,” I said again. “It was almost as if—” I stopped.

“As if what?”

“It was almost as if he hadn’t wanted to put it in writing. He was insistent that I come to you personally.”

“But Arthur has been dead some months. If it were a pressing matter, surely it would have been better to come here at once?”

I prevaricated. “You were in France, Lieutenant Graham. And there were my duties as well. And this—” I indicated my arm.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” He continued to stare at me, but his mind was elsewhere. Then he said again, “And that’s all of the message? You’re quite sure?”

“Yes. I’ve given it word for word.”

“Thank you, Miss Crawford. It was kind of you to carry out my brother’s wishes. But I think you liked him, a little. Is that true?”

“He was a very likable man,” I answered honestly. “Very popular with the men and with the nursing staff.”

“And he said nothing about this matter until he was—dying?”

“To my knowledge, no. None of the other nurses told me anything about promises.”

“But then you didn’t tell them, either, did you.”

“No.”

“Why do you think he chose you?”

I knew I was pink again. “Because I took the time to be with him during his last hours. I assure you, he wasn’t the only one I watched over or read to—or wrote letters for. It’s hard to explain, Lieutenant Graham, but when you are sitting by a wounded man and he’s telling you what to say to his mother or his wife or his sweetheart, there’s an intimacy that can’t be avoided. I have had men say things to me that were terribly personal, messages to their wives that they would never have shared in any other circumstance.” I paused. “It’s almost as if I’m not there, they’re simply talking aloud. But I hear these things and try not to listen at the same time. If you understand what I’m saying.”

Jonathan Graham nodded. “Yes, I’ve asked the nursing sisters to write letters for me, when the bandaging covered my eyes.” After a moment he roused himself from whatever thoughts were distracting him, and said again, “Thank you. It was a great kindness. I hope you’ll consider staying the weekend. I think my mother would be grateful if you could.”

“I don’t wish to impose—”

“It’s no imposition. She would take it as a great favor.”

We walked on, the wintry sun trying to peer through the bare trees.

“Have you been to Owlhurst before, Miss Crawford?”

“No, it’s my first visit to this part of Kent.”

“We were once famous for our owls. On the far side of the churchyard there’s what’s left of the great expanse of wood that covered much of Kent in the distant past, an almost impenetrable forest. When my parents were first married, I’m told they could walk through it of an evening and count two or three species of owl calling in the dusk. I daresay they’re still there, those owls. I like to think of the continuity of life here. It helps, a little, in the trenches.”

“I remember Arthur saying something about them. He could never find where they nested.”

Jonathan smiled. “That was Arthur for you. Always trying to get to the bottom of things. My mother will tell you he was a very clever child, interested in science but with a leaning toward the law. I expect he’d have become a solicitor but for the war.”

I said nothing. Arthur had told me that he had turned away from the law as a profession. I tried to remember his words.

“There’s evil in goodness and goodness in evil,” he’d said. “I’ve seen too much of the evil in the law to be comfortable with it.”

“What would you like to do, then, when the war is over?”

“I think I’d like to grow coffee in East Africa. Somewhere new where I could start over.”

“Why should you wish to start over?”

“Because there would be no memories of the past infringing on the present.”

I’d thought he meant memories of the war. Now I wondered.

“Lieutenant Graham, I’d like very much to ask you a question. Though you needn’t answer if you don’t wish to.”

“Of course. What is it?”

“Can you right this wrong for your brother? Is it in your power?”

“Why should you doubt me?” His voice was cold.

“It isn’t doubting you so much as wanting to believe that his faith in both of us wasn’t misplaced. I saw his distress. This was on his conscience, if you will. He was helpless to rectify what lay in the past. But he thought you might be able to do that for him. I’d like to leave here with the feeling that Arthur will rest easier now.”

“Your sense of duty does you credit, Miss Crawford. You can rely on me to see to it that Arthur’s last wishes are treated with the greatest respect.”

“Indeed. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

We made our way back to the house in silence, and I tried to tell myself that I had faithfully kept my promise. There was, after all, nothing more I could do or say. And if Arthur had trusted his brother, I must believe he knew he could.

Then why did I have this feeling that treating Arthur’s last wishes with the greatest respect wasn’t the same as promising to carry them out?

I could almost hear the Colonel Sahib’s voice: Walk away, Bess. If Arthur had wanted more from you, he’d have told you more.

The question really was, would Arthur have felt satisfied?

Well, to be fair, it was possible that Jonathan Graham knew what it was Arthur wanted but not how to go about it. After all, he’d had only a matter of minutes to digest my message.

Who are you to talk? my conscience demanded. After leaving your duty to the eleventh hour. What would you have done, my lass, if Lieutenant Graham had died of his own wounds?

I sighed as we walked through the door and would have liked to go directly to my room for a bit.

But Mrs. Graham was standing there waiting for us, as if she’d watched our progress from a window, and she rushed me into the sitting room the instant I’d handed my cloak over to Susan.

“You must be freezing, my child. Come and sit by the fire. Would you like something warm to drink?”

“No, I’m fine, Mrs. Graham, thank you.”

“You saw the memorial?”

“It was—touching,” I said, trying to think how to answer.

“Yes. I think he’d have been glad of it.”

Jonathan had gone to some other part of the house, and I wondered if he would tell his mother any or all of that message. Or what he would tell her. I was just grateful now that she hadn’t brought up the subject again.

After lunch, she asked if I’d care to walk around the village. “For the sun is stronger now, and it will be more comfortable.”

It was the last thing I wanted. The cold, after the Mediterranean Sea, was penetrating. My arm preferred to sit by the fire. But I smiled and said that I would, and she sent me up for my coat.

Muffled once more in scarf and gloves, I followed her down the lane and into the churchyard. I thought at first she was going to take me back to see the memorial.

Instead we walked a little way among the gravestones, and I could admire the lovely mellowed stone of the church above us. Its air of age was comforting, like an anchor—or a rock—that spoke of centuries past and centuries to come.

Neither of us mentioned the raw graves marking where men had come home to die. Arthur might have been among them, if his leg had waited another few weeks to turn septic.

In the sea there were no markers for the dead. No place in the deep to mourn, no place to leave flowers. Just degrees of latitude and longitude on a chart.

Mrs. Graham nodded toward the rectory. “We have a new rector now. And a new doctor. Times are changing. But then nothing stays the same forever, does it? Even one’s children grow up and go off to die.”

“You’re worried for Jonathan,” I said.

“Dr. Philips tells me the bandages will be off in another fortnight. After that, it will be a matter of days before his orders come.” I could hear the pain in her voice and for once was thankful that my own mother had not had a son.

“They’re in desperate need of men,” I said.

It was not what she wanted to hear.

She gave me a sharp glance and didn’t answer. We walked on down the street, where brick houses lined the road. One of them, set back a little, was covered in what would be honeysuckle and roses in summer. Their bare branches arched across the front of the house, trembling in the wind.

Mrs. Graham caught the direction of my interest and said, “That’s the doctor’s surgery. And just down there is the house that Arthur would have had, if he’d lived. It’s part of our property, going to the eldest son on his marriage. There’s a caretaker now, one of my school friends who fled London at the start of the war. She was that certain the Kaiser would sail up the Thames before she could pack her boxes.”

It was a handsome house, with a front garden set off by a low wall and a cat curled on the doorstep, waiting to be let in. I smiled without realizing it, and she said, “Yes, the cat goes with the house. It or its ancestors have always lived there. Arthur was fond of cats, did you know?”

But he hadn’t said anything to me about cats or dogs. I would have replied, if anyone had asked me, that we’d spoken of everything under the sun. I realized now that “everything” hadn’t included his childhood or his family. How much had I told him about the Colonel? I couldn’t remember…. We’d lived in the present. It turned out to be all there was, though he’d wanted a future.

At the next corner, where a row of shops began, we paused. “Did you know this was once a famous smuggling area? Goods were brought up from the coast and hidden wherever the Hawkhurst Gang believed they were safe. There’s a hotel now where the inn stood—it provided the horses and wagons for the smuggled goods, and the story has come down that an underground passage ran between The Rose and Thorn and the church. We couldn’t find Arthur and his brothers one afternoon—he must have been twelve or thirteen at the time. We finally discovered them in the church, searching for the secret door to the tunnel. I had to explain to them that nearly every village with a smuggling past has such stories of underground passages. They were sorely disappointed.”

I smiled as we turned back the way we’d come. “It was probably a story the smugglers themselves invented to keep Customs officials busy searching in the wrong places.”

A little silence fell. I could sense that Mrs. Graham was on the point of asking me about what I’d told Jonathan, and I was bracing myself to meet her pleas. I was grateful when a young man came out of one of the other houses we’d just passed and called a greeting to her, heavy with relief.

“Just the person I was after. Could I borrow your Susan, Mrs. Graham? I’ve got an emergency on my hands, and Betsy is with Mrs. Booth, awaiting the baby.” He caught up with us, nearly out of breath and flushed with worry.

“Certainly not,” Mrs. Graham answered him. “We have a guest at present, and Susan is indispensable.” She turned to me, her face stiff with disapproval. “Miss Crawford, this rude young man is Dr. Philips.”

“My pleasure, Miss Crawford. And my apologies. But I’m shorthanded, and there’s little time for polite exchanges—”

I interrupted him. “I’m a trained nurse,” I said. “Can I help in any way?”

The doctor stopped short. “Are you indeed? Oh, thank God. Will you come with me?” He hesitated. “You aren’t put off by swearing, are you?”

“Not at all.”

“Then I must take her, Mrs. Graham, and return her to you later in the day. Forgive me, but it’s urgent.”

Mrs. Graham wanted no part of this arrangement. She said, “Dr. Philips. Miss Crawford will not accompany you. You may have Susan—under protest—but you must make certain she’s back in time to serve our luncheon.”

He glanced at me and then said, “Miss Crawford volunteered, I believe. I’ll have her back to you, no harm done, as soon as possible. Come along, there’s no time to waste.”

“Dr. Philips—” Mrs. Graham was indignant.

“It’s quite all right, Mrs. Graham. I have a duty to help. Forgive me, but I must go.” I could see the anger in her eyes. I’d disappointed her in some way, but there was nothing I could do about it now. “Dr. Philips?”

He touched his nonexistent hat to her, then took my arm and led me away, his strides twice the length of mine.

“I expect I’ve caused you no little trouble, Miss Crawford. But I’m rather desperate, and my patient comes first. I’ll do my best to smooth matters over for you.”

He was a tall man, prematurely graying, with dark eyes. A strong odor of pipe tobacco swirled in his wake as I tried to keep pace with him. We’d reached the house he’d just come from and were hurrying up the walk. “What’s the matter with your patient?”

As I spoke I looked back. Mrs. Graham was standing where we’d left her, staring after us. I turned away and followed Dr. Philips through the door of the house.

Dr. Philips was saying, “This is a man who suffers from shell shock. You don’t have any preconceived notions about that, do you? Cowardice, and all that? No? That’s good. He terrifies his poor wife, but there’s nothing she can do when he has one of his spells. I’ll give him an injection and he’ll calm down. But you’ll be there to see to it that he does himself no harm meanwhile.”

I had had some experience with shell shock. None of it the sort of thing I wanted to walk into the middle of, not knowing the circumstances.

“Who is in the house with this man—besides his wife?” I asked.

“No one at the moment, worst luck. It’s the housemaid’s day off, and she’s gone to Cranbrook to visit her sister.” We stepped into the cold entry, went through the inner doors, and turned down a passage on the left side of the stairs.

A harried young woman stepped out of the nearest room. She had been crying. She said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to do—I left him there, I couldn’t watch him any longer.”

“You did just the right thing, Mrs. Booker. Now run along to your mother’s house and let her take care of you. Miss Crawford and I will see to Ted.”

He was walking on as he spoke, opening the last door along the passage, pushing it wide for me to enter. It was a small back parlor where a man sat in a chair in front of the windows, a shotgun across his knees.

I stopped, surprised. I hadn’t expected to find him armed. Small wonder the man’s wife had been terrified.

“Come along, Ted,” Philips said in a strong voice. “You aren’t going to kill yourself here, in the house. Certainly not in front of this young woman. You don’t want to upset her, do you? Let me take the gun and give you something for the pain.”

From across the room Ted Booker stared at him, unaware who the doctor was. I could see the blankness in his eyes. Ignoring us, he went on talking to invisible companions, men he could see clearly and appeared to know well.

He was arguing, vehement and insistent and profane. It appeared that a sniper had already killed three of his men, and he was on the field telephone, asking someone to do something about it.

“I can give you his range, damn it.” His voice was ragged, close to the breaking point. “We can’t hold out much longer. I tell you, the Hun’s got us in his sights—”

He ducked then, swearing, and shouted, “Someone stop that bastard! No, not you, Harry—” There was a garbled exchange, as if he were struggling with another man, the shotgun jerking wildly in his grip. And then he cried out, screaming Harry’s name over and over again, springing to his feet and finally bending to someone lying there in front of him, pleading with the man not to die.

I said quietly to Dr. Philips, “Who is Harry?”

“His brother.”

Dear God, no wonder this poor soul was distraught!

The doctor tried again, but I could see he wasn’t getting anywhere asking the man to buck up and put the past behind him. Ted Booker was in a dark place no one else could reach. But there might be a way….

Ignoring the shotgun, I crossed the room to take Booker’s arm. “We must get him to the dressing station,” I told him urgently. “Hurry, he’s bleeding badly.”

He shook me off. “Harry, speak to me, for God’s sake, speak to me.”

“If you wait any longer, he’ll die.” I reached out and took the shotgun away as his hands flexed open, trying to help the wounded man. I put the weapon behind me, and Dr. Philips was there, I could feel his grip above mine, then he stepped back. I held on to Booker’s arm. “What rank was he? Do you know?” I asked Dr. Philips in a low voice.

“Er—lieutenant, I think.”

“Don’t stand there staring, Lieutenant Booker! Here, take his shoulders, I’ll get his feet.”

He seemed to rouse himself, looking up at me, then telling Harry it would be all right, there was help now.

And then between us, we lifted the wounded man I couldn’t see, and Booker started out the door and down the passage with him between us, urging me in his turn to hurry, hurry.

Confused as we entered the passage by the stairway, Booker hesitated.

I said, “That cot. Over there. Doctor! This case is critical.” We put Harry down at the foot of the stairs, with Dr. Philips hovering in the background.

“Well done, Lieutenant. Look, here’s someone to see to Harry now. Sit down over there—yes, out of the way.” I led him to a chair against the opposite wall, put out a hand, and Dr. Philips set the needle into my palm. “Here, you’re exhausted. You must be calm when you see him again. Let me give you this—” The needle went home, and Ted Booker started up. I thought for an instant he was going to strike me. “Steady, young man, or I’ll make you wait outside the tent,” I said harshly, the voice of Matron and not to be trifled with. “Now sit down and be quiet while we do our work.”

But he shook me off, still calling to Harry.

Dr. Philips came up, took his arm as I had done, and said, “Soldier, you’re in the way. I can’t work—sit down. See, you’re distressing the wounded man—”

I turned my head to stare at him—it didn’t sound like Dr. Philips’s normal voice at all. It sounded like a medical orderly giving orders. We had found ourselves swept up in Ted Booker’s nightmare, playing our roles to an invisible audience.

Booker, distraught, clung to him. “Harry—” he began.

“Harry’s in good hands. You mustn’t let your men down, you know. Good example and all that.”

We finally got through to Booker, and then he sat down on the floor and began to cry, holding his dead brother in his arms and rocking him like a child. It wouldn’t be long now before the injection took effect.

I said softly to Dr. Philips, “The shotgun. Get rid of it.”

He turned to do as I’d asked, and I bent over to touch Booker’s shoulder.

“Lieutenant. Come in here, out of the rain.”

Ted Booker got up, stumbling a little, and let me lead him toward the dining room.

Halfway there, he twisted free and went back, calling for Harry. But his words had already begun to slur, and it was just a matter of minutes before he was half conscious and easily led up the stairs to the nearest bedroom. We got him onto the bed, his shoes off, his collar loosened, and a blanket over him against the chill. By that time he was out, and snoring from the drug.

Dr. Philips said, “Thank you for your help. You must have done this before—you got through to him.”

I couldn’t tell him I’d never dealt with such a severe case before. Not alone. But I’d learned from Dr. Paterson not to interrupt whatever world the patient inhabited. It was easier to enter it, and use it to help.

“They’re accustomed to the sisters. They usually mind well enough.” I was suddenly very tired, a reaction to the tension we’d been under.

“One of these days, he’s going to do himself a harm. He thinks he got his brother killed. Most of the time he’s all right, but today something set him off. His wife sent the man next door to call me. He was as bad as I’ve ever seen him.”

“He’s in torment,” I said. “And it won’t go away. You can’t keep him drugged.”

“No. I’ll take the shotgun home with me and bury it in a closet. I should have thought of looking for a weapon before this, but truth is, I didn’t know it was even in the house until today.”

We sat down on the two chairs in the room, one by the window, and the other near the bed. Dr. Philips looked as tired as I felt.

“A long night?” I asked him.

He roused himself to answer. “A difficult delivery, and another biding its time. There’s no doctor in the next village. I work there as well, when I’m sent for. Where did you serve? France?”

“I was on Britannic.”

“Good God. That explains why you’re visiting the Grahams. Arthur Graham died on that ship.”

“Yes, I was there.”

“A putrid wound, from what I hear.”

“The doctors tried amputation, but the infection had advanced too far.”

“Yes, sadly, once it has got a grip, there’s not much hope. Arthur was a strong young man, but that seems to make little difference.”

“Did you know Arthur well?” I asked him.

“I came here just before his first leave. Dr. Hadley had died. From overwork, if you want my opinion. Another doctor I know suggested I take over his practice. Because of the need.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t at the Front.”

“Yes, well, I’m not fit enough to go. So they tell me. I have a heart condition.”

“And yet you’re working yourself into exhaustion. Because you feel guilty about not serving?”

He smiled. “You are to the point, aren’t you?”

“I was hoping to find someone who could tell me more about Arthur Graham. I took care of him when he was wounded, and I got to know him. So I believed then. I realize now how little that was.”

“Wrong person. Dr. Hadley, now, had been the family physician for most of Arthur’s life. He could have told you about measles and falls from a horse and whatever else you desired to know.”

I smiled. “I’ve met Jonathan and Timothy. But there’s another brother, isn’t there? I’m sure Arthur told me he had three brothers. I was reluctant to ask—he might be dead.”

“They don’t mention him. Apparently he did something rather dreadful and was sent away.”

“To prison?” I asked, taken aback.

“No. He’s in an asylum. If you came down on the train, you must have passed it on the road here.”

The house ablaze with light. “How awful for the family.”

“Peregrine is the eldest, a half brother to the younger three. A tragedy that we can’t cure minds.”

My father had told me that Ambrose Graham’s first wife had died in childbirth. Peregrine would have been her son, then.

“But what did he do?”

“He’s said to have killed someone. One of the old spinsters here in Owlhurst, Mrs. Clayton, told me all about the family skeleton. She said he strangled a girl in a moment of passion.” Disconcertingly, he grinned.

“Small wonder no one mentions Peregrine.”

“I have to take most of that with a grain of salt,” he added in apology. “By my calculations, Peregrine was hardly more than fourteen when it happened. Mrs. Clayton is a wonderful old gossip, I love her dearly, but she has a lively imagination, fed in part by senile dementia. Still, he was banished from Owlhurst at a young age, and in the dark of night, according to what I’ve gathered. Would you care for some tea? It’s the one thing I can manage, along with toast. If my cook left me, I’d starve to death.”

Ted Booker was deeply asleep. After making certain, we went down to the kitchen and Dr. Philips found the tea things, blew up the fire in the stove, and soon had the kettle on the boil. It was fairly decent tea, and I told him so.

Afterward, we went to sit with Ted Booker for another half hour, then Dr. Philips stood up, stretched his shoulders. “I’ll leave you here, shall I? Until I can find someone to replace you. He won’t be any trouble for several hours. He’ll be dry as a desert and have a thundering headache when he wakes up.” He took my hand. “Thank you for volunteering. I hope I haven’t upset any plans Mrs. Graham may have made for your entertainment. How long are you staying?”

“Just the weekend.”

He nodded. “Wretched beginning to your visit. But there you are.”

And he was gone, his footsteps echoing on the stairs. I looked out the window and saw he had the shotgun under his arm, broken open.

I went back to my chair and made myself as comfortable as I could, listening to Booker’s heavy breathing, thinking about his anguished obsession with his brother’s death.

And in the silence, I also considered what Dr. Philips had told me about Peregrine.

“A tragedy that we can’t cure minds…”

Arthur’s words came back to me then.

Tell Jonathan I lied. I did it for Mother’s sake. But it has to be set right.

What had to be set right? Had Arthur objected to his brother going to the asylum instead of prison but said nothing? Was that it? But if he’d gone to prison, surely he’d have been hanged. No, not that young—

I knew little about prisons, but enough to understand that an asylum might well be a better choice for a deranged man. Perhaps the authorities had tried to spare the family the nightmare of a trial and conviction by sending Peregrine to where he might—or might not—get the treatment he needed. At least there he was no longer a threat to anyone. He wouldn’t be the first nor the last to be put away in that fashion.

I shivered, remembering the lights in every room. Was a madhouse better than hanging?

Only Peregrine could answer that. If he understood at all what he’d done and what choices had been made for him.

And then it occurred to me that I’d worried about trouble with a girl—and in a way, perhaps my instincts had been right. But in a far different sense than I could ever have guessed.

Had the dead girl’s family been considered? Or had their wishes, their feelings, been swept away in the rush to protect Mrs. Graham and her children from scandal?

Belatedly, faced with his own death, had Arthur suddenly come to realize that they hadn’t been consulted, that they had been wronged? He would have wanted Jonathan to recognize that revelation as well. At the same time, he wouldn’t have wished for this to distress his mother—and he must have felt that he couldn’t confide the family skeletons to me. Or to paper.

If the girl had come from a poor family, what recourse had they had against the Grahams and their money or influence?

I found myself feeling a new respect for Arthur.

I’d been sitting in that same uncomfortable chair for another half hour, wrestling with my own thoughts, when the outer door opened and a voice called tentatively up the stairs, “Where are you?”

I stepped to the door and answered quietly, “Who is it?”

“I’m Sally Booker’s mother.”

“We’re in here. The bedroom nearest the stairs.”

She came up, heels clicking on the treads, a small, gray-haired woman with lines of worry on her face. “Is he all right?”

She peered in the room, then sighed. “I don’t know what’s to become of him. He was the most wonderful young man. I was so happy when Sally married him. And now look at him.”

“He can’t help it,” I said, in defense of Booker.

“Yes, I know that. It doesn’t matter, does it? He’ll never be the same, and Sally is at her wit’s end. I feel so deeply for both of them.”

“Are there any children?”

“Yes, a boy. He’s away at his cousin’s, thank God.”

She took a deep breath, then said, “I’m Marion Denton.”

“I’m Elizabeth Crawford. I’m here to visit the Grahams. And Dr. Philips commandeered me to help.”

“Yes, that’s what Dr. Philips told us when he looked in to let us know how Ted was faring. Thank you for your help. I don’t know how we would have managed. The doctor said it was easier with a woman here. That surprised me. Sally isn’t able to cope with Ted in these moods.”

“She’s his wife,” I said simply. “That’s harder.”

“True.”

Ted coughed, and then moaned a little in his sleep.

“He doesn’t rest at night, you know. That’s the roughest time for him.”

“He lost his brother, I understand.”

“They were twins. I’m told it’s harder with twins.”

She came in to take the chair that Dr. Philips had occupied, and we sat in companionable silence for a time. Then she said, “How did you come to know the Grahams? Are you a relation?”

“No, I was a nursing sister on Britannic, when Arthur was brought onboard. I was with him when he died.”

“I was fond of Arthur. A very nice boy, who grew into a very nice young man. Timothy and Jonathan seemed to collect trouble the way a dog collects burrs. They’re closer in age, of course, and what one couldn’t think of, the other could. Their father died when they were very young. It isn’t surprising they ran a little wild. Mrs. Graham’s cousin did what he could to manage them, but they were headstrong. Of course they turned out well enough, I must say. I thought for a time that Sally might choose Johnnie or Tim. I didn’t know Peregrine well. The family always claimed he was a little slow. A little different. But I never saw it myself. Still, his tutor despaired of him, and he must know better than I.”

She turned to stare at the man on the bed. “So was Ted a nice boy. I was that fond of him, and he was a good husband to Sally. Look at this house—he saw to it that she wanted for nothing. And now she can’t bear to come here, to him. She’s begged me to send him back to hospital, where they know what to do with his kind. Maybe it would be best after all if he used that shotgun. I don’t know what peace he’ll ever have.”

I was shocked. “He can’t help but relive his brother’s death. He feels the burden of responsibility. It’s not something one gets over easily.”

“But that’s the point, isn’t it? His brother is dead. It’s time to move on and live for his wife and son.”

“It’s not that easy—” I repeated, trying to make her see that his memories were beyond Ted Booker’s control. But she had no experience of war or any other horrendous event that shocks the mind, and her callousness was in defense of her daughter. I might as well have been talking to the wall.

She turned to me. “What’s not easy about remembering your family? The boy is afraid of him, and Sally’s told me that when she promised to love him in sickness and in health, there was nothing said about madness.”

“It isn’t madness. Shell shock is an affliction of the brain.”

“I call it madness, to sit in a dark room and talk to the dead and threaten to use that shotgun. I tried taking it away once, but he came raging over to my house and demanded it back. And I was afraid to say no.”

“It takes time.”

“No, it doesn’t. He needs to brace up, like a man, and say good-bye to his brother and remember he’s still alive, with a family looking to him for love.”

I lost my patience. “You weren’t in the trenches with him, Mrs. Denton. You don’t know what it’s like when one mistake kills dozens of men right in front of your eyes, where a simple lapse in concentration means you’re hanging on the wire, dying, and no one can bring you back without dying beside you. You don’t smell the dead with every breath and know that some of what’s nasty under your boots were your friends before they were blown to bits.”

She replied righteously, “Yes, that’s all very well, isn’t it? That’s in France, where such things happen. This is Kent, and he must learn the difference.”

It was useless. Instead of trying to persuade her, I suggested that she have a long talk with Dr. Philips to see what could be done to help Ted Booker cope.

“He doesn’t have any answers, except for the powders he gives Ted that make him like this—asleep and useless for hours at a time. How is he ever to earn a living and support a wife and child, I ask you!”

“Perhaps you and Sally ought to visit such a hospital yourselves, before deciding where your son-in-law belongs,” I suggested. I trained in one, and it was heart wrenching. But this woman could only see her daughter’s misery, and the anguish that drove Ted Booker into the past was as foreign to her as the monkey gods of India or the typhoons that killed thousands in the flat deltas below Calcutta.

The outer door opened, and Dr. Philips’s footsteps rang on the stairs. He came in, looked at the two of us sitting there in a huffy silence, and then crossed to the bed to examine Ted.

“Be careful he doesn’t choke,” he said. “He can’t fend for himself just now.”

“Yes, I’ll be careful.”

“Mrs. Graham is very upset with me. She wants you to come back to the house straightaway. ‘She’s a guest,’ she tells me. ‘And not here for your convenience.’”

“Surely you’ve found someone to sit for a while. He’s harmless, poor man, as he is.”

“Yes, I’ve found someone. But she’s nearly as frightened of Ted as his wife is. She needs the money, and so she’ll come.”

“What’s to become of him?”

“Back to hospital, I fear. Mrs. Denton here and her daughter have had enough. I can’t say that I blame them, but Booker is my patient, and I had hoped that in surroundings he knew from before the war, there was comfort.”

“What set him off this morning?”

It was Mrs. Denton who answered me. “It’s their birthday—his and his brother’s.”

I felt a wave of sadness. Poor man.

I went on, out of compassion, “I’ll sit with him a little longer, if you like.”

But the doctor answered with a shake of his head. “Mrs. Graham will nail my medical degree to the church door, if I leave you here a moment longer. Can you find your way back? Or do you need a guide?”

“No, I’ll be all right. Stay with your patient. Good-bye, Mrs. Denton. I hope that all will be well with your daughter’s marriage before very long.”

She thanked me, and I went down the stairs and into the street. The wind was at my back as I walked, and I looked at the houses on either side of the Bookers’. Arthur had told me that this was once iron-making country, and so it had prospered. But the trees that fed the furnaces had gone long ago, and now it was pasturage for sheep and fields of corn and hops that kept the villages flourishing.

I found myself thinking that the Grahams had secrets as painful as Ted Booker’s. It wasn’t surprising now that Arthur hadn’t told me about his brother. He’d have had to explain too much, and so it was easier to say nothing. Had Arthur and Peregrine been close as children? They were nearest in age. How had Mrs. Graham managed to tell her remaining sons why Peregrine was being sent away? Surely not the truth, not until they were older. I understood now my feeling when I met her, the feeling that she carried a heavy burden.

The church door was open as I came by, and for a moment I stepped inside out of the wind, not quite ready to return to the Graham house. I stood in the nave and looked up at the stained-glass windows, shining in the bright sun, before walking a little way down the aisle. I didn’t want to go as far as Arthur’s memorial. I just needed the silence here, to wipe away the stress of dealing with Ted Booker and then listening to his mother-in-law wish him dead. She didn’t know how near she’d come this time to getting her wish.

Someone was moving over my head, the sound of a bench being dragged across the wooden floor, the rustle of papers, and I realized that whoever it was must be in the organ loft. Then, without warning, the stone walls filled up with the raw scrape of a saw biting into wood. It was so unexpected that I walked down the aisle and looked up at the loft. All I could see was a man bent over something, and then as the sawing stopped, hammering began. As he stood up, I could see his clerical collar and shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. He was looking down at his handiwork as if satisfied, and then he gathered up his tools, and moved toward the stairs. I strode quietly up the aisle and was out the door before he could encounter me in the nave.