A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd

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 wifeis 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