“The Rose,” I said when Duke revealed the cover. “By W. B. Yeats.”
“Charlie wanted to be a poet. He thought he’d be a poet-soldier, like Siegfried Sassoon.” Duke glanced at me then back down at the pages. “He wrote poetry and love letters to another officer. I hope I haven’t shocked you.”
I smiled at him. “That’s not shocking where I’m from.”
“Where are you from?”
“The future,” I said. He opened his mouth to ask a question and I raised my hand. “And no, I can’t tell you about it.”
He smiled, then turned a page in the Yeats book.
“Mother had all his papers burned when he died. A maid stole this from the bonfire for me.”
“Did she think you might catch typhus from them?”
He thought about that question a moment before answering.
“Truly, I think she burned his poetry for the same reason everyone who burns books does—because it’s less trouble than burning the people who wrote them.”
He opened a page marked with a scarlet ribbon and read aloud:
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep…
“Keep going,” I begged.
Duke cleared his throat. “Better not. Let’s see…what else have we here? Oh, yes, Eddie’s toy horse.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, marveling at the intricate metalwork. It had tiny wheels on the hooves so a child could pull it on a string behind them.
Koshka stood on his back legs and lightly batted at the horse.
“No, buddy, be careful,” I said. “That’s not—”
“Let him play with it.” Duke pushed it toward Koshka. “Eddie lovedanimals. He was always sneaking food to the cats in the stables. Father would catch him and whip him for it, telling him the cats wouldn’t hunt mice if they weren’t hungry. But Eddie didn’t care. He’d do it again the very next day.”
Koshka sniffed the horse, then batted at it again, then again, until he pushed the toy to the edge of the table.
I caught it as it fell and gave it back to Duke.
“Is my writer still alive, by any chance?” he asked me.
“Dead since 1969.”
“Pity,” Duke said. “I would’ve liked to have had a word with him. Was it really necessary to killallof my brothers off?”
“Fictional detectives tend to have tragic backstories that make them obsessed with saving other people. Since you couldn’t save your brothers, you try to save everyone else.”
“I still say I’m owed compensation. A beautiful girl madly in love with me, at least,” he said, as he wrapped the horse in its linen shroud and placed it back into the hatbox.
“If they’re only characters in a book,” Duke asked, “why do I love them so bloody much?”
“You can love fictional characters. At times, it’s almost easier to love them than to love real people.”
