Jenny called from the house, saving Walter from having to answer his brother.

"Yes, coming," he replied, and then to his brother he said, "I'll just put these candles out. Why don't you go on up to bed? You aren't going to find any peace until you do."

Peter reached for his cane and struggled to his feet. Walter caught one of the chairs he'd been using as it almost tipped over. Peter swore at his own clumsiness. Leaning heavily on his cane, he made his way across the lawn toward the house. And halfway there, he turned and said to his brother, "Things will look better tomorrow."

Walter nodded, then set about reaching into the colorful paper cages and pinching out the flame of each candle. As he came to the last of them, he stopped.

It was too bad, he thought, that life couldn't be snuffed out as easily as a candle flame.

Could a man will himself to die? He'd seen it happen more than once in West Africa but never really believed in it.

Now he wished he could.

His sister, Leticia, would call that arrant nonsense. After all, he didn't suffer in the same way that his brothers did. Not physical pain.

He could have borne that.

It was not knowing what to do that haunted him.

Chapter 3

London, Late May, 1920

Before leaving the next morning to give evidence in a court case in Sheffield, Ian Rutledge had taken his sister, Frances, to dine at a new and popular restaurant. There they encountered friends just arriving as well and on the point of being shown to a table. They were invited to join the other party, and as new arrangements were made, Rutledge made certain that his own chair remained at what had become the head of a larger table. His claustrophobia after being buried alive when a shell blew up his salient in 1916 had never faded.