this event had neither a before nor an after and existed in his mind merely as a snapshot , and though when his brother henry died from pneumonia he and his mother had already separated from the family , he overheard her speaking about the boys death and later wondered if pneumonia had actually been the case or if he too had undergone a covering with black flesh and that perhaps something had gone wrong and that during that covering he had contracted a sickness and had died as a cause of it ; in any case , the fact that his brothers children had died at a young age too , coincidental as it may have been , at least suggested a possible nefarious cause , and though windsor knew not what this cause might be , the combined reasoning of his earliest memory and zacharys judgment concerning donald and charlesscmrstatus led him to believe that before parting this world the necessity had arisen to ascertain the nature of his familys intentions .