The Croaking Raven

by Gladys Mitchell

  “But they didn’t have it at hand. The doctor left more than two hours before Tom Dysey was killed.”

  “I know. It is all very puzzling. So is the inference that neither Bonamy nor Henry was born at the castle. It was clear, I thought, that Doctor Binns’s father was present at neither birth. I find that extremely odd.”

  “I don’t. They’d have been born in a nursing home, of course.”

  “Oh, yes, very likely. Of course, one might possibly assume, bearing in mind the two deaths and the story of the Ravens’ Hoard—but, no, it is all very puzzling.”

  Laura stared hard at her employer.

  “Meaning that you are not in the least puzzled, and that you know who the murderer is,” she said. “Well, I don’t know what you think, but Cyril Dysey comes pretty high on my list. If Bonamy is dead, Cyril scoops the pool.”

  “Then there is Henry, of course.”

  “But he’d have to kill Cyril and (if he’s still alive) Bonamy, if he wants to inherit. Even then, if he’s illegitimate, his chance is a slender one, I should have thought. Wouldn’t young Carter have a claim if his father is descended from a Dysey?”

  “Yes, I think he would, but the murderer may not realise that. Let us continue to assemble and inspect what more we have gathered which may help us to a just and final conclusion.”

  “Well, I don’t know what it indicates, except bad manners on their part, but there was that business of the two girls making themselves scarce as soon as they could after dinner. I wonder at what time they got back after seeing Henry and young Carter?”

  “It might be very interesting to know.”

  “Especially if Henry is the murderer. Couldn’t he have escorted them back to the castle and then lurked about until he got Tom on to the battlements, or up on that gallery in the keep?”

  “It is not impossible.”

  “Meaning you don’t think it’s very likely. Of course, the snag about fixing on Henry as the murderer is the utter unlikelihood that Tom would be making secret assignations with him at midnight. It really seems a very far-fetched idea, that.”

  “There are the cricketing flannels to be accounted for, too.”

  “Yes, the ghost theory seems a bit thin, when one really thinks it over. Playing practical jokes of that sort is a boy’s or a young man’s idea of being funny. It wouldn’t normally appeal to anybody as old as Tom Dysey. I mean, he must have been at least in his early, middle, or late fifties, if Eustace and Cyril were his younger brothers.”

  “Very true. What other conclusions have you arrived at?”

  “None, so far as I know. Of course, there’s that peculiar woman who pinched the pound note from the battlements and left the change, but I should simply call her a bit deranged.”

  “Deranged or not, she seems to be Henry Dysey’s mother and calls herself Henrietta Dysey. She may be determined to eliminate all those who stand between Henry and what, no doubt, she may consider his right to the Dysey property.”

  “Then she must believe that Bonamy Dysey is dead.”

  “Or disinherited. I have paid insufficient attention, so far, to the family archives, but one thing seems to be certain. The property has never been entailed.”

  “But that means it could be left to simply anybody. It needn’t go to a member of the family at all.”

  “That is true, but only to a limited extent. The family, if the estates were willed away from them, would have a strong case, I fancy, if the matter were taken before the courts.”

  “But if Mrs. Dysey is as poor as people seem to think, she couldn’t afford to go to law, could she?”

  “You have a point there, no doubt. What did you think of the story of the Jesuit treasure?”

  “Not much. If ever there was such a thing as the Ravens’ Hoard, I should say that it disappeared long ago.”

  “Yet the Dysey estates, in themselves, are almost worthless.”

  “All the more reason why Mrs. Dysey shouldn’t bother to go to law about them, if they have been left outside the family. What about my popping up to Somerset House and taking a gander at Tom Dysey’s will?”

  “It is too soon for that.”

  “I say, I suppose this Henrietta Slepe woman really is Henry’s mother? If she is, why didn’t Cyril marry her instead of his housekeeper? Then she could at least have helped to bring Henry up and look after him.”

  “Perhaps, as you suggest, she is not Henry’s mother, or perhaps Cyril Dysey preferred the housekeeper, dear child.”

  “Yes, perhaps, although she seems to be a bit of a doormat, I thought. Hardly the honoured mistress of the chalet, would you say?”

  “The doormat wife is not unknown, even when the contracting parties are of equal birth. However, no matter who brought Henry up, he appears to have outgrown his youthful jealousies and passions, and to be a notably good-natured and equable young man.”

  “Unless he is our murderer.”

  “Unless, as you say, he is our murderer.”

  “Well, he did climb to the battlements in that suspicious and unnecessary way when Gavin spotted him that time. Although I can see you’re trying to put me off, I still think he’s a pretty hot suspect, you know.”

  “Oh, I shall not leave him out of my calculations,” said Dame Beatrice, “particularly if he proves to be younger than Bonamy.”

  “I can’t see what that has to to with it. Anyway, if Mrs. Wick is right, he did let down the younger of those two nieces when she was only sixteen.”

  “Yes, Henry was the obvious choice for a scapegoat there.”

  “I did just wonder the same thing myself. With girls as silly as those two, it could have been anybody, you mean. All right, we’ll acquit Henry of that, for the time being—or, at any rate, keep an open mind about it.”

  “We can put it completely out of our minds for all time, I think,” said Dame Beatrice. “However reprehensible it may have been in itself—and public opinion, I notice (unlike my own), becomes more and more uncertain on the point—it can have no conceivable bearing on the subject at issue.”

  “A Freudian, unconscious selection of words germane to the said subject, or a series of regrettable puns?” Laura enquired. “Never mind. Let it go. In your case, I take leave to doubt whether it was either, so, passing lightly on, as they say, suppose you do the next bit of our précis. Personally, I never could see the use or purpose of that particular exercise. Précis-writing, I mean. One assumes that people say what they have to say in the requisite number of words. If they are unnecessarily verbose, why should perfect strangers, probably no better at English, have to correct them? Anyway, ignoring all that—which, no doubt, you have done—you seem to have changed your mind about Henry Dysey. After the doctor and his wife had gone from here, you said, speaking of Henry and his childhood hatred of Bonamy, that the child was father of the man, but now you seem to be completely white-washing the lad.”

  “I have had time to think things over,” Dame Beatrice meekly replied. Laura snorted, and was about to return to the attack when Dame Beatrice added, “And you yourself, I seem to remember, corrected me by remarking that all young children tend to resent the presence of a new baby in the house. This is largely true, and I accepted your rebuke with all proper humility.”

  “One thing,” said Laura, “that knocks on the head a previous theory that Henry brought those girls back that night from the home farm, is awful Gina’s report that it was young Carter who escorted them. The only thing is that I don’t believe her. That was an obvious lie she told when she said there was no pre-arrangement that Henry would be at the home farm while the dinner-party was on. Why should he have been there if it wasn’t prearranged? Personally, I don’t believe it was to the home farm they went, but to the chalet.”

  “I might agree with you but for the fact that the chalet is a long way from the castle, and a very rough walk after dark, and also nobody could be sure that Cyril Dysey would not come home.”

  “Yes, but I thought it was definit
e that he spent the night at the castle. Well, I take it that’s about as far as we can get with our summing-up until we hear what Cyril and Henry have to say. I must say that, so far, I find it discouraging to think how little we’ve managed to find out.”

  Dame Beatrice took up another volume and looked at the title.

  “Why do you suppose the Reverend H. R. Haweis—surely a most unusual name?—author of Music and Morals, Travel and Talk, etc., chose to call his volume of sermons The Dead Pulpit?” she asked.

  “Goodness knows. Foreseeing the readers’ comments, perhaps.” Laura pushed aside her letter and came over to the book-shelves. “I should think the Dyseys must have had shares in Bliss, Sands,” she observed, scanning the shelf which was engaging her employer’s attention. “What about this for a bromide—A Tale of the Thames. A Novel. It’s by J. Ashby-Sterry, author of A Naughty Girl, The Lazy Minstrel, etc. etc. A busy man, J. Ashby-Sterry. Do you suppose the book can be slightly improper? It was published at six shillings, a whale of a price, I should have thought, in 1890 or thereabouts. Look here, I’ll rummage, shall I, while you get down to the family archives? What am I looking for—a will disinheriting Cyril?”

  “That would be too much to expect, and, except for the fact that testamentary depositions are almost invariably interesting, it would also be of little use in furthering our present enquiry. Family memoirs or old letters referring to the Ravens’ Hoard are what I hope to light upon, apart from any references to the priest’s hole.”

  “But that wouldn’t advance the enquiry either, would it?—reading about the Ravens’ Hoard, I mean?”

  “It might explain why Eustace Dysey kept vigil here, don’t you think? He must have had some good reason for affecting to visit Eastbourne while, all the time, he was in residence at the castle.”

  “It might help to explain his death, too, perhaps. You don’t think he’d discovered the Hoard, do you?—and that the murderer knew that he had? If so, that seems to bring it back to Cyril.”

  Dame Beatrice did not respond to these remarks. She seated herself at the table, put Laura’s unfinished letter aside, and settled down with the one attempt at authorship upon which the Dysey family appeared to have embarked. There was silence in the library for the next half hour or so, except for some sotto voce observations from Laura as she took out, inspected, and replaced books, and an occasional slight sound as Dame Beatrice turned a page of the Dysey memoirs.

  These dated from 1746 and ignored the general course of English history except for a reference to the extinction of Stuart hopes in the failure of the second Jacobite rebellion…“I hear the Earl of Kellie is kept in Edinburgh Castle. I met him once, I believe, at Mr. Dickson’s, but thought him not much in either fortune or understanding”…and, in 1762, in feebler penmanship and very difficult to decipher:

  Tom Jenkins is come home from the wars without his right leg which he lost at Dettingen against the French. He will expect some employment from me. They say a Naval Officer, a clergyman’s son, has turned highwayman and is to be lodged in Newgate. I am to have the company of Brother Tom and Sister Jane this Christmas, but I doubt of the meeting being a happy one, as Tom is plagued with the Itch, which is as much a Disease with him as the Scurvy. However, he shall hear nothing from me to his Advantage. Upon that I am resolved.

  Dame Beatrice re-read this entry and then addressed herself to Laura.

  “Come and tell me what you make of this,” she said, showing her the paragraph.

  “Sounds a bit like Cassius’s itching palm. Do you suppose it can possibly be a reference to the Hoard?” Laura enquired. “Worth reading on a bit, don’t you think?”

  Dame Beatrice read on, pursuing her studies with extreme diligence but to no helpful end. The Christmas Day entry ran:

  A great deal of rain fell all day and we was confined to the house. Tom, after family Dinner which we took at three o’clock, proposed Hide and Seek, which he said his little Boy would enjoy. The child being entered only into his 3. Year, I said I was doubtful of it, so we got to Loo, at which I won 0.3.0. Being disagreeably inclined at losing and also, I believe, very uneasy on account of his Suspicions I know where it lies and am in mind to keep him from it, Tom spoke severely to the Child and beat him on the ear, which caused an Upset with Sister Jane. Found myself very low for the rest of the Afternoon and glad to sup and get to my bed.

  “Well, it sounds as though the Ravens’ Hoard was thought to be in existence in 1762,” said Laura. “Does he have any more to say about it?”

  “No. He seems to have died in the following year. The next entry is in a slightly different hand. It reads:

  Buried poor Henry. Susan gave us a good plain dinner and after it a bowl of warm negus, then to bed. Young Bonamy sad and silent. I rallied him on being a bad member of society, to which he replied that he should not so much care for that as for dropping asps in their own venom to know whether they died or thrived of it. I lamented to his mother that I did not understand him, but supposed him to be suffering from the loss of his father, to which she replied that he was confused and thrown loose for love of him and knew not what he said.

  The Ravens’ Hoard is not mentioned.”

  “It doesn’t help much,” said Laura, “except that there’s a smack of Hamlet about it.”

  “Or, of course, a smack of Hamlet’s uncle. Can poor Henry have been murdered by the asp, do you suppose? It is interesting how family baptismal names persist.”

  “Perhaps murder, like red hair and green fingers, runs in families, too,” said Laura. “That’s what it looks like, anyway.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Cyril Departs in Haste

  “ ‘O when will ye come hame again?

  Dear Willie, tell to me!’

  ‘When the sun and moon dance on yon green:

  And that will never be!’ ”

  The Twa Brothers

  Following the discovery of Eustace Dysey’s body, Laura had given up her daily swim in the Dysey lake. She would have found it difficult to give a reason for this, had she been asked for one, but Dame Beatrice put no questions.

  Finding that the light from an oil lamp was insufficient to make further perusal of the Dysey diaries anything but a strain on the eyes, she and Laura gave up their researches into the possible hiding-place of the Ravens’ Hoard and went to bed even earlier than usual that night, so that, before dawn on the following morning, Laura was wide awake and restless for action.

  She got up and prowled round the house, stood on the trap-door which opened the way to the priest’s hole, and scowled in the half-light, and in a frustrated manner, at the aperture which she could not enter. Then she decided to walk over to the home farm, where she could at least look at the pigs and perhaps bring back some eggs. There was almost always somebody about with whom she could pass the time of day—Jerry, his father, his wife, or his mother, but more often she merely found Bellairs sluicing himself under the pump preparatory to setting out for the castle to commence his duties. It was Bellairs she met on this occasion, and when he had finished his ablutions they walked back to the castle together.

  “Bellairs,” said Laura, on impulse, her mind being full of the matter, “have you ever heard of the Ravens’ Hoard?”

  “Oh, that old matter!” said the gardener contemptuously.

  “You have, then?”

  “Everybody that know of the Dyseys have heard tell of the Ravens’ Hoard, Mrs. Gavin, mam, but that be nowt but an old wives’ tale, I reckon.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is, but there must have been something of the kind once upon a time, otherwise there would be no mention of it.”

  “I hear the inquest on poor Mr. Eustace is put off while they police does a bit more ferretin’ round,” said Bellairs, pursuing what was to him a more interesting theme.

  “It’s the usual thing in a case of murder, unless the coroner’s jury actually name the murderer,” said Laura.

  “Ar.”

  They walked
on in silence until Laura said,

  “Why don’t you want to talk about the Ravens’ Hoard?”

  “Me, Mrs. Gavin, mam?”

  “Yes. You changed the subject pretty quickly, I noticed.”

  “I thought we’d done with en.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that Mr. Eustace may have been on the track of it when somebody killed him?”

  “Why, no, that it never! Be more like summat on the pictures or in a book, like. Don’t you worrit yourself about that old ’Oard. If there ever was such a thing, I reckon it was found out and spent many a long year afore this.”

  “I suppose so, yes.” They walked on in silence again. Then Laura asked, “Did you know Bonamy Dysey, the son who died?”

  “Ar. I reckon it was on’y put about as he died, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Arst me, that did ought to ’ave wented be’ind bars, and then was shipped abroad, the way ’e wouldn’t bring no more disgrace on the family.”

  “I heard he went abroad, but…”

  “He never went abroad not near so soon as Mrs. Dysey like to make out. That be my opinion, any road. And I don’t come to reckon as he be dead, neether.”

  “Have you anything to go on?”

  But the gardener wagged his head and drew her attention to a robin which showed signs of accompanying them on their way.

  “Tamest liddle old birds in the whole wide world,” he said approvingly. “Christian birds, they liddle robins be.”

  Laura perceived that both topics of conversation she had introduced would have to be shelved, if only for a time. However, the second of them had given her food for thought. She recounted the gardener’s remarks to Dame Beatrice.

  “This widely-held opinion that Bonamy is still alive,” she said, “makes nonsense of the theory that somebody has knocked off Tom and Eustace so as to inherit the property. The only person, other than Bonamy, who seems to be in line for the inheritance is Cyril. If Cyril believes that Bonamy is dead, well, that’s that, and he remains chief suspect. But some of this stuff flying about that Bonamy is still alive must surely have reached Cyril, so, unless he’s reaching for his little meat-axe against the time Bonamy comes home and stakes his claim, well, I’d be inclined to say ‘Pass, Cyril. All’s well.’ ”