The Croaking Raven

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I see your point.”

  “There remains Henry, of course. I can’t see why on earth he should want to murder Eustace (unless Eustace had the goods on him for killing Tom—yes, that must be it!) but it seems to me he had a double motive for murdering his father. After all, Tom had turned him out of the house and, although a by-blow, he was Tom’s son.”

  “He may not remember the one or be aware of the other, you know.”

  “That’s true enough, of course. All the same, he’s not at all sure whether Cyril is his father or his uncle. How are you going to start the ball rolling?”

  “By sending George over to the chalet with a note.”

  “He’ll hate walking all that way. Besides, how is he to get across the river?”

  “He will not have so very far to walk. I presume that tradesmen call at the chalet. There must be a road to it, and on the same side of the river.”

  The note was despatched, and George, who had been told to wait for an answer, returned at the end of an hour and ten minutes with the news that Henry Dysey had gone off to the races and was not expected back until the late evening, but that Cyril would come to the castle immediately after lunch. He arrived at a quarter to three to find Dame Beatrice at the receipt of custom in the gatehouse entry, and that there was an empty chair beside the one she was occupying. Laura was showing a party of Wednesday visitors over the house. The police had lifted their embargo, and sightseers were flocking in to look with ghoulish reverence at a place stricken twice within three years by violent death.

  “I assume,” he said, taking the seat she offered him, and placing his hat and walking-stick on the table which held the pudding-basin and Gavin’s last consignment of sketches, “that there is a reason for your having asked me to come over.”

  “A good reason, I think,” Dame Beatrice replied. “I have been reading, not without difficulty, the journal of one Christopher Dysey, who appears to have been resident in the castle in the mid-eighteenth century.”

  “Old Kit? Oh, yes, he is said to walk.”

  “Interesting. He mentions something which he calls the Ravens’ Hoard.”

  “They say he is always trying to contact somebody to whom he can explain where the treasure is hidden.”

  “There is, or was, such a treasure, then?”

  “There doesn’t seem any doubt about that, but my belief is that it was either stolen or dissipated years ago. Tom and Eustace and I used to spend hours, as boys, looking for it, but we had no luck, needless to say. Did you bring me over here just to talk about it?”

  “Not altogether. I wondered whether perhaps that is what your brother Eustace was looking for when he met his death.”

  “It’s quite likely. Eustace was always the romantic one of the family. But even if he was snooping around, it doesn’t bring us any nearer to finding out who killed him, and what the reason was, does it?”

  “No, it does not. What I really want from you, if you will be good enough, is a detailed description of the evening you spent here before your brother Thomas died.”

  “Oh, you think the deaths of Thomas and Eustace were connected, do you?”

  “What else is there to think?”

  “Coincidences do happen. Anyway—I don’t mean to be offensive, mind you—what business is it of yours?”

  “Two unexplained deaths on premises of which I am temporarily the tenant may be held to make it my business to enquire into the circumstances of those deaths, it seems to me.”

  “Oh, well, if you think so, although I should have thought the police would have all that sort of thing in hand. Well, what do you want me to tell you?”

  “First, whether there was any particular reason why Mr. Henry Dysey was not invited to the dinner-party.”

  “He was invited. He turned down the invitation, that’s all.”

  “Why did he do that, I wonder?”

  “He couldn’t stand Etta, he had it in for Tom, and he found out that those silly girls Gina and Peggy Wick had been asked to come.”

  “You say ‘he had it in for Tom.’ Was there any good reason for that?”

  “He discovered—how, I don’t know, for I certainly never told him—that Tom had kicked him out when he was three years old. I suppose Etta gave him the information. She’s spiteful enough.”

  “I have heard something of this. At the age of three he became your adopted son.”

  “Nothing legal, you understand.”

  “How long ago was it that Henry decided you were not his father? Since when has he taken to referring to you as his uncle?”

  “Oh, since he was about twelve, I think.”

  “As long ago as that?”

  “Oh, yes, quite as long ago as that.”

  “And if it was Mrs. Dysey who gave him this information, which of them was it she intended to upset—Henry or your brother Thomas?”

  “Heaven knows! You never know what Etta’s intentions are, except to create mischief. She’s the most god-forsaken woman I know. Actuated by nothing but malice—that’s Etta.”

  “Did Henry and her son Bonamy have much to do with one another after you and Henry left the castle and went to live in the chalet?”

  “We didn’t go to live in the chalet straight away, you know. We lodged at the home farm until Henry was twenty-two. If Henry had to do with any other boy, except the boys at school and college, it was with young Jerry Carter. He was never invited to the castle until after Bonamy got into trouble and had to be shipped abroad out of harm’s way.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Embezzlement.”

  “Dear me!”

  “Tom paid up before proceedings could be taken. Beggared himself, I’ve no doubt. Bonamy had got away with a few thousands, I believe. It was then Tom sold me the land and I built the chalet.”

  “And where is Bonamy Dysey now?”

  “Under six feet of tropical soil, I hope.”

  “Oh, I see. Why, then, does Mrs. Dysey let the castle and go to France for three months every year?”

  Cyril Dysey got up, retrieved his hat and stick, stuck the one on his head and thumped the ferrule of the other hard down on to the paved courtyard, as he said,

  “How should I know? Needs the rent, I suppose. And how do you know she goes to France? Much more likely to go and tuck herself away in some seedy little boarding-house in the south of England. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to.”

  “You haven’t told me anything about the dinner-party,” Dame Beatrice pointed out.

  “Find out for yourself! I’ve nothing to say about that. It was a fiasco, that’s all,” said Cyril, in his most boorish tone.

  “I had hoped you might be able to tell me something which might help Mr. Henry Dysey.”

  Cyril stared at her.

  “Help Henry? What do you mean?”

  “Well, he seems to be the only person with the faintest shadow of a motive for killing Tom Dysey, does he not?”

  The veins in Cyril’s neck began to swell. He looked as though he was about to speak, but after opening and closing his mouth once or twice, he gave a vicious snort, smashed the ferrule of his stick on to the paving again and then, pushing his hat to one side of his head, he tramped away. Dame Beatrice gazed benignly after him until she lost sight of him over the crest of the hill.

  “Well! What was that in aid of?” asked Laura, who had dismissed the visitors to look at the fortifications for themselves, and so had witnessed Cyril Dysey’s angry departure. “You seem to have upset him a bit, don’t you?”

  “True,” replied Dame Beatrice. “He departed in haste, but I venture to think that he will return at leisure, when he has had time to reconsider his attitude.”

  “What can you have said to him?”

  “Nothing that he has not thought of for himself. Besides, I have as good as accused Henry of murdering Thomas.”

  “Pitching it strong, what? And I thought you didn’t believe it, anyway.”

  “Wheth
er I believe it or not, there is no doubt about what Mr. Cyril thinks. Besides, until the very end of our conversation, he was so unlike himself that I could not help wondering what he was hiding.”

  “Unlike himself?”

  “Yes, indeed. He was smooth, polite, co-operative and, I think, untruthful. He avers, for example, that he and Henry lodged with the Carters at the home farm until Henry was grown-up. At about that time Bonamy got into this trouble (here he reverted to the truth, I think) and was sent out of the country after his father had settled his debts. Cyril, coming to the rescue financially, purchased from Thomas the land on which the chalet is erected—at least, that is what he says.”

  “What do you think did happen, then?”

  “I think they may have lodged at the home of the present Mrs. Cyril.”

  “Did he tell you anything about the dinner-party?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose there’s anything more to tell.”

  “Time will show that. I descry more visitors. What a pity Hamish is not here! His enthusiasm and his services were invaluable on these tiresome occasions. I wish we could find out whether Henry or Bonamy is the older.”

  “Ask the oldest inhabitant,” said Laura.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  And Returns at Leisure

  “Saies, ‘God you save, my deere madam,’

  Saies, ‘God you save and see!’—

  Said, ‘You be welcome, Kyng Estmere,

  Right welcome unto mee.’ ”

  King Estmere

  Cyril Dysey returned to the castle two days later. He came at once to the point of his visit.

  “You asked me about that dinner, the night that Tom died,” he said. Dame Beatrice, who had been busy with the castle archives, put away the book which she had been studying and greeted him in matter-of-fact tones.

  “So here you are,” she said. “Yes, I should like to have your account of what happened that night. So far, I have had descriptions of it from the vicar, the doctor, their wives, and Miss Gina Wick. I doubt whether there is much more for me to learn about the dinner-party itself, but there are one or two questions I should like to put to you. Do, please, sit down.”

  “Fire away,” grunted Cyril, seating himself.

  “Thank you. First, then, can you tell me at what hour you left the castle that night? I understand from the doctor and the vicar that their visit terminated at about a quarter to ten. When did you go home?”

  “When did I go home? Well, I didn’t, you know. Stayed the night. Was on the spot when that fool Bellairs found Tom’s body.”

  “I see. So you cannot give Mr. Henry an alibi for the hours immediately preceding midnight.”

  “What’s he want with an alibi? Look here, I’m sorry I flew off the handle the last time I came, but what are you getting at about Henry?”

  “I am attempting to clear away some dead wood.”

  “I don’t understand you. Henry wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “As a small child, he seems to have contrived to hurt his half-brother Bonamy more than a little. Doctor Binns says that he treated the child Bonamy’s injuries.”

  “Well, so he did, but they weren’t caused by Henry.”

  “Doctor Binns seemed to doubt that, too.”

  “Well, of course! Binns, fool though he is, knows the difference between injuries inflicted by one small boy on another and injuries handed out to a child by an adult.”

  “You astound me!”

  “Besides, Bonamy was three years older than Henry. A child of three can’t overcome a much bigger and heavier child of six. I won’t have Henry accused of something he didn’t do! It was a good thing for Henry when I took him away from here. Tom was always pitching into the child, although nothing to compare with Bonamy’s injuries.”

  “At least, then, Mr. Thomas had no favourites, if what you tell me is true.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t Tom who knocked Bonamy about. But that’s ancient history. What I really came for was to ask you whether Etta specifically accuses Henry of these murders.”

  “She has not accused him to me.”

  “Why should he be suspected, anyway?”

  “Before I reply to that question—although I think you know the answer just as well as I do—allow me to ask you another. You are now, I take it, the heir to the castle and the estates.”

  “As I’ve told you before, I don’t want either.”

  “Are they willed to you?”

  “No, they are not, if you want to know. Tom willed them to Bonamy.”

  “Then Bonamy is still alive?”

  “Why else do you suppose Etta goes bouncing over to France every summer?”

  “You seem to have reconsidered some previous opinions. Does Mr. Henry know that his half-brother is the heir?”

  “Goodness knows! We’ve never mentioned it, so far as I remember. Henry will have whatever I leave. He wouldn’t expect anything more.”

  “If Bonamy is alive, why did Mrs. Dysey have a memorial tablet put up to him in the church?”

  “Guess for yourself. Fool women do damn-fool things.”

  “You told me that Bonamy was sent abroad by his parents because he was involved in some scandal.”

  “Embezzled his firm’s money, the young ass.”

  “I also understand that the loss was made good before police action was involved.”

  “Right again. But Tom beggared himself and Etta, and never forgave the little forger. Kicked him out and told him never to come back.”

  “But made him his heir, all the same. Tell me, now that his father is dead, does not his mother wish to have him with her?”

  “Well, she didn’t, but now, I’m inclined to think, that’s all arranged. He’s coming home as soon as the police have arrested Eustace’s murderer.”

  “Why must his home-coming wait upon that?”

  “Etta thinks that whoever did for Tom and Eustace may do for Bonamy, too.”

  “Considering that you claim to dislike her so much, you seem in rather close touch with her and her opinions. Does she suspect Mr. Henry of the murders?”

  “No. She suspects me!” said Cyril Dysey, laughing for almost the first time since Dame Beatrice had known him. “Oh, she’s got it all cut and dried. She came over to the chalet a week ago, and told me all about it. She thinks, you see, that I intend Henry shall inherit, and that I’ll go to any lengths to get every other possible claimant out of the way.”

  “But, if the estates are willed to Bonamy, then, even if Bonamy were killed, the property would not necessarily come to you, would it, unless Bonamy has willed it to you? I understand that it is not entailed.”

  “Oh, Etta wouldn’t think as far as that. Women don’t, you know, not on the whole. A lot of Mrs. Bennetts when it comes to the law, that’s what women are.”

  “Present company excepted, I hope,” said Laura, from an obscure corner of the room. Cyril chuckled.

  “Do you remember inviting Laura, her husband, her son, and myself to lunch, soon after we came here?” asked Dame Beatrice. “The dinner-party was mentioned then, I believe, but I cannot recollect that you referred to Bonamy Dysey except obliquely. You also led me to understand that Mr. Henry was illegitimate, but that he was Mrs. Dysey’s child.”

  “Ah, well, it doesn’t do to give everything away to strangers, does it?”

  “Did your elder brother make no provision at all for his natural son?”

  “No. I took Henry over, lock, stock, and barrel, and it was understood that Tom renounced all rights in him. Anyway, with what it cost to cover up for young Bonamy, there wouldn’t have been anything left for anybody else, you see.”

  “You also indicated that there were, in your expression, ‘high jinks’ at that dinner-party. Nobody else has mentioned anything of the sort—rather the reverse, in fact.”

  “Oh, well!” Cyril waved his hand. “I remember telling you who were there. You’d hardly believe that company could have a riotous
time, would you?—not that those two girls wouldn’t have managed it if they could, the hussies!”

  “This morning you have stated that Mr. Bonamy Dysey is still alive, yet, at your chalet, you gave me to understand that this was doubtful, although you did not mention his name.”

  “Look here, madam, what are you getting at?”

  “The truth about the deaths of Mr. Thomas and Mr. Eustace, I hope. What do you know about Mr. Henry’s mother?”

  “Damn-all. Tom met her, and got her with child. What about it? He’s not the first man to run away from his obligations.”

  “That is certainly true. Did you ever meet Henrietta Slepe?”

  “So that was her name, was it? Funny that Tom should have married another Henrietta! And Shakespeare thought there was nothing in a name!”

  “He caused Juliet to think so. It is not the same thing.”

  “You’re quibbling!”

  “Not half as much as you did, on the occasion of that luncheon party you so kindly gave for us.”

  “Oh, well, we won’t quarrel, then. You’ll see Henry’s all right, won’t you?”

  “He is on the list of suspects, as I told you.”

  “The police list?”

  “I have no way of knowing that, at present.”

  “On your damned list, then?”

  “On the list of everybody, I imagine, who believes that the murders were committed for gain.”

  “Of the Dysey estates? That’s laughable!”

  “Not if the Ravens’ Hoard is still extant.”

  “You can forget the Ravens’ Hoard. That went west long ago.”

  “He’s much too anxious that we shall think so, anyway,” remarked Laura, when Cyril, abruptly declining an invitation to stay to lunch, had stumped off out of the house. “All the same, if it is still in existence, I expect you’d have to tear the house and castle apart before you’d find it.”

  “Let us pursue our researches,” said Dame Beatrice, “and as I propose, in a metaphor I have heard you employ, to leave no stone unturned, I shall now devote my attention to the ancient cookery books which take up the whole of the next shelf.”