“When are you going to talk to Henry Dysey?” asked Laura.
“I think Henry will decide that for himself. I have sown the wind by indicating to his uncle that I suspect Henry of being our murderer, so I expect to reap the whirlwind at any moment.”
The whirlwind, when it came, blew itself out in the first five minutes. Henry turned up at half-past three in the afternoon just as Dame Beatrice was deciphering an extract from an eighteenth-century book on housekeeping which began with something crossed out by a later hand, and which then proceeded to impart to the reader that its purpose was “to inform such Housekeepers as are not in the Higher Rank of Fortune, how to Eat, or Entertain Company, in the most elegant Manner, at a reasonable Expence.” Further researches into this mine of charitable lore were prevented by the arrival of Henry.
“Here, I say, you know,” he began, “this business about my uncle, you know…”
“Sit down, Mr. Henry,” said Dame Beatrice, returning the book to its place on the library shelf. “What business of your uncle, and which uncle, is under review?”
“Oh, don’t stall!” said the young man, flinging himself about the room in an agitated manner, and then suddenly dropping into a chair. “You’re going round telling people I murdered Uncle Eustace. Well, I didn’t.”
“I am not going round telling people anything,” said Dame Beatrice mildly. “I did suggest to Mr. Cyril Dysey that you are under suspicion not only of killing Mr. Eustace, but Mr. Thomas, too.”
“Yes, I know, and I’m about sick of it all. The police have grilled me until I don’t know whether I did it or not, and now you!”
“If you did not do it, you have nothing to fear.”
“That’s a lot of boloney, and you know it. Why should I do it, anyway? I’ve nothing to gain by any of the family deaths.”
“Oh, but you have,” Dame Beatrice pointed out, in the same gentle tone and in the same very beautiful voice. “Surely you must see that. With Mr. Thomas and Mr. Eustace both out of the way, and yourself Mr. Cyril’s heir, you have a splendid chance, even if you don’t murder Mr. Cyril, of inheriting the family fortunes.”
“Of course I haven’t. There’s a son, a chap named Bonamy. Lives abroad, I believe, but I bet he’ll come home fast enough when probate has been settled and he knows he’s the heir.”
“But I understood that Bonamy was dead. Did not his mother raise a memorial tablet to him in Ravens Dysey church?”
“She did. Have you looked at it?” His mild tones now matched her own.
“No.”
“Well, I’ve learnt it off by heart. It reads: ‘To the memory of Bonamy Dysey, who lies in Spanish Morocco, far from his home and his mother.’ Does anything strike you about the wording? It’s peculiar, to say the least, don’t you think?”
“Two things strike me about it. One is that no mention is made of his father, and the other—but perhaps I show unseemly levity in suggesting this…”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” put in Henry. He grinned, not very pleasantly. “Do go on.”
“Well, is not the wording somewhat reminiscent of the time-honoured jest that an ambassador is a man who lies abroad for the good of his country?”
“Well, that’s how it strikes me, I admit. Anyhow, if Bonamy is still alive, he is still the Dysey heir, and poor bastard Edmund doesn’t get a look in, and never expected to.”
“You are certain, then, that the legitimate Edgar was not disinherited?”
“I am quite certain. I’ve seen a copy of the will.”
“I wonder that the vicar did not question the wording of the memorial. It is, to say the least, a little unusual.”
“Oh. Banks was a gaga old doddler, you know. He was over ninety at the time, and died soon afterwards. Then we had a chap named Coomber, but he was made headmaster of a public school about three years ago, so now we’ve got this fellow who had the living given to him.”
“I am convinced, then, that, since you believe Bonamy Dysey to be alive, you could have had no motive for disposing of his father and your uncle in order to clear the way to the inheritance for Mr. Cyril and yourself, unless, of course, you propose to murder Bonamy also when he arrives to claim the estates.”
Henry laughed.
“I haven’t yet got that far in my plans,” he said.
“There is a curious discrepancy in the evidence at my disposal,” said Dame Beatrice, after a pause. “If the memorial tablet was conceived in spiteful mood by Mrs. Dysey, why does she visit her son every summer while the castle is let?”
“She’s only let the castle since her husband’s death, you know. It was never let during his life-time, so far as I know. As for her visits to Bonamy, well, I suppose she’s forgiven him.”
“What about this clause in my lease that I must admit the public on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons?”
“Oh, I believe that when Tom Dysey inherited it, it was in pretty poor shape, you know, and he got some historical society, or antiquarian gang, or someone, to patch it up. I expect they charged him only about a quarter of what the actual repairs cost, and, in return, he was to suffer this invasion twice a week during the summer and early autumn.”
“I see. What did you do on the night of Mr. Thomas’s death?”
“What I did not do,” said Henry sharply, “is mess about with that wretched kid Peggy Wick, in spite of what her mother thinks and says.”
“Cannot Peggy convince her of your innocence?”
“You’re putting your tongue in your cheek when you ask me that. Peggy could clear me with her mother in three minutes if she’d only tell the truth, but she daren’t.”
“Really? Is not one persuasive male as bad or as good as another?”
“Not when he’s a married man and a father!”
“Are you sure of what you say?”
“It’s what Peggy told me when the row blew up. Of course, I could hardly bring Tom Dysey’s name into it, and, anyway, by that time he was dead.”
“But surely this incident did not take place on the night of the dinner-party?”
“No, of course it didn’t, but Peggy swore it did, and that it happened with me. You see, it made an altogether better story. I knew Uncle Cyril was staying the night at the castle, therefore what more likely than that I should tip the wink to the two girls that the chalet would be ours, get in some drink and Jerry Carter, and make whoopee? That’s Peggy’s story, and she’s stuck to it.”
“Was any attempt made to get you to marry her?”
“No. She stuck her feet in and said she wouldn’t marry me if I were the last man, etc. etc. I think she was afraid of the dog’s life I’d lead her if we had been forced into marriage.”
“But would you have allowed yourself to be forced into marriage with her?”
“Oh, yes, and put the screw on Tom Dysey ever afterwards, if he’d lived—which, of course, he didn’t.”
“You really believe you would have blackmailed him?”
“Why not? What is it the poet says about all alike must pay hereafter, some for sighs and some for laughter?”
“What you are telling me,” said Dame Beatrice, “is that to have Tom Dysey alive would have been more to your advantage than to have killed him.”
“You can check with Peggy, you know. Bounce her hard enough, and she’s bound to come clean. After all, she struck lucky, and it’s all over and done with now.”
“So we acquit our chief suspect,” said Laura, when Henry had gone. Dame Beatrice had motioned her to stay in the room when Henry had been shown in.
“I hardly call him our chief suspect,” Dame Beatrice observed, “but he did not answer the question when I asked him, rather abruptly, what he had been doing on the night of Thomas Dysey’s death.”
“No. He only told you what he had not been doing. But, you know, isn’t he a bit dim-witted not to see that the girl’s story gives him a perfect alibi? It seems to me that he’s only got to admit to the police that Peggy told the truth at the time,
to put himself completely in the clear.”
“But, of course, Peggy did not tell the truth, that is the trouble. I must have a word with Mr. Jerry Carter,” said Dame Beatrice. “I wonder whether you will be good enough…? I do not think it would be advisable to send Zena or even the discreet and loyal Henri.”
“It’s good to have Henri and Celestine here. Makes it feel more like home. Yes, of course I’ll go over to the farm. What do you want me to say?”
“Just ask when it will be convenient for young Mr. Carter to call upon me.”
“Won’t it sound a bit odd?”
“All the better. Curiosity is a great spur.”
So Laura set off for the home farm and gave the message. Jerry Carter was not in, so, having delivered herself of her errand, she drank a cup of strong tea with his wife and his mother, ate homemade cheese straws, and admired the baby. As she was about to leave, an apparition swathed in shawls made for the tray of tea.
“You might have told me there was company, and you’d wetted the tea,” it said. This was Laura’s introduction to old Mrs. Carter, contemporary and sister of the father of Thomas, Eustace, and Cyril Dysey. This (thought Laura, recalling a joking piece of advice she had given Dame Beatrice) was the Oldest Inhabitant.
“Oh, mother!” exclaimed the next oldest Mrs. Carter, John Carter’s wife and Jerry Carter’s mother. “You really shouldn’t risk they stairs on your own, really you shouldn’t! Might fall and break your leg!”
“And who’d be the worse off for that?” demanded the old lady, seating herself. “You keep me put away in that miserable bedroom as if I was a Turk’s wife, so what’s it matter whether my legs are broken or whole? Who’s this?”
“This is Mrs. Gavin, mother. She’s one of the ladies who’s taken over the castle for a bit.”
“So’s Etta can go and live with her fancy fellow, I suppose! Disgraceful! As if the baby wasn’t enough of a disgrace already! And calling him Henry, as though there was nothing to be ashamed of! Glorying in her sin, I call it! I wonder Tom puts up with it, really I do!”
“Tom’s dead, dear. Don’t you remember?”
“Dead, is he? None of that lot were ever any good! Remind me of the Kilkenny cats, they do! All but Eustace, and even he was a nasty, snooping little boy, always ferreting round! Ferreting round and singing. Ah, singing and never even knowing! Enough to drive you silly!”
“Now that’s enough of that, mother. Here’s your cup of tea. Now you just drink it up, and then straight back upstairs. I’ll come with you and make your fire up and bring you a nice brown egg for your tea.”
“I don’t want eggs. I want a bloater.”
“We haven’t got a bloater, dear, and you know you can’t manage the bones.”
“Singing! Always singing, and didn’t even know! A dratted row, I call it! Enough to drive you silly!”
Laura returned to her employer with the tidings that Jerry Carter would be over as soon as he had had his tea and, in his mother’s expression, cleaned himself.
“Ah,” said Dame Beatrice. “Very satisfactory. He will be in need of beer. Tell Henri to have some in readiness. Meanwhile, let us pursue our researches into the Dysey archives.”
“You don’t really think the Ravens’ Hoard is still in existence? You’re not still barking up that riven old tree?”
Dame Beatrice did not reply to this enquiry. Instead she said,
“I wonder what the distaff side has to tell us? A man may not tell his secrets to his mother, but it is not unknown for him to confide in his wife.”
“Remind me to tell you about Grandmother Carter,” said Laura.
Jerry Carter arrived at seven, freshly shaven and in his best clothes.
“You wanted to see me, mam? No complaints about the milk and the eggs, I hope?”
“Nothing of that sort. In fact, I have no complaints of any kind, Mr. Carter,” responded Dame Beatrice. “What I want to ask of you is a little help in clearing up a matter of some present obscurity.”
“Oh, ah?” said Jerry, looking, Laura afterwards observed, a good deal wiser than, probably, he was.
“Can you cast your mind back to the night on which Mr. Thomas died?”
“Don’t know as I can do that. What did you want to know?”
“Whether you can remember whether Mr. Henry Dysey spent the evening with you at the farmhouse.”
“To my knowledge, Henry Dysey never spent an evening over at our place in his life. He thinks himself other than us.”
“I see. Then who did go to the farmhouse that evening?”
“I reckon you’re trying to lead me somewhere, but I’m blest if I can see what you’re getting at, mam.”
“Well, if I may be direct to the point of offensiveness, at what time did you escort Miss Gina and Miss Peggy Wick back to the castle that night?”
“And who might they be?” His face was wooden.
“Look, Mr. Carter,” said Dame Beatrice impressively, “cases of wilful murder are under consideration. Will you do nothing to help find the murderer of your relatives?”
“Uncle Tom and Uncle Eustace, you mean? Look, us have had police, the newspapers, the burglars…”
“The burglars?”
“Ah, so us have.”
“But when was this? Recently, do you mean? And what did they take away?”
“It was in the dead of the night about a fortnight ago. I can’t call to mind which day of the week that would have been. Wait a minute, though! It wasn’t a Sunday—I’d have remembered if it had been a Sunday, on account of what was taken away.”
“The day of the week is probably of no importance, but tell me what was stolen.”
“You couldn’t exactly call it stolen, neither,” said young Carter. “It was returned in less than a week. Ah, chucked over into one of the sties, that was. My mother was properly put out about that. It was the Family Bible, you see.”
“And that was the only thing which was taken from the house?”
“The only and one thing, mam. What do you make of that, now?”
“And you have no suspicions as to the identity of your strange burglar?”
“None at all. There was money in the house—ah, that’s it! It must a-been a Wednesday night, because my dad and me had been to market and the banks was shut before we could put in our takings, so we brought home a matter of two hundred pounds, I dare say, on account of some calves and young porkers and one of Dawnlight’s colts as we sold. But there wasn’t a penny piece gone, although there must have been them as knew we hadn’t been to the bank, nor none of my grandmother’s silver went—nothing!”
“Your grandmother having been…?”
“Alicia Dysey, sister of Uncle Thomas’s father, her that married my grandfather, Gerald Carter, against the family’s wishes. My father was their son, and that’s how I come to be connected with the Dyseys. Grandfather Dysey, Mr. Thomas’s dad, gave us the farm. He wasn’t going to see his sister the wife of a cowman, he said, and the farm been ours ever since.”
“Very interesting. And you still remember nothing that you did on the night of Mr. Thomas Dysey’s death?”
“Can’t say I do, mam. All I know is that Henry never came to the farm, not ever in his life he didn’t.”
“Which seems to dispose of Mr. Cyril’s assertion that he and Henry lodged at the farm from the time they left the castle until, many years later, they moved into the chalet,” said Dame Beatrice to Laura, when their visitor had gone.
“Why should he have said such a thing if it wasn’t true?”
“Perhaps because he does not wish us to know where they did lodge during those years.”
“You believe Jerry Carter, then?”
“He is almost the only member of the Dysey family and its collaterals that I do believe, child. What was it you were going to tell me about his grandmother?”
Laura described the appearance and conversation of Grandmother Carter.
“I wondered,” she said, at the e
nd, “whether the old lady had got her ideas mixed up.”
“I hope not,” said Dame Beatrice. “If she is right, that which I have long suspected will prove to be the truth.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
E. and O. E.
“About the middle o’ the night,
The cocks began to craw,
And at the dead hour o’ the night,
The corpse began to thraw*.”
Young Benjie
“Well, if you don’t think Jerry Carter was lying, what about Gina Wick?” said Laura. “And what do you mean about Grandmother Carter? I can’t really think she’s got hold of the right end of the stick. Why, that would mean…”
“Yes, it would.”
“Food for much deep thought, in fact.”
“Of course, there are other, far more important things, which we have not been told.”
“Such as?”
“Such as which of the family and its connections knew of the existence of the priest’s hole; such as the real identity of Cyril Dysey’s housekeeper-wife; such as who (granted that he or she knew of its existence) would have used the priest’s hole as a repository for Eustace’s body.”
“You mean a certain amount of brawn and muscle would have been necessary to shift the body that far?”
“And all this without disturbing…”
“A light sleeper such as you, and a non-sleeper such as me? Yes, indeed, as the Welsh poacher said when asked how the rabbit got into the stew. You’ve said that there are three suspects. I should have thought possibly more.”
“Oh, well, three is a nebulous, legendary, apocalyptic, amorphous, magical number. One thinks of the Three Graces, the Three Golden Apples, the Shadowy Third, the Three Norns, the Rule of Three, the triumvirs, the three witches, the Third Man, the best out of three, the three legs of the Isle of Man…”
“Likewise, two’s company, three’s none, not to mention being three sheets in the wind,” said Laura, grinning. “But what do I see? No Thisbe do I see, but, instead, the local police force. Have they come to make an arrest, do you suppose?”
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