The Angel of the Crows

by Katherine Addison

  I stared again at those neat, almost demure punctures on her arm. They looked like a snakebite, but I’d seen a number of snakebite cases in Afghanistan, and they had all been distinguished by coagulopathy, which Julia Stoner did not display at all.

  Mentally digging around, racking my brains for anything I knew about snakes and snakebites, I remembered one of my colleagues, an old warhorse of a doctor who’d served in India for thirty years before being assigned to our regiment, talking about cobra bites. He’d never discussed the pathology, but I remembered him saying—I thought I remembered him saying—that cobra bites didn’t bleed.

  But how could Julia Stoner have been bitten by a cobra in the middle of Surrey?

  I was standing beside the crypt, staring at those puncture marks and trying to make sense of them, when a horrified voice said, “What in the name of God are you doing?”

  I looked up, and for an awful disorienting moment thought it was Julia Stoner who had asked. The next second I realized this was a living lady, and therefore Julia’s twin sister, Helen.

  “Trying to find out what killed your sister,” I said.

  “But you mustn’t—!”

  She sounded so genuinely distressed that instead of pointing out that it was too late for warnings, I said, “Why not?”

  That seemed to flummox her. I began sewing up my Y-cut and finally she said, “Dr. Roylott said it was too dangerous. We don’t know what killed her.”

  “That’s why one performs an autopsy,” I said, and I tried to be respectful of her grief and say it kindly, though I don’t know how well I succeeded.

  “He said Julia must have some terrible disease for her to have died so quickly, and we were lucky not to have caught it.”

  “I don’t think so. Come here, Miss Stoner.” She came, though wincingly. “Have you ever noticed this mark on your sister’s arm before?”

  She looked, frowning, at Julia Stoner’s arm, then I saw her head jerk down for a closer look. “No, never,” she said with flat certainty. “What is it?”

  “I think it’s what killed her, but I can’t see how it happened. Unless you know how your sister could have been bitten by a cobra?”

  Her sallow face went chalk white, and I had to catch her as her knees buckled. “Oh my God, the Doctor,” she said in a whispered rush. “He spent his professional life in India and when we returned to England—though why I say that when Julia and I were born in India—in any event, he had his friends ship him Indian animals, living ones. Macaques and langurs, a hyena, even a Bengal tiger. I don’t know that he ever received a cobra, but he is a strange and secretive man, and it would not surprise me.”

  “Well, your sister died of something that stopped her breathing and did a lot of damage to her kidneys—which is generally the sign of a toxin. She didn’t swallow it, and she didn’t breathe it, and the only other damage I can find on her body is this mark on her arm, which looks to me like the bite of a snake. Not,” I added pointedly, “a vampire.”

  She reddened. “My stepfather is a very persuasive man. The village is terrified of him, and I admit I am, too.”

  “Your stepfather is the one who accused the vampire?”

  “I believe he meant only to divert attention from the gypsies who were camped in the lower field as he always lets them do. But the Mayor and the Chief Constable seemed to think it had to be the correct solution.”

  “But why didn’t he just say, ‘I have a cobra. It must have gotten loose.’”

  She turned wide, dark eyes on me, and I saw that she was scared almost out of her mind. “Because my sister’s door was locked. We always keep our doors locked, because my stepfather lets his creatures roam the house. If there was a cobra in Julia’s bedroom, it could only be because he put it there.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “The money. My mother left her money—which is all that stands between him and penury, for he has no money of his own—such that when Julia or I get married, we get a third.”

  “And Julia was going to get married?”

  “She was, although I didn’t think he knew.” She shivered. “It is impossible to keep secrets in that house, and he is Machiavellian in his plotting. I have always thought he had something to do with the death of my fiancé, even though I do not know how that could be true.”

  “How did your fiancé die?”

  “He was lost at Bhurtee—he had volunteered to attempt to reach the relieving column and was never heard of again. The rebels killed him. I tell myself that Dr. Roylott could have had nothing to do with Harry’s death, but he and my mother did not approve of Harry, and Dr. Roylott was always thick as thieves with Sergeant Barclay—it was no secret how much the sergeant hated Harry. He came courting me, when we knew Harry was dead, but I could not bear even to be in the same room with him. And my stepfather could not have prevented my mother from giving me part of her estate as a wedding gift, although I know he argued with her about it.”

  I had finished closing up Julia Stoner’s body while her sister spoke and now redressed her in her nightgown.

  “Thank you, Miss Stoner,” I said. “You must have been very young.”

  “It was thirty years ago,” she said, as if it were something she told herself often, and sighed a little. “I was seventeen.”

  “And you have lived with Dr. Roylott ever since?” It sounded like a sure recipe for madness.

  “We see each other very little,” she said. “Since my mother’s death, he has shut himself up in his wing of the house to conduct his experiments and write treatises on the fauna of the Indian subcontinent, and I never venture there.”

  “Forgive my asking, but do you think you are safe?”

  “Oh yes,” she said with a twisted smile. “I will never marry, and he knows it. I do not wear mourning only for my sister. But thank you, Dr.… I don’t believe I know your name.”

  “Doyle,” I said. “J. H. Doyle, at your service.”

  “And I am Helen Stoner, but you already know that.”

  From somewhere above us and not very far away, a man’s angry voice shouted, “Helen! Where are you?”

  “Oh God, it’s him,” she said, and she gathered up her skirts to take the stairs almost at a run.

  “Were you terrified of him, too?” I said to Julia Stoner as I covered her again with the crisp white sheet. “I imagine you probably were, and it seems you had good reason.” Helen Stoner was safe for now—two mysterious deaths in a row would probably be too much even for the Chief Constable—but sooner or later, her stepfather was going to be plagued beyond bearing by how much money he was wasting on feeding and clothing her, and she would be killed.

  I wondered about Mrs. Roylott’s death, too.

  31

  A Man with a Mongoose

  I made my cautious way back to the inn—the last thing I wanted was my own encounter with Dr. Grimsby Roylott—and found Moriarty waiting in my room.

  “Don’t you need permission?” I said irritably.

  “Not in a public space,” said he. “Anywhere there’s an angel, vampires can come and go freely. The Angel of the Rose and Tankard is in the tap room.”

  “And she won’t come to find out what you’re doing?”

  “There’s nothing for her to find,” he said. “I’d hardly be so stupid as to commit rape where she could hear me. And anything else we may choose to do”—he gave me a comic-opera leer—“is no business of hers. But come! Tell me what you found out, and then I will share my story.”

  I described the bite and the evidence of a toxin. He said indignantly, “Vampires are not poisonous!”

  “Venomous, actually,” I said on reflex.

  “How could they think—?”

  “I think Dr. Roylott has a vested interest in keeping the authorities away from the truth, since he set a trap for Julia Stoner with a cobra he had shipped to him from India.”

  “A cobra?”

  “Or some other venomous snake. He apparently has a number of I
ndian animals roaming his property.”

  “How odd,” said Moriarty. “For that dovetails very neatly with my news. I have found an ally, and he is a man with a mongoose.”

  “A mongoose.”

  “Yes. He’ll be up a little later, once he’s finished entertaining the men in the taproom.”

  “All right. But you found Miss Shirley?”

  “Yes. The jail is not terribly secure, but of course the iron bars are cage enough. She is unharmed—though angry—and says she has learned nothing save that everyone is terrified of Dr. Roylott.”

  “His surviving stepdaughter says the same.”

  Moriarty’s eyebrows rose. “You encountered Miss Helen Stoner.”

  “She discovered me in the midst of conducting the postmortem on her sister.”

  “How very awkward,” Moriarty said appreciatively, and I grinned back.

  Crow, I thought, with some fondness, would not have seen the difficulty.

  “I acquit the lady of any malice,” I said. “She is terrified out of her mind by her stepfather. The stepfather is the one who first suggested Julia Stoner was murdered by a vampire.”

  “A cunning murderer, and as you say, one with a vested interest in pointing attention elsewhere. Perhaps a visit to Dr. Roylott is in order.”

  “A very cautious visit, if he has a cobra to send after unwanted visitors.”

  “Bah,” said Moriarty. “He’ll be hiding his snake for all he’s worth—if he hasn’t already killed and buried it, which would be the intelligent thing to do.”

  “He collects Indian animals. I doubt he could bring himself to dispose of the jewel of his collection. Besides, he might want to use it again.”

  “You think the remaining Miss Stoner is in danger?”

  “Not immediate danger. But he killed Julia Stoner out of greed, to keep from having to give a portion of her mother’s estate to her upon the occasion of her upcoming wedding. I cannot persuade myself that Helen Stoner is safe, even though she says she will never marry.”

  “Disappointed in love?”

  “Her fiancé died in India. She believes Dr. Roylott had something to do with it.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Ha!” said Moriarty. “My ally comes well upon his cue.” And he called, “Come in!”

  The door opened and a most remarkable human being entered the room. His face was handsome, though rather haggard, but his body was hunched and twisted in such a way that it was clearly impossible for him to stand upright. He carried a box slung on his back and from inside it, something rustled. He looked a little startled to see someone other than Moriarty in the room, and Moriarty said with great good humor, “Dr. Doyle, may I present Helen Stoner’s dead fiancé—this is Henry Wood.”

  The crooked man looked even more startled, and I said, “Perhaps you had best elaborate.”

  “It is not my story,” said Moriarty. “Corporal?”

  “That I was,” said the crooked man with a sigh. “Corporal Harry Wood, and although you may find it impossible to believe, I was once the smartest man in the 117th Foot. I was betrayed by my sergeant into the hands of the rebels, and they left me as you see me.”

  Moriarty said, “We were just speculating that perhaps Dr. Roylott had something to do with your unfortunate fate.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Harry Wood, and clearly he was not surprised. “I’ve always known Barclay didn’t act by himself.” His lip curled. “He wasn’t smart enough. He had the information, but somebody else had the idea. I would guess it was that somebody else who actually talked to the rebels—and that means it almost had to be Dr. Roylott, because there were only so many men in Bhurtee who could speak Hindi. And besides, it was his kind of plan, if you follow me. But I have no proof. I don’t even have proof it was Barclay, except that he and I were the only two people who should have known where I was going and when.”

  The box on his back rustled again, and he said apologetically, “Do you mind? Teddy won’t bite, and he can’t stand a room he hasn’t investigated.”

  “Not at all,” said Moriarty, and I shook my head.

  Wood shrugged the box carefully off his back and set it on the floor. “All right, Teddy,” he said, and slid open the wire door.

  Teddy proved to be a long, grayish-brown creature, short-legged, with a pointed nose and bright, horizontally pupilled red-orange eyes. He investigated the room rapidly, but thoroughly, as if he had some sort of checklist, and he showed no fear of either Moriarty or me. He came back in the end to Wood, who stroked his long back, saying, “Teddy is the most faithful friend I’ve ever had. I don’t count the Maharanee, for she would kill me if she could.”

  “The Maharanee?” said Moriarty, as one who knows he will be sorry he asked.

  Wood grinned, a remarkably sunny expression on his haggard face, and drew out of one of his overcoat pockets a long, dry, rustling thing that at first I could not even make sense of until suddenly the head came into view, and I realized it was a snake.

  I might have yelped.

  Wood let the snake slide through his fingers back into his pocket. “That’s the Maharanee. She’s a defanged cobra. Teddy catches her every night to amuse the punters.”

  “You are a man full of surprises,” Moriarty said, and Wood laughed.

  “No less than the pair of you. What’s your story? Why are you in Stoke Moran?”

  Moriarty and I explained in tandem, first about Judith Shirley and then about the findings of the autopsy. Wood listened intently, and at the end said, “What do you plan to do? I’ll help you in any way I can.”

  Moriarty said, “We have to find the snake to prove the murder.”

  “It’ll be somewhere in the manor house,” I said. “This could be tricky.”

  “How certain are you that he killed Julia?” said Wood.

  “Certain,” I said. “She died of a poison that she didn’t inhale, because there’s no sign of it in her lungs or her trachea or her mouth, and she didn’t ingest it, because there’s no sign of it in her stomach or her esophagus. And she shows none of the signs of heavy metal poisoning. The only mark on her body is two little punctures on her left arm, and I do know what a snakebite looks like. If it was a snake, and it didn’t get into her room by itself, which it didn’t because Miss Stoner told me that she and her sister always kept their doors locked, there’s only two people who could have put it there, and my money is not on Helen Stoner.”

  “Well, if there’s snakes involved, I have the sovereign remedy,” said Wood. He snapped his fingers, and Teddy came galumphing across the room—I can find no better verb than Mr. Dodson’s—from where he had been investigating under the bed.

  “Let us pay a visit to Dr. Roylott,” I said. “And I am uneasy. Let us do it tonight.”

  “You said you didn’t think Miss Stoner was in immediate danger,” said Moriarty—not as an objection, for he was already standing up.

  “I know,” I said, as Wood half coaxed, half shoved Teddy into his box and slung the box on his back again. “But something…” I could not explain it. It was not even an instinct, just a vague, inchoate feeling that something was not right.

  “He’ll be awake,” said Moriarty. “He’s well known for insomnia in the village.”

  “I’m in,” said Wood. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Wood and I sat together in the back of the dog cart. He was cheerfully, blessedly incurious, talking of the places he and Teddy (and the Maharanee) had been, which seemed to be everywhere from India to Portugal.

  “What brought you back to England?” I said, for clearly he had never meant to return, a position with which I could sympathize.

  “Well,” he said, “it was a funny thing. There was a tarot reader working a canteen in Gibraltar, and instead of getting mad when I came along, she offered to give me a reading. I’d watched her do a couple, and she knew what she was doing, so I said sure. And it was a good reading—pain and betrayal in the past,
aimless wandering in the present, and every card that talked about the future said, GO HOME. And, well, if the aether tells you something that loudly, you do it. Teddy and the Maharanee and I stowed away on the Nancy Devoy, and we’ve been wandering ’round England ever since. The trouble is, I’m not sure where ‘home’ is supposed to be. My dad moved us around a lot when I was a kid, following the jobs, so nowhere ever really got to feel like home. My parents both died before I entered the service—thank God, for I’d hate for them to see me like this—so that’s not the answer. I finally thought of Helen—no, that’s not right, I think of Helen all the time—I finally thought that Helen might be ‘home,’ so I came to Stoke Moran as a test. And I think this time I was right.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think we may be very glad of you and Teddy before the evening is out.”

  The manor house was a Romanesque mansion made of dark gray stone. I have seldom seen a building I disliked more intensely on first sight. Moriarty drew up at the front door, and a surprised and sleepy-looking groom came out of the stable to hold the horse’s head.

  The butler looked just as surprised, if not as sleepy.

  “Is Miss Stoner in?” I said. “It is a matter of some urgency.”

  “I…” He glanced over his shoulder, then pulled himself together. “May I ask who is calling?”

  “Dr. Doyle. We met this afternoon.”

  He retreated, looking sorely bewildered; when he returned, Miss Stoner was with him.

  “Dr. Doyle!” she said. “We must be very careful that my stepf—HARRY?”

  Beside me, Wood winced, but said staunchly, “Hello, Helen.”

  It is greatly to Miss Stoner’s credit that she did not faint dead away, but said, “C—come into the drawing room.”

  Moriarty said, “I think I’ll stay with the horse.” I glanced at him, and he shook his head slightly. Miss Stoner had not noticed that he was a vampire, and she did not need another shock—whether that was Moriarty’s reasoning, I could not say.