The Wrong Rite

by Charlotte MacLeod

“Gunpowder? How could she? Where did she get it?”

  “We were hoping you might be able to tell us that, since your uncle couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. He just sat there all puffed up and gulping air like a bullfrog. You don’t suppose he’s trying to keep something from us?”

  “He’s bloody-minded enough to keep anything from anybody. Crazy old bahstid.” Dai cast a furtive glance at Sir Caradoc and muttered, “Sorry. I don’t know.”

  “Your uncle doesn’t hunt, by any chance?”

  “Him? All he does is talk and eat.”

  “I get the impression that you haven’t had much use for either your aunt or your uncle.”

  Dai’s answer was a sneer. He picked up a cake from Janet’s tray and snapped at it like a ravening coyote.

  “Why are you still with them, then?” Madoc persisted. “You’re old enough to be out on your own, aren’t you? What are you, twenty or so?”

  “Almost. I have to stay, they’re my guardians till I’m twenty-one. If I leave before then, I’ll never get my inheritance.”

  “Who says you won’t?”

  “Uncle Bob. He says it’s in my father’s will.” Dai finished his cake and reached for another. He was warmed up now. “My father was a geologist for an oil company in Iraq, I think it was. He died out there when I was a kid. My mother took off with some bloke when I was still very small, and my father got custody of me. He couldn’t take me to Iraq with him, so he parked me with Aunt Mary. I expect Uncle Bob made Father write in his will that they were to get paid for taking care of me.”

  Madoc was interested. “Have you ever seen your father’s will?”

  “How could I? Uncle Bob keeps it at the bank.”

  “Then it is Bob and Mary Rhys who had taken care of you practically all your life?” Constable Cyril interjected.

  “Well, they had a nanny for me, then I went to school. Only as a day boy. I’d rather have been a boarder but they wouldn’t let me. I wanted to go off to college, too, but they said there wasn’t enough money so I’d have to be apprenticed to Aunt Mary. I’m to serve seven years without pay, then I get taken into the firm. Only how can I, now that she’s dead? Can Uncle Bob attach my inheritance for breach of contract?”

  “What contract was this, Dai?” asked Madoc.

  “The one they made me sign when I was apprenticed.”

  “But how could they do that if you’re still underage?”

  “I don’t know. Uncle Bob said they could.”

  “Couldn’t you have asked the lawyer?”

  “There wasn’t one. Uncle Bob took care of it all.”

  “It sounds to me as if somebody ought to take care of Uncle Bob,” Janet was too incensed not to get in her two cents’ worth. “What do you think, Uncle Caradoc?”

  “I think we must investigate this matter on Dai’s behalf,” the old man replied quietly. “It is a pity you did not come to me sooner, Dai.”

  “I wouldn’t have known what to say,” the young fellow mumbled. “They kept telling me they were acting in my best interest, because there wasn’t enough money in the trust fund.”

  “We shall see. Now we must deal with the problem of why your aunt Mary died in so unlikely a fashion. We are relying on you to help us. Madoc, do you have further questions for Dai?”

  “Oh yes. What you must realize, Dai, is that you’re the only one who may be able to give us any real help. So far, your uncle’s testimony hasn’t amounted to much. He complains that his sister never confided in him, but we’re wondering whether that may have been because he never gave her much chance to talk. Did she talk to you when you were alone together in the workshop?”

  Dai’s shudder would have been answer enough. “God, yes! Yammer, yammer, yammer, that’s all I heard the whole day long. She never shut up till dinnertime, and then Uncle Bob would take over. You’re not going to make me go back with him, are you?”

  “I have no authority to make you do anything, Dai. Anyway, I doubt whether Constable Rhys will allow any of us to go anywhere until we find out the real story of how your aunt died. You have no idea whatsoever where that gunpowder might have come from? Take your time, think it over. Do you want another cake?”

  Dai wanted another cake. He was beginning to look almost hopeful. “Unless Uncle Bob got some to use for one of his spells. He was trying to raise a demon once. He’d taken off all his clothes and painted his—um—anyway, he’d drawn a circle with a pentagram inside it and a lot of mystic symbols done in colored chalks on the floor of his bedroom, and he was hopping around inside it making odd noises. And he was burning something in a brazier.”

  “Are you sure it was gunpowder?” Madoc interjected. “Was it burning very fast and hot? Did it smell like firecrackers going off?”

  “Well, no, not exactly. It seemed to be just smoldering and giving off a lot of smoke, and the smell was more like dead leaves or something. Anyway, it was rather ghastly. But he might have had some gunpowder mixed in.” Dai was clearly itching to pin something on his uncle. “I wasn’t close enough to see.”

  “You weren’t taking part in the rite?”

  “Not likely! I was peeking through the keyhole, if you really want to know. I was only about ten at the time, I wanted to see the demon.”

  “And did you?”

  “No, the thing was a complete bust. I heard Aunt Mary coming and had to slope off in a hurry.”

  “But that was ten years ago. You can’t say whether your uncle has gone in for any demon-raising lately?”

  “I haven’t bothered to snoop. Uncle Bob’s spells never work out. And Uncle Bob in the buff is no great treat, you know.”

  “I don’t know”—Madoc was trying not to smile—“and I sincerely hope I never find out. The one thing he did tell us was that your aunt has been making extra money of late years, not through the gem-cutting business but from some kind of annuity. Did she tell you anything about the annuity?”

  “Not really.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? More keyholes?”

  Dai shrugged. Madoc persevered.

  “Your uncle told us that your aunt used to hint around about the great lot of money she was getting, but wouldn’t give him any concrete information about where it was coming from. Was that what she did with you?”

  “She never said anything to me directly. I’d hear her dropping cryptic remarks to Uncle Bob now and then. He’d be livid because she wouldn’t tell and begin shouting at her. When she talked to me, it was mostly about what a great gem-cutter she was and how I’d never be as good as she; which I don’t suppose I ever will because I never wanted to be one in the first place. But she’d talk to herself a lot while she was working, and I couldn’t help catching bits of what she was muttering even though I didn’t particularly want to. And she’d talk to people on the telephone sometimes.”

  “What people were these?” Madoc asked him. “Friends of hers?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. I don’t believe Aunt Mary had any friends. She did get business calls, of course, but these calls were different. I could always tell—she’d put on a smarmy voice, as if she was pretending to be somebody else. Whoever it was never called her, she’d always put through the calls herself.”

  “With you right there to hear?”

  “Oh, she’d have forgotten I was around. She’d do that, you know, simply forget I was there. I always had the feeling she thought of me as some kind of puppet that she could stick on the shelf when she didn’t want me for anything, and I wouldn’t be able to move until she came back to pull my strings.”

  “That must have been very hard on you.”

  “No, actually those were the easy times. Being ignored was better than being picked at like a hen with a worm. Me being the worm, needless to say. I don’t have to tell you, you saw her going at me yesterday, right in front of Annie and everybody. God, I wanted to die!”

  “You were not wanting Miss Mary Rhys to be dropping down dead in your place?” That was Constable Rhys, back on the j
ob.

  “No, I’ve never ill-wished either of them. I’m too inadequate for that, I suppose.” Dai scowled down at his dirty tennis shoes. “If I were to kill anyone, it would be myself. I’ve thought of it sometimes.”

  “At least you had sense enough not to try,” said Madoc. “Since you’ve brought up the subject yourself, Dai, would you mind telling us what your aunt was laying into you about yesterday at the party?”

  Dai’s chin went down into his shirtfront. “It was about something I hadn’t done,” he mumbled.

  “When were you supposed to have done this thing?”

  “Then. While everyone else was at the party.”

  “Mind telling us what it was?”

  “She’d told me to get out the golden sickles and make tracings of them.”

  “Get them out?” exclaimed Sir Caradoc. “How could you?”

  “Easily enough, she’d given me her key to the grille. See, here it is.”

  Dai fished a shiny bit of metal from his pocket and handed it over. The old man stared, not believing what he saw. “But this is impossible!”

  “Oh no,” said Dai, “it was quite simple. Remember the last time we visited? You had the crosier out to polish and she went through her routine with the loupe. You’d laid the key on the table, as you always do, and Aunt Mary just casually reached over and took an impression of the wards with a little lump of wax she had in her hand. I don’t expect anybody else noticed—people never did notice Aunt Mary unless she was making a pest of herself.”

  “But why would she have abused my hospitality in so mean a way?”

  “Because she wanted to steal the emerald.”

  “The emerald? Dai, you are not making sense. If it was the emerald she wanted, why did she ask you to trace the sickles?”

  “By then, she’d already got the emerald.”

  “Boy, you must stop telling me such stories. After I had come from my wonderful birthday party, the last thing I did before going to bed was to visit the dining hall, as I often do. The little light that illumines the grille was shining, my eyesight is perhaps not what it used to be, but it is good enough. I could see clearly the great green stone in the crosier. I thought how beautiful it looked with the freshly polished silver gleaming around it, and I vowed to myself that for whatever time I had left, I would keep the crosier brightly shined for my own selfish pleasure and to the glory of God, as the old monks must have done. I may have waxed fanciful, but I believe I was still in full possession of my wits.”

  “Sir, I’m not saying you didn’t see a green stone; it simply wasn’t the emerald. Aunt Mary must have taken the real stone the night we came. That had to be why she was so insistent about making me look through her bloody loupe, blathering on about what I was supposed to be seeing, making you all believe the stone was what it should have been. She thought I’d be too dense to catch on. She’d no opinion of me at all, you know, she was always calling me an idiot and saying I’d never learn. I’ll admit I’m no great expert, but I’ve learned enough to tell a genuine emerald from a lump of melted glass.”

  “Great God in heaven! Madoc, is this possible, what Dai is saying?”

  “I’m afraid it’s more than possible, Uncle Caradoc. I assume she wanted the tracings so that she could fake up substitute sickles too, and pull another swap the next time she came. Right, Dai?”

  “Oh yes, no question. The thing of it is, I’ve always wanted to be a goldsmith instead of a lapidary. I’ve a feeling for gold; it’s something I was born with, I think, like perfect pitch or being double-jointed. I understand it, I know how to handle it.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Certain sure. Every chance I get, I sneak over to the goldsmith’s shop next door to ours. Armand—that’s the chap who owns it—has been teaching me on the sly when Aunt Mary would go off to see clients or whatever. I haven’t wanted it that way, but she and Uncle Bob would have stopped me if they’d known. Anyway, I’ve done a fair amount of whining about wanting to change, so finally Aunt Mary said all right, she’d give me a test. If I could make her accurate copies of your golden sickles, I could go and apprentice myself to Armand instead of her, so long as I didn’t tell Uncle Bob.”

  “When was this, Dai?”

  “Just this past week, the day before we came. I said it was an unfair test because I’d never find the perfect shade of that old red gold. Then she said I wasn’t to use real gold, but just copper with gold leaf over it, which is bonkers, but she wouldn’t listen. That’s what she was at me about yesterday. She wanted me down at the manor, climbing the wall to get at your sickles.”

  “I assume climbing the wall is a figure of speech,” said Madoc. “How would she herself have got at the emerald? Did she tell you?”

  “She’d got hold of a collapsible aluminum ladder somewhere, she claimed it was the sort Raffles the Gentleman Cracksman used to use. Some chap she met abroad, I suppose—I don’t know if she got it off him or what. It’s not really a ladder, just an expandable tube with handholds that flip out and hooks at the top to catch on with.”

  “But how could a frail, elderly woman be climbing an expandable tube?” demanded Constable Cyril.

  Dai snorted. “She wasn’t that old, and she certainly wasn’t frail. Aunt Mary could climb like a monkey. She’d go upstairs on the outside, swinging from the banisters with her legs dangling out in space. I used to wish she’d lose her grip and break her bloody neck, but she never did. She’d got the ladder hidden under some shrubbery, she was afraid to leave it in her room because Uncle Bob was always snooping. I can show you where, if somebody hasn’t walked off with it.”

  For once, Sir Caradoc was looking all his ninety years. “I cannot believe this. My own kinswoman stealing from me. Mary a criminal, climbing like a monkey. And jumping through the balefire with gunpowder in her pockets. That is not the act of a sane person. She must have been wandering in her wits.”

  “We’re not at all sure Mary knew the gunpowder was there,” said Madoc. “Dai, have you any thoughts about that?”

  The ex-apprentice shrugged. “Unless it was something to do with those weird telephone calls she’d been putting through.”

  Here it came; Madoc could feel the prickling up his spine. “Dai, can you remember any of the things you heard your aunt say during those calls?”

  “It was more the way she’d say them. Like the way she’d been paying Aunt Iseult those little backhanded compliments on her emeralds to let people know they’re not really all that marvelous. Anybody who’s not a fool ought to realize they couldn’t be, or Aunt Iseult wouldn’t dare wear them as casually as she does. That doesn’t mean anything. Lots of film stars have replicas made of their real jewels so they don’t have to worry if the stuff gets stolen.”

  Madoc wasn’t interested in Iseult’s jewelry. “About the calls, Dai, can’t you remember anything at all about what Mary said? Were these different people she talked to, do you think, or was it usually the same one?”

  Dai had to think a minute. “I’d say it was the same one. Mostly, anyway.”

  “And was this person a man or a woman?”

  “I’ve no idea. She did mention a man’s name every so often, but I don’t think it was the name of the person she was talking to. It was more as if it was somebody they both knew. Arthur, that was it. Arthur.”

  “Arthur? Would that have been Lisa’s husband? The chap who died abroad and nobody wants to talk about? Uncle Caradoc, do you know what happened to him?”

  “Oh yes, Madoc, I know. Arthur Ellis was found beaten over the head and strangled in an alley in Marseilles. He had been robbed of his money and presumably of gems. The reason people do not want to talk about it is that the place where his body turned up was one in which Arthur would, quite literally, not have wanted to be found dead.”

  “Oh.” Dai was staring at the old man, his face flushed beet red. “Then I think I know what the calls were about. I think Aunt Mary was blackmailing somebody.”

&
nbsp; Chapter 17

  “BLACKMAIL IS A TERRIBLE thing to be accusing your own aunt of doing, Dai Rhys.”

  Constable Cyril was not at all happy with this added complication. Why should he be? A woman who’d been blown up by gunpowder in the midst of an ancient fertility rite was no sort of corpse for a village constable to be stuck with. Making her out a crook might explain why she died, but it still didn’t prove who’d stuck the gunpowder in her pocket.

  Janet could see it coming. That petty satrap of a chief constable wasn’t about to call in Scotland Yard. Why should he go flinging the county’s money about on a pack of Londoners when here was a perfectly good Canadian whom he could stick with doing the job for nothing? Nor would Davies strain himself to help Madoc and Cyril, because they were Sir Caradoc Rhys’s kinfolk and he didn’t like Sir Caradoc. Mary’s death would remain a family affair unless the Rhyses absolutely forced Davies to take official action, which they wouldn’t because they didn’t like him any better than he liked them.

  But it was just plain stupid to believe a half-cracked woman who’d been systematically milked of her earnings all her working life by that leech of a brother, and had finally got the upper hand of him by milking some other victim in turn, would have turned around and committed suicide in a fit of remorse for her ill-doing. Mary had been riding high yesterday, cocksure of her ability to control a situation whose potential dangers she was too egocentric to recognize. According to her repellent sibling, she’d preened herself on having mystic powers that he was either sane enough or mean enough to realize she couldn’t have possessed; power of some kind was clearly what she’d wanted more than anything else. And no wonder, after having been browbeaten all her life by that awful brother. Janet could believe Dai’s blackmail story, she sensed that Madoc did too. Uncle Caradoc naturally didn’t like having to think of his dead kinswoman as a crook; but after Dai’s revelations about his life with Bob and Mary, a person might as well believe anything.

  Dai was sticking to his guns. “I’m sorry, Sir Caradoc. I don’t want to be stirring up more trouble for the family, but if Aunt Mary wasn’t blackmailing somebody, then where was she getting all that money?”