The Croaking Raven

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Oh, yes, of course she would. She seldom gives the lad a completely favourable press, so she’d have been certain to have grabbed him by the short hairs if she’d had any suspicions that he was our little jackdaw. Why does she always run the kid down?”

  “It shows a reverse side of the gold medal of motherly love and pride, that is all. Laura is terrified of the depth of her feeling for her husband and her son, and is even more terrified by the thought that others may discern the truth, so that she loses no opportunity of publicly disparaging Hamish and Robert. They both understand her perfectly well, and, with true masculine chivalry, keep her secret. They have, of course, like all compatible males, a secret understanding between themselves.”

  “I see. No wonder Hamish often seems older than his years. Well, now, about these hidey-holes you mentioned. I take it that we begin in the dining-room, since that’s where he saw this ghost. Doesn’t one tap the panelling and press knobs and knot-holes? I can’t wait to begin. Do we get Deb to join in the fun?”

  “No,” said Dame Beatrice, to Jonathan’s surprise. “We do not.” She spoke with so much abruptness that he raised interrogative eyebrows and smiled at her. She added, with equal decisiveness, “I am not gifted with Laura’s instinctive pricking of the thumbs, but I am afraid of what we may find. There has already occurred one unexplained death in this place, and, if a disputed inheritance is at stake, there may easily be another. I do not altogether care for the way our visitor has disappeared.”

  “Dear me! You curdle my blood!” He spoke lightly, but eyed her keenly. “You think there’s more to this prowling business than the mere purloining of food, then?”

  Dame Beatrice did not reply. She stood up, and Jonathan followed her to the dining-room. It was one of the three rooms shown to visitors, because it had an impressive Tudor fireplace, linen-panelled walls, and an interesting plastered ceiling of early date. Two embrasures, one on either side of the fireplace, had mullioned windows bearing the Dysey coat-of-arms of three ravens, and on one of these windows was inscribed the family motto Salve Domina and on the other the disquieting little rhyme:

  I am dede but have been seene—

  The ravens pickt my black bones cleane

  Jonathan studied this for a moment, and said,

  “Yes, I see what you mean. Well, we’d better find out where it’s best to begin our search. Hamish was making for the sideboard.” He went back to the doorway and then walked towards the heavily-carved piece of furniture. “He would have seen the ghost—where?”

  Dame Beatrice joined him.

  “We may assume that he had not helped himself to the biscuits before he saw the figure,” she said, “so the likeliest place for us to investigate is the fireplace, since that is directly in one’s line of vision as one walks towards the sideboard.”

  The fireplace, however, yielded nothing to their proddings and probings. Jonathan looked up the wide chimney but found no rewarding signs that it led to anything but the outside air. He went to the doorway again and surveyed the room.

  “The likeliest thing is that Hamish spotted the ghost before he stepped into the room at all,” he said, “but, to save time, would it meet with your approval if I asked Hamish where the ghost was standing when he spotted it? I don’t want to scare him, of course, but we are rather working in the dark, aren’t we? It will take several hours to test all the panelling in this room.”

  “I think that, if you choose your words, Hamish will only suppose that you are taking a kindly interest in his story of the apparition. In any case, he is not a child to take alarm easily, so, by all means, contact him,” said Dame Beatrice. “I will leave it entirely in your hands.”

  Hamish and Laura came back ravenously hungry from their swim, and had hot milk, biscuits and cheese, and rubbed their hair dry in front of the enormous kitchen range. Then Laura took Deborah and the dog for a walk before lunch, and the opportunity presented itself for Jonathan to question the boy.

  Hamish was delighted to find that Jonathan, whom he greatly admired, seemed to have taken his story seriously, and together they repaired to the dining-room, where the boy marched straight over to the embrasure whose window bore the sinister little rhyme, and said,

  “He was in here. We have to keep it roped off because it’s supposed to be unsafe, and, anyway, you can’t see anything out of the windows. I know, because I’ve tried. They’re sort of frosted over.”

  The windows were on two sides of the rectangular recess. The third side backed on to the enormous fireplace and was linen-panelled, like the rest of the low-ceilinged rather gloomy room.

  “Well, it seems as good a place for a ghost as anywhere else,” Jonathan remarked.

  “You mean because of the rhyme? Yes, I’d thought of that. I’m going to make a copy of it to show the chaps at school. Well, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll push off now and have another look at my pig. He won’t get to know me properly unless I see a good deal of him, will he?” Hamish enquired.

  “What’s his name?”

  “I call him County Mark, after Guillaume, Comte de la Marck, the Wild Boar of the Ardennes. He comes in Sir Walter Scott. Mrs. Dame suggested it when I asked her. I call her a most gifted person, don’t you?”

  When the boy had gone, Jonathan unfastened the silken rope, let the loosened end drop, and stepped cautiously into the embrasure. The floor, however, seemed as firm as a rock. He peered at the mullioned window opposite the fireplace wall, and then at that which, presumably, faced the keep, and found that the boy was right. The glass had been rendered opaque and there was no view to be had from either window. He stepped across to the panelled wall of the alcove, and as he stood staring at the linen-fold craftsmanship of the woodwork, the floor beneath his feet sank, with terrifying silence and suddenness, to a depth of about eighteen inches, and then remained stationary, so that he found himself standing in a square hole staring at an opening in the panelling. He stepped quickly up on to level flooring, but the low doorway in the panelling remained open.

  He peered in. The aperture appeared to be a deep cupboard, stone-built except for its door. It went back for about nine feet, he judged, and at the further end there seemed to be a gaping hole. He went out of the dining-room, closing the door behind him, and sought Dame Beatrice, whom he found in the pleasant little room which faced the gatehouse.

  “I’ve found it,” he said. “Come and see. Do you happen to possess an electric torch?”

  Dame Beatrice acquired a powerful torch from her bedroom, and together she and Jonathan repaired to the dining-room, but the panelling had slid back into place. Jonathan opened it as he had done before, and remained standing on the spot, while Dame Beatrice examined the aperture and reported that at the back of it there was a staircase.

  “I think,” she said, “that I had better be the person to make the descent into Avernus. From what you say, it seems that the machinery involved in opening the panelling must work on some sort of counterpoise. No wonder the visitors are discouraged from trying their weight! I wonder how long it takes for the contraption to close? One would have thought that the moment you stepped out of that depression in the floor, the closure would have been immediate, but you say this was not so.”

  “Maybe it works in slow motion,” suggested Jonathan. He looked at the gaping hole and then at his companion.

  “Do you really think you ought to risk it?” he asked. “You don’t want to get trapped down there. We might have to pull the house apart to get you out.”

  “I do not think there can be the slightest risk so long as you will be good enough to remain standing in the depression. I have no wish to emulate the unfortunate lady in The Mistletoe Bough, I assure you.’

  So saying, she ducked under the low doorway and made for the steps. It was a long time before she reappeared.

  “Quite interesting,” she said. “The stair is in the thickness of the wall and then a ramped passage comes out into the undercroft of the keep. Laura declares that there
was no way into the ground floor rooms of a Norman castle except by an inside staircase, so it looks as though the keep was in better repair when this priest’s hole was constructed than it is now.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Jonathan, “it’s clear enough what happened to make the ghost do its disappearing trick, and perhaps it explains how your midnight food-stealer got in.”

  “Not unless there is still another entrance to the priest’s hole. But all that will have to wait. I have made a most disquieting discovery.”

  “Ah, I thought you were gone a long time.”

  “Yes, indeed. I have no option but to contact the police.”

  “Good Lord! What did you find?”

  “Not only the priest’s hole, but in it the body of a man. What is more, I know whose body it is. From the necessarily superficial examination I was able to make, I should say that it had been killed by a heavy blow on the base of the skull and was then pitched over into the undercroft from the gallery round the Great Hall and subsequently removed to the priest’s hole with intent to conceal it.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Dysey Inheritance

  “Ye’se get a sheave o’ my bread, Willy,

  And a bottle o’ my wine:

  But ye’ll pay me when the seas gang dry,

  For ye’ll ne’er be Lord o’ Linne.”

  The Heir of Linne

  “Well, who is it?” asked Jonathan. “Nobody that I know, I trust?”

  “No. He is a former patient of mine named Eustace Dysey.”

  “Oh? A son of the house?”

  “He had some claim to be the owner. The man who was in possession, Tom or Thomas Dysey, is also dead.”

  “Sounds like something out of a nineteenth-century horror chronicle. What do you want me to do?”

  “Take Deborah out for a drive after lunch and call on Doctor Binns. Bellairs will have his address. Meanwhile I will take Laura into our confidence and send her over to the home farm to telephone the police.”

  “They’ll probably come before I can get hold of the doctor.”

  “They will notify their own man, in any case, but a second opinion may be useful.”

  “There’s your own opinion, as well. How long has the chap been dead?”

  “About a week, I think.”

  “Could be the ghost, then?”

  “Or the ghost’s victim—or, in either case, our nocturnal prowler. I am glad Hamish is not in the house.”

  Hamish preferred to eat his midday meal at the home farm, except when he elected to be on duty on Wednesdays and Saturdays at the castle, so, on this particular occasion, it was certain that he would be out of the way for the whole of the afternoon and the early evening when the police would be making their preliminary enquiries.

  “And now,” said Dame Beatrice, when she had seen Laura and told her the news, “for an interesting little experiment.” She led the way to the dining-room, which she had locked up, and produced the key. She locked the door again as soon as they were inside the room. Followed by Laura, whom she commanded to stand well away, she went to the spot on which Jonathan had stood and remained there for several minutes. There was no response from the trap-door or the panelling.

  “As I supposed,” she said, “when Jonathan told me that Hamish had inspected this forbidden territory. He is a well-grown boy, but neither his weight nor mine is sufficient to set the counterpoise in motion. Perhaps you would be good enough to see what you can accomplish.”

  Laura stood on the spot. Nothing happened at first, and then (grudgingly, it seemed) the door in the panelling opened as the square of flooring very slowly gave way.

  “That settles one thing,” Dame Beatrice remarked. “Unless we have solid and weighty persons in the house, you must not be the one to go into the priest’s hole in which the body reposes.”

  “Whereabouts is the priest’s hole?”

  “About half-way down the steps, on the right as one descends.”

  “Behind the fireplace, then, more or less?”

  “One would suppose so.”

  “Well, I’m just as glad I haven’t to go down. Is—er—is the body knocked about, like the other corpse?”

  “As I did not see the other corpse, I can make no comparisons. The head of this one is not pretty. It is just as well that you need not look at it.”

  “Many thanks. I mean, it’s not as though I could do any good if I did see it, and I’d really rather not.”

  “Quite so. I think, from the nature of the injuries, the victim was struck on the head and the body thrown over the gallery railing on to the floor of the keep.”

  “What are we going to tell the servants?”

  “Nothing at all, yet. They will find out soon enough. Now, if you will kindly go along and extract a sheet from the linen-chest in my room, I will see what I can do about making the poor man look a little more presentable than he does at present, without, of course, disturbing the body. The police would not care for me to do that.”

  “There must be some way of opening the panelling from the inside, you know,” said Laura. “I mean, you could show the occupant in and shut the door on him, but there must be some means by which he could open it for himself from inside when the coast was clear. Otherwise, what happened to the wretched priest if his Catholic pal got apprehended by the powers that were, and was cast into the jug for plotting against the State, or whatever they brought it in as?”

  “Of course there must be another entrance to the priest’s hole as well, don’t you think?” asked Dame Beatrice. “If not, how did the murderer get into the undercroft of the keep to reach the body?”

  “Came through the house, same like the ghost,” said Laura. Dame Beatrice pursed her lips in doubt of this, and Laura went off to procure the item which Dame Beatrice had specified. Her employer took the sheet from her, produced the powerful torch she had used before, and, humming (slightly off-key) the tune of The Mistletoe Bough, stepped across the secret doorway as soon as Laura’s weight had opened it again.

  “I’ll stay exactly where I am,” said Laura, “until you come back. Do be careful down there, won’t you?”

  Dame Beatrice cackled harshly and disappeared into the depths. In a very short time she returned. Laura stepped off the spot on which she had been standing, and the door in the panelling very gradually closed with its former uncanny soundlessness.

  “A pity Hamish has to miss the fun,” Dame Beatrice remarked. “Let us hope that the police will have concluded their operations before he has to leave us, and then we can initiate him into these enthralling mysteries.”

  “I hope they won’t want to question him. I wish Gavin were still here,” said Laura.

  “I think we may confidently expect him. Jonathan will have telephoned him, and, if I know our dear Robert, he will forsake all and be with us tomorrow.”

  This prophecy was rather more than fulfilled. The local police were still at the castle, conducting a preliminary enquiry, when Gavin came roaring up to the gatehouse on a motor-cycle. He had lost no time, but, upon receiving Jonathan’s telephone call, had, in his own phrase, “dropped everything and scorched the earth” to reach the castle before nightfall.

  The police, mindful of her eminence and her connections with Gavin and with the Home Office, had handled Dame Beatrice delicately. They did not expect to obtain any useful information from her, and were surprised to discover that she had known the dead man as a patient. They were interested, too, in her account of the mysterious activities of the purloiner of food, but were doubtful whether they agreed with her that the thief was likely to have been Eustace Dysey himself.

  Hamish, to his great joy, was allowed to tell his story of the ghost, and Jonathan was asked what had led him to think that there was a secret opening in the dining-room panelling. The answer to this—since Hamish had already told his tale—was obvious, but Jonathan gave it with grave courtesy. Laura, as Gavin’s wife, was almost immediately dismissed from the enquiry and Deborah
(apart from being asked to account for her presence at the castle—this because the police could think of nothing else to ask her) was not involved in the proceedings. The women servants, who were known to be birds of passage, were hardly questioned at all (this to their chagrin), but the gardener, as a local man and one who had known the Dyseys well, came in for a heavy bombardment, albeit one from which nothing helpful emerged.

  “All in all,” said Dame Beatrice, when the police had gone and the body had been removed for a post-mortem examination of a more exhaustive kind than had been possible in the priest’s hole, “a disturbing yet remarkably dull day.”

  “What did you make of the body? I trust you had a good look at it,” said Gavin.

  “The injuries were consistent with those which would result from a very heavy fall from a considerable height, but the body was already dead, I think, before it fell.”

  “Murderers are seldom imaginative. They always tend to repeat their effects. The police intend to treat it as a case of murder, I take it?”

  “Following the still unexplained death of Mr. Thomas Dysey, I suspect that they have no option. Of course, it may be that the manner of the former death has suggested a course of action to another murderer. Again, both deaths may have been accidental, or the result of attempts at suicide.”

  “If so, why should someone have taken the trouble to move the bodies and, in this second instance, even to attempt to conceal one of them?”

  “That, indeed, is an interesting point. Besides, from my previous knowledge of Eustace Dysey, I am convinced that he was not of suicidal disposition.”

  “And if the man had merely met with an accident, there would be no point in trying to hide the fact by concealing the body.”

  “Except in respect of trying to conceal from possible lessees (such as ourselves) that the fabric of the castle is in a dangerous state of disrepair.”