The Croaking Raven

by Gladys Mitchell

  The journey took just over an hour, and the clocks stood at ten minutes past ten when George pulled up in the car-park and came round to open the door for Dame Beatrice to get out.

  “I do not know how long we are likely to be, George,” she said. “If we are not back by half-past twelve, go and get yourself some lunch.”

  “Very good, madam.”

  He closed the door of the car and resumed his seat at the wheel. Dame Beatrice and Laura walked out of the car park, found a policeman, and asked the way to the street they wanted. It was not far away, and by twenty-five minutes past ten Laura was ringing the bell of a squarely-built detached house of late-nineteenth-century appearance. A middle-aged woman wearing a flowered overall and holding a mop answered the door.

  “Mrs. Wick’s just gorn shopping, won’t be long, Miss Peggy’s at work and Miss Gina’s in bed with a cold, you can go on up if you don’t mind catching it, I got to get on, only here ’til eleven,” said the apparition, breathlessly. A youthful voice from upstairs called out,

  “Who is it, Mrs. Adams?”

  “Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley and secretary,” said Laura to the woman.

  “Dame Bradley and seckerterry,” called Mrs. Adams. “You better go straight up,” she added to the visitors, “else she’ll only catch ’er death, sparrin’ about on that draughty landin’.”

  Dame Beatrice and Laura mounted the staircase and encountered a girl in her early twenties. She was wearing a transparent housecoat over ‘shortie’ pyjamas and she gave a squeak of dismay when she saw the visitors.

  “But I don’t know you!” she said. “What—what are you doing in this house?”

  Dame Beatrice produced a visiting card.

  “I am accredited to the Home Office in the capacity of psychiatric consultant,” she said, in her beautiful voice. “On the present occasion I am assisting the police to unravel the mystery of the so-far unexplained deaths of Mr. Thomas and Mr. Eustace Dysey, to whom, I believe, you bear relationship.”

  “Oh, dear! I thought that was all over and done with long ago! The police questioned us. We couldn’t tell them anything.”

  “Had you not better get back into bed?” asked Dame Beatrice. The girl giggled.

  “I haven’t really got a cold,” she confessed. “I just didn’t feel like going to the office this morning. If you don’t mind waiting a minute, I’ll get some clothes on. I wish my mother would come home!”

  She retreated into a bedroom and shut the door, re-appearing in a miraculously short time dressed in trousers and a hip-length jacket. As the top of the shortie pyjamas was now doing duty as a blouse or shirt, there was ample explanation of the speed with which the girl had dressed. She leaned over the banisters and called out,

  “Have you done the lounge, Mrs. Adams?”

  “Just finished it!” the daily help returned in trumpet tones. “Be you a-comin’ down?”

  “Yes. Put the electric fire on.”

  “Shall I make you a cup of tea?”

  “No, three cups of coffee.”

  “Instant sort?”

  “Yes, of course. Come on down,” she added, to the visitors. The lounge was a large, square room, comfortably furnished, and the electric fire was a new one. “Sit down,” went on the girl. “I suppose it’s Uncle Eustace’s death that has brought it all up again?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Dame Beatrice replied. “Whatever the rights or wrongs of Mr. Thomas’s death, there can be no doubt that Mr. Eustace was murdered.”

  “That’s what we thought.”

  “You seem to take the matter calmly.”

  “No other way to take it. Anyway, it’s no good for you to think any of us here can tell you anything.”

  “About the death of Mr. Eustace? I know you cannot, unless you can suggest any reason why anybody should have desired it.”

  “Aunt Etta would be the only one. She hated him like poison. But however much she desired it, as you say, she wouldn’t have done it. I’m absolutely sure of that. Besides, she was abroad at the time.”

  “Can you be sure of that, I wonder?”

  “Well, we had picture postcards from her. It’s only in books that people alibi themselves by getting other people to post their letters and things on a certain date, isn’t it?”

  “How clear is your recollection of the events which took place on the occasion of your last visit to Dysey Castle?” asked Dame Beatrice, ignoring the postcards.

  “Very clear. Peg and I have talked so much about it that I couldn’t forget, even if I tried.”

  “I wonder whether you will be good enough to give me an account of how you spent the evening of the dinner-party?”

  “Oh, well, we were a bit browned-off about that dinner-party. The people were all so stuffy.”

  “The people being…?”

  “Oh, Uncle Thomas and Aunt Etta, of course, and Uncle Eustace and Uncle Cyril, and the doctor and his wife and the vicar and the vicaress. She might have been all right, but he wasn’t. I mean, you can’t have much fun with a vicar, can you? We did think Aunt and Uncle might have invited a young man or two, but I don’t suppose they knew any.”

  “There was your cousin, was there not?”

  “Oh, we don’t count Henry as a cousin.” She giggled wildly. “And poor old Bonamy, of course, is dead.”

  “Dead? Can you be sure of that?”

  “Well, I never quite believed it, you know. He did something pretty awful—we were never told what it was—and had to be sent abroad, and then we heard he’d died of fever or something. There’s a memorial to him in the church. Aunt Etta had it put up soon after he was sent away.”

  “Had you any reason for disbelieving the story that your cousin was dead?”

  “Not really. It just seemed a bit too neat, that’s all. I mean, it’s never the bad eggs who cop out, is it? Only the decent people die. That’s my experience.” She giggled again, oblivious of Laura’s scowling countenance.

  “Finding the dinner-party disappointing, how did you and your sister spend the rest of the evening?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “Oh, we walked over to the home farm and stayed a couple of hours. Jerry Carter saw us back to the castle.”

  “Ah, yes. It would have been dark by then, I suppose.”

  “Darkish, anyway. There was a moon, of course.”

  “Did young Mr. Carter enter the castle with you?”

  “Oh, no. Jerry’s ever so shy. A real country bumpkin of a boy. Of course, he wasn’t married then. He married about three months later. He’s got a bouncing baby boy, too. We wanted to be godmothers, but only one of us could be, so, short of tossing up for it, which didn’t seem quite the thing, we let it go. Of course, Jerry and his wife might not have wanted us, anyway.”

  “You saw nothing, then, of Mr. Henry Dysey, on that evening of the dinner-party?”

  “Oh, yes, of course we did. He was at the home farm, too.”

  “By pre-arrangement?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Did you know he was going to be there?”

  “No. How could we?”

  “But he did not escort you back to the castle?”

  “No, the lazy brute! He said he wasn’t going to fag. It was quite far enough to walk back to the chalet from the farm, without the sweat of going to the castle first. Actually, I think he was a bit narked at not being invited to the dinner, although I don’t see how he could expect to be.”

  “Are you sure he was not invited? It seems strange to have left him out.”

  “Not a bit of it! Uncle Tom couldn’t stand him. Mummy knows the reason, but she won’t tell us what it is. So stuffy of her, because I’m sure it’s something scandalous, and I do so adore a breath of scandal. Oh, here is Mummy! I’m downstairs, darling! In the lounge! I’ve got visitors!”

  A middle-aged woman, wearing a tweed coat and a felt hat, came in, followed by Mrs. Adams, who was carrying three cups of coffee on a tray.

  “I better make you one bef
ore I go, I s’pose,” she said to her employer, as she set down the tray.

  “No, don’t bother. I had one in the town,” said Mrs. Wick. Gina introduced Dame Beatrice and Laura.

  “They want to know about Uncle Tom and Uncle Eustace,” she explained, “but there’s nothing much I can tell them. They’re not the police, but they belong to the Home Office.”

  A shout of, “Well, I’m orf,” from Mrs. Adams, and the slamming of the front door, interrupted Mrs. Wick’s comment on this information.

  “What did you think my daughter could tell you?” she enquired, in none too friendly a tone. “Her father won’t be very pleased at having everything raked up again. Gina was only eighteen and Peggy sixteen at the time. They were much too young to be mixed up with the police.”

  “Oh, Mummy, it was quite fun! And it wasn’t as though we knew Uncle Tom all that well, or liked him all that much. And, anyway, it was proved to have been somebody unknown, or an accident of some sort, wasn’t it?”

  “It was all very worrying to your father and me that you should have been in the castle at the time.” She turned to Dame Beatrice. “Oh, dear! So now the bother is going to start all over again! But what help can you expect from Gina? She knows nothing except what she has read in the papers, and that was little enough.”

  “I wonder, Mrs. Wick, whether I may ask what may seem to be an impertinent question?” enquired Dame Beatrice.

  “I suppose I don’t have to answer it,” Mrs. Wick retorted.

  “How nearly is your family related to the Dyseys?”

  “Oh, that! I thought you were going to ask me something else. My mother was cousin to Etta Dysey’s mother.”

  “So that under no circumstances would you or your daughters have expectations under a Dysey will?”

  “Good gracious, no, of course we shouldn’t! In any case, I don’t know what the Dyseys would have to leave, except that white elephant of a castle and the land that goes with it—unless, of course, the Ravens’ Hoard, as it’s called, ever turns up again.”

  “The Ravens’ Hoard?”

  “Yes. There’s an old story—I heard it from Tom one Christmas, but even he didn’t really believe it—that Dysey Castle was made the repository for a very large amount of Jesuit treasure which was never claimed—although how that could be, I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “Oh, it would be quite possible,” said Laura. “The money would be intended to further the work of the Jesuits in England, but I expect the Order was proscribed before it was all spent. After that, the money wouldn’t be touched, you see, because no one person could lay claim to it. The Order was disbanded by Clement XIV in 1773, after being turned out of England in 1604. By the time it was re-established I suppose the story of the Dysey treasure had become a sort of myth and nobody believed it any more, or else they concluded that the Dyseys had spent it.”

  “Interesting,” remarked Dame Beatrice. “I must thank you for the story of the treasure, Mrs. Wick, and Miss Wick for her helpful information. I wonder whether I might talk to your younger daughter when she returns home?”

  “No, that you certainly may not!” said Mrs. Wick, with asperity. “I absolutely forbid you to get in touch with Peggy. She can add nothing to what Gina has told you, and I will not have all that dreadful business raked up again! I’m sorry, but there it is. Peggy was an innocent child. She was led astray, and I won’t have her reminded of that night.”

  “In that case,” said Dame Beatrice, rising, “I am sorry I suggested it. I had no idea that anything of that nature was involved.”

  “Well, it was,” said Mrs. Wick. “It was that wretched Henry, of course! We had to take steps—I need not say more!”

  “Of course not,” Dame Beatrice agreed. Gina, true to her reputation, giggled.

  “I wouldn’t have called Peg all that innocent!” she said.

  “Really, Gina!” protested her mother. “Please see your visitors to the front door.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Ravens’ Hoard

  “And he bred up that bonny boy,

  Call’d him his sister’s son;

  And he thought nae eye could ever see

  The deed that had been done.”

  Jellon Grame

  “How rotten for Mrs. Wick!” said Laura, as they walked back towards the car park. “I suppose they’re sure it was Henry? Personally, I wouldn’t put it past Cyril. I suppose he’s the next person we have to tackle about Tom Dysey’s death? I don’t look forward to it much.”

  “I think we should also question Henry. We must see them separately, Cyril first. But before we do that, I confess to some curiosity concerning the Ravens’ Hoard.”

  “Yes, stories of treasure are always interesting. Think there might be something in that eighteenth-century journal you sorted out for Hamish?”

  “It is not unlikely. The Jesuit Order was disbanded in 1773, you say, but the Society was expelled from England as early as 1604?”

  “Yes, officially, but that’s not to say all the members went, you know. In fact, I should guess it’s fairly certain they did not. That’s where the hiding-places like the one in Dysey Castle would come in handy. It would have been constructed during the reign of Elizabeth I and it probably went on being used for many years after that.”

  “I wonder when the Dyseys gave up the Catholic faith?”

  “Perhaps Cyril knows. It might make a talking-point.”

  Before tackling Cyril Dysey, Dame Beatrice spent three days in close inspection of the library. It contained a good deal of rubbish in the form of unreadable and, she would have thought, unpreachable sermons. There were also some bound copies of extremely dull Victorian magazines with a semi-religious bias, as well as more interesting material in the form of some enormous volumes of the Boys’ Own Paper, text books on aero-dynamics, mathematics, and physics, an interesting collection of cookery books dating from the seventeenth century to Mrs. Beeton, volumes of the Victoria County Histories and a set of those works by Rudyard Kipling which were published in the uniform edition of 1900. Dickens and Sir Walter Scott were represented in bulk, and there were a number of books, many of them by authors long forgotten, published at prices varying from sixteen shillings to a humble one and sixpence by Bliss, Sands and Company of 12 Burleigh Street, Strand, London.

  Dame Beatrice took down one or two of these. Men, Cities and Events, by Wm. Beatty-Kingston. The Best Cruise on the Broads, With useful hints on Hiring, Provisioning and Manning the Yacht; Clothing, Angling, Photography, etc., by John Bickersdyke. A Winter Jaunt to Norway by Mrs. Alec Tweedie, author of A Girl’s Ride in Iceland.

  “Fascinating,” said Dame Beatrice aloud. “How do you suppose they did it at the price?”

  “Did what?” asked Laura, who was inditing a letter to her husband describing her encounters with Mrs. Dysey, the vicar, the doctor, and the Wick mother and her elder daughter. “Oh, sold books? Cheap labour, I suppose. Have you found anything interesting?”

  “Interesting, yes. Germane to our purpose, no.”

  “I’ll come and help. I’m getting sick to death of this letter. There seems an awful lot of it, but you say we have to keep Gavin up-to-date with our discoveries. Not that I can see they amount to much, so far, but…”

  “I am far from feeling discouraged. Consider the evidence that we have already obtained.”

  “I have considered it. I can’t see it gets us very much further.”

  “Oh, but, think! From the vicar’s wife we learn that some people in the village thought that Mr. Thomas Dysey’s death was a suicide, and that another faction held the opinion that he had been murdered, not by person or persons unknown, but to secure the inheritance for Eustace, the rightful claimant.”

  “Well, that theory has been knocked on the head now that Eustace has been murdered, and there’s no evidence whatever that Tom was illegitimate. They’ve got him mixed up with Henry.”

  “I think you are right about that. Thomas and his wife
do not seem to have been popular in the village, so there were bound to be scandalous rumours.”

  “It was interesting about the living being alternately given and sold, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, indeed. Another interesting point is that the Reverend Mr. Charlock did not at first remember that there was anything amiss with Thomas on that evening, but that, upon reflection, he did, and has proved to us conclusively that he did, and that this conviction of his was not an afterthought. Then we were assured, not only of the existence of Mrs. Dysey’s son, but that he was probably still alive. I take it that you had not noticed the tablet commemorating Bonamy’s death when you took Hamish to church during his stay here?”

  “No, I hadn’t. I don’t take any stock in memorial tablets unless they’re mediaeval brasses or those oddly comic Elizabethan and Early Stuart horrors. I suppose Mrs. Dysey was so fed up with Bonamy’s lapse from grace—whatever it was—that, to her, he was as good as dead when the disgrace was made public.”

  “It seems likely, unless he really is dead.”

  “Oh, he’ll crop up again. They always do. Read any good book,” said Laura.

  “Then,” Dame Beatrice went on, declining to take advantage of this suggestion, “there is the surprising business of the dinner-party.”

  “Oh, I don’t know that it was particularly surprising in itself,” Laura objected. “I suppose they had to think of something to entertain those regrettable girls.”

  “And you think that the best they could do, in that respect, was to pass over two unattached young men (for the farmer’s son, Carter, was not then married) and to favour two married couples?”

  “Well, one can understand why Henry wasn’t invited, and the Dyseys probably thought Carter wasn’t good enough to make castle company.”

  “Very likely. There remains the fact that the Dyseys had already cold-shouldered the vicar and, in any case, seem to have shunned all forms of entertaining. I hardly think they would have put themselves out for a couple of obscure relatives. Still, one never knows. It may be, of course, that the vicar and his wife were invited because the Chief Constable could not, or would not, come, and that the invitation to the doctor was to make sure of having medical aid at hand. That, to me, has a curious ring.”