The Croaking Raven

by Gladys Mitchell

  “As we’re agreed that there must have been an accomplice, there’s another possible combination, isn’t there?”

  “There could be several, I suppose. In this case you refer to…?”

  “Cyril and Mrs. Cyril. She must have been implicated in some way or other. She knew, for instance, that Etta Dysey used to go and stay at the chalet.”

  “It was explained that Mrs. Cyril was of less expense as a wife than as a paid housekeeper, and, of course, although she was wife in name, her duties as housekeeper do not seem to have altered. However, the fact that Mr. Cyril married her before the death of Mr. Thomas seems to indicate that that death had already been planned.”

  “It seems to me,” went on Laura, warming to her work, “that there’s something in this business which cuts both ways. If a wife can’t be made to give evidence against her husband—that’s what you mean, isn’t it?—neither can he be made to incriminate her.”

  “Your arguments appear to be sound.”

  “But they don’t get us beyond the fact that Cyril and Etta are guilty. Oh, well, if that’s what you think, that’s it, so far as I am concerned. Shall we have to appear at the Assizes?”

  “I shall. I found Mr. Eustace’s body.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  “To bed. In the morning we will institute a search for the Ravens’ Hoard.”

  “You really believe it exists?”

  “No, but I think we might amuse ourselves by trying to find out where they hid it. Mr. Eustace was looking for it, I think. We, with our powers of deduction and the invaluable life-work of Mrs. Sarah Harrison…”

  “I wish Hamish could be here! He’d revel in it, wouldn’t he?”

  “Tomorrow I think we must drink champagne.”

  “Why?” asked Laura suspiciously.

  “Because it is the first time, so far as my memory serves me, that you have expressed a wish for the company of your son.”

  Laura was up on the following morning at an hour which was unusually early, even for her. With great caution she crept downstairs to the side door and unbolted it. Then she crossed the courtyard and walked along the paved path at the side of the vegetable garden until she came to the castle wall and the flanking tower. Dawn, grey but with a promise of gold to come, was beginning to break as, with a sense of eerie expectancy, she stepped heavily upon the bottom step of the newel staircase. Nothing happened. Placing her hands on the walls of the inside of the tower, she jumped up and down, but still with no result.

  She tried the second stair, but, again, nothing happened, so she felt all over the walls for projections which, when pressed, might work an Open Sesame. There were no such projections.

  At the first turn of the stair there was a deeply-embrasured little window. She climbed up to it, determined to try everything, likely and unlikely, which might serve to open up the passage from the tower into the house. The tiny slit had a single iron bar across it. This was vertical. It was also very rusty. Laura regarded it doubtfully and then, standing on tiptoe, she tugged on it with all her force. Still nothing happened.

  Laura looked at the rust stains on her palms, rubbed them off as well as she could on the seat of the slacks she was wearing, and climbed to the top of the tower. The morning air was nippy and very fresh, and she stood for a few minutes looking out on the landscape. Smoke in the distance indicated that the fire in the kitchen at the home farm had already been lighted, but the green hill was high before it dropped to the valley, so that she could not see the farm buildings. She turned and began to stroll along the top of the curtain wall. Soon she came opposite the frowning keep, but the curtain wall had been built well clear of it, and it was impossible to see the inside of the massive building She walked on until she came to the gatehouse. Here she descended one newel staircase, crossed under the archway and, mounting a second stairway, ducked under a much smaller and lower arch to get into the porter’s room.

  “Got it!” she said aloud. “No, I haven’t! It probably worked a portcullis or the drawbridge.” The object which had caught her attention was an ancient iron wheel along whose flanged edge ran a chain. She gave the wheel a wrench by putting both hands on one of its iron spokes (of which it possessed only four, in the shape of a cross) and thrusting downwards. Nothing budged.

  Disgusted, she concluded her perambulations and, having reached her starting-point, descended to the courtyard to find the chauffeur, George, washing himself under the pump which was being operated for him with almost religious fervour by Zena. As Laura came up, Zena handed him a towel.

  “Hullo, George,” said Laura. “I say, when you’re dried and dressed, I wish you’d come over to that tower and solve a problem for me.”

  “Mr. Henri and I solved it last night, madam, after you and madam and the police force had removed Mr. Dysey from the premises.”

  “Damn!” said Laura, disgustedly. “What knob did you press that I couldn’t find, then?”

  “It is not a question of knobs, madam, but of leverage.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “If you’d care to come and take a look, madam.” Laura went with him to the foot of the tower. “Realising that madam must have had some definite purpose in requesting Mr. Henri and myself to seat ourselves at the foot of the tower, madam, I said to Mr. Henri, ‘Hullo,’ I said. ‘Dirty work afoot. Madam must think there’s a miscreant under these steps.’ Well, we sat on, as advised, until the party, as you might say, was over, and the police force, together with the miscreant, had driven off, and then I said to Mr. Henri, ‘What price we have a dekko?’ Well, he was game, of course, but, before we got started, I had the message that the car would be wanted to go out to the river. Still, that left us nice time, so we got some candles from the kitchen and I had my torch, and we took a look. Here’s how it works.”

  He knelt down and put a forefinger into each of what looked like two small ventilator holes in the strut of the bottom stair. It, and the one above it, seemed to fold back like two sticks of a fan, and there, before Laura’s fascinated gaze, was a flight of steps. George removed his fingers.

  “Watch this,” he said. He counted aloud to ten. “Just gives anybody nice time to get down the steps.” Without human aid, the two steps slid back into position. “You’d never notice those two holes, in the ordinary way,” he said. “That’s the beauty of ’em.”

  “Then how did you notice them?” asked Laura.

  “It’s on account of messing about with cars and gadgets all my life, madam, I expect. Anyway, there it is, and a real little daisy, too. There’s likely a way of opening up again from the inside, I wouldn’t be surprised. Madam must have thought so, anyway, and so did the miscreant we heard hammering and yelling while we sat there.”

  “Well, I’ll go and have some breakfast, and then I’ll bring Dame Beatrice along and demonstrate the miracle to her.”

  “Very good, madam. I’d better be on hand, then.”

  “We shall need you here, and Henri in the dining-room, so that I’ve got two bolt-holes. Dame Beatrice will insist on that, I expect.”

  Henri, therefore, was shown where to stand in order that the panelling in the dining-room might remain open, and Laura lowered herself into the abyss when George operated the tower steps. She had Dame Beatrice’s big torch, switched it on, and found herself in a narrow passage which descended fairly steeply for a bit and ended in a flight of steps. Laura ascended these and found a doorway on her left, but, broken only by the stone platform which accommodated the doorway, the steps descended again to another passage. She tried the door, but it remained firmly fastened. She listened. Celestine and Zena must be in the kitchen, she thought, but the door was soundproof. She hammered on it, and shouted, but there was no response.

  “Been kept locked, when not in use, ever since the food was stolen, I suppose,” she said aloud. “No, that can’t be the answer. Eustace stole food a good many times. There must be a way of opening it from this side. If so, why didn’t Cyril use
it? Oh, well, we can find out later.” She descended the stairs and was met by a steady draught. At the end of the next passage, which was considerably shorter than the previous one, there was a kind of baffle-door giving two exits to the ground floor of the keep.

  Laura stepped out into the dimness which her torch scarcely served to illumine, and walked round to where the passage to the priest’s hole led into the building. Then she looked back. The exit by which she had left was completely screened.

  There was something else in the undercroft, however. As she looked at the huddled shape which lay only a few yards from where she stood, she realised what it must be. She shone her torch on it to make sure, and then hastened along the ramped passage to the priest’s hole and the patient Henri waiting on duty in the dining-room.

  “I suppose, mam,” said the inspector, when Mrs. Dysey’s body had been removed, “she thought it was better than serving a life sentence. Anyway, we found a full confession on the body, and we’ve got Mr. Cyril, anyway. You’ll be wanted at the inquest, Mrs. Gavin, I’m afraid,” he went on, “and Mr. Bonamy will have to give evidence of identification, being next of kin. I’ve telephoned Scotland Yard, mam, and Mr. Gavin reckons he’ll be with you tomorrow some time. You, Mrs. Gavin, must have had a bit of a shock, and will be glad to have him with you.”

  “I don’t think it was much of a shock, in a way,” said Laura, when he had gone, “although I expect I turned a bit green about the gills when I found her. Still, I can’t pretend I feel very sentimental about her end. Do you really think she would have tried to kill Bonamy and the baby?”

  “She seems to have been a cruel and ruthless woman. I think, however, that the next victim would have been Mrs. Cyril Dysey. For one thing, she knew too much, and could have given evidence against Mrs. Etta, even if not against Mr. Cyril.”

  “And, of course, I suppose Etta and Cyril wanted to live together for good and all. Cyril seems to have been a bit of dirty work altogether, doesn’t he?”

  “He took care of Henry, of course. By the way, was there ever any rational explanation of the singing which Zena heard?”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? It was Eustace, as we thought. Grandmother Carter told me that he always sang, and didn’t even know he was doing it. Didn’t he sing while you were treating him after the war?”

  “He did not have an opportunity. We talked all the time. Besides, I expect he sang only when he was alone.”

  “Oh, what you might call one of these bathroom-type operators. Well, look here, we’ve got the rest of the day before us, and we can’t leave here, in any case, until after the inquest, so why don’t we look for the hiding-place of the Hoard? I must do something to take my mind off Mrs. Dysey. Let’s have another go at the underlined passages in The Housekeeper’s Pocket Book.”

  “I will leave you to it.”

  “All right. I’ll have a go. What are you going to do?”

  “Cope with the visitors. Have you forgotten that it is Saturday afternoon?”

  “But, in view of what’s happened…”

  “Nothing has been made public yet, and this is the last time the place will be open until next May.”

  “Oh, Lord! I’d better turn to and help.”

  “No, no. Pursue your studies. I will send for you if I need you.”

  As it happened, the weather at midday turned very wet. Dame Beatrice sat in the morning-room, from whose window she could command the gatehouse archway. Laura, assured by her employer that there would be no visitors in such weather, repaired to the library to ponder upon Jesuit bark and Roman wormwood.

  At half-past three a car drove in under the gatehouse archway and up to the front door of the house. Gavin and his son got out. Dame Beatrice did not wait for them to pull the bell, but went to meet them.

  “Oh, Mrs. Dame, dear,” said Hamish, rushing at her and hugging her, “isn’t it super? Old Earthworm’s been made an F.R.S. It seems it’s a very good thing to be. He’s the Head’s brother, you know, so we’ve all been given a long nepotic week-end if our parents want us to have it, and I don’t have to go back to school until Tuesday morning, so I wired Scotland Yard—it was a super thing to do, and when Canford Major heard of it he put me in the Colts XV, which you generally have to be at least eleven to get into, and, of course, I’m not eleven until next year, although I’m bigger and heavier than some of the men who are eleven, and worth my place, I think.”

  “Nepotic?” said Dame Beatrice. “Robert, dear, this is a pleasant surprise. Laura is in the library.”

  “Yes, nepotic,” said Hamish, hanging on to the thin, surprisingly muscular arm of his ally while his father went bounding up the shallow, broad-treaded stairs. “It’s a word which means giving benefits and things to your relations, whereas, if they weren’t your relations, they wouldn’t get them. In the ordinary way, I believe it’s considered rather a dim way to behave, but when it means we get a long week-end just because old Earthworm is the Head’s brother, well, I’m all for it. The chaps who can’t go home get a fireworks display and rather a lot of sardines and cake and things, but I don’t grudge it them. I’d ever so much rather be here. I never thought I’d see the castle again. Did you know it had a treasure? I mean, it did have a treasure. It’s gone now.”

  “What do you mean—it’s gone?” asked Laura, coming down the stairs with her husband.

  “Old Mrs. Carter told me when I took my pig up to her bedroom to show her. It’s a very good story.”

  “Was she sure it had gone?”

  “Oh, yes, mamma, quite sure. She told me how to find the place where it had been hidden—at least, she told me where to look for the clues, but I didn’t know how to work them out.”

  “I might be able to help you,” said Laura.

  “Good. Tea first, then. I’m starving.”

  “Come to think of it, so am I,” said Laura. “I’ll get my notes, and we can talk about them while we eat.”

  “Dame B. and I will leave you to it, then,” said Gavin, relieved to find that his wife had already recovered from the shock of rinding Etta Dysey’s body. “Come on, Dame B. Let’s have our tea in the morning-room and shove these treasure-hunters up to the library.”

  “What have you so far, mamma?” Hamish enquired, studying Laura’s notes. “Oh, I see. Well, Jesuit bark—yes, old Mrs. Carter told me about the Jesuits, and, of course, I’ve read about them in history, although, actually, we’re not up to the sixteenth century yet. Roman wormwood—well, Roman could be Julius Caesar and those sort of people, or it could be the Catholics. Taken with the Jesuit bit, it would mean the Catholics.”

  “Yes, I’d got as far as that.”

  “It’s just a pointer, like Captain Flint’s skeleton of a sailor. Well, now.” He bit a large section off a buttered scone. “Spring water. Hm! Could be the lake or the—no! I’ve got it! It’s the pump in the courtyard! It’s fed from a spring. Bellairs told me so. The spring feeds a well, of course, but shouldn’t think that matters. ‘Try how deep it goes, for the greater part may be hid within’—why, that’s it, mamma! It must be in the well!”

  “Have been in the well,” amended Laura.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” agreed Hamish, slightly deflated. “What’s this next bit?—‘dirty ends, put salt to them?’—I don’t see much meaning in that. Do you think it means we ought to take a pinch of salt with this information, and the treasure was never in the well at all? Have you anything else to go on?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. I kept one or two bits of the diary.”

  “So did I—the bits Mrs. Dame copied out for me and you typed, but I’m sure they’re nothing to do with the treasure. Let’s look at yours, may I? Hm! What have we here?—‘very uneasy on account of his suspicions I know where it lies’—that must refer to the treasure, but the rest of it, and the man dying, don’t seem to help at all. Let’s go back to the idea of the well. Now, the pump would be later than the actual well, so we concentrate on the well. That must be—have you ever seen it, m
amma?”

  “No, I can’t say I have. Most castles had two at least—one in the bailey and the other, where enemies couldn’t get at it to poison it, in the keep.”

  “Oh, if it’s in the keep, it would be where we can’t get at it, either, wouldn’t it? It would be on the ground floor, and there’s no way to the ground floor because the floor of the Great Hall has gone, and so have the staircases from it down to the basement. There’s nothing left where you could possibly find a well.”

  “Finish your tea, then, and let’s join the others. It’s getting chilly in here.”

  “Right. I wonder whether you’d mind if I just strolled over to the farm for a word with the Carters? I expect they’ll be pleased to see me. People always are.”

  He’s awful!’ said Laura, when Hamish, having given a promise to be back before dark, had left them. Gavin laughed. Then he said,

  “Now tell me all that’s been happening.”

  Laura and Dame Beatrice, supplementing one another, did so. Then Laura said,

  “I can’t let him go into the undercroft of the keep after what’s happened there, but it would just about make his day if I showed him the priest’s hole. What do you think?”

  “Go ahead. I see no objection. But he’s certain to want to know where the ramped passage leads. You could take him as far as the end of it, I suppose. Anyway, it will have to be tomorrow, not today.”

  “No, I shan’t take him farther than the priest’s hole. I wish we could find out how to get the pantry door open on to that passage from the flanking tower. Eustace knew how to do it.”