An Unkindness of Ravens

by S. E. Smith

  When the usual conversations were complete, I turned things around to the Bravos. From my hints and innuendos, I soon created the desired effect in the mind of my target. Cardew, sensing something he could dine out on – even if court mourning put a limit on his ability to carouse – preened and sat upright in his chair, his claret forgotten.

  “Well, of course, Bravo was her second husband,” the old boy’s voice brooked no interruption. “I met him once. Boor of a man ... Voracious appetite for the skirt. A bit like yourself – and indeed me in my younger day – if you get my drift.” The old boy smacked his lips. “Kept a couple of mistresses. Had at least one illegitimate child. Totally different in that respect to his wife’s first husband.”

  “First husband?”

  Cardew lent forward and lowered his voice. “Alexander Ricardo, doncha know? Son of the MP. Party had high hopes for him. A fine soldierly man. Didn’t react well to civilian life; took to the bottle.”

  Knowing how that felt after conversations with the man in front of me, I said nothing.

  Kept waiting for the next utterance, I was almost at the point of bringing Cardew back to the topic in hand when:

  “Mrs Ricardo – as she was then – didn’t help matters. When she wouldn’t come to heel, she felt Ricardo’s wrath - which is only right, whatever the suffragists, may say.”

  Of its own volition, my fist clenched. Yet instead of ramming it down his throat as was my intention, I nodded and decided the century would be a damn sight older before my attitude to relationships became the norm. Unable to stop the scorpions who, sensing my disquiet, ran laps around my head, I headed back into painful waters. “You intrigue me. What happened?”

  “Silly filly felt Ricardo’s right to chastise her meant she could leave him. Family despaired. Sent young Florrie away to Gully’s health spa to recuperate.” The ageing peer leant in even closer. His breath smelling of claret and cigars, reminded me of Grandmother; and I did my best not to snort my mirth to the world.

  “Did more than recuperate from what I can tell. Got very biblical with Gully ... if the rumours are true.” In his mind, I think Cardew believed his voice low. In reality, it boomed loudly around a fortunately near-empty room. “Indeed, I have it on the best of authorities, Florrie and her doctor got caught in the middle of a bit of how’s your father on the sofa of a mutual friend!” the old boy’s eyes rounded with scandal.

  I took another sip of coffee while he martialled his thoughts. “Of course, the family totally disowned the girl. Not that Gully was blameless. Only a fool tups a girl where anyone can catch them.” He winked salaciously and leaned in again to whisper loudly. “You and I would never be that foolish.”

  I grimaced and allowed his final point. Although it was close to being retracted when he added:

  “Though – as you will own – Byrd old friend, ‘tis hard to say what a man in lust will do.” He winked again. “Especially given she was much younger ... but the sofa of a family friend? Not good form. Should have set her up in an apartment ... or gone to an hotel.” Cardew shook his head and raised his voice. “I always feel a sound business relationship with a young filly keeps things properly regulated.”

  “You don’t think Ricardo’s family had anything to do with Bravo’s murder?” I said, determined to avoid the nauseous images his words created.

  Lord Cardew’s busy, white brows furrowed in concentration. “Wouldn’t have thought so. Terribly respectable and forward thinking. Jewish. Ricardo’s mother died in ‘69 - if memory serves and the father eight years earlier. There were no other children ...” Said brows took on a ferocious angle. “Maybe a disgruntled former army colleague wanted the woman gone. Florrie did ruin Ricardo’s reputation and drive him to drink.”

  Taking a breath, Cardew shrugged. “That’s the long and short of it. Not sure about Bravo’s mistress. Wouldn’t have thought she wanted him dead though. More to have been got from blackmail than murder if you ask me.”

  I raised a finger and twirled it around to an imaginary beat as he gave the matter further consideration.

  “Besides nothing was said about her at the time. If she was in the frame, the papers would have made more of his lifestyle instead of focusing on the widow’s.” Cardew eyed his claret with interest, and to distract him, I poured and handed him another cup of coffee.

  “What about the servants?” I asked refilling my own cup as I spoke. “Any scandal in that arena d’you think?”

  The old boy untangled his eyebrows. “Possibly, but nothing could be proved. Cox - the companion - was a nasty piece of work by all accounts. Rumours circulated she killed her husband.” Cardew’s eyebrows unfurled still further as he considered the matter. “If you think she’s come back to England, you’re sixpence short of a shilling, Byrd. From what I understand, she came into an inheritance.”

  “Lucky woman.”

  “Besides, she was convinced it was Gully. Kept hinting at such at the inquest.”

  “You went?” This was news to me.

  Cardew sipped again, “Oh, but of course. To both of them. I was a friend of Johnson – one of the six physicians in attendance at the Priory – went along to support him.” He smiled.

  I returned the gesture. “Did you reach your own conclusion?” Looking up from my coffee, I was just in time to catch cold fear cross the old man’s face. “No!” he said too firmly. “The evidence was too confusing. Any one of them could’ve done it.”

  “Even Langley?” I dropped the name like a stone into the conversation. There were ripples, as any name dropped suddenly would create, but nothing decisive.

  “Langley?” I could see Cardew trawling that vast gossiping mind of his until the lightbulb of memory went on. “Which one of them? There were two. Twins. Identical, except for the nose.”

  Interesting, Lamb made no mention of Langley being a twin. Perhaps the old sergeant’s memory really was failing.

  Aware I was going off on a mental tangent and also acutely aware of Cardew’s stare, I returned to the matter in hand. “Robert that is, not his brother.”

  At the mention of the forename, Cardew relaxed slightly. “Ah yes, Robert. Didn’t give evidence, was with his brother at the time. Didn’t need to. Had an alibi.”

  “Do you remember the other brother’s name?”

  “No.” Yet again, the word exploded into existence too quickly for my liking. “Do recall the brother was a valet. Worked for ... for ... for ...”

  And then I found it. The lie. The holding back of something important. The vestiges of real fear in Cardew’s voice and face. A sense of dread pouring from every pore. An anxiety comparable to that displayed when Emily introduced herself to him last year.

  Words tumbled over themselves to cover his mistake. “Damn it, can’t remember who the other Langley worked for. Well, it was a long time ago. Thirteen years?”

  “Twenty-five!”

  “Good lord. Good lord. So long?” He tripped over himself to hide his mistake in plain sight. “Oh yes. Oh yes. Long times. Long times.” I let Cardew ramble in the hopes he would say something indiscrete, but he didn’t. Just used the time to marshal his thoughts. “How did Robert Langley die?”

  “Gunshot wound. Stomach blown completely away.”

  “Good God! How vicious!” Coffee forgotten, Cardew picked up his claret and drank deeply. I sat there, desperate to escape, until he drained the glass and called for another.

  Taking that as my cue, I rose: “Well thanks, my dearest Cardy! You are – as always – a pearl amongst men.” I held out a paw and winced as, staggering to his feet, the old boy gripped my hand inside his own clammy grasp.

  He leaned in, and I smelt fear in the lowered tones of a man, the sober side of three sheets. “Do me a favour Byrd, eh?” He waited for me to nod. “Happy to help and all ... But ... please don’t tell anyone I told you your dead Langley had a twin. Please?”

  Promising utter discretion, I left a decidedly rattled Cardew balling out Grant for his tardin
ess and walked out into a biting February wind. Turning left, I ambled for a mile or so until, running out of thoughts, I raised an arm to hail a taxicab.

  “Scotland Yard, cabbie,” I said as I leapt aboard, “and don’t spare the horses!”

  Scotland Yard - A Little After Lunch.

  CC was not having better luck, not if the way Sergeant Lamb had his head firmly in a pile of reports was anything to go by. I tried to sneak past that worthy gent, but my size 10’s disturbed him.

  “Be careful!” Lamb advised curtly. “He’s in the office; chewing out Barker.”

  I waved an imperial paw. “Any particular reason, my muttonous Lamb?”

  Lamb snorted and examined his reports.

  “Before I go in, beard the lion and all that, any chance you remembered any of those people in the picture?”

  Lamb shook his mane and rubbed his arm. “Sorry, my lord. Only that the man’s Langley.”

  “Were the twins identical?” I asked.

  “Aye sir, ‘cept for the nose. A former employer apparently.” He realised his mistake and, looking slightly perturbed, rubbed his arm.

  I smiled to take the sting out of my rebuke. “Strange you can remember Langley had a twin, but not the names of the women. Especially given your eye for the ladies.”

  Lamb turned up his hands in a show of innocence. “No accounting for age is there, my lord?”

  I wouldn’t go so far as to say the loquacious sergeant of London lied; just he didn’t tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I waved again. “Let me know when you do, Lamb. Let me know when you do!” And without further ado, I headed towards the sound of raised voices.

  “What the hell do you mean they disappeared?”

  My cousin’s bellow was loud enough to be heard in Whitehall. Made of sterner stuff than my cousin’s sergeant, I didn’t bother knocking on CC’s door, I simply pushed it open and readied myself to battle like Leonidas at Thermopylae.

  He paused briefly to acknowledge my arrival before continuing. “This idiot can’t find hide nor hair of anyone connected with Langley. No mother, no sister, no wife, no cousin. Nothing. Even his brother vanishes off the census after 1880.” CC turned his attention and ire to the young policeman, whom I liked because of his eye to detail and his embracing of the science of deduction. Under cover of CC’s tirade, I sent Barker a message of solidarity via my eyebrows.

  “Family don’t disappear! More’s the bloody pity,” CC continued, “they turn up like spectres at the feast. They leave a trail, easy enough for any halfwit to follow!” CC glared at his constable, “Go out there and find them, before I terminate your employment!” He stopped, and the glare intensified exponentially. “Well, what you waiting for?” He snarled. “Get. Out!”

  Barker fled before the final word left my cousin’s lips.

  The door banged sharply behind him, cutting off the comforting words of Sergeant Lamb to his protégé. I took up residence in the chair opposite my cousin and stared at him expectantly.

  “Well?” CC urged. “What did the old windbag have to say for himself?”

  “Plenty of gossip; nothing of use. You’re already aware Langley had a brother, I can add an identical twin with a broken nose, who used to be a valet. That’s it!” I gave an apologetic shrug. “The body’s no better. Fortunately, I’m getting a second opinion.”

  “Lamb said!”

  I didn’t reply, contenting myself with staring at CC for a few minutes; weighing up the potential consequences, before wading in with the confidence of one who can trace his family back before 1066. “Cousin dearest, why don’t you tell the prime minister this is a storm in a teacup?”

  I gave him my best winning smile. CC did not return it. “Give it a couple of days, then tootle to Downing Street. Tell the old boy that I – and my wondrous team – found nothing, and it’s just a coincidence Bravo’s former clerk’s wound up murdered.”

  CC stared mulishly at me, and I felt honour-bound to continue ... “Coincidences do happen in this big wide world.” I waited for my suggestion to sink in. I waited some time.

  Then, just when I despaired of such things ever coming to pass, he shrugged and nibbled his lip. “I could. I suppose ... Oh, I don’t ...” The lip took more punishment before my cousin took command of his flaying emotions. “Oh, very well. But if your second opinion finds something ... You can tell the prime minister. Understood?”

  I nodded my agreement readily enough, forgetting for the moment Cardew’s fear. “Oh, cousin of mine,” I trilled, “when have you ever found me to be wrong? McGregor will rule death by gunshot. Our coincidence will be confirmed. All will be right with the world!”

  Remember I said our middle name should have been stupid? I should have added another phrase: ‘Should know better Byrd’. Said, of course, in the voice of the Ghost of Christmas Present.

  Some half hour later, I left CC, who wore trouble like some wear a favourite jumper, and headed back to Lamb’s desk where I found my quarry drinking tea and looking more relaxed. Of Barker, there was no sign. “That photograph ... with the ladies, may I borrow it?”

  Lamb’s smile was all apology. “If I had it, you could borrow it with pleasure. But the lad’s got it. Took it with him in hope it would jog memories.”

  I stared back at the good sergeant through narrow and cynical eyes. Had I not known better, I would bet my eye teeth the sergeant magicked it away deliberately. “Oh well, Lamb. Never mind old chum. I’ll collect it another day.”

  From Reports. 27th February.

  It was a little before ten when Nanny – a flurry of pink shawls, wild hair, and the unmistakable aroma of cat – bustled along Fournier Street towards the pawnbroker’s shop.

  Fending off an offer to take her coat, she made her way along the maze of corridors to a small insignificant door at the end of a narrow flight of stairs. A quick, respectful tap later, she let herself into a well-appointed room with a little truckle bed in one corner, two chairs around a stove, the third one in a corner ready to be pulled forward, and a desk piled high with papers.

  Nanny surveyed the scene and tutted.

  A young woman in her mid-twenties sifted through papers and made notes, in pencil, in the margin of a ledger book. An elderly gentleman, cravat and top button undone, snored in one of the wingback chairs. To all but the daftest of visitors, it gave the impression of being a scene of domestic bliss. For Nanny, well used to the subterfuges of the pawnbroker and his apprentice, it was an indication all was not well.

  Wearing a pinstripe tailored dress, the woman at the table was the first to acknowledge the old lady. “Hello Nanny, what can we do for you?”

  The old lady ignored her. “You sleeping yet, child?” she asked in a voice that brooked no defiance.

  Emily nodded. “Yeah, Nanny; las’ coupla days. Must ‘ave got too sof’ livin’ with tha’ toff.”

  Nanny’s nose twitched at the appalling cockney accent, the normally well-spoken Emily immediately affected on being questioned, but otherwise refused to rise to the bait.

  Without waiting to be asked, she pulled her chair over from its accustomed place against the wall and took out her knitting. The needles clacked for a few minutes before: “No use pretending, Mordecai Adonais. You’re not asleep.”

  A lid opened. A genuine grin reached beyond the old man’s eyes and disappeared into his hairline. “Nothing gets past you, does it, Nanny?” He stretched but did not get up. “You worry unnecessarily. Since coming home, her landlady tells me Emily sleeps like a baby.”

  Nanny’s snort of disbelief carried. “A baby with colic, you mean.” She gave the pair the kind of stare that would have wilted lesser creatures. Gold was not such a creature, and like Emily, laughed at the old lady’s antics.

  “Oh, Nanny put away your looks. We’ve been friends too long to be at odds like this.” Getting up, Gold pottered at the fireside until the milk boiled and chocolate – the beverage of Nanny’s choice – made. Giving Nanny hers first, he
placed the second in front of Emily.

  Job of butler complete, the old man coughed quickly into a handkerchief, which he threw on the fire; went back to his chair and made a great show of getting comfortable. Never one to be upstaged, Nanny made an equally great show of setting down her cocoa. But the observant would have noticed, she regarded the old man with concern.

  “Nanny,” the young woman said, “out with it. This ain’t no social call.”

  Nanny – apparently having seen enough – pursed her lips and concentrated on her knitting, waiting until she reached the end of the row before setting it neatly in her lap. “Do you remember Lilian Poulter?”

  Gold coughed, a hacking nasty thing that consumed him for a few minutes before he could sit upright. “I do. Why’d you ask?” His brows creased in concentration, and he stared at Nanny, in what might have been taken as concern - had the people in the room been naïve enough to assume he was capable of such a thing.

  “She was supposed to visit me a couple of days back. Didn’t turn up.”

  “She’s an old lady, Nanny. Maybe she changed her mind?” Gold said before Emily could get a word in edgewise.

  Not that his speech stopped her own response. “Uncle’s right.”

  Nanny gave Emily a glare which transported her back to childhood. “If I wanted that kind of opinion, Emily Davies,” the old lady returned waspishly, “I would have gone and frightened Constable Dennison. From you, I expect better. Now be quiet, listen, and put your considerable brain to proper use.”

  Suitably chastened, Emily did as she was told.

  “Lilian Poulter left London years ago. Sometime after ‘77, if I remember correctly. After a while, she went to live in North Wales somewhere. Her village had a silly name.”

  “Welsh usually does look silly, almost as bad as our mother tongue, Nanny.”

  “Not Welsh. English. It bore no resemblance to the Welsh. And no, child, no point pushing it. Tried to remember and can’t.” Nanny shook herself and rounded on them. “See what you’ve done? Got me rambling ... “