The Other Devil’s Name
The Other Devil’s Name
E. X. Ferrars
FELONY & MAYHEM PRESS • NEW YORK
All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.
THE OTHER DEVIL’S NAME
A Felony & Mayhem mystery
PRINTING HISTORY
First UK edition (Collins): 1986
First US edition (Doubleday): 1986
Felony & Mayhem edition: 2021
Copyright © 1986 by M. D. Brown
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-63194-254-9
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ferrars, E. X., author.
Title: The other devil’s name / E.X. Ferrars.
Description: New York : Felony & Mayhem Press, 2021. | Series: A Felony & Mayhem mystery | Summary: “When a friend consults Professor Basnett about a blackmail plot, further investigation reveals a surprising cluster of disappearances in a small Berkshire village”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021007325 | ISBN 9781631942549 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781631942556 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Basnett, Andrew (Fictitious character)--Fiction. | Retired teachers--England--Fiction. | Botanists--England--Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6003.R458 O84 2021 | DDC 823/.912--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021007325
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Hidden Agenda
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
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Chapter One
It was nine o’clock on a Wednesday morning in May, and Andrew Basnett, who had been out late the evening before and had overslept, was in his kitchen, dressed in pyjamas, his dressing gown and a pair of socks, and was making coffee for his breakfast when the doorbell rang.
Assuming that it was the postman, trying to deliver a package that would not go through the letter box, Andrew went to the door and opened it.
It was not the postman. It was Andrew’s old friend and colleague Professor Constance Camm, F.R.S., whom it was very surprising to find at his door at that hour of the morning.
Now that she was retired, she lived with her sister in the village of Lindleham in Berkshire, and on the occasions when she wanted to meet Andrew, usually made careful arrangements by telephone several days beforehand. She would then probably invite him to lunch with her at her club, or after some persuasion might allow him to take her out to lunch at one of his favourite Soho restaurants. She had only rarely visited the flat in St. John’s Wood, where he lived, and then never at such an early hour.
He felt embarrassed on seeing her, not only because she had caught him in pyjamas and dressing gown and still unshaven, but mostly because he was without slippers. When he was alone in his flat he usually padded about it in his socks, leaving his slippers wherever it had occurred to him to kick them off. Today they were on the rug in the middle of his sitting room, and the first thing that he did on bringing her into the flat was to dart to where he had left them and put them on.
After that he felt better.
“I’m sorry to turn up so early, Andrew,” she said. “I tried to get in touch with you yesterday evening, but I think you were out, and I’ve got to get home today as early as possible because I’ve left Mollie in rather a state.” Mollie was the sister with whom she was living in Lindleham. “We’ve both been feeling very upset and I thought that what we needed was some sound advice and that you were the best person to turn to. If you don’t feel you can face that, however, I’ll go away. Only I do think it’s rather urgent and that you might perhaps be of great help to us.”
It astonished Andrew to be asked for advice by Constance Camm. She was as independent a person as he had ever known. She had given him advice at many times in his life, particularly when he had first been appointed to the chair of botany in the London college where he had spent the last twenty years of his working life and in which she had held a research professorship since a few years before his arrival. They were about the same age, which was seventy-one, and had retired at the same time, Constance leaving London after a while to join her sister and apparently giving up all interest in science, while Andrew had remained in his St. John’s Wood flat and had devoted himself, in a slightly haphazard way, to writing the life of Robert Hooke, the noted seventeenth-century natural philosopher and architect.
Pursuing this work meant making frequent visits to the library of the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace, which at least had the virtue of taking him out of his flat. Yet hard as it seemed to him that he worked at the book, it had a mysterious way of appearing never to grow any longer. Perhaps this was because as he went along he kept tearing up most of what he had written a week or so before. If anyone asked him how the book was going he always replied that it was going splendidly, but at the back of his mind there lurked a suspicion that it might never be finished.
This did not disturb him very much. In an occasional mood of depression he might deplore the futility of what he was doing, but luckily such moods were infrequent with him.
“I was just going to make some coffee when you rang,” he said. “I expect you’d like some too. So if you don’t mind waiting while I get some clothes on, I’ll make it and then you can ask me for that advice, which I don’t suppose for a moment I’ll be able to give
you. Here’s a copy of The Times you can look at while I’m doing it.”
“Don’t bother to get dressed on my account,” Constance said. “You’re perfectly decent as you are. But coffee would be nice.”
She accepted the copy of The Times as she sat down in a chair near the electric fire, which had not been switched on because the May morning was sunny and warm, but she showed no sign of wanting to open the newspaper. It occurred to Andrew as he saw her lean back in the chair and give a quiet sigh that she was looking very tired, as if she had not slept much. She was a small woman, slender and neatly made, with straight grey hair cropped close to her small, well-shaped head, somewhat sharp-featured and eyes of an uncommonly brilliant blue.
They were also uncommonly intelligent eyes, and if her features were sharp they were also mobile and expressive. She was wearing a grey tweed suit, plain, not very expensive, but well-fitting. She had been a close friend of Nell, his wife, who had died of cancer ten years ago, and in her restrained, undemonstrative way was perhaps closer to Andrew than most of his other friends.
However, he felt that he would be more at ease with her if he got into some clothes, so he retired to his bedroom and presently emerged in trousers, a shirt and a pullover and, going to the kitchen, resumed the making of coffee. He was a tall, spare man who did not look as tall as he really was because he had allowed himself in recent times to get into the habit of stooping. He had rough grey hair and grey eyes under eyebrows that were still almost black. Making some toast, he put it with the coffee, cups, butter and marmalade on a tray and carried it into the sitting room.
But just before he did this he paused for a moment. Opening the refrigerator, he took out a slab of cheese, pared off a slice and ate it hastily. There was something faintly furtive about the way that he did this. He hated the idea that he might be thought a diet crank. He always asserted that he could eat anything that was put in front of him. But he did like to start the day with a small piece of cheese. At some time he had been convinced by something that he had been told, or perhaps had read, that it was important on getting up to eat some protein, and it was much less trouble to eat a little cheese than to boil an egg. Yet somehow he would not have liked to be caught doing this by someone as full of ruthless common sense as Constance Camm.
He found her still in the chair where he had left her, looking as if she had not moved.
She smiled as he handed her a cup of coffee and said, “Really I’m sorry to have come calling so early, but I tried telephoning you from my club two or three times yesterday evening; then when I couldn’t get an answer I got the idea into my head that your phone might be out of order, so I came out here on the chance of finding you at home after all, and as that was no use, I thought I’d try just once more this morning. Please forgive me.” She sipped some coffee. “This is just what I needed.”
“I’m always delighted to see you at any time,” Andrew said as he sat down with his own cup of coffee. “You know that. Only I can’t imagine what I can do for you that can be worth your taking so much trouble.”
“It’s this.” She opened her handbag and took out a letter. “I’d like to know what you make of it.”
“You want me to read it?”
“Please.”
He took it from her, glancing at the address on the envelope. It was typewritten.
Mrs. Mollie Baird
Cherry Tree Cottage
Bell Lane
Lindleham
Maddingleigh
Berks.
It was a plain white envelope with a Maddingleigh postmark and had been neatly slit along the top. Andrew took out the sheet of paper inside. It was quarto-size flimsy typing paper and had a few lines of typing about halfway down it.
“Don’t forget I saw you bury him. I know where the body is. And it can stay there as long as you remember what I said about payments. Don’t forget.”
Andrew read it through two or three times, drank some coffee, then read the message yet again.
“This came in the post?” he said.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“Mrs. Baird is, of course, your sister.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what it means?”
“No. It seems to me a piece of sheer lunacy. But then again, perhaps it isn’t. And that’s why I brought it to you. I wanted to talk it over with someone—someone I trust.”
He caught an odd note in her voice, and looking at her, he saw that she was watching him with unusual anxiety.
“I suppose neither of you has been burying any bodies recently,” he said.
“No, Andrew, we haven’t.”
“Or anything else?”
“What do you mean?” She had an attractive voice, soft but incisive.
“I just wondered if it could be somehow metaphorical,” he said. “Both the body and the burying might stand, so to speak, for something else. Otherwise…”
“Yes?” she said as he paused.
“Well, otherwise I don’t understand why you aren’t satisfied with your own explanation that it’s lunacy. It sounds to me as if it’s been done by someone who’s trying to frighten you, and it sounds to me, too, more probable that it’s been done by someone who’s slightly mad than by anyone who’s got a real hope of blackmailing your sister. Have you any recognizable lunatics in your neighbourhood?”
She must have thought that there was some flippancy in his tone, for she said, “Andrew, I wish you’d take this seriously.”
“But I’m taking it very seriously,” he said. “Because you must be frightened or you wouldn’t have troubled to bring the thing to me. And you haven’t answered my question. Have you any neighbour who seems to you even mildly unbalanced? Lunatics can be astonishingly clever at hiding their madness, you know, as clever as criminals may be about hiding their crimes. And the medical profession cooperates with them nowadays. They want them kept in a so-called normal environment, rather than shut away out of sight. But I once knew a psychiatrist whom I really respected, a very gifted chap, who said that the well should be protected from the sick. I know that’s not a fashionable attitude nowadays, but I think there’s something in it. What I wanted to ask you, however, was whether or not you’ve been coming into contact recently with anyone who seems to you even a bit odd.”
She finished her coffee, gave another sigh, leant back in her chair and answered, “Most people seem to me very odd.”
“That’s only natural,” he said. “It’s difficult for you to understand why people should be less talented than you are yourself. But even you must admit there are different standards of oddity. So tell me if there’s anyone you suspect of having written this strange missive.”
Her eyes, of the unusually brilliant blue that age had not affected, though the face out of which they shone had many wrinkles, dwelt on his face for a moment, but with a look of gazing beyond it, as if she were contemplating something much farther away. Then she shook her head.
“No.”
“So what is it you’re afraid of?”
“I’m not exactly afraid. But I’m puzzled. And I’m wondering if there’s anything Mollie and I ought to do about it. That’s why I came to you. I wanted to talk it over, as I said, with someone I trust. Someone who won’t try to push us into doing something that may be harmful to someone else. You seemed to me the obvious person.”
“Thank you,” he said. “But go on.”
“Well, does anything strike you about the way that letter’s addressed?”
“Only that it’s neatly typed and seems to be correct.”
“Yet the letter inside doesn’t seem to have been meant for Mollie at all.”
Enlightenment dawned on him. “Oh, I see. I think I see. You think someone got confused, wrote a letter to someone else and put it in an envelope addressed to your sister, and no doubt wrote her a letter and put it in an envelope addressed to that other person.”
“Yes,
and you see what that could mean, don’t you?”
He considered it for a moment. “I see one thing it could mean, but it seems rather fantastic.”
“I believe we may be dealing with a very fantastic situation,” she said.
“It could mean that the writer of this letter did see someone burying a body and has been blackmailing that person ever since.”
As he said it he hoped that she would reject this suggestion as being indeed too fantastic, for it might mean, he was afraid, that he would shortly find himself becoming involved in a kind of drama which did not appeal to him at all. It had happened to him before, and in his view it was not really the kind of thing that he was meant for. But he was not surprised when he saw her nod.
“Don’t you think that’s what must have happened?” she said.
He replied reluctantly, “I suppose it isn’t impossible.”
“But if that’s right,” she went on, “the question is, what ought we to do about it?”
“Give the letter to the police,” he answered immediately.
“No.”
“But of course that’s what you must do,” he said. “If there’s the slightest possibility that you’re right, you shouldn’t lose any time in giving it to them.”
“That’s just what I don’t want to do, Andrew.” Her gaze was sharply focussed on his face. “That’s why I came to you. I felt I wanted to talk the matter over with someone who wouldn’t try to make me do just that and whom I could trust not to go to them on his own with a story about this slightly strange occurrence. And of course you can see why, can’t you?”
He leant forward to refill their cups with coffee.
“I’m afraid you think I’m much wiser than I am,” he said. “The only reason I can think of is that the letter you think your blackmailer wrote to your sister but posted to the wrong person is something she or you couldn’t face letting the police find out about. But that’s nonsense.”
“Why is it nonsense?” she asked in her soft, precise voice.
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