Root of All Evil

by E. X. Ferrars

  Presumably there had once been a farm at the end of Old Farm Road, but there was no vestige of it left now. The street consisted of fairly large, solid, Victorian or Edwardian villas, all set well back from it in big gardens. Ramsden House was of moderate size, square and covered in cream-coloured stucco. It had a roof of wavy red pantiles and green shutters at the windows. There was a gravelled drive up to a projecting porch in which there was a massive green door with a highly polished brass knocker on it. There was also a bell beside the door. Andrew paid off the taxi, rang the bell and stood waiting.

  The door was opened almost immediately by a man in a white jacket and dark trousers. He reached quickly for Andrew’s suitcase and let him in out of the rain. This was Laycock, Andrew supposed, the manservant who wasn’t quite up to being a butler. Andrew’s first impression of him was that he was about twenty-five. He had a round, pink-checked, ingenuous face which in spite of its very grave expression was very youthful. He had rather the look of a boy who was doing his best to assume the dignity which he thought appropriate to his occupation. But then Andrew noticed small lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth and after all it seemed probable that he was at least thirty, or even more. Leading Andrew to the door of Felicity’s drawing-room, he opened it, and in a voice more cultured than those to which Andrew in his later years had become accustomed in the younger members of his department, announced, “Professor Basnett.”

  Felicity was sitting in a chair by the fire, working on some embroidery. She rose with surprising ease for someone of her age, came quickly to meet him and kissed him.

  “This is so good of you,” she said. “I’m so glad you’ve come.”

  She was a small woman who still held herself erect and in whose delicate features and expressive, bright blue eyes it was easy to perceive the beauty that she had once possessed. Indeed, she was still beautiful in the way that a few of the old, in spite of deep wrinkles, sagging skin under their chins and thinning hair, can be. Her hair, which had once been softly golden, was now snow-white and was brushed back from her face into a small roll at the back of her head. She was wearing a plain grey dress, a violet-coloured cardigan and a necklace of amethysts.

  “Laycock, drinks, please,” she said, then led Andrew to a chair by the fire, facing the one in which she had been sitting when he arrived and in which she sat down again. “We’ll have a drink straight away, then Laycock can take you up to your room. I don’t think you’ve changed at all since I saw you last. You’re wearing very well.”

  Andrew knew that he had aged a good deal during the last five years, but to the very old woman who was smiling at him with a fair remnant of her once vivid charm, it might seem hardly significant.

  “You’re doing pretty well yourself, Felicity,” he said. “What a nice idea of yours it was to ask me down. It’s delightful to see you again.”

  For the moment, he meant it. Even though he had never been fond of her, he could not help admiring someone who was so indomitably vital.

  “You could have come at any time if you’d happened to think of it,” she said with some asperity in her voice. Her voice was the oldest part of her. It had once been charming, but now creaked sadly. “But I suppose you’re too busy to bother about your aged relations, even though you’ve retired. I remember you planned to write a book when that happened to you. Have you really done it?”

  He thought there was irony in the bright blue eyes, as if she were sure that the book that he had planned to write, about which he must have spoken to her on some occasion that he had forgotten, had never been anything but a daydream.

  “I’m working on it now,” he said.

  The room was very pleasant. It had some good early Victorian furniture in it, some fine Persian rugs on the floor and a number of comfortable chairs covered in flowered cretonne.

  There were some hyacinths in pots and two or three quite pleasing seascapes on the walls. Big windows overlooked a lawn with daffodils in bloom along its edges and a forsythia at the bottom. An old-fashioned room without much character, but in which it came naturally to feel at ease.

  The door opened and Laycock came in, carrying a tray with a decanter of sherry and three glasses on it. Andrew wondered for whom the third glass was intended until Felicity said, “Laycock, will you please tell Mrs. Cavell we’re having drinks now and ask her to join us?”

  “Very good, madam,” he replied sedately and withdrew.

  Felicity chuckled. “Isn’t he a dream? I haven’t been called ‘madam’ by anyone else for years. Our daily help always calls me ‘dear’ or ‘love’ and Agnes of course calls me ‘Felicity,’ though I had to tell her to do that when I knew we were going to be friends. Of course, it’s three-quarters an act with Laycock. He can be quite informal when he chooses. But I don’t think he’d like it if I called him Ted, as Agnes does. And really it’s so wonderful to have a man about the house. He can pull the corks out of bottles, and unscrew the tops of jars that no one else is strong enough to manage, and hammer nails into things, and change fuses. And of course he drives the car and washes it and does all sorts of odd jobs. He was all my own idea. I saw an advertisement in the Telegraph and I rang up about it straight away and got him. Agnes was away on holiday at the time and I had him installed here by the time she got back. I think she rather disapproved at first. Jealousy, perhaps. But he got round her and now she admits I was right to try the experiment.”

  “How long ago was this?” Andrew asked.

  She looked vague. “Three months...four... I find it so difficult to keep track of time these days. Of course, I don’t suppose he’ll stay for long. I’m sure he’s got his sights set on higher things. Anyway, they never do stay long with you nowadays, do they? It’s been so wonderful for me, having Agnes. She looks after me so kindly and besides that, she’s so intelligent. I couldn’t stand having an utter fool around me all the time, like that awful woman I had before her. Not that she was exactly a fool... No, I don’t suppose I ought to say that about her. She was...well, other things, and a fool in some ways and of course I had to get rid of her and it seemed wonderful finding Agnes after her... Oh, Agnes, come in. This is Professor Basnett.”

  The door had opened and a small, middle-aged woman had come quietly in. She had a full bosom and broad hips and light-brown curly hair, cut short, in which there was still no touch of grey. She had grey eyes, a short, faintly upturned nose and a wide, friendly smile. She was wearing a pale-blue hand-knitted jersey and a dark-blue tweed skirt. A very ordinary-looking woman, except for the fresh-faced air of serenity about her.

  She held out a hand to Andrew and gave his a surprisingly vigorous grip.

  “I’m so glad to meet you at last, Professor Basnett,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  Andrew thought it improbable that she really had. It seemed to him unlikely that Felicity had spoken of him from year’s end to year’s end. Her invitation to him had almost certainly been the result of a sudden impulse. Agnes Cavell, he assumed, merely thought this the courteous way to get over the awkwardness of meeting a stranger of whom in fact she knew next to nothing. She poured out the sherry, then, as she sat down, said to Felicity, “Have you told Professor Basnett our news?”

  “News?” Felicity said incredulously. “We never have any news.”

  “About Quentin,” Agnes Cavell said.

  “Oh, that.” Felicity gave a short laugh. “That won’t interest you, Andrew. It’s only that my grandson, Quentin, has become engaged. He’s brought the girl down to stay with Derek and Frances over Easter and he brought her up here to see me yesterday. Quite a nice girl, I suppose. Not very good-looking, but nice-mannered. Not quite right for Quentin, though, I felt. A bit too serious and probably too intelligent.”

  “I thought she was charming,” Agnes Cavell said.

  “Yes, yes, of course you’d expect that. Quentin has taste. Have you ever met him, Andrew?”

  “Not that I remember,” Andrew answered.

  �
��But you’ve met my son, Derek.”

  “I rather think he and his wife came to Nell’s funeral, but I doubt if I’d recognize them if I saw them again.”

  “You’ll be seeing them tomorrow. I asked them to lunch. Quentin and Georgina are their children. Quentin’s twenty-seven. He had an idiotic idea after he left Oxford that he was going to be a writer and he’s actually had one or two things published, I believe, but I don’t think they brought him in any money, so he dropped the idea and went into advertising, at which I understand he’s doing quite well. Georgina can’t make up her mind what to do. For a time she thought she’d like to be a nurse, but I think she found it too like hard work, so she started to train as a secretary, but that bored her, so she got a job as courier for a travel agent, but they told her she’d got to take lessons in languages and she said that was expecting too much, so now she’s set her sights on becoming an airline stewardess. Meanwhile she lives mostly at home. She’s only twenty-three, so I don’t suppose it matters much if she goes on fooling around for a time. She knows that when I die she’ll have no need to earn her living. This girl Patricia, or Tricia as they call her, whom Quentin’s got engaged to, works in his office. I only hope she isn’t marrying him for the sake of my money. He’s quite capable of having told her that I’m ready to pack it in any day now.”

  “Now you know that’s nonsense, Felicity,” Agnes Cavell said. “He’s very fond of you.”

  “But you always think the best of everyone, Agnes,” Felicity said. “You don’t see what’s going on under the surface. Let me tell you, being rich is a wonderful training in distrust.”

  “Then I’m glad I’m not rich,” Agnes said.

  “Oh no, you’re not! Nobody is. Even the people who renounce wealth and dedicate themselves to total poverty only do it because wealth has such an overpowering attraction for them that they become afraid of it.”

  Agnes shook her head. “You don’t really think that.”

  “I do wish you wouldn’t keep telling me what I think!” Felicity exclaimed with irritation. “You’re always doing it, but you don’t understand me at all. I’m not in the least nice-minded, like you. As I’ve told you over and over again, and as Andrew will tell you, I’m not a nice old woman.”

  Agnes, smiling, looked ready to dispute this, but at that moment the door opened and Laycock appeared to tell them that luncheon was served.

  Over lunch Felicity questioned Andrew on how he lived and on who looked after him and was very surprised to hear that he looked after himself, except for help one morning a week when a very competent woman came in to clean his flat for him.

  When he told her that he could cook reasonably well and quite enjoyed shopping, she said that she was sure that he had most of his meals at his club; and when he told her that he had never belonged to a club in his life, she shook her head dubiously and said that she did not know what the world was coming to when men could be so independent. When the meal was over she said that as usual she would lie down for a time and suggested that Andrew should do the same. But he had not the desire to do so and, looking out of the window and seeing that the rain had stopped, said that he would go for a walk. Agnes told him that if he turned left outside the gate, the road would take him to a patch of quite attractive common, and that if he continued across this, he would reach the towpath along the side of the river. It was a nice walk, she said.

  Setting out about half past two, he intended to follow her instructions and in fact he did so. But first, as he walked down the drive to the gate, an odd thing happened. Someone was at the gate and was just opening it. It was the woman in the scarlet coat whom he had seen in the train. She stood still for a moment when she saw him approaching, then slammed the gate shut and turned away. By the time that he reached it she was twenty yards from it and was walking as fast as she could in the direction of the town.

  Andrew rambled across the common and along the towpath, then turned back, taking about an hour and a half for his walk. Although the rain had stopped, it was still blustery and cold and not at all agreeable. The wind had risen since he had started out and moaned among the trees beside the river. But he had felt an urge to get out of the house for a time. He did not know what he would have done with himself, sitting alone in the drawing-room while Felicity rested. In fact, by now he was regretting having come. The next few days, he thought, were going to be very boring.

  When he returned to the house in Old Farm Road and rang the bell, the door was opened by Agnes Cavell.

  “It’s Ted’s afternoon off,” she explained. “He’s gone into Braden. I think he’s got a girlfriend there, though he’d never talk about it. He worries so much about his dignity. Come in and get warm. I’m just getting tea.”

  She led him into the drawing-room where he found Felicity sitting by the fire as she had been when he first arrived, at work on her embroidery.

  Tea, which Agnes wheeled into the room on a trolley, consisted of homemade scones, still hot from the oven, little cucumber sandwiches and the kind of fruitcake that Andrew remembered as a normal part of tea when he had been a boy but had not tasted for years. Agnes poured out the tea and stayed chatting until about half past five, when she wheeled the trolley out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  “She’ll go up to her room now to listen to the five-forty news,” Felicity said. “She’s got a very nice room with a television and her own bathroom on the top floor. She always listens to the news, then she comes down and attends to cooking the dinner. She’s a splendid cook. Andrew, you just don’t know how lucky I was to find her. I’d been getting quite frightened of getting really old. Derek and Frances kept saying I ought to give up the house and go into one of those very luxurious old people’s homes somewhere, but I simply hated the idea. It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford one of the good ones, but I thought to myself, however comfortable that sort of place is and however much the people there play up to you because you’re rich, you won’t really be able to call your soul your own. And most of the other inmates will be at least half-senile and you’ll soon begin to think you’re like them. As you may be, of course, without being aware of it. So I took no notice of Derek and Frances and advertised in several papers and I got quite a number of replies, but I picked out Agnes’s at once. Her letter was so much more literate than any of the others and I liked her handwriting. A lady, I thought, though perhaps that sounds old-fashioned. And she’s promised she’ll stay with me for as long as I need her.”

  “What was she doing before she came here?” Andrew asked.

  “She’d recently lost her husband and she said simply that she was lonely and that she’d like a job where she could be of some help to someone. She didn’t seem to worry much about the pay. She’s got a pension, so the money doesn’t mean so very much to her. Her husband was something or other at one of those new universities—Derby, I think. He was some kind of biologist. Perhaps his name means something to you. Eustace Cavell.”

  Andrew thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve heard of him.”

  “I think he was a lecturer, or a reader, or something like that,” she said. “He died of a stroke. Very sad, because he wasn’t much over fifty. She seems to have been devoted to him. But she really meant what she said about liking to have someone to help. She runs the house marvellously and when I get into one of my moods she only laughs at me, which of course is very good for me. I wish more people had done it when I was younger. I expect they did it behind my back, but never to my face, because there was always that will I was so famous for changing. I’m sure you know I keep changing it every year or so. It’s one of the entertainments of old age.”

  “I hope you’ve remembered Mrs. Cavell in your most recent one, if she’s really all you say,” Andrew said.

  “Yes, naturally. And I’ve left you twenty thousand pounds, Andrew. I don’t see any harm in telling you about it now. After all, it’s why you came to see me, isn’t it? So I may as well put yo
u out of your agony.”

  He stared at her for a moment, hot with anger. Then he laughed.

  “I’m glad you warned me of your habit of changing your will,” he said. “You can leave me out of the next one, Felicity.”

  “But why?” Her tone was bland. She was maliciously pretending innocence of having said anything offensive. “It’s what I’d have left Nell if she’d been alive and she’d have left it to you.”

  “She isn’t alive.”

  “No, but it would have come to you if I’d happened to die before her, which really was only to be expected. I’m more than twenty years older than she was. And don’t pretend you won’t like to have it. You will, you know, when the cheque arrives.”

  Andrew felt a curious chill. Oddly enough, at the same moment, Felicity gave a sharp little shudder. It was as if a cold breath of air had swept suddenly through the room, touching them both. He thought that Felicity’s withered old face turned pale and he began to wonder if she was not as well as she wanted to appear.

  “Is something the matter?” he asked.

  “Only someone walking over my grave,” she answered. “I don’t really like to talk about death. After all, it could happen to me tomorrow and I find that harder to face than you might think. Let’s talk about something else. Tell me about your trip round the world. Was it very interesting?”

  He told her as much about it as he thought would interest her, but he could see that her mind soon wandered and that she hardly listened to what he said. It was after some time, with an abruptness that showed what she had really been thinking about, that she said, “Now tell me why you really came to see me, Andrew. I know it wasn’t because of the money. That was me just trying to get under your skin because you never seem to want anything from anybody. It’s infuriating to see you so independent and well-adjusted.”