Root of All Evil

by E. X. Ferrars

  “I think I came because I felt Nell would have wanted me to,” he said.

  “You still miss her, do you?”

  “And will to the end of my days.”

  “I missed my husband quite a lot for a year or two after he died,” she said, “but on the whole I prefer living alone. I had two or three affairs after his death, but I never felt the least inclination to marry again. It was only when I got old that I began to feel I ought to have someone living with me, and my first attempt at that was so disastrous that I nearly gave in to Derek and Frances and agreed to go into the home they said they’d find for me. But then I found my wonderful Agnes—”

  “Just a minute!” Andrew broke in. He jerked forward to the edge of his chair as his memory played the odd trick on him that it occasionally did, all at once revealing something to him that until that moment had been lost in obscurity. “That first attempt you made, the woman you had before Mrs. Cavell...”

  “Margot Weldon,” Felicity said. “The forger.”

  “The what?”

  “The forger. She forged my cheques. So of course I had to get rid of her.” Felicity had picked up her embroidery again and was stitching at it. “Why?”

  “I saw her on the train today, coming down here.”

  “Did you really? How very odd. Coincidence, I suppose.”

  “Perhaps. But she got off the train at Braden. Then when I was starting out for my walk this afternoon, she was at the gate. I think she was trying to make up her mind to come in, but seeing me somehow put her off and she went away. I had the feeling when I first saw her at Paddington that I’d seen her before, but I couldn’t place her, and it was just your happening to mention her now that made me remember where it had been. It was here about five years ago when I came to visit you and she was working for you. So she forged your cheques, did she?”

  Felicity let her embroidery sink into her lap. “Yes. You see, I trusted her completely. It was sheer laziness on my part, not real trust, but I generally behave as if I’ve no suspicions of people till they make it quite plain I can’t go on doing that. I can’t stand bothering to be suspicious. It’s such a nuisance. But of course my swans quite often turn out to be geese, I’m used to that happening, and I know it’s mostly my own fault. But I was particularly stupid about Margot. I let her handle all my housekeeping accounts and cash my cheques at the bank and she knew quite well I hardly ever checked my bank statements as carefully as one should, so actually she got away with hundreds—I’m not sure it wasn’t a thousand or two—before I stumbled by chance on what she was doing.”

  “What did you do about it?” Andrew asked, intrigued.

  “Oh, got rid of her, of course. I could hardly keep her on after that. Besides, I’d never liked her particularly. She was a rather brash sort of young woman. I couldn’t make a companion of her.”

  “But didn’t you have her charged?”

  “Oh dear no, going into court and all would have been too disagreeable. So you saw her at the gate today, did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s very strange. I wonder what she could have wanted. She can’t have imagined I’d take her on again.”

  “Have you had any contact with her since she left?”

  “None at all. Perhaps she wanted to persuade me she was a reformed character and wanted me to give her a reference. Or perhaps she thought I might give her some money. How did she look? Did she look as if she might be in trouble?”

  “I didn’t see any sign of it. She was quite well-dressed. Would you have given her money if she’d asked for it?”

  “Probably, if it wasn’t too much and if it was the easiest way of getting rid of her. I suppose she may come back some time this evening. If she came all the way down to Braden to see me and then simply went away instead of coming in, it’s rather puzzling.”

  “Perhaps she lost her nerve when she actually got to the house.”

  As Andrew said it, the front doorbell rang.

  “There she is, I do believe!” Felicity exclaimed. “I’m not expecting anyone else.”

  They heard footsteps, which Andrew supposed were those of Agnes Cavell, crossing the hall and the front door being opened. Then they heard voices, but it was a man to whom Agnes was speaking. Felicity looked interested, but as the talking went on for some time she picked up her work again and went on stitching. It was several minutes before the door of the drawing-room was opened and Agnes came in.

  “It’s really very strange...” she began, then seemed unable to go on, but stood looking at Felicity with a peculiar expression on her face.

  “For heaven’s sake, what is it?” Felicity demanded.

  “I think perhaps this gentleman had better come in and explain,” Agnes said. She turned and spoke to someone in the hall behind her. “Please come in, Inspector.”

  A tall man followed her into the room. He was about forty, well-built, wide-shouldered, with a square face and a heavy jaw, a short, thick nose and thick dark hair. He was wearing a neat, new-looking raincoat.

  “This is Detective Inspector Carsdale,” Agnes said, still sounding bewildered. “And this is Mrs. Silvester, Inspector.”

  “Mrs. Felicity Silvester?” he said, almost as if he doubted it.

  “Certainly,” she answered.

  “I’m very sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Silvester,” he said, “but a very unusual thing has happened.”

  “Yes, yes, well?” she said.

  “The body of a woman has been found in the road across the common,” he said. “Apparently it was a hit-and-run accident. It looks as if she was killed instantly. We don’t know yet how long ago it happened.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear it,” Felicity said, “but what has it to do with me? I haven’t been out driving my car. I didn’t run over her.”

  “No, of course not. But does the name Margot Weldon mean anything to you?”

  “It does. She worked for me as my housekeeper several years ago. Do you mean this woman who’s been killed is Margot Weldon?”

  “It seems probable, though there hasn’t been any possibility yet of making a positive identification. But her handbag was lying near her and from various cards inside it we’re inclined to think that that was her name.”

  “Was she wearing a scarlet coat with a black collar?” Andrew asked.

  “She was,” the inspector said.

  Felicity gave him a long look as if she were trying to find the answer to some question before she said, “But what’s brought you to me? I haven’t seen anything of her since she left me.”

  “It’s just that we found a letter in her handbag, signed by her,” he said. “It’s addressed to the Chief Constable and in it she confessed to the murder of Mrs. Felicity Silvester.”

  Chapter Two

  “Good gracious me!” Felicity said. She stabbed several times with her needle at her embroidery, as if she were punishing it for something. “She said she’d murdered me? How ridiculous. You can see I’m alive.”

  “Yes, indeed,” the inspector said.

  “Can I see this letter?” Felicity asked.

  “I’m sorry, not at the moment,” the inspector answered. “There’s a matter of fingerprints, for one thing. But no doubt we’ll be able to show it to you later.”

  “Then tell me what else she said. Was that all, that she’d murdered me? Didn’t she give a reason?”

  “Yes, in a way she did.”

  “Then sit down, sit down, and tell me about it.” Felicity gestured at a chair, then happened to remember Andrew’s presence. “This is Professor Basnett, an old friend. You can say what you like in front of him.”

  Andrew was beginning to think that his visit might not be as boring as he had feared and that the time might soon come when he would find himself wishing that it were.

  The inspector sat down.

  “There isn’t much to tell at present,” he said. “She accuses you of having persecuted her ever since she left you, refusing to give her referen
ces and maligning her to other possible employers. She describes herself as having been driven desperate.”

  “You mean she was planning to come here, murder me, post the letter, then commit suicide?” Felicity said. “Then she was knocked down by a car before she could do any of it?”

  “That’s the simplest interpretation of what she wrote, in view of the fact that you’re unharmed,” he replied.

  “But there isn’t a word of truth in any of it,” she said. “She never gave my name as a reference. I’ve never maligned her to anybody, because there was never any reason to do so. I’ve had no contact with her at all since she left me.”

  “Had she any reason to bear you a grudge?” he asked. “Something she might have magnified if she wasn’t—well, wasn’t quite in her right mind?”

  “So that’s what you think, is it—that she was insane?” Felicity asked.

  “It’s a possibility we shall certainly have to consider. It isn’t often that a person confesses to a murder that hasn’t been committed.”

  “I thought you were always getting false confessions about things like murder from people who are completely innocent. Exhibitionists. People who long to have notice taken of them.”

  “Yes, that happens, but it’s usually after a crime has been committed and has been well publicized. Not as in the present case, when there’s been no crime at all.”

  “She probably did bear you a very serious grudge, Felicity,” Andrew said. He turned to the detective. “Mrs. Silvester and I were talking about it only just before you came. The grudge, reasonably speaking, should be on Mrs. Silvester’s side, but if, as you seem to think, the woman may not have been sane, she might have put all the blame for what happened on Mrs. Silvester instead of on herself.”

  “I suppose that’s possible,” Felicity said. “You see, Inspector, I sacked her for forging some cheques of mine. I used to give her the cheques to cash at the bank and I wasn’t as careful as I should have been in checking my monthly bank statements when they came, and it was some time before I realized that the amount I seemed to be drawing out was about double what it ought to have been. Perhaps I should have called in the police when I found it out. Forgery’s a serious crime, isn’t it? I believe it was once a hanging matter, though of course that was a long time ago. But I found the idea so unpleasant, I mean the thought of having to give evidence in court and perhaps be responsible for having the silly woman sent to prison and so on, that I just dismissed her. She packed her things and left that very day. And that’s the last I’ve heard of her till today when Professor Basnett told me he’d seen her in the train he came down in himself. And then he saw her again in the afternoon at my gate when he was going out for a walk. He said he thought she looked as if she was trying to make up her mind to come in, but when she saw him, she went away.”

  “About what time was that, Professor?” Inspector Carsdale asked.

  “I think about half past two,” Andrew answered. “At the time I couldn’t think who she was though I’d a feeling I’d seen her before. It was only when Mrs. Silvester started talking about her a little while ago that I suddenly remembered having seen her here when she was still working for Mrs. Silvester.”

  “You didn’t speak to her?”

  “No.”

  The inspector turned back to Felicity. “You’re absolutely sure in your own mind that she was guilty of the forgery? There’s no possibility you’d been mistaken so that she might have had a genuine reason for feeling she’d been misjudged by you?”

  “Oh dear no,” Felicity said. “She admitted it, burst into tears, told me she’d an aged invalid father whom she was trying to support, which I’m certain was a lie, and swore she’d never do anything of the kind again, if I’d only keep her on. Naturally I wasn’t going to consider that. I just gave her a month’s wages, which I think was generous of me in the circumstances, considering how much she’d got away with already, and told her I expected her to be out of the house by the evening. And that’s positively the last I’ve heard of her.”

  “How long ago was this?” the inspector asked.

  “About five years. I can’t tell you the exact date.”

  He stood up. “Well, I won’t intrude on you any longer, but I’ll keep you informed of anything we discover. And it’s possible we may want a signed statement from you, though I hope we shan’t have to trouble you for that. May I say how glad I am that she didn’t succeed in carrying out her intention, if she really did come here to commit murder? Perhaps that’s what she had in mind when she saw Professor Basnett coming to the gate. If she really had anything in mind. If it wasn’t all a fantasy she’d never have dreamt of carrying out in reality.”

  “But she must have come back later for some reason,” Andrew said, “or what was she doing this evening on the road across the common when the motorist hit her?”

  “That’s something we may never know,” the inspector said.

  “Was she in the road or on one of the footpaths?” Andrew asked.

  “In the road. I expect one of our psychiatrists will come up with a theory about it all, but we may never get any proof of why she came here. If we can trace where she was living, the people there may be able to tell us something about her state of mind, but even that’s uncertain. You’d be surprised how blind people can be to the signs of mental disturbance in other people. The symptoms of serious mental illness can get written off as unimportant eccentricities. But of course what we’re really after at the moment is the man—or perhaps the woman—who killed her. That hit-and-run driver. He’s far more of a murderer than she was. But I hope we shan’t have to trouble you about it again. Good evening, Mrs. Silvester.”

  “Good evening, Inspector.”

  Agnes Cavell let him out.

  At the sound of the front door closing after him Felicity sank back in her chair and closed her eyes. All at once she looked as if the detective’s visit had been more of a strain than she had allowed to appear at the time. She looked very old and very tired. Andrew turned his gaze to the fire. He had an uneasy feeling that there was something that he ought to have told the inspector and he was irritated with himself because he could not think what it was. For an instant he had grasped it and had been about to speak of it, then either Felicity or Carsdale had interrupted him and now he could not remember what it had been. The probability was, he knew, that if he did not try to think about it, it would come back to him, but it was difficult to dismiss it and until he could it would continue to elude him.

  To distract himself he began to recite a verse in his head. Kingsley, of course.

  “Welcome, wild North-easter!

  Shame it is to see

  Odes to every zephyr,

  Ne’er a verse to thee...”

  The wind outside was rattling the window-panes. No doubt that was why that particular verse had sprung to his mind. Whether or not the wind was a North-easter, it had grown even stronger than when he had gone out for his walk in the afternoon. The woman in her red coat must have found it very cold walking in the teeth of the blast out there on the common where there was no shelter. Walking in the road, apparently, to go by what Inspector Carsdale had said, which was odd, or how had she been hit by a car there?

  Was that what he had wanted to say to the policeman? Andrew wondered. Had he wanted to point out that it was strange that the woman should have been walking in the road when there was a perfectly good footpath on each side of it? He had walked along one of them during the afternoon. No, that was not it, because of course the police would have thought of that for themselves. It was something else...

  “Andrew!”

  He looked up at Felicity. Her bright blue eyes were open, watching him. He did not know how long she had been doing it, but harmless as his thoughts had been, there was something disconcerting about having been observed when he had not been aware of it.

  “Isn’t it ridiculous?” she said. “I’m frightened.”

  “In an odd way, so am I,” he
said, “though I couldn’t tell you why.”

  “Poor woman,” she said. “You know, I’ve a guilty feeling about her now, and I don’t like feeling guilty.”

  “I don’t see that you’ve anything to feel guilty about. Her death had nothing to do with you.”

  “It’s just that if I’d realized when she was here that she wasn’t normal—because after all that must be the explanation of the forgery affair, mustn’t it?—I might have been a little more compassionate. Though I don’t know what I ought to have done, because after all you can’t let a person, however mad they are and however sorry for them you feel, get away with forging your cheques. All the same, now that she’s dead...” She gave a worried shake of her head and an abrupt little shiver.

  It was seeing the shiver that reminded Andrew of what the thought had been that he had been trying to recapture.

  “Felicity, I’ve had an odd idea,” he said. “Do you remember when we were talking a little while ago before that man arrived, you told me you didn’t like talking about death?”

  “Well, I don’t,” she said. “Who does, once they start thinking about it as something that might really happen to them at any time?”

  “But you gave a shiver and when I asked you if anything was the matter, you said it was someone walking over your grave.”

  “Well, that’s all it was.”

  “But the odd thing was, I’d felt a chill myself at the same time.”

  She frowned. “Not telepathy, please, Andrew. Don’t let’s get ourselves mixed up with telepathy. If you’re going to suggest that that’s when Margot was killed and that we both felt it because we’re psychic, I won’t listen to you. It’s nonsense.”

  “It wasn’t what I was going to suggest at all,” he said. “What I’m suggesting is that we both felt a real draught at that moment.”

  “A draught?” She stared at him without comprehension. “Where could it have come from?”

  “That’s what I was going to ask you. Have you ever noticed it before? If a door’s opened somewhere—”

  Just then the door of the drawing-room was opened and Agnes Cavell came in.