Over coffee in the drawing-room, there was an attempt for a little while to keep up some kind of conversation, but it soon lapsed. Agnes kept glancing at her watch as if she was wondering when Felicity and Derek would be back from their gruesome errand. Frances said she had a headache and asked Agnes if she had any aspirins and Agnes went out to get them. While she was gone Georgina wandered out too. Quentin picked up a book and started aimlessly leafing through it. Patricia sat quietly gazing into the fire, frowning slightly as if her mind were occupied with puzzling thoughts.
She had a very intelligent face, Andrew thought, and he began to wonder if she was not a little too good for Quentin, who had his own kind of bright intelligence and of course his startling good looks, which no doubt had influenced her, but who seemed to Andrew, now that he had seen a little more of him, superficial and probably cold-hearted.
When Agnes returned with the aspirin, she looked round and said, “Where’s Georgina?”
“Probably in the kitchen, trying to get off with Laycock,” Quentin said. “She can’t resist anything male. Of course she’ll get a brush-off.”
“She probably will,” Agnes said. “He’s fixed up with a girlfriend. Oh...” She had heard a car outside. “Here they are, I think. I do hope it hasn’t been too much for Felicity. I should think she’d better go to bed, then I’ll take her up a little lunch and she can rest.”
They heard the front door open, then Felicity and Derek came into the room.
Felicity, instead of removing the furs in which she had gone out, huddled them around her as if she still felt the chill of the mortuary, and went to her usual chair by the fire and dropped into it. She looked small and shrunken inside her wraps and pale and tired, with the wrinkles that seamed her face deeper than usual.
“Yes, it was Margot—no question about it,” she said. “A very unpleasant experience, looking at the poor woman, stiff and stark.”
“Have you any brandy, Agnes?” Derek asked. “I think Mother would like it.” His smooth, bland face was concerned. “Our outing has been rather much for her.”
“I’ll get it,” Agnes said, “then you must go to bed and I’ll bring you up some soup and some toast and you can have a good sleep.”
“I don’t feel at all like sleeping,” Felicity replied. “I feel a rather horrid sort of excitement. But perhaps the brandy will help.”
Apparently it did, for when she had drunk it she looked ready to fall asleep in her chair. Her head nodded. Agnes touched her gently on the arm.
“Let’s go up now,” she said. “I’ll help you.”
Felicity gave a start as if she had indeed been falling asleep.
“Thank you, I don’t need help,” she said. “I can manage perfectly well by myself. And I don’t want to go to bed. I’ll just lie down and rest. Don’t bother about any lunch for me. I haven’t a trace of an appetite. But bring me up some tea presently, will you, Agnes? D’you know, Derek and I saw the man who’s in charge of the case now that it’s definitely murder? Chief Superintendent Theobald, I think he’s called. Not an impressive person. No presence. I’m sure he won’t solve anything.”
“I thought he was a very intelligent man,” Derek said. “He was so quiet only because he was doing his best not to upset you.”
“Why should he bother about that?” She stood up and walked towards the door. “Nothing upsets me. I’m tough as old boots.”
“Darling, are you sure you wouldn’t like one of us to help you?” Frances asked.
“Quite sure, quite sure,” Felicity answered irritably.
She went out.
It was a moment later, when she had had the time to climb the stairs, that the screams started.
Andrew, who happened to be the nearest to the door, was the first out through it into the hall. The others crowded after him. Laycock, alerted by the noise, came hurrying out of the kitchen and stood staring up with his mouth a little open.
Felicity was standing at the top of the stairs with one arm out, pointing. It was obvious that her shrieks were of rage, not of pain or fear.
“The baggage! The impudent, greedy baggage—look at her!” she shouted.
The door of Felicity’s bedroom faced the top of the stairs. It was open and Georgina was in the doorway, looking sheepish. She also looked distinctly ridiculous, for with her dirty jeans and bulgy sweater she was wearing a shining diamond tiara, glittering diamond earrings, a big diamond sunburst at the neck of her sweater and several diamond rings on her not very clean fingers. She looked as if she were not sure whether to start giggling or to burst into tears.
“I didn’t mean anything, honestly I didn’t,” she said. “I just thought I’d like to try them on.”
“Whatever did you think you were doing?” Derek asked sternly. “Take those things off at once and apologize to Mother.”
“It was just a joke,” Georgina said shakily. “I wanted to see what I’d look like in a tiara.”
“As no doubt Prince Hal said when he was caught trying on the crown before the King was dead,” Quentin observed. “‘Dad, it was just a joke.’”
If only Georgina’s head had been visible, Andrew thought, with her pale, silken hair and the diamond crown on it, she would have looked like a fairy princess. It was what was below the level of her neck that wrecked the image.
Felicity still looked furious. “The fact is simply that you couldn’t wait till I was decently dead to get my jewellery,” she cried. “You knew I’d left it to you in my will, but you couldn’t wait to see how you’d look in it. Well, let me tell you, you look a fool. And even if you broke it all up and had it reset, you still wouldn’t have the personality to carry off my diamonds. You need something more than you’ll ever have to do that. So let me tell you, I’m not going to leave them to you at all. I’m not going to leave you any legacy either.” She turned, shrivelled and ancient in her furs, yet curiously frightening in her fierce assertion of dominance. She flung out a pointing finger at the group at the bottom of the stairs. “What do any of you care about me? Why do you come to see me? This silly child’s been doing it for the sake of the diamonds she couldn’t keep her hands off when she thought I was safely out of the house, but she’s no worse than the rest of you. You don’t love me, any of you. Not even my son. You love my money and you love the thought that I won’t live much longer. You only trouble yourselves about me because you want to make sure I don’t change my will. But I’m going to change it. I’m going to telephone my solicitor now and tell him to come to see me tomorrow. And I’m going to leave everything I have, including my jewellery, to the only genuine friend I have, Agnes Cavell. She’s the only one I care about and who deserves it.”
Gripping the banisters, Felicity came stumping down the stairs.
Andrew heard Agnes Cavell draw her breath in sharply. “No!” she said.
“No!” It was an agonized whisper. “Don’t do it—please don’t, Felicity. You don’t mean it. You know you don’t mean it. You’re upset by what’s happened today. Please don’t do it.”
“I mean every word of it,” Felicity said, turning on Agnes as if she were as angry with her as with the others. “I’m going to phone Arthur Little now and don’t think anything any of you can say is going to stop me.”
Chapter Four
There went his twenty thousand, Andrew thought.
Immediately he felt ashamed, but he could not deny the fact that that was the first thing that had flitted through his mind the moment he heard what Felicity said.
The thought that followed it was that perhaps she did not mean to change the legacies that she had left to friends outside her family.
The thought that followed that was simply that he did not need twenty thousand pounds, that he had not thought for a moment until the evening before that he might ever be bequeathed such a sum by anybody and that Felicity had a perfect right to leave her wealth as she saw fit.
By the time he had reached that point, Felicity was at the telephone, talking
to her lawyer.
The other Silvesters did not stay long. Georgina disappeared into Felicity’s bedroom to take off the diamonds, then joined the family and was shepherded out with them to Derek’s car. She was not very popular with them just then, that was evident. Laycock gave a sudden grin which made his round face look boyish, as if the whole incident had been extremely amusing, then disappeared into the kitchen. Agnes and Andrew followed Felicity into the drawing-room.
She was just putting down the telephone.
“Arthur’s coming tomorrow morning,” she said. “Good. I’m glad I’ve made up my mind about that at last. I’ve been on the edge of doing it for some time. There was just a sort of unreasonable feeling stopping me that money ought to stay in the family. But why should it, if they haven’t deserved it? And they don’t need it. Derek’s a very successful doctor. He can get on perfectly well without it. And I imagine he can provide for his own children. And the sight of that awful girl was just too much for me. Did you ever see anything like it?”
Andrew never had, though he thought that in another ten years, when she had outgrown the dirty-jeans stage and begun to take pleasure in elegance, Georgina might be able to wear diamonds with splendour.
“I don’t think you ought to act too quickly,” he said, hoping that it was not of his own prospects that he was thinking. “You may feel differently tomorrow. As Mrs. Cavell said, you’ve had an upsetting day.”
“Please, Felicity, please don’t do it!” The short, sturdy woman was standing in the middle of the room, her hands pressed together in a gesture that looked almost anguished. There was intense anxiety in her grey eyes. “It will only make trouble. They’ll contest the will as a matter of course and try to prove that I’ve used undue influence, and I simply couldn’t bear that. Truly I couldn’t. And I shouldn’t defend the case, I shouldn’t dream of it. So they’d get the money anyway and it would all be so ugly. I don’t mind your leaving me a legacy—I won’t be a hypocrite and say I mind that—but please, please, don’t think of leaving the rest to me. It would make me very unhappy.”
Felicity gave a little chuckle. She looked very pleased with herself.
“My dear, I’ve been thinking of doing it for the last year or two,” she said. “I meant what I said—you’re the only real friend I have, so don’t argue about it. Now I’ll go up and lie down and presently you can bring me some tea. You haven’t forgotten in the midst of all the excitement, have you, that Max is coming to dinner? I’d forgotten it myself until just this moment.”
“I don’t think you know what you’re doing,” Agnes said.
“Dear me, you of all people to think I’m not in full command of my faculties!” Felicity said. “Andrew, what do you think? Am I responsible for my actions?”
“Dreadfully responsible,” he said, “but perhaps not wise.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think Mrs. Cavell’s right. Your son would contest your will on the ground of her having brought undue influence to bear on you, and that would put her in a very unpleasant position.”
“But anyone who knew me, including you, would be able to testify that nobody, ever, has been able to influence me once I’ve set my mind on a thing.”
“That may be true,” he admitted, “but I’m afraid the argument may not make much of an impression on a judge.”
“I don’t understand you,” Felicity said. “Both of you seem to be just trying to stop me doing something I want to do. Something I’ve a perfect right to do. And I don’t mean to let you do it, so you may as well give up. Well, I’ll go upstairs now and I’ll come down again before Max gets here.”
She left the room and they heard her making her way slowly up the stairs.
She reappeared at about half past six. Andrew had been out for a walk, not across the common because he felt squeamish when he thought of it, but into the town, where most of the shops were shut because it was Good Friday and there were not many people about. The wind had dropped and for some of the time that he was out the sun shone brightly in a sky of clearest blue. But clouds had moved up across it before he returned to Ramsden House. It had begun to drizzle by the time that he rang the doorbell.
He expected it to be answered by Laycock, but it was Agnes who opened the door.
“I don’t know where Laycock is,” she said. “He doesn’t seem to be about. I’ve just taken Felicity’s tea up to her. She was sound asleep. You’d like some too, I expect. I’ll bring it in a minute.”
She wheeled it into the drawing-room on the tea-trolley almost immediately. There were no scones or cucumber sandwiches today, but there was the same fruitcake that there had been yesterday.
“This is the best fruitcake I’ve had since I was a boy,” Andrew said as she helped him to a slice of it. “In those days we always had a splendid tea, but now it’s a meal to which I don’t normally treat myself. But I enjoy it immensely when it’s provided for me. You’re a wonderful cook, Mrs. Cavell. Felicity was incredibly fortunate, finding you.”
She gave no sign of being pleased by the compliment. Her face was troubled. At last she said, “You don’t think she meant what she said about the money, do you, Professor?”
“I don’t know,” Andrew replied. “The fact is, I hardly know her. She’s only a relation by marriage and I haven’t seen her for several years. Is she in the habit of saying things she doesn’t mean?”
“Oh yes, often. Sometimes they’re quite insulting things and then she makes out afterwards one ought to have known she didn’t mean them. And generally I think she really didn’t, she was just blowing off steam, because she’s been so vigorous and vital all her life and being old now is very frustrating. When she says something particularly unpleasant to me I usually laugh and that seems to make it all right.”
“She says unpleasant things even to you, does she?” Andrew said.
“Oh dear, yes. But not things that really hurt. She’s never really unkind. But to her family this afternoon... She can’t really have meant it, can she?”
For a moment Andrew had a feeling that Agnes might be trying to make him say that Felicity had indeed meant it and that what she had said could be counted on. But the distress on her plain, snub-nosed face looked real.
“Perhaps when she wakes up she’ll have had second thoughts,” he said. “Anyway, if she makes a new will tomorrow, she’ll probably have plenty of time to change it again. She may live another ten years. Longevity is said to run in the family, isn’t it, and I remember vaguely that her mother lived to ninety-six or thereabouts.”
“Of course, I know that,” Agnes said. “But in the meantime my relations with the rest of the Silvesters aren’t going to be very pleasant, are they? Because I’m sure they’ll believe I have been using undue influence. It’s even making me wonder...” She hesitated.
“Yes?” Andrew said.
“It’s making me wonder if I ought to give up my job here and look for something else. I don’t want to do it at all. I’ve never dreamt of such a thing until this afternoon. I’ve thought of this as my home for a long time now. I’m very fond of Felicity and I’ve made friends in Braden. It would be very painful to leave. But if the Silvesters think I’ve abused my position in the house, I couldn’t bear it. Nobody’s ever had any possible reason to think anything of the kind about me before. It makes me feel—well, almost criminal.”
“Oh, come, Mrs. Cavell,” Andrew said, “that’s going rather far. Nobody’s going to say anything like that about you. And if they do, you can call on me as a witness to the way things happened this afternoon. It was that silly girl decked out in all those diamonds that upset Felicity. They looked so ridiculous, for one thing, and probably they’re very precious to her and she doesn’t like seeing them looking absurd. But it surprises me that she keeps them in the house. I don’t suppose she wears any of them nowadays, so wouldn’t they be safer in the bank?”
“I’ve tried to persuade her they would be,” Agnes replied, “but she says she kno
ws she’d never take them out again once she put them in, so it would be like saying good-bye to them. She keeps them in the top left-hand drawer of her dressing table. She says that’s where all women keep their jewellery, that it’s the proper place for them. She can be very perverse, you know, when she feels like it. But you don’t think it would be best if I left as soon as I decently can? My pay isn’t important to me. I’ve got my pension.”
“I think it would be a calamity for Felicity if you left her,” Andrew said. “I really shouldn’t think of it unless you’re unhappy here.”
She looked searchingly at his face, making sure that he meant what he said, then gave her wide, pleasant smile and without any further signs of disquiet poured out a second cup of tea for each of them and persuaded Andrew to eat some more fruitcake.
When Felicity came downstairs she looked rested and calm. She said nothing at all about her intention to change her will or her quarrel with her family. She had changed into a long black dress with a string of pearls round her neck. As she had before lunch, she insisted on having a drink before her guest arrived. Agnes brought in the tray with the sherry decanter and glasses on it.
“I don’t know what’s happened to Ted,” she said. She looked harassed and upset. “He’s disappeared.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?” Felicity said. “Where’s he gone to?”
“I don’t know. I can’t find him.”
“Have you looked in his room?”
“Yes, and he isn’t there.”
“And he said nothing to you about going out?”
“Nothing at all.”
“That’s odd. He’s never done anything like that before.”
“No.”
“Well, can you manage dinner without him?”
“Oh, I can manage all right. It’s just that it’s strange.”
Root of All Evil Page 7