Root of All Evil

by E. X. Ferrars

  In fact the thought had occurred to Andrew, but he had not wanted to alarm her by telling her of it, though he felt that before going to bed it would be his duty to look through the house. Felt it reluctantly, because he had not the least desire to come face to face with a probably violent intruder. However, as she had brought the matter up herself, he decided to admit what had been in his mind.

  “It isn’t impossible,” he said.

  “Then oughtn’t we to look round?”

  “Yes—yes, no doubt.” He went back to the drawing-room and picked up the poker. Agnes followed him. “If you’ll wait here I’ll go round—”

  “Oh, I’ll come with you,” she said. “It’ll be better if there are two of us. And we must be very quiet. We don’t want to disturb Felicity.”

  They set off through the house.

  In only a few minutes Andrew decided that it should be Agnes and not he who was carrying the poker. She hurried from room to room ahead of him, looked inside cupboards and under beds with a boldness which made him feel how pusillanimous he was himself. She went ahead with intrepid haste while he was inclined to go slowly, with a good deal of caution.

  In Laycock’s room on the top floor she made a particularly careful examination of cupboards and drawers and of the small bathroom opening out of the bedroom. Apart from establishing the fact that neither he nor anyone else could be hiding there, she appeared to be looking for something special. When she failed to find it, she stood still in the middle of the very tidy room, looking round with an air of disappointment.

  “I thought—I just had a sort of idea—that his suitcase might be here and that if it was, it might tell us something,” she said. “Of course I was away when he arrived, so I don’t know for sure him much luggage he brought, but I know he had a suitcase, because I’ve seen it on top of that cupboard.” She pointed. “But it’s gone. So I suppose he’s left and isn’t coming back. Yet he’s left quite a lot of things—shirts and socks and so on—in his drawers. So I don’t know what to make of it. Let’s get on.”

  She led the way into her own bedroom which was on the same floor, found it as empty as the other rooms in the house, then led the way downstairs again.

  Back in the drawing-room she suggested that Andrew might like a nightcap and admitted that for once she felt inclined to have one herself. She brought in whisky and glasses and left Andrew to pour out drinks for them. The energy that had carried her through their search of the house seemed suddenly to have run out. A look of depression had settled on her features. She began by gulping her drink, as if she could not wait to feel the warmth of it inside her, then, catching herself doing this, put the glass down on a table at her side, gave a slight shudder and sat back, closing her eyes.

  Andrew sipped his own drink slowly, watching her for a little while and wondering whether to call her back from the distance to which she had withdrawn or to leave her to come back in her own time. In the end he cleared his throat to remind her that he was there and asked a question that had been on his mind for some time.

  “Mrs. Cavell, do you remember when Felicity called you upstairs soon after she went up to bed?”

  She started and opened her eyes. “Yes?”

  “It isn’t a question I’ve any right to ask,” he said, “but she sounded excited. Was it about anything special?”

  She reached out a languid hand to pick up her glass again, but then nursed it without drinking.

  “Yes, it was special in a way,” she said, “and she’d worked herself up into quite a state of excitement about it. It was about the money. As a matter of fact, it rather upset me.”

  “You mean she told you she hadn’t meant what she said about changing her will?”

  “No, she told me she had meant it.”

  “She told you she was definitely going to leave all her money to you?”

  “Yes. She’d realized, you see, that I hadn’t believed it, so she called me upstairs so that we could have a quiet talk and told me very emphatically that she’d meant every word she’d said because I was her only real friend and that when Mr. Little came tomorrow she would make a will which would convince me she was serious. And so she really is at the moment, I think, but of course she’ll have plenty of time to change her mind again. She may live to a hundred.”

  “And it upset you that she’s going to leave her money to you?”

  “Yes, it did, it upset me.”

  “But why?”

  “For the reasons I gave her this afternoon. The family would contest the will on the grounds that I’d used my position here to gain undue influence over her, and I couldn’t bear to put up a fight about a thing like that. Of course I’d like to have the money. Don’t imagine I wouldn’t. But not at the price of having a horrible action in court and being made to appear a greedy, grasping woman who’d done all she could to get her hands on a fortune. I’ve really never done anything of that kind, you know.”

  “I’m sure you haven’t.”

  “Felicity told me some time ago that she’d left me a legacy, and I’m very glad she wanted to do that and I’d have no hesitation at all about accepting it, and I don’t think her family would grudge it me. But all her money, no—no, it simply wouldn’t do.”

  “A good many people would gamble on their chances of being able to hold on to it,” Andrew said, “even if it meant fighting an action in court.”

  “Oh, I know, and don’t think for a moment I’m not tempted. Even though I’ve never been really poor in my life, I’ve never been rich either, and there are so many things one might do...” She gave a long, quiet sigh. “Yes, of course I’m tempted. But I understand myself enough to know I’d give in, and then I’d be hurt and disappointed and upset much more than if I give up all hope of it now. And even if I didn’t give in and if I won the case, I’d have the feeling there was something horribly sordid about it. Dishonest, almost. It’s a feeling that goes very deep in most of us, doesn’t it, that money should stay in the family?”

  “I suppose so, though I don’t see why it should if they don’t deserve it.” Years ago Andrew had made a will leaving his own modest estate to a nephew who was almost his only living relative and of whom he happened to be very fond, so there had been no problem for him. “But you won’t want to go on working for ever, you know. The time will come when you might be very glad to have Felicity’s money behind you, even if it turns out to be rather less that it sounds now, because I suppose Inland Revenue would take a good slice of it.”

  “I shan’t need it,” she said. “My husband was a reader in molecular biology at the University of Derby, so I’ve got my share of his pension. It’s not very much, but it’s enough to get by on. I don’t really need to work, I just wanted to. I felt so lonely after his death, and I found it so boring cooking just for myself and so on that I decided I’d try to get a job where at least I’d be of use to someone. And I just happened to land here. Of course, Felicity can be very trying sometimes and quite often I say to myself I simply won’t stand it any longer and I’m going to leave and look for a job with people who won’t be so demanding. Because she does demand a lot, you know, in the way of attention and giving in to her whims. But the fact is, I’m very fond of her and I think she is of me, after her fashion. So I just stay on.”

  “What d’you really think about the way Laycock left this afternoon?” Andrew asked. “Why d’you think he did it?”

  She looked deeply into her glass, giving herself a moment to think. Then she shook her head.

  “I simply don’t know.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t. Even before he disappeared I had my doubts about him.”

  “He’s always been very helpful and efficient.” She sounded defensive, as if even now she was unwilling to criticize the young man. “I’ve always liked him.”

  “But his performance as a manservant wasn’t very convincing, was it?”

  “Wasn’t it? I don’t
know what a manservant ought to be like. I don’t think I’ve ever met one before.”

  “I’m not sure that I have either, but I couldn’t help feeling he’d learnt his behaviour from rather old-fashioned West End comedies. I suppose he wasn’t ever an actor who couldn’t make it in the theatre and found that a job like this one with Felicity felt nice and secure?”

  “But he worked for someone else before he came here—worked for her for three years, I believe.”

  “Ah yes, I was forgetting that. Well, perhaps he’ll just come back tomorrow with or without an explanation of what he’s been doing.” He saw a little animation come back into her expression and wondered if Laycock, with his boy’s face, had succeeded in appealing to a frustrated motherliness in her. “You’ve no children?” he asked. “There’s no one to look after you?”

  “No,” she answered. “Anyway, if I had any, I shouldn’t want them to do that.”

  “And you’ve never thought of marrying again?”

  She gave an unexpectedly gay little laugh. “D’you know, it’s funny your saying that, because I had a proposal only a few weeks ago. Yes, at my age! It was from Max Dunkerley. Can you imagine that?”

  “I can’t really see why not,” Andrew answered. “But I gather you weren’t interested.”

  “I’m afraid not—no. I like him, you know. He’s been a good, loyal friend to Felicity and he’s always been very nice to me, but as a husband, well...” She gave another laugh. But then the cheerfulness faded from her face. “I loved my husband very much, you see. We got married when we were very young and I don’t think either of us gave a thought to anyone else ever after. It was so wonderful while it lasted. At first, when he died, I simply couldn’t believe it had happened. Life couldn’t be like that, I thought. I don’t think I could ever think of replacing him, even by someone I was fond of.”

  Andrew thought of what a power for loving was going to waste in this woman and of how much waste of this kind there was in a world that seemed sometimes to be given over almost wholly to hatred and destruction. But his own case, after all, was not so different from hers and he knew there was nothing to be done to bring that old power, once lost, back into use.

  Tears had suddenly come into her eyes. She knew that he had seen them and did not try to hide them.

  “Forgive me, I’m not often like this,” she said. “But it’s a long time since I’ve had someone like you to talk to. And it’s been a trying day. I’m not myself.”

  She finished her drink and stood up.

  “Good night,” she said.

  Andrew stood up too. “Good night.”

  She paused to put the fire screen in front of the remains of the fire, then asked him to remember to turn out the lights when he went up to bed and left him.

  He did not linger for long in the drawing-room after she had gone, though he thought that he was too restless and wide-awake to have any chance of sleeping. But in his bedroom he found an Agatha Christie which he did not think he had read, so he got into bed, switched on the table lamp beside it and settled down to read.

  However, he must have been more tired than he realized, for almost at once the print began to swim before his eyes, he could not keep his mind on the characters who were being introduced at the beginning of the story, and after only a little while he discovered with a start that the book was flat on his chest and that undoubtedly he had been asleep for at least a few minutes. Laying the book down, he switched off the light and was soon in a deep sleep.

  He woke, as he usually did, at about seven o’clock. Yesterday, he remembered, Laycock had brought him tea at eight o’clock, but this morning, presumably, there would be no Laycock and so no tea, unless the young man had returned during the night, with or without an explanation of his absence. But in any case, eight o’clock seemed a long way off and Andrew found that he had intense desire for a piece of cheese.

  He was of course accustomed to starting his day with a piece of cheese, but he had not recognized till then that this had become virtually an addiction. He knew that Agnes Cavell would presently provide him with a substantial breakfast in which there would be no lack of protein, but all the same, what he wanted as he lay there, watching through the window the April sky become sunny and softly blue with no trace of cloud in it, was a piece of cheese.

  For a little while he controlled himself, but at last, thinking that for sure he would be able to find some in the kitchen, he got up, put on his dressing-gown and a pair of socks and crept quietly downstairs.

  As soon as he approached the kitchen he realized that he was not the first person astir in the house. Agnes was there already, busy with the clearing up of the meal that had been left in the dining-room the evening before. He thought that she looked very tired, as if she had not slept much, but she greeted him cheerfully.

  “Hallo. I was going to bring you up some tea as soon as I’d got rid of this clutter, but I’ll make it for you here in a moment if you’d like to wait.”

  It would have embarrassed Andrew to tell her that he had come prowling into the kitchen, looking for cheese, so he resigned himself to doing without it. It embarrassed him too that he had omitted to put on his slippers, particularly as he now saw that there was a small hole in the toe of one of his socks.

  “So there’s still no Laycock,” he said.

  “I’m afraid not,” she answered. “It rather looks as if we’ve seen the last of him.” She closed the dishwasher on all the things she had stacked inside it and set it going. Then she filled a kettle, plugged it in and started putting out cups and saucers on the table. “I hope you slept well.”

  “Like a log,” he said. “And you?”

  “No, I can’t say I did, although I’d taken one of my sleeping pills. I don’t often take them, but I’ve always had some by me since Eustace died, because for weeks after that happened I hardly slept at all, but now I only take them when something’s upset me badly. And yesterday really wasn’t a nice day, was it? But the pill didn’t work. That’s to say, when I did get off to sleep at last I had most horrible dreams. I can’t remember now what they were about, I only know they were horrible.”

  She took a tray from a shelf, put an embroidered tray cloth on it, then a teacup, milk jug and a small silver teapot, and when the kettle boiled made tea in the little pot. She also made tea in a larger pot on the table.

  “Help yourself,” she said. “I’ll just take this up to Felicity, then come down and join you.”

  She carried the tray out of the kitchen.

  As she went Andrew darted a look at the refrigerator, wondering if there was a chance, if he made a rapid search, that he might find some cheese in it and be able to satisfy his craving before Agnes returned. Why not, after all? Even if she returned before he had finished searching and caught him at it, he had only to admit to a very harmless foible. He might even attempt to convince her that she herself might benefit by starting her busy day with a little piece of Stilton.

  He stood up, took a step towards the refrigerator, then stood still.

  From upstairs there had come a fearful crash. He recognized the sound of breaking china and heard one sharp, shrill cry.

  He ran to the stairs and from the bottom of them saw that Felicity’s bedroom door was open.

  Then he heard Agnes calling. “Professor! Professor!”

  He leapt up the stairs as fast as he could and reached the open door. Agnes was standing just inside it. She had let the tray fall to the floor. The cup and the milk jug were broken and tea was spilled over the cream-coloured carpet.

  Beyond the stain of the tea Felicity lay sprawled, her eyes staring, her face a yellowish grey, her limbs rigid. She had been dead, Andrew realized almost at once, for several hours.

  Chapter Five

  The police arrived fifteen minutes after Andrew’s call to them. He had hurried into some clothes by then, but had not shaved. The first to come were two uniformed men in a car. After them a number of others arrived, of whom the most sen
ior was Chief Superintendent Theobald, whom Andrew had heard Felicity mention as having been in charge when she and Derek had gone to identify the body of Margot Weldon.

  Felicity had not been impressed by him. He was a smaller man than most of the others who crowded into the house, a quiet, retiring-looking man with a pale, sharp-featured face, straight, light brown hair and grey eyes that never seemed to dwell on anything for more than a moment. Yet in that moment they gave the impression of taking in more than most people would be able to observe in even the longest, most thoughtful gaze. Andrew thought that Felicity had been mistaken about him when she said that he had no presence.

  As soon as Andrew had made the telephone call that had brought the police Agnes had insisted on calling Felicity’s doctor. Andrew had told her that this would be pointless, since nothing could be done for her and they might just as well wait until the police surgeon arrived, but she had taken the telephone over from him and called Dr. Jay. He had replied to her that he would come to the house immediately and in fact had reached it only a few minutes before the two constables in the car.

  After one look at Felicity he had come out of her room and said to Agnes that it was obvious that he must not touch anything, but that he would wait until the man in charge arrived. When Superintendent Theobald appeared, his voice soft, his hands in his pockets, his stride slow and lounging, he spoke briefly to Agnes and Andrew, then asked the doctor to accompany him up to Felicity’s room.

  It was only then that Andrew telephoned Derek Silvester. It had been at the back of his mind that he would have to do this ever since he had looked past Agnes and the tea stain on the floor at Felicity lying stiffening there. But he had had a hope that Agnes might undertake making the call and had put off doing it himself until she actually said to him, as if of course it was for him to do it, “Aren’t you going to tell Derek what’s happened?”

  He nodded reluctantly, asked her what Derek’s number was and dialled.

  A woman’s voice answered.