Root of All Evil

by E. X. Ferrars

  Finishing his sandwich and his whisky, he decided to go for a walk. He had no clear idea when he set out of where he intended to go and took the road into the town without thinking about it. With the capriciousness of April weather, the afternoon had turned cloudy and colder than it had been for some days, though the strong wind had not returned. Remembering as he walked along how fiercely it had blown on Thursday evening, a fact struck him which was so obvious that he wondered why he had not considered it before. It was simply that at the time when he and Felicity had both shivered and had later more than half-believed that at that moment someone with murder in mind had opened the back door, Felicity had not yet said anything about changing her will and her diamonds had not disappeared.

  So if the truth was that at the time of the sudden draught through the house someone who had already planted the confession to Felicity’s murder in Margot Weldon’s handbag had come to follow that up by murdering Felicity, it could not have had anything to do with her will. The theft of the diamonds might have been the motive for murdering Felicity and the failure to get them that evening might have been what had brought the murderer back next day. But the will could not have had anything to do with either murder, unless the fact was that the two occurrences had nothing to do with one another.

  Brooding on the possibility of this, Andrew looked around him, noticed that he was near the church and admitted to himself that this was where he had intended to come from the first. For Coram Court, where Max Dunkerley lived, he had heard was close to the church.

  Andrew had not been told what street it was in, but among the old houses at the centre of the town it was easy enough to find it, a moderate-sized block of flats, four storeys high, probably built in the nineteen-thirties and now with a shabby air, not exactly dilapidated but certainly in need of a little freshening up. A coat of paint would not have come amiss. Going up to the entrance, he saw Max Dunkerley’s name on a card beside one of a row of bells, rang it, heard a moment later the sound of clicking at the door, pushed it open and saw a lift facing him.

  Max’s flat was on the second floor. Entering the lift, Andrew pressed the second-floor button and was taken shakily upwards. Max had opened the door of his flat and was waiting for him on the landing by the time that he emerged from the lift. Max was wearing an old sweater, out at elbows, and wrinkled corduroy trousers. His scanty pinkish hair curled on the roll-collar of his sweater. His wide-open blue eyes contemplated Andrew with the startled look that he remembered, almost as if he were prepared to bar the way to so unexpected an intruder.

  Yet he smiled, said in his high-pitched, grating voice, “Ah, it’s you. A good idea to call. We can talk. Come in,” and stood aside for Andrew to enter.

  Andrew remembered that Felicity had called it an unspeakable little flat. That was an exaggeration. It seemed to have only two rooms, a bedroom and a living-room, besides the bathroom and the kitchen. But except that the living-room, which Andrew supposed was the room that Max had called his studio, was extremely untidy, it was pleasant enough in its way. The furniture belonged to half a dozen different periods and there was rather too much of it, and the walls were almost completely covered in pictures, which Andrew found oppressive and made him wonder where Felicity’s pictures would be hung. But no doubt some that were here now would be sacrificed for them. There were comfortable chairs and a nice hearth rug. An easel had a half-finished seascape on it and there was a stack of canvases in a corner and several pots of green trailing plants on the window-sill. It was the room of a man who lived alone, but certainly as he chose.

  Max said, “I’ll make some coffee. Won’t take a minute. D’you know, if you’d come an hour ago you’d have found me in tears? The police came here and told me what had happened, then asked a lot of damnfool questions and I controlled myself while they were here, then cried like a child. I don’t promise I shan’t start again. You’ll be asking the same questions, I expect, and that may set me off again. But there are one or two I’d like to ask you. Sit down. Smoke if you want to. Cigarettes on the mantelpiece.”

  He went out.

  Andrew, who did not smoke and who was repelled by the heavy smell of stale cigarette smoke in the room and the quantity of stubs in everything that could be regarded as an ashtray, did not sit down, but roamed around the room, taking a closer look at some of the pictures on the walls. Most of them were signed with the initials “M.D.”, so could be presumed to be Max Dunkerley’s own work. There was nothing distinguished about them, but the sheer quantity of them showed that it must give him great pleasure to produce them.

  Max returned after only a few minutes with mugs and a coffeepot. Instant coffee, undoubtedly. Filling a mug for Andrew, he filled one for himself and settled down sprawling on a spindly little Victorian sofa.

  “Well, go on,” he said. “Ask me what you want to know.”

  Faced with the blunt question, Andrew found that he did not know what he wanted to say. He sat down in a worn but well-padded armchair that probably dated from the nineteen-twenties.

  “I didn’t come to ask anything special,” he said. “I wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to get away from Mrs. Cavell who’s in a very emotional state. I’m sure that sounds callous, but when you know a person’s in great trouble and you realize you can’t do a thing to help them, it’s a natural instinct to flee. And I didn’t feel any inclination to visit the Silvester family. But that reminds me...” He paused.

  “Ah,” Max said, “now you’ve remembered what you came to ask me. Yes?”

  Andrew had almost convinced himself while he had been speaking that he had not come there to ask Max Dunkerley anything special, and it amused him, now that the other man’s perception had been too quick for him, that really the question had been on the tip of his tongue.

  “Mrs. Silvester—the younger one, Frances—said something this morning that interested me,” he said, “and I’ve been wondering if there’s any truth in it.”

  “Never believe Frances,” Max said. “She’s one of the most completely unreliable people I’ve ever come across. But perhaps you’ve realized that yourself.”

  “I’ve been wondering about it,” Andrew said. “She seems a little muddle-minded.”

  “The trouble is, you know, I’ve never made up my mind whether that muddle-mindedness of hers, as you call it, is genuine or not,” Max said. “I’m inclined to think it’s an act with which she defends herself from her rather dominating family. Because Derek, as you may have noticed, likes to have his own way, and the two children, I’ve no hesitation in saying, are devils. Not that I’m not very fond of them both. I’ve known them since they were babes. But talking of Frances, I rather think the truth about her is that she’s a shrewd, mildly unscrupulous woman who blames her bad memory or her state of general mental confusion if there’s any risk of her being caught out in any of the lies she may feel inclined to tell.”

  “So when she said she thought it was you who recommended Margot Weldon to her, after which she recommended her to Dr. Silvester and he to Felicity, you’d say it was a deliberate lie—supposing it doesn’t happen to be true.”

  “Ah,” Max said, “I see. That’s what you came to ask me. Is it true?” He smiled amiably, as if there were something entertaining about being suspected.

  “The question’s been worrying me,” Andrew confessed. “Among other things.”

  “I know, I know, just how I feel myself. Everything seems a little mad.” Max reached for a cigarette. “No, I didn’t recommend the woman to anybody. I’d never heard of her till Felicity told me she’d employed her. And yes, if Frances says I found Margot for Felicity, I’d say that’s one of her deliberate lies. But it might not be. That’s one of the awful things about the woman. One can never be sure.”

  “Has she anything against you that explains her trying to get you mixed up in this?”

  “Not that I know of. Not that it’s a thing I’ve ever thought about. I’d have said we were quite good friends. If sh
e’s trying to involve me, I’d say it’s probably because she’s trying to protect someone else. One of her family, of course, who may not even need protecting. But she could have been genuinely muddled, because I did talk to her about someone, a nice elderly woman who I thought would suit Felicity, and Frances said she’d ask Derek what he thought. But then I heard that Margot had been taken on, so naturally I didn’t raise the matter again.”

  “If it’s one of her family she’s protecting, which of them do you think it would be?”

  “There I can’t help you, I’m afraid. I’d say Quentin is her favourite. All the same, it could be any of the others. And that recommendation could have been given quite innocently and have nothing to do with the forgeries or the murders, and whoever gave it may only be keeping quiet about it now out of fear. Now I said I was going to ask you some questions. Tell me, have they found out anything about Laycock?”

  Andrew drank some of his coffee. “He hasn’t reappeared, if that’s what you mean. But Felicity’s solicitor, Arthur Little, thought he might have a note of the name and address of the woman who gave him a reference and was going to check it, but I haven’t heard the result of that yet. Felicity, so she told me, talked to this woman herself and then engaged the man without any consultation with her family or Mrs. Cavell, who had gone away on holiday.”

  “Ah,” Max said. “Yes.”

  “Does that mean anything special?” Andrew asked.

  “I was just wondering what you make of Agnes Cavell,” Max said.

  There was something in his tone which made it sound as if he would be glad to be told something to her discredit.

  Cautiously, Andrew replied, “She seems a very admirable woman.”

  “Of course, of course. Do you know, not long ago I asked her to marry me? Luckily she had the sense to refuse. It wouldn’t have worked at all. But of course I haven’t forgiven her. At the time I’d never dreamt she could possibly refuse me and I’m afraid I’ve never managed to trust her since. Sheer wounded vanity, of course, but there it is. I always wonder what she’s thinking about when she looks at me. Such a candid, open look and I can’t help thinking it hides contempt and dislike.”

  “I imagine it was just that she didn’t want to marry anybody,” Andrew said. “I believe she was very devoted to her husband.”

  “Yes, yes, of course, that’s the obvious explanation. Sometimes I almost believe it.”

  “But there was something I was told this morning by Mrs. Godfrey who I understand comes in daily to help in the house, and I wonder what you think of it.” Andrew finished his coffee and put his cup down.

  “Something about Agnes?”

  “Well, yes,” Andrew said. “It was only that Mrs. Godfrey believes that it was Mrs. Cavell who put the idea of employing a manservant into Felicity’s head and who then found some advertisements and tried ringing up the people who’d advertised, but had no success with them. Then she went away and soon afterwards Felicity herself tried some of this ringing up and was at once successful.”

  Max’s hard, bright stare dwelt steadily on Andrew’s face for a moment.

  “I’m not sure if I understand you,” he said. “What is there strange about that? Wasn’t it just chance?”

  “I expect so.”

  “But you don’t think it was.”

  “I think it must have been.”

  “What’s worrying you then?”

  Andrew stirred uneasily. He had not really meant to talk so much.

  “There’s the disappearance of an address book Felicity usually kept in her handbag,” he said. “She told me herself she’d a note of that woman’s number in it, the one who recommended Laycock. And the police have been turning the house inside out, looking for the book, but they haven’t found it. So it looks as if someone who knew there was this note in it wanted to hide the fact and removed the book, obviously to conceal something about Laycock. And the most likely explanation is that it was Laycock himself who did it, if it was he who came back to the house to do the murder. The police found the handbag in Felicity’s bedroom this morning, with no book in it. But it just might have been Mrs. Cavell who took it, mightn’t it? She came and went in the house. She could have got at the handbag any time. It wouldn’t necessarily have had to be yesterday evening. It might have been missing for days without Felicity noticing it.”

  “But that argues Agnes has some connection with Laycock,” Max said, “and I don’t see how she could have. There’s no question that she was away when Felicity took him on. She was so proud of having done it herself, you know. She wanted to display to us all that she was still perfectly independent.”

  “Yes, I’m only trying to think of who could have got at the handbag,” Andrew said.

  As he said it, he suddenly understood what had been driving him on since he had begun to talk about the address book and its mysterious disappearance. Yesterday evening, when Max Dunkerley had come to dinner, the two women had left the dining-room before the men and Max and Andrew had sat on for a little while, talking of the love that Max had felt for Felicity and of the beauty that she had still had in her sixties. Then Andrew had gone to the drawing-room, but Max had lingered behind, supposedly to go to the lavatory. But if he had not really done that, he would have had time to go quickly upstairs, go into Felicity’s room, find her handbag and extract the address book from it.

  Not that Andrew had the faintest idea why Max should have done such a thing. However, it was a possibility which perhaps should be borne in mind. It should also be borne in mind that if Max had done that, he had had an opportunity too to help himself to Felicity’s diamonds. It did not occur to Andrew to speak of this, but he found himself watching Max’s face with sudden alertness.

  He could discern no change of expression on it.

  “If Little has a note of that woman’s name and address,” Max said, “the theft of the book was pointless.”

  “Quite pointless,” Andrew agreed.

  “Someone must be feeling very disappointed.”

  “Very.”

  “Interesting, very interesting,” Max said. “Yet it’s possible, isn’t it, that it wasn’t that particular address this person wanted? Suppose there was something in the book that tied someone up with Margot Weldon.”

  Andrew had been pursuing his own line of thought so doggedly that he had not thought of this. “That’s possible, of course,” he said.

  “Or something else, something quite innocent.”

  Andrew did not believe for a moment that it was innocent, but he recognized that this was not impossible and that one of the troubles about the situation in which he found himself at the moment was the temptation to assume that every little thing that had happened during the last two days was in some way connected with the two murders. The truth might be that there was an innocent explanation of nearly everything and that the main clues to the mystery, or to the two mysteries, if it turned out that they were unconnected, had yet to be revealed.

  A few minutes later he left. Max accompanied him to the lift, summoned it for him and thanked him for his call and their most interesting talk. Andrew went down in the creaking lift and let himself out into the street where the street-lamps had already been lit and dusk was already deepening in the early evening. The dusk took him by surprise, yet it should not have done so, for by the time that he had left Max’s flat it had been dark enough in there. But Andrew had been too engrossed in what they had been talking about to think of it.

  As he walked along he found himself wondering if it was conceivable that Max had stolen the diamonds. He had had the time and the opportunity to do it. But if he had, then their theft and Felicity’s death had nothing to do with one another. She had been alive and well when he had left the house. If the theft had been successfully achieved soon after dinner, what could possibly have brought him back?

  It all seemed very unlikely. Yet suppose he was in urgent need of money. It was impossible to guess whether a man who lived in the kind of d
isorder in which Max Dunkerley chose to live was rich or poor. Hadn’t someone said that he had worked for the United Nations? That meant that he must have a reasonable pension and perhaps, if he had lived most of his working life abroad, had had an untaxed income out of which he might have saved a substantial amount.

  But he might be a compulsive gambler, or have relations who made sudden large demands for money on him which he felt unable to refuse, or he might even be subject to blackmail. Perhaps he needed money. Perhaps he was a thief. Perhaps he was a liar and had introduced Margot Weldon into Felicity’s house. Perhaps he was a murderer...

  “Professor Basnett! Professor Basnett!”

  Andrew started. He had just passed the police station and now heard swift footsteps behind him, as if someone had just emerged from it and was running to catch up with him. Turning, he saw Patricia Neale. She had on a waterproof and had a scarf tied over her brown hair.

  “I thought it was you,” she said as she joined him, “and there’s something I want to ask you. You’re going back to Ramsden House, I suppose. Do you mind if I walk along with you?”

  “It’ll be a pleasure,” he answered. “Have the police been questioning you?”

  “I’ve been questioning them.” She fell into step beside him as they walked on. Her hands were in her pockets and there was a worried frown on her face. “I wanted to ask them simply if I’d got to stay here or if I could go home.”

  “I’m sure you can go home if you want to,” he said, “as long as they know how to get in touch with you.”

  “That’s what they said. But what about you? Are you staying?”

  “For the moment.”