Root of All Evil

by E. X. Ferrars

  “You mean when you heard Mrs. Silvester announce that she was going to change her will,” Theobald said.

  “No, no, what the hell had that to do with me? No, it was when I saw young Quentin making off with the old lady’s diamonds.”

  “Quentin?” Agnes said sharply. “What d’you mean?”

  “Just that,” he answered. “I saw him coming out of Mrs. Silvester’s room in a great hurry, stuffing something into his pockets. Then he dropped something and he stooped to pick it up and I saw it was a diamond ring. Then he went sneaking out as fast as he could and didn’t know I’d seen him. I was standing in the doorway of Professor Basnett’s room at the time—yes, yes, Professor,” he added as Andrew was about to speak, “I’d been into your room just to see what you’d brought with you. I’m naturally inquisitive. But there was nothing rewarding there. I didn’t really think there would be. And I was just coming out when I saw Quentin. So I waited till he’d gone, then I went into Mrs. Silvester’s room and looked in the case where she’d kept her diamonds, and they were missing. And then I began to think about my own position.”

  “When did this happen?” Theobald asked. From the flatness of his tone it was impossible to tell whether or not he believed what he was being told.

  “I can’t tell you exactly,” Laycock said. “Latish in the afternoon sometime.”

  “After the Silvesters had left then,” Theobald said.

  “Oh yes, they’d been gone an hour or more. Quentin must have got away from them and come back on his own. I suppose he did it because he thought that if he and his family were going to be disinherited, he might as well make off with something tangible while he’d the chance and hope I’d be blamed for it. That’s what I made of it at the time, anyway, and I thought it would be distinctly to my advantage to get away as fast as I could. I may have been wrong about that, but with that record of mine it seemed only to make sense. So I packed a small case I had and slipped out quietly and went to London. Does that answer your question about why I disappeared?”

  “Not entirely,” Theobald replied. “Why didn’t you try to stop Silvester when you saw what he was doing?”

  “And have him dump the diamonds out of his pockets and swear he’d been trying to stop me making off with them? Which of us d’you think would have been believed?”

  “He’d have had to explain what he was doing there at that time of the day.”

  “Granted. But by the time I’d got that thought out, he’d gone. I could have told Mrs. Silvester about it right away, I suppose, but that would have done just the thing I wanted to avoid. We’d have had the place crawling with policemen and my record would have come out and I’d almost for certain have been sacked. So I decided I’d save her the trouble of doing that and discharge myself. Much less distressing than having scenes and accusations and all the rest of it. Besides, it doesn’t come naturally to squeal on another chap. But perhaps you don’t understand that.”

  “You’re doing it now and you’d have done it right away if you’d seen any advantage in doing it,” Theobald said. “I understand that much about it. What I can’t say I understand is why you hadn’t made off with the diamonds yourself. Evidently you knew where they were kept and you must have known their value and you could have got at them any time you liked. Why didn’t you?”

  Laycock puffed some smoke out languidly before he answered. “You won’t believe me if I tell you the truth, so why should I?”

  “Try it and see.”

  “Very well, Superintendent. The simple fact is, I’ve been going straight. You won’t be able to find a single thing against me since my last spell inside. I did a lot of thinking while I was in there and I came to the conclusion there was no percentage in the way I’d been living. Going straight was the obvious thing. Not that I meant to stay in the kind of job I’ve had here for any longer than I could help, but you’ve got to start somewhere and it’s one of the easiest sorts of job to get nowadays. But I meant to work my way up in time.”

  “But to get even a job like this one you needed a reference,” Theobald said. “How did you arrange that?”

  “Well, I got a friend to help me,” Laycock said. “Girl who was an actress. Had the right sort of voice. She did it nicely.”

  “A girl?” Theobald said. “We’ve been told by the caretaker who let her flat to her that she was a middle-aged woman.”

  “That’s right,” Laycock said, but he looked disconcerted for a moment, as if he had been caught out making a slip. “One calls them girls, you know, out of habit. They don’t want to be called middle-aged. That’s natural, isn’t it?”

  “What was her name?”

  He looked vague. “Can’t remember. Let me think. Graveney, that was it.”

  “That’s the name the caretaker had,” Theobald said. “I want her real name.”

  “That was her real name, so far as I know. Sue Graveney. Only of course, she hadn’t a title. We added that to make it sound better.”

  “What’s her address?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. I haven’t seen or heard of her since she did that little job for me.”

  “I don’t suppose she really went to Canada.”

  “She may have, for all I know.”

  Theobald looked resigned. He was able, Andrew thought, to recognize a stone wall when he ran into one. Laycock might not mind incriminating Quentin Silvester, but at least for the present he did not intend to give away the woman who had helped him.

  “So now we come back to the question of why you came back this morning,” Theobald said. “And the truth would be a nice change. Then you can come down to the station with me and we’ll have a written statement. If that will suit you.”

  Laycock grinned as if he had begun to take a liking to the detective. It was a boyish grin, yet it had the odd effect of making his round face look older than it did when he was serious. It emphasized the little lines about his eyes and mouth in a way that made them look as if they might soon become permanent. He was at least thirty, Andrew thought, and a hard-bitten thirty at that.

  “I haven’t told you a word that isn’t the truth,” he said.

  “Perhaps only an odd one here and there,” Theobald replied. “Now about turning up here this morning, why did you do it?”

  “Because I read the news in my paper about the old lady’s murder,” Laycock said.

  “Why should that have brought you?”

  “Because the way it was put about the police wanting a man to help them with their inquiries sounded pretty like me, so I thought the sooner I came along on my own account the better. It’s one thing to be suspected of stealing diamonds and another to be suspected of murder. And it just happens I can prove I didn’t commit any murder.”

  “An alibi?”

  “That’s right. When I left here in the afternoon I went straight to the station and waited around till there was a train for London. Being Good Friday there weren’t many and I had quite a wait and I walked up and down the platform and had a talk with the porter. I don’t know his name, but he’s the only one they’ve got there and he’ll probably remember me and seeing me get on to the train when it came. Then when I got to London I went to the room of a friend of mine, Charlie Lewis, at 39 Grieve Street, and asked him if he could put me up for the night. He said he could, then we went out for a meal at the Black Horse, round the corner, and met some other chaps there whose names I can give you if you want them, and had a few drinks, then went back to Charlie’s and played poker for a time. Then the others left and Charlie made me up a bed on the floor and I was with him till I read the news in the paper this morning and decided I’d better come down. Anything you want me to add to that?”

  Listening, Andrew realized that if this alibi that Laycock had given could not be shaken, Theobald would have to abandon his theory that Laycock might have returned to the house on Friday evening to murder Felicity by arrangement with one of the Silvesters. Yet all the Silvesters had alibis too if they had t
old the truth about spending the evening together.

  “All right,” Theobald said. “You’d better come along with us now and give us a written statement. Any objections to doing that?”

  “A pleasure,” Laycock answered.

  Agnes stood up abruptly. “Are you going to arrest him?”

  “What for?” Theobald asked. “Concealing evidence? If he’d told us about seeing Quentin Silvester taking the diamonds, it might have been a help. On the other hand, it might have made no difference and it may not even be true. We’ll wait and see. Come along, Laycock—if that’s the name you’re sticking to at the moment. We’ve a job of work to do.”

  The sergeant put a hand on Laycock’s arm as if he thought that he might suddenly take it into his head to make a break for freedom, but he went apparently willingly with the two policemen. They let themselves out of the house and Andrew heard a car start up as the three of them departed.

  Agnes had sunk down again in her chair. She sat crouched in it with her elbows on her knees and her face hidden in her hands. Andrew went to stand at the window, looking out at the lawn with its borders of daffodils and the big bush of forsythia at the bottom, glowingly yellow in the bright sunshine of the morning. It was Easter Sunday, he thought, and apart from its religious meaning, should have been a day for celebrating with rejoicing the return of the Spring.

  He remembered that when he had been a child his parents had always hidden a nest full of chocolate eggs somewhere in the garden, which he had to set out to find, and beside the nest there had always been a hare made of some material that had predated plastic, the head of which screwed off, revealing that the inside of its body was filled with chocolates. He had sometimes been puzzled by the problem of whether a hare could lay eggs or if its always being there beside the nest was a coincidence. Even now he was not quite sure of the accepted answer to the problem, though he guessed that Freud had provided one.

  “Do you believe that?” Agnes suddenly asked. Her voice sounded muffled, as if she were struggling with tears.

  Andrew turned and came back to the fireside.

  “Believe Laycock? I don’t know. Do you?”

  “I meant that he saw Quentin take the diamonds.”

  “Knowing as little of them both as I do,” Andrew said, “it’s hard to say. I’m inclined to believe it.”

  “I thought Laycock had taken them,” she said in a tone of strange desperation which made Andrew wonder suddenly if Quentin meant more to her than he had realized. “I was sure of it.”

  “It was a natural thing to think,” he said.

  “But Quentin—why should he do such a thing?”

  “I think he’s been badly wanting money recently, and even if he might have been ready to wait for it in the normal course of events till Felicity died, when she told the family she was going to disinherit them all, he thought he’d better make off with what he could while it was possible.”

  “But why should he specially want money?” she asked. “He’s in a good job. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s earning as much as his father. And Tricia’s in a good job too. I suppose it’s possible she may not want to go on working once she’s married, but even if that’s so, they’d be quite well off.”

  “She told me yesterday the engagement’s broken off,” Andrew said. “And the reason seems to be that as soon as Quentin comes into his money, he’s going to give up his job and go to live abroad and start writing again. It sounds as if he really hates that good job he’s got. But I believe he’s had one try at writing already that wasn’t very successful, and Tricia didn’t seem to like the idea of his doing it again. She doesn’t think he’s got the talent to justify it. But if it’s what he’s very keen to do, you can see why he needs money.”

  “I see. You mean he took the diamonds simply so that he could give up his job.”

  “If Laycock’s telling the truth about having seen him take them.”

  “Yes, of course it comes back to that, doesn’t it?” She shook her head, as if she were trying to refute something that had been said to her, or perhaps it was only something at the back of her own mind that had not been put into words by anyone. “I was so sure he’d taken them himself.”

  “D’you know, you surprise me a little,” Andrew said. “I thought you’d taken a liking to him. I’d have expected you to be pleased on the whole if it could be shown he’s innocent of everything but getting into a panic and bolting.”

  She gave him a quick look which was one of the most despairing that he had ever seen on a human face. He could not understand it.

  “Oh yes,” she said, “I’m very pleased.”

  “You guessed he was a crook, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you wanted to help him if he was trying to go straight.”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” She leapt to her feet and shouted at him with the same sort of fury that he had seen in her once before. “And look what’s come of it—murder! Why couldn’t he have said he saw Quentin take the diamonds? The fool, the wicked fool!”

  Stumbling, as if she could not see where she was going, she darted out of the room.

  Puzzled and wishing that he had followed his own impulse the day before and returned to London where he could have been peacefully at work today on his notes on the life of Robert Hooke, Andrew left the room. But in his case it was to look for a drink. He found bottles and glasses in the dining-room, helped himself to whisky and returned to the drawing-room, wondering if lunch would be provided by Agnes that day or if he would have to satisfy his hunger as he had yesterday, with a sandwich.

  Not that he ever had more for lunch at home than a sandwich, but when he helped himself out of the refrigerator here in Felicity’s house he could not quite rid himself of the feeling that it was a kind of theft. Not on the scale of helping himself to her diamonds, but still a kind of stealing. He did not like the thought of being caught at it and hoped he would not have to do it again today.

  To his relief Agnes presently returned to the drawing-room and said that she had prepared some lunch, though she was sorry that it was nothing much. It turned out to be cold beef and a salad and bread and cheese. Her mood was subdued again. She seemed to be deep in her own thoughts. From time to time she made an effort to talk, but they spent most of the meal in silence. When it was over she said that she would make some coffee and Andrew returned to the drawing-room. It was while they were drinking coffee that Laycock returned.

  Before showing himself, he had changed into his white jacket and resumed the air of an impeccable manservant. Agnes looked at him helplessly as he stood in the doorway of the room, looking as if he were waiting for orders from her. It seemed to be too much for her. It was plain that she could not cope with the situation. Andrew did his best to come to the rescue.

  “So they’ve let you go,” he said.

  “Yes, thank you, sir.” The genteel cockney accent was back in place again.

  “Why did they do that?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir.”

  “They simply turned you loose again?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Without any explanation?”

  “None at all, sir.”

  “Stop it, will you—stop it!’ Agnes shouted at him, her voice rising as it did when one of her moods of fury was erupting. “Stop this playacting! Come in and sit down. Tell us what really happened.”

  Laycock came in, closing the door behind him. But instead of sitting down he went to one of the windows and stood there with his back to it. Perhaps he felt that even for a guaranteed ex-convict, rather than a mere servant, to sit down in the company of his employer would show too much familiarity. He groped in a pocket for a cigarette.

  “Sorry,” he said. The accent was gone. “It came automatically and I thought I might be a bit of use here. But if you’d sooner I didn’t stay...” He lit the cigarette and blew smoke out lazily.

  “What really happened?” Agnes demanded again.

  “As I sai
d, Mrs. Cavell, they just turned me loose,” he answered. “I made the statement they wanted and was expecting to be held there for God knows how long when they seemed to get into a state of excitement and suddenly told me to go. I told them I’d be coming here unless you didn’t want me to stay, and they made a note of it and that was that. If you don’t want me around, of course I’ll go right away. May I say, while I’ve got the chance, that I appreciate the kindness you and Mrs. Silvester always showed me, and I can assure you, in case you’ve any doubts, that I never touched a hair of her head.”

  She gave him a long, puzzled stare, trying to work out something in her own mind, but before she could speak the front doorbell rang.

  Still smoking and with an air of casualness that was new, Laycock lounged over to the door and went out.

  It was Patricia who had rung the bell. She did not wait to exchange any words with Laycock, but thrust past him into the drawing-room, looking wildly round it as if she expected to find more people there than Agnes and Andrew and that they would be sure to be doing something stranger and more dramatic than drinking coffee. There were the marks of tears on her cheeks, though she was not crying now. Her eyes were hard and bright.

  “They’ve arrested him—Quentin!” she cried. “They came to the house and charged him and took him away. And the horrible thing is, I’ve been half-expecting something like that to happen. He’s been so strange, I knew there was something wrong with him. I didn’t know what it was, and I tried to explain it to myself. I thought perhaps it was the effect his family had on him. But that didn’t really make sense. And that he’d be arrested—I never even thought of it.”

  “You mean they’ve arrested him for the theft of the diamonds?” Andrew said. “Have they found them? Can they prove it?”

  “The diamonds!” she said with derision. “Of course they found them. I don’t believe he’d any idea what to do with them once he’d got them. He’s such a fool. He’s made one blunder after another. No, they arrested him for the murder of Margot Weldon and they’ve got absolute proof he did it.”