Root of All Evil

by E. X. Ferrars

  “And how much better it would have been if you’d given him the money to lead the life he wanted,” Georgina said sneeringly. “Then none of this need have happened.”

  “It would have happened sooner or later,” Derek said. “That streak of crookedness was bound to come out, just little by little at first, the odd cheque now and then when he thought he could get away with it, but getting reckless till he was caught. And perhaps eventually leading to murder as it has.”

  “You don’t want to take any of the blame yourself,” Georgina said. “You think you can buy yourself off now by spending money defending him, but you know you should have given it to him when he asked for it.”

  “I don’t know anything of the kind,” Derek answered violently. “He was old enough to stand on his own feet—as you are yourself, my child. Drifting from one thing to another without any sense of responsibility and coming home in betweenwhiles when it suits you isn’t going to get you anywhere. But you’ve just been waiting for Felicity’s money, haven’t you? That’s what you’ve both been doing. And you all but wrecked your chance of getting it by your foolery with those diamonds. If someone hadn’t stepped in to make sure she hadn’t time to change her will, you wouldn’t have got anything. You haven’t only a murderer for a brother, but a murderer for a very kind friend.”

  Georgina had grown pale while he had been speaking.

  “That’s a horrible thing to say!” she cried.

  “That’s right, it’s horrible,” he answered. “And what a pity it is you can’t change your parents for ones you’d like better, just as I wish at the moment I could change my children for another pair.”

  “Please, please,” Frances said, her eyes filling with tears. “Don’t talk like this. It doesn’t do any good. And you don’t mean what you’re saying, either of you. Let’s go home.” She stood up and turned with an unsteady sort of dignity to Andrew. “These family rows don’t mean anything, you know, Professor Basnett. I’m sorry you’ve had this one inflicted on you. We’re all so quick-tempered, but we always end up making peace. Derek and Georgina are really very fond of one another. Come along, both of you. We’ll go home.”

  She put an arm through Derek’s and he let himself be guided to the door.

  Georgina, with a sullen look on her face, lingered as if she were not sure that she wanted to leave with her parents, but then she strolled out after them. Patricia hesitated, then followed them too.

  As the door closed behind them Agnes let out a long breath.

  “I know I ought to be sorry for them,” she said, “but I’d prefer it if they did their quarrelling elsewhere.”

  “Do they quarrel a lot?” Andrew asked.

  “I don’t really know,” she answered. “I’ve always suspected they weren’t a very happy family, but in front of Felicity they were always careful to be very sweet to one another. Actually she’d have enjoyed watching them quarrel, but I don’t think they understood that. Well, I must go and see what there is for us to eat. I had such nice meals planned for your visit, Professor, and you just haven’t been getting them. But I’ll see if I can manage something tolerable now.”

  “Please don’t go to any trouble on my account,” he said. “My appetite isn’t at its best.”

  She smiled at him. “That’s probably true of us all, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  She left the room and Laycock followed her out.

  Andrew walked about restlessly for a few minutes, glad to have the room to himself and grateful for the quiet in it. But he was disturbed by a feeling which came to him all too often nowadays that he had forgotten something of importance, something which he had been on the verge of expressing a short time ago, but which, just before he did, had been completely washed from his mind. Something had interrupted him, no doubt, something possibly of no importance. But he knew from experience that the harder he tried to recapture what he had lost, the more elusive it would become. The only way to do it was to get his mind off it completely, then there was a chance that it would suddenly return to him as clearly as if he had never forgotten about it.

  Because he did not want to think about the matter, whatever it was, he fell back on muttering to himself the rhyme that had kept taking possession of his mind recently.

  “When all the world is young, lad,

  And all the trees are green;

  And every goose a swan, lad...”

  Something checked him. Hadn’t Felicity said something about her swans quite often turning out to be geese? He thought he remembered her saying that, and believed he had reflected at the time that Felicity’s swans of the moment were obviously Agnes Cavell and Edward Laycock. But Agnes had succeeded in remaining a swan for four years, which surely was long enough for any gooselike qualities to have revealed themselves, whereas in Laycock’s case it had been a matter of only four or five months. After spending five years in prison.

  Five years is a long time.

  But in some circumstances four years can be a long time too. A long time to wait. A long time in which to feel lonely. Almost as long as five years...

  Abruptly Andrew stood still. The thought that had been eluding him suddenly yielded itself to him. And it meant that there was something that he ought to do. Ought to do immediately. The sooner the better.

  Going to the telephone, he picked up the directory and looked for the number of the police station. When he had dialled and a voice answered, he said who he was and that he would like to speak to Chief Superintendent Theobald. After a brief wait he heard Theobald’s voice.

  “I’ve thought of something that may be important, Mr. Theobald,” Andrew said. “I think you should get in touch with the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Derby and find out what they can tell you about the family of a man called Eustace Cavell. In particular, was there a son—”

  That was the last thing he knew. Something crashed on his head. Pain and shock blinded him and a thought flashed through his mind before darkness came that this was death. Then he fell in a heap on the floor.

  Chapter Eight

  It was not death. Not, that is to say, unless it was to be expected that the first thing that he should see on being resurrected was the face of Chief Superintendent Theobald. The face of the superintendent, kind, concerned and more than a little curious, hovered above Andrew as though in a dream. Then the darkness closed in again.

  When it lifted once more he had no idea of how long he had been unconscious. He had no sense of time. It might have been for minutes, it might have been for hours. But above him he could see the ceiling of Felicity’s drawing-room and he was aware that under him there was something very hard. So it seemed probable that it was the floor and that he had not been moved since that moment of which he had a faint recollection when something had descended on his head. For a moment fear possessed him. Had they left him lying there on the floor because they were afraid to move him? Had his skull been fractured? Had his neck been broken? Was he dying, if not dead?

  Experimentally he tried moving his head and felt a hand immediately laid on his forehead. There was something soft under his head, a cushion perhaps.

  “Take it easy,” a voice said.

  “Have they gone?” he asked, or thought he asked. His voice sounded to him so distant that he did not think it could be audible to anyone else.

  But someone answered, “It’s all right, we’ve got them.”

  That was satisfying, though for the moment he was not sure why.

  “I don’t understand...” he began to say.

  The other voice said, “Don’t worry, there’s an ambulance coming. Probably not necessary, but it’s best with concussion not to take any risks. We’re packing you off to hospital.”

  “Have I got concussion?” Andrew asked.

  The face of Theobald swam into view above him once more. He was smiling an amiable but sardonic smile.

  “That’s all,” he said. “I believe he stopped her killing you, according to our men. Qu
ite a risk you took, phoning the police with a murderer loose in the house. Another time you’ll know better.”

  “But how did you get here so soon? I’d hardly begun telling you what I was going to say.”

  “We have our methods. No reason for you to concern yourself.”

  After that Andrew found that it felt very comfortable to close his eyes again and let himself drift back into darkness, which no longer seemed frightening—only restful.

  He had no memory afterwards of being lifted into the ambulance or taken to the hospital. When full consciousness at last came back it did so with odd abruptness. A man in a white coat, presumably a doctor, was standing by his bed, talking to a nurse, and all of a sudden, out of nothingness, Andrew heard him say, “...really remarkable.”

  That was all, but Andrew at once felt sure that the doctor and the nurse were discussing the fact that it was really remarkable that he should be alive. All the same, he felt that there was something ridiculous about having been put into hospital simply because he had had a knock on the head. Not that he could remember ever having been hit on the head before. He had really led a very sheltered life, he thought. Even during the war, being a scientist, he had been in what had been called a “reserved occupation,” and though he and Nell had had to sit through their share of air raids, the only trouble that they had had was when their front door had been blown off its hinges by the blast from a V-2, and that had happened at a time when they had both been out of the house, so they had not been frightened by it.

  A memory of those far-off days came back to him and he thought of it with a kind of pleasure before letting the doctor see that he was conscious. It was of himself standing in a bus queue with two stout, elderly women in front of him, both of them with shopping baskets on their arms in which, no doubt, they had been collecting their rations. And one had said to the other in a tone as matter-of-fact as if she had been talking of the weather, “The one thing I don’t like is being machine-gunned.”

  “Look, he’s coming round,” the nurse said. “He’s smiling at something.”

  The doctor bent over the bed. “Well, how are you feeling, old man?” he asked.

  “Old, as you say,” Andrew answered. “Very old indeed.”

  “Now I didn’t mean—”

  “Never mind. But I’m feeling my age. How long am I supposed to stay here?”

  He noticed that there was darkness outside the window, so he supposed it was still the same evening as the one on which he had lost consciousness, not the next day.

  “We’ll see about that,” the doctor said. “Meanwhile, is there anyone you’d like us to get in touch with and tell them you’re here? Any friend or member of your family?”

  “Why, am I dying?” Andrew asked.

  “Certainly not. I just thought if you’ve a wife or children or anyone else—”

  “I haven’t.” Andrew’s only relation was his nephew who at present was in Paris, busy writing the science fiction which made him a far ampler income than Andrew had ever achieved in his scientific career, and he saw no reason why he should interrupt these remunerative activities. “Is it true they’ve got those people?”

  The voice that had told him that they had seemed hazy and unreal now, perhaps only part of a dream.

  “The young man and the woman?” the doctor said. “I believe so. But that’s not my business. How do you feel about talking now? Superintendent Theobald wants to talk to you as soon as you’re up to it, but I can fend him off for a bit longer if you’d prefer it.”

  “I’d sooner talk to him, I think,” Andrew said.

  “All right, if it’s going to set your mind at rest. But not for too long.”

  The doctor and the nurse went out.

  Andrew realized that he was in a private ward, a small room with the usual paraphernalia of a hospital in it and he wondered who would pay for it. The police, since it would have been at their orders that he had been put there, rather than into a general ward? Or would the bill be presented to him? In any case, he was glad to be alone and not to be the object of the curious glances of the other occupants of a big ward, which would certainly have been concentrated on him once the police came visiting.

  A few minutes after the doctor had gone, Theobald came quietly in. He drew up a chair to the bedside and sat down.

  “You’re a lucky man, Professor,” he said, “but I expect you know that by now.”

  “I suppose so,” Andrew said. “Did I get it right that your men arrived in time to see the man stop the woman finishing me off? Or was that just something I imagined when I wasn’t quite with you?”

  “No, that was quite right.”

  “But why were your men there? I asked you that before. You didn’t explain it.”

  “I told you, we have our methods. But it almost seems, doesn’t it, as if your mind and mine have a way of working along the same lines, even if our approach is different? Now let me ask you a few questions. When did you begin to suspect Laycock was Mrs. Cavell’s son?”

  “I can’t say exactly. It was something that built up little by little that there was some close connection between them. To begin with, it was only that she was always on his side, trying to defend him if anyone criticized him. Then there were various things that all came together when it suddenly occurred to me that the time she’d been working for Mrs. Silvester was about the same time that Laycock spent in prison. Not that that would have meant anything by itself if I hadn’t realized how easy it would have been for her to get Laycock the job in Ramsden House.”

  “But I thought that was one of the problems,” Theobald said “That Mrs. Silvester had engaged him independently when Mrs. Cavell was away on holiday. There seemed to be no connection between them.”

  “That’s what I thought until I had a conversation with Mrs. Godfrey, the woman who’s been coming in daily to clean for the last ten years,” Andrew said. “She told me it was Mrs. Cavell who put the idea of employing a manservant into Mrs. Silvester’s head. And also she said that Mrs. Cavell found some advertisements from people who wanted that kind of job and tried ringing them up, but didn’t find anybody who’d suit. Then she went away and almost immediately afterwards Mrs. Silvester saw one of these advertisements herself and rang up and managed to engage Laycock on the spot and was very proud of having done so. Well, wouldn’t it have been very easy for Mrs. Cavell to have left a newspaper with a few of these advertisements in it where Mrs. Silvester would see it, and with the ones she’d already tried, or said she’d tried, crossed out, and just the one remaining that gave the number of Lady Graveney? And what would be more natural then than for Mrs. Silvester to ring up that number and talk to that nice Lady Graveney, who of course was Mrs. Cavell, disguising her voice, and be told that Laycock was everything that she could possibly desire? And Mrs. Silvester did honestly believe she’d engaged him herself without any prompting, because she liked to feel independent and didn’t realize for a moment that the whole thing had been set up for her by Mrs. Cavell.”

  “Lady Graveney was described to us by the caretaker of the flat where she stayed as a middle-aged woman with black hair,” Theobald said. “Mrs. Cavell is grey-haired.”

  “Easily covered by a wig,” Andrew said, “or perhaps she just made do with what I believe is called a rinse. I believe, unlike a dye, it washes out quite easily, though I’m not very well up in such matters.”

  “Quite so.” Theobald had not needed to be told that, but his face showed that he was deeply interested in the working of Andrew’s mind. “And you believe, I assume, that it was Mrs. Cavell who extracted Mrs. Silvester’s address book from her handbag after the murder, because she knew there was a note of the Graveney number in it. But she didn’t know at the time that Mr. Little had a note of the number too.”

  “Yes, and that was another part of the puzzle that fell into place. It was after it came out that he had the number that she began to get scared. I had a curious scene with her which began after your detective had
searched the bureau in the drawing-room for the address book and failed to find it, with her bursting into tears, which I naturally took to be caused by her grief for Mrs. Silvester. But she denied it and said it was because of her violent disappointment that she wasn’t going to inherit Mrs. Silvester’s money. And I believed her, but of course it wasn’t true.”

  “You aren’t telling me it really was grief?”

  “Of course not. And I don’t believe now the tears were real. She did a great deal of noisy sobbing and mopped and rubbed her eyes, but I can’t swear to it that I saw any actual tears. No, what she wanted to get into my mind was that she’d wanted the money very badly and that she was the one person who’d really lost by the murder. We’ve all been hypnotized in this case, I think, by the belief that ‘the love of Money is the root of all evil.’ Of course that’s totally untrue. It can be a relatively harmless foible. But everything to do with Margot Weldon’s murder, everything to do with the Silvester family, was connected with the love of money. So that’s how we thought of Mrs. Silvester’s murder too, instead of recognizing that there are other loves that can be far more dangerous and destructive. Sad to say, maternal love is one of them. I thought of that when I heard Frances Silvester trying to defend her son.”

  Theobald nodded thoughtfully. He had not been watching Andrew, while he had been talking, but had his head propped on one hand. Now he gave him one of his swift, perceptive glances.

  “Is this a bit much for you?” he asked. “Shall we give it a rest and have another go at it later?”

  “No, let’s get on with it,” Andrew said, “Let’s get it over. But before we go any further, will you tell me how your men came to be on the spot when Mrs. Cavell attacked me?”

  “Oh, we hadn’t been nearly as penetrating as you,” the detective answered. “It’s just that we’ve got resources that weren’t at your disposal. As a matter of routine we investigated the background of everyone who had any connection with Mrs. Silvester.”