Root of All Evil

by E. X. Ferrars

“Mrs. Silvester?” he asked.

  “No, it’s Georgina,” the voice answered. “Do you want my mother?”

  “It’s actually Dr. Silvester I’d like to speak to,” Andrew said.

  “I’ll get him. Who is it speaking?”

  “Andrew Basnett.”

  “Oh, that’s Professor Basnett whom we met at Felicity’s yesterday, isn’t it?” the girl said. “Wasn’t it awful—what I did, I mean? And it was only a joke, but the family will hardly speak to me now. Is Felicity ill or something, wanting my father at this hour? She isn’t actually a patient of his, you know. She usually has Dr. Jay.”

  “Yes, I know,” Andrew said, “but it isn’t a case of illness.”

  You could hardly call death an illness. Hadn’t it been described as the cure for all ills? As he spoke he glanced at his watch and saw with surprise that it was only twenty minutes past eight. He remembered that it had been seven o’clock when he had got up to look for a piece of cheese, but it felt as if several hours had passed since then.

  “All right, hold on a moment,” Georgina said and he heard the sound of the telephone being put down.

  A moment later it was picked up again and Derek said, “Dr. Silvester speaking.”

  “This is Basnett,” Andrew said. “I’m afraid I’ve some very shocking news for you. I wasn’t sure whether to telephone or to come and see you—”

  “It’s my mother,” Derek interrupted. “What’s happened to her?”

  An impulse with more than a little cruelty in it came suddenly to Andrew to tell her son exactly what had happened to her. But for decency’s sake he restrained it. Reminding himself, however, that he was talking to a doctor to whom death would not be startling news, he said, “She’s dead. She died in the night, or perhaps yesterday evening. Mrs. Cavell and I didn’t find her till this morning.”

  “Died?” Derek said. There was a pause, then he added, “Is that all you can tell me? Nothing about how it happened? I’ll come over at once, of course, but Henry Jay’s her doctor. Have you got in touch with him?”

  “He’s here,” Andrew said. “And I ought to tell you, so are the police. The fact is, Dr. Silvester, Mrs. Cavell and I didn’t like the look of things and we called them immediately. I’ve hardly spoken to them yet, so I can’t tell you much about what happened, but I gather it wasn’t a mistake to call them.”

  There was another pause, a longer one this time. Then in a voice that had suddenly started to shake, Derek said, “Murder...? There’s no doubt about it?”

  “I don’t think so,” Andrew said.

  “I see. Well—well, thank you for calling. Never a nice job, breaking bad news. I’ll be over at once.”

  The telephone was put down.

  Agnes was standing at Andrew’s elbow. “He’s coming, is he?”

  “Yes,” Andrew said.

  “How did he take it?”

  “I suppose much as you’d expect. A bit incredulous, a bit shaken, but very restrained. Not giving anything away at the moment.”

  “Not giving anything away? What should he have to give away?” There was an undertone of excitement in her voice.

  “About his feelings, I meant.”

  “Oh, I see. For a moment I thought you meant...” She turned away. Going to the fireplace where yesterday’s ashes still lay in the grate, she took hold of the mantelshelf with both hands and leant her head on them. “What d’you think happened, Professor Basnett?”

  “I’ve no idea,” he answered, “except that it must have happened between the time you saw her last and the time you found the kitchen door open. I spent most of that time comfortably asleep in here for I’m not sure how long. I didn’t notice what the time was when you woke me.”

  “It was about half past eleven, I think,” she said. “I’d been up to my room after my talk with Felicity and watched the late news as I’d missed the one I usually watch. Then I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t locked the back door, so I came downstairs again to do that and found it wide open. And really that scared me and that’s why I woke you up and you remember what we did then. And d’you remember we were very quiet so that we shouldn’t disturb Felicity? But it had happened by then, hadn’t it?—the murder? She was dead already. And if only I’d had the sense to lock up when I usually do, it probably wouldn’t have happened at all. But as I told you, I was upset by that talk I had with her and wanted to sit down and think about it, and I simply forgot about the door.”

  “We’ll have to tell all this to the police, I expect,” Andrew said. “We’ve neither of us got alibis. And I’ve a motive of sorts. She told me she was leaving me twenty thousand pounds and perhaps that would have got left out of the will she was going to make today. Whether or not Superintendent Theobald will feel inclined to believe that I can manage without that twenty thousand will depend on the kind of man he is. Your case is rather different. It looks as if you may be going to lose—” He stopped abruptly.

  She raised her head and looked at him. “What is it?”

  “I’ve just realized I haven’t put on my shoes,” he said. “I think I’ll go and do that.” He was looking down at his feet and at the small hole in the toe of one of his socks. “I’d feel rather at a disadvantage when Mr. Theobald gets around to questioning me if I didn’t. I shan’t be a minute.”

  He went out quickly, managed to persuade the constable at the foot of the stairs to allow him to go up to his room, put on his shoes and with that, found that he felt more in command of himself.

  But he had not shaved yet and when he passed a hand along his jaw it felt distinctly bristly. And as the day went on it would get worse and he might not have another opportunity as good as the one he had at the moment. Going to his bathroom, he shaved, combed his hair which he had also forgotten to do when he hurriedly got dressed, put on a tie—another of the things that he had forgotten—and feeling that he would be better able to cope with questioning by that quiet policeman, if that was what he would shortly have to endure, he went downstairs again.

  Agnes had left the drawing-room and he deduced that she was probably in the dining-room, or one of the other rooms, talking to the superintendent. But there was another woman there, kneeling by the hearth, holding a match to the fire that she had just laid. She was a small, neat, energetic-looking woman with black hair, dressed in brown trousers and a canary-coloured jersey. She heard him come in and as flames from the paper in the fireplace went leaping up the chimney she looked round and said, “You’ll be Professor Basnett.”

  Andrew admitted that he was.

  “Poor Mrs. Silvester told me you were coming,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Godfrey. I come in to help every morning, only not yesterday, because it was Good Friday. And now I come today and there’s police and murder. I said to myself, ‘Shall I go straight home and not get mixed up in what’s not my business?’ But then I said to myself, ‘You never know, perhaps I can help and I wouldn’t want not to help if I could.’ So I come in and saw this fire wanted lighting.” She stood up, brushing a smudge of ashes from her knees. “And it’s not only poor Mrs. Silvester but Miss Weldon too, so the fellow at the bottom of the stairs was telling me. He’s Jack Prestbury. He’s a friend of my husband’s. My husband works in a garage in Braden and he and Jack play darts most Saturday evenings, if Jack’s free, in the Ring of Bells.”

  “Did you know Miss Weldon then?” Andrew asked.

  “Yes, I’ve worked for Mrs. Silvester for a long time. Ten years, it must be. There was a couple working for her when I first come, but they retired and then Miss Weldon come. I remember the commotion there was when they found she’d been signing cheques in Mrs. Silvester’s name and taking the money, though I must say, it didn’t surprise me. I never trusted her. Though to tell you the absolute truth, I was kind of surprised when I heard she’d been forging anything, because you’ve got to be clever to be able to do that, so I’d have thought, and she wasn’t clever at all. In fact, she was downright stupid. She couldn’t add up a column of fig
ures and get it right. I was always having to help sort out her accounts for her. But her just being dishonest, well, I could have guessed that. But now she’s dead, poor soul, so perhaps it’s not right to say such things of her.”

  “What do you make of Laycock?” Andrew asked, thinking that he might gather some interesting information from this woman which would not be available from Agnes Cavell.

  “Oh, him!” she said contemptuously. “Now that’s something I’ll never understand, why Mrs. Silvester and Mrs. Cavell took to him so. It’s not even as if he’s specially good-looking. Just a plain round face, like a silly sort of boy.”

  “Wasn’t it Mrs. Silvester who took him on?” Andrew said. “Mrs. Cavell came home from her holiday and found him installed. I believe she didn’t take to him at first.”

  “Well, yes and no,” Mrs. Godfrey said.

  “You mean she did like him?”

  “No, what I mean is, it was really her idea, getting him. It was her put the idea into Mrs. Silvester’s head of having a man in the house. She kept telling her there were so many jobs a man could do that are pretty hard for a woman, and that’s quite true, but Mrs. Silvester took some persuading. And then Mrs. Cavell found some advertisements for Mrs. Silvester of men wanting this kind of work and did some telephoning for her, but they were all fixed up, or didn’t suit, or something. So Mrs. Cavell went away on her holiday and while she was gone Mrs. Silvester did some telephoning herself and got this chap right away. And now he’s murdered her and stolen God knows what and gone off. And I can’t say I’m surprised. You could tell he wasn’t straight.”

  “Is that what your friend Jack Prestbury told you has happened?” Andrew asked.

  “No, he’s said nothing about it, but it stands to reason, doesn’t it?”

  She picked up the pan full of ashes that she had cleared out of the grate and turned to the door.

  As she did so Jack Prestbury appeared there and asked Andrew if he would come to the dining-room where Chief Superintendent Theobald would like a few words with him. Andrew went to the dining-room where he found the superintendent standing at the window, with his back to the room. At the sound of the door opening and closing he turned, but with an air of reluctance, as if the talk that he had had with Agnes Cavell had given him enough to be going on with and he would sooner have had some time to himself in which to think it over. But he gave Andrew a little nod of greeting, one of his swift glances, gestured to him to take a chair, then began to wander aimlessly about the room, his hands in his pockets and his manner abstracted. Andrew waited patiently, seeing no reason why it should be he who had to commence their talk.

  After a little while, in his low, quiet voice, Theobald said, “I expect you want to know how Mrs. Silvester was killed. She was strangled.”

  “What with?” Andrew asked.

  “A strong pair of hands.”

  “Like Margot Weldon?”

  “More or less.”

  “A man’s crime then.”

  “Probably, though with someone as old and frail as Mrs. Silvester it might have been done by a woman.”

  “Do you know when it happened?”

  “Only roughly, naturally. She was seen alive by Mrs. Cavell about eleven o’clock, and she’d probably been dead for seven or eight hours when she was found.”

  “So she was dead by midnight?”

  “At the latest. Now about that will that she was talking of changing...”

  “Yes?” Andrew said.

  “Mrs. Cavell’s told me something about it. Can you tell me anything?”

  “Only that Mrs. Silvester said yesterday that she intended to make a new one,” Andrew answered. “I believe her solicitor will be calling here later this morning to see what her wishes were.”

  “And can you tell me what she intended?”

  “She said she was going to leave everything she had to Mrs. Cavell.”

  “You yourself heard her say that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who else heard her?”

  “Several people. Her son, Dr. Silvester. His wife. Their son. His fiancée. Their daughter.”

  “What about the manservant, Laycock?”

  With a feeling of surprise, Andrew realized that he had forgotten Laycock, though now he remembered that the young man had emerged from the kitchen at the time when Georgina, decked out in Felicity’s diamonds, had been in the doorway of Felicity’s bedroom and Felicity had been making her furious denunciation of her family from the top of the staircase.

  “Yes, he heard it,” he said. “But I’d be very surprised if a change in her will would be of any interest to him. He’s only worked for her for a few months. It’s hardly likely that he’d have got anything under the old will.”

  “But he was there, was he, when Miss Silvester appeared, wearing her grandmother’s diamonds, which I understand very much upset the old lady and apparently triggered off what happened?”

  Andrew realized that Theobald had been told all this by Agnes.

  “Yes,” he said. “But as I was saying—”

  “Yes, yes,” Theobald interrupted abruptly, “I’m sure Laycock had no interest in Mrs. Silvester’s will. But it may have been the first time that he saw the diamonds. And you see, they happen to be missing.”

  “So that’s why he’s disappeared!” Andrew exclaimed.

  “Not necessarily.” Theobald gave him one of his swift glances, then wandered off to the window again. “He’s disappeared and the diamonds have disappeared, but it would be unwise at this stage to assume they disappeared together.”

  “But doesn’t that seem probable? It explains this disappearance of his that puzzled Mrs. Silvester and Mrs. Cavell so much.”

  “Except that if he’s a professional thief, you can be sure he’s known about the existence of the diamonds since almost the first day he got here. He’d have done a quick search through the house very soon after arriving, would have found them at once, and wouldn’t have stayed on then for three or four months, doing a dull job, when he could easily have made off with them quietly at a convenient moment which didn’t make a murder necessary. On the other hand, if he isn’t a professional, but on seeing the diamonds for the first time found he couldn’t resist the temptation of taking them, you’d have to assume that something made him leave the house in the middle of the afternoon, then come back in the evening to get them, and found that meant he’d got to murder Mrs. Silvester because she caught him at it. Doesn’t that sound unlikely?”

  “Yet you’re interested in him,” Andrew said, “or you wouldn’t have asked me if he was there when Mrs. Silvester made her announcement about her will.”

  “I’m interested in everyone who knew she was going to change it,” Theobald said. “In spite of what I’ve just been saying, it’s possible to make out a case against Laycock, but it means assuming the theft of the diamonds was only a blind.” He paused, coughed, turned and came to the table and sat down facing Andrew. “I believe you gain something under Mrs. Silvester’s existing will, Professor.”

  “So she told me,” Andrew said. “Of course, I never saw the document.”

  “Do you know how much she intended to leave you?”

  “Twenty thousand pounds, she said.”

  “And would she have left you that in her new will?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Twenty thousand pounds isn’t a very great sum, as things go nowadays.”

  “No. About the diamonds being taken only as a blind—”

  “Please.” Theobald raised a hand. “Sometimes my mind wanders. I speculate when I ought to be going after facts. To go back to the will—”

  Andrew raised a hand in imitation of Theobald’s gesture and echoed his, “Please. When you said the diamonds might have been taken as a blind, it’s because you think it’s possible Laycock heard Mrs. Silvester say she was going to change her will, realized that every one of the people who heard her, with the exception of Mrs. Cavell, stood to lose by it, disapp
eared in the afternoon to make contact with one of those people whose character he must have assessed pretty accurately by then to dare to do it, arranged with that person that he’d murder Mrs. Silvester before she could make the new will, came back in the evening, killed her and took the diamonds to make it look as if the theft had been the motive for her murder. Wasn’t that what you were going to say?”

  A smile briefly lit up the detective’s pale, reserved face. “It’s a pleasure to talk to you, Professor. And I think I know what’s coming next. You’re going to point out that it lets you off the hook.”

  “Well, it does, doesn’t it?”

  “Because your twenty thousand wouldn’t last long, paying Laycock the blackmail he’d be able to get out of you? No doubt you’re right. If there’s anything in this theory I’ve been exploring in my own mind, we’ve got to look for someone who’ll gain rather more than you by Mrs. Silvester’s death. But talking of blackmail, you haven’t forgotten, have you, that we’ve two murders on our hands, Mrs. Silvester’s last night, and Margot Weldon’s on Thursday evening?”

  “And you think they’re connected?”

  “Possibly, possibly not. It would be rash to make up our minds about it yet. But what I was going to tell you was that that letter we found in Margot Weldon’s handbag, which confessed to the murder of Mrs. Silvester, which hadn’t happened yet, is a forgery. She never wrote it.”

  Andrew sat up a little straighter in his chair. “You’re certain of that?”

  Theobald nodded. “We found a shopping list in the handbag and one or two odd notes which she’d certainly written herself, and our experts say there’s no question about it, the letter’s a forgery.”

  “You know she was sacked by Mrs. Silvester for forging her signature on her cheques, don’t you?” Andrew said.

  Theobald nodded again. “And so you’re going to say that perhaps it wasn’t Margot Weldon who did those forgeries, but this other character who put the letter in her handbag. That she handed in the cheques to the bank, but that was all.”

  Andrew gave a wry smile. “It’s a pleasure to talk to you, Superintendent. Do we both go in for mind-reading?”