Roots of Evil

by Sarah Rayne

  Lucy smiled involuntarily. ‘Today I wanted to read a modern poem about a lovely dotty old lady who got a kick out of being old and dotty.’

  ‘Was it called Warning by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, it was! Aunt Deborah would have adored it, but my cousin Edmund thought it wasn’t suitable.’

  ‘I met your aunt a few times,’ he said. ‘And I think you’re right that she’d have liked the poem. Oh – I’m Michael Sallis. I’m from a Charity called CHARTH. Charity for Rehabilitating Teenagers made Homeless, if you want the whole thing. We pick them up off the streets, dust them down, teach them a few basic social skills, and then turn them loose again, mostly on a wing and a prayer. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.’

  ‘Was CHARTH one of Aunt Deb’s pet charities? I know she had a couple of particular favourites. She used to do quite a lot of voluntary work.’

  ‘I don’t know about voluntary work,’ said Michael Sallis. ‘But she left her house to us. That’s why I wanted to come to her funeral. As a courtesy.’ He clearly sensed her shock, and took his eyes off the road for long enough to look at her. ‘Didn’t you know about the house? I assumed you would.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Lucy, staring at him. ‘And I’ve got a feeling my cousin Edmund didn’t, either.’

  Edmund certainly had not known, and he was very much inclined to question this stranger, this Michael Sallis who had turned up, cool as a cat, and who appeared to consider himself Deborah Fane’s main beneficiary. Well, all right, not himself precisely, but his company or charity, or whatever it called itself.

  But people did not blithely make over their entire properties to tinpot charities, ignoring their own families, and Deborah Fane would certainly not have done so. CHARTH, for goodness’ sake! An outlandish name for a charity if ever Edmund had heard one. What did it stand for? Was it properly registered? He, Edmund, had never heard of it, and it would not surprise him to find that this Michael Sallis was nothing but an adventurer. It would not surprise him to find that there had been undue pressure, either. This would have to be looked into very carefully.

  Still, the conventions had to be observed, and Edmund beat down his anger and took Sallis into the small downstairs study. The subdued murmur of the funeral party was still going on across the hall; it was infuriating to remember that he ought to be out there, handing round drinks, talking to people, gracefully accepting sympathy. Being admired for his control and his efficiency at such a time.

  Michael Sallis said, ‘I’m extremely sorry about your aunt’s death, Mr Fane. I only knew her slightly but I liked her very much. As a matter of fact I spoke to her on the phone only a few days before she died.’

  ‘About the homeless teenagers?’

  Michael Sallis took that one straight. ‘Yes. She was very interested in CHARTH’s work. I only meant to attend the service today, though. But then your cousin Lucy missed her lift outside the church, so I drove her here and she asked me to come in for a drink.’

  So it was ‘Lucy’, was it! And on five minutes’ acquaintance! Edmund said coldly, ‘I suppose this bequest is all in order?’

  Michael Sallis’s cool grey eyes met Edmund’s angry blue ones. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Perfectly in order. But this is hardly the time to discuss the legalities, is it?’

  And now the man was putting Edmund in the wrong, and on Edmund’s own terrain as well! Arrogance, you see!

  ‘Quite,’ said Edmund, and added offhandedly that he dared say there was no objection to his having given out some pieces of his aunt’s jewellery to various members of the family. Only a few trinkets, really.

  ‘I suppose that strictly speaking there ought to be a probate inventory before anything’s actually taken,’ said Michael Sallis. ‘But that’s your terrain, more than mine. I do know that it’s only the bricks and mortar that are left to us, though.’

  Well, of course Edmund knew there should be a probate inventory, but he had not bothered to get one because he had assumed everything was coming to him. But he could not actually say this, so he merely said, frostily, that if Sallis would leave a card, they could be in touch in the next week or so. After probate was obtained.

  ‘Yes, certainly. I’ll give you our legal department’s direct number, as well.’

  So it was not such a tinpot set-up after all. This annoyed Edmund even further, and he remarked that it was all very unexpected of his aunt. Of course, elderly widows were given to such enthusiasms, most people knew that.

  Sallis looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then said, ‘Mrs Fane asked a lot of very searching questions about our work. About exactly how we would make use of the house if she decided to leave it to us. It was all quite carefully tied up.’ He paused, and then said, ‘I wish I had known her better than I did; she was a remarkable lady. It must have been an immense shock to you when she died so suddenly.’

  Edmund said, in his silkiest, politest voice of all, ‘Yes. Yes, it was a great shock. But everyone has to die some time.’

  Everyone has to die some time.

  Even though Deborah had been over seventy, Edmund was very glad to know that he had not fumbled or bungled things. A swift, painless death, it had been. Anything else would have felt almost discourteous.

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t have fumbled it,’ Crispin had said, afterwards. ‘A gentleman to the last,’ he had added, smiling the secret smile that Edmund always found so fascinating, and that he thought – hoped! – no one but himself ever saw.

  Nobody had suspected anything wrong about Deborah’s death, and even if they had, they would not have dreamed that respectable Mr Fane would have…

  Go on, say it.

  Would have committed murder.

  Murder. An old, old word that had smeared its bloody pawprints on the history of humankind. A word whose dark origins derived partly from the Middle English word, murther, taken from the Old English morthor. Akin to the Old High German word, mord.

  No one would have suspected trustworthy, reliable Edmund Fane capable of committing mord.

  The post-mortem on Deborah Fane had been held within a couple of days – that was one of the advantages of living in such a small place, of course – and the conclusion was a myocardial infarct. Sudden and fatal heart attack. Perhaps there had been a slight puzzlement on the part of Deborah’s GP, who had told Edmund that apart from the angina which they were controlling well with the medication – oh, and a touch of arthritis – Mrs Fane had been in fairly good general health. But then he had said, oh well, you could not always predict when a heart was about to give way. Still, she would be a great loss to everyone who had known her.

  ‘She’s a great loss to me,’ said Edmund sadly. ‘I shall miss her very much.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Short of the occasional domestic disaster – ‘Water pouring through all the bedroom ceilings, Edmund, and I cannot get a plumber to come out before Thursday!’ – Aunt Deborah had hardly ever phoned Edmund at the office.

  ‘I don’t believe in intruding into business hours, Edmund, dear,’ she had always said. ‘It’s important to respect a person’s place of work, and you have clients to consider.’

  It had been a surprise, therefore, to hear her voice, shortly after nine fifteen one morning. Edmund had been engrossed in the complexities of a boundary plan relating to a right-of-way dispute for a farmer, and he had just been brought his coffee; he liked a cup while he looked through his morning’s post and generally arranged his day. Decent coffee, of course; he could not bear the instant powdered stuff. He had bought and installed a good filter machine for the office, and he paid for properly ground coffee and fragrant Earl Grey tea. Considerate Mr Fane, such a generous employer. He did not expect his staff to swill the stuff indiscriminately, though. Two cups of coffee in the morning and two cups of tea in the afternoon were enough for anyone. If his staff wanted more than that, they could bring their own.

  Into the phone he said, ‘Good morning, Aunt Deborah.’

&nb
sp; ‘I tried to reach you last evening,’ said Aunt Deb, without preamble.

  ‘I was at a Law Society dinner.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well now, listen. Lucy phoned me at the weekend.’

  ‘How is Lucy?’

  ‘She’s perfectly fine except for that wretched neighbour who sings rugby songs in his bath – I do wish she wouldn’t live in that crazy flat! – but I haven’t phoned you to talk about that, Edmund. I’ve phoned you because Lucy’s been approached by a woman called Trixie Smith.’

  ‘Yes?’ Edmund spoke rather absently, his attention still more than three-quarters on the farmer’s assertion that not a soul had walked the alleged right of way for seven years.

  ‘This Trixie Smith – are you listening, Edmund? You sound very vague, I hope you haven’t got a hangover. Your father was always much too fond of a drink, and you don’t want to go the way he went—Anyway, this Trixie Smith is a teacher somewhere in North London, but she’s been studying for a doctoral thesis, and she wants to use the Ashwood murders as a main case study.’

  The quiet, well-ordered office blurred for a moment, and Edmund had to take a deep breath before replying. Then he said, ‘Oh, not again. It only needs it to be the anniversary of the murders or for somebody to resurrect one of Lucretia’s films, and they come crawling out of the woodwork. You aren’t going to do anything about this one, are you?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Deborah. ‘I’ve already phoned Ms Smith, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Yes. Rather an odd-sounding person. Abrupt. I said I didn’t know how much help I could give, but you know, Edmund, I was in my teens at the time of the Ashwood murders, so I remember quite a lot about it. Ms Smith – they all like to be called “Ms” these days, don’t they? – says she’d like to talk to me about Lucretia.’ It was typical of Deborah that she never referred to Lucretia as ‘mother’; or perhaps, thought Edmund, that was due to Lucretia herself.

  He said, ‘She’ll be a sensation-seeker, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t think she is,’ said Aunt Deb. ‘She wants to talk about all the people involved in the Ashwood case, not just Lucretia. I was there that day, and so—’

  This time the room did not just blur, it tilted as well, and Edmund had to grasp the edges of the desk to stop himself from falling. From out of the dizziness, he heard his voice say, ‘I didn’t know you were actually there when – on the day it happened. You never told me that.’

  ‘Didn’t I? But I used to go to the studios with Lucretia sometimes – you knew that.’

  ‘Yes, but…Don’t you think,’ said Edmund after a moment, ‘that it might upset you to talk about it all? I mean – Lucretia’s death and everything…Won’t it be dreadfully painful?’

  ‘Oh, not at this distance,’ said Deborah. ‘It all feels as if it happened to someone else. You’ll understand that when you’re older, Edmund.’

  A pulse was beating inside Edmund’s head, each hammer-blow landing painfully on the exact same spot, rapping out a maddening little rhythm against his senses, over and over. She-was-at-Ashwood-that-day, she-was-at-ASHWOOD…said this infuriating rhythm. She was there when it happened, she was THERE…

  He forced himself to take several deep breaths, but the pulsating hammer blows continued. What-did-shesee…? they said. What-did-she-see-that-day-at-Ashwood…At ASHWOOD…?

  ‘And it isn’t as if any of this is going to be published and made into a best-seller or anything like that,’ Deborah was saying. ‘It’s a – a scholarly thing that Miss Smith’s going to write. She’ll be dealing mostly with the psychological aspects.’

  ‘How very modern of her.’

  ‘Don’t be sarcastic, Edmund, it doesn’t suit you. I suppose you ate too much rich food at the Law Society dinner last night and it’s given you indigestion: it always did make you disagreeable, indigestion…’

  ‘I do not have indigestion—’

  ‘…a good dose of Andrew’s liver salts, that’s what you need. If you haven’t got any you’d better get some on your way home tonight. So now, here’s the thing: I’m almost sure Trixie Smith is genuine, but I thought it might be better if you made the call setting up the meeting. You wouldn’t mind doing that, would you? She’s perfectly agreeable to driving up here at the weekend, and I can give her some lunch while we talk. But just in case she has got a – what d’you call it? – a hidden agenda, I thought a call from a solicitor would let her know that I’m not some half-witted old dear, all on my own.’

  ‘Nobody would ever call you half-witted,’ said Edmund automatically, and without warning the pulse stopped. An enormous silence flooded the inside of his head, and he saw, quite clearly, what he must do. From out of this huge silence, his voice said, quite calmly, very nearly absent-mindedly, ‘Still, now that you mention it, it would be quite a good idea for me to make the call. Give me the number and I’ll ring now. Or – no, wait a moment, I’m going out to a client’s house later this afternoon, and I’ll be driving past the end of your lane. How about if I call in and phone from your house? I’d rather do that; they’re such a gossipy lot here, and if anyone overheard—’

  Deborah said certainly they did not want any of Edmund’s staff to hear such a conversation, not even that nice secretary who was so very reliable, or the good-looking young man who looked after the conveyancing work. If Edmund was not expected anywhere later, perhaps he would like to stay on to supper, she said.

  ‘That’s an offer I can’t refuse,’ said Edmund and rang off.

  It was important to remain perfectly calm and not to give way to nerves, although Edmund thought he might have been forgiven for doing just that; you did not expect to be confronted with the dangerous resurrecting of your family’s ghosts while reading your day’s post, and you certainly did not expect those ghosts to come packaged, so to speak, with warnings about indigestion and a throwaway remark concerning the infamous locus in quo of a murder.

  (She-was-there…said his mind, starting up its maddening tattoo again. Deborah-was-there…What-did-she-see…?)

  As he drove to the house Edmund’s mind was working furiously. There must be no investigations of the Ashwood case – no prying researches so that some unknown female could write the letters MA after her name, no books written by sensation-seeking chroniclers, no idle delvings by anorak-garbed enthusiasts, or journalists constructing Fifty-Years-Ago features…

  There must be no elderly ladies growing garrulous with increasing age, reliving memories, talking about the past to anyone who might listen.

  The past…

  The truth about Ashwood’s past must never surface, no matter the cost.

  Tea and scones were set out for Edmund with the slightly slapdash generosity that had always characterized Aunt Deborah’s hospitality.

  Edmund, accepting the cup of tea, said, ‘What I think I’d better say to this woman is that…Oh, keep still a moment, Aunt Deborah – there’s a spider crawling on your neck—’ He set down the cup and went over to her chair.

  ‘Ugh, how horrid – flick it off for me, Edmund, you know how I loathe spiders—’

  There was no spider, of course; what there was, brought into the house in Edmund’s pocket and now carefully concealed in his hand, was a hypodermic syringe, unobtrusively taken from a medicine cabinet years earlier, when Deborah Fane’s husband had had to be given intravenous injections of heparin and nitroglycerin for his failing heart by a nurse who came in every day. Edmund had taken the syringe after William Fane died, and had kept it at the back of a drawer in his own house. You never knew what might come in useful; Crispin had instilled that in Edmund shortly after that last university term, and it was a good maxim.

  Carefully kept, as well, had been the memory of a conversation with the nurse, who had still been called a district nurse because people were old-fashioned in this part of the world. You had to be very careful with intravenous injections, she had said, that was why she had to come in each morning. The syringe had to be corre
ctly filled, so that you did not inject air into a main vein and risk causing an embolism.

  Embolism?

  Air bubble in the system, said the nurse, rather flattered to be sought out and talked to by Mr and Mrs Fane’s attractive nephew, pleased at being able to impart information. Mostly the body could adjust to a small air bubble and absorb it, but if you introduced a big enough pocket of air into one of the large veins – the femoral vein, say, or the jugular – that pocket of air could travel to the heart inside of a couple of minutes, and the heart would stop. The nurse had noticed that it was a murder method sometimes utilized by writers of whodunnits. It was probably not quite as cut-and-dried as the books made out, but the principle was perfectly sound. Hadn’t Dorothy L. Sayers used it in a book?

  Edmund had said, with polite regret, that he did not read detective books – ‘Too busy studying, you know’ – and the nurse went off thinking what a charming young man he was, so obviously grateful to the relatives who had been so kind to him. She wondered if he had a girlfriend at university. Or he might be gay, of course; the really nice-looking ones often were. Ah, well.

  Edmund did not read detective books, but he could and did read the encyclopaedia, and he had looked up embolism at the next opportunity. Sure enough, there it was.

  ‘Embolism, from the Greek, embolos, meaning stopper or plug. Obstruction of a blood vessel by material which has been carried along in the bloodstream. Commonest cause is detachment of a blood-clot, portions of growths on heart valve, pieces of tumours, fat, masses of bacteria, and in some instances, air bubbles…’

  Air bubbles. Airlock in the system, just as the nurse had described it. The same thing you sometimes got in a car or a central heating system, bringing the car or the heating system to a full stop. Bringing the human body to a full stop? That was how it sounded. Introduce a big enough bubble of air into one of the large veins – for instance by jabbing in an empty hypodermic syringe and pressing the plunger – and the chances were that death, swift, painless, silent, undetectable death, would result within minutes. That was interesting. It was something to tuck into your mind and remember. One day it might be necessary to find out if it really did work.