Roots of Evil(11)

‘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.’

‘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.’