Roots of Evil(130)

‘When Michael phoned me,’ said Elsa, ‘Edmund was already here as the inspector has said. But I did not need Michael’s phone call – I knew who Edmund was at once. And I did not trust him.’ She paused, and then said, ‘He is very sick, I think. There is a strong indication of split personality of some kind – I am not enough qualified to go further, but it was very evident to me.’

‘What happened?’

‘After the first few moments,’ said Elsa, glancing at Michael, ‘I realized that there was some kind of deep conflict in him. When he talked, it was as if he was trying to stop himself from talking, but could not. In the village where my mother was born they believed in possession of the soul. Nowadays we dismiss such things, but listening to your cousin, Lucy, I could have believed in it very easily.’

Lucy said, in a whisper, ‘Go on, please.’


‘Coming to this house had – had profoundly affected him,’ said Elsa, with a glance at Michael. ‘I had offered him coffee on his arrival, but when I realized how unstable he was, I took him into the dining-room and dropped a sleeping pill into his cup. Very easy to do so discreetly and the pill itself was harmless. But it would induce drowsiness, you understand?’ She paused, as if considering to go on, and then said, ‘I was a little frightened, I admit, but after a very short time the drug took over and he dropped into a deep sleep in the chair. So,’ said Elsa, ‘I locked the dining-room door and waited for Michael to get here.’

‘When we did get here,’ said Inspector Fletcher, ‘the sleeping pill was starting to wear off, and Edmund was—’

‘Lucid?’ said Lucy hopefully, because she was not bearing the thought of Edmund – always so correct, and so fastidious – behaving like this, being drugged, being regarded as disturbed and dangerous.

Fletcher hesitated, and then said, ‘It was clear that for most of the time he believed himself to be Crispin.’

‘But I still don’t understand this,’ said Lucy. ‘Crispin’s been dead for years. And even if Edmund is – even if he has this belief about being Crispin, why would he try to kill anyone? Or drive all the way out here?’ Wherever ‘here’ is, said her mind.

‘I haven’t talked to Edmund for very long,’ said Jennie Fletcher. ‘And we’ll have to defer to the doctors. But if he can be believed, fifty years ago, Crispin Fane killed Conrad Kline at Ashwood Studios. And as far as we can piece it together, Edmund has spent most of his life trying to keep that fact quiet.’

Lucy felt as if she had been plunged into a nightmare. She could not really remember Edmund’s father, who had sunk into that sad confused old man and who had died when she was very small, but she knew the stories of the charming good-looking Crispin; and her mother had known him very well. (‘Such good company,’ she had said. ‘He always came to my parties before he went peculiar, poor dear Crispin.’ But Aunt Deb, downright as ever, had sometimes said that Crispin Fane had been ominously weak, and that she would not trust him a yard.)

Speaking as if she was afraid of breaking something extremely fragile, Lucy said, ‘You’re saying Crispin Fane killed Conrad? That it wasn’t my grandmother who did it?’

‘It doesn’t look like it.’

Not Lucretia. After all these years – after all the scandal and after all the books that had been written and the articles that had been published – Lucretia had not killed Conrad Kline. Grandmamma, are you going to turn out to be the victim of scandal, rather than the perpetrator? thought Lucy. And then wondered if it mightn’t be exactly like Lucretia to have the last laugh on everyone.

She said, ‘Inspector, are you absolutely sure about all this?’

‘Not absolutely. Not yet. But we’re checking the facts, and it’s looking that way.’ Jennie Fletcher glanced at Michael, and then said, ‘It sounded to me as if there had been some kind of love affair between Lucretia and Crispin, and Crispin killed Conrad in a jealous rage.’

Lucy suddenly felt deeply sad at the thought of Edmund carrying this secret around for so long. She said, ‘He always had a horror of gossip – of the family skeletons. And he always hated people talking about my grandmother and the old Ashwood case. I never minded it, in fact I rather enjoyed the stories and the rumours – it all seemed far enough back not to matter.’

‘Another world,’ said Michael, half to himself.

‘Yes. But if anyone ever mentioned Lucretia or Ashwood, Edmund used to change the subject at once. He was—’

‘Yes?’

‘I was going to say he was almost pathological about it,’ said Lucy. ‘But I suppose that’s precisely what he was.’

‘It looks like it. The doctors might get more out of him later on, but I think we’ll find that he killed Trixie Smith that day to stop her from getting at the truth about the original Ashwood murders,’ said Jennie.

‘Although we might never know what else he’s done over the years to keep his father’s secret.’

So Crispin, the golden charming young man who had died sunk in melancholy and madness, had been a murderer. And Edmund, whom Lucy had known all her life, who had held her hand across a table and suggested it was an alluring idea for the two of them to become close, had been a murderer as well. I’m not going to cope with this, thought Lucy in horror. And then – yes, of course I am.