Something Wicked Read online

  Something Wicked

  E. X. Ferrars

  FELONY & MAYHEM PRESS • NEW YORK

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Contents

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Root of All Evil Preview

  Dead Men Don't Ski Preview

  Copyright

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  Guide

  Cover

  Title

  Contents

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Start of Content

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Morna Doris MacTaggart was born in Burma in 1907 and sent at the age of six to a prestigious boarding school in England. After an early marriage and the publication of two novels, in 1940 her life was turned upside-down when she both met Robert Brown, a professor of botany, and published Give a Corpse a Bad Name, her first mystery and the first in what would become the five-book “Toby Dyke” series (published, astonishingly, over just two years). Ferrars and Brown married in 1945, and in 1951 moved to the US, where he had been offered a position at Cornell. However, they returned to the UK the following year, sickened by America’s turn toward McCarthyism.

  In 1953 Ferrars helped found the Crime Writers’ Association, and she and her husband stayed in Edinburgh (where Brown held a chair at the University) for 25 years. During this period Ferrars published more than 35 crime novels, finally returning to series mystery—first with the “Virginia and Alex Freer” series, and then with “Andrew Basnett”—in the late 1970s, after a move to Oxfordshire. She died in 1995, having published more than 75 novels and numerous short stories, nearly all of them involving dead bodies.

  Chapter One

  “But of course you must let me pay rent for the place,” Professor Basnett said. “I couldn’t think of staying there otherwise.”

  “No, really,” Peter Dilly, his nephew, answered. “I don’t want any rent. It’s an advantage to me to have someone living there through the winter, seeing the pipes don’t freeze and that squatters don’t move in and settle, or burglars break in and steal my priceless treasures. If you’d really like to stay there, Andrew, you’ll be more than welcome.”

  Though he was the son of Andrew Basnett’s sister, who had died when Peter was a child, he had never called Andrew uncle in his life. As a child of three Peter had settled for Andrew and had stuck to it ever since. Peter was now thirty-five and Andrew was seventy.

  “Of course I realize the money doesn’t mean anything to you now,” Andrew said, “but perhaps if I paid in cash so that the taxman needn’t know…”

  “That isn’t the point,” Peter said. “Don’t you understand, I like the thought of you living there if it’s got any attractions for you? I’m glad for once to be able to do something for you, instead of its always being the other way round. And a pretty small thing it is, as I’ve just explained, since I’d far sooner have someone living there for the next few months than just leave the place empty.”

  “Very well, if you’re quite sure. I’m very grateful.”

  They were having lunch together in Soho. The attraction for Andrew Basnett of borrowing his nephew’s cottage in the Berkshire village of Godlingham was that his own flat in St. John’s Wood was about to be redecorated. At last, after seeing it grow shabbier and shabbier since the death of Nell, his wife, ten years ago, he had made up his mind to have it painted right through, had given
a good deal of thought to the choosing of new colours, had felt interested and stimulated at the idea of change, and then had thought with horror of having to live in the midst of the upheaval while the work was in progress.

  The men on the job would probably bring a radio with them, which they would play all day at its loudest. At intervals they would want cups of tea. They would discuss football at the tops of their voices. The quiet life, which was the only kind of life that Andrew could endure nowadays, would be shattered. In a state of sheer panic he had almost made up his mind to cancel the whole project when his nephew, as they were drinking sherry before this lunch that they were having together, had asked if by any chance Andrew would care to borrow the cottage in Godlingham, as Peter himself intended to spend the winter in Paris.

  “It’s only three miles from Maddingleigh, which is less than an hour from Paddington,” Peter said, “so you could get up to London quite easily and keep on with your work, and my precious Mrs. Nesbit would come in once a week to do the cleaning, just as she does for me, and I expect you’d find the neighbours friendly if you felt like company, though you can be as quiet as you like if you want. I know you like walking, and the downs are there, right at the back door, for when you feel like it.” He finished his sherry and put his glass down. “Just a suggestion,” he said. “Think about it. No need to make up your mind on the spot. I just thought perhaps you might enjoy a change.”

  It did not take Andrew a moment to make up his mind. But then there followed the inevitable argument about the rent, though this was little more than a formality, since Andrew knew that Peter would refuse to accept any payment, as Peter had known that Andrew would do his best to insist on a normal businesslike arrangement between them. Luckily for both of them, the money was of little importance to either. Andrew, since his retirement three years ago, had an adequate pension as well as some investments left to him by Nell, and could easily afford to pay a reasonable rent, while Peter, who had started life as a schoolmaster but had recently discovered a knack for writing science fiction, which had turned out surprisingly successful, and who might almost be called rich, certainly had no need for any additional income. For his self-respect, however, each felt that there should be at least a token argument, though Andrew had known from the beginning that he would give in, since after all it was the rational thing to do, Peter being so obviously pleased to be able to make a generous gesture.

  The work that Andrew was doing, to which Peter had referred, was the writing of a life of Robert Hooke, the noted seventeenth-century natural philosopher and architect, celebrated for pioneering microscopical work in a variety of fields, and particularly renowned as the first microscopist to observe individual cells. Andrew, who had been a professor of botany in one of London University’s many colleges, had always felt a particular interest in him and for the last two years had made a habit of going twice a week to work on his papers in the library of the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace. The first year after his retirement he had spent on a slow journey round the world, lecturing in the United States, New Zealand, Australia and India, but he had started his book soon after arriving home and had been absorbed in it ever since.

  Whether it would ever be finished was a matter of uncertainty. As he kept destroying almost as much of it as he added to it week by week, it never seemed to grow any longer. Nevertheless, the work was important to him and one of the attractions of Peter’s offer was that, although Godlingham was in the country, the journey to London was so short that it would be easy to keep up those bi-weekly visits to the Royal Society.

  Apart from that, Andrew knew the cottage, knew that it was comfortable, well heated, convenient and quiet. He had spent several week-ends there with Peter while he had still been a schoolmaster, teaching in the nearby school known as Newsome’s, named after the family who had once inhabited what was now only a small portion of the buildings. Peter had left his job soon after his books had begun to sell successfully, but had kept on the cottage. Andrew knew that nothing could suit him better.

  “When shall I take over?” he asked once the matter of the rent had been disposed of. He was thinking of the men with their radio and their cups of tea and their football talk and was hoping that after a brief talk with their foreman to make sure that he understood what was to be done, he could arrange to avoid them altogether. The key to the flat could be handed over to the porter, who was an obliging and responsible man and could safely be left in charge. “When are you leaving?”

  “Next Friday,” Peter said, “but you needn’t hurry to get down before that unless you want to. I can leave a key with my next-door neighbour, Jack Fidler, and you can pick it up from him. I can’t remember if you ever met him when he came down to see me. He’s a teacher of biology at Newsome’s. He’ll be interested to meet you. I’ll give you his phone number and you can ring him up when you want to collect the key.”

  “I don’t think I’ve met any of your neighbours,” Andrew said, “except for a tall, diffident individual who came once to return a book. But seeing a stranger there, he vanished as fast as he could.”

  Peter smiled. “That sounds like Godfrey Goodchild.” Peter’s smile was bright and lit up his pale, deceptively blank face very charmingly. He was a small man and in a neat, small way was good-looking, with small, fine hands and fair, straight hair which he kept thrusting back from his forehead, but which instantly tumbled forward again almost into his grey eyes. “Godfrey’s retired, I’m not sure from what. He doesn’t talk about himself and makes you feel it would be the height of impertinence to question him. He’s my next-door neighbour on the other side from the Fidlers. He and Hannah have been living there since long before I moved in and we’re quite good friends, but it’s extraordinary how little I know about him.”

  “Surprising, considering how curious you are about people,” Andrew said. He was much taller than his nephew and in fact, if he took the trouble to stand erect, was even taller than he looked, but in the last few years he had allowed himself to get into the habit of stooping. He was a spare man with bony features, short grey hair and grey eyes very like Peter’s, under eyebrows that were still black. His long sight was still good and he needed glasses only for reading. “You must do a lot of listening and watching when you look as if you’re thinking about nothing at all.”

  Peter shook his head. “The people I write about are complete fictions. They couldn’t possibly exist. I don’t have to tell you that, do I? I don’t think I’m at all clever at understanding real people. For instance, I’ve never been able to make up my mind about our murderess.”

  “Your what?”

  “Our murderess. Do you remember the house on the hillside opposite mine—good Georgian, red brick, nice parapet round the roof, fine windows and a rather handsome portico. It’s called Godlingham House and our murderess lives there.”

  “I remember it, but I never met the lady. What kind of murders does she go in for?”

  “Oh, there was only one, if that. That’s what I’ve never been able to make up my mind about. Did she do it or didn’t she?”

  “You know her well?”

  “Hardly at all, and you aren’t likely to meet her. She keeps herself very much to herself.”

  “What was her sentence?”

  “Oh, my goodness, she wasn’t sentenced. She wasn’t even charged. She had a perfect alibi.”

  “Then doesn’t that answer your question? She didn’t do it.”

  Peter made one of his attempts at thrusting back his hair. “Ye-es. One has to accept that. But one can’t help wondering…”

  “Who was it you think she may have murdered?” Andrew asked.

  “Her husband.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, for money. He was immensely rich. He was a brother of Henry Hewison’s—you know, the man who started Newsome’s. The two brothers inherited a lot of money when they were in their forties or thereabouts from some rich relative, and Henry put all his money into the school, which
has always been his passion, while Charles, the elder… But you don’t want to know all this. As I said, you won’t meet her.”

  “I’m very interested.” If Peter had written detective stories instead of science fiction, Andrew would have read them eagerly. As it was, he had tried to read them out of affection for Peter, but had given them up. He admitted that Peter wrote very well and sometimes used his fantasies to make comments of some penetration on social affairs. His first book, called Whalewater, was about a species of whale that had learnt to fly and which mankind had naturally recognized at once as a most valuable addition to their stockpile of armaments, since these amiable and very teachable mammals, which had not the imagination to know fear, could be both airships and submarines. Peter’s second book, Camellords, was about some scientists who by a remarkable feat of genetic engineering had managed to create men with the heads of camels. These, unfortunately, had had all the hauteur of the camel together with all the most aggressive instincts of man, and had soon established an élite that had gradually reduced ordinary men to helpless slaves, a condition which it turned out they enjoyed. It had been obvious to Andrew that Peter, whose subject had been classics, had no fragment of knowledge about genetic engineering, but then neither had his readers, and the book had sold very well and had had a television series based on it.

  “Well then,” Peter went on, “the rumour was that Charles Hewison was going to put a lot of money into his brother’s school, which wasn’t flourishing quite as was hoped and had eaten up most of H.H.’s capital. H.H. is what we always called Henry Hewison. Charles had been in the Foreign Service, living mostly abroad until he retired, when he bought Godlingham House and came to live there to be near his brother. Charles was married, Henry isn’t. I believe Charles married fairly late in life a woman who was at least twenty years younger than he was and had a daughter. I remember when they first came to the place they were friendly, sociable sort of people and were generally liked and seemed to be happy enough with one another. And then one evening Charles Hewison was murdered.”

  “How long ago was that?” Andrew asked.

  “About six years,” Peter said. “It happened just after Christmas. There was a big freeze-up at the time—d’you remember it? It was fearsomely cold and as we had a power failure in the district at the time that cottage of mine was like an icebox. I hope nothing of the sort happens to you this year, because, as you know, I’m entirely dependent on electricity. There isn’t a fireplace in the house. The central heating’s oil-fired, but of course there’s an electric pump and that wouldn’t work, so the radiators went stone-cold. The cut lasted for about two days and snow had blocked the road to Maddingleigh and I’d been fool enough not to buy one of those portable gas heaters—you’ll find there’s one there now—and I couldn’t get into Maddingleigh to buy one, so there was nothing for it but to sit there and freeze, though the neighbours with less modern, labour-saving houses than mine were very kind and brought me hot food and asked me in to sit by their fires.”