The Origin of Evil (28 page)

‘Your motive must have been compelling. It couldn't have been gain, because Hill's death brought you no material benefits; his share of the business went to Laurel. It couldn't have been to avoid exposure as the murderer of Adam twenty-five years ago, for Hill was neck-deep in that crime with you and had benefited from it equally — he was hardly in a position to hold it over you. In fact, he was in a poorer position than you were to hold it over
him
, because Hill had the additional reason to want to keep it from Laurel. Nor is it likely that you killed him to avoid exposure for any other crime of which he might have gained knowledge, such as — I take the obvious theory — embezzlement of the firm's funds. Because the truth is you have had very little to do with the running of Hill & Priam; it was Hill who ran it, while you merely put up a show of being an equal partner in work and responsibility. Never leaving your house, you could hardly have been so in control of daily events as to have been able to steal funds, or falsify accounts, or anything like that. Nor was it trouble over your wife. Hill's relationship with Mrs. Priam was friendly and correct; besides,' said Ellery rather dryly, ‘he was getting past the age for that sort of thing.

‘There's only one thing you accomplished, Priam, by killing Leander Hill. So, in the absence of a positive indication in any other direction, I'm forced to conclude that that's why you wanted Hill out of the way.

‘And it's confirmed by your character, Priam, the whole drive of your personality.

‘By killing Hill
you got rid of your business partner
. That is one of the facts that emerge from his death. Is it the key fact? I think it is.

‘Priam, you have an obsessive need to dominate, to dominate your immediate background and everyone in it. The one thing above all others that you can't stand is dependence on others. With you the alternative is not so much independence of others as making others dependent on you. Because physically you're helpless, you want power. You must be master — even if, as in the case of your wife, you have to use another man to do it.

‘You hated Hill because he, not you, was master of Hill & Priam. He ran it and he had run it for fifteen years with no more than token help from you. The firm's employees looked up to him and loathed you. He made policy, purchases, sales; to accounts, big and small, Leander Hill was Hill & Priam and Roger Priam was a forgotten and useless invalid stuck away in a house somewhere. The fact that to Hill you owe your material security and the sound condition of Hill & Priam has festered inside of you for fifteen years. Even while you enjoyed the fruits of Hill's efforts, they left a bitter taste in your mouth that eventually poisoned you.

‘You planned his death.

‘With Hill out of the way, you would be undisputed master of the business. That you might run it into the ground probably never occurred to you. But if it did, I'm sure the danger didn't even make you hesitate. The big thing was to make everyone involved in or with Hill & Priam come crawling to you. The big thing was to be boss.'

Roger Priam said nothing. This time he did not even make the beastly sound. But his little eyes roved.

Keats moved even closer.

‘Once you saw what you had to do,' continued Ellery, ‘you realized that you were seriously handicapped. You couldn't come and go as you pleased; you had no mobility. An ordinary murder was out of the question. Of course, you could have disposed of Hill right in this room during a business conference by a shot. But Hill's death wasn't the primary objective. He had to die and leave you free to run the business.

‘You had to be able to kill him in such a way that you wouldn't be even suspected.

‘It occurred to you, as it's occurred to murderers before, that the most effective way of diverting suspicion from yourself was to create the illusion that you were equally in danger of losing your life, and from the same source. In other words, you had to create a fictitious outside threat directed not merely at Hill but at both of you.

‘Your and Hill's connection with Charles Lyell Adam twenty-five years ago provided a suitable, if daring and dangerous, means for creating such an illusion. If Adam were “alive,” he could have a believable motive to seek the death of both of you. Adam's background could be traced by the authorities; the dramatic voyage of the
Beagle
was traceable to the point of its disappearance with all hands; the facts of your and Hill's existence and present situation in life, plus the hints you could let drop in “Adam's” note, would lead any competent investigator to the conclusions you wanted him to reach.

‘You were very clever, Priam. You avoided the psychological error of making things too obvious. You deliberately told not quite enough in “Adam's” note. You repeatedly refused on demand to give any information that would help the police or make the investigation easier, although an examination of your “refusals” shows that you actually helped us considerably. But on the surface you made us work for what we got.

‘You made us work hard, because you laid a fantastic trail for us to follow.

‘But if your theory-of-evolution pattern was on the fancy side, your logic was made curiously more convincing because of it. To nurse a desire for revenge for almost a generation a man has to be a little cracked. Such a mind might easily run to the involved and the fanciful. At the same time, “Adam” would naturally tend to think in terms of his own background and experience. Adam having been a naturalist, you created a trail such as an eccentric naturalist might leave — a trail you were sure we would sooner or later recognize and follow to its conclusion, which was that Naturalist Charles Adam was “the enemy out of the past.”

‘Your camouflage was brilliantly conceived and stroked on, Priam. You laid it so thickly on this case that, if you had not foolishly used that broken-T typewriter, we should probably have been satisfied to pin the crime on a man who's really been dead for a quarter of a century.'

Priam's big head wavered a little, almost a nod. But it might have been a momentary trembling of the muscles of his neck. Otherwise, he gave no sign that he was even listening.

‘In an odd sort of way, Priam, you were unlucky. You didn't realize quite how bad Hill's heart was, or you miscalculated the impact of your paper bullet. Because Hill died as a result of your very first warning. You had sent yourself a warning on the same morning, intending to divide the other warnings between you and Hill, probably, alternating them. When Hill died so immediately, it was too late to pull yourself out. You were in the position of the general who has planned a complicated battle against the enemy, finds that his very first sortie has accomplished his entire objective, but is powerless to stop his orders and preparation for the succeeding attacks. Had you stopped after sending yourself only one warning the mere stoppage would have been suspect. The warnings to yourself had to continue in order that the illusion of Adam-frightening-Hill-to-death should be completely credible.

‘You sent six warnings, including the masterly one of having your tuna salad poisoned so that you could eat some, fall sick, and so call attention to your “fish” clue. After six warnings you undoubtedly felt you had thoroughly fooled us as to the real source of the crime. On the other hand, you recognized the danger of stopping even at six with yourself still alive. We might begin to wonder why — in your case — “Adam” had given up. Murderers have been caught on a great deal less.

‘You saw that, for perfect safety, you had to give us a convincing end to the whole business.

‘The ideal, of course, was for us to “catch” “Adam.”

‘A lesser man, Priam, wouldn't have wasted ten seconds wrestling with the problem of producing a man dead twenty-five years and handing his living body over to the police. But you didn't abandon the problem merely because it seemed impossible to solve. There's a lot of Napoleon in you.

‘And you solved it.

‘Your solution was tied up with another unhappy necessity of the case. To carry out your elaborate plot against Hill and yourself, you needed help. You have the use of your brain unimpaired, and the use of your hands and eyes and ears in a limited area, but these weren't enough. Your plans demanded the use of legs, too, and yours are useless. You couldn't possibly, by yourself, procure a beagle, poison it, deliver it and the note to Hill's doorstep; get cardboard boxes and string from the dime store, a dead lamprey from God knows where, poison, frogs, and so on. It's true that the little silver box must have been left here, or dropped, by Laurel; that the arsenic undoubtedly came from the can of Deth-on-Ratz in your cellar; that the tree frogs were collected in these very foothills; that the green alligator wallet must have been suggested by your wife's possession of a handbag of the same material and from the same shop; that you found the worthless stock from Mrs. Priam's first husband's estate in some box or trunk stored in this house; that to leave the bird clue you chose a book from your own library. Whenever possible you procured what you needed from as close by as you could manage, probably because in this way you felt you could control them better. But even for the things in and from this house, you needed a substitute for your legs.

‘Who found and used these things at your direction?

‘Alfred Wallace could. Secretary, nurse, companion, orderly, handyman … with you all day, on call all night … you could hardly have used anyone else. If for no other reason than that Wallace couldn't possibly have been kept ignorant of what was going on. Using Wallace turned a liability into an asset.

‘Whether Wallace was your accomplice willingly because you paid him well, or under duress because you had something on him,' said Ellery, looking down at the mound under the blanket, ‘is a question only you can answer now, Priam. I suppose it doesn't really matter any more. However you managed it, you persuaded Alfred to serve as your legs and as extensions of your eyes and hands. You gave Alfred his orders and he carried them out.

‘Now you no longer needed Alfred. And perhaps — as other murderers have found out — tools like Alfred have a way of turning two-edged. Wallace was the only one who knew you were the god of the machine, Priam. No matter what you had on him — if anything — Wallace alive was a continuous danger to your safety and peace of mind.

‘The more you mulled, the more feasible Wallace's elimination became. His death would remove the only outside knowledge of your guilt; as your wife's lover he ought to die to satisfy your peculiar psychological ambivalence; and, dead, he became a perfect Charles Adam. Wallace was within Adam's age range had Adam lived; Wallace's background was unknown because of his amnesic history; even his personality fitted with what we might have expected Adam to be.

‘If you could make us flush Alfred Wallace from the mystery as Charles Adam, you'd be killing three birds with one stone.

‘And so you arranged for Wallace's death.'

Roger Priam raised his head. Colour had come back into his cheekbones, and his heavy voice was almost animated.

‘I'll have to read some of your books,' Priam said. ‘You sure make up a good story.'

‘As a reward for that compliment, Priam,' said Ellery, smiling, ‘I'll tell you an even better one.

‘A few months ago you ordered Alfred Wallace to go out and buy a gun. You gave Wallace the money for it, but you wanted the gun's ownership traceable to him.

‘Tonight you buzzed Wallace on the intercom, directly to his bedroom, and you told Wallace you heard someone prowling around outside the house. You told him to take the gun, make sure it was loaded, and come down here to your room, quietly —'

‘That's a lie,' said Roger Priam.

‘That's the truth,' said Ellery.

Priam showed his teeth. ‘You're a bluffer after all. Even if it was true — which it ain't — how could you know it?'

‘Because Wallace told me so.'

The skin above Priam's beard changed colour again.

‘You see,' said Ellery, ‘I took Wallace into my confidence when I saw the danger he was in. I told him just what to expect at your hands and I told him that if he wanted to save his skin he'd be wise to play ball with Lieutenant Keats and me.

‘Wallace didn't need much convincing, Priam. I imagine you've found him the sort of fellow who can turn on a dime; or, to change the figure, the sort who always spots the butter side of the bread. He came over to me without a struggle. And he promised to keep me informed; and he promised, when the time came, to follow not your instructions, Priam, but mine.

‘When you told him on the intercom tonight to sneak down here with the loaded revolver, Wallace immediately phoned me. I told him to hold up going downstairs for just long enough to allow the lieutenant and me to get here. It didn't take us long, Priam, did it? We'd been waiting nightly for Wallace's phone call for some time now.

‘I'm pretty sure you expected someone to be outside on guard, Priam, although of course you didn't know it would be Keats and me in person on Wallace's notification. You've put up a good show about not wanting police guards, in line with your shrewd performance all along, but you've known from the start that we would probably disregard your wishes in a crisis, and that was just what you wanted us to do.

‘When Alfred stole into this room armed with a gun, you knew whoever was on guard — you hoped actually watching from the terrace — would fall for the illusion that Wallace was trying to kill you. If no one was watching, but a guard on the grounds heard the shot, within seconds he'd be in the room, and he'd find Wallace dead — in
your
room, with you obviously awakened from sleep, and only your story to listen to. With the previous build-up of someone threatening your life, he'd have no reason to doubt your version of what happened. If there were no guards at all, you would phone for help immediately, and between your version of the events and the fact that the gun was bought by Wallace you had every reason to believe the matter would end there. It was a bold, even a Bonapartist plan, Priam, and it almost worked.'