The Origin of Evil (30 page)

‘No, you keep going, Keats. Is there anything else that's bothered you?'

‘Lots more. You talked about Priam's shrewd tactics, his cleverness; you compared him to Napoleon. Shrewd? Clever? A tactician? Priam was about as shrewd as a bull steer in heat and as clever as a punch in the nose. He couldn't have planned a menu. The only weapon Priam knew was a club.

‘He figured out a series of related clues, you said, that added up — for our benefit — to a naturalist. Evolution. The steps in the ladder. Scientific stuff. How could a roughneck smallbrain like Priam have done that? A man who bragged he hadn't read a book since he was in knee pants! You'd have to have a certain amount of technical knowledge even to
think
of that evolutionary stuff as the basis of a red herring, let alone get all the stages correct and in the right order. Then picking a fancy-pants old Greek drama to tie in birds! No, sir, I don't purchase it. Not Priam.

‘Oh, I don't question his guilt. He murdered his partner, all right. Hell, he confessed. But he wasn't the bird who figured out the method and thought up the details. That was the work of somebody with a lot better equipment than Roger Priam ever hoped to have.'

‘In other words, if I get your thought, Keats,' murmured Ellery, ‘you believe Priam needed not only someone else's legs but someone else's grey matter, too.'

‘That's it,' snapped the detective. ‘And I'll go whole hog. I say the same man who supplied the legs supplied the knowhow!' He glared at Alfred Wallace, who was slumped in the chair, hands clasped loosely about the glass on his stomach, eyes gleaming Keats's way. ‘I mean you, Wallace! You got a lucky break, my friend, Priam sloughing you off as a maroon who trotted around doing what you were told —'

‘Lucky nothing,' said Ellery. ‘That was in the cards, Keats. Priam
did
believe Wallace was a stupid tool and that the whole brilliant plot was the product of his own genius; being Priam, he couldn't believe anything else — as Wallace, who knew him intimately, accurately foresaw. Wallace made his suggestions so subtly, led Priam about by his large nose so tactfully, that Priam never once suspected that
he
was the tool, being used by a master craftsman.'

Keats glanced again at Wallace. But the man lay there comfortably, even looking pleased.

Keats's head ached. ‘Then — you mean —'

Ellery nodded. ‘The real murderer in this case, Keats, was not Priam. It's Wallace. Always was.'

Wallace extended a lazy arm and snagged one of Ellery's cigarettes. Ellery tossed him a packet of matches, and the man nodded his thanks. He lit up, tossed the packet back, and resumed his hammocky position.

The detective was confused. He glanced at Ellery, at Wallace, at Ellery again. Ellery was puffing peacefully away at his pipe.

‘You mean,' said Keats in a high voice, ‘Hill wasn't murdered by Priam after all?'

‘It's a matter of emphasis, Keats. Gangster A, a shot big enough to farm out his dirty work, employs Torpedo C to kill Gangster B. Torpedo C does so. Who's guilty of B's murder? A
and
C. The big shot and the little shot. Priam and Alfred were both guilty.'

‘Priam hired Wallace to do his killing for him,' said Keats foolishly.

‘No.' Ellery picked up a pipe cleaner and inserted it in the stem of his pipe. ‘No, Keats, that would make Priam the big shot and Wallace the little. It was a whole lot subtler than that. Priam
thought
he was the big shot and that Wallace was a tool, but he was wrong; it was the other way around. Priam
thought
he was using Wallace to murder Hill, when all the time Wallace was using Priam to murder Hill. And when Priam planned the clean-up killing of Wallace — planned it on his own — Wallace turned Priam's plan right around against Priam and used it to make Priam kill himself.'

‘Take it easy, will you?' groaned Keats. ‘I've had a hard week. Let's go at this in words of one syllable, the only kind I can understand.

‘According to you, this monkey sitting here, this man you call a murderer — who's taking your pay, drinking your liquor, and smoking your cigarettes, all with your permission — this Wallace planned the murders first of Hill, then of Priam, using Priam without Priam's realizing that he was being used — in fact, in such a way that Priam thought
he
was the works. All my pea-brain wants to know is:
Why?
Why should
Wallace
want to kill Hill and Priam? What did
he
have against 'em?'

‘You know the answer to that, Lieutenant.'

‘Me?'

‘Who's wanted to murder Hill and Priam from the start?'

‘Who?'

‘Yes, who's had that double motive throughout the case?'

Keats sat up gripping the arms of his chair. He looked at Alfred Wallace in a sickly way. ‘You're kidding,' he said feebly. ‘This whole thing is a rib.'

‘No rib, Keats,' said Ellery. ‘The question answers itself. The only one who had motive to kill both Hill
and
Priam was Charles Adam. Ditto Wallace? Then why look for two? Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other. Wallace is Adam. Refill now?'

Keats swallowed.

Wallace got up and amiably did the honours, Keats watching as if he half-expected to catch the tall man slipping a white powder into the glass. He drank, and afterwards gazed glumly into the brown liquid.

‘I'm not being specially obtuse,' Keats said finally. ‘I'm just trying to wriggle out of this logic of yours. Let's forget logic. You say that proves this smoothie is Charles Adam. How about coincidence? Of all the millions of nose-wipers who
could
have been Priam's man Friday, it turns out to be the one man in the universe who wanted to kill him. Too neat, Queen, not to say gaudy.'

‘Why do you call it coincidence? There was nothing coincidental about Charles Adam's becoming Priam's wet-nurse.
Adam planned it that way
.

‘For twenty-five years he looked for Priam and Hill. One day he found them. Result: He became Priam's secretary-nurse-companion … not as Adam, of course, but as a specially created character whom he christened Alfred Wallace. My guess is that Adam had more than a little to do with the sudden resignations of several of his predecessors in the job, but it remains a guess — Wallace, quite reasonably, is close-mouthed on the subject. My guess is also that he's been around Los Angeles far longer than the amnesic trail to Las Vegas indicated. Maybe it's been years — eh, Wallace?'

Wallace raised his brows quizzically.

‘In any event, he managed finally to land the job and to fool Roger Priam absolutely. Priam went to his death completely unaware that Wallace was
actually
Adam rather than the spurious substitute for Adam Priam thought he was palming off on the authorities. Priam never doubted for a moment that Adam's bones were still lying in the coral sand of that deserted West Indian island.'

Ellery stared reflectively at Wallace, who was sipping his Scotch like a gentleman in his club. ‘I wonder what you really look like, Adam. The newspaper photos we dug up weren't much use … Of course, twenty-five years have made a big difference. But you wouldn't have trusted to that. Plastic work, almost certainly, and of the highest order; there isn't a sign of it. Maybe a little something to your vocal cords. And lots of practice with such things as gait, tricks of speech, “characteristic” gestures, and so on. It was probably all done years ago, so that you had plenty of time to obliterate all trace of — forgive me — of the old Adam. Priam never had a chance. Or Hill. And you had the virility Priam demanded in a secretary. You'd undoubtedly found out about that in your preliminary reconnaissance. A glimpse of Delia Priam, and you must have been absolutely delighted. Plum pudding to go with your roast beef.'

Wallace smiled appreciatively.

‘I don't know when — or how — Priam first let on that he wanted to be rid of Leander Hill. Maybe he never said so at all, in so many words. At least in the beginning. You were with him night and day, and you were studying him. You could hardly have remained blind to Priam's hatred. I think, Wallace,' said Ellery, setting his feet on the coffee table, ‘yes, I think you got hold of Priam's proboscis very early with your magnetic grip, and steered it this way and that. It would be a technique that appealed to you, feeling your victim's desires and directing them, unsuspected, according to your own. Sensing that Priam wanted Hill dead, you led him around to becoming actively conscious of it. Then you let him chew on it. It took months, probably. But you had plenty of time, and you'd proved your patience.

‘In the end, it became a passion with him.

‘Of course, to do anything at all along that line he needed an accomplice. There couldn't be any question as to who the accomplice might be. It wouldn't surprise me if you dropped a few hints that you weren't altogether unfamiliar with violence … you had vague “memories,” perhaps, that came and went conveniently through the curtain of your “amnesia” … It was all very gradual, but one day you got there. It was out. And you were to do the “legwork.”'

Wallace surveyed the flames dreamily. Keats, watching him, listening to Ellery, had the most childish sense that all this was happening elsewhere, to other people.

‘Priam had plans of his own. They would be Priam-like plans, crude and explosive — a Molotov cocktail sort of thing. And you “admired” them. But perhaps something a little less direct …? In discussing the possibilities you may have suggested that there might be something in the common background of Priam and Hill that would give Priam — always Priam — a psychologically sound springboard for a really clever plan. Eventually you got the story of Adam — of yourself — out of him. Because, of course, that's what you were after all along.

‘After that, it was ridiculously easy. All you had to do was put ideas into Priam's head, so that they could come out of his mouth and, in doing so, convince him that they were original with him. In time you had the whole thing explicit. There was the plot that would give Priam the indestructible garment of innocence, Priam was convinced it was all his idea … and all the time it was the very plot you'd planned to use yourself. That must have been a great day, Wallace.'

Ellery turned to Keats.

‘From that point it was a mere matter of operations. He'd mastered the technique of cuckolding Priam, psychologically as well as maritally; at every stage he made Priam think Priam was directing events and that he, Wallace, was carrying them out; but at every stage it was Priam who was ordering exactly what Wallace wanted him to order.

‘It was Wallace who dictated the note to Hill, with Priam doing the typing — just as you figured out, Keats. Wallace didn't call it dictation — he undoubtedly called it, humbly, “suggestions.” And Priam typed away on a machine on which the T key was broken. Accident? There are no accidents where Wallace-Adam is concerned. He'd managed, somehow, and without Priam's knowledge, to break that key; and he managed to persuade Priam that there was no danger in using the typewriter that way, since a vital part of the plan was to see to it that Hill destroyed the note after he read it. Of course, what Wallace wanted was a record of that note
for us
, and if Hill hadn't secretly made a copy of it, you may be sure Wallace would have seen to it that a transcription was found — by me or by you or by someone like Laurel who would take it to us at once. In the end, the clue of the missing T would trap Priam through the new T on Priam's machine … just as Wallace planned.'

The man beyond Keats permitted himself a slight smile. He was looking down at his glass, modestly.

‘And when he realized what was at the back of Priam's mind,' continued Ellery, ‘the plan to kill
him …
Wallace made use of that, too. He took advantage of events so that the biter would be bitten. When I told Wallace what I “knew,” it coincided perfectly with his final move. The only trouble was — eh, Adam? — I knew a little too much.'

Wallace raised his glass. Almost it was a salute. But then he put it to his lips and it was hard to say if the gesture had meant anything at all.

Keats stirred, shifting in the comfortable chair as if it were uncomfortable. There was a wagon track between his eyes, leaving his forehead full of ruts.

‘I'm not going good tonight, Queen,' he mumbled. ‘So far this all sounds to me like just theory. You say this man is Charles Adam. You put a lot of arguments together and it sounds great. Okay, so he's Charles Adam. But how could you have been sure? It's
possible
that he wasn't Charles Adam. That he was John Jones, or Stanley Brown, or Cyril St. Clair, or Patrick Silverstein. I say it's
possible
. Show me that it isn't.'

Ellery laughed. ‘You're not getting me involved in a defence of what's been, not always admiringly, called the “Queen method.” Fortunately, Keats, I
can
show you that it's
not
possible for this man to be anyone else
but
Charles Adam. Where did he tell us he got the name Alfred Wallace?'

‘He said he picked it out of thin air when he got an amnesia attack and couldn't remember who he was.' Keats glowered. ‘All of which was horse radish.'

‘All of which was horse radish,' nodded Ellery, ‘except the fact that, whatever his name was, it certainly
wasn't
Alfred Wallace. He did pick that when he wanted an assumed name.'

‘So what? There's nothing unusual about the name Alfred Wallace.'

‘Wrong, Keats. There's something not only unusual and remarkable about the name Alfred Wallace, but unique.

‘Alfred Wallace — Alfred Russel Wallace — was a contemporary of Charles Darwin's. Alfred Wallace was the naturalist who arrived at a formulation of the evolution theory almost simultaneously with Darwin, although independently. In fact, their respective announcements were first given to the world in the form of a joint essay read before the Linnean Society in 1858, and published in the Society's
Journal
the same year. Darwin had drafted the outline of his
Theory
in manuscript in 1842. Wallace, ill with fever in South America, came to the same conclusions and sent his findings to Darwin, which is how they came to be published simultaneously.'