The Origin of Evil Read Free

name Priam it might have been Hatfield. ‘Daddy had a bad heart, and we should have lived on level ground. But he liked hills and wouldn’t hear of moving.’
    â€˜Mother alive?’ He knew she was not. Laurel had the motherless look. The self-made female. A man’s girl, and there were times when she would insist on being a man’s man. Not Miss Universe of Pasadena or anywhere else, he thought. He began to like her. ‘She isn’t?’ he said, when Laurel was silent.
    â€˜I don’t know.’ A sore spot. ‘If I ever knew my mother, I’ve forgotten.’
    â€˜Foster-mother, then?’
    â€˜He never married. I was brought up by a nurse, who died when I was fifteen — four years ago. I never liked her, and I think she got pneumonia just to make me feel guilty. I’m — I was his daughter by adoption.’ She looked around for an ashtray, and Ellery brought her one. She said steadily as she crushed the cigarette, ‘But really his daughter. None of that fake pal stuff, you understand, that covers contempt on one side and being unsure on the other. I loved and respected him, and — as he used to say — I was the only woman in his life. Dad was a little on the old-school side. Held my chair for me. That sort of thing. He was … solid.’ And now, Ellery thought, it’s jelly and you’re hanging on to the stuff with your hard little fingers. ‘It happened,’ Laurel Hill went on in the same toneless way, ‘two weeks ago. June third. We were just finishing breakfast. Simeon, our chauffeur, came in to tell Daddy he’d just brought the car around and there was something “funny” at the front door. We all went out, and there it was — a dead dog lying on the doorstep with an ordinary shipping tag attached to its collar. Dad’s name was printed on it in pencil: Leander Hill .’
    â€˜Any address?’
    â€˜Just the name.’
    â€˜Did the printing look familiar? Did you recognize it?’
    â€˜I didn’t really look at it. I just saw one line of pencil-marks as Dad bent over the dog. He said in a surprised way, ‘Why, it’s addressed to me.’ Then he opened the little casket.’
    â€˜Casket?’
    â€˜There was a tiny silver box — about the size of a pill-box — attached to the collar. Dad opened it and found a wad of thin paper inside, folded over enough times so it would fit into the box. He unfolded it, and it was covered with writing or printing — it might even have been typewriting; I couldn’t really see because he half-turned away as he read it.
    â€˜By the time he’d finished reading his face was the colour of bread-dough, and his lips looked bluish. I started to ask him who’d sent it to him and what was wrong, when he crushed the paper in a sort of spasm and gave a choked cry and fell. I’d seen it happen before. It was a heart attack.’
    She stared out the picture window at Hollywood.
    â€˜How about a drink, Laurel?’
    â€˜No, thanks. Simeon and —’
    â€˜What kind of dog was it?’
    â€˜Some sort of hunting dog, I think.’
    â€˜Was there a licence-tag on his collar?’
    â€˜I don’t remember seeing any.’
    â€˜An anti-rabies tag?’
    â€˜I saw no tag except the paper one with Dad’s name on it.’
    â€˜Anything special about the dog-collar?’
    â€˜It couldn’t have cost more than seventy-five cents.’
    â€˜Just a collar.’ Ellery dragged over a chartreuse latticed blond chair and straddled it. ‘Go on, Laurel.’
    â€˜Simeon and Ichiro, our houseman, carried him up to his bedroom while I ran for the brandy, and Mrs. Monk, our housekeeper, phoned the doctor. He lives on Castilian Drive and he was over in a few minutes. Daddy didn’t die — that time.’
    â€˜Oh, I see,’ said Ellery. ‘And what did the paper in the silver box on