Roots of Evil (37 page)

And then he was there.

His misgivings increased at once. The house was completely unremarkable; it was the kind of house that might have originally belonged to an estate worker in the days when there were lords of the manor. You saw dozens of similar properties the length and breadth of England, often nicely converted but sometimes crumbling into ruin. This one seemed to have been quite well looked after, but…

But surely this could not be right.
Had
he got the address wrong after all, or did the owner of the legendary Ashwood Studios really live in this ordinary house, in this remote Lincolnshire village? Perhaps it was some elderly recluse, or an eccentric industrialist whose private retreat this was. Yes, that was a possibility, and it might explain Ashwood’s own dereliction as well. But clearly his carefully rehearsed plan about a client and land purchase was not going to work.

It’s all right
, said Crispin.
This is clearly a private house, but just remember that Michael Sallis has the phone number, so he must know whoever lives here
…

After a moment Edmund got out of the car, and went through the gate and along the little path. The house, seen closer to, was neat and clean, and the gardens were tidy. But there was a quiet feeling to it; the feeling you got from a house that had been empty for a long time, or that had only had one inhabitant for several years.
Nothing stirred as Edmund went through the gate and down the path to the front door.

He plied the old-fashioned door-knocker and waited. For several minutes nothing happened and another possibility occurred to him. Perhaps the owners had moved out, and the Land Registry had given him out-of-date information. That would explain a good deal. But then there was a flurry of footsteps from within, and the door was opened.

A plump, no-nonsense lady with short hair and weatherbeaten skin, but with the faint tilt of the cheekbones that suggested a dash of Eastern European ancestry, stood in the doorway, looking enquiringly at Edmund.

She was dressed plainly in a skirt and sweater but there was just the suggestion of hospital starch about her, and of thermometers and stainless steel bowls. A nurse? No, but something close to it. At once the plan that had been shifting its contours in Edmund’s mind dropped into place, and he saw his way forward.

‘I’m sorry I was a few minutes coming to the door,’ said the brisk lady. ‘Can I help you at all?’ She spoke English smoothly, but there was a slight inflection that emphasized the faint foreign air.

Edmund’s whole body was thrumming with nervous anticipation, but he smiled Crispin’s smile, and introduced himself as Mr Edwards, apologizing for intruding. A business journey from London to a place just north of Rotherham, he said, and he happened to have mentioned it to his good friend, Michael Sallis, earlier in the week. Michael had suggested he might break his
journey here since it was only a few miles out of his way. And, said Edmund, he understood that visitors were always welcome.

‘Oh, how very nice,’ said the woman. ‘I always like to see a new face. Mr Sallis comes up about once a month, but of course he phones as well, just to see if there’s any news.’

‘So I believe,’ said Edmund, picking his way carefully, but thankful that he seemed to be striking the right note.

‘A bit of company always helps as well,’ said the woman. ‘Come along in. There’s very little change, of course, but we stay positive. Would you like a cup of coffee? – I was just thinking I would make some for myself.’

‘That would be very kind.’

‘We’ve converted one of the downstairs rooms,’ said the woman, leading Edmund along the hall. ‘Friendlier, somehow, than being tucked away upstairs. And it’s at the back of the house, so we can open the French windows on to the garden in summer. I’ll take you through.’

It was a large room, and in the summer it would be filled with sunshine from the garden beyond. But on a dark autumnal day the shadows clustered everywhere, and there was a feeling of immense quietness, as if hardly anything had happened here for a very long time. A high, narrow, hospital-type bed stood near the window.

Edmund paused just inside the door, waiting for the woman’s footsteps to die away. Had she gone back to the kitchen? Yes, that was the sound of a door opening
and closing. Then he was on his own for a brief space.

Except that he was not on his own at all. There was someone lying in the high narrow bed. Someone who lay very still, and whose light papery breathing barely stirred the covers. As his eyes adjusted to the shadows, he began to make out colours, shapes, features…

There was no movement from the bed, barely even any indication of life. Sleeping? But as he moved to stand by the bed, he could see that this was deeper than sleep. You’re very far away, said Edmund silently. You haven’t quite died and I don’t know if you’re drugged or in a semi-coma, but you’re not really in this world any longer. Beneath all these thoughts, an immense tidal wave of emotion was sweeping over him because he knew, definitely and unquestionably, who this was.

The legend. The person about whom all those stories had been told, and upon whom so many of those rumours had focused. Edmund did not understand how it had happened, or how the legend had wound up in this remote corner of England, but he knew who was lying in the narrow bed.

As he stared down, he was strongly aware that Crispin was pouring into his mind, filling him up, so that all the guilt and the fear scalded through Edmund’s whole body. He thought he gasped with the pain of it, and he must certainly have made some sound, because the movement he had been watching for came from the bed. A light stirring, and then a half-turning of the head.

You’re not yet so far away that you don’t sense I’m here, thought Edmund. But is it me you’re sensing? Or is it Crispin? Because it’s Crispin who’s smiling down at
you, and it’s Crispin who’s reaching into the coat pocket for the syringe, and who’s saying to me, Isn’t it fortunate that we brought this with us, dear boy…

It isn’t me in this room any longer, thought Edmund. It’s Crispin. It’s Crispin who’s about to sever this remaining link to the shameful past. The voice inside his head was very clear, and he could hear exactly what Crispin was saying.

One last murder to commit, that was what Crispin was saying. One last murder, and then we can be safe.

And this murder, dear boy, is going to be the easiest of them all…

As he bent over the bed, the door opened behind him.

Lucy and Francesca had not been able to keep up with the police cars, which had hurtled away at top speed and vanished into the swirling traffic and the snaking network of roads.

‘I didn’t think we would,’ said Fran. ‘But I think we’re on the right track.’

After they left the motorway the roads narrowed and were harder to negotiate, but the signs were still clear. They were going deep into the fenlands, and if the telegraph poles and the occasional electrical pylon or cellphone-mast could have been blocked out, they could both have believed themselves to have somehow gone back to medieval times.

‘I’ve never been to this part of England before,’ said Lucy. ‘Have you?’

‘Fen country. No, I haven’t. But there’s masses of history out here and lovely bits of folklore. The Babes
in the Wood in Wayland Forest and the
Paston Letters
, and some of the settings for
David Copperfield
. I might set up a project for my sixth-formers on all the associations of the place,’ said Francesca thoughtfully. ‘Where are we now?’

‘We need to go straight across the next traffic island, and then turn sharp right after about two miles.’

‘It’s quite well signposted,’ said Fran, negotiating the traffic island. ‘But I’m glad Michael wrote down that list of villages, or we’d have been hopelessly lost.’

The names on the signposts were like something out of an old-fashioned children’s fairy-story. Grimoldby and Ludford Parva and Osgodby. A fat little country bus jogged along behind them for a few miles, and then turned off down a lane marked Scamblesby.

‘You don’t suppose we’ve fallen into Beatrix Potter territory and not noticed it?’ said Francesca.

‘It feels like that, doesn’t it? Or is it nearer to Lewis Carroll?’

‘Straight down the rabbit-hole and through the looking-glass,’ agreed Fran.

They were passing through stretches of flat, reed-fringed marshlands now, and once or twice there was a feeling that the skies might be moving downwards, blurring with the land. Lucy thought the winter days would be very short here but memories would be long. All kinds of forgotten secrets might live out here for a very long time.

She had thought they would need to ask for directions, but in the event it was easy enough to follow Michael’s hastily-scrawled notes.

‘The house must be along there,’ said Fran.

‘Yes. It isn’t quite what I was expecting though,’ said Lucy, and as Fran turned the car into the narrow lane she thought: we’re going back into the past, I can feel that we are.

But I don’t know whose past it is.

Crispin had been furious when the woman attendant came back into the bedroom, just as he was reaching for the syringe. He had whipped round and called her an ugly name – almost spitting it out at her – and Edmund had been horrified. He had wanted to apologize to the woman; to explain that Crispin had been startled, but he found it difficult to make himself heard because Crispin was smothering him. Keep your stupid mouth shut, Edmund – that was what Crispin had said. Keep quiet and let me deal with this bitch. It was worrying to find Crispin so strongly in control and it was also a bit frightening.

But the woman seemed not to have heard the epithet and she seemed not to have noticed that Crispin was glaring at her with his hands curling into claws. She smiled and said the coffee was ready, and perhaps he would like to come into the dining-room to drink it. As she led the way out of the big bedroom, she talked in an ordinary voice, asking about his journey here: had the roads been crowded? It was a nightmare to drive anywhere these days, wasn’t it?

After that swift eruption of rage died down Crispin became his normal courteous self once again. He knew how to handle women, and he knew how to charm and
flatter – Edmund had always admired that in Crispin. He sipped the coffee which was strong and sharp, and listened to Crispin setting himself out to charm this woman. It was only as the coffee was finished and the cup set down that a faint concern crept in. Was Crispin talking a little too much? There was a slight blurriness to his voice, but every so often a sneering arrogant note came to the fore, which Edmund disliked. Crispin had every right to be arrogant – he was the golden charming young man of Edmund’s childhood and everyone had loved him – but it did not do to let that arrogance come to the surface. It was always better to present a deferential façade; to fool people into thinking you were quiet and modest and entirely trustworthy. You needed to be diffident, that was the word.

Edmund tried to remind Crispin to be diffident and modest, but Crispin’s voice became louder and louder. It went on and on – like a fly buzzing against a window-pane. Irritating. Edmund had never before found Crispin irritating, but this torrent of words was starting to be very annoying indeed.

He was thankful when the sound of a phone ringing somewhere in the house reached him, and the woman had to go out to answer it, leaving Edmund on his own with Crispin.

Lucy tried to concentrate on what Inspector Fletcher was saying. They were in a small and rather cosy room in the quiet house; Michael was in a deep armchair and Inspector Fletcher had taken a high-backed chair by the window. Fran had curled up on the window-seat, as if
she was trying to give Lucy some privacy but was trying not to be obvious about it. An unknown woman with an efficient manner but kind eyes had let them in, and at a signal from Michael had taken a chair near to the fireplace.

Lucy had asked if Edmund was here, and Inspector Fletcher and Michael had exchanged quick glances. Then the inspector said, carefully, ‘Edmund got here well ahead of us, as we thought he would. But I’m afraid that he is – very disturbed indeed. I’m so sorry about it, Miss Trent.’

‘Disturbed?’ said Lucy blankly, and Fletcher looked at Michael, as if she might be thinking this would come better from him.

With the air of a man taking a run at a high fence, Michael said, ‘I don’t know how to explain without it sounding utterly bizarre, Lucy. But I’ve talked to Elsa – I did introduce Elsa, didn’t I—?’

‘You did,’ said the woman with high cheekbones, who was studying Lucy with interest.

‘And as far as we can all make out, Edmund believes himself to be Crispin. Or to be under Crispin’s influence,’ said Michael.

‘Crispin? You mean Edmund’s father?’ said Lucy, not questioning yet how Michael knew about Crispin. ‘You do mean that?’ She looked at the woman called Elsa.

‘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.

‘What will happen to Edmund?’ asked Francesca into the silence.

‘I should think some sort of long-term treatment will be necessary,’ said the inspector.

‘Not – prison?’

‘On the present showing, I think it’s unlikely that he’d be considered fit to stand trial.’

Edmund guilty of murder, but unfit to stand trial. Edmund shut away in some dreadful asylum. And if only one could get rid of an appalling image of Edmund, madness glaring from his eyes, stalking that poor wretched Trixie Smith, bringing the skewer down on her face, it might be possible to feel deeply sorry for him. To dispel this image, Lucy said, ‘Elsa – you said you recognized Edmund. Could you explain that, please?’ She was not yet quite sure who Elsa was, but presumably at some stage it would be possible to ask.

‘My mother had photographs dating back – oh, many years,’ said Elsa. ‘Some of them showed Crispin Fane. And Edmund is very like Crispin to look at.’

‘Crispin? Your mother knew Crispin?’

‘My mother was in a place of hell with the Baroness von Wolff,’ said Elsa. ‘It forged a bond between them – the kind of bond that never breaks, not even in death. I know a great deal about your family, Lucy.’

‘Elsa’s mother was called Ilena,’ said Michael. ‘She was Polish. After the war she became a doctor – a very good one.’

‘Medicine is a tradition in my family,’ said Elsa composedly. ‘Me, I am just a nurse, nothing any grander than that.’

Lucy looked at her. ‘You said – a place of hell?’

‘Yes. My mother and Lucretia von Wolff were in Auschwitz together.’

Auschwitz.

As if a signal had been given, Michael stood up. ‘Francesca, could you and Elsa stay in here for a little while?’ he said.

‘Of course.’

‘Thank you. Lucy, if you’re up to it, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. It won’t be very easy and it might be a shock. But since we’re in this house—Well, anyway, I think you’d better know about it.’

‘Who is it?’ Lucy could not keep the apprehension out of her voice. ‘Who am I going to meet?’

‘My father,’ said Michael. ‘Alraune.’

Alraune. The uneasy legend. The smear of darkness on the edge of consciousness. The ghost-child named for the half-mythical mandragora root.

As they entered the big room at the back of the house Lucy was glad of Michael’s presence. But her heart was
pounding and she felt as if she had been running very fast and very hard. I’m about to see the legend, she thought. The fable, the semi-monster from my childhood. ‘A childhood so bizarre and so bitterly tragic that it’s best not repeated,’ Aunt Deb had once said. ‘Alraune, living or dead, is better left in peace…’