Roots of Evil (41 page)

Alice could not have done it on her own. If Ilena had not been at Ashwood that day – if Ilena had not seen Dreyer, or if she had not followed Alraune into the dressing-room – the plan could never have been made and would never have worked.

Ilena took in the situation at once, of course. Alice was to think later – when she could think again – that any other woman would have screamed, but Ilena, good, trusted friend, had shared the memories; she did not need any explanations and she did not scream. She saw Leo Dreyer lying in a messiness of blood, still moving feebly, clawing vainly at the air while dreadful choking grunting sounds issued from his lips, and she saw the stiletto that had been on the film set, still dripping blood, in Alraune’s small hand, and she understood at once what had happened.

Alice had backed against the wall, one hand clamped
over her mouth, to stop herself from screaming or being sick or both, and it was Ilena who snatched the stiletto from Alraune and thrust it on to a chair. She bent over Dreyer’s body – Alice thought she tried to staunch the flow of blood, and she saw Ilena feel for a pulse and a heartbeat.

Alice had lost all sense of time; she had no idea how long Ilena stayed like that, but at last she straightened up, and came over to Alice, taking her arms and shaking her slightly. ‘Listen to me, Lu. We have minutes – seconds, maybe – to think what to do.’

‘Is Dreyer dead?’

‘Dying,’ said Ilena, and Alice remembered with deep gratitude Ilena’s medical background. ‘The stiletto is deep into his brain and there is nothing I can do for him – there is nothing anyone can do for him. I think he has perhaps ten minutes left of life,’ said Ilena. ‘After that I hope he goes straight to hell, and I hope he can hear me saying it.’

The world was already steadying. I can deal with this, thought Alice. I am equal to this, just as I have been equal to all the other things in my life. She stood up a little straighter, and said, ‘Ilena. This is what we’re going to do.’

The two of them knew one another so well that a few hastily exchanged sentences were all that was needed for Alice to explain the plan.

Ilena got Alraune out of the room, and Alice locked the door and then ransacked her make-up drawer. Her mind was racing at top speed, thinking, planning,
discarding, wondering what she would do if the items she sought were not here.

But it was all right. Everything she needed was here – even down to the green-tinted face powder she had worn to indicate deep shock after discovering the body of her husband in the film. You could act your boots off to convince an audience you were distraught and despairing, but not even Bernhardt had been able to turn pale on cue. Alice sat down at the mirror and applied the powder, determinedly not looking at what lay in the corner, in its own blood.

She was just putting the box of powder away when there was a faint tap at the door. Ilena? Alice opened the door cautiously, and Ilena slid inside, closing the door and turning the key in the lock.

‘All right?’

‘Yes,’ said Ilena. ‘Alraune’s with Deborah – they’re going straight home. I asked one of the men to phone a taxi – I thought we might need the car. I told Deb you had been delayed.’

‘Had she seen anything, d’you think?’

‘I’m sure she hadn’t. She had wandered off to talk to some of the make-up girls. She wasn’t anywhere near this room.’

‘Thank God for that at any rate.’ Alice hesitated, and then said, ‘Alraune?’

‘Perfectly all right. He seemed to have no understanding that he had done anything wrong. And he was so quiet that people will probably not even remember he was here.’ Ilena knelt down by Dreyer.

‘Is he dead?’ asked Alice after a moment.

‘Yes,’ said Ilena, and there was just a split second when Alice had time to think how curious it was that the man she hated most in the world had died there on the floor while she was putting on her make-up.

Ilena stood up. ‘Lu, are you sure about doing this?’

‘Yes.’ Alice took a final look in the mirror. Marble-white skin, faint bruises under the eyes. She had draped a black silk stole around her shoulders because there had not been time to create the deathlike pallor on her arms. ‘Ilena, can you give me at least fifteen minutes before you let them break in?’

‘I think so. Yes. The door will be locked, so they’ll have to break it and that will take time anyway. Lu, what are you going to do?’

‘It’s better that you don’t know,’ said Alice. ‘It’s better that you’re as genuinely shocked as everyone. And Ilena—’

‘What?’

‘I can’t imagine ever having a better friend than you,’ said Alice.

‘Oh, rubbish,’ said Ilena, and whisked from the room.

An illusion, Alice’s mind was saying. You’re going to create an illusion, and part of that illusion is that you turned a little crazy at being confronted with Leo Dreyer – the man who condemned you to four years of living hell, who arranged that mass rape. That’s enough to send anyone temporarily mad, surely.

There was an old property chair in the corner: an elaborate thing – high-backed and ornate, with a glossy green satin covering. Alice pulled it forward and, setting her teeth, hooked her hands under Leo Dreyer’s arms
and half-dragged, half carried him to the chair. It was more difficult than she had expected to get him up on to the chair and prop him in a sitting position, but eventually she managed it. His head lolled to one side, and blood was still oozing from his eyes, so that Alice had to quench a spasm of revulsion. Don’t think about what you’re doing, just get on with it. She glanced at her wristwatch and saw with panic that six of the fifteen minutes had already ticked away.

Working swiftly, she lit two candles from the emergency box kept for power-cuts, and when the wax had softened a little she set them on the mirror-shelf, so that they were on each side of the chair. The tiny flames burned up, reflecting in the mirror and casting eerie shadows so that for a moment Dreyer’s dead face had life and movement. Dreadful. But it added the final touch of Grand Guignol, and when people broke in they would see Leo Dreyer seated upright in the chair, candles positioned as if for a religious ritual, his eyes torn out. And the baroness sprawled at his feet, the evidence of her suicide clear for them all to see.

There was another thing they would see, if they had the knowledge or the memories: the reproduction of the closing scene from an old film that had flickered shockingly and darkly across the silver screen all those years ago…A film that had made Lucretia von Wolff famous.

Alraune, catlike and soulless, tearing out the eyes of a man she hated, and then arranging his body in a macabre sacrificial pose.

There were eight minutes left. She had better concentrate on her own death. She would have preferred to use
fake blood – there was probably some in the wardrobe room next door, but there was no time to get it and she dare not be seen. There were, however, two bottles of nail varnish in her make-up drawer, both of them the deep blood-red that were the baroness’s trademark. Once out of the bottle the stuff would dry a bit too quickly and the smell would be dangerously distinctive, but the room already stank overpoweringly of Dreyer’s blood and there was an acrid tang from the candles as well. She unscrewed the top of each bottle and put them ready.

Six minutes left. She could hear Ilena’s voice now, telling people she was worried; Ilena’s voice was strident, but it was tinged with panic. Exactly right.

A quarrel, Ilena was saying. A dreadful quarrel between the baroness and Herr Dreyer – no, Ilena did not know the details. But they had locked the door, and certainly Herr Dreyer had been a camp commandant at Auschwitz, and there would be enmity between the two as a result.

Good! thought Alice. And perfectly true. She looked quickly round the room. Was there anything else to be done? Yes. The signs of a fight, of a fierce quarrel. She flung a table lamp hard against the long glass, shattering it, and breaking most of the smaller bulb-lights around its edges, which instantly made the room darker. What else? She swept brushes, make-up boxes – everything – to the ground, and for good measure overturned a small side table. From beyond the door, Ilena let out a screech.

‘We must stop them!’ shrieked Ilena. ‘They are fighting – they will kill each other—’

People were gathering outside the door; someone was
calling for a key, but someone else was saying, Oh, leave them to it; von Wolff’s famous for her tantrums.

Alice let out a gasping scream, and threw a cut-glass scent bottle at the door. The bottle smashed.

‘He is killing her!’ cried Ilena. ‘I know it! Please to hurry—’

‘We’d better break in,’ said a man’s voice – Alice thought it was the floor manager. ‘There’s certainly some kind of struggle going on in there.’

She lay down on the floor, near to the chair. Her heart was beating so fiercely that she could have believed it was outside her body altogether.
Beat-beat
…
Beat-beat
…As if someone was standing outside her head, knocking against her mind.
Beat-beat, let-me-in
…It would be the people outside trying to get in, of course.

But it was not coming from the door, it was coming from the adjoining room – from the small wardrobe-room next door. A soft light tapping. And a kind of scrabbling against the wall. Could it be mice, or even rats?
Tap-tap
…
Let-me-in
…Or was it,
Tap-tap
…
Let-meout
…
?

She had been avoiding the sight of Dreyer, but now she raised her head cautiously to look up at him. Supposing he was not dead, after all? Supposing he was scrabbling to get out of his chair? But he had not moved, and the candles were still in place, casting their uncanny shadows. A sick shudder went through Alice at the sight of his face, the blood forming a crust where the eyes had been. Was there time for her to check for a pulse? Because if he were to be still alive – if he survived long enough to tell people the truth about Alraune…?

But there was no time; people were trying to force the lock, and someone was saying it was no use doing that; they would have to kick the door in.

This was the cue. Alice lay down again, and reached for the nail varnish bottles. Would there be enough? There would have to be. And Dreyer’s blood was spattered everywhere, and some of it was on her hands anyway, from arranging him in the chair. From the doorway and in the dim light it should look all right.

At least the oddly sinister tapping had stopped, or if it had not, it had been blotted out by the sounds from outside. A new voice was saying, ‘Try kicking. A couple of good slams and the lock should snap. God knows what’s going on in there.’

As the second blow fell on the door, Alice tipped the contents of the first bottle over her left wrist, and then the contents of the second one over her right wrist, feeling the thick stickiness ooze over her hands. She thrust the emptied bottles in the folds of her shawl – she could trust Ilena to scoop them up before anyone saw them – tumbled her hair over her face, and thrust her arms straight out so that the glossy crimson fluid would be seen.

At the same moment the lock snapped and the door was flung open. Alice heard the cries of horror, and a genuine gasp from Ilena as she took in the scene. And then Ilena took charge, bossy and firm.

Please to keep well back, Ilena called out. She was a doctor and she would make an examination. It was already plain that Herr Dreyer was dead, and the police must be called, of course. For now the concern was
Madame. She bent over Alice – Alice felt the warmth of Ilena’s fingers feeling for a pulse at the base of her throat, and then for a heartbeat.

‘A faint pulse,’ cried Ilena. ‘But so very faint—Hand me something to use as a tourniquet – scarf – stocking, anything to stop the bleeding from the arteries.
Quickly
!’ Alice felt the tightness of silk being tied over each of her arms, and then something being wrapped around her wrists, covering the now-hardening nail varnish. She heard one of the men saying he would telephone for an ambulance.

‘No time for that,’ said Ilena brusquely. ‘There has been a massive blood loss. My car is outside; I will take her straight to my own hospital. You,’ Alice felt the imperious gesture as Ilena pointed to one of the men. ‘You will carry her for me, yes? But I must be with you, I must keep her arms well above her head.’

As the man – Alice thought it was the cameraman who had given Alraune a fruit drink – lifted her, someone said, ‘But what on earth happened here?’

‘I do not have time to speculate,’ said Ilena sharply. ‘But surely it is clear. The baroness killed a man who tortured her inside Auschwitz. I was in Auschwitz with her, and I know that for the truth. And then she tried to kill herself from remorse.’

‘We gave it out that I had died on the way to the hospital,’ said Alice to the listeners. ‘We walked an amazingly dangerous tightrope over the formalities, of course, but we had got over the first difficulty, which was to get away from Ashwood, and out of reach of the police.’

‘They would have insisted that the crime scene remained exactly as it was,’ said Liam.

‘Yes. And then the illusion would have been ruined, of course. As it was, we left Dreyer’s body in position for the police, and later Ilena issued a death certificate for me from her own hospital. She took appalling risks and she would have been struck off if any of it had ever come out, but it never did.’

‘But the police would need to see a body, wouldn’t they?’ asked Francesca.

‘Yes, but that was only another formality. They accepted Ilena’s death certificate unquestioningly. And Ilena simply gave me a hefty dose of veronal – that’s a sleeping drug that was fashionable in those days. Not a fatal amount, but enough to knock me out. The surgeon came in, took a cursory look, and bureaucracy was satisfied. Afterwards I got in a wheelchair and Ilena trundled it out of the hospital, and I drank several gallons of black coffee straight off to get rid of the veronal.’

‘What about a post-mortem? An inquest?’ said Lucy.

‘There never was a post-mortem. Ilena took over again – she could be astonishingly autocratic, and she staged a kind of Eastern European hysteria, and said after all I had been through in the camps, no one should touch my body except herself. She was a qualified doctor and quite well thought of, and the Ashwood police already had more than they could cope with. So they were more than happy to let her go ahead with that part of things. She provided a false report for the coroner – death from loss of blood was given as the cause of death. I forget the technical medical terms used.’