Roots of Evil (15 page)

After Edmund had gone, Lucy washed up the dishes, her mind churning.

That had been a very odd encounter. But she must surely have jumped to a wrong conclusion. ‘Oh, Lucy,
you’re such a romantic under that tough façade,’ Edmund had said, and his tone had been that of someone deliberately injecting a caress into his voice. A
seductive
caress. And then, in the kitchen, he had forced that embrace, and that had been the most un-Edmund thing of all, in fact Lucy had found it slightly sinister.

But there was nothing sinister about Edmund, just as there was nothing come-hitherish about him. She must have misread the whole thing. And he had spent most of his afternoon tussling with the police about being at Ashwood with Trixie Smith – yes, he had said something about wanting some human warmth after an upsetting day. He had probably been agonizing about Lucretia being splashed all over the Sunday newspapers because of this murder, as well; Edmund, of all the family, had always hated anything to do with Lucretia. Poor old Edmund, thought Lucy determinedly.

But it was still odd that he had so readily driven all the way to Ashwood that day to meet Trixie Smith. Not because of the distance, or because of the disruption it must have made to his carefully ordered life…

Because of Crispin.

It was rather a pity that Lucy had not responded to his approach, although there might be other opportunities. As Edmund drove out of London, he smiled in the driving mirror as he considered this possibility. And at least it had knocked her away from talking or thinking about Crispin, which had been the real aim. (Or had it? Be honest, Edmund. Yes, of course, it had!)

Once clear of London, the motorways were fairly light
on traffic, and his mind wound back to before dinner at Lucy’s flat, and replayed the police interview. He was inclined to think that had gone quite well, and he was as sure as he could be that DI Fletcher had not suspected anything, although there had been one or two sharp-edged comments that he had not cared for. Sarcastic bitch.

One thing had lodged in his mind from the interview, though, and that was the brief reference to Ashwood’s ownership. Ought he to look into that? But if it had changed hands several times, any links to the past were likely to have become long since buried beneath land registrations and transfers. Company secretaries might have said disinterestedly, Haunted, is it? But they would have gone on to say, Well, so long as it doesn’t affect the value. We’re not scheduled to develop for two years anyway. And then some finance wizard somewhere would have decided that it was not a viable proposition after all, and the site would have been off-loaded as quickly as possible.

Still, it would not hurt to request an official search of the Land Registry, although the land would not necessarily be registered – it depended on how recently it had changed hands. But Edmund could certainly make an application. If necessary he could say he had a client who might be interested in the place. Yes, he would do that first thing on Monday.

There had been no anticipation of what lay ahead when Alice reached the streets surrounding St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna.

They were badly lit, these streets, and seen by night, seen when you were utterly alone and almost penniless, they were sinister and imbued with a menace that Alice had never before encountered or even dreamed existed.

‘People talk about Vienna’s beauty, and how its streets smell of good coffee and croissants, and how the very pavements thrum with music,’ she said to the absorbed child curled into the chimney corner, firelight painting shadows in the dark rebellious hair. ‘And that is certainly one side of it. But the Vienna I stumbled into on the night after Miss Nina’s parents ordered me from the house was cold and unfriendly, and the people were bedraggled and impoverished. There were narrow cobbled streets and alleys with stone arches overhead,
and unexpected little flights of stairs leading down to cellars…It was still Vienna, but it was so different from the Vienna I had known that I began to think I had fallen into a completely new world.’

‘Oh, I can understand that. Because—’

‘Yes? Whatever it was, you can say it. You can say anything to me.’

‘I know. I was going to say that when I came here it felt like coming into another world. Not just because it’s different to Pedlar’s Yard, although it is. It’s more than that. To start with I thought it was this house, only now that I’ve lived here for a bit I don’t think it is. I think it’s you. But I don’t really understand why.’

This was the most intimate speech ever made since coming here, and there was a sudden stab of anxiety. What if Alice doesn’t like me saying that? What if she doesn’t understand?

But of course she understood, just as she always did understand. She said, slowly, ‘I think it might be because the whole world believes me to be dead. And,’ she said, ‘the whole world must continue to believe that.’

It was amazingly easy to call up the memories for this unusual child and to paint the word-pictures, although it was necessary to be selective; to employ a little censorship. The word made Alice smile rather wryly.

On that first night and on several nights afterwards, she had slept in a doorway in one of those very alleyways in the cathedral’s shadow. There had been others there with her; others who were homeless and hopeless. They had not exactly welcomed her, but there had been
a curious comradeship. They were the dregs and remnants of humanity, and the rejected and the unwanted, but Alice had felt oddly comfortable with them. Because I, too, am rejected and unwanted.

But even with the casual fellowship of the homeless, it had taken a good deal of fortitude to get through those days. She had continued doggedly to search for the tall narrow house, because surely he would help her, surely he would not let her become one of the lost and nameless ones – the beggars and the paupers and the street musicians who wove their own melodies into the city streets. But she had known by the end of the second day that she was not going to find it. Vienna was too big, too bewildering, too intricately threaded with mazes of streets and unexpected courtyards.

By the end of a week, when her tiny savings were used up, she had gone with some of the other homeless people to stand near to the cathedral entrance, to wait for the rich visitors who came to sight-see. Begging. Am I reduced to this? Has
he
reduced me to this, that man with the golden-brown eyes? But by that time she had discovered that when you are sick and dizzy from hunger, and when your stomach knots into cramp-pains with emptiness, you no longer care. You would steal if you thought you could get away with it. You would do other things, as well as steal…

The sumptuous Grand Tours of the last century were no longer
de rigueur
for the sons of the wealthy, but enough of them still travelled around Europe as part of their education, and a great many came to Vienna. When one or two of them stopped their carriages and walked
across to her to make their sly suggestions, Alice had at first shaken her head and backed away. But later, she had shrugged and had gone with them to their hotel rooms. It meant a certain amount of bravado; it meant braving the rich plush reception halls and the stony stares of the hotel staff – some of them disapproving, some smilingly knowing. But it also meant she could eat for several days, and after the first few times she acquired the trick of donning an air of disdain, and of walking arrogantly through the hotels. Accepting a few more offers of the same kind meant she could take a room in the poorest lodging-house.

Most of the men were well-off travellers from other countries, but a few were the smart, sharp German army officers who were so often to be seen in Vienna nowadays. Alice discovered that almost all the men liked to talk about themselves – about their lives and their families and their work if they had any work – but that the German officers did not. They were courteous enough and most of them were fairly considerate, but there was a rigid silence about their army duties and their regiments. Almost as if they counted themselves as part of a secret service.

But it did not matter who the men were or what they looked like, because Alice already knew that was something that would never matter again. Unless the man in bed with you had golden-brown eyes and a quick eager way of talking…Unless he could make music so beautiful it would melt your bones and make you want to cry when it stopped…

‘Somehow I survived,’ she said, staring into the fire, no longer fully aware of the comfortable English sitting-room
or the listening child. ‘Somehow I lived through those bad days and I emerged from them stronger. Remember that – enduring bad times in your life, which is something everyone has to do – makes you stronger. What happened to you in Pedlar’s Yard will make you very strong indeed.’

It was not quite possible to believe this yet, but there was a vague feeling that it might one day be possible. For the moment, the important thing was Alice’s story.

‘So you got through the bad times. And then—’

The smile came again. ‘And then,’ she said in a much lighter voice so that it was almost as if a different person sat there, ‘and then, my dear, there came a day when I knew I must leave behind that poor beaten thing who had loved and lost and been hurt. I knew I must find a way of shaking off the darkness. I had a little money stored up by then: not very much, but a little.’ A pause.

‘There’s a bit there you aren’t telling, isn’t there? Is it about how you got the money?’

‘Yes, there’s a bit there I’m not telling, and yes, it is about how I got the money. But one day I will tell you. When you’re a bit older.’

‘OK. Don’t stop the story though.’

‘By that time,’ said Alice, ‘there was no one to know or care where I went or what I did. So I vowed that I would become an entirely different person.’ The slanting smile came again.

‘I also vowed,’ said Alice softly, ‘that if I could become another person, it would be someone who would make people sit up and take notice. A person who would make a stir in the world.’

A stir in the world. The idea had been exciting and frightening – can I do it? How can I do it? What could I become?

Her parents had been so pleased when Alice had gone into what they called good service, although they had been anxious when, later on, the family had asked Alice to go with them to that foreign place. They were nervous of Abroad, although Alice’s father had been in France during the Great War – Alice had only been a child at the time, of course – and once they had gone on a day trip to Ostend, which they had not much cared for.

But it would be all right for Alice to travel Abroad in this way because she would be with the family, and the family would look after her. Alice’s mother had been a parlourmaid in the house of a titled gentleman; her father had been his lordship’s valet. They had got married late in their lives, doing so timidly and unobtrusively, and Alice had been born a good many years afterwards, taking them by surprise since they had ceased to hope the good Lord would send them a child.

But altogether they had been in service for forty years, they said proudly, and they knew that the upper classes looked after their servants. Why, only look at how his lordship had given them something called an annuity when they had reached the end of their working lives. They did not rightly understand how it worked, but what it meant was that they were given a sum of money every week for as long as they lived. Oh no, it was not a large amount, but the rent of this little house was very cheap, and if necessary, Alice’s mother could always do a little plain sewing for the ladies who lived on the Park; her
father could take on a bit of carpentering. They were very grateful to his lordship for taking care of them.

They were gentle and unworldly and unambitious and trusting, and Alice was torn between exasperation and love for them.

Respectable service. Honourable work. What was so honourable about one human being waiting on another? What was respectable about fetching and carrying for the aristocracy who thought themselves too grand even to dress themselves? And at the end of it all, being grateful for a few miserable shillings every week in your old age, and even then having to take in sewing? All that when you had worked for more than forty years, every day from six in the morning until midnight! For goodness’ sake, hadn’t that kind of humility and gratitude been blown away by the war, by feminism, by women gaining the vote?

Whatever else I may do in the future, vowed Alice during those days in Vienna, outside of illness or old age I will never again wait on another human, and I will never expect another human being to wait on me!

In the small room she had rented in the Old Quarter, just off a cobbled alley, rather sinisterly named the
Blutgasse
– Blood Alley – she considered how difficult it would be to throw off the quiet lady’s maid and replace her with a completely new person. It was exciting and terrifying, but if she did it, it might mean she would no longer have to submit to the prodding hands and insistent bodies of all those nameless men in anonymous hotel rooms.

I could be anything and anyone I wanted, thought Alice with a little thrill of excitement.

What she had not been prepared for was how much fun it was to plan a whole new identity. All it needed was a little money, and a little resolve. Not much more.

Alice Wilson, that nice, well-behaved girl, had always looked exactly what she was. An English girl of the servant class, respectable, quietly dressed, her complexion as God had made it, save for a light dusting of rice powder on her nose when it was her day off, because only females of a certain type – which meant tarts and actresses – painted their faces. Well, all right, and bright young things who danced to jazz, and painted their mouths and showed their ankles.

Alice considered her appearance. She had unremarkable eyes, somewhere between grey and green, and slightly fluffy mid-brown hair. Pretty hair, people had sometimes said, indulgently. A pretty girl. Yes, but I don’t want to be pretty any longer. Prettiness is for good girls. For nicely brought-up girls who would not dream of going to men’s rooms, and doing with them the thing that should not be done until after marriage…(No man will ever respect you if you don’t remain pure, Alice’s mother had said. No man will ever want to marry you.)

There were other things that nicely brought-up girls did not do, as well. They would not, for instance, dream of dyeing their hair. But Alice dyed hers that day, buying the preparation from a tiny shop, trying not to feel guilty. The process of darkening her hair to a shiny raven-black was complex and messy, but after it was done and her hair had dried in the warm afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows of the little room, she brushed it
smooth so that it fell in glossy wings on each side of her cheeks. And then she stared at herself in the small oblong of mirror which hung over the weatherbeaten dressing-table.

The transformation was startling. It was beyond her wildest hopes. She was almost a different person. But was ‘almost’ enough? She must be unrecognizable to everyone who had ever known her. All right, what else could she do? How about cosmetics? Greatly daring, she tried the effects of outlining her eyes with kohl and of darkening her lashes with mascara. At once the nothing-coloured eyes became mysterious and slanting.
Good.
Now for the lips. She applied a dark, mulberry-hued lipstick, getting it crooked the first couple of times, and having to wipe it off and start again. It felt dreadfully sinful but it also felt exciting, and at the third or fourth attempt she got it right. This time, when she considered her reflection in the mirror, she was aware of a little thrill of delight, tinged with fear. Is that really me? And dare I go into the streets looking like this? Yes, said the rebellious little voice in her mind, yes, you dare, and yes you will.

So now, what about clothes? As Miss Nina’s maid she had worn a neat black frock with a crisp apron – plain for daytime, frilled muslin for evening. On her day off she had worn her good navy serge in winter, with a cloche hat, and for summer there was a brown linen costume, with a straw boater. When she had tied an orange ribbon around the boater’s brim the master’s butler had said, My word, Alice, that looks very dashing, but the housekeeper who oversaw the female servants
had tutted and thought it a bit fast, and said Alice was not to wear it to church this Sunday.

But the person Alice intended to become would not wear brown linen (even with the orange ribbon on her bonnet), and she certainly would not wear navy serge either. She counted her money out again, nodded to herself, and bundling her hair under the navy hat so that no one would see the halfway stage of her transformation, went out to one of the little backstreet clothes shops.

She knew about these shops that existed in any city and that bought and sold the cast-offs given to maids by the rich, bored ladies they served. She had, in fact, entered one or two of them herself after Miss Nina had rather pettishly given her gowns. ‘I’m bored with this thing, Alice, and the colour is ugly. You might as well have it.’ Never once wondering where a maid would have the opportunity to wear a silk dance frock or a velvet tea-gown. In England Alice had done what most maids did; she had accepted the cast-offs politely, and then sold them. Now she would enter the second-hand shops in Vienna, but this time she would be buying, not selling.