Roots of Evil (21 page)

‘You won’t tell anyone about this, will you?’ his father was saying. ‘You won’t ever tell anyone.’

‘No,’ said Edmund slowly. ‘No, I won’t tell anyone. No one outside this room will ever know that you’re a murderer.’

The shadows seemed to creep closer, and to reach out to claw the words and take them into their darkness, and then return them.

You’re-a-murderer
…
You’re-a-murderer
…

‘You’ll be quite safe,’ said Edmund in the same soft voice, and it was only then that the clutching hands loosened their grip, and Crispin Fane fell back on the pillows, exhausted.

Shortly after midnight Crispin seemed to slip into an uneasy slumber, and after a few moments Edmund went out of the room. He had not eaten or drunk anything since midday; he would make himself a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

There was hardly any food in the house, so whatever the doctor had said, he would have to go out tomorrow. He was just grating some rather stale cheese when the floorboards creaked overhead, and he went back out to the stairs. He was halfway up when he saw his father’s outline, pitifully frail in the thin pyjamas, making a slow, fumbling way across the landing. There was a moment when the overhead light turned Crispin Fane’s hair to
the shining red-gold it had been in Edmund’s childhood. He waited, and saw his father go into the bathroom at the far end, and close the door.

Nothing wrong with that, said Edmund’s mind. If he feels well enough to walk to the loo on his own, that’s perfectly all right. He went back down to the kitchen, and heard the taps running in the old-fashioned bathroom that his father had never bothered to modernize. After a few moments the tank began to refill. The pipes were slow, clanking things, and the tank always took quite a long time to fill up; when Edmund was very small he used to lie awake listening to it, wondering how the water knew when it had reached the top and had to stop. Sometimes the rushing of the water seemed to go on and on.

It went on and on tonight, almost drowning the single chime from the old carriage clock that had belonged to Edmund’s mother. One a.m. The smallest of the small hours. The murdered walk, his father had said. If that was true, this was surely the hour when they would do so. Who would they be, those murdered ones? The long-ago Conrad Kline, killed by a jealous boy? Mariana Trent and Bruce, screaming as the flames burned their flesh, with the appalling stench of burning human flesh, like meat cooking in an oven filling up the night…But I never meant that to happen, cried Edmund in silent anguish. Yes, but it happened all the same. It was your fault. And that makes you a murderer…

Crispin had been a murderer, as well. He had killed Conrad Kline. But what about the other man – Leo Dreyer? Who had killed him? Had it been Lucretia after all?

The slopping water filling up the tank had died away, and in the silence the ticking of the carriage clock seemed unnaturally loud.
Tick-tick
…
The murdered walk
…Crispin had said that, as well.
Tick-tick
…
They walk, they walk
…
Burned alive or stabbed in the face, they always walk
…

He carried his sandwich and the mug of coffee upstairs. His father’s room was still empty, the bedclothes pushed back. Edmund set down the plate and the mug, and went along the landing.

The bathroom door was not locked, but when he called out to know if his father was all right, there was no response. I don’t want to go any further with this, thought Edmund. I truly don’t. But I’ll have to. I’ve called out to him – that’s a reasonable thing to do, isn’t it? He took a deep breath, and opened the door.

The bathroom was full of pale thick vapour, as it always was if someone took a long hot bath and forgot to open the window, and for a moment Edmund could only make out the shapes of the washbasin and the deep old bath and the cloudiness of the misted mirrors. But here and there the mists were tinged with red, like clouds reflecting a vivid sunset.

It was a large bathroom by modern standards: the house had been built at a time when space was not at a premium, and one of the bedrooms had been converted some time before Edmund was born. For a moment he could not see any sign of his father, but then the mistiness cleared a little as the cooler air from the open door began to disperse it. The pulsing fear that had been beating inside him changed key, and began to drum against his temples.

Because there was someone lying in the bath.

There was someone lying absolutely still in the bath, the head turned to the door as if watching for someone or something it would never see again. For the space of six heartbeats the lisping trickle of water still dribbling into the tank whispered all round the room, seeming to mock the confused panic in Edmund’s mind.
S-s-someone lying in the bath
…
S-someone with blood-dabbled hands, and blood-smeared che-s-s-t, and someone who’s grinning through gaping bloodied lips-s-s
…

Someone who had deliberately run a hot bath, and then had got into it and was grinning with macabre triumph at having cheated the world. The tiles around the bath were splattered with blood, and there was blood on the damp tiled floor. The razor lay on the tiles.

How am I supposed to interpret what I’m seeing? thought Edmund. I must concentrate, I must work out exactly what I’m looking at, because they’ll want to know – police and doctors, they’ll all want to know. So what am I seeing? I’m seeing that he’s smiling – that’s the first thing. But his mouth’s in the wrong place.

His mind finally snapped out of the frozen paralysis, so that he could think logically again. His father was not smiling, of course. His lips had a blueish tinge and they were slightly open. They were expressionless, giving nothing away. It was the other lips directly underneath, the lips of the deep, gaping wound across his throat that curved into that dreadful grin, and that glistened wetly with blood…

He’s cut his throat, thought Edmund. That’s what’s happened. He found the old-fashioned razor and then
he got into a hot bath, and he slashed the razor across his throat. That’s what I’m seeing. I’m seeing someone who no longer wanted to live.

A dozen different emotions were scalding his entire body, but at last he walked across the damp tiles. The hot tap was still dribbling into the bath; moving like an automaton he turned it off, and then reached into the still-warm water for one of the flaccid hands, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. And Crispin’s skin was unmistakably lifeless. Dead meat. But I’ve got to make sure, thought Edmund. How about a heartbeat? It was unexpectedly distasteful to reach into the warm water to touch the bloodied chest, but it was necessary. Don’t think, said his mind, just do it. You’ve got to make certain beyond all doubt that he’s dead. If you phone an ambulance now, that’s what they’ll tell you to do. The flat of your hand against the left side of his chest. A bit higher. That’s about right. And if there’s the least sign of anything beating—

But there was nothing at all, and at last Edmund stepped back from the bath, suddenly realizing that he was shaking violently, and that despite the warm damp bathroom he was icily cold. He leaned back against the wall, wrapping his arms around his body as if it might bring back some warmth, staring down at the thing that had been his father. For several moments he fought to remain in control, because he must not give way to nerves or confusion, he must
not
…And looked at logically, there was nothing in here that could possible hurt him or threaten him.

Or was there?

The trembling had stopped and he was just gathering himself together to go downstairs to the phone, to summon ambulances or doctors, or whoever else might need to come out to deal with a dead man in the middle of the night. It was then that he caught a flicker of movement on the rim of his vision, and he spun round at once, his heart leaping up into his throat. Someone here? Someone hiding in the tiny bathroom, standing in the pale mistiness watching him? He remembered what his father had said earlier. ‘Listen,’ he had said. ‘It sounds like someone creeping up the stairs.’ Edmund felt the blood start to pulsate inside his head again.

And then he realized that what he had seen was his own reflection in the big oak-framed mirror above the washbasin. A small nervous laugh escaped his lips, releasing some of the throbbing tension. Only his own reflection.

Or was it? He peered through the wisps of vapour. The surface of the mirror was still patchily misted, but wasn’t it a subtly different Edmund who stood there; an Edmund who was somehow more definite, more vivid? An Edmund whose hair seemed almost to catch an unseen shaft of light, so that it gleamed faintly red…

Edmund moved one hand experimentally, and the other Edmund moved his hand also, but not quite in synchronization, more as if he was sketching a half mocking, half amused salute from the depths of the glass.

I’ll always be with you, Edmund
…

The memory made Edmund’s lips twist in a brief acknowledgement that was almost a smile. At once the image in the mirror gave the same near-smile as well,
and this time there was no doubt about it; this time the smile was definitely not his own. It was the smile of a young man who once upon a time had possessed sufficient charm to attract a wicked, mischievous lady – a lady with skin like porcelain and hair like polished silk…A young man who had killed and escaped the consequences of killing…A young man with hair the colour of honey with the sun in it, and a smile filled with charm…

Crispin. Crispin standing in the mirror’s smoky depths, looking out at him. Speaking to Edmund inside his mind.

I’ll always be with you
, said Crispin’s voice, just as it had done when Edmund was very small.
Remember that, Edmund
…
You won’t need anyone else, because whatever you do and wherever you go, I’ll always be there to help you
…

After a long, long time Edmund remembered that there was still a world beyond the house, and things that must be done, and somehow he got to the phone to dial the GP’s night service. An impersonal voice answered and Edmund said, in a perfectly calm tone, that his father had just died, and that he was on his own and he had no idea what he should do but he thought he had better start with his father’s doctor.

Yes, he was quite sure that life was extinct, he said. No, there was no possibility of survival whatsoever. So could the doctor – or one of his partners – come out as quickly as possible? Yes, he understood that it might take a little time to locate whoever was on call. No, of course
he would not leave the house in the meantime. He wondered if the owner of the voice suspected him of preparing to zap off into the night to whoop it up somewhere while rigor mortis set in on his father’s corpse.

But he listened to the explanation about calling 999, and then said coldly that in view of the fact that his father was undoubtedly dead there did not seem much point in summoning the emergency services who might be better employed elsewhere, to say nothing of waking the entire neighbourhood with sirens and flashing lights. What he needed, he said, was a doctor and an undertaker, and he did not mind in which order. The voice appeared to find this an inappropriate remark, and said primly that an on-call doctor would be there as soon as possible.

Edmund had to wait three hours for a very young, very rumpled-looking duty doctor to arrive. He spent the hours sitting on the landing floor, with the bathroom door propped open, watching his father’s body, trying not to wonder what he would do if that the dreadful head with the two sets of gaping lips – one pallid, the other blood-caked – suddenly turned towards the door.

While he waited the carriage clock downstairs ticked away the minutes and then the hours.
Tick-tick
…
Always-be-with-you-Edmund
…
Tick-tick
…
The-murdered-ones-walk-Edmund
…

The murdered ones. Conrad Kline. Leo Dreyer. Mariana and Bruce Trent.

Edmund listened to the ticking rhythmic voices for a long time, and very slowly he began to understand that
Crispin – the real Crispin who had been young and good-looking and full of confidence – was filling him up, and he knew that Crispin would stay with him no matter what he, Edmund, did. He could hear Crispin’s voice inside the ticking clock, and inside the goblin-chuckling of the rain as it ran down the gutters.
We’re both murderers, Edmund
…
We’ve both killed someone
…
So I’ll stay with you, Edmund
…
I’ll make sure you’re safe
…

Shortly before dawn Crispin’s body finally began to stiffen, slipping down in the cold water so that it washed against the sides of the bath, adding its slopping voice to that of the ticking clock.
The murdered walk, Edmund
…
I’ll always be with you, Edmund
…
Always be with you
…
Whatever you do and wherever you go, I’ll always be there to help you
…

After the fire Lucy had not minded living with her father’s family, who were kind and generous, and who made her part of them. There were holidays with Aunt Deborah, who talked to Lucy about Mariana, which Lucy liked. Looking back, she thought she had eventually managed to have a reasonably happy childhood, although she had been glad when she was old enough to leave home and work in London and have her own flat.

But the trouble with memories was that even though you fought them as hard as you could, they were sometimes too strong for you; they could lie quietly in a corner of your mind – sometimes for years and years – and then pounce on you. Lucy knew very well that there were some memories that were dangerous and painful, and that must be kept out at all costs.

Alice had always known that the past was something that might be dangerous, and she had always known, as well, that the ghosts of that past might one day be responsible for destroying the careful, false edifice she had built up. It would only take one wrong move, or one unexpected moment of recognition, and the baroness’s career would be over.

But what Alice had not known was that there were other ghosts in the world who might destroy far more than a fake identity. Ghosts who were eagle-talon cruel and who stalked nations and haunted entire generations, and ghosts who bore as their device an ancient, once-religious image, which they had arrogantly reversed in the service of an implacable regime…

It was not until after
Alraune
became a success (Brigitte Helm was reported to be furious at this impudent annexing of her most-famous role) that Alice began
to have the feeling that Viennese society was changing; that the gaiety was a little too hectic to be quite natural, and that the lights were burning a little too brightly. Afterwards she was to wonder if those days had held a touchstone moment – if there had been an hour or a day or a night when those faint scribblings on the air had formed into the patterns of augury, like the tea-leaves in old women’s cups, or the misted surface of a scryer’s glass…

But surely she was not the only one who had sensed that the dangerous sinister ghosts were regrouping their forces and preparing to enter the world once again? For every major event in the world there were always people ready to nod wisely, and say, Oh, yes, we knew there was something wrong…We said so at the time…We had a feeling…Had those Cassandras sensed that a grisly chapter of history was being revived and mobilized so that it could march forward once more…? Had some of them glanced uneasily over the years to a time when the lights of an entire continent had gone out and when they had stayed out for four long years…?

But everyone agreed that no government would allow another war to happen, and that after the Great War there would be no more conflict. Alice had only been eight years old on that November day in 1918; at the time she had not really understood the cheering and the celebrations, and the word ‘Armistice’ had meant nothing to her except that people had been shouting it joyfully in the streets. But she understood it now; she understood that the war to end all wars had come and gone, and that since that time the world had become safe.

So forget this unease. Dress up in something startling, go to an outrageous party – better still,
give
an outrageous party! Order pink champagne, commission an extravagant gown from Schiaperelli, a flagon of perfume from Chanel…

And close your ears to the tales of injustice and oppression said to be rife under that ridiculous, vulgar little man in Germany, and remember that Vienna is a self-governing state, self-contained, perfectly safe even if the rest of Europe runs mad. Ignore the stories about the suppression of free speech, about the censorship of letters, about the burning of books thought to preach anti-Nazi propaganda – yes, and ignore the alarmists who warn that people who burn books may end in burning men, and who whisper dreadful things about Göering’s labour camps…Above all, close your ears to the accounts of the spies who prowl the streets, seeking out people with Jewish blood…

Jewish blood. Conrad. For a moment the two things interlocked grimly in her mind, and as if the interlocking was a yeast ingredient that had been quietly fermenting in wine or bread, the danger and the darkness suddenly felt much closer.

Conrad had not been faithful to Alice, of course; probably he was congenitally incapable of being faithful to any woman. He was handsome and charismatic, and possessed enough charm and sexual energy to lure an abbess into bed and then take on the rest of the convent afterwards.

The first time Alice discovered that he had spent a
weekend with a little Russian singer, she had hurled herself on to the bed and sobbed all night. This did nothing but give her a pounding headache and a swollen face next morning.

The second time (a wickedly
gamine
Parisienne mannequin), she had not hurled herself on to the bed; instead she had hurled crockery, aiming most of it at Conrad, and then stormed out of his rooms. This time he had followed her, and there had been a grand reconciliation. He had put a gramophone record of Wagner’s
Tannhäuser
on – he adored making love to music – and they had spent a delirious afternoon in bed, staying there until the summer evening sunshine streamed into the bedroom, both of them wine-flown by then, both riotously trying to time orgasms to the swelling crescendos of the music.

So, Alice thought afterwards, tears and vapours get you nowhere. Tantrums and smashed crockery do. So much for polite behaviour and ladylike restraint.

It was a gratifying discovery, but what was even more gratifying was finding that it was perfectly possible to embark on the occasional bedroom adventure on one’s own account, and to return to Conrad afterwards. These escapades were fun, but what was even more fun was that they always made Conrad violently jealous. Alice took care to make sure he always knew where she had been on those occasions, although not who she had been with, not after the time he had challenged the other man to a duel. (‘I will meet you in the village of Klosterneuberg overlooking the city,’ hissed Conrad, with gleeful relish at such drama. ‘Be there at the break
of dawn, and I will kill you and throw your body into the Vienna Woods for the bears to eat.’)

I believe, thought Alice, stepping in to prevent the duel, that I’ve turned into a vamp. Imagine that. One day my children – if I have any – might hear about all this, and perhaps they will enjoy the drama of it, as Conrad does, or perhaps they will sigh and say that Mamma was really too outrageous for words when she was young.

Children…

She had not intended that there should be any children at all, but a daughter was born just over six years after that amazing night at the State Opera House. Conrad’s, of course, people said, smiling a little slyly, and the baroness had smiled back, apparently unruffled.

One or two people wondered whether the outrageous couple might now marry – a child ought to have a proper father, after all – and one or two of them asked the question openly. Lucretia simply laughed at such a preposterous idea – boringly conventional! – and did so loudly enough to cover the fact that she would have dearly liked to be married to Conrad.

But marriage or not, Conrad was completely charmed with his small daughter. He had been immersed in ancient music at the time, and he had suggested naming the child Deborah after the Old Testament prophetess who had stirred up Barak to march against Sisera. Alice liked the name, and she liked Conrad’s description of Deborah’s song, which had been sung on the occasion of Israel’s victory, and which he said was one of the oldest
Hebrew compositions. ‘But one day I shall compose a new variation of it,’ he announced, with that blend of arrogance and naïve enthusiasm that was attractive and infuriating by turns. ‘When I have finished writing music for films, I shall compose a piece of music that will be called
Deborah’s Song,
and everyone will know it is for my beautiful daughter. And a little,’ he added, ‘for her even more beautiful mamma.’

Alice wondered if Deborah would grow up hearing the stories about her wanton mother and be shocked. She supposed her grandchildren – if ever she had any – would hear the stories of their grandmother’s wild and tempestuous youth, and regard her with disbelieving fascination.

Grandchildren. I shall
never
be old enough to have grandchildren! I shall stay like this, caught in this marvellous world of films and music and lovers – of money and good clothes and jewellery and adulation – and if I do grow old, I shall not let the world see it.

But if one day I do have to be old, I shall make sure it is a dazzling oldness, and I shall make sure it is a disgraceful and scandalous oldness as well!

By the time Deborah was born, Alice had made three films, and she had seen the acting of the real stars of the screen – people such as John Barrymore and Erich von Stroheim, Conrad Veidt and Marlene Dietrich. She knew perfectly well that despite the adulation she received she was not in their league, and she was certainly not in the same league as Dietrich, with her smouldering eyes and her remarkable ice-over-fire quality. But Alice thought
that Lucretia looked all right on the screen and she thought she could convey most of the emotions, although she knew, deep down, that she was relying on personality and on her own legend rather than on acting ability.

She always gave of her best on film sets; that was her early training, of course, the training that had instilled into her that if you were paid for a service – whether it was sewing a torn hem or scrubbing a sink, or playing a part in a film – you gave your employer what he had paid for. For being ravished by a sheikh, for dying bravely and aristocratically on the scaffold, for heading armies and sacking cities and defying tyrants. For being a King in Babylon, and making profane and forbidden love to a Christian slave…

And really, thought Alice, for a jumped-up parlourmaid with a false name, I’m doing rather well.

Conrad, who adored his small daughter, had written the promised music for her, but it was not until an early summer night in 1938, with Deborah three years old, that the first public performance took place. It would be a glittering occasion, said Conrad happily. People from several continents would flock to hear his music, and he would have a spectacular success, and it would all be because of his enchanting daughter. Lucretia would occupy the stage-box for the occasion, and she would be wearing something dazzlingly beautiful.

‘I shall be dazzlingly bankrupt at this rate,’ said Alice, but made expeditions to the couture houses of Lanvin and Worth.

On the night of the concert it felt wrong to leave the sturdy, bright-eyed toddler in the care of the nurse. Alice,
who had returned to filming when Deborah was six months old, and who was perfectly accustomed to long absences from the baby and had not considered herself particularly maternal anyway, found herself snatching the child up in her arms and covering the small flower-like face with kisses.

‘This ought to be your night, Deborah,’ said Alice to the child. ‘It’s your very own piece of music that’s going to be played, and you should be there, listening to it, dressed up in a silk frock with ribbons in your hair. One day your papa will play for you in a concert hall, though, I promise you he will.’

‘She’ll be perfectly all right with me, madame,’ said the nurse, a rather stolid Dutchwoman.

‘Yes, I know she will.’

Alice had commissioned a backless evening gown of jade green for the concert, and over it she draped a huge black-and-jade-striped silk shawl, which enveloped her almost to the ankles. Her hair was threaded with strands of jet studded with tiny glowing emeralds, and on her feet were green satin shoes with delicate four-inch heels. They were impossibly impractical, but she would not need to walk far in them. Cab to theatre foyer, foyer to stage-box, perhaps a sip or two of champagne in the crush bar at the interval, supper somewhere afterwards with Conrad and a dozen or so guests. And then a cab home. It did not, therefore, much matter if she was wearing four-inch heels, or five-inch heels, or shoes made of paper, or if she was wearing no shoes at all. She had enamelled her toenails silver to match her fingernails, and fastened a silk chain around one ankle.

At a time when most women were starting to wear their hair in rolls and elaborate swirls, and gilt hairnets for the evening, Alice had retained her smooth sleek blackbird-wing style. It was cut for her by a glossily fashionable French hairdresser on the Ringstrasse, but she dealt with the colouring of it by herself and in private – imagine if a story got out that Lucretia von Wolff, the infamous sable-haired temptress, actually dyed her hair! And it was rather amusing to don a drab disguise – to become a ladies’ maid again – and go into the small anonymous shops on Vienna’s outskirts to buy the hair-dye.

The concert hall was filled with glitteringly dressed people, and there was a pleasant buzz of expectation in the air. The baroness was escorted to the stage-box, which was sufficiently near to the platform for most of the audience to see her, and which faced the gleaming Bechstein. (‘I shall not look up at you during the performance,’ Conrad had explained seriously. ‘Because once I begin to play, I shall not know about my surroundings at all.’)

But he blew her a kiss when he came on to the platform, and Lucretia gave him the now-famous cat-smile and watched him sit down at the piano, flinging the tails of his evening coat impatiently behind him. He removed the heavy gold cufflinks he wore and the onyx signet ring, and laid them on the side of the keyboard. He looked handsome and patrician, and the sharp formality of the white tie and tails suited him.

The audience were silent now, waiting. Some of them would be here purely because it was an Occasion and
one must be seen at such things, but a good number would have come because they were genuinely interested in music and because they admired Conrad Kline and wanted to hear his new piano concerto.

Conrad was allowing the anticipation to stretch out, adjusting the music stand which did not need adjusting, flexing his fingers which were more supple than saplings anyway, frowning at an imagined speck of dust on the Bechstein’s gleaming surface. He would judge the moment absolutely precisely, of course, because he would know the exact second to signal to the conductor that he was ready, and then he would bring his hands down on the keys, and his marvellous music would flood the auditorium. Alice, who had shared a very small part of Conrad’s agonies throughout the composing of
Deborah’s Song
, and who found it beautiful and moving, prayed that the audience would find it so. Conrad would be like a hurt child if they were less than wildly enthusiastic.

He lifted his eyes from the keyboard, and met the waiting eyes of the conductor. And then into the charged silence, into the thrumming expectant atmosphere, explosively and frighteningly came the sounds of the outer doors being flung open, and of booted feet marching across the foyer.