Roots of Evil

by Sarah Rayne

  Had Dreyer known Conrad would be here today? Had he fixed the date of this visit deliberately? But whatever the truth, the two of them must not be allowed to meet, and Dreyer must be got out of Ashwood as quickly as possible. Alice began to say that they could not talk here where anyone might burst in unannounced, when, as if in response to this, the door was pushed open. Alice and Leo Dreyer turned to see Alraune standing in the doorway.

  His appearance ought not to have been so startling and so instantly frightening, and the room ought not to have filled up with such choking menace.

  But Alraune’s face was sheet-white and his eyes – monstrous, swollen insect-eyes, like demon’s eyes staring out of hell’s caverns – blazed with hatred. Alice saw at once that he knew who Dreyer was: that he recognized him as the man who had dragged the two of them out of the stone wash-house that day, and who had carried Alraune across the compound at Auschwitz and sat by him in Mengele’s grisly surgery. Of course he remembers him, thought Alice, horrified. If ever Alraune was to remember anyone from those years, it would be Leo Dreyer.

  Hatred and fury were pouring into the room: Alice could feel them, and she could feel Dreyer’s fear, as well. He’s afraid of a child, she thought incredulously. He’s not afraid because of what Alraune knows about him: he’s afraid of the black malevolence in Alraune’s eyes. For a dreadful moment something she had not known she possessed gripped her, and she thought: let him suffer that fear. Let him experience sheer stark terror, just for a few moments, and let him have a taste of what we all endured during those years.

  The feeling lasted barely twenty seconds, but it was so violent that it seemed to print itself on the air. When it released her Alice went forward, meaning to snatch Alraune out of Dreyer’s path, thinking she could carry him out into the relative normality of the main studio.

  But she was too late. Alraune was already bounding forward and Leo Dreyer, unprepared, fell back with the child on top of him. Something was glinting in Alraune’s hand – something that was sharp and cruel and pointed…Something that caught the light as he lifted it and then drove the point straight down into Dreyer’s eyes, first one and then the other…

  For a very long time no one in the warm, well-lit sitting-room spoke. The glow from the table lamp had fallen across Alice’s face while she talked, making her hair seem darker and smoothing the lines on her face so that it had seemed as if a much younger woman sat there. But when she described how Alraune had attacked Leo Dreyer, the light seemed to retreat and the illusion of youth vanished.

  ‘I never told you,’ said Alice, looking across at Michael. ‘I never told you what Alraune did that day.’

  ‘You didn’t need to,’ said Michael. ‘I guessed years ago. But what I could never fathom, and what I can’t fathom now, is how you foisted that colossal deception on everyone.’

  ‘I notice you ask how it was done, not why,’ observed Alice.

  ‘I know why you did it,’ said Michael, speaking directly to Alice, as if the others were not there. His voice was extremely gentle. ‘Of course I do. You had to protect Alraune.’

  ‘He had had so much tragedy in his life,’ said Alice. ‘The things he had been forced to witness…And he had had so little…’ A spreading of the hands, the mirror image of a gesture Michael had used earlier. ‘I had minutes – barely even that – to make a decision. I could let the law take its course, and allow Alraune to be branded a killer. Or—’

  ‘Or,’ said Michael, ‘you could save Alraune and let the world believe you were the killer instead.’ He did not say, At the expense of your two daughters, but Lucy thought the words hung on the air between them for a moment.

  ‘There was never really a choice,’ said Alice. ‘Alraune would have been put in some appalling institution – this was over fifty years ago, remember, and such places were grim and harsh. I couldn’t do it to him. For most of his life he had had nothing – nothing that normal children have. He had lived on scraps – worn bits of sacking, lived in fear and seen the most unbelievable brutalities. And he had killed an evil man – a man he remembered from Auschwitz. A monster.’

  Michael said, ‘And Reinard Stultz?’

  ‘Stultz’s murderer was never established,’ said Alice at once. ‘And he had been a Nazi officer – he could have made dozens of enemies. One of them might have sought him out – Alraune might even have seen the murder done—’ Again she made the quick impatient gesture with her hands. ‘Perhaps what I did that day was wrong – certainly it was unfair to Deborah and Mariana – but that was how my mind reasoned in those few moments.’

  Michael said again, ‘So how did you do it?’

  ‘It wasn’t difficult. Since I was seventeen I had spent most of my life spinning illusions. And on that day at Ashwood, I spun the greatest illusion of them all.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  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 delaye
d.’

  ‘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?’