Roots of Evil

Roots of Evil by Sarah Rayne





AUTHOR’S NOTE


The film and story of Alraune referred to in Roots of Evil come from a book written between 1911 and 1913 by a German author called Hanns Heinz Ewers.

Several versions of Alraune have been filmed over the years, most recently by Erich von Stroheim in 1952, but a number of silent versions were made between 1918 and 1930, mostly in Germany, Austria and Hungary. The eroticism of the earlier films was decried and deplored by many people at the time, and this, of course, served to ensure their commercial success.

For the purpose of this story, a late-1920s version has been created – a silent film starring an infamous film-actress called Lucretia von Wolff





CHAPTER ONE




It is not every day that your family’s ghosts come boiling out of the past to disrupt your ordinary working day. Lucy Trent had not been expecting ghosts to appear today, and there had been no warning of their imminence. It had, in fact, been years since she had even thought about the ghosts.

She had reached her office early and had spent most of the morning engrossed in a presentation for silent horror films from the 1920s: Quondam Films, who specialized in the restoring and marketing of old films, were putting together a marketing package aimed at the satellite TV networks, and Lucy had been given the task of setting up the presentation. She had only worked for Quondam for about six months, so it was quite a coup to be trusted with this project.

She had been immersed in writing a summary of a fourteen-minute film from 1911 called The Devil’s Sonata. Quondam had had this in their archives for several years and had been trotting it out unsuccessfully at regular intervals, so it would be particularly good if Lucy could flog it this time round. She was just describing how the charismatic violinist lured the kohl-eyed heroine into the deserted theatre, when reception phoned through to say there was someone to see her. A lady called Trixie Smith. No, she had not said what she wanted, but whatever it was, it seemed that only Lucy would do.

The rather dumpy female in the small interview room shook hands with Lucy in a brusque, businesslike way, inspecting her from bright brown eyes. She was wearing a plain mackintosh and sensible shoes, and her hair, which was turning grey in pepper-and-salt fashion, was cut in a pudding-basin style. Lucy thought she might be a games mistress of the old style, or an organizer of therapy-type workshops for people to make raffia baskets. Intelligent, but possibly a bit tediously over-emphatic when it came to her own field, whatever her own field might be. She had probably brought in an ancient reel of ciné film that would turn out to be smudgy footage of great-uncle-somebody’s boating holiday from 1930, and Lucy would have to find a tactful way of telling her that Quondam did not want it.

But Quondam’s policy was never to ignore a possible acquisition, so Lucy sat down and asked how she could help.

Trixie Smith said, ‘Can I make sure I’ve got the right person before we go any further? You are Lucretia von Wolff’s granddaughter, aren’t you?’

Lucy thought, oh, blast, it’s something to do with grandmamma. Another weirdo wanting to write an article or even a book. But she said, guardedly, that yes, she was Lucretia’s granddaughter.

‘Ha!’ said Ms Smith. ‘Thought I’d found the right Lucy Trent. Can’t always trust reference books, though. Who’s Who and all the rest of them – they often get things wrong. The thing is, Miss Trent, I’m doing a postgraduate course.’ She named a smallish university in North London. ‘Useful to have a doctorate in teaching, you see. More money.’

‘You’re a teacher.’ It explained the brisk authority.

‘Modern languages,’ agreed Trixie. ‘But the subject of my thesis is, “The Psychology of Crime in the Nineteen-fifties”.’

‘And,’ said Lucy, ‘you’re going to use the Ashwood murders as the cornerstone.’

‘Yes, I am.’ A touch of truculence. ‘I don’t suppose you mind, do you?’

‘Not in the least. Half the rainforests in South America must have been cut down to provide paper for books about Lucretia. She was a celebrity almost before the word was invented, and the Ashwood case was one of the biggest causes célèbres of its day.’ Lucy paused, and then said, ‘Listen, though, Ms Smith—’

‘Call me Trixie, for goodness’ sake. Life’s too short for formalities.’

‘Uh – Trixie, if you’ve got any wild ideas of solving a mystery, you should know there truly isn’t one to solve. In the late twenties and thirties my grandmother was the original sultry temptress of the silent screen. The men adored her and the women disapproved of her. Her lovers were legion and her scandals were numerous. She got somehow tangled up in the Second World War – not very creditably by some accounts – and then afterwards she tried to make a comeback.’

‘Ashwood Studios,’ said Trixie Smith, nodding. ‘She was making a film at Ashwood, wasn’t she, and two men – both of them supposed to be her lovers – got into a jealous argument. Upon which Lucretia flew into a tantrum, killed both of them, and then killed herself – either from remorse at their deaths, or from panic at the thought of the hangman’s noose.’

‘Two murders, one suicide,’ said Lucy rather shortly. ‘And clearly you’ve found out most of the facts already. I don’t think there’s likely to be anything I can add to any of that.’