Roots of Evil(135)

Liam dealt with the champagne competently and filled the glasses, somehow ending up in a seat next to Lucy. ‘Are you thinking this is pure gothic?’ he said. ‘Unknown cousins, and wicked family solicitors turning up?’

‘I was thinking it’s like something from The Prisoner of Zenda or Rudolph of Rassendyll,’ rejoined Lucy. ‘I wasn’t expecting the wicked solicitor as well.’

‘When this particular client calls, I ditch everything else to obey,’ said Liam, and smiled across the table at Alice. ‘She never pays my bills, although that might be because I usually forget to send her any. But she’s my favourite client.’

‘Mr Devlin’s been my agent at Ashwood for several years,’ said Alice. ‘It’s a good relationship. He’s a very good lawyer.’

‘I’m very good indeed,’ said Liam, grinning. ‘But I’d have to say that until last weekend, I really did think I was acting for a lady called Alice Wilson.’

‘You’re Ashwood’s owner?’ said Lucy to Alice. ‘No, you can’t be, though – Michael said—’ She stopped. How acceptable was it to refer to Alraune in this house?

‘Over fifty years ago,’ said Alice composedly, ‘I bought the entire Ashwood site. Land, buildings, cottages, fields – everything. I did so under my real name of Alice Vera Wilson—’ She broke off as Lucy looked at her in surprise, and then said, ‘My dear, no smouldering silent-film star with any self-respect would have got far with a name like Alice Wilson. And you wouldn’t believe how useful it is to have two identities. It meant that when I bought Ashwood no one suspected that the wicked baroness was still alive, and buying up parcels of valuable building land. Explain that part, would you, Mr Devlin.’

‘She did own Ashwood,’ said Liam. ‘But three years ago we transferred the ownership of Ashwood Studios to her son, Alan Salisbury. To comply with HM Land Registry laws I had to formally register the land at the time. So if Edmund Fane really did apply for a search for the title—?’

‘He did. We know that.’

‘Ah. Well, then, he’d receive a brief report showing that the land had passed from the ownership of A. V. Wilson to Alan Salisbury. Relatively ordinary names,’ said Liam, looking at Michael questioningly.

‘Yes. But,’ said Michael, ‘both of those names were listed on my mobile phone – which Fane had taken. We know now that he had spent most of his adult life watching for anything that might reveal the truth about his father and when he received the Land Registry information he already knew I was Alraune’s son. Seeing those names – the names of Ashwood’s buyer and seller – on my phone must have panicked him. He didn’t know who Alan Salisbury was, and he didn’t know who A. V. Wilson was, but he saw that I was in some way linked to them, because I had their phone numbers. I should think that was enough to send him hotfoot after one or both of them.’

‘Michael’s told you that his father was a violent man,’ said Alice. ‘I won’t go into what happened to Alraune inside Auschwitz or the things he saw – at any rate, I won’t do so now. For now I’ll just say that what he saw and what he experienced scarred him very deeply indeed.’ She paused, and Lucy saw that she was thinking back over all the years, to the child born in Auschwitz.

‘He was an oddly attractive child,’ said Alice. ‘Dark and enigmatic – people found that intriguing. Women especially. But after he married, he behaved violently towards Michael’s mother, and in the end he killed her.’ She paused to take a sip of champagne.

‘That was the night I ran away,’ said Michael, taking up the story. ‘I was eight years old, and I had spent all of my life in Alraune’s shadow. I was terrified of practically everything in the world. On the night he killed my mother I thought he was going to kill me as well. So I ran away to Alice.’

‘How did you know about her, though?’

‘I didn’t know then that Alice and Lucretia and my grandmother were one and the same person,’ said Michael. ‘But my mother knew the stories about a young parlourmaid and her dashing lover.’

‘I told Alraune those stories,’ said Alice. ‘I made them into fairy-tales for him. The serving girl and the rich man. But I never knew whether he would remember them.’

‘He did remember them,’ said Michael. ‘He told them to my mother, and she told them to me. She had Alice’s gift for recounting stories, so I grew up knowing about the fairy-tale romance between the rich man and the serving girl. And on the night I ran away, it seemed entirely natural that I should run to the lady in the stories.’

‘Michael’s mother gave him something to run to,’ said Francesca thoughtfully.

‘Yes. I’ve always been so grateful to her for that.’

‘But she didn’t know who “Alice” really was?’ put in Lucy.

‘No. It was the early years she knew about,’ said Alice. ‘That seems to have been all Alraune ever told her. I was a parlourmaid in those years. It was a very wealthy family, and they were very prominent in Viennese society. It was all very gay – in the days when “gay” had a different meaning – and everyone was very self-indulgent and even rather decadent, although I only saw things from below-stairs, of course. But then one night I ran away with the young man who was about to become betrothed to the daughter of the house.’ Her eyes took on a luminous look. ‘His name was Conrad Kline, and he was gifted and charming, and he was your grandfather, Lucy.’