Roots of Evil(143)

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 delayed.’

‘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.