Roots of Evil(21)

Trixie had at once said, God, Fran, your accent! at which Fran had replied defensively that it was all very fine for Trixie and her posh education, but not so fine for people who had only attended Brick Street Junior School! She could be a bit prickly at times, that Fran, although there was a definite touch of the spaniel-eyed romantic several layers down.

Here was the baroness’s infamous dressing-room, next door to the wardrobe. It was not quite as dark, but Trixie had to feel around to locate the door handle, and even when she found it and opened the door, she could not see very much. But she set to with the tape measure again, going more by feel this time than anything else.

One of the versions said that Conrad Kline had caught Leo Dreyer making love to Lucretia in here, which in Trixie’s view would have been a mad thing for them to have done, what with people milling around outside and anyone likely to come in. But maybe Lucretia had got a kick out of the danger; Trixie believed some people did get kicks in that way.

But what had really sparked the Ashwood murders had been a version of the eternal triangle, or so the police had finally decided. The story that was afterwards pieced together – the one that was put out as the official verdict – was that there had been a monumental row between the three main characters, with everyone accusing everyone else of any number of debaucheries. Leo Dreyer had apparently said Conrad Kline was a shameful libertine from whom no female was safe – which taunt Kline had not minded – and that his music was rubbish, which Kline had minded very much indeed, retorting that he, at least, stipulated that his women should be over the age of consent.

After this, Lucretia, never one to stay out of the action for long, had flown into one of her celebrated tantrums and had snatched up a stage prop which somebody had left lying around and which unfortunately had been a stiletto or a knife that the props department had not yet blunted. She had gone after Kline, who had stormed off to the wardrobe-room to sulk, and had stabbed him and then returned to Dreyer and stabbed him as well. Then she had slashed both her wrists, either out of an extravagant burst of remorse or as a means of escaping the ugliness of the gallows. Either way, you could not say she had no style, that Lucretia, even if the style was Grand Guignol.

Whatever the truth of it, it all made for a damn good case study. Trixie sat on the floor directly beneath the solitary light and marked the salient points carefully on her plan. One body here, a second there. Cameras and technicians presumably grouped about here – she would take an educated guess at that. And then Lucretia’s suicide here. Lying gracefully on the floor of her dressing-room it had been; trust the baroness to be gracefully arranged, even in a blood-dripping death, thought Trixie, and added a note to explore and if possible analyse the complexities of an ego that cared how its mortal coil looked after it had been shuffled off.

She came back to where the solitary light bulb cast its sullen glow, and sat down to make some notes about the actual studio – the floor was cold and disgustingly dusty, but sitting on it was preferable to burrowing under one of the shrouded piles of furniture to find a chair. She was trying to ignore those pallid shapes under the dust-sheets and tarpaulins, and she was also trying to ignore an increasing sensation that she was not on her own in here. Ridiculous, of course, although it would be a bit of a laugh if she did turn out to be psychic after all! She could just see Mr Edmund Fane’s face if she was able to give him an action-replay account of the murders! Oh sure, said her mind sarcastically.

But there is something here, I can feel that there is. What is it, though? Lucretia von Wolff? The kohl-eyed baroness, still bound to the scene of her crime, resentful of intruders? Suicides did not rest, most people agreed on that.

But the murdered did not rest either. Was it Lucretia’s victims whose presence she was sensing so strongly? Lot of rubbish, all this ghost business, but still—

But still, she was hearing something. Soft creakings and rustlings. Mice? Or even (shudder) rats? Or was it the dying Conrad Kline butchered and mutilated, left to die in the dark, but scrabbling on the wall for help…?

Tap-tap…Help-me…Tap-tap…Help-me…

For a moment this last image was so vivid that Trixie almost believed she could hear him.

Tap-tap-tap…I-am-dying…

Who had really killed Dreyer, and who had really killed Conrad Kline? The question sounded slightly absurd, like the old rhyme about Cock Robin. How did it go? All the birds of the air/Came a-sighing and asobbing/When they heard of the death/Of poor Cock Robin…

So, who killed Leo Dreyer? Not I, said the baroness, with my stiletto. And all the ghosts of Ashwood/Came a-sighing and asobbing/When they heard of the death/Of poor Leo Dreyer…

Except that ghosts did not sob, any more than they existed, and there had been nothing poor about Leo Dreyer, in fact it was Trixie’s guess that no one had especially sighed or sobbed at his death. But the method of his dying, yes, that had been bad. And quite a number of people had probably both sighed and sobbed for Conrad Kline.

The rain was still beating on the roof, sounding for all the world as if somebody was throwing hundreds of tin-tacks on to a metal tray, but beneath it, Trixie caught a sound from beyond the inner door. Someone out in the lobby area, was it? Or perhaps Edmund Fane had not closed the outer door properly and it was the wind. No, she had heard him slam the door herself. But he might have come back for some perfectly innocent reason, or Liam Devlin might have done so. Something to do with the keys or the parking of the cars. But surely they would not creep around out there; they would come straight in, calling out to her.