Roots of Evil(43)

Parked a few yards away, just inside the car’s headlights, was a rain-splattered estate car, and it did not need a second look to know it must have been parked in that same spot for a long time, because the wheels were half-sunk in the wet mud.

Trixie’s car. The weatherbeaten, seldom-cleaned vehicle she had driven ever since Fran had known her, because it was reliable and there was room for the dogs in the back. Absolutely unmistakable.

After what felt like a very long time, Michael said, ‘I suppose I’m reading this situation right, am I? That’s her car, is it?’

‘Yes,’ said Francesca. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘In that case, Devlin, it’s as well you brought the keys, because I think we’ll have to take a look inside this studio. Francesca, will you stay in the car?’

But Fran was not going to stay out here alone in the unfriendly evening which already seemed to be filling up with shadows and whisperings. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said firmly, and got out of the car before either of them could argue the point.

But neither of them did. Michael passed her her scarf, which had fallen on to the floor of the car, and Liam switched off the car’s engine and said, ‘I think there’s a torch somewhere on the back seat.’



The light from Liam’s torch played thinly over the ground as they walked cautiously forward, several times disturbing little clouds of darting insects that rose up.

‘Like will o’ the wisps,’ said Liam.

‘Ignis fatuus,’ said Michael, softly. ‘The foolish fire. Odd how the old English folklore stays around, isn’t it?’

‘In Ireland they’ll tell you that will o’ the wisps meddle with none but the guilty,’ said Liam. He paused, and then said, ‘None but the murderers and the cheaters of widows and children,’ and this time there was something in his voice that made Francesca turn her head to look at him.

‘I think,’ said Michael, ‘that we’ve got quite enough to worry about, without encountering creatures from ancient myths.’

But Fran thought he glanced uneasily over his shoulder as he said this, as if he suspected someone might be following them, and this was such a disturbing idea that she said, ‘Is that the studio over there?’

‘It is. Studio Twelve.’ Liam’s voice had regained its lightness. ‘The one your friend asked to see, Francesca. I’ll spare you the ghost stories: I suppose you both know what happened here, but it was a long time ago, and as somebody once said, it was in another country—’

‘And besides, the wench is dead.’ Francesca completed the quote almost on a reflex, and then wished she had not.

‘Exactly,’ said Liam rather dryly. ‘Can one of you hold the torch, while I unlock the door. Thanks.’

It had not been possible to live in the same house as Trixie without picking up quite a lot about this place; Fran had rather liked hearing about it, although after a while she had found it vaguely troubling, and she had wanted to say, ‘Please leave this whole thing alone! Can’t you see that you’re prising open a fragment of the past, and don’t you know that there are some pasts that ought never to be disturbed?’ The same impulse seized her now, and she found herself wanting to stop Liam unlocking the door. But of course they must unlock the door. This was not about ghosts, it was about Trixie; it was about discovering what had happened to her.

As Liam pushed the door inwards Francesca had the sudden impression that Ashwood’s history and its memories – all the quarrels and rivalries and all the jealousies and adulteries – had been piled in a jumbled heap against the inside of the door, and that opening the door had brought them tumbling out to lie in an untidy tangle on the ground. But as Liam led the way across a big square hall and into the main part of the studio, she saw that far from the place being peopled by the ghosts of old romances and faded renunciations, it was simply a sad dusty warehouse, covered in the dust and dirt of years. There was a sense of scuttling black beetles and cockroaches, but there was nothing very menacing about it. (Or is there? said a voice inside her mind. Are you sure about that?)

‘There’s an appalling smell of damp,’ said Michael, hesitating in the doorway. ‘Or cats. Or something. Are you sure the place is weathertight, Devlin?’

‘No.’

‘We’ll have to look round, won’t we?’ said Fran, and heard with irritation that her voice sounded a bit uncertain. ‘Properly, I mean?’

‘I’m afraid so. But there’s a light switch just inside the door and it’ll be a whole lot better if we can see what we’re doing. Wait now till I find it—’

There was a click, and a solitary light flared overhead. ‘That’s better,’ said Liam. ‘Francesca, shall you stay here by the door, while Sallis and I explore?’

‘I’ll explore with you.’ Just as Fran had not liked the silent twilight outside, she was not liking this vast place with the huge dust-sheeted shapes under which anything might be crouching, and she was not liking, either, the sense that eyes were watching from the pools of thick darkness beyond the single pallid light. Perfectly ridiculous, of course. And yet…

And yet, walking between and around the mounds of stored furniture and scenery was an eerie experience. Fran could not rid herself of the feeling that they were brushing against sealed-away sections of Ashwood’s history, or tiptoeing past invisible doors behind which might lie all the make-believe worlds that had been spun here. Worlds where cities were made of canvas and plywood – where walls flew apart and where people flew into love and into tempers. Over there was an elaborate chaise-longue that might have graced Cleopatra’s barge, or a Turkish seraglio, or Elizabeth Barratt’s sickroom. And the remnant of stonework propped against it was clearly only plasterboard and paint, but once it might have formed a battlement on a Norman castle, or a wishing-well, or a raven-infested midnight tower…