Roots of Evil - Softcover

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 cŽl bres 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.'

'Don't you care that your grandmother was branded as a double murderess?'

Bother the woman, she was like a steamroller. But Lucy said, 'I don't know that I do care very much. I wouldn't have chosen to have a grandmother who was a murderess, and I'm not very happy about the alleged spying activities either - but it all happened a long time ago and it was years before I was born. I don't think any of the family is particularly bothered about it these days. I'm not; I never even knew Lucretia - oh, and I'm not named for her in case you wondered. But I hope your thesis works out well, and I hope you get your doctorate out of it.' She stood up, hoping this would end the interview.

It did not. 'What I really want,' said Trixie, 'is to talk to any members of your family who might actually remember Lucretia. She had two daughters, didn't she?'

'Yes. They changed their surname after Lucretia died - or their guardians or trustees changed it on their behalf or something like that. My mother was the younger daughter -- ' Lucy hesitated briefly, and then said, 'She died when I was eight. The other daughter is my aunt - Deborah Fane.'

'The books all mention her, but I hadn't got a surname.' Trixie Smith wrote it down industriously and Lucy thought, Damn, I didn't mean to give that away. 'And she's still alive, is she?' said Ms Smith hopefully. 'Deborah Fane? How old is she? Would she agree to see me, d'you think?'

'She's certainly over seventy and her heart's a bit tottery - a touch of angina - but she's pretty lively. She might talk to you.' This was quite possible; it had been Aunt Deb who had told Lucy most of the stories about Lucretia, and she had always seemed to rather enjoy Lucretia's smouldering legend. Lucy rather enjoyed it as well, although she was not going to admit this to a stranger. The rest of the family had always found Lucretia slightly shameful, of course; and as for Edmund...Lucy repressed a mischievous grin at the thought of her cousin Edmund's probable apoplexy if he discovered that Lucretia was being dragged into the spotlight again.

She said carefully, 'I could ask Aunt Deb if she'd talk to you. I can't promise anything, but give me your phone number and I'll call you later this evening. It's just background stuff you want, is it?'

'Mostly background. Although there is one other thing -- '

'Yes?' There was no particular reason why Lucy should feel a sudden butterfly-flutter of apprehension, but she did feel it.

'I want to find out about Alraune,' said Trixie Smith.

Alraune.

The name dropped into the small room like a heavy black stone falling down a well. There were several possible responses to it; one of which was for Lucy to say, with extreme flippancy, 'Yes, wouldn't we all like to find out about Alraune, dear,' and then escort Ms Smith out of the building faster than a bat escaping hell. After which Lucy could forget this entire discussion, leave Lucretia with the brand of Cain on her sultry white forehead, and shut Alraune firmly back into the stored-away memories along with the rest of the ghosts.

The second option was to look faintly bored and slightly disdainful, and to act as if a rather embarrassing gaffe had been committed. ('Oh, we don't talk about that, Ms Smith, not in public...')

The worst thing of all would be to say, in the kind of aggressive voice that positively invites an argument and a discussion, that Alraune had never existed, and add that the whole thing had been a publicity stunt dreamed up by journalists.

Lucy said, 'But you must surely realize that Alraune never existed. It was all a publicity stunt dreamed up by journalists,' and Trixie Smith, with the air of one who has finally heard what she has been waiting for, said,

'Are you sure about that?'

As Lucy made her way home that night, she hardly noticed the stuffy, crowded tube and the rush-hour jostle of people.

She reached her flat, threw her coat into the wardrobe, and went through to the kitchen. She lived in the upstairs, left-hand quarter of a rather ugly mid-Victorian house on the edge of Belsize Park; the house was not quite large enough to warrant the term 'mansion' but it was not really an ordinary family house either, and the inside was very nearly palatial. It meant that Lucy had a huge sitting-room, which had originally been the house's master bedroom, and a tiny bedroom opening off it, converted from a dressing-room. The original landing, which was vast, had been partitioned so that she had a kitchen and bathroom at the front half, and the flat on the other side of the house had the back half. This worked reasonably well, although the dividing wall between the two bathrooms was a bit thinner than it should have been.

Aunt Deb had always thought it rather a ramshackle set-up and Edmund had never understood how Lucy could live here, but Lucy liked it, partly because she had the feeling that it had once been a very happy house. She liked the feeling that over the years entire families had printed their cheerful memories on the old timbers, or that contented ghosts had pasted their shadows on to the walls.

Memories and ghosts...

She liberated a bottle of sharp dry wine from the fridge, and took it to the uncurtained window to drink. It was dark outside: the rooftops beyond the windows were shiny with rain, and ...