‘But not any longer?’
‘After Lucretia died the cranks and the weirdos latched on to it,’ said Lucy. ‘And it achieved a sort of underground near-cult status. Unfortunately it’s got all tangled up with the legend – Conrad Kline and Leo Dreyer butchered at Ashwood, and Lucretia committing that spectacular suicide – so nobody’s very objective about it any more. That’s a great shame, because it really was a remarkable film. Very innovative and quite daring in parts. And the director achieved some terrific effects.’
‘You’ve seen it?’
‘Yes, I saw it when I was at university.’
‘Is it ever shown publicly now? On TV for instance?’
‘I don’t think so. It sometimes gets trotted out at film festivals, or rented by the more avant-garde film clubs – that was where I saw it.’ It had been fashionable, in her second term at Durham, to admire film noir and the gloomier epics of German Expressionism – she was always vaguely irritated that the loss of her virginity would forever be associated in her mind with Orson Welles and the zither music of The Third Man. To Inspector Fletcher, she said, ‘It’s probably a bit heavy for modern tastes, so it isn’t usually seen—Oh, no, wait, one of the satellite TV companies showed it a few years ago. They offered it to viewers as a curio. A stormy petrel, or the Macbeth of the silent film era, the announcer called it.’
The inspector appeared to absorb this, and then said, ‘There are still copies of the film in existence, then?’
‘Yes, certainly,’ said Lucy, feeling on slightly safer ground. ‘Not too many, and what there are are a bit weather-beaten by now – it was 1928 or 1930, which means it’s the old cellulose nitrate composition, and that sometimes decomposes beyond recall. The layers of film actually weld together.’ She paused, and then said, ‘But it’s still around. D’you want to see it?’
‘Yes, I do. Could it be arranged?’
‘I think Quondam have got it, but if not I can probably track it down with one of our rivals,’ said Lucy, who knew perfectly well that Quondam had got it, because she had looked for it within a week of joining the company. ‘How about my grandfather’s backing music? Conrad Kline, I mean. He tends to get a bit overshadowed by Lucretia, but he was a gifted composer in his day. D’you want that as well?’
‘Well, if it’s to hand, yes. But it’s the film I really want.’ A pause. Lucy waited, hoping to find out what might be behind all this, but Fletcher only said, ‘We don’t know yet if there’s any connection between the old murder case and Trixie Smith’s death, but we want to consider every angle.’
‘Starting with a look at Alraune,’ said Lucy.
‘Yes.’
‘The murderer more or less copied the last scene of Alraune, didn’t he?’
‘It sounds as if you’ve been reading the tabloids, Miss Trent. Very unwise. How soon could you let me know about viewing the film?’
‘I’ll do it at once,’ said Lucy. ‘And I’ll phone you back. If I hit any problems, you can invoke the might of the British constabulary.’
‘What about actually running it? We’re fairly high-tech in the police, but I don’t know if we’d be equal to a seventy-year-old reel of – what did you say it was made of?’
‘Cellulose nitrate. Actually, a lot of the early stuff is being fairly successfully transferred to DVD these days. I don’t think that’s happened to Alraune though, so you’d probably need the old projectors. But that needn’t be a problem: I expect I can set up a viewing for you. We’ve got a couple of viewing rooms here, and the larger one will seat about ten people. Would that be enough?’
‘Yes, I think so. Thank you very much. I’ll wait to hear from you.’