‘Dear God,’ said Fran softly, and without thinking put out a hand to him. His hand closed about her fingers, and at once something passed between them. Like an electrical spark, thought Fran. Or like being in the shower when the water suddenly catches a glint of sunshine so that for a couple of seconds you stand inside a rainbow. She withdrew her hand, but the brightness of that moment stayed on the air.
The dishes were stacked in the sink: Fran supposed they would get washed up at some stage, but for the moment there were more important things to consider. Alraune’s photograph was on the table where they had left it and she put out a tentative hand to touch the glass covering it. ‘Michael, that is Alraune, isn’t it? I mean – there isn’t likely to be a mistake? The name written on someone else’s photo by mistake or anything like that?’
‘No. It’s unquestionably Alraune.’ He had taken an apple from the dish of fruit Fran had put on the table, and was quartering it rather abstractedly. Fran waited and after a moment he said, ‘Alraune was smuggled out of Auschwitz some time during 1943 or 1944. Lucretia fixed that, although I’m not sure how, and after the war she brought Alraune back to England. Later on Alraune got married, although it wasn’t a very happy marriage.’
Francesca glanced at him, but his eyes had the shuttered look again, so with the air of one concentrating on the nuts and bolts of the situation, she said, ‘If Alraune lived in Austria, Trixie could have found the photograph this summer. She used to go on walking holidays in the long summer holidays, and this year she went to the Austrian Tyrol.’
Trixie had in fact suggested that Fran went along with her. ‘Good fresh air and lots of brisk, hearty exercise, that’s what you want. It’ll stop you brooding and moping over that rat, Marcus,’ she had said, but Fran had still been in the stage of wanting to brood and mope, and the thought of tramping briskly and heartily all round Austria in Trixie’s undiluted company had been so daunting that she had stayed at home.
Michael said, ‘Where exactly did Trixie go, d’you know?’
‘Not in any detail. But when she got back she talked about staying for a week or two in a place called Klosterneuberg. It’s one of those tiny villages in the Vienna Woods, apparently. There’s a miniature monastery and vines are hung over the doors of inns for the wine festivals, and all the villagers get sloshed on the new harvest. Trixie got to know some of the locals while she was there – she taught modern languages so her German was fluent. She mentioned being invited to some of the local houses for supper.’
‘You think she might have come across the photograph then?’
‘I think it’s more likely that it came from a bookshop somewhere. Trixie liked foraging in second-hand bookshops – she used to look for stuff that might be useful as translation projects for some of her classes. Boxes of old books and leaflets, or even theatre programmes and playscripts – something a bit out of the normal run of textbooks. She liked old prints and maps as well – she sometimes bought those jumbled-up boxes of stuff at sales on the grounds that ninety-nine per cent would be rubbish, but that there was always that unpredictable one per cent.’
‘The wild card,’ said Michael thoughtfully.
‘Yes. Alraune’s photograph might have been tucked into one of those boxes – or perhaps in a silver frame that was being sold.’ Francesca looked at the photo again. ‘It’s a face that stays with you, isn’t it? And juxtaposed with the name—’
‘Would the name have meant anything to Trixie?’
‘It might have done. She might have known about the original book. She might even have chosen her thesis subject because of that photograph,’ said Fran. ‘Put all the elements together, and you’ve got quite a good mix. The whole psychology of what happened at Ashwood Studios – Lucretia and Alraune, and the war and Ewers’ book—’ And the reasons for Lucretia killing two men, said her mind. Oh God, no, I can’t think about that one, not yet.