Since that splintering second of recognition at Quondam, Edmund had struggled to control a scalding jealousy of Michael Sallis. Once you allowed an emotion – almost any emotion – to get the upper hand, you stopped thinking and reasoning, and you lost a certain detachment.
But the angry hating jealousy was threatening to overwhelm him, blotting out all other considerations and making it difficult to focus on anything else.
Alraune’s son. That was who Sallis was – Edmund knew it quite definitely. After those first few puzzled moments, he had looked from Sallis to the screen and he had suddenly seen the extraordinary resemblance to the young Lucretia von Wolff. A direct descendant? Was that possible? But Michael resembled Lucretia far too closely to be anything else. So who was he? Whose son could he be?
It was unlikely in the extreme that Sallis was a secret son of either Deborah or Mariana. Those two had lived open and conventional lives, but both of them had been sufficiently Lucretia’s daughters not to have troubled overmuch about having an illegitimate son. Deborah, in fact, would probably have relished it. Edmund was inclined to absolve both Deborah and Mariana.
That left the third of Lucretia’s children. Alraune. And Alraune had not been a legend as so many people had said, but a real person, born in December 1940 – the birth certificate in Deborah’s house had been testimony to that. And so far from dying mysteriously or vanishing without explanation, it looked as if Alraune had grown up and had had a more or less conventional life – marriage presumably, and a son.
Alraune had grown up. This was the thought that was sending the corrosive waves of hatred and jealousy scudding through Edmund’s body. Alraune had not been that secret intimate ghost whose presence he had felt so strongly at Ashwood, and whose emotions he had shared. All you need to believe in is the practice of mord, Alraune had said that day. And there had been that burst of childish glee. Remember the eyes, Edmund…Remember mord…
Alraune was mine! cried Edmund silently to Sallis. Alraune was that fragile little ghost who guided my hand when I killed Trixie Smith! We shared mord, Alraune and I, and we shared that killing! The thought of Sallis knowing Alraune – growing up with Alraune as a parent – was almost more than Edmund could bear.
But it was important to stay in control. To fight that black and bitter tide of hatred that threatened to swamp his reason. He forced himself to think on a practical level. How much might Alraune’s son know about Ashwood? Had Michael listened to the stories of the past, as Edmund had? A child ‘listed as Allie’ had been at Ashwood that day: had it really been Alraune? (‘You don’t need to believe in me, Edmund…All you need to believe in is the practice of mord…The ancient High German word that means murder…’)
How much had Alraune seen and understood that day at Ashwood? Enough to pass it on to Michael, years afterwards? ‘Once upon a time, Michael, there was a place called Ashwood where a murder happened, and there was a man called Crispin Fane who committed that murder and no one ever knew…But I knew, Michael, I knew because I saw it all…’
There was no way of knowing how much Sallis had been told, but Edmund was not going to take any chances. There was also no way of knowing if Sallis, or indeed Alraune, might have talked to anyone about the Ashwood murders, although on balance Edmund was inclined to think not. The police did not seem to know much about Alraune, and Sallis did not seem to have told them anything. And although Alraune’s birth certificate had been in Deborah’s house, if she had known of Michael’s existence she had never talked about it, just as she had never talked about Alraune.