She said, ‘Inspector, are you absolutely sure about all this?’
‘Not absolutely. Not yet. But we’re checking the facts, and it’s looking that way.’ Jennie Fletcher glanced at Michael, and then said, ‘It sounded to me as if there had been some kind of love affair between Lucretia and Crispin, and Crispin killed Conrad in a jealous rage.’
Lucy suddenly felt deeply sad at the thought of Edmund carrying this secret around for so long. She said, ‘He always had a horror of gossip – of the family skeletons. And he always hated people talking about my grandmother and the old Ashwood case. I never minded it, in fact I rather enjoyed the stories and the rumours – it all seemed far enough back not to matter.’
‘Another world,’ said Michael, half to himself.
‘Yes. But if anyone ever mentioned Lucretia or Ashwood, Edmund used to change the subject at once. He was—’
‘Yes?’
‘I was going to say he was almost pathological about it,’ said Lucy. ‘But I suppose that’s precisely what he was.’
‘It looks like it. The doctors might get more out of him later on, but I think we’ll find that he killed Trixie Smith that day to stop her from getting at the truth about the original Ashwood murders,’ said Jennie.
‘Although we might never know what else he’s done over the years to keep his father’s secret.’
So Crispin, the golden charming young man who had died sunk in melancholy and madness, had been a murderer. And Edmund, whom Lucy had known all her life, who had held her hand across a table and suggested it was an alluring idea for the two of them to become close, had been a murderer as well. I’m not going to cope with this, thought Lucy in horror. And then – yes, of course I am.
‘What will happen to Edmund?’ asked Francesca into the silence.
‘I should think some sort of long-term treatment will be necessary,’ said the inspector.
‘Not – prison?’
‘On the present showing, I think it’s unlikely that he’d be considered fit to stand trial.’
Edmund guilty of murder, but unfit to stand trial. Edmund shut away in some dreadful asylum. And if only one could get rid of an appalling image of Edmund, madness glaring from his eyes, stalking that poor wretched Trixie Smith, bringing the skewer down on her face, it might be possible to feel deeply sorry for him. To dispel this image, Lucy said, ‘Elsa – you said you recognized Edmund. Could you explain that, please?’ She was not yet quite sure who Elsa was, but presumably at some stage it would be possible to ask.
‘My mother had photographs dating back – oh, many years,’ said Elsa. ‘Some of them showed Crispin Fane. And Edmund is very like Crispin to look at.’
‘Crispin? Your mother knew Crispin?’
‘My mother was in a place of hell with the Baroness von Wolff,’ said Elsa. ‘It forged a bond between them – the kind of bond that never breaks, not even in death. I know a great deal about your family, Lucy.’
‘Elsa’s mother was called Ilena,’ said Michael. ‘She was Polish. After the war she became a doctor – a very good one.’
‘Medicine is a tradition in my family,’ said Elsa composedly. ‘Me, I am just a nurse, nothing any grander than that.’
Lucy looked at her. ‘You said – a place of hell?’
‘Yes. My mother and Lucretia von Wolff were in Auschwitz together.’
Auschwitz.
As if a signal had been given, Michael stood up. ‘Francesca, could you and Elsa stay in here for a little while?’ he said.
‘Of course.’
‘Thank you. Lucy, if you’re up to it, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. It won’t be very easy and it might be a shock. But since we’re in this house—Well, anyway, I think you’d better know about it.’
‘Who is it?’ Lucy could not keep the apprehension out of her voice. ‘Who am I going to meet?’
‘My father,’ said Michael. ‘Alraune.’