The feeling lasted barely twenty seconds, but it was so violent that it seemed to print itself on the air. When it released her Alice went forward, meaning to snatch Alraune out of Dreyer’s path, thinking she could carry him out into the relative normality of the main studio.
But she was too late. Alraune was already bounding forward and Leo Dreyer, unprepared, fell back with the child on top of him. Something was glinting in Alraune’s hand – something that was sharp and cruel and pointed…Something that caught the light as he lifted it and then drove the point straight down into Dreyer’s eyes, first one and then the other…
For a very long time no one in the warm, well-lit sitting-room spoke. The glow from the table lamp had fallen across Alice’s face while she talked, making her hair seem darker and smoothing the lines on her face so that it had seemed as if a much younger woman sat there. But when she described how Alraune had attacked Leo Dreyer, the light seemed to retreat and the illusion of youth vanished.
‘I never told you,’ said Alice, looking across at Michael. ‘I never told you what Alraune did that day.’
‘You didn’t need to,’ said Michael. ‘I guessed years ago. But what I could never fathom, and what I can’t fathom now, is how you foisted that colossal deception on everyone.’
‘I notice you ask how it was done, not why,’ observed Alice.
‘I know why you did it,’ said Michael, speaking directly to Alice, as if the others were not there. His voice was extremely gentle. ‘Of course I do. You had to protect Alraune.’
‘He had had so much tragedy in his life,’ said Alice. ‘The things he had been forced to witness…And he had had so little…’ A spreading of the hands, the mirror image of a gesture Michael had used earlier. ‘I had minutes – barely even that – to make a decision. I could let the law take its course, and allow Alraune to be branded a killer. Or—’
‘Or,’ said Michael, ‘you could save Alraune and let the world believe you were the killer instead.’ He did not say, At the expense of your two daughters, but Lucy thought the words hung on the air between them for a moment.
‘There was never really a choice,’ said Alice. ‘Alraune would have been put in some appalling institution – this was over fifty years ago, remember, and such places were grim and harsh. I couldn’t do it to him. For most of his life he had had nothing – nothing that normal children have. He had lived on scraps – worn bits of sacking, lived in fear and seen the most unbelievable brutalities. And he had killed an evil man – a man he remembered from Auschwitz. A monster.’
Michael said, ‘And Reinard Stultz?’
‘Stultz’s murderer was never established,’ said Alice at once. ‘And he had been a Nazi officer – he could have made dozens of enemies. One of them might have sought him out – Alraune might even have seen the murder done—’ Again she made the quick impatient gesture with her hands. ‘Perhaps what I did that day was wrong – certainly it was unfair to Deborah and Mariana – but that was how my mind reasoned in those few moments.’
Michael said again, ‘So how did you do it?’
‘It wasn’t difficult. Since I was seventeen I had spent most of my life spinning illusions. And on that day at Ashwood, I spun the greatest illusion of them all.’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Alice could not have done it on her own. If Ilena had not been at Ashwood that day – if Ilena had not seen Dreyer, or if she had not followed Alraune into the dressing-room – the plan could never have been made and would never have worked.