The Eden Inheritance

by Janet Tanner

  The last weeks had been traumatic ones, lightened only by the birth of Josie’s baby – a little girl. With Otto dead and the Sanchez family holed up in Venezuela there had been no one to insist she should leave the island for the birth – in fact Lilli had insisted she should not. And so the child had become the first native-born Madreporan for almost twenty years – and once again josie had asked Lilli to be godmother, an honour she was reluctant to accept in her present state of depression.

  Now, as she helped Ingrid sort through the possessions accumulated by her father in his twenty-five years on Madrepora, the bleakness was there again. Was this all a lifetime amounted to in the end – a houseful of furniture and clothes and bric-á-brac? Valuable though some of it might be, at the same time it was a poor substitute for the wealth of a close-knit family and the love of those dear to you, who asked for nothing but that you should be yourself and give them love in return.

  Lilli straightened up from packing her father’s books into a crate to be despatched to a bookseller who would be able to separate the rare first editions from the run-of-the-mill volumes and dispose of them accordingly. Already she and Ingrid had sorted Otto’s clothes, which would be shared out amongst the servants who wanted them, and arranged for a dealer to acquire the collection of rare stamps. Now the time was coming when they would have to decide between themselves who would have the various household effects. Otto’s will bad made provision for Ingrid but left the bulk of his estate to Lilli, but Lilli was determined that Ingrid should not be dispossessed. She had, after all, been Otto’s wife, and she had been there at the end when he had needed her. Besides, Lilli did not particularly want any of the large items of furniture. She had no room for them in her little apartment in New York. Better that Ingrid should have them shipped to Germany to form the basis of the new home she would be making there.

  No, as long as she had one or two personal mementos, and her treasures, Lilli did not very much mind letting Ingrid have everything else. Just as long as Ingrid knew that the treasures were hers and did not try to lay claim to any of them.

  Lilli got up, going to the little bronze of Ceres and running her fingers over it lovingly as she had seen her father do so many times, then appraising each and every one of the treasures in turn. She must have them professionally packed, she decided. She couldn’t risk them being damaged in transit. She lingered in front of the triptych, seemed to hear her father’s voice across the years telling her that it was ‘Lilli’s triptych’, and tears stung her eyes. She turned away, picking up one of the silver candlesticks and turning it idly in her hands whilst she regained control of her emotions. It was cold to the touch, solid and heavy, a perfect piece of silver, wrought in an elaborate design. She upended it, holding it to catch the light and looking for the hallmark. Then, to her surprise, she realised that there was another inscription of some kind engraved on the base.

  She carried the candlestick to the window, looking at it more closely, and as she made out the words her forehead creased into a frown.

  De Savigny.

  I’m imagining things, Lilli thought. It would be too much of a coincidence for Guy’s name to be on my candlestick! But no, there was no denying it. The engraving was minute but nevertheless clear.

  De Savigny.

  The salon door opened and Ingrid came in carrying a box of slides.

  ‘I don’t know what you want to do with these, Lilli. They are mostly photographs of you when you were a little girl …’ She broke off, realising that Lilli was not paying her any attention. ‘What’s the matter? Are you all right?’

  ‘Ingrid, where did Daddy get these candlesticks?’ Lilli asked.

  A faint flush coloured Ingrid’s ivory cheeks.

  ‘I don’t know. He had them long before I married him. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Didn’t he ever say where they came from?’ Lilli persisted, ignoring Ingrid’s question. ‘They’ve been here as long as I can remember, of course, but they couldn’t be from his old home in Germany, could they? That, was bombed in the war. And they don’t look like something he would have picked up in South America. There’s no Spanish influence there. In fact, none of the things look German or Spanish. They’re more … Well, even my triptych is Joan of Arc, isn’t it?’

  ‘They are French,’ Ingrid said. ‘I thought you knew that.’

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it until now.’

  It was true, she never had, or at least, not in any depth. But quite suddenly she was thinking about it very hard indeed, and the thoughts she was having were unwelcome ones. French treasures had been in her father’s home ever since he had come here to make a new life after the war. And where had he done most of his service? In France.

  ‘He brought them with him, didn’t he?’ she said. ‘He got them out of France.’

  Ingrid’s colour was higher now and she looked unusually agitated.

  ‘You mustn’t blame him too much, Lilli,’ she said, her words tumbling over one another. ‘ He had to have something to help him start his new life. He had nothing – nothing! His home was destroyed, his family dead, the career that he had worked and lived for in ruins – is it any wonder he needed some things as an insurance for the future? And in any case, he loved them! He had wanted those treasures from the first moment he set eyes on them. He couldn’t have borne to leave them behind. That family whose house he lived in had everything – everything.’ Her voice was growing harsh now with the bitterness of defeat. ‘They didn’t have to flee their country and never see it again as he did. Their château was still standing, their lands returned to them …’

  ‘You are telling me he stole these things from a French château,’ Lilli said. Her voice was cold and level.

  ‘They came from the château, yes. I wouldn’t say he stole them.’

  ‘Well I would!’ A tremble crept into Lilli’s voice now. ‘If they belonged to the family of the château there’s no other word to describe what he did. Unless they gave them to him, of course.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Lilli.’

  ‘Or sold them to him? Did they do that, did they sell them to him for privileges of some kind under the occupation?’

  She was grasping at straws and she knew it. More than anything she wanted Ingrid to say yes, they had come into his possession as a result of a bargain of some kind. But she did not. Far from making excuses, Ingrid seemed to want Lilli simply to accept the truth as she saw it. Perhaps she herself had felt some guilt over the years regarding the treasures which belonged elsewhere and by making Lilli face the truth was in some way sharing the burden of that guilt.

  ‘The family weren’t in the château when your father was there,’ she said. ‘They were living in a cottage on the estate.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Your father had to have a headquarters of some kind for his officers. They needed decent billets. They weren’t the hoi polloi, you know.’

  ‘So they turned out the family who lived there and then stole their belongings,’ Lilli said. She was very cold.

  ‘It was wartime. These things happen in time of war.’

  ‘And should be put right afterwards,’ Lilli said. Her heart felt like lead in her chest. Shock after shock, would they never end? First her father’s illness, then the horrible truth about her mother’s death and the evil beneath the beauty on the island she loved, now her precious treasures which her father had given to her not hers at all, for they had not been his to give.

  ‘These things must go back to their rightful owners,’ she said firmly.

  ‘You’re upset, Lilli. Think what you are saying.’

  ‘You think I could keep them now, knowing they were stolen? I shall see they are returned where they belong, each and every one of them.’

  ‘And how will you do that?’ Ingrid asked scornfully. ‘For one thing you would have to admit that your father took them and bring shame on his memory. For another, how would you know where to return them? I can’t remember where he was pos
ted in the war – I only know it was somewhere in the middle of France – and I don’t want to remember. You can’t begin trying to find out now.’

  ‘I don’t need to do any investigating,’ Lilli said. ‘I know where they come from and to whom they belong.’

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’

  Lilli upended the candlestick again, looking at the inscription.

  ‘You know the pilot who came here? The one we thought was investigating the drugs cartel? Well, he wasn’t. He was investigating Daddy for quite another reason.’

  Ingrid was staring at her blankly.

  ‘Lilli, you have lost your reason. You don’t know what you are saying.’

  ‘Oh yes, I do know,’ Lilli said. ‘His name was Guy de Savigny. Take a look at this, Ingrid.’

  She passed the candlestick to Ingrid. For a moment the older woman refused to take it, as if shrinking from contact with confirmation of what Lilli had told her. Then, reluctantly, her fingers closed over the smooth silver, she glanced quickly at the base, then set it down.

  ‘You may be right.’

  ‘I’m sure I am. Anything else would be too much of a coincidence. It’s a very unusual name.’

  ‘Yes, it is. So why couldn’t Otto recognise it …?’ She broke off. Perhaps he had never heard it. He had already been too ill to care about such things when Guy was engaged, and certainly when she had booked the air taxi for Lilli she had told him only that the pilot had a French sounding name. But certainly he had reacted strangely to that nugget of information. He had, she remembered, become very distant, lost in a world of his own. At the time she had put it down to the effect of the drugs, now, suddenly, she found herself remembering that those glazed eyes had not only stared into space, but also strayed around each and every one of the treasures, and all the while that slightly puzzled frown had remained.

  Could it be that some sixth sense had warned him that the man with the French sounding name was somehow connected with his past?

  ‘But I still don’t understand,’ Ingrid said slowly. ‘ If this man is one of the same de Savignys, if he came here looking for your father and his family’s treasures, why didn’t he say something? Why did he go away again? Obviously, with your father dead he couldn’t have brought him to justice, if that was his intention, but I’m surprised he didn’t at least try to look for his family’s heirlooms. If he had come here and seen them he would presumably have been able to identify them. Why didn’t he do that?’

  Lilli’s hand flew to her mouth. Tiny cracks of light were beginning to illuminate her shock and confusion.

  Guy had been here. He had seen the treasures – they had even talked about them – on the afternoon she bad almost drowned. But he had said nothing. It could mean only one of two things. Either he had not recognised them – or he had, and chosen to say nothing. Why should he do that? Unless … Unless …

  ‘I really think you should forget all about this, Lilli,’ Ingrid was saying. ‘ Let sleeping dogs lie. Those things are yours now.’

  ‘No,’ Lilli said. ‘They are not mine and they never have been. I am going to get in touch with Guy de Savigny and clear the matter up once and for all. Please don’t try to stop me, Ingrid.’

  Looking at her small, determined face, Ingrid realised with a sinking heart that further argument would be a waste of breath.

  ‘So,’ Kathryn said when at last Guy finished his story, ‘you decided not to reclaim the family heirlooms because you felt sorry for von Rheinhardt’s daughter.’

  ‘I suppose you could put it like that.’ Guy’s tone was hard. Knowing he would never see Lilli again was a constant weight on his heart and the fact that he was still certain he had done the right thing did not help. All very well to tell himself they could never have built a real relationship on a foundation of secrets and lies, even to know with the thinking part of his brain that it was undoubtedly true, he still could not get her out of his mind. His senses all remembered her with a clarity that ached in the night and the hardest thing he had ever had to do was try to forget her and get on with his life.

  ‘I couldn’t hurt her any more,’ he said. ‘I honestly don’t think she could have taken it.’

  ‘What a wicked man he was!’ Kathryn said. ‘ Not content with being responsible for God knows how many deaths in the war, he went on to peddle death and misery in the drugs trade. Well, at least he got his just desserts in the end. Except that it was too quick and easy for him. He should have suffered the way he made others suffer.’

  ‘Believe me, he suffered,’ Guy said. ‘And in the end he saved my life, I hope you realise. The letter bomb in the box file was meant for me.’

  Kathryn shuddered at the thought of what might have happened. But still she could not find it in her heart to be magnanimous to the man she hated.

  ‘He didn’t do it for you, though. He did it for the girl. If she hadn’t been with you he’d have let you be blown up and not lost a moment’s sleep over it. I’m sorry, Guy, but you can’t expect me to forgive him just because he inadvertently saved your life. If he hadn’t been mixed up with such evil and dangerous people it wouldn’t have happened at all.’

  ‘But it wasn’t Lilli’s fault,’ Guy flared. ‘She can’t be blamed for what her father did and I don’t want her to suffer any more for it. She adored him. It would have broken her heart to know that besides being a drug-trafficker he was also a butcher. I wanted to leave her some illusions. Surely you can understand that?’

  Kathryn was silent for a moment shocked by his vehemence. He was in love with the girl – that was what had effected the change in him. It was what she had wanted for him for so long – but why, of all the girls in the world, had he had to fall for Otto von Rheinhardt’s daughter?

  Revulsion filled her, a wash of emotion which owed nothing to logical thought, before, with an effort, she pushed it away.

  Who was she to condemn anyone – much less Guy – for falling in love with the wrong person? Wasn’t it exactly what she had done – and with dire consequences? At least Guy had had the sense to realise it could never work.

  As for his reasons for not telling Lilli the truth about her father, they, too, seemed to echo the deceit she had practised on Guy. She had been desperate to spare him the knowledge of what his father had done too. And in that at least, it seemed she had succeeded.

  ‘Well at least there won’t be a public trial,’ she said quietly. ‘At least we shall be able to leave the past where it belongs.’

  He nodded and they sat in silence for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts.

  ‘What will you do now?’ she asked eventually.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Start looking for another job, I suppose. But I think I should go to France first and fill Grandpapa in on what has happened.’

  ‘You won’t tell him, though, that you know exactly where his family heirlooms are?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I shan’t tell him that.’ His face was shadowed and once again Kathryn thought how changed he was in some subtle way. ‘I think I should be going, Mum. I’ll come and see you again very soon.’

  ‘Please,’ she said. The change in him seemed to have extended to mending the cracks which had appeared in their relationship when she had told him about her wartime affair – he had not mentioned it again and neither would she.

  ‘I’m glad things have turned out the way they have,’ she said.

  He raised an eyebrow. He looked, she thought, very sad.

  ‘I’m glad you are pleased, anyway,’ was all he said.

  Spring had begun to bless Charente with its first gentle touch. The trees were still bare but the promise was there in the softening of the air and the new green spikes which would soon blossom into early flowers. But the dankness of winter still hung in the vast and lofty rooms of the château, making its presence felt as soon as the pale sun sank in the weak blue sky, and Guillaume still shrank into his heavy tweed suit and warmed himself whenever he could in front of the roa
ring fires which blazed in the cavernous fireplaces.

  ‘Well, Guy, if I’d been you I think I would have stayed in the Caribbean until the weather was a bit warmer in this part of the world,’ he said, stretching his long thin fingers out towards the blaze and rubbing them together to generate extra warmth. ‘But then, I suppose at your age you don’t feel the cold as I do, with my old bones.’

  ‘No, Grandpapa, I don’t suppose I do. Though it’s still a bit of a shock to the system to be swimming in a warm sea one day and freezing in a European winter the next.’

  ‘So – you’ve come to tell me how you got on, no doubt,’ Guillaume said, changing the subject. ‘Did you find the man your friend told you about? Was it von Rheinhardt?’

  ‘Yes, Grandpapa, it was. But he’s dead now.’ Guy related the story as he had to Kathryn, but omitting any mention of Lilli or the treasures.

  Guillaume, however, was not to be so easily satisfied.

  ‘Did he have our heirlooms, that’s what I want to know. I must say I was hoping you might bring them home with you. It would have been so good to see them again – and have them back here where they belong. Of course, it might not have been von Rheinhardt who stole them. There were others. But I always thought it was him.’

  ‘Getting into the villa wasn’t easy when he was so ill,’ Guy said evasively. His grandfather’s obvious longing to have his treasures back was making him feel guilty, but the decision was made now; there could be no going back on it.

  ‘No, I suppose not. A great pity. Though he might not still have the treasures now even if he had them in the first place. He might have sold them years ago, before he made his fortune out of drug-trafficking. I imagine he needed a great deal of money to keep him in the lifestyle he was used to.’