“No, it’s a lie.”
“You set the house on fire after you murdered them. To hide what you had done.”
“No.” Ritter half spat out the word. It was almost as if he was back on the parade ground issuing commands. “There was an investigation by the army,” he went on after a moment, having regained his composure. “We were fully exonerated. They found German bullets in the bodies.”
“But why would there have been an investigation? It was war time, and you say you’d done nothing wrong.”
“I don’t know. The colonel wanted one.”
“You’re lying, Mr. Ritter,” said Swift. “Both the colonel’s sons heard you and him in his study, talking about what you’d done.”
“No.”
“Silas Cade has told this court what you said. And his brother will do the same.”
“They’re lying.”
“Why should they be? Stephen had nothing to gain by quarreling with his father.”
“I don’t know about that. He had plenty to gain by killing him.”
“And why should someone send the colonel a blackmail letter about what happened at Marjean if nothing did? Answer me that, Mr. Ritter.”
“It must’ve been Carson who sent the letter. He was a born liar, and he always wanted money. He kept asking the colonel after the war, and the colonel was foolish enough to give him some. He gambled that away in no time, and then he wanted more. When the colonel said no, he developed a grudge against him. It became like an obsession.”
“Why would the colonel have given him money?”
“Because he was generous that way. He shouldn’t have done it. I told him not to.”
“He gave him the money because he wanted to keep Carson quiet. About what he’d seen at Marjean. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“No.”
Swift pulled his gown up around his shoulders, locking eyes with Ritter, before he asked his next question.
“Somebody had tried to kill Colonel Cade before, hadn’t they, Mr. Ritter? Back in 1956?”
“Yes.”
“Was that at Marjean?”
“Yes. We went there together. The colonel wanted to go back and see some of the places where we’d been in the war.”
“And he came back in a wheelchair and became a recluse. Wasn’t that when you helped him install the best security system his money could buy?” asked Swift.
“That’s right. No burglar was going to get through that.”
“And then came the blackmail letter asking the colonel to go to London. Someone couldn’t get in and so they were trying to lure him out. Yes?”
“If you say so.”
“What’s your point, Mr. Swift?” asked the judge, who had been stirring impatiently in his seat for some time. “This history lesson is all very interesting, but perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling us what it’s got to do with the charge against your client.”
“Certainly, my lord. I am trying to show that someone else, who was not my client, had been trying to kill Professor Cade for a long time before he was finally murdered.”
“And my understanding is that Mr. Ritter is saying that it was this man, Carson.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Well, you may well be right, Mr. Swift. But I don’t see how it helps you. Mr. Carson was already dead when Professor Cade was murdered. He’d fallen from a moving train near Leicester after drinking too much alcohol. Inspector Trave found a newspaper article about what happened on the floor beside the professor’s body. It’s in his witness statement. Do you want me to read it to you?”
“No, my lord. I’m aware of the article. But, with respect, that’s not the end of the matter. The defence suggests that the person who wanted to kill Professor Cade because of what happened in France was still alive on the night of his murder.”
“What’s the basis for that?”
“The Mercedes car outside the gate, my lord. And the foreigner who was stopped for speeding in it shortly afterward.”
“The one who can’t be traced?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Well, if that’s your client’s defence, I’m not going to stop you advancing it. The jury will be free to form its own conclusion. Do you have any other questions for this witness, Mr. Swift?”
“No. Nothing else,” said the defence barrister, realising that there was nothing to be gained by carrying on with Ritter. He sat down heavily, trying to keep the sense of defeat that he felt inside from showing too clearly on his face. Judge Murdoch had done no more than demonstrate the weakness in the defence that he had been telling Stephen about for months. There wasn’t enough evidence that the massacre at Marjean ever happened. And even if it did, there seemed to have been no survivors. And no witnesses except Carson, who was dead too. The man in the Mercedes was interesting, but he wasn’t enough. There was no evidence that he’d got inside the grounds, let alone the house. There had to be someone else. An insider. But who? All the evidence pointed to Stephen. Perhaps he did kill his father, just like the Crown said. And this trial was just a waste of time.
Swift glanced back at the dock. Stephen was leaning forward in his chair, cradling his head in his hands. The barrister felt the case weighing him down like a stone around his neck. He wanted it to be over.
TWELVE
Ritter couldn’t find his wife anywhere. He didn’t search too hard, since he had better things to do. She was probably crying somewhere. At the back of the women’s toilets with a wad of tissues in her hand, maybe. Ritter didn’t suspect her of any wrongdoing with Silas. That would have been an enormity beyond his wildest imaginings. But he had understood enough of the policeman’s conversation with the man in the dirty suit to realise that Silence had been taking long-distance photographs of Sasha. Perhaps he’d taken some of Jeanne too, when Sasha’s curtains were drawn. Nasty little sneak. Ritter made a mental note that he needed to see the photographs, and then he’d have a few words to say to Silence. Ritter smiled. He thought about taking hold of Silas’s delicate white hands again—women’s hands, they were—and squeezing them, gently at first, and then harder and harder, watching the surprise and then the pain registering on Silas’s thin sallow face.
That’s what had happened with Carson. Sitting in an empty second-class compartment of the intercity express with dirty Midland towns rushing past the grimy window. Cigarette butts overflowing out of the metal ashtrays and a few tears in the cushion covers of the seats. They’d sat side by side just like old pals, and Ritter had poured Bell’s whisky into the yellow plastic toothbrush mug that he’d brought along for the purpose. Glug, glug, glug. The whisky had loosened Carson’s tongue, got him talking about the old times. Arab women in North Africa, French women in Rouen. Carson and his whores and all the money he’d frittered away in second-rate casinos. It made Ritter want to puke. But he’d kept his hands off the little shit long enough to move the conversation round to the blackmail letter and the shooting at Marjean. Carson had pretended not to know anything about them, and the funny thing was he’d carried on saying that right up to the end. Ritter had put a gag in Carson’s mouth while he’d broken his fingers one by one, but that was a punishment. Ritter had given up on trying to get any worthwhile information out of the chubby corporal by then. And when he’d taken the gag out and held him at the open door near Leicester, ready to throw him out, Carson had been saying the same thing: “I didn’t do it, Reg. I had no reason to. I swear I didn’t, Reg.”
That was the last thing that Jimmy Carson said before Ritter pushed him down to his death: “I didn’t do it, Reg.” But he did. It had to be him. And the colonel didn’t have any doubts either. Those last few months, the old man had slept better than he had in years. He was frail obviously, and he was always going to be an invalid—Carson’s rifle bullet had seen to that. But he was more like his old self again. He’d go out on the lawn, sit on the bench under the honeysuckle, talk about the future, and not worry so much about the past. Ritter had wished at the time
that he’d found Carson sooner. It had taken him nearly two years. The bastard had changed his name and disappeared, gone west maybe. He only reemerged when his mother died. Like some pathetic old East End gangster, Carson had always loved his mother. Ritter knew that, and he’d had her watched. Funny, though, that Carson had waited to visit her until after she was dead, when there was no point anymore. He’d got word that Ritter was after him, and so he’d gone to ground. And that was a sure sign of his guilt. You didn’t need a confession for a conviction. Look at Stevie. Still protesting his innocence back in Court number 1, trying to cheat the hangman.
Ritter smiled. Giving evidence had been easier than he thought. He’d known that he’d be asked about Marjean. Stevie was fixated on it. That was the reason he’d quarreled with his father. Couldn’t stand the thought of a couple of Frenchies getting potted. He’d probably have even objected to the dog. So Marjean was going to come up, and Ritter had been prepared for it. He’d remembered what the colonel had told him fifteen years before. If you’ve got to lie, lie well. And Ritter had lied well. Solemnly and on oath, and the jurors had believed him. He’d watched them and he knew. And then the judge had weighed in and told them that it was all irrelevant anyway. Carson was the only other witness, and he was dead. He couldn’t have killed the colonel.
Only Ritter was left. He was the only one left alive of all the people who had been there that day. The Germans had been first. Ritter had told the truth about that. There had been two trucks, and they had ambushed them on the drive. But the house had not been on fire. Not yet. That had come later.
Sitting on the municipal bench in High Holborn, Ritter lost touch with the present. The passing traffic and the men in city suits pounding the pavements through their lunch hours were all outside his consciousness. He was back in France in the late summer of 1944 and the hot hard sun was hanging low over the western horizon as Rocard and his wife and the old man staggered up the sloping path to the church with their British captors following close behind. The old man was still suffering the effects of the beating that he had received from Carson and leaned heavily on the Frenchwoman’s shoulder for support, so that they made fairly slow progress.
There was time therefore for Ritter to really take in the façade of Marjean Church, and he didn’t like what he saw. It gave him the creeps. Perhaps it was the hour of the day or the proximity of the black empty lake, but he couldn’t escape the sense that he was being watched. It made him nervous and angry with himself all at the same time. If there was one thing that Ritter was sure of, it was that superstition was stupid.
A grey stone statue of some French saint missing half his head stood above the entrance, and when Rocard pushed open the heavy wooden door of the church at Cade’s direction, Ritter had to fight down an impulse to run back down the slope, in headlong retreat to the safety of the house. But instead he swallowed his anxiety and followed the others into the airless twilight interior, wishing that the colonel had picked somewhere else to continue the interrogation. Still, at least they were out of sight, and Carson would be able to see everything from where he was standing outside. It was a grandstand position. The lake and the sky and the house and the drive were all in view. There would be plenty of time for Jimmy Carson to shout out a warning if he saw someone coming.
The church was simply furnished. There were ten pews on either side of the uncarpeted nave, with a few chairs at the back and an old organ that looked the worse for wear. Up beyond the chancel, the altar was covered with a thin white sheet and adorned with nothing except a small brass cross, and the walls too were bare of decoration. The last of the evening light came in through high leaded windows.
Cade didn’t stop when they got inside. He seemed to know exactly where he was going. He was now ahead of Madame Rocard and the servant, walking almost parallel with her husband toward a half-open door at the back of the church.
“Where are we going?” asked Ritter, but he never got an answer to his question.
Perhaps they were going too fast and she lost her footing on the uneven stone floor, or perhaps she could no longer bear the weight of supporting the old man. Whatever the reason, Madame Rocard suddenly stopped and put her hands up to her head, and the old man fell to the ground, taking his mistress with him. Ritter had been following close behind them with the safety catch on his German pistol released. He didn’t trust any of these people and was taking no chances. Now he too lost his balance, and fell almost on top of the woman. Ritter had always been a heavy man, and Madame Rocard screamed with renewed pain as she felt his full weight land on her body.
Her husband turned round instantly, and the sight of the fat British sergeant on top of his wife enraged him. It broke his self-control and he started raining blows down on Ritter’s head. Everything went black, and it was just instinct and not any kind of conscious decision that made Ritter squeeze his finger down on the trigger of the gun in his hand. Not once, but again and again.
There was a huge explosion in Ritter’s ears, and then complete silence for a moment before everyone seemed to start shouting all at once. Ritter felt the taut wiry body above him go suddenly limp, and then the Frenchman’s warm blood began seeping down over his arm. It brought Ritter to his senses, and he pushed Rocard’s dead weight away and got to his feet.
What happened next he never forgot. It was the only time that the colonel ever lost his temper with him, and it hurt Ritter deep down inside with a pain that he never wanted to feel again.
“Fuck you, Sergeant.” The colonel was white with anger, but he didn’t raise his voice. “Do you know what you are?”
Ritter shook his head.
“You’re a fat, trigger-happy idiot who’s probably just cost me my life’s work. But you wouldn’t understand that, would you, you dolt?”
Cade would have gone on and on, heaping abuse on the one person he could really rely on in the world, if Rocard’s wife hadn’t suddenly started screaming. She was bent over the body of her husband, plucking at his face, trying to get him to come back to life, and now, in despair, she began beating his chest and crying out his name over and over again while the old servant tried ineffectually to pull her away.
Cade reacted instantly. He pulled her roughly to her feet, and then slapped her across the face again and again until she stopped screaming and fell silent.
“She may know something,” he said. “Get the old man and follow me. We’ll take them downstairs.”
The old servant didn’t seem to have much life left in his legs, but Ritter had just got him moving when Carson appeared in the doorway behind them.
“What the fuck happened?” he shouted at Cade. “You told me there wasn’t going to be any killing.”
“I told you to follow orders, and you’d get rewarded for it. If you still want the money, shut up and get outside. Do you hear me, Corporal? Do your fucking job.”
Ritter had never seen the colonel so angry or so powerful. It was certainly too much for Carson, who turned away without further protest and went back to his post, half closing the heavy church door behind him.
“Now, let’s be quick about it,” said Cade, turning back to Ritter after Carson had gone. “Leave the body here. We can come back for it later.”
They went through the door at the back of the church into an open area that evidently served as the vestry. An old white surplice was hanging from a hook on the far wall beneath a dirty window, and a pile of hymn books was stacked on a low table. A rope hanging down through a hole in the middle of the plaster ceiling was obviously connected to the bell at the top of the tower that Ritter had noticed earlier, when they were walking up the hill to the church. Rocard should have rung it when he heard the firing coming from down the drive, thought Ritter. Somebody might have come to save him, but it was too late now.
There was a staircase in the corner of the vestry with stone steps going up and down. Cade took a torch out of his pocket and started descending. He had obviously come prepared.
The sta
irs were narrow and curved round on themselves, and Cade and Ritter had to keep a firm hold on their prisoners to make sure they didn’t fall over. Rocard’s wife seemed to be in a state of shock, and the old man could hardly walk.
They stopped at the bottom of the stairs, and it took a few moments for Ritter to realise the scale of the room that he had now entered. The crypt ran the whole length of the church, and each wall was lined with tombs. Some were plain stone coffins, while others were surmounted with life-size sculptures of their occupants, but each tomb seemed to have an inscription on the wall beside it. Names and dates that were illegible in the torchlight.
“Who are they?” asked Ritter. He had never seen a place like this before and never wanted to again. It reminded him of the Nottinghamshire mines that he had run away from to join the army when his father died.
“Abbots, mostly. There was a monastery here once. The church is pretty well all there’s left of it.”
The anger had gone out of Cade’s voice and his tone was businesslike as he lit a paraffin lamp hanging down from the centre of the ceiling.
Then, at the colonel’s direction, Ritter pulled two chairs out of a corner and sat the Frenchwoman and the old man down under the lamp. It was still swinging slightly from when Cade had lit it, and it felt to Ritter for a moment like they were in the bowels of a ship. Ritter had always hated the sea.
The old man was mumbling incoherently, and Rocard’s wife seemed almost lifeless. Cade tried smacking her again, but it had no effect. Bruises were already beginning to come up around her eyes, and her cheeks were red weals.
“This is useless,” said Cade. “Give me your whisky flask, Reg. Maybe that’ll work.”
Surprisingly it did. Ritter held the woman’s head back while Cade dropped the alcohol into her mouth. After a moment she began coughing and spluttering, and the anger and grief reappeared in her eyes.
Cade began talking to her in French. His face was inches from hers, and he kept repeating that same word that Ritter had heard him use outside the house.
The Inheritance Page 14
