Moreton Manor had become a fortress that Cade never left. Ritter ran the house, patrolled its boundaries. More than once he’d cross-examined Stephen about the man in the greatcoat, but no one had seen the man since his last visit six years before.
Ritter seemed to be everywhere: At a turn in the staircase or at the end of a corridor, Stephen would suddenly come upon him. The brothers called him the tree frog because of his double chins, and he was truly an ugly man-big black glasses over his small mean eyes and his great stomach bulging inside huge trousers held up by wide, garishly coloured suspenders. But then he could move so quickly and quietly when he wanted to, turning up when you least expected him. Although he refused to admit it to himself, Stephen was secretly frightened of the sergeant, and perhaps he would not have had the courage to confront his father about the letter if Ritter had been home. But Ritter was away on business the day the letter arrived, and it was Stephen and the housemaid who had to help Cade to his bed when he suddenly felt sick and faint.
Returning to the dining room, Stephen found Silas sitting in their father’s place at the head of the table, reading the letter. Stephen had always disapproved of his brother’s interest in the private affairs of his fellow human beings. Spying and eavesdropping were not honourable activities in Stephen’s book, and at first he refused to read the letter that Silas held out to him.
“All right, I’ll read it to you then,” Silas had said impatiently, closing the door of the dining room.
It wasn’t a long letter, and Stephen could still remember its awkward wording, as if it had been written by a foreigner or someone trying to disguise his identity.
“Colonel,” the letter had begun. Not “Dear Colonel” or “Colonel Cade.” Just “Colonel”-the same name that the visitor in the greatcoat had used for Stephen’s father six years earlier when he had emerged from the trees and stopped Stephen at the gate.
Colonel,
I saw what you did at Marjean. You thought no one saw and lived but I did. I saw the bodies and the fire, and I saw what you took. I want what you took. Bring the book to Paddington Station in London and put it in the locker that is marked 17. Bring it yourself and use the key that is in this letter. Do it on Friday. In the morning. If you do this, I will be silent. If you do not, I will go to the police. In France and in England. You know what will happen.
There had been no signature on the letter, and the message and the address on the envelope had been typed. It had been posted in London the day before, Monday. The envelope contained nothing else except a tiny silver key that Silas had already shaken out onto the tablecloth.
There was no time for the brothers to talk about the letter before Cade reappeared to reclaim it. And Stephen was astonished at the speed with which his brother replaced paper and key in the envelope as the door opened. Their father’s face was very pale, and he went to the drinks tray in the corner and poured himself a generous measure of whisky before he left with the letter in his hand. It was the only time that Stephen ever saw his father drink alcohol at that time of the morning.
Afterward, Stephen spent the best part of an hour arguing with his brother about what to do, but Silas was adamant. He would not talk to their father about the letter. It was as if Silas knew more than he was saying about what the writer meant. Or perhaps it had just been Silas’s dislike of direct confrontation. He was certainly frightened of his father.
Ritter was due back on the following day, so Stephen decided not to delay. He needed to know what his father had done. The man was cold and distant, but he was also a genius and a war hero. Stephen had spent hours with his mother as a child, examining his father’s medals. In the young Stephen’s imagination, Colonel Cade had marched through France with Eisenhower and Montgomery, liberating the country from the Nazis. But what if it wasn’t true? What if his father was instead nothing more than a murderer and a common thief? What did that make Stephen? He had to know the truth.
He felt his heart pounding in his chest when he knocked at the door of his father’s study. He longed to run away but forced himself to stand still waiting for the door to open.
“Stephen, I’ve been expecting you.”
Cade was smiling, and he put an arm around his son’s shoulder as he ushered Stephen to one of the leather armchairs in the centre of the room and sat down opposite him in the other. Stephen had never sat with his father like this, like they were equals, and it made his spirits soar. He had never wanted to believe in another human being as much as he did then.
“You’re worried about that letter, aren’t you, Stephen?”
Stephen nodded, wondering how his father knew that he’d read it. Perhaps he’d overheard him talking to Silas.
“Well, I can understand that,” his father went on, without a word of reproof to Stephen for reading it. “But it’s not true, you know. Not one word of it. You remember that man, Carson, who came here? The one with the gun?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he wrote it. He hates me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know exactly. He was passed over for promotion. Fell on bad times. Blames me for some reason. It doesn’t really matter. The main point is that he tried to kill me last year. Damn near succeeded. And now he’s written this letter to try to lure me somewhere where he can have another go. But he won’t succeed, Stephen. Your old man’s not going anywhere.”
Cade smiled encouragingly at his son, and Stephen smiled back. He felt better already but he knew he couldn’t leave without asking about what the man had written in the letter. He needed to know that his father had done nothing wrong.
“What’s Marjean, Dad?” he asked, swallowing hard so that his question came out almost as a whisper.
Cade didn’t answer immediately but instead looked at his son meditatively as if deciding how far he could trust him.
“I feel I owe you an apology,” he said finally. “You’re a grown man now and I should have more confidence in you. I’ve tried to shelter you too much since your mother died. I see that now.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Marjean’s a little town in Normandy. No more than a village really. There’s a chateau and a church. I went there in the war with Carson and the sergeant. Carson was a corporal then.”
“After D-day?”
“That’s right. It was a bad time. The Germans were a cruel lot at the best of times, but by that time they were losing and that made them vicious. They’d been using the house as a headquarters, and we ambushed them when they were leaving, but we were too late to save the family. It wasn’t the first time that happened or the last. War’s an ugly thing, Stephen.”
Cade got up and went over to a filing cabinet in the corner of his study and took out two documents fastened together with an old paper clip.
“Here, read this,” he said, giving them to Stephen. “Then you’ll understand.”
It was a British military report on the events at Marjean chateau on August 28, 1944, and everything was set out in black and white. Before they left, the Germans had taken the owner of the chateau and his wife into the church that was no more than two hundred yards from the house. There was an old family servant there too, and the Germans had shot all three of them. Then they had set the house on fire and an old woman, perhaps the wife of the servant, had died in the flames. The Germans had even shot the dog. This was how they had repaid their hosts’ hospitality. They’d been thorough as always.
The report had been written by Cade and cosigned by another officer whose signature Stephen couldn’t read. Attached to it was a shorter handwritten document bearing the signature of a Charles Mason, Army Medical Officer. He stated simply that he’d been called to the church at Marjean by Colonel John Cade on August 28, 1944, and been asked to examine three dead bodies dressed in civilian clothing and located in the crypt. He had extracted bullets from each of the deceased and was able to say that they were of German origin, fired from Mauser pistols of the type then in use by the German army.
The documents seemed entirely authentic, and they were enough for Stephen. He wanted to believe his father, and so he did believe him. He had stayed on at school for an extra year and had got a place at New College to study history, and his father seemed proud of his achievement. The start of term was only two months away, and Stephen was busy planning how to decorate his rooms. Outside it was summer and everything seemed full of hope and possibility.
But Stephen’s mood didn’t last. One night less than a week later, he had just got into bed and turned out the light when Silas knocked on his door.
Perhaps if Stephen had known where they were going, he would have refused to follow his brother down the west-wing stairs, out through the door into the night, and round the back of the house. But Silas’s air of mystery drew Stephen forward, and when they got close to the study window, Silas’s hand on his arm meant that Stephen would have had to struggle to get himself free. The window was open, and Stephen was not prepared to risk discovery. And he needed to hear what Ritter and his father were saying. They were talking about the letter.
One time only Stephen raised his head above the windowsill to look in, before Silas pulled him back. There was no light in the room except from the green reading lamp on his father’s desk. Ritter and Cade sat in the leather-backed armchairs in the centre of the room with their heads close together. They were talking about what to do, and it didn’t take Stephen long to realise that he had been lied to. The men inside the room were cold-blooded killers, and they were about to kill again.
“There wasn’t anyone else, Colonel. You know that as well as I do.” It was Ritter talking. His voice was soft but pressing, with the usual tone of false jocularity entirely absent. It made Stephen feel cold inside, even though the night was warm.
“I hope you’re right.” Cade sounded anxious, petulant almost, like a man who craves reassurance but can’t accept it when it’s offered to him.
“It’s the house that worries me, Reg,” he went on after a moment. “You should have searched it before, when you got the book.”
“Maybe I should’ve done. But you wanted to get them in the church straight away. It was your call.”
“I wasn’t going to stand there asking them questions out in the open.”
“And the church was safe. You knew that because you’d been there before.” Stephen sensed a slight impatience in the sergeant’s voice as if he’d been over this ground many times before. “The point is that it didn’t make any difference,” he went on after a moment. “No one left the house while we were in the church or Carson would’ve seen them. It wasn’t that dark, and he had a view of all the exits. I asked him about it afterward, and he had no reason to lie.”
“He had no reason to shoot me.”
“That was twelve years later,” said Ritter. “No one got away. I’m sure of it. You found everyone you expected to. You told me that yourself.”
“I didn’t know about the old woman.”
“Fine. And she burnt up like a stick of old firewood.”
Ritter laughed harshly, but Cade didn’t join in.
“That was Carson too,” he said, sounding even more agitated than before. “He caused that fire. He didn’t need to shoot back like that. He must have seen the lamp in the window. He knew the risk. Maybe what I really wanted was in that house. It hurts not knowing whether it was there or not. It’d be easier to know it was destroyed than not to know one way or the other. Part of me wishes there had been a survivor.”
“Well, there wasn’t. Just you and me and Carson.”
“I don’t know how he even made corporal,” said Cade quickly. “I should have killed him when he came here before.”
“You couldn’t. Not with the boy watching.”
“No. Maybe not. But I didn’t realise then how persistent he would be,” said Cade. “The best thing would have been not to have got the bastard involved in the first place.”
“There’s no point in going over all that again, John. You thought we needed him at the time, and I agreed with you. We didn’t know how many Germans there would be, and we had to have a lookout. For afterward.”
“Afterward,” repeated Cade bitterly. “That’s when I talked about the book. And the cross. Babbling about them like some idiot schoolboy. Making out as if they were the most valuable things in the world. I wouldn’t have said anything if it hadn’t been for the fire.”
“How valuable is the book?” Ritter’s voice was suddenly much softer than Cade’s. It made Stephen shiver.
“It’s worth money. But no more than some of the other manuscripts here. And that’s not why I wanted it. I needed it because of where I thought it would lead me. But it hasn’t. All it’s done is get me a bullet in the lung and this bastard Carson stalking me. I don’t think he even wants the codex. It’s double Dutch to him, and he couldn’t fence it even if he wanted to. He just wants to hurt me, because he’s got it in his head that I’m the reason he’s poor and unsuccessful. And shabby. God, you should have seen him when he came here the second time, Reg. He looked like a tramp.”
“I wish I had,” said Ritter. There was no mistaking his meaning.
There was silence for a moment before Cade spoke again, and then the fretful note was back in his voice.
“You’re sure it’s him, Reg. Nobody else?”
“I know it’s him. There were no witnesses and no survivors. Nobody except him. Look, give me that again.” There was a sound of paper rustling. Ritter was obviously reading the blackmail letter. “Here. Paddington Station’s where you’re supposed to meet him. And he lives just round the corner from there. Or at least he used to. In some dive up above a paper shop. I visited him there once. And seventeen’s probably his lucky number.”
“Was his lucky number.” Cade laughed. “What are you going to do to him, Reg?”
The sadistic curiosity in his father’s voice was too much for Stephen. Swallowing the bile that had suddenly come up into his throat, he took an involuntary step back from the window. Several twigs had blown down with the leaves from the nearby grove of elm trees earlier in the day, and one broke now with a snap under Stephen’s foot. Inside the room Ritter reacted instantly, pushing back his chair and crossing to the window. But Silas was quicker, pulling his brother down and round the corner of the house into the darkness.
Less than six feet away from where they were standing, the brothers could sense Ritter at the window peering out into the night.
“What is it?” asked Cade from inside the room.
“Nothing. Some animal,” said Ritter. “Nobody’s going to get into these grounds anymore. We’d hear the alarm if anyone tried.”
“I hope you’re right. So what are you going to do to him?” Cade repeated his question, once Ritter had come back from the window.
“I’ll deal with him.”
Just four words, but so full of meaning. Ritter would murder Carson when he found him. Stephen was sure of that. After a hearty breakfast at some local cafe, he’d go upstairs to Carson’s flat and shoot him full of holes.
“When?” Cade’s voice was soft now too.
“Soon,” said Ritter. “I’ll leave tomorrow. If there’s anything I need to know, you can send a message to the usual place. But leave it to me. I’ll take care of him. It’ll be a pleasure.”
The next day, true to his word, Ritter was gone. Stephen didn’t see him leave. He’d been up most of the night, tossing and turning in his bed until he had fallen into an uneasy sleep just as the grey light of the early dawn had started to seep into his room.
In the far corner, Stephen’s collection of children’s books was carefully arranged on wall-length shelves. Most of them were about heroes. Stephen had known for a fact that his father was a hero for as long as he could remember. It explained why he could not get close to his father, however hard he tried. Heroes lived in their own world, an English version of Mount Olympus, and they couldn’t be expected to worry too much about mundane things like children. Peop
le like Stephen’s father had their hands full making discoveries and saving the world. Cade’s coldness had just made his younger son love him even more, and his wholesale rejection of the boy following his wife’s tragic death had done nothing to change Stephen’s inmost feelings.
Stephen never really knew what he was going to do when he grew up, but it would be something that would change the world. He would follow in his father’s footsteps. Except that now he knew where those footsteps led.
Stephen felt as if he had lost his hold on everything. His father’s shame was his shame. And yet he could not stand aside and do nothing. He had to make a stand. And for that he needed Silas.
Dressing quickly, he went in search of his brother and found him eventually, crouched over a tray of developing fluid in a makeshift darkroom that Silas had created in one of the unused cellars under the west wing. And Stephen had to practically force his brother out into the sunlight. He had no intention of discussing inside the confines of the house what they had overheard.
The brightness of the day did not accord with either brother’s mood. Stephen had torn a piece of green wood from the branch of an oak tree and was using it to behead the stalks of nettle and cow parsley growing in the hedgerows beside the road, while Silas walked with his head hunched over between his shoulders, as if hiding from the sun overhead.
“I can’t believe it,” said Stephen, angrily swishing his stick from side to side through the still air. “He lied to me about everything.”
“What did you expect him to do?”
“I expected him not to have killed those people. In a bloody church too.”
“Well, I’m sorry you couldn’t keep your illusions. That’s part of growing up, I guess.”
“What? Finding out our father’s a mass murderer?”
“He’s not my father.”
“Well, he’s the nearest you’ll ever get to one.” Stephen paused, regretting his words. “Sorry, Silas,” he went on after a moment. “I know it’s not easy being adopted, but it doesn’t mean you haven’t got a responsibility.”
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