The Inheritance itadc-1

by Simon Tolkien

  “What did you see?” asked Thompson, sounding puzzled. There was nothing in the woman’s statement about seeing anything special. In fact, she seemed to have been pretty insistent that she saw nothing at all. She’d told the police that several times.

  “I saw Silas Cade in the courtyard. It was before the shouting started. And he was going from the study to the front door. I saw him go inside.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was at my window, doing my hair. I had not gone to bed. My husband had. He was waiting for me.”

  “But he told us you both went to sleep,” interrupted Thompson, countering with the first thing that came into his head. He’d left his prepared questions behind, and now he was in uncharted territory.

  “He may have been asleep. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s what I saw outside that is important,” said Jeanne. It was as if it hadn’t occurred to her that she wouldn’t be believed. “I could see everything because there was a moon. How do you call it when the moon is big?” she asked.

  “A full moon,” said Thompson.

  “Yes. That’s it,” she said eagerly. “There was a full moon, and Silas, he was coming from below me, walking quickly. Very quickly. Soon I found out why, but then I did not know.”

  “How could you be sure it was him? Did you see his face?” asked Thompson.

  “No. I saw him from above, and from behind. But I know it was him. He was wearing his own black mackintosh and his hat. I have seen him wearing them many, many times before.”

  Thompson seemed at a loss for words. He had been completely unprepared for Mrs. Ritter’s revelations. He’d just wanted her to corroborate her husband’s evidence about the study key, which she’d done. Perfectly. And if only that had been the end of it. But instead, here she was, pointing the defendant’s brother out as the murderer. And the worst part of it was that Silas was the only other person with a motive. The same motive as Stephen. Disinheritance.

  But the woman was lying. She had to be. Otherwise she’d have told the truth in her statement. Thompson just needed to find out why she was trying to put a rope round Silas Cade’s neck. There had to be a reason.

  “I’d like to address your lordship in the absence of the jury,” said Thompson, turning away from his witness with a look of disgust.

  “Yes, Mr. Thompson. I thought you might be wanting to do that,” said Judge Murdoch. “Just step outside for a minute, ladies and gentlemen, please. This shouldn’t take long.”

  The jurors filed out, looking puzzled. Some of them even seemed irritated. And who could blame them, thought Trave. They were being sent out just when the trial was getting interesting. The Frenchwoman looked like she’d got plenty more to say about Silas Cade. Trave glanced over at the public gallery and noticed that Silas had disappeared, although Ritter was still there, looking like thunder. Trave considered going after Silas, but then thought better of the idea. There was no way of knowing where he’d gone, and Trave needed to hear the rest of the Ritter woman’s evidence. It was his case, after all.

  The door at the back of the court closed behind the last juror, and the judge turned to the witness.

  “Sit down, young woman,” he said coldly. “I need to talk to counsel.”

  Jeanne obeyed. She looked terrified now, like someone who has jumped headlong into the water and found it to be far colder and deeper than she’d expected.

  “There’s nothing of what the witness has been saying about this man in the courtyard in her witness statement. That’s your point, isn’t it, Mr. Thompson?” asked the judge.

  “Yes, my lord. And I need to ask her why. The jury needs to have the full picture.”

  “Yes. And I am sure defence counsel will agree with that proposition. Am I right, Mr. Swift?”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Swift. Mrs. Ritter had entirely changed her story, and there was no basis on which he could object to Thompson’s application. Besides, he wanted to know what else she would say. Perhaps she would implicate Silas even further.

  “Very well,” said Murdoch. “The prosecution’s application to cross-examine their witness is hereby granted. Let’s have the jury back. And you can come back into the witness box now, Madam,” he added. “There’ll be some more questions for you.”

  “You remember making a statement to the police, Mrs. Ritter?” asked Thompson, once the jurors were back in their places.

  “Yes, I remember,” said Jeanne softly.

  “Good. Let me read you a bit of it then. This is what you said: ‘I went to sleep quite early with my husband, and I wasn’t aware of anything unusual until the sound of someone shouting woke me up.’ That’s what you told the police. You were asleep until you heard the shouting. Not a word about anyone in the courtyard.”

  “It’s not true. What I said there isn’t true.”

  “But that’s not what you said at the time, is it, Mrs. Ritter?” said Thompson, with a smile. “Look, you signed a declaration saying that your statement was all true. You even agreed that you could be prosecuted if it wasn’t.” Thompson held up the last page of the statement for everyone to see, with his finger pointing at Jeanne Ritter’s rather laborious-looking signature at the bottom.

  “I was lying. I wanted to protect Silas.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I loved him.” Jeanne almost shouted the words, glorying in the momentary sense of complete release that they gave her. “I loved him, and I thought he loved me. But he didn’t. He never loved me at all.”

  “And that’s why you’ve made up this story about him. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Ritter?” asked Thompson, scenting victory. “It’s revenge you’re after. Not the truth.”

  “No, I’m telling you the truth now.”

  “But you were lying before.”

  “Yes, can’t you understand?” Jeanne was crying now, and her words came out in short rushes between the heaves of her body. “I was downstairs in the hall, and Reg was shouting about the colonel, about him being dead, and I knew what I had to do. First of all, I locked the door. Then I picked up the mackintosh and the hat, and I hung them up so that no one would see. And afterward I told the policeman that I saw nothing. Nothing at all. But it wasn’t true. I saw him, and I know what he did.”

  “So you say, Mrs. Ritter,” said Thompson. His icy calm was a sharp contrast to the obvious distress of his witness. “But it’s what you would say, isn’t it, now that Mr. Cade has rejected you?”

  “No,” said Jeanne weakly, but it sounded more like a protest than a denial. She felt suddenly terribly tired, drained of all emotion. Thompson was staring at her, making no effort to hide his contempt, and it took an enormous effort of will to turn away from him. She scanned the courtroom, looking for a friendly face, but everyone seemed indifferent to her. Except Stephen. She could not bear the look in his eyes. “You protected Silas and you condemned me,” he seemed to be saying. “And it’s too late now. Too late for you and too late for me.”

  Thompson was asking her more questions, pressing her to tell the jury the story of her adultery, but she couldn’t answer anymore. She was no match for the mean little barrister with the effeminate voice or the judge who talked to her like she was so much dirt. Suddenly she felt an intense longing to see her father again, coming whistling up the lane at twelve o’clock with the mailbag over his shoulder and a present for his own little girl in the pocket of his black serge uniform. She could feel the hair of his thick moustache against her cheek as he picked her up and told her that everything was going to be all right, because she’d cried a lot back then as well. Before any of the bad things happened. Before her father died. And her mother too. Before Reg Ritter came to claim her. She needed everything to have been different, but it wasn’t, and something inside her, deep inside her vital organs, seemed to snap, and her legs buckled beneath her as everything faded away. The policeman told her afterward that she was lucky to have been standing in the witness box. The side of it apparently broke her fall.

  B
y the time she regained full consciousness of her surroundings, the judge had disappeared from off his dais, and the people in the courtroom were moving around, gathering up their possessions.

  The policeman who’d taken her statement was leaning over her, encouraging her to drink from a glass of water he had in his hand. She remembered his big hands with the bitten-down fingernails and his sad, sympathetic pale blue eyes. She hadn’t found it easy to lie to him on that June morning when he’d come to see her at the manor house. But now everyone knew she was a liar and an adulteress. The shame of it, the sense of the spectacle that she must have made of herself in front of all these people, was almost more than she could bear. She closed her eyes, and Trave leaned forward instinctively and loosened her high collar.

  “What happened?” she asked. She found it difficult to speak, and the words came out in a whisper.

  “You fainted. And the judge left you to it,” Trave said with a smile.

  “So please, can I go?” Jeanne asked, getting unsteadily to her feet.

  “Yes. But they want you back tomorrow, I’m afraid. Have you got somewhere to stay? I don’t think you should go back to Moreton.”

  “Yes, I can find somewhere. There are places up near Baker Street where I was living before. I’ll be all right.”

  In truth, Jeanne had no idea if she would be all right. All she knew is that she wanted to be alone, far away from anyone who had seen her in court, but the police officer was persistent. He wouldn’t let her go so easily.

  “What about money?” he asked.

  “I’ve got enough.”

  “Well, I’ll walk you to the tube.”

  Trave felt frightened for the woman. Either tonight, that she’d do something to herself, sitting on the side of the bed in some ill-lit cheap hotel room in the early hours with bottles of pills lined up on the dresser, or tomorrow, when Ritter found her. There was no sign of him anywhere in the courthouse or in the street when they got outside, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t lurking somewhere, ready to grasp his wife in his thick pudgy hands as soon as Trave’s back was turned.

  But there was nothing Trave could do. That much was obvious to him as his companion hurried down Blackfriars Road toward the underground station, intent only on getting away from him. He couldn’t guard her if she didn’t want to be guarded, and even if she did, it was probably outside his job description.

  The station was crowded, and she had to queue for a ticket.

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” he asked, as if in need of some kind of blessing for leaving her alone. But she didn’t answer. She was looking in her purse for coins, and Trave felt as if he’d already been left behind.

  At the foot of the stairs, Trave turned back, hoping to get a last glimpse of her at the turnstiles, but she was gone, swallowed up into the throng of afternoon travelers, and so he climbed back up into the day and walked out onto Blackfriars Bridge.

  The great grey river washed against its stone banks, too dirty to reflect the solid nineteenth-century buildings rising up on either side. And, despite the sunshine, there was almost no river traffic. Just a police launch approaching fast from the east, looking for something or someone. London was an easy place to end your life, if that’s what you had in mind.

  Trave felt the old familiar depression settle down onto his shoulders, although there was no return of the pain in his chest that had brought him to his knees on the first day of the trial. He’d almost have welcomed it, because the sense of desolation told him a different story. He’d live for many more years yet in his big old North Oxford house, thinking about his son who had died and his wife who had left him for another man. He’d hear the echo of things that had gone forever until he couldn’t stand it anymore. The echo of playing the piano in an empty room or mowing the lawn in an empty garden. Keeping going for no good reason at all.

  Trave’s work had been his salvation ever since his son died. He was good at it, and it had kept his demons at bay, for most of the time at least. But this case had changed things. Standing, looking down into the grey river, Trave realised that now. He’d begun to make mistakes. He should have pressed Ritter’s wife more when she made her statement. He should have had enough experience to know if she was lying to him. Stephen’s guilt was too easy an explanation, but he’d ignored the personalities and concentrated on the facts. It didn’t matter how strong the evidence was. He should have known better. He should have kept an open mind. Instead he’d got it wrong. And now a boy might hang for something he probably never did. And a woman might die tonight. And it seemed like there was nothing he could do.

  Trave turned away from the river with a sense of despair, but then thought better of stopping at the pub on the corner for a whisky. He had work to do, and he needed a clear head. First of all, he had to find Adam Clayton, if he was still in the courthouse. The gossip in the witness room was clearly what had driven the Frenchwoman to change her story. And of course Clayton’s evidence about what had happened that afternoon would help Gerald Thompson persuade the jury that she’d invented her new account on the spur of the moment, in order to punish Silas by accusing him of the murder. Clayton would help put the rope back round Stephen Cade’s neck, and Trave understood himself well enough by now to know that he would do almost anything to save the boy. Anything except not do his job. His duty was to provide the evidence, not to withhold it, and then it was for the jury to decide who was guilty and who was not.

  Perhaps Jeanne Ritter had told him the truth back on that late summer’s day when he had gone to visit her at Moreton and they had sat so awkwardly at either end of the heavy mahogany table in the dining room, never once making eye contact. In court today, he’d believed her, but now he wasn’t so sure. She’d been angry as well as desperate until Thompson had got the better of her. There were questions that still needed answers. Had she seen Stephen coming back into the study just before his brother crossed the courtyard? She’d have been at the window because she was doing her hair, but would she have seen him? If he’d come along the side of the house, he’d have been out of her view-and maybe out of her hearing too if the window was closed. There was a wind, and she’d never said she heard the gunshot. But then again, perhaps she hadn’t mentioned Stephen because he never did come back. Perhaps he was in the study all the time, killing his father, and the rest was just a figment of the Frenchwoman’s overactive imagination.

  Trave shook his head from side to side, as if to rid himself of his thoughts. His mind was going round and round in circles, posing questions to which he had no answers. But at least Adam Clayton hadn’t gone. He was waiting for the inspector outside the courthouse.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, sounding nervous and excited all at once. “People in there were saying that Ritter’s wife fainted and that’s why the court rose early.”

  “Yes. I’ve just been taking her to the underground. She’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

  “But that can’t be right,” said Clayton, clearly surprised. “She just went by here only a couple of minutes ago. She was with her husband. He was shouting at her, calling her names.”

  “What names?” asked Trave, looking horrified.

  “He called her a whore. And a bitch too, I think. He was pulling her along, and so I didn’t get to hear much. Perhaps I should have stopped him, but I didn’t, because she is his wife, after all,” Clayton ended uncertainly.

  “No, I’m the one who should have done that.” Trave realised what a fool he’d been. Why hadn’t he seen her onto a train? Instead he might just as well have handed her over to her murderous husband. Ritter had obviously followed them down into the underground station, and then calmly waited until Trave had left before taking hold of his wife and dragging her back the way she’d come, while Trave gazed down into the River Thames, wallowing in self-pity. God knows where they were now.

  “Did Ritter say anything else?” Trave asked.

  “He said she was going to show him. Whatever that me
ant.”

  “Show him,” repeated Trave, sounding puzzled, and then suddenly he understood. “Come on,” he shouted. “He’s taking her back to Moreton. And he’s driving. Otherwise he wouldn’t have come back here.”

  “How do you know it’s Moreton?” asked Clayton, speaking between panting breaths, as he struggled to keep up with the inspector.

  “Because that’s where she betrayed him with scrawny Silas Cade. He’s probably going after him too.”

  FOURTEEN

  The Rolls-Royce glided down the fast lane of the motorway, headed for Oxford. Silas was driving at close to one hundred miles per hour, but the car showed no sign of stress. Cocooned inside, Silas’s mind was racing. He had very little time to make a plan, and he needed something that would work.

  Jeanne’s evidence had come as a complete shock. Only the day before she’d been her normal self. Ritter had gone into Oxford and they’d met in the trees by the west wall. And afterward she’d clung to him, fantasising about a future he knew they would never have. But it didn’t matter. He’d let her get on with it, building her castles in the air. Ritter would take her away once the trial was finished and Silas was the undisputed lord of the manor. In the meantime, there was no need to rock the boat.

  But then she’d got up in court and practically accused him of murdering his father. She must have found out about the photographs of Sasha. There was no other possible explanation. Somebody must have told her about them. But who? Silas had asked himself this question a hundred times or more since he’d slipped out of the back of the courtroom in the middle of Jeanne’s evidence, but forty miles down the highway, he was still no nearer to an answer.

  He’d known from the first that the photographs were his Achilles’ heel. He should have had the sense to destroy them before the police searched the house. But they had been very understanding when he’d gone down to the station in Oxford to ask for them back. They’d got their man, and the pictures weren’t relevant to the case. He’d burnt them when he got home, but that didn’t mean he could erase them from people’s minds. The whole bloody Oxfordshire police force must have been laughing at him for months, thought Silas bitterly-calling him a voyeur, a dirty little peeping Tom. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that now, thanks to Jeanne, he was a murder suspect. He needed an alibi. And there was only one person in the world who could provide him with one. Silas looked up into the empty afternoon sky and prayed to a god in whom he didn’t believe that just this once Sasha would be home.