The Inheritance itadc-1

by Simon Tolkien

  He found her in the manuscript gallery on the second floor. He hadn’t seen her at first. The high polished oak bookcases, which the professor had had specially constructed by a firm of Oxford craftsmen a decade earlier, divided the gallery into self-contained aisles, connected by several open archways. The central aisle was the widest, but those at the sides had tables set under the high leaded windows, to enable the professor and his assistants to work using natural light. Sasha was sitting at one of these now, poring over some Latin text or other. She had turned on a green reading lamp, but a few final shafts of late afternoon sunlight still penetrated the library, illuminating motes of dust in the still air, picking out the gold titles on the spines of the old leather books on the highest shelves.

  Silas had come quietly up the central aisle and now stood watching the woman he wanted from the other side of the archway between them. She had taken off the jacket of her grey suit and pushed her hair back over her shoulders. With an imaginary hand, he traced the line of her soft white neck down beneath her starched white shirt, on to the high mound of her right breast, and then round, behind, to where she was most vulnerable. Forgetting himself, Silas moved slightly, adjusting his weight from one foot to the other, and Sasha looked up, startled. Surprise and then irritation replaced the previous expression of rapt concentration on her face, and then, almost immediately, she reached back and put on her jacket. It was always the same. She could never rid herself of the consciousness of her disfigurement, and Silas imagined that it must itch her all the time, like eczema.

  “What are you doing? Something interesting?” he asked, glancing down at the papers spread out on the table between them. There was no time, but he needed her calm before they talked.

  “Just work. It wouldn’t interest you.” Sasha was ruder than she intended, unable to keep the annoyance out of her voice. Silas always seemed to appear out of nowhere, as if he’d been watching her for a while before he finally approached.

  “Why not?” he asked. “Maybe I know what you’re looking for.”

  Sasha suddenly became very still while her mind raced. What was he talking about? Perhaps Silas did know something about the codex. Perhaps he’d seen something. What a fool she’d been, allowing her dislike of the man to get the better of her common sense. If anybody could be relied on to pry out people’s secrets it was Silas, and yet she’d spent the last six months trying to avoid him.

  “I’ve been watching you, Sasha,” he said. “I’ve seen what you do, late at night down in my father’s study, when you think no one is looking. Opening this, opening that, tapping on walls. And all the time what you’re searching for is sitting right there in front of your eyes.”

  Silas laughed, but Sasha forced herself not to respond. His tone angered her as much as his words. She hated the thought of his knowing her so well, but she needed to know what he was going to say.

  “It’s the book you’re after, isn’t it?” he said. “The one that my father stole from those people in France.” Silas knew there was no time left to fence about. He needed to engage Sasha, and all the time he was listening with one ear for the sound of police cars screeching to a halt outside. Jeanne’s evidence made it inevitable that they’d be coming after him.

  “What is it you want, Silas?” asked Sasha, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice. At that moment there was almost nothing she wouldn’t have done to get her hands on the codex.

  “I want to make a trade,” he said.

  “A trade?”

  “Yes, that’s what they call it in the secret service, you know. We each have something the other one wants. We make an exchange, and then we both live happily ever after. That’s how it works.”

  “And what have I got that you want?” Sasha asked warily.

  “Evidence.”

  “Evidence.” She repeated the word as if she didn’t understand it. It was not the answer she had been expecting.

  “Yes. I need an alibi.”

  “For what?”

  “For killing my father.”

  It was Sasha’s turn to laugh. The thought of Silas as the Moreton Manor murderer had never even occurred to her. Silas was like Hamlet without the speeches. He never did anything. He just took photographs.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “I didn’t do it, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’ve got my brother to thank for that. No, I’ve just been accused of it, that’s all.”

  “By whom?”

  “Jeanne Ritter. She gave evidence today. Said she saw me crossing the courtyard from the study to the front door, just before Stephen started shouting.”

  “And did you?”

  “No, of course not. I was up in my room, like I told the police.” Silas lied easily. It was something that came naturally to him.

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “She’s the problem. It’s my word against hers. And they’re going to believe her because I’ve got no one to back me up. Unless you help me.”

  “Help you how?”

  “By saying we were together before the shooting started. It doesn’t matter if we say we were in my room or yours, provided we agree on it before we make our new statements.”

  Silas spoke confidently, but then his voice trailed away as he caught the instinctive look of disgust written so plainly across Sasha’s face.

  “What about Stephen?” she asked.

  “What about him?”

  “Jeanne’s evidence might save him.”

  “And put the noose around my neck?”

  “Maybe.”

  Sasha turned away, biting her lip. She liked Stephen. She’d only met him twice, but both times he’d gone out of his way to be friendly toward her, asking her about her work on the manuscripts, and she had appreciated his efforts at the time, realising the pressure he must have been under, seeing his father again after so long. But did that oblige her to try and save him? Did it mean that she had to give up the codex when she had worked so hard, had given up so much to find it? Leave it to Silas, who had no use for it? No, surely not. Providing the alibi might save Silas, but it wouldn’t condemn Stephen. His guilt was for the jury to decide. With a visible effort Sasha beat her conscience into submission. She had to have the book because that was the way to the cross, which was worth paying almost any price to obtain.

  “So what were we doing in my room or yours?” she asked, making no effort to hide the contempt in her voice.

  “Having an affair. And we made false statements because we didn’t want your Catholic mother to know about us.”

  “How do you know I’ve got a Catholic mother?” asked Sasha, surprised.

  “Because she came here once to visit you, don’t you remember? She arrived unexpectedly, and you weren’t happy about it. Took her straight off into Oxford. But I was the one who opened the door to her. She was complaining about her journey, and I got her some of my mother’s smelling salts that never got thrown out. Your mother said they smelt like something in her church. Her Catholic church.”

  “Well, you’re right about one thing. I wouldn’t want my mother to know. Or anyone else either,” said Sasha.

  Silas looked exasperated. “Oh God, does it matter?” he said. “It’s not like I’m asking to have an affair with you, can’t you see that? I just want you to say we did have one and to explain why you lied about it before. That’s all.”

  “And for this I get what?”

  “The book. But only after you’ve given evidence. Until then you’ll have to trust me.”

  “No.” Sasha turned away and began gathering her papers together. She calculated that Silas needed her at this moment more than she needed him. And she was right. It didn’t take him long to give in.

  “All right,” he said. “You can have it once you’ve made a statement to the police. At least you’ll be committed then.”

  “Show it to me first,” she countered. “Then the statement.” It was the first time in his life Silas could ever recall Sasha’s smiling at him l
ike she was now. He knew the reason, of course. He wasn’t stupid. It was the first and probably the last time that he had ever had anything she wanted. But still he wished he could stop the ornate clock that ticked away so loudly and relentlessly above the entrance to the library. He wondered for a moment if she would let him kiss her to seal their agreement, but then he realised that he would never have the courage to ask. Women frightened him, and Sasha most of all.

  “It’s in the study,” he said.

  “Well, at least I knew that much,” said Sasha, going past him. She was unable to keep the excitement out of her voice. She’d forgotten Stephen now that the codex was about to fall into her hands, just when she’d been on the point of giving up on it for good. She wondered as she went downstairs if all this was meant to be, but then laughed at herself softly. She’d studied religious history long enough to know that there was no such thing as Divine Providence.

  In the study she turned to face Silas. One of the tall green leather armchairs was between them, and she stood with her hands lightly touching the brass studs in its back, watching him in the doorway.

  “So show me,” she said. Her face was flushed and her lower lip trembled slightly.

  “That’s the chair in which he died, you know,” said Silas, ignoring her demand. “Where he was most comfortable. I’ve got photographs of him sitting there. In life and in death. Before and after. I look at them sometimes up there in my room, wondering what it all means. Do you do that, Sasha?”

  “What?”

  “Think about him. I do. All the time. This whole house rotated round him like a clock, and now it’s stopped. I spent my whole life trying to make him notice me, and I don’t think he ever really did. Not even once.”

  “You were adopted,” said Sasha brutally. Silas wasn’t the only one who’d had a bad time growing up.

  “Yes. But that wasn’t it,” he said. “No one really existed for him. Except maybe my mother.”

  “I never knew her.”

  “And she wasn’t really my mother.”

  Silas smiled, but Sasha stamped her foot, unable to contain her impatience any longer. Perhaps Silas was bluffing her about the codex. She had to know one way or the other.

  “Where is it, Silas?” she said. “It was a deal, remember?”

  “You’re looking at it,” he said. “You’ve been looking at it all the time.”

  Sasha looked down at the low table between the chairs, but all she could see were several old magazines and the professor’s chessboard with the old ivory pieces set out in battle formation, ready to play.

  “Don’t play games with me, Silas,” she said. “I’ve no time for them.”

  “Which is probably why you never found your precious book,” he said, as he bent down over the table and began to remove the chess pieces from the board. “My father was brilliant at this game, you know. He’d have done well as a Soviet grand master, although perhaps he didn’t have the imagination to be the best. I wonder if that’s why he never played competitively,” Silas added musingly, as he held the now-empty board up to the light. His earlier agitation had disappeared, now that Sasha had agreed to give him what he wanted.

  “It’s a beautiful thing,” he said. “So simple and yet so clever. Of all my father’s possessions it’s the one I like the most. Even more than the Rolls-Royce, I think, sometimes.”

  “It’s a chessboard,” said Sasha, looking bemused.

  “Yes, but it’s more than that. Much more. It’s also a hiding place.” Silas held the board just above the top of the table and began to press down on two of the diagonally opposing corner squares with his thumbs.

  “I saw him doing this through my telephoto lens,” he said. “He was in a hurry for some reason and forgot to close the curtains. It was unlike him.”

  Slowly, the base of the board divided down an invisible central seam, and the two sides opened. But the book stayed inside, kept in place by two small clips, until Silas turned the board upside down and lifted it out.

  “I think he had it specially made, although I don’t know where,” he said. “And I don’t understand why he chose the two queens’ rooks for the squares to press. Perhaps there’s no significance.”

  Sasha wasn’t listening. She’d seized the codex from Silas’s hands almost as soon as he had it out of the box, and now she found it hard to turn the pages with her shaking hands. But it didn’t take her long to know that it was the real thing. The tooled leather binding was an eighteenth-century addition, there to protect the ancient vellum on which the old French monk had inscribed the gospel of St. Luke. It was not long. Not many pages. But the painting was magnificent. Red and black and gold. The colours were richer than any that Sasha had ever seen.

  But would it tell her the secret of the cross, or was that just an old wives’ tale in which John of Rome had too-credulously believed? Cade must have spent years trying to find the answer, but there was nothing of his inside that she could see, except a small sheet of notepaper between the last two pages with a series of numbers written in columns that made no immediate sense to her. Was it a code? Sasha thought of trying to remove it from the book, but there was no time as Silas pulled the codex back out of her hands.

  “I can hear them coming,” he said. “Remember what we agreed.”

  Sasha did not hear anything immediately. The windows were closed, and Silas’s hearing was much more acute than hers, but soon the sound of a car approaching fast up the drive became unmistakable.

  “Christ, it’s not the police; it’s Ritter. And he’s got Jeanne with him,” said Silas a moment later. He had moved over behind the window and was looking out into the courtyard, where a blue estate car had just driven up.

  “Well, what’s so weird about that? She is his wife,” said Sasha.

  “Shut up and get over here.”

  Sasha had never heard Silas speak to her so rudely, but something in his tone made her do as he said. Out in the courtyard, Ritter and his wife were still in their car arguing. But then the driver’s door flew open, and Ritter got out. He was clearly enraged. It was obvious from the way in which he pulled open his wife’s door and hauled her out.

  She seemed limp and held on to the car for support when he let her go, and her face was obviously bruised around the eyes. She looked a mess, with her hair in a tangle and her dress crumpled. Below the hem her stockings were torn, and there appeared to be dried blood as well as dirt on her shins, as if she had fallen over. Or been pushed.

  “What a pig!” said Sasha. “He’s not going to get away with it this time. I’m going out there. Right now.”

  She moved toward the french windows, but Silas took hold of her arm and pulled her back before she could open them. It was the first time he had ever laid hands on her, and for a moment she was paralysed with shock.

  “Keep quiet, Sasha,” he said, speaking through his teeth. “Do you want him to kill us too?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “He kills people. That’s what he does. The family in France who owned this book that you care about so much. And a man called Carson. Others too probably that I don’t even know about.”

  “But why would he kill us?”

  Silas didn’t answer. Outside Ritter was hitting his wife, holding her up with one hand and smacking her across the face again and again with the back of the other.

  Leaving Sasha by the window, Silas crawled over to his father’s desk on his hands and knees and put his hand up above his head to lift the telephone receiver down from off its cradle.

  Laboriously he dialed 999.

  “Show me,” Ritter kept shouting at his wife out in the courtyard. “Show me where you fucked him, you cheap little whore.”

  “Fire, police, or ambulance?” asked the operator at the other end of the telephone line.

  “Police,” whispered Silas. There was no risk of Ritter’s hearing him, but fear had taken his voice away, and Silas had to give the address twice before the operator w
as able to tell him that help was on its way.

  Outside, Ritter was getting no reply from his wife. That much was obvious. It didn’t look like Jeanne was still conscious, and, quite soon, Ritter let go of her and she slumped to the ground. It was only then that he seemed to take in the presence of the Rolls-Royce for the first time. He went over and pulled the door open as if he thought someone might be hiding inside, and then, finding nothing, he suddenly shouted out Silas’s name, causing its owner inside the study to drop the telephone receiver on the ground like it was a hot coal.

  “Where are you, Silence?” he called up at the empty windows of the house. “You’re in there. I know you are. Snot pouring out of your fucking oversized nose and your legs shaking. Knock, knock, knock. I can hear them knocking down here, Silence.” Ritter laughed.

  A minute or two passed before he started shouting again. “Look out here, boy,” he called. “I’ve got something to show you.” Ritter had picked up his wife from off the ground, and now he held her up like she was some kind of puppet. There was blood on her face. Around her nostrils and trickling down from the corner of her mouth.

  “Don’t like the look of her now, boy? Damaged goods. Is that it?”

  It was as if Ritter knew that Silas was at one of the windows watching, and the thought seemed to reinvigorate him. Ritter was like a man who had burnt all his bridges and was now looking for the bloodiest possible ending.

  Inside the study, Silas had seen enough. He needed to get to the back door before Ritter found him. What a fool he’d been not to put the Rolls in the garage. But he had never dreamt that Jeanne would be fool enough to tell her husband about their affair. Or perhaps it had come out in court. In front of everyone. If Ritter found him, he’d never find out what had happened.