The Inheritance itadc-1

by Simon Tolkien

  But Swift was ready with his answer. “Because your first plan hadn’t worked,” he said. “Your father was in the clutches of Reg Ritter, and you’d found out he was going to disinherit you as well as Stephen.”

  “Stephen had a right to know what he was going to do.”

  “Yes. But it was the same pattern as before, wasn’t it?”

  “What pattern? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. You were pushing Stephen all the time behind the scenes-delivering letters, arranging visits. But yet you never stuck your head up above the parapet with your father. Not once.”

  “I didn’t push Stephen to do anything.”

  “Oh, yes, you did. You practically drafted his letter to your father.”

  “I helped him write it. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Maybe not. But then you just happen to see the entry in your father’s diary about seeing his solicitor. Blackburn. Three o’clock. You remember that, Mr. Cade?”

  “Of course I do. But I didn’t just happen to see it. Both Stephen and I agreed that it was important to watch what our father was doing, given what I’d heard him say to Ritter.”

  “About the will?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you were certainly the one for the job, weren’t you? Always reading people’s mail and listening at their windows in the middle of the night. You led your brother along every inch of the way, telling him he was the one who should talk to your father, because you were adopted and he wouldn’t listen to you.”

  “That’s true. He wouldn’t have.”

  “Do you understand what I’m putting to you, Mr. Cade? You inflamed your brother to just the right level and then you kept him there. Until you were ready to arrange his final meeting with your father.”

  “I didn’t arrange it. Stephen did.”

  “But you told him to ask for it. Because you realised that you’d run out of time. You had to get rid of your father before he saw his solicitor, and you needed someone to take the blame.”

  “No,” protested Silas angrily, but Swift ignored him.

  “And who better than your brother?” he went on relentlessly. “You hated him because he took your place. Once he was there, you could never forget that you were adopted, that you were second best.”

  “I wasn’t second best,” said Silas. Tears had welled up in his grey eyes and his knuckles were white from clutching the sides of his chair.

  “You felt you were, though,” countered Swift. “He took your mother away from you, after all. And you hated him for it, didn’t you?”

  “No. I loved him. He’s my brother.”

  “You’re lying, Mr. Cade,” said Swift, relaxing suddenly. “You set your brother up for your father’s murder so that he’d be the one who paid for it and you’d inherit everything: the house, the art, the car, the money. The whole shooting match.”

  “Damn you. Damn you to hell,” shouted Silas, finally losing his temper in the face of Swift’s taunts.

  But the barrister ignored him. He hadn’t finished yet. “You waited for Stephen to leave the study that night, and then you walked in there quite calmly and shot your father in the head. Maybe the fact that he wasn’t your real father made it easier. But anyway, you only needed one bullet because you were already a very good shot, and you’d been practising. Hadn’t you, Mr. Cade?”

  “No. I bloody well hadn’t. I don’t even own a fucking gun.”

  Silas looked like he had plenty more to say, but the judge didn’t give him the opportunity. “Control your language, young man,” he said, almost spitting out the words. “Do you hear me? Any more swearing and I’ll hold you in contempt. This is a courtroom, not some bar.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Silas, biting his lip. He had tried to get up from his chair as he answered Swift’s last question and had inadvertently put pressure on his injured foot. Now he was breathing deeply, trying to control the pain. Beads of sweat stood out on his pale face.

  “You didn’t expect your brother to come back into the study when he did,” said Swift, resuming his attack. “But you kept your nerve. You waited behind the curtains while he picked up your gun and you slipped out just before he started shouting. It was just bad luck that there was a full moon and your mistress happened to be looking down into the courtyard when you went over to the front door.”

  “I didn’t. I was nowhere near the courtyard.”

  “So you say, Mr. Cade. So you say.”

  But Silas wasn’t prepared to leave it at that. Something in him rebelled against the lawyer’s self-assurance.

  “It’s not just me who says it,” he shouted across the court. “It’s Sasha Vigne as well. And you didn’t accuse me of murdering my father when I came here before. Why not, if that’s what you and Stephen believed. Why not?”

  “I’m not here to answer your questions, Mr. Cade,” said Swift quietly. “It’s you who must answer mine.”

  “And I have. But they’re not my prints on the key and they’re not my prints on the gun. They’re my brother’s. My bloody murdering brother,” said Silas, pointing toward Stephen in the dock. Silas was crying now, and his voice had broken.

  “That’s enough,” said the judge, banging his table hard with his fist. “I’ve already warned you about your behaviour, sir. Any more and I’ll put you in the cells. Do you understand me? Have you any more questions, Mr. Swift?” he asked, turning to the barrister.

  “No, my lord,” said Swift. He’d got what he needed from Silas. There was nothing to be gained by any further exchanges.

  All in all, the cross-examination had gone even better than he’d hoped, Swift thought, as he sat back in his chair, allowing himself to mentally unwind. He’d known he’d be able to show the jury that Silas was a liar and a pervert who had both motive and opportunity to kill his father. The evidence was there for all these allegations, and Silas couldn’t deny it. The bonus was that Silas had finally cracked and lost his temper. That had been the missing ingredient up to now. Without it the jury might not believe that Silas had the stomach for the crime. And now they might. And might was enough-enough for a verdict based on reasonable doubt.

  But that outcome depended on Stephen’s not cracking himself when it came his turn to give evidence. Because God knows he’d had motive and opportuntity too. And, as Silas had said, Stephen’s prints were on the key and the gun. Swift glanced behind him at his client. Stephen’s fists were clenched around the rail of the dock and his eyes were bright with anger as his brother limped past him down the aisle. He’d have to control himself in the witness box if he was to have a chance. And yet he was so headstrong and there was no barrister in the business better at riling a witness if he wanted to than Thompson. And Tiny would have the judge on his side as well. Swift felt his own fists clenching involuntarily as he glanced up at Old Murder sitting so self-righteously up on his dais.

  Briefly Swift reconsidered the possibility of not calling his client. Stephen didn’t have to give evidence after all, but he was desperate to do so, and, in all conscience, Swift didn’t feel able to keep him out of the witness box. The prosecution case was too strong. That was the trouble. It needed an answer. But giving an answer opened Stephen up to Thompson, waiting like a hawk on the other side of the court, circling over his prey.

  Swift drummed his fingers on his table, trying in vain to find an outlet for his frustration. He was damned if he called his client, and damned if he didn’t. That was the truth. He needed a drink, he thought suddenly. A double or even a triple whisky. And another after that as well.

  EIGHTEEN

  Sasha settled herself into her window seat and breathed a sigh of relief as the train pulled out of Paddington Station, and yet within moments she was twisting and turning again, trying to get comfortable. It wasn’t her immediate surroundings that were causing her distress. The compartment was half-empty, and there was room to stretch out her legs. No, it was the memory of Stephen’s face as he’d s
tared at her across the courtroom while she gave her evidence that was troubling her. She’d tried to avoid his gaze but there had not been one moment when she’d not felt his eyes boring into her, pleading with her to tell the truth. And yet she’d lied, over and over again and without hesitation. Why? Looking out the train window at the passing suburbs, Sasha realised that she didn’t really have a satisfactory answer. She already had the codex, after all. She’d gone to the hospital and made Silas tell her about its new hiding place at the back of the manuscript gallery as soon as she’d given her statement to the police. Because that had been their agreement. And perhaps that was why she’d lied to the court today. Because she’d given her word. Keeping her promises was rapidly becoming her only virtue, she reflected bitterly.

  Sasha screwed up her eyes in a vain effort to suppress the picture of Stephen in his prison cell waiting for the executioner to come. But that wasn’t inevitable, she told herself, just as she had so many times before. Perhaps Stephen would get off. All he needed was reasonable doubt. It was like she’d told the policeman: she hadn’t pointed the finger at Stephen; all she’d done was help to exonerate his brother. And yet in truth Sasha knew that nothing would’ve stopped her from doing whatever was necessary to secure the codex once she’d found out that Silas had it. It was no excuse that she felt herself in the grip of a force more powerful than she was: that didn’t stop her hating herself for what she’d done back in Courtroom number I, but she knew that the decision to give Silas his alibi had never really been in her hands.

  And the jury had believed her. She felt sure of it. Stephen’s clever barrister had certainly done his best, taking her through her first statement to the police line by line, but she had been ready with an explanation for her change of story that-try as he might-he couldn’t shoot down. Because no one knew her mother like Sasha did. The old bitch was more Roman Catholic than the pope. Sex was a bad thing that could just about be tolerated if it was for the purpose of manufacturing Catholic babies, but pursued for pleasure outside the confines of marriage it was a mortal sin. It led to ruin, just like what had happened to Sasha’s father when he chose to fornicate with his students rather than teach them medieval art history. Sasha had had no difficulty describing to the jury how her mother would have reacted to hearing about her affair with Silas, because that is exactly how she had reacted when Sasha phoned her the day before to tell her what she was planning to say in court. Sasha had held the receiver away from her ear for at least a minute while the old woman shouted herself hoarse. She’d obviously not told the jury that her mother had long since ceased to have any hold on her.

  Sasha didn’t want to admit it to herself, but part of her had almost enjoyed her sparring match with the defence barrister, at least while it was happening. The point about lying was that it took practice, and God knows she’d had enough of that. She’d worked with John Cade eight hours a day, five days a week, for more than eighteen months, and he’d never once guessed who she really was. Perhaps it was because he needed to trust her. There was, after all, nobody else at the manor house who understood the significance or the value of what he owned. And she was his lifeline to the outside world. He never went outside the gates himself, and so he had to rely on her to go to libraries and visit the auction houses. At the end, she was all he had to rely on in his long, hopeless search for the jewelled cross of St. Peter, and so he had had no choice but to trust her. It was as if he had been taken in by all Ritter’s boasts about his state-of-the-art security system. Cade viewed everything and everybody outside his gates with a distrust bordering on paranoia, but once someone had got inside the enclosure, his suspicions seemed to vanish. Ritter and his wife had been quite right when they testified that Cade never locked the internal door of his study.

  Once or twice Sasha had come close to exposing herself, although it was Ritter, not Cade, whose watchfulness she feared. The worst time had been only a month or two before Cade’s death. They had been sitting at dinner in the big dark dining room. It was a dismal place with shadowy portraits on the walls and heavy mahogany furniture that had long since lost its shine. The lights in the half chandeliers overhead were always too dim, and conversation was a struggle against the silence. Except for Ritter. The dining room was where he was at his most animated. Because it was the one room from which Silas could not escape. It guaranteed Ritter a victim and an audience for at least half an hour every day.

  But on this particular evening Ritter went too far. Perhaps he had drunk too much, but his insinuations about Silas’s sexuality turned to outright accusation, and Cade pulled the sergeant up short.

  “You’re out of line, Reg,” he said. “Silas may not have the balls to say ‘boo’ to a goose, let alone a girl, but that doesn’t make him queer. If he was, I’d kick him out of here without thinking twice about it.”

  Ritter was silenced. He couldn’t respond, not even when Silas shot him a look of triumphant hatred across the table. And meanwhile, Cade was warming to his theme. He was usually silent in the evenings, letting Ritter run the conversation, but to night was different. He’d got two bottles of vintage red wine up from the cellar, and the food had been less heavy and stodgy than usual.

  “Queers are all the same, you know,” said Cade, sitting back in his chair at the end of the table and twirling his glass of wine in his hand. “They’ve all got one thing in common.”

  “They can’t be trusted,” said Ritter, trying to recover his employer’s approval.

  “That too. But what they really can’t do is control themselves. I had first-hand experience of this before the war, you know.”

  “Where?” asked Ritter.

  “Here in Oxford. There was a fellow over at Worcester College. Blayne, he was called. Taught medieval art just like me and put himself forward for the university professorship when old Spencer died in thirty-seven.”

  “At the same time as you?” asked Silas.

  “That’s right. Anyway, we were both being considered by the selection panel when one of Blayne’s students came forward and said that Blayne had been having relations with him.”

  “You’re joking,” said Ritter, laughing.

  “No, I’m not. At three o’clock every Tuesday. Once a week for three months. During their one-on-one tutorials. That was the end of Blayne’s candidacy, of course.”

  “I should hope so,” said Ritter.

  “Yes. But my point is the man couldn’t control himself. He knew how important it was to stay out of trouble when he was applying for the professorship, but he just couldn’t keep his hands off the first pretty boy that came along. And why not? Because he was queer. That’s why.”

  Cade smiled complacently and poured himself another glass of wine, and it was all that Sasha could do to stop herself reaching over and throwing it in his mottled corrupt old face. Instead she bit her lip until the blood flowed inside her mouth, and, unseen, she stabbed her nails into the palms of her hands under the table. But, when she looked up, she saw Ritter staring at her and felt for a moment entirely naked under his gaze, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  “Are you all right, Sasha?” he asked. “You look very pale all of a sudden.”

  “I’m fine,” she replied, answering a shade too quickly. “It must have been quite convenient for you, Professor,” she said, turning to Cade.

  “What?”

  “This Blayne man turning out to be a homosexual. Didn’t it get rid of your rival for the professorship?”

  “I suppose so,” said Cade languidly. “But he wasn’t really a rival, you know. He’d published very little and what he had was rather second-rate. He didn’t have the same reputation as me.”

  “I’m sure he hadn’t,” said Ritter, laughing. “He was a nancy boy, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. But he had a wife and daughter too, you know, although whether that was for cover or because he couldn’t acknowledge the truth about himself, I don’t know.”

  “What happened to them?” asked Sasha,
unable to resist asking the question, although it cost her an almost superhuman effort to keep her voice steady.

  “The wife left him. And he lost everything. His fellowship too. The last I heard he was lecturing miners’ sons in South Wales.”

  “Well, he’d better watch himself if he tries molesting them,” said Ritter. “Or he’ll end up underground for good.”

  Sasha couldn’t stand it anymore. While Cade and the sergeant were still laughing, she got up, pushing her chair back against the wall behind her.

  “I think maybe the sergeant’s right. I’m not feeling so well after all,” she said, holding her napkin up to her face to hide the tears that were starting in her eyes. “I think I’ll go and lie down for a while.”

  “You do that, my dear. And I hope you feel better soon,” said Cade benevolently. “We’ve got important work to do tomorrow.”

  Sasha hated Cade more than ever after that evening. She could not look at him without thinking of her father shambling around Oxford in his old unmended clothes. In the evenings, Cade would sometimes lean on her shoulder as they came down the stairs from the manuscript gallery, and she would think how easy it would be to push him forward and watch him break up like an old doll as he turned and turned, bouncing off the bannisters until he hit the ground at the bottom with a final thud.

  But she did nothing. The stakes were too high, and Cade was her only hope of finding the codex and the cross. And so she watched herself even more closely than before, burying her hatred beneath a cool, professional exterior that deceived even Ritter. He was the one that she always feared. She couldn’t rid herself of the sense that he suspected her. But perhaps he had that effect on everyone. There was only one person he had ever been loyal to, and that was Cade. Still, they were both dead now. And Jeanne too, although Sasha didn’t want to think about Jeanne. It was too horrible what had happened. She wished she could’ve done something more to protect the poor woman from her monstrous husband, but at the same time she realised her own impotence. The sense of defeat that she had felt after trying to confront Ritter in the kitchen was still fresh in her mind. The man was a force of nature, and she was glad he was dead.