The Inheritance

NINETEEN

Above all Stephen felt a sensation of weight. The air itself seemed heavy, pressing down on his chest, making it difficult to breathe. It wasn’t at all how he had imagined it was going to be. He had pictured the witness box as an opportunity, his chance to convince the doubters, to win them over to his side. But it was nothing like that. He directed his answers at the jury just as his barrister had told him to, but the jurors’ faces remained impassive. There were no connections to be made. He was surrounded by people hanging on his every word, and yet he was completely alone.

Swift had let him tell his story. It was the same one he’d told the police on the day after his father died. And time hadn’t made it any more credible than it had been then. If only he hadn’t gone back to the study. If only he hadn’t picked up the gun. Every choice that he’d made had taken him further down the wrong road. And Stephen didn’t need to be told where that road led. It was why everyone was here. To see if he was going to live or die.

The moment had arrived. Gerald Thompson got to his feet and gazed at Stephen over the top of his gold-rimmed half-moon spectacles, allowing the silence to build around the accused. Standing in the witness box, waiting to be attacked, Stephen felt a curious sense of disassociation from himself. It reminded him of a scene that seemed to happen so often in the war movies he had watched insatiably as a child. The man from the gestapo would come into the interrogation room, carefully removing his black leather gloves as he approached the table. It was always immediately obvious that he was an entirely different species of man from the soldiers that had been asking the prisoner questions up to then. For a start, he wore no uniform. Just an immaculately pressed double-breasted suit under his heavy tan mackintosh, with a small swastika on the lapel. He carried a small briefcase and looked just like a businessman arriving for a company meeting. There was nothing strong or hardy about him, and he never raised his voice. But the battle-hardened soldiers all instinctively shrank away from the new arrival. They knew that he was capable of things that they would prefer not to even imagine, and the cinema audience was left in no doubt that it was all over for the brave British airman sitting handcuffed to the chair with his back to the door. Thompson would’ve gone far in the gestapo, thought Stephen. He looked over at the prosecutor and realised with a shudder that the little man desired his death just as much as he himself wanted to live. It pushed Stephen onto the back foot before the cross-examination had even begun.

“How would you describe your relationship with your father in the last two years of his life?” Thompson began at last. There was a measured deliberation about the question, as if it was the first move in a long-planned game of chess.

But Stephen answered immediately without considering his reply. “We were estranged,” he said. “We had no relationship.”

“And that was because of your anger against him, yes?”

“It was more shame than anger. I couldn’t cope with what he had done. He’d killed people in cold blood. And it was obvious he felt no remorse.”

“And your feelings were strong enough that you cut off all contact with him?”

“Yes. I felt I had no choice.”

“So you left. Stayed away for two whole years. Did your father make any effort to contact you all the time you were away?”

“No, I think he was glad to be rid of me. He blamed me for my mother’s death. It was like he hated me.”

Stephen cursed himself as soon as the words were out of his mouth. It was what Swift had told him not to do. To volunteer information, to provide openings. Thompson wasn’t slow to take advantage.

“And you’d done nothing to deserve your father’s hatred,” he said. “The injustice must have made you very angry.”

“I tried not to think about it.”

“But did you succeed? Isn’t the reality, Mr. Cade, that as the months passed and turned into years, you became more angry with your father, not less?”

“No. Like I told you, I didn’t think about him.”

“I see. Well, why then did you go back to your father in the middle of last year, if you’d been so successful in putting him out of your mind?”

“Because of what Silas told me. That he didn’t have long to live. Knowing that made everything seem different.”

“Yes. Particularly if you were going to be disinherited. That was the real reason you went back to Moreton, wasn’t it? To stop your father from changing his will. By any means possible.”

“No,” said Stephen. “The will was only one of the reasons.”

But Thompson didn’t let him finish. “You’d had enough, hadn’t you, Mr. Cade?” he went on, pressing home his advantage. “Two years of thinking about the injustice and the rejection, and then your brother tells you that your father’s going to disinherit you. It made you want to kill him, didn’t it? You’d had enough.”

“No, I wanted to talk to him. That’s all.”

“Are you sure about that? Remember what you said to Inspector Trave in your interview. That you told your father he deserved to die. Is that what you said?”

“Yes. But I didn’t mean it.”

“Didn’t you? It’s just a coincidence then that your father was murdered that evening?”

“Yes; I didn’t kill him.”

“So you say. But then who did?”

“Silas-it had to be Silas.” Stephen couldn’t keep the desperation out of his voice. “He must’ve hid in the curtains and slipped out after I came back. Jeanne Ritter saw him in the courtyard.”

“So she said. But she had a reason to lie. And so do you, Mr. Cade. From the outset you’ve tried to blame everybody but yourself. First of all it was the mysterious man in the Mercedes, and then you changed your mind and said it was your brother. Who will it be next?”

“I just know it wasn’t me.”

“Because you were there. Well, perhaps you better tell us again what happened between you and your father that evening.”

“We talked.”

“About what?”

“The will. Him dying. He said he wouldn’t discuss those things with me. I asked him for money for Mary, my girlfriend, because her mother needed to have an operation, but he refused to give it to me. He said I was lying to him. That I needed the money to pay debts, but that wasn’t true at all. He was just being cynical like he always was. So we argued, and then he said that I could have the money if I beat him at chess. It was ridiculous. He was just playing with me, like he used to do when I was a kid. He’d be black and play without one of his pieces, but he always won. And that evening was just the same. I don’t know why I went through with it. Perhaps I thought he’d do the decent thing for once.”

“And lose?”

“Yes. I know I was stupid.”

“And how did you feel when he didn’t do the decent thing?”

“I was upset. Obviously. The money meant nothing to him and everything to me.”

“Why everything?”

“Not everything. I’m exaggerating,” said Stephen nervously. “Mary said she’d have to go and look for work up in London if I couldn’t get the money from my father. I didn’t want her to go.”

“Because you were in love with her?”

Stephen didn’t answer, and the judge was quick to intervene.

“Answer the question,” he demanded, fixing Stephen with an unfriendly glare.

“Yes, I loved her,” said Stephen finally. “I still do.”

“So the game of chess was for high stakes?” asked Thompson, carrying on where he’d left off.

“I suppose so. It didn’t make me do any better, though. My father was black and without a knight, but he still beat me. Easily. I should never have played him.”

“Because it just made you angrier than you’d been before, when he refused to give you the money in the first place.”

“Yes. It’s not a crime to be angry, is it?” said Stephen defiantly. But Thompson ignored the question.

“What happened after you lost the game?” he asked.

“He grinned at me. Said, ‘better luck next time,’ or something sarcastic like that. I told him that I’d had enough, that I’d expose him, make everyone know what he’d done. I meant it as well. It wasn’t like before.”

“This wasn’t the first time you’d threatened to expose him then?” asked Thompson. As he had anticipated, Stephen’s desire to talk about how he had been treated had got the better of the unnatural reticence that his barrister had forced on him. All Thompson had to do was to nudge him along, and Stephen would soon reveal the full depth of his rage against the dead man.

“No, it wasn’t the first time,” said Stephen. “I said I’d do it when I first found out what he’d done to those people in France. Silas and I were listening outside the window of the study, and he and Ritter were gloating about it. How they’d left no survivors, and so it had to be Carson who’d written the blackmail letter. I made my father promise to stop Ritter going after Carson, and I left it at that. He was telling me how it would disgrace the family name if I went to the police and how he was too ill to cope with a trial. He had a way with words, but I shouldn’t have listened to him.”

“And so then two years later you threatened to expose him again. How did he react?”

“He laughed at me. He said there were no witnesses now. Nobody except him and Ritter. Then he went over to his desk and got out a newspaper cutting about Carson’s death. It was from a few months before, and it was obvious that Carson hadn’t fallen off a train. Ritter had pushed him. And my father had lied to me again. He hadn’t done anything to stop Ritter from murdering Carson. It probably just took them longer to find him than they’d first thought. Maybe if I’d gone to the police when I first found out about Marjean, Carson would still be alive.”

“And all this went through your mind when your father showed you that cutting, didn’t it, Mr. Cade?”

“Yes, of course it did,” said Stephen, leaning forward in the witness box and throwing caution to the winds. “He disgusted me, sitting there looking so smug with all that blood on his hands. People’s lives meant nothing to him. Nothing at all.”

“Yours included?”

“Yes.”

“And that made you angry?”

“Of course it did.”

“Very angry?”

“I don’t know.” Stephen’s voice was suddenly quiet as if he had just realised where his answers had led him.

“I suggest you do know,” said Thompson, switching seamlessly on to the offensive. “You were angrier with your father than you’d ever been in your life before. Everything suddenly came together. The changing of his will, his refusal to give you the money for your girlfriend, the way he’d toyed with you over the chess game, the shame that he’d brought down on your head, and all the lies he’d told you.” Thompson ticked off John Cade’s sins on his fingers one by one, but he left the worst for last. “Above all, you couldn’t stand his smug indifference to everything you cared about,” he said. “It drove you crazy, didn’t it, Mr. Cade?”

“I was angry, like I said before. I wasn’t crazy,” said Stephen doggedly.

“Are you sure about that?” asked the prosecutor. “It was after your father showed you the newspaper cutting that you told him that he deserved to die. Isn’t that right?”

“I don’t know. I must’ve been referring to what Silas told me. That my father had said to Ritter that he didn’t have long to live. I was saying that that’s what he deserved.”

“No, you weren’t,” countered Thompson. “You’re the one who’s lying now, and you know it. You said in interview that you shouted at your father that he deserved to die. Shouted, Mr. Cade. You shouted because you’d lost your temper. And that’s when you took the gun out of your pocket and shot your father dead.”

“No.”

“Yes. You murdered him. And then you locked the door to give yourself some time to think.”

“No, I didn’t,” shouted Stephen, losing his self-control. “I never locked the door. And I never killed my father. I left him sitting in his armchair and I walked down to the gate. And when I came back, he was dead. That’s what happened.” Stephen was breathing loudly now, and his knuckles were white from gripping the top of the witness box with his hands. Thompson’s tactics had paid off. Stephen would never have reacted to the accusation with such obvious emotion if he had been hit with it straightaway.

“You’re angry now, aren’t you, Mr. Cade?” asked Thompson with a smile. Perhaps it was intentional. The prosecutor’s smugness reminded Stephen irresistibly of his father. The half-moon glasses they wore were the same too.

“Of course I am,” he said. “You’re accusing me of something I never did.”

“But they’re your fingerprints on the gun. No one else’s.”

“I saw it on the floor when I came back in. It was a natural thing to do to pick it up.”

“But the truth is that you never left the room in the first place, did you? If you had, you’d have taken your hat and coat with you. Unless you’re seriously suggesting that you intended to go back for them after your walk.”

“No, of course not. I forgot them. That’s all. I was angry and upset and I just wanted to get out in the air. I wasn’t thinking about my hat and coat. And it had stopped raining so I didn’t need them anyway.”

“You never went to the gate, Mr. Cade,” Thompson went on relentlessly. “You just made that up to try and escape responsibility for what you’d done.”

“No.”

“You had the motive, you had the anger, and you had the gun. Your fingerprints tell their own story. You are guilty of this crime. Guilty as charged,” said Thompson with finality. He sat down without waiting for Stephen to respond.

Too late, Stephen thought of all the things he had wanted to say. That he was a terrible shot, that he wouldn’t have played chess with his father if he’d brought a gun to kill him with, that he wouldn’t have opened the door to Ritter if he’d committed the crime. He’d have tried to escape. But it was too late now. Thompson had played him like a prize-winning angler with his catch. He’d let Stephen do his work for him, and then pulled him effortlessly ashore and left him exposed and struggling for breath. Waiting to die, thought Stephen, as he made his slow way back to the dock. Waiting to die.