The Inheritance

TWENTY-TWO

Someone tapped Trave on the shoulder as he was waiting outside the Court of Appeal. It was John Swift, ready once more to go into battle. It wasn’t the first time the two had spoken: Swift had written Trave a note to thank him for the statement from the maid, Esther Rudd, and they had had a drink together after the verdict to commiserate on what had happened.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Inspector,” said Swift. “This hearing isn’t about the facts, remember, it’s about whether everything was done legally over at the Bailey. And Old Man Murdoch’s no fool. He kept everything on the legal side of bias just like he always does. We’re firing blanks, I’m afraid.”

Trave would’ve responded, but just then Tiny Thompson bustled past them through the door of the court, looking outraged at the spectacle of the officer in the case locked in discussion with his opposite number.

“Someone looks happy this morning,” said Swift, raising his eyebrows, and turned to follow Thompson into court. The case had been called on.

Trave barely had time to settle in his chair before the hearing began, and he was soon struck, just as he had been so many times before, by how remote everything seemed. There were no witnesses, no defendants being cross-examined-just lawyers arguing the legal rights and wrongs of what had already happened elsewhere. The three black-robed law lords sat far away on a high dais with shelves of antique lawbooks rising from floor to ceiling behind them, and green-shaded reading lamps threw pools of light on their old hands as they listened to the arguments of Thompson and Swift. It was a duel of words-cut and thrust, back and forth, which was obviously almost entirely incomprehensible to Stephen as he sat biting his nails in a caged dock at the side of the court. And to Trave too, except that he had the advantage of Swift’s warning of the likely outcome, which proved before the end of the day to be entirely accurate. It was still quite early in the afternoon when the Lord Chief Justice dismissed the appeal, upheld the mandatory sentence of death, and disappeared with his two colleagues through three separate polished mahogany doors at the back of the court.

Fifteen minutes later Trave and Swift stood on the courthouse steps and watched the prison van turn out into the Strand, ready to take Stephen back to Wandsworth Prison for the last time.

“God help him,” said Swift. “I need a drink.”

They ordered double whiskies in the pub across the road, and then Trave bought them two more. Swift was visibly upset, shaken by Thompson’s taunts in the robing room and his own sense of failure. Trave, as always, was doing a good job of keeping his emotions in check.

“They’re the worst, these kinds of cases,” said Swift.

“Which kind?”

“The ones where you know the defendant’s innocent and yet you can’t get him off, however hard you try. And when it’s a capital case it’s almost unbearable. Makes me want to give it all up sometimes.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Trave. “The evidence was overwhelming. That’s why I had to charge him in the first place.”

“Yes, but too overwhelming,” said Swift. “Too neat. Someone else committed this crime and set Stephen up. I know they did.”

“Yes, someone did,” agreed Trave flatly. “And his name’s Silas Cade.”

“Maybe; maybe not,” said Swift, sounding unconvinced. “He’s the obvious candidate, I agree. But part of me doesn’t buy it. He just didn’t feel guilty for some reason when I was cross-examining him. Scared and defiant, yes-but not guilty.”

“Well, he felt guilty to me,” said Trave, having none of it. “And his alibi’s rubbish. I know that much.”

“But that doesn’t mean he killed his father. The jurors sure as hell didn’t think he did or they’d have acquitted Stephen.”

Trave didn’t respond, and they were both silent, each turning over the evidence in their minds.

“What about the home secretary? Can’t you get him to grant a reprieve?” asked Trave, changing the subject.

“I’ll try. Of course I’ll try. But don’t count on it. We’re in the court of public opinion now and hanging Stephen’ll be a lot more popular with Joe Public than showing him mercy. You can be sure of that. Stephen’s not one of them, remember. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Much good that it did him.”

“Mercy! These bastards don’t know the meaning of the word,” said Trave bitterly, suddenly overwhelmed by disgust at the whole situation.

And yet as he spoke, he knew that it wasn’t disgust that was tearing him up inside. It was powerlessness. It reminded him of how he’d felt when his son died.

Trave’s depression lasted through the weekend, and Sunday evening found him out on the golf course, walking alone in the twilight. His head sunk in thought, he cut across the seventh fairway, making for the gate in the hedge. He had been thinking more often recently about getting a dog, a companion for his lonely evening walks across the deserted course. But he feared the attachment even more than he desired it, and he could always think of reasons to hold back from making the commitment. The dog would get bored sitting at home in the empty house, waiting for his master to return. He would bark at the neighbours and cause a nuisance, or he might wander out in the road and get run over. And Trave would be left alone all over again. Being alone was one thing; being left was quite another. Lifting the latch on the gate, Trave thought that he had had quite enough of being left behind for one lifetime.

The evening was cold and windy, and Trave had only come out because he felt so restless indoors. Sundays were always hard, but this one was worse. He’d gone out in the garden after he got back from church, but then the rain had driven him back inside. It was the Lord’s day, but he’d given into the need for alcohol by mid afternoon and taken a bottle of whisky into the front room and sat in the threadbare armchair, looking up at the framed photographs of Joe and Vanessa on the mantelpiece. What was she doing now? Making a new life with a man called Osman over on the other side of Oxford. It was all that Trave could do to resist the impulse to throw his glass at the wall. And so he’d got up and gone out, walking the golf course without dog or clubs, trying not to think about his wife or his son or Stephen Cade, sitting in his prison cell up in London, waiting for the executioner to come.

Now that Stephen’s appeal had been dismissed, Stephen would be moved into the Wandsworth death house, a two-storey red-brick building over by the perimeter wall. He had ten days left to live unless the home secretary granted a reprieve, which Trave agreed with Swift seemed unlikely with the government wanting to stay popular and law and order such a prominent issue. People needed to be protected from guns, and what crime could be worse than killing your father in his own home? It was a cold, premeditated act, and the murderer had shown no remorse.

Starting from tomorrow, the hangman would be visiting the gaol every other day, watching his subject through the eyehole in the cell door, measuring weight and drop with a trained scientific eye. The whole assembly line of death was now in motion. Its wheels were turning in nondescript offices all over London. Warrants and orders were passing backward and forward between the Court of Appeal and the Home Office and the prison at Wandsworth. All stamped with the right stamp and signed by the right person. Everything that needed to happen before a modern British hanging could go ahead.

Trave had always hated the death penalty and its attendant machinery. He didn’t bring murderers to justice to see them murdered. His church said it was wrong to take life, and that at least was something he had no trouble believing. And yet he realised now that he had never really confronted the implications of his own role in the process. Death sentences were not as common now as they used to be, and he had not doubted the guilt of those men whom he had brought to justice, those who had gone on to pay the ultimate penalty. But Stephen Cade was different. And not just because he was young and reminded Trave so forcibly of his own lost son. In his heart, Trave was sure Stephen was innocent, and yet there seemed to be nothing he could do to save him. The trial was over, and Trave had no authority to ask the witnesses any more questions. He had saved Silas from Ritter when he should have saved Ritter’s wife, and now Silas was sending Stephen to his death when Silas should be going there himself. Silas. It had to be Silas, whatever Swift said. He was the one who had the motive, and Jeanne Ritter had seen him in the courtyard. And his alibi was a lie. The jurors were fools to have been taken in by it.

Trave turned the corner and stopped dead in his tracks. The man he was thinking about was standing on the pavement just outside his house, illuminated by the light from a streetlamp overhead. Silas was off the crutches but seemed to be leaning heavily on a tall walking stick for support.

“What are you doing here?” Trave asked furiously as soon as he had got level with Silas. The anger that had been boiling up inside him as he walked home overflowed in this sudden unexpected encounter with the man he held responsible for everything that had happened.

But Silas didn’t seem to notice the animosity in the policeman’s voice. He was too preoccupied with the reason for his visit.

“I found your name in the book,” he said breathlessly. “And I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. I don’t know why. I needed to know what you think.” Silas blurted his words out in such a rush that Trave found it quite difficult to understand what he was saying.

“Think about what?” he asked, his anger half giving way to curiosity.

“About what I’ve found. Photographs. I need to show them to you.”

Silas held up an old briefcase that he had been holding in his left hand, which Trave had not noticed until then.

“You better come in,” he said grudgingly. Trave didn’t like visitors. His house was where he kept his grief, and he didn’t want to share it with anyone, least of all sneaky Silas Cade. But he felt he didn’t have any option. It was beginning to rain again, and they could hardly examine photographs under a streetlight in the wet, with Silas wobbling unsteadily on his walking stick.

In the living room, Silas sat down awkwardly on the edge of the chair where Trave had been drowning his sorrows in drink less than an hour earlier. Trave remained standing on the other side of the empty fireplace, refusing to provide his visitor with any kind of welcome.

“Is that your boy?” Silas asked, pointing at a photograph of Joe aged thirteen on the mantelpiece. It was Vanessa’s favourite, but Trave had insisted on keeping it when she left.

“He’s not here,” said Trave shortly. “Perhaps you better show me whatever you came here to show me, Mr. Cade. Sunday’s my day off, and I’ve got to work tomorrow.”

This time the hostility got through to Silas.

“I shouldn’t have come,” he said. “I know what you think of me. You’re like Stephen. You think I killed my father.”

“What I think doesn’t matter,” said Trave. “It’s the jury’s decision that counts.”

“But you believe it was the wrong decision, don’t you?” said Silas, refusing to be put off. “You think I should be the one with my head in the noose. Not my precious brother.”

“I’ve got concerns. Yes. But they’re my affair. Not yours.”

Silas met the policeman’s stare for a moment and then dropped his eyes. “I’m here because I don’t think Stephen killed our father either,” he said in an almost inaudible voice. “I used to, but I don’t anymore. And I don’t want him to hang for something he never did. I was hoping that the appeal would work, but it didn’t, and now I’ve got to do something.”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll be pleased to hear that,” said Trave sarcastically. “But just how do you propose to stop them hanging your brother, Mr. Cade? Are you here to make a confession? If so, you’ll have to wait while I go and get a pen and some paper. It shouldn’t take long.”

“No,” said Silas angrily. “I didn’t kill my father any more than Stephen did.”

“That’s not what Mrs. Ritter said.”

“I know,” said Silas slowly. “I thought she was lying at first. God knows she was angry enough to say anything once she got in that courtroom. But now I’m not so sure. I think someone did go into my father’s study after Stephen left it and then slipped away across the courtyard after he came back.”

“Yes. And that person was you.”

“No. Not me. Someone wearing my hat and coat, pretending to be me. Jeanne never said she saw my face, remember? You were in court for her evidence.”

“All right, maybe she didn’t,” said Trave grudgingly. “But who was it she saw in the courtyard if it wasn’t you? Who else had a motive to kill your father?” Trave made no effort to keep the disbelief out of his voice.

“I don’t know,” said Silas. “I wish I did, but I don’t.”

“You don’t know. And yet you’re the one with the motive and the alibi that I’ve never believed in for one second. How much did you pay Miss Vigne to say you were sleeping together, Mr. Cade? It must have been a lot, but I suppose you can afford it now that you’re the lord of Moreton Manor.”

Trave had had no intention of discussing the case with his visitor, but his anger toward Silas had got the better of him. Now he just wished Silas gone so that he could nurse his bitterness in peace.

“Why would I be here talking to you if I were the murderer?” asked Silas, refusing to give up now that he had come so far.

“I don’t know. Perhaps you’ve got a guilty conscience.”

“Oh, come on, Inspector. You can do better than that.” Silas had started to get to his feet while making this angry outburst, but now he sank back into the armchair, and his brow creased as if he was suddenly deep in thought.

The brass clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly, and Silas nervously fingered the catch on the briefcase that he was holding across his knees.

“It’s not easy for me,” he said, breaking the silence. “Helping to exonerate my brother is just going to make you point the finger at me even more. It’s hardly an incentive. I was a lot better off when I believed that my brother did commit the murder.”

“What made you change your mind?” asked Trave. He was not in the business of making deals with murderers. If Silas had something to say, he should say it. Let the evidence point where it will.

“Jeanne’s dying and my almost getting killed by Ritter shook me up. Changed me more than my father’s death, I think. But in the end it was photographs,” said Silas. “Photographs and a name. They made me change my mind.”

“What name? What photographs?”

“The ones I have here. In my bag. If I show them to you, Inspector, will you do one thing for me? One small thing.”

“What thing?”

“Keep an open mind about who killed my father. That’s all I ask. Just keep an open mind.”

Trave was not won over. The pleading edge to Silas’s voice annoyed him. But the request was a reasonable one. If he’d had more of an open mind at the outset, he might not have been so quick to hand Stephen over to Gerald Thompson. And Silas was right. There was no reason for him to be here if he was the murderer. He would be undoing his best-laid plans just as they were coming to fruition.

“All right,” Trave said grudgingly. “I’ll keep an open mind. Now show me your pictures.”

Silas didn’t need to be asked twice. He opened the briefcase and took out two large colour photographs. Then, moving Trave’s whisky bottle out of the way, he laid them out side by side on the low coffee table in front of the fireplace.

Trave sat on the sofa as far away as he could from Silas and studied the pictures. It was obvious that one photograph was simply a blown-up section of the other. In the first the murdered man sat in his high-backed green leather armchair with the bullet hole in his forehead and the game of chess laid out on the table in front of him. In the second there were only the big heavy chess board and the hand-carved ivory pieces. Some were on the board and some were on the table, some still in play and some taken.

“Well, what’s the point?” asked Trave. The irritation was back in his voice. There was nothing new to see. Cade had played chess with his younger son before he died. Everyone agreed that that had happened. According to Thompson, the loss of the game was one of the things that drove Stephen over the edge.

“Can’t you see?” asked Silas.

“No, I can’t. And I don’t know how you got these photographs either. They’re a crime scene, for God’s sake. And that man’s your father.”

“Was my father. I took quite a few photographs when the policeman you’d put in the study had his back turned. It was the same one who told Jeanne all about me and Sasha at court. What was his name?”

“Clayton. Adam Clayton. And he didn’t tell Jeanne anything.”

“She overheard him. Yes, I know. But it still had the same effect. Anyway, the second picture, the one with the chess pieces: I developed that off the first one about a week ago. I did it because of what I heard my brother say when he was giving his evidence.”

“About what?”

“About the chess pieces. You were in court too, Inspector. I saw you. But perhaps you didn’t listen. Too busy building a case against me, I expect.”

Trave felt an almost irresistible desire to punch his visitor, to literally kick him out of the house. But he did resist. He swallowed his anger and waited for Silas to continue.

“Stephen said that our father told him he could have the money he wanted if he won a game of chess. And then a little later he said that Dad played black and without a knight, but he still won easily. All that struck a chord with me, Inspector. It was the sort of thing my father did. He liked to show off his superiority, and he had a sadistic streak. It was there all the time when we were children, but it got worse after my mother died-much worse.”

“In any case, what Stephen said about the chess game jogged something in my memory. And so I went back to the photographs I’d taken in the study, and that’s when I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“That black didn’t win. Look. It’s the black king that can’t move. And the white queen’s attacking him down the rook file. White won in the photograph, Inspector. Not black.”

“And so he must have carried on playing chess with himself after Stephen walked out. Really serious players do that, don’t they?” said Trave, suddenly excited. “Your photograph shows that Stephen must have left the study like he said. And Cade replayed the game or some of it before his killer came in.”

“Dressed in my hat and coat.”

Trave ignored Silas’s denial that he was the murderer. The photographs entranced him. They were like a laser beam shining back through time toward the truth, and yet they were not enough. Trave had realised that almost as soon as he had understood their significance. They supported Stephen’s case only if he was telling the truth about his father playing with the black pieces. Of course he had no reason to lie. But the evidence was self-serving. It wouldn’t be enough to reverse the conviction or save Stephen from the hangman. More was needed. Some independent evidence exonerating Stephen of the crime. But where was it to come from? There was so little time left, and Trave didn’t know where to begin.

“Is this all you’ve got?” he asked. “It’s good but it’s not enough. Or maybe you know that already.”

“I know we need more, if that’s what you mean,” said Silas. “The photographs are important for me because they made me change my mind, not because they’ll save Stephen.”

“So, have you got anything else?” asked Trave, trying to contain his irritation.

“Not much. Somebody changed the chess pieces back to their starting positions. I found them that way when I came downstairs in the morning a couple of days after the murder. I don’t know who did it, but everyone in the house denied responsibility. Especially Esther, the housemaid. She got quite angry when I asked her, as if I was accusing her of something. We never got on after that, and I had to get rid of her. She was too much trouble.”

“You think it was the murderer who came back and changed the pieces.”

“Maybe. Except I don’t know how he’d have known what happened in the chess game without Stephen telling him. I only realised when Stephen gave his evidence.”

“Unless Stephen said something while he was still in the house.”

“What? You mean before you arrived?”

“Or after. But we’re clutching at straws. And straws won’t save your brother.”

Silas looked over at Trave quickly. He’d picked up on the policeman’s use of the word “we.” Perhaps Trave would keep an open mind after all.

“There’s one other thing that might help,” he said slowly. “Do you remember the Mercedes that got stopped outside Moreton on the night my father was killed?”

“Yes. How do you know about that?”

“You gave evidence about it, and there was a report in one of the newspapers. Anyway, the driver gave his name as Noirtier. Well, I don’t know if it means anything, but look.”

Silas bent down and took an old book out of his briefcase. It was an atlas, and he quickly turned to the page he wanted. A map of northern France. He pointed to a black dot a little way south of Rouen.

“Do you see the name?” he asked.

The light was bad, and Trave had to bend down close to the page so that his head almost touched Silas’s.

“Moirtier,” he said. “Moirtier-sur-Bagne.”

“An m for an n,” said Silas. “It’s close enough. And Marjean is less than three miles down the road. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but maybe not.”

“You think your father’s murder had something to do with what happened in France?”

“Yes. I don’t know why, but I feel sure of it. Ritter and my father did kill those people, you know. Stephen and I heard them talking about it. Things like that don’t go unpunished.”

“In war they do,” said Trave. He felt suddenly as if Silas was trying to lead him somewhere, and his natural obstinacy combined with his policeman’s suspicious mind to hold him back. And yet he had always felt he should go to France and ask some questions, look in the record books, see what he could find. He remembered Swift’s question to him at the trial: “Why didn’t you go to Marjean to investigate for yourself who shot Professor Cade in 1956 and sent him the blackmail letter the following year?” “It was a prosecution decision,” he had said. But it hadn’t been his decision. And he could still go. To Moirtier. It didn’t sound like a common name. It didn’t sound like a coincidence.

And yet why would Silas want to send him to France? Perhaps he wanted him out of the way until his brother was safely executed and the case was closed forever. Trave remembered what Swift had said to Silas when he cross-examined him the second time: “You’re the one who’s been pulling the strings in your family for a long time now.” Silas was the one with the motive, and Silas was the one with the false alibi. It had to be false. Trave remembered Sasha Vigne’s suitcases standing in the hall at Moreton Manor. She’d been in a hurry to leave because she didn’t want to be in the house when Silas got out of hospital. She had never slept with him. Trave was sure of it.

Trave walked over to the front window and looked out into the dark empty street. He felt confused and uncertain-a man in search of a sign. Unless the sign was on the map lying open on the table behind him, where Silas had just put his finger. Moirtier-sur-Bagne, the place was called. Less than three miles from Marjean.

“I’ll go with you if you like,” said Silas, breaking the silence. “There’s nothing to keep me here.” It was as if he’d been reading Trave’s mind.

“No,” said Trave more harshly than he had intended. “I can’t go if you go. Surely you can see that.”

“Because I’m still a suspect, you mean,” said Silas, laughing mirthlessly. “What more can I do to convince you, Inspector?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing you can do other than what you have done. Nothing at all. I’ll go alone, and I just hope I’m doing the right thing.”

Hearing himself, Trave realised that he had already decided what to do before he had even known of his own decision. He was going to follow his instinct. That was what had deserted him in this case. Perhaps it would take him in the right direction now. He’d take a leave of absence. With luck he could be in Rouen by Tuesday evening.

Silas went back to the manor house in a taxi. His injured foot made it impossible for him to drive the Rolls-Royce, which had stood parked in the garage behind the house since the day the Ritters died. The road to Moreton was full of landmarks: the bottom of the hill where his mother died, the place where the unknown driver of the black Mercedes was stopped by a traffic policeman and gave the name Noirtier and a false address in Oxford. But Silas was not looking out the window. He had taken the photographs back out of his briefcase and was gazing with rapt attention at his father’s last game of chess. So many secrets. The Marjean codex hidden inside the board and the black king mated. Under attack and with nowhere left to go, just like Silas’s brother up in London. Alone in his cell, awaiting the coup de grace.