The Inheritance

TWENTY-SEVEN

Two strong hands pushed Trave deep down into his own armchair, and a moment later the light went on overhead. Mary Martin was sitting opposite him on the other side of the fireplace with a pistol in her hand.

She held the gun trained on the centre of his forehead, but for a moment he didn’t take it seriously. It made him angry to be manhandled, threatened in his own house. It was a violation, and he started back up out of the chair in instinctive protest. But he was hardly able to take a step before the man by the door pushed him back, pinning him down with one hand while he smacked him twice across the face with the back of the other.

Trave stroked his stinging cheeks and looked his attacker in the eye. He had never seen him before. He’d have remembered if he had. Paul Martin’s narrow grey eyes were completely cold. The violence had been switched on and off quite effortlessly, and once it had achieved its desired effect, he returned to his original position by the door.

“I’m sorry about that, Inspector,” said Mary, glancing angrily toward her accomplice and looking genuinely pained by what had just happened. “Paul has a tendency to overreact, but he won’t touch you again, I promise, if you don’t do anything stupid.”

“What do you want?” Trave demanded, refusing to be mollified. “Why are you here?”

“Isn’t it usually the one with the gun that asks the questions?” she countered quietly. “Even if you are the policeman.”

Mary’s voice was unnaturally calm, and it struck Trave that she was in fact making a supreme effort to keep control of her emotions. However, the only outward sign of her inner turmoil was the way in which the gun shook slightly in her hand.

“All right,” said Trave, breathing deeply to regain his composure. “Have it your way. What do you want to know?”

“How was France?” She made it sound as if she was asking about a recent holiday, not a police investigation.

He didn’t answer at once, partly because he was so shocked by the change in the woman he had once known as Mary Martin. At the time of Cade’s murder she had been part of the background. Never more than that. She was obviously attractive, but she didn’t seem to have anything very interesting to say. She answered all the police questions without any fuss, but she didn’t volunteer any information. Really the most significant thing about Mary Martin had been her lack of significance, and Trave was shocked now by how stupid he had been to accept her at face value. She was an actress, and Stephen Cade was infatuated with her. That ought to have been enough to make him want to find out more, but instead he’d done nothing, seduced by the mountain of evidence against her boyfriend. What a fool he’d been!

Her clothes were more expensive than he remembered-a black Chanel dress and a cashmere coat that hung down below her knees-but otherwise she was the same. Except that now, for the first time, he was aware of the force of her personality. She was no longer a shy young girl; instead she was a woman capable of premeditated murder. The change left Trave temporarily off balance, at a disadvantage in their conversation.

“All right, let me put it another way,” she said after a moment. “How much did you find out while you were away?”

“I found out who you are,” he said, rising to the challenge.

“I’m impressed. So who am I?”

“Marie Rocard. And you’re wanted for the murder of John Cade at Moreton Manor House last June.”

“Wanted for questioning?”

“That’s right.”

“Because, without my help, you haven’t got enough to save Stephen from the rope. That’s the truth, isn’t it, Inspector?”

“I don’t know,” said Trave, trying not to sound defeated. “Maybe.”

Mary looked over toward Paul, and Trave was again aware of the tension between them.

“Paul doesn’t think we should be here at all,” she said. “But don’t worry, Inspector. Paul and I have had our argument, and I’ve won the day. This is my party now. Paul’ll make us some coffee. Won’t you, Paul?” she asked, slowing down her English to speak to her companion.

Trave could sense the Frenchman’s reluctance to leave the room, but finally, without a word, he moved away from the door, and Trave could hear him farther down the hall, opening drawers and cupboards in the kitchen.

“I saw Stephen today,” said Mary, biting her lip, and Trave couldn’t help noticing the break in her voice.

“That must’ve been interesting,” he said noncommittedly.

“No, it was horrible. I’m not proud of what I’ve done to him, you know.”

“Well, I’m sure it’ll be a comfort to him to know that.”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course it won’t. He hates me now, which is as it should be, but for some silly reason I wish he didn’t. We were happy together for a while before all this happened.”

“How could you be happy? You were using him to get to his father.”

“Yes, and I don’t regret that. I had no choice. It was framing him afterward that was wrong. I didn’t realize that until after Stephen was arrested, but planning something isn’t the same as watching it happen. Paul thinks I’m crazy, but I’d give almost anything to put the clock back.”

“Would you spare John Cade?”

“No, not that. I said almost anything,” said Mary with a half smile.

“In my experience murderers always blame their accomplices,” said Trave, refusing to believe in Mary’s sincerity.

“But I’m not blaming anyone. Paul didn’t kill John Cade; I did. It had to be me, because it wasn’t a murder; it was an execution, an act of justice. If any man deserved to die, it was that bastard-surely to God you can see that.”

Mary stopped suddenly, realising that anger had got the better of her, and then breathed deeply, reasserting her self-control. “Well, let’s not quibble over words. You did well, Inspector. Better than I expected. It’s one thing to discover that my parents had a daughter, quite another to find out that she survived John Cade and turned into me.”

“I got lucky,” said Trave, making a conscious decision to be less confrontational. If Mary was here to help him save Stephen, he wasn’t going to discourage her. “Your friend in the kitchen complained about Cade to the police in Moirtier, and one of them told me about it,” he explained.

“Laroche, you mean. That was more than ten years ago, and I thought Paul gave him a false name. Still, whatever he said, he shouldn’t have gone to the police. We both realised that afterward. But it was early days, and we were naive back then. We thought somebody might help us, that the world was a fair place. And Paul thought I should have my inheritance. Not that I ever wanted it. A burnt-out house with bad memories and a few outbuildings. La belle France is welcome to it, as far as I’m concerned.”

Trave noticed the bitterness that had crept into Mary’s voice as she was speaking. It was like the cover of a deep, empty well had been momentarily removed, revealing the unplumbed depths of black cynicism that lay underneath.

“You see, neither of us understood back then that my nonexistence was my greatest advantage. Cade never knew about me until the second before he died. I hadn’t been thought of when he first came to the house, and my mother was upstairs, seven months pregnant, when he came back at the end of 1938 and my father kicked him out.”

“But what about in 1944? What happened then?” asked Trave.

“I was in the church tower, and so they didn’t see me watching them. Cade and Ritter and stupid Jimmy Carson. If they’d asked questions afterward, people would’ve said I died in the fire with sweet old Marguerite. That was the story my friends spread about. But they had no reason to ask questions. Not then and not later. Cade always thought it was Carson who took a shot at him in 1956 and sent him that blackmail letter a year later. He never knew it was me because I didn’t exist. My birth certificate was destroyed by the Germans when they attacked Rouen, and there was never a death certificate because I didn’t die. It was easy. Stephen’s lawyers never found out about me either. They sent a man out there to ask questions, but I guess he didn’t get lucky like you did.

“Anyway, from the church, I got as far as a friend’s house, and he sent me on to Paul’s father. Hundreds of miles away. I wasn’t even six, but I didn’t forget. And Paul looked after me after that. He made me what I am.”

Trave decided against asking Mary whether she thought this was a good thing or a bad thing, because Paul was back now, leaning against the wall by the door, and although he continued to remain silent Trave had no idea how much he understood of the conversation.

“What do you want me to do?” Trave asked.

“Write my statement over at that table,” said Mary. “Then when we’re done, I’ll sign it, and you can take it up to London in the morning. Give it to Stephen’s barrister. He’ll know what to do. They can’t hang Stephen if I’ve confessed.”

Trave wasn’t so sure, but he picked up the mug of black coffee that Paul had put in front of him and went over to the table where he’d got slowly used to eating his meals alone in the months since Vanessa left him. Just as he’d finished sitting down, the telephone rang. Instinctively he put out his hand to answer it, but Mary’s voice stopped him.

“I’ll shoot you, Inspector, if you do that,” she said in a flat, hard voice. “I don’t want to, but I will.”

Trave wasn’t sure he believed her, but there was no way he was going to put her assertion to the test. Not with the cold-eyed Frenchman standing behind him. The telephone rang on unanswered for nearly a minute, and then, when it had stopped, Paul put pen and paper in front of him, and Trave began to write down what Mary was telling him. After a few sentences she gave the gun to Paul and began walking up and down the room as she dictated her statement, speaking quickly and with little hesitation. It seemed obvious to Trave that she had prepared a great deal of what she had to say in advance, but a growing passion that crept into her voice as she told her story made him realise that she’d been waiting for this moment for a long, long time.

“My name is Marie Rocard,” she began, “and I was born on January third, 1939. My parents, Henri and Mathilde Rocard, were killed by John Cade and Reginald Ritter on August twenty-eighth, 1944, at Marjean Church in Normandy. There was a third man called Carson who kept watch outside. They killed our servants, Albert and Marguerite too, and they set fire to our house, and then they blamed it all on the Nazis, who’d been using the chateau as a headquarters since 1942. Cade believed that there were no survivors because he never knew that my parents had a child.

“Afterward, with the help of friends, I escaped to another part of France and took on a new identity, and then, when I was old enough, I planned out how to punish John Cade for what he’d done. For as long as I can remember I thought of nothing else, but I also knew it wouldn’t be easy. In 1956 I enticed him to Marjean and shot him with a rifle but he recovered from his wound, and after that I couldn’t find a way to get him to leave his house, however hard I tried. He was a rich man who lived behind high walls and electronic gates, and a break-in was simply not practical. I had to get close to him to make sure he died, but that meant that someone else in the house would have to take the blame for the murder. I decided on Cade’s son, Stephen, who was a student at Oxford University. He would be my passport into Moreton Manor House, and then the state would hang him for what I’d done. Back then I held the whole Cade family responsible for the father’s crime. But I was wrong. I wish now that I acted differently after the murder, that I didn’t stand aside and watch Stephen suffer as he has. But what’s done is done. I cannot make amends. All I can do now is save him from the gallows.”

“What about Ritter?” asked Trave, interrupting. “You said it was Ritter as well as Cade that killed your parents.”

“He would’ve come afterward. But you saved me the trouble, Inspector.” Mary smiled briefly, as if acknowledging a debt. “And Ritter killed Carson. Pushed him from a train outside Leicester. But you probably know that already, don’t you?”

“I guessed,” said Trave, picking up his pen and trying to avoid looking at Paul, who still had the gun trained on his head. Unlike Mary, his hand was entirely steady.

“Where was I?” said Mary. “Oh yes, Stephen. Always Stephen. He was twenty-one years old when I first met him and very impressionable. And he was estranged from his father, which was always going to make him the prime suspect. It didn’t take him long to fall in love with me. That was the easy part. And then, when he couldn’t do without me anymore, I told him that my mother was sick and I needed money for an operation. He believed me. He had no reason not to. How was he to know that my mother was well beyond medical help, rotting in her grave on the other side of the Channel?”

Mary laughed harshly, allowing Trave another glimpse of the angry bitterness that lay just beneath the smooth surface of her personality. But he said nothing, waiting for her to continue her story.

“I told him that I’d have to go and look for work up in London or even Manchester if I couldn’t find the money, and of course there was only one person whom he could go to for it. But still, it wasn’t easy for him to ask his father for anything, and maybe he wouldn’t have written to the old man at all if I hadn’t got lucky. Just when I was beginning to put the pressure on, Silas arrived and told Stephen about the will. It was Silas who practically dictated the letter that Stephen wrote to his father, asking to be allowed back. And, you know, at the time it didn’t seem like luck at all. It felt like fate was on my side, as if I’d been chosen in some way.”

“Like you were the wrath of God?” asked Trave.

“Yes, if you like,” said Mary, ignoring the irony. “It certainly hardened my resolve-helped me use the son to get at the father. Anyway, the letter worked and we went out to the manor house for lunch with the man I hated most in all the world.”

“How was that?”

“Not easy. No, almost unbearable since you ask. But I got through it somehow and then, in the afternoon, I slipped away and took a tour of the rooms that I needed to know. I found Cade’s keys in his desk drawer. There was one that fitted the door between the study and the east-wing corridor, and I took a wax impression of that one and also of the ones that opened the french windows to the study and the front door of the house. Afterward Paul arranged to have copies made. One for the front door, one for the french windows, and two for the door to the study.”

“Why two?”

“For the fingerprints. I held one of the keys in Stephen’s fingers while he was asleep. And I used the other to lock the door after I’d killed his father. Then I took it out and put the one with Stephen’s prints back in the lock so that it’d look like he locked the door himself. I needed two keys because locking the door with the first key would’ve wiped away his prints. And I did the same with the guns. There were two of them as well. One that he’d held in his sleep, and one that I used to kill Cade. I fired the one with Stephen’s prints on it the day before I put it in his hands.”

“Why didn’t he wake up?”

“I’d given him some sleeping powder. It wasn’t difficult. And so that was the plan. Wait for Stephen to leave the study, follow him in, kill Cade, and lock the door behind me before I went out through the french windows. Go back in the house through the front door and then wait for someone to find the body. And then when the police came, the gun would be in Stephen’s room with his prints on the magazine.”

“He’d have known it was you. Nobody else could have put his prints on the gun. Or the key.”

“Possibly. But, in any case, nobody would have believed him. He was the one with the motive, not me. And I hadn’t been in the study. He had.”

Trave nodded. “So what happened?” he asked. “When you went back?”

“Things turned out differently than I expected,” she said. “Just like they always do. After dinner I went down the drive and opened the gate. Paul had his car parked over by the phone box on the other side of the road, so I could call if anything went wrong, and then he would come and get me. It was a fail-safe. Nothing more than that. I didn’t expect to need to run away.

“Stephen had arranged to see his father at ten o’clock, and once he was inside the study, I went to get his hat and coat from his bedroom. I was going to wear them to cross the courtyard afterward, you see, so anyone looking down would think I was Stephen. Not that I expected anyone to see me. I hoped that all the lights would be out by then, and I had a silencer for the gun. But the hat and coat weren’t there. It was only afterward that I found out that Stephen had put them on to go for a walk up the drive before he saw his father. So I didn’t know at the time that he’d closed the gate and seen the Mercedes, and I’m glad I didn’t. It might have made me lose my nerve.”

Trave thought this unlikely, but he didn’t say so. He had his work cut out trying to write down everything that Mary was saying. She was speaking quicker now that she was reliving the events of the murder night, and Trave’s pen raced backward and forward across the paper. He tried not to think of Paul over by the door with the gun still aimed at his head.

“I ran downstairs from the bedroom,” Mary went on, “and I took Silas’s hat and coat from off the stand in the hall. I needed a disguise, and something was better than nothing. Then I went into the little book room off the east-wing corridor next to the study and waited. There was the sound of talking, but I couldn’t really make out any of the words until about thirty minutes had gone by. Then, suddenly, the voices got louder, and I could hear most of what Stephen was saying. He did tell his father that he deserved to die. And, you know, Inspector, it made me smile, standing waiting in the darkness on the other side of the wall, ready to kill that bastard just as soon as his son had gone on his way.

“Stephen went out through the french windows pretty soon after the shouting started, and I hadn’t expected that. I don’t really know why. I’d just anticipated him coming past me down the corridor. And he didn’t go across the courtyard to the front door either. I looked out of the window in the corridor and I didn’t see him, so he had to have walked away down the drive or out into the grounds. Either way, there was obviously a risk that he might come back, but I had to accept that. I’d gone too far to pull back with Cade a few feet away and the gun ready in my hand. I didn’t know when the chance might come again, now that he’d quarreled with Stephen. And I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. All the years of waiting came together in that moment when I went through the door of his study and there he was, bent down over his stupid chess game with his big wet tongue flicking round his lips, like he was some horrible bloodsucking insect that needed to be stamped on, put an end to, destroyed.”

Mary punched her clenched fist into the open palm of her other hand to give emphasis to her words, and then suddenly stopped short, as if realising that her narrative had carried her away. It struck Trave that she hadn’t just come to confess to Cade’s murder. She was also dictating a sort of testament.

“I didn’t shoot him straightaway,” she said after a moment, in a quiet, more measured voice. “I waited until he saw me. Because I needed him to know why he was going to die. That was important. So I let his watery pale blue eyes come up level with mine, focusing through his little gold half-moon glasses, and then I told him who I was. It took him a second or two to register the information, and then I shot him just as he opened his mouth to shout. One bullet right in the middle of his big shiny forehead. And it was done. Revenge for my parents; revenge for Albert and Marguerite. Good people who never did anyone any harm. It was the best moment of my life.

“But I didn’t lose my concentration; I didn’t waste any time. The plan was what mattered. I locked the door with the first key I’d copied, and then I took it out and replaced it with the second, the one with Stephen’s fingerprints on it. And I was just about to go over to the desk to remove Cade’s key from his ring when I heard footsteps outside. It was Stephen coming back. I couldn’t believe it. I was beside myself. I hid behind the curtains over the french windows, and he walked straight past me into the room. He never saw me at all. But I still made a mistake that could have cost me everything. Obviously I realised I had to change the plan now that Stephen had come back. I couldn’t put the gun in his room. He had to have it with him in the study. Otherwise nothing would make sense. But I didn’t have time to think it through. He started shouting for help, and I needed to get out of there. So I slid the gun in my hand, the wrong gun, out into the room, and then I walked quickly across the courtyard to the front door. Stephen didn’t hear me. He was too busy shouting. And until Ritter’s wife came to court and said her piece, I thought no one had seen me.

“Anyway, I unlocked the front door with the key I’d had made, closed it behind me, and it was only then, when it was too late to do anything about it, that I realised what I’d done. The gun I’d left behind was the one I’d killed Cade with. There were no fingerprints on it because I’d worn gloves. But Stephen wasn’t wearing gloves. A clean gun would be as bad as no gun at all, but there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing at all.

“I threw Silas’s hat and coat in the general direction of the hat stand and ran up the west-wing stairs to my room. I didn’t try to compose myself because it didn’t matter. Everyone was going to be upset. I came back down just in time to see Ritter’s wife in the hall. I must’ve missed with the hat and coat because she was hanging them up on the stand. I had no idea that she was protecting Silas. I thought she was just doing her job, being the housekeeper. She must’ve locked the front door too. I walked straight past her and down the corridor to the study. The door was open, and Ritter was inside with Stephen, smacking him across the face, and I could see the gun. It was on the side table by the door. Someone had picked it up off the floor and put it there. And for some reason I knew it wasn’t Ritter. He was a psychopath but he wasn’t stupid. It had to be Stephen. And I knew then that I was safe. The plan had worked better than I could have hoped for. Now that he’d touched the gun and the key, there was no reason for him to suspect me at all. All I had to do was visit him in Wandsworth Prison once a week and watch him getting ready to die.

“And, of course, that’s what I hadn’t reckoned with,” said Mary, with a bitter laugh. Her voice had been confident, proud even, as she told the story of the murder, but now her fluency deserted her as she returned to Stephen and the present.

“Don’t worry, Inspector, the irony hasn’t escaped me,” she went on after a moment. “I’m here because everything went too well. If the plan had gone as I’d anticipated and Stephen hadn’t come back to the study, then he’d probably have ended up suspecting me, just like you said. He’d have known that somebody had put his fingerprints on the gun and the key, and that person was likely to be me. And if he’d accused me of the murder, then I’d never have carried on visiting him in gaol and ended up feeling like this. I’d just have left justice to take its course.”

“Not justice,” said Trave. “Injustice. And, if you ask me, I don’t think you’d have left him to hang, whatever you say. You’re not as cold-blooded as you like to pretend, Miss Martin or Rocard or whoever you are. You’d have regretted what you’d done to that poor boy, whether you’d gone to see him once a week, twice a week, or not at all.”

Mary was about to respond, but the sudden harsh ring of the doorbell stopped her short. Paul was the first to react. He crossed the room as quickly and noiselessly as a cat and pressed the revolver up hard against Trave’s temple. His free hand was clamped over the policeman’s mouth. Mary stood by the door into the hall, listening. There was silence. And then the bell rang again. Longer this time. Afterward they could hear the sound of someone stamping their feet on the step. It was cold outside, and perhaps the visitor would go away. But instead he knocked on the door with his fist and called out for Trave to let him in. It was Clayton, and he obviously believed Trave was inside because of the light on in the living room. But Trave didn’t move a muscle. He wasn’t going to give the silent Frenchman any excuses. And after a moment they could hear footsteps receding down the road and a car engine gunning into life. Paul let go of Trave’s head and moved away toward the window.

“Who was that?” asked Mary.

“Someone who works for me,” said Trave.

“Will he be back?”

“I don’t know. It depends on what he wants.”

“Well, we’re not going to wait to find out. Is what you’ve got there enough if I sign it now?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. Confessions are usually best if they come with the people who make them.”

“Well, you can’t have everything, Inspector,” said Mary with a half smile. “This should make the difference, though, if those men in Whitehall need further persuading.”

Mary opened her bag and took out a rectangular black velvet case. Inside, spaces had been hollowed out for two revolvers. One was empty, but there was a little silver snub-nosed gun in the other. Trave recognized it immediately. It was an exact match for the one that he’d seized from Cade’s study on the night of the murder.

“I got them as a pair,” she said. “They’re an exact match. I can’t see them arguing with that. You can look if you want. It’s not loaded.”

But Trave didn’t take up the invitation. Not while the Frenchman still had him in his sights.

“Good. Now give me what you’ve written so I can see if you’ve got it all right before I sign it,” said Mary, picking up the papers. “Paul’ll make us some more coffee and then we can go.”

“We?” repeated Trave, surprised.

“Yes. You too. I’m not leaving you here to put out a general alert as soon as we’ve gone round the corner. What do you take me for?”

Mary went over to Paul and took the gun out of his hand. It seemed as if she whispered something as well, but Trave couldn’t he sure. It was too quick, and he was tired, dog tired. He needed the coffee if he was going to stay awake. She read the pages methodically, one by one, looking up at frequent intervals to check that Trave hadn’t got up from the chair Paul had moved him to in the far corner of the room, and then signed the statement at the end in the name of Mary Martin, formerly Marie Rocard. Trave witnessed her signature underneath.

“Why did Cade kill your parents?” he asked, finishing the coffee that Paul had put in front of him. “Stephen said it was about a book.”

“Yes. My father wouldn’t sell it to Cade and so he stole it. Then he killed everyone to cover his tracks.”

“It must have been some book. People don’t commit murder for nothing.”

“You’re probably right, but it was stolen when I was too young to know anything about such things. And I’ve never seen it since. Books don’t concern us, Inspector. That’s not why I’m here.”

Trave had other questions he wanted to ask. Questions about Sasha and Marjean Church, but for some reason he couldn’t find the words. His head was swirling, and he felt strange inside. It was like he was in a rudderless boat going up on the highest waves and down into the deepest troughs. It was more than fatigue. He knew that for a fact as he rolled in and out of consciousness, losing his unsuccessful fight with the drug that Paul had stirred into his coffee minutes before. Mary was still in the room when he fell down onto the floor, but he didn’t know if it was she or Paul who carried him over to the sofa and laid him out under a blanket.

“It’s all right. You’ll just sleep for a while,” she said. “And then when you wake up, you can go to London and save Stephen from the gallows. You’ll be a national hero. And I, I’ll be gone.”

She was by the door now, but her voice came floating through the air toward him one last time.

“Good-bye, Inspector,” she said. “Tell Stephen I’m sorry.”

He didn’t hear the door close.