Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

Stephen had never forgotten that day when he broke with his father. For the first and last time in his life, he rushed into the study without knocking. And looking up from a manuscript, Cade had needed no more than a moment to know that the time for pretending was over. He sat back in his chair and sighed, waiting for what was to come.

“You lied to me,” Stephen shouted with tears in his eyes. “Everything you’ve ever said was lies.”

“Who told you?” asked Cade, ignoring his son’s accusation.

“You did,” said Stephen with a bitter laugh. “I heard you talking last night. In here. You’re guilty, Dad. Guilty of everything.”

But Cade did not react to Stephen’s anger. He sat silently, looking up at his son as if he was measuring him, and this only served to enrage Stephen further.

“Why?” he asked, half shouting, half crying. “Just tell me why!”

“It was an accident,” the old man said. “Things got out of hand.”

“An accident! Killing all those innocent people. It was a massacre. That’s what it was.”

But Cade shrugged his shoulders and opened his hands, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “It was a long time ago,” he said.

Stephen was dumbstruck, horrified by his father’s apparent indifference to the enormity of his crime.

“So what are you going to do, Stephen?” the old man asked after a while, breaking the silence.

“Do? I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

“Well, before you do anything, think what a trial will do to me. It’ll kill me, you know. I’m not a well man, Stephen.”

Stephen looked at his father, disgusted by the pleading tone in his voice.

“This isn’t about you,” he said. “It’s about what’s right and wrong.”

“All right. Well, think of your mother then, if you don’t care about me. Is this what she would have wanted? To have her family disgraced?”

“It’s you who did that. Not me.”

“Please, Stephen. I haven’t much longer to live. You know that. Going to the police won’t solve anything.”

Suddenly Stephen felt deflated. The fight went out of him as he realised that there was nothing he could do to change the past. His father was right. A trial would achieve nothing.

“What about Carson?” he asked in a flat voice, keeping his eyes on the floor.

“What about him?”

“If I keep quiet, Carson goes free. You’ll call that psycho off. Yes?”

“Yes, I swear it. On Clara’s grave I swear it,” said Cade, suddenly animated as he sensed the chance of escape for the first time.

Stephen didn’t know whether to believe his father or not. All he knew was that he had gone as far as he could go. He felt torn up inside. He couldn’t stand to spend another minute in the man’s presence.

“You’re not my father,” he said flatly. “Not anymore. I’m going, and I’m not coming back.”

But it hadn’t been that easy. The shame had followed Stephen wherever he went, growing inside him like a tumour, until he had finally gone home and ended up sitting in this prison cell, fighting for his life, paying for his father’s crimes.

Trave arrived late, anxious to avoid if possible another encounter with Thompson, and earned himself a malevolent glance from the judge as the swing door banged closed behind him and he took a seat at the side of the court.

Silas was already in the witness box, and he kept his eyes fixed firmly on the floor as he answered the prosecutor’s questions, studiously avoiding the eager stare of his brother, who was gazing at him expectantly across the well of the courtroom. Trave realised that it must be four months or more since the two had last met.

Unsurprisingly, Silas looked more ill at ease than when Trave had seen him at the manor house the day before, but there was the same lack of expression in his voice as he answered the prosecutor’s questions, and the way in which he always seemed to think before he spoke made Trave more sure than ever that the young man was hiding something. Not for the first time Trave wished that he’d had the chance to interrogate Silas in that same windowless interview room at the back of Oxford Police Station, where he had questioned Stephen on the day after the murder. The trouble was that the evidence against the younger brother was just too strong. Trave had had no option but to charge the boy, and that had put an end to further investigation. Trave stirred in his seat, trying unsuccessfully to shake off his frustration and concentrate on the evidence.

“How would you describe the relationship between your brother, Stephen, and your father?” asked Thompson, getting straight to the point.

“When?”

“Let’s say, in the last two years of your father’s life. I don’t think there’s any need to go back further than that.”

“They were estranged.”

“They didn’t speak to each other at all?”

“Not as far as I know. My brother was at the university, and my father lived at home. He never went out,” Silas added, as if it was an afterthought.

“Why was that?” asked Thompson.

“He couldn’t because of his health, but he was also concerned about security. Although less so toward the end. I don’t know why. In the last couple of months he would sit outside in the garden sometimes, which he never used to do before. But he still didn’t leave the grounds.”

“What was wrong with your father’s health?”

“He was shot in the lung while on a trip abroad about three years ago. He never really recovered.”

“Was he working? During his last two years?”

“Yes. He’d retired from the university, but he was writing a book on illuminated manuscripts. That was his real field of expertise. Sasha helped him with the research, and I did the photography.”

“What did that involve?”

“My father had his own collection, and I was mainly documenting that. He wanted to use as many of his own manuscripts as possible in the book.”

“I see. This collection must be very valuable.”

“Yes.”

“And what did you believe would happen to the manuscripts after your father died?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it. I suppose I assumed that Stephen and I would inherit from my father. That is until I heard him talking about his will with Sergeant Ritter.”

“This is admissible hearsay, my lord. It will go to the defendant’s state of mind,” said Thompson, anticipating a defence objection.

“Very well, Mr. Thompson. Carry on,” said the judge. He looked almost benign this morning. The trial was going well. The prosecution seemed to have everything: motive, fingerprints, and now a history of ill will between victim and defendant. Getting a conviction should be child’s play.

Thompson turned back to his witness and asked Silas to tell the court about the conversation he’d overheard.

“They were in my father’s study.”

“And where were you?”

“I was in the corridor outside. I heard them talking about the will, and so I stopped to listen. They didn’t see me.”

“What did they say?”

“It was my father who was speaking. He was telling Sergeant Ritter that he didn’t have long to live. I don’t know how he knew that, but I assume his doctor had told him. And it was then that he told Ritter that he was intending to change his will. The house, my home, was going to become a museum for the manuscripts, and Ritter was to be one of the trustees.” A note of emotion had crept into Silas’s voice when he was speaking about the house, but it was immediately suppressed. “I don’t know who the other ones were going to be,” he added. “My father’s solicitor, perhaps.”

“How did you feel about what you heard?” asked Thompson.