Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

Ritter smiled. Giving evidence had been easier than he thought. He’d known that he’d be asked about Marjean. Stevie was fixated on it. That was the reason he’d quarreled with his father. Couldn’t stand the thought of a couple of Frenchies getting potted. He’d probably have even objected to the dog. So Marjean was going to come up, and Ritter had been prepared for it. He’d remembered what the colonel had told him fifteen years before. If you’ve got to lie, lie well. And Ritter had lied well. Solemnly and on oath, and the jurors had believed him. He’d watched them and he knew. And then the judge had weighed in and told them that it was all irrelevant anyway. Carson was the only other witness, and he was dead. He couldn’t have killed the colonel.

Only Ritter was left. He was the only one left alive of all the people who had been there that day. The Germans had been first. Ritter had told the truth about that. There had been two trucks, and they had ambushed them on the drive. But the house had not been on fire. Not yet. That had come later.

Sitting on the municipal bench in High Holborn, Ritter lost touch with the present. The passing traffic and the men in city suits pounding the pavements through their lunch hours were all outside his consciousness. He was back in France in the late summer of 1944 and the hot hard sun was hanging low over the western horizon as Rocard and his wife and the old man staggered up the sloping path to the church with their British captors following close behind. The old man was still suffering the effects of the beating that he had received from Carson and leaned heavily on the Frenchwoman’s shoulder for support, so that they made fairly slow progress.

There was time therefore for Ritter to really take in the facade of Marjean Church, and he didn’t like what he saw. It gave him the creeps. Perhaps it was the hour of the day or the proximity of the black empty lake, but he couldn’t escape the sense that he was being watched. It made him nervous and angry with himself all at the same time. If there was one thing that Ritter was sure of, it was that superstition was stupid.

A grey stone statue of some French saint missing half his head stood above the entrance, and when Rocard pushed open the heavy wooden door of the church at Cade’s direction, Ritter had to fight down an impulse to run back down the slope, in headlong retreat to the safety of the house. But instead he swallowed his anxiety and followed the others into the airless twilight interior, wishing that the colonel had picked somewhere else to continue the interrogation. Still, at least they were out of sight, and Carson would be able to see everything from where he was standing outside. It was a grandstand position. The lake and the sky and the house and the drive were all in view. There would be plenty of time for Jimmy Carson to shout out a warning if he saw someone coming.

The church was simply furnished. There were ten pews on either side of the uncarpeted nave, with a few chairs at the back and an old organ that looked the worse for wear. Up beyond the chancel, the altar was covered with a thin white sheet and adorned with nothing except a small brass cross, and the walls too were bare of decoration. The last of the evening light came in through high leaded windows.

Cade didn’t stop when they got inside. He seemed to know exactly where he was going. He was now ahead of Madame Rocard and the servant, walking almost parallel with her husband toward a half-open door at the back of the church.

“Where are we going?” asked Ritter, but he never got an answer to his question.

Perhaps they were going too fast and she lost her footing on the uneven stone floor, or perhaps she could no longer bear the weight of supporting the old man. Whatever the reason, Madame Rocard suddenly stopped and put her hands up to her head, and the old man fell to the ground, taking his mistress with him. Ritter had been following close behind them with the safety catch on his German pistol released. He didn’t trust any of these people and was taking no chances. Now he too lost his balance, and fell almost on top of the woman. Ritter had always been a heavy man, and Madame Rocard screamed with renewed pain as she felt his full weight land on her body.

Her husband turned round instantly, and the sight of the fat British sergeant on top of his wife enraged him. It broke his self-control and he started raining blows down on Ritter’s head. Everything went black, and it was just instinct and not any kind of conscious decision that made Ritter squeeze his finger down on the trigger of the gun in his hand. Not once, but again and again.

There was a huge explosion in Ritter’s ears, and then complete silence for a moment before everyone seemed to start shouting all at once. Ritter felt the taut wiry body above him go suddenly limp, and then the Frenchman’s warm blood began seeping down over his arm. It brought Ritter to his senses, and he pushed Rocard’s dead weight away and got to his feet.

What happened next he never forgot. It was the only time that the colonel ever lost his temper with him, and it hurt Ritter deep down inside with a pain that he never wanted to feel again.

“Fuck you, Sergeant.” The colonel was white with anger, but he didn’t raise his voice. “Do you know what you are?”

Ritter shook his head.

“You’re a fat, trigger-happy idiot who’s probably just cost me my life’s work. But you wouldn’t understand that, would you, you dolt?”

Cade would have gone on and on, heaping abuse on the one person he could really rely on in the world, if Rocard’s wife hadn’t suddenly started screaming. She was bent over the body of her husband, plucking at his face, trying to get him to come back to life, and now, in despair, she began beating his chest and crying out his name over and over again while the old servant tried ineffectually to pull her away.

Cade reacted instantly. He pulled her roughly to her feet, and then slapped her across the face again and again until she stopped screaming and fell silent.

“She may know something,” he said. “Get the old man and follow me. We’ll take them downstairs.”

The old servant didn’t seem to have much life left in his legs, but Ritter had just got him moving when Carson appeared in the doorway behind them.

“What the fuck happened?” he shouted at Cade. “You told me there wasn’t going to be any killing.”

“I told you to follow orders, and you’d get rewarded for it. If you still want the money, shut up and get outside. Do you hear me, Corporal? Do your fucking job.”

Ritter had never seen the colonel so angry or so powerful. It was certainly too much for Carson, who turned away without further protest and went back to his post, half closing the heavy church door behind him.

“Now, let’s be quick about it,” said Cade, turning back to Ritter after Carson had gone. “Leave the body here. We can come back for it later.”

They went through the door at the back of the church into an open area that evidently served as the vestry. An old white surplice was hanging from a hook on the far wall beneath a dirty window, and a pile of hymn books was stacked on a low table. A rope hanging down through a hole in the middle of the plaster ceiling was obviously connected to the bell at the top of the tower that Ritter had noticed earlier, when they were walking up the hill to the church. Rocard should have rung it when he heard the firing coming from down the drive, thought Ritter. Somebody might have come to save him, but it was too late now.

There was a staircase in the corner of the vestry with stone steps going up and down. Cade took a torch out of his pocket and started descending. He had obviously come prepared.

The stairs were narrow and curved round on themselves, and Cade and Ritter had to keep a firm hold on their prisoners to make sure they didn’t fall over. Rocard’s wife seemed to be in a state of shock, and the old man could hardly walk.