Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

Slowly and methodically she carried on, reading the old monk’s code under the hospital’s strip lighting, oblivious to the murmuring voices of the sick men and women around her. A few minutes later, and she had the message complete. “Crux Petri in manibus Petri est,” it read. “The cross of Peter is in the hands of Peter.” What could it possibly mean? Who was the second Peter, and where were his hands?

Leaving the last decorated initial behind, Sasha read the last page of the Gospel of St. Luke to herself. Jesus led them out as far as Bethany and blessed them, and while he blessed them, he parted from them and ascended into heaven. “Ascendit in caelum.” She turned the page, and there was Cade’s list of numbers tucked into the back of the book, and at the bottom in her father’s handwriting was a list of his own under the heading, “Abbots of Marjean.” There were four names and four sets of dates: Marcus 1278–1300. Stephanus Pisano 1300-05. Bartholomeus 1306-21. Simeon 1321-27. The last name was twice underlined. Simon, abbot of Marjean. Was he the second Peter of the coded message? Peter after all was Christ’s name for the apostle Simon. He called him petrus, or stone, because Simon was the rock on whom Christ chose to build his church-the same Simon Peter who betrayed Christ three times before the cock crowed on the day of the crucifixion.

Was St. Peter’s cross lying in the hands of Simon, abbot of Marjean? There was a crypt under the church with tombs on either side. She’d been there and seen it all two years earlier. The church had not been damaged by the fire that had gutted the chateau at the end of the war. Could it be possible that the cross had lain undetected in a stone tomb for nearly seven hundred years before Cade went there in

The thought of her father’s nemesis brought Sasha back to earth. Even forgetting that it made no sense that Cade had taken so long to break the code, she could not ignore the fact that he had gone to Marjean in 1956 and had come away empty-handed. He hadn’t found the cross, or he wouldn’t have hired her eighteen months later to search for it everywhere except where it ought to be: beneath the church at Marjean. Unless he had missed something. She had to go and look for herself. She must bury her father, and then she would take the ferry to Le Havre and hire a car. Her father had all but told her where to go, even though he knew the dangers. As she had told him weeks before, when she first brought him Cade’s diary: She had gone too far to stop now.

The radio was playing in the taxi that took Sasha home from the hospital. Late-night news repeated every hour. The second item was the Moreton Manor murder. “Stephen Cade’s appeal due in court tomorrow,” announced a toneless voice from the dashboard. “Will death sentence be upheld?”

Sasha felt suddenly sick. She leant forward in her seat, clutching her knees as the world turned over. She was powerless to stop her brain from summoning up the same image that had come to her before: the image of Stephen sitting alone in his cell in the early morning, watching the clock for the appointed hour, waiting for the hangman to come. Her sense of responsibility clutched her like a vice. She thought fleetingly of telling the taxi driver to turn round, to take her to the police station so she could confess her sins to that weathered old policeman who had come to visit her at the manor house, pleading with her to tell the truth. But she knew she couldn’t. It was too late now. Perjury in a capital case was a serious crime: she didn’t need a lawyer to tell her that. They’d imprison her for what she’d done and the prize would slip from her grasp. She’d never find out what lay “in manibus Petri.” And anyway it would do no good. What was done was done. Stephen was beyond saving and her father was dead. The only way was forward: She had to go on.

Exhausted, Sasha wound down her window and lay back in her seat, letting the cold night air play over her face. The headlines were over on the radio, and she finished her journey to the accompaniment of an American called Elvis Presley singing something loud and insistent called rock and roll.

“At least it keeps you awake,” said the taxi driver, apologetically, as he took her money.

“Yes, it does that,” agreed Sasha with a thin smile, before she turned away with the bag containing the codex and its deciphered code held tightly in her hand.

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.”