Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

Stephen laughed bitterly, and his anger beat against his old girlfriend, forcing her away from him, up against the back of her ugly wooden chair. In truth she looked little better than Stephen. Her nails were bitten to the quick and the tightness of her facial muscles showed the strain she was under as she fought to keep hold of her usual composure. All the day before Paul had tried to make her stay away from the prison, but she’d insisted on coming. Stephen had a right to know what they had done to him, she’d said; he had the right to an explanation, but now that she was here the words wouldn’t come, and every passing minute made it more difficult to find a way to begin.

The truth was that it had all turned out wrong. Stephen hadn’t deserved any of this-she realised that now. It had just all seemed so much simpler before, when she was still in France and it was all about her parents, about getting them justice. Closing her eyes, Mary summoned up the image of her mother looking up at her in the window of the tower as she crossed the nave of Marjean Church for the last time. It was the memory that had haunted Mary and sustained her for the last fifteen years. Her own mother leaving behind her dead husband, slumped on the stone-flagged floor of the church, as the two Englishmen, Cade and Ritter, pushed her and old Albert through the door of the vestry and down the narrow winding stairs to the crypt. Mary had waited for them to come back, but instead she had heard the shouting and the cries of pain and the gunshots and the silence afterward. Always the silence that went on and on and on forever. It demanded retribution; it required the oath that she had sworn with Paul on the deserted hill outside Dijon all those years ago.

They had watched and they had waited, dreaming of a just revenge. And killing John Cade had been just that. She’d not felt one moment’s remorse for what she had done that night at Moreton Manor. She still rejoiced in it, when she wasn’t thinking about what had happened since, but almost from the outset this slow judicial murder of Cade’s son had begun to make her sick, until now she couldn’t stand it any longer. It was too cold-blooded, and Stephen wasn’t just Cade’s son anymore, either. She knew him too well, and, however hard she tried, she hadn’t been able to stay entirely detached from the part she’d played with him in the months before his arrest. The trouble was that he had nothing to do with what had happened to her at Marjean. It wasn’t his fault that John Cade was his father. God knows, Stephen had walked away from the man because of what he’d done to her parents.

Mary had hoped that he’d be acquitted at the trial, but it hadn’t happened. The jury hadn’t bought Silas as the murderer, and now she could only save Stephen by exposing herself. And Paul wouldn’t hear of it. Not because he was frightened. That wasn’t in Paul’s nature. No, it was because of the plan. Always the plan. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth-not just Cade but his son as well, which was fine when you were far away, working out details on a piece of paper. It was very different when Cade’s son was a man who loved you, a young man with his whole life in front of him, a life that you were trying to take away.

It was funny how Paul’s determination to carry out the plan to the letter seemed to have grown in direct proportion to the waning of her own enthusiasm for it. She and Paul had always been like brother and sister, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t become jealous of Stephen. Looking back, even Mary had to admit that there had been times in Oxford when she had forgotten that she was an actress playing a part. But that was in the past. All Mary knew now was that the time had come to change the script, with or without Paul. She’d already worked out what had to be done, but first she owed it to Stephen to tell him the truth, and that was the difficult part, she now realised; the rest would be far easier.

“It’s not over yet,” she said lamely, trying to buy time before she began her confession, but the remark infuriated Stephen.

“Yes, it is,” he shouted. “Over and out. I’m going through that trapdoor on Wednesday unless the real murderer comes forward, and I don’t think that’s very likely. Do you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe…”

Stephen shook his head violently, and Mary’s prepared speech died in her throat as she glimpsed the depth of his despair. He swallowed hard and looked up at the ceiling, fighting to keep back his tears. Brutally, he rubbed the back of each hand across his face, and then, blinking, he seemed to see Mary for the first time since he had come into the room.

“You know, this is probably the last time we’ll ever be together,” he said, in a suddenly quiet voice. “Unless you believe in the afterlife, which I don’t. Since I was moved to the new cell, I’ve been reading the Bible at night when I can’t sleep. Trying to make sense of all this and failing. All that cursing and begetting. But I was wondering last night if that’s what all this is about.”

“What?”

“Being cursed through the generations. Like I’m dying, not for what I’ve done, but to atone for what my father did. As if his death wasn’t enough. It needs more blood to even up the scales.”

“Your father was an evil man.”

“Yes. But I’m not. I’ve always tried to do the right thing. And look where I’ve ended up. You know, I’ve always thought that this is about what happened to those people in France all those years ago. You and Swift persuaded me to accuse Silas, but I never thought he was capable of killing anyone, let alone our father. And I don’t think accusing him helped me at all in the end. It looked like opportunism, which is exactly what it was.”

“You had to try it,” said Mary defensively. “The stuff about Marjean wasn’t working. You know that.”

“No, I don’t,” said Stephen stubbornly. “That car was parked outside the gate for a reason that night. There was something about it. You’d know if you’d seen it. And the name the driver gave the police turns out to be almost the same as the next town up from Marjean. That’s not a coincidence. I know it’s not.”

“How do you know about the name?”

“It’s always been in the evidence. I just didn’t make the connection.”

“Who did?”

“Silas. He came to see me. I’m glad he did too. He said he didn’t believe I killed the old man anymore. He’s found out the chess pieces were changed after I left the study. Somebody else did that. And it wasn’t Silas.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. Silas says the policeman in charge of the case has gone to France to ask questions. Maybe he’ll find out something.”

Stephen’s face lit up as he clutched at this straw of hope.

“You’ve been good to me, Mary,” he said. “You’ve always believed in me. Not like everyone else. You were all I ever asked for, and then this happened. It seems like such a waste. You know what I can’t stand? If I’ve got to die, I’d like to die for a reason. Not for nothing at all. I’m twenty years too late. That’s my problem. I remember the Spitfires and the Hurricanes up in the sky when I was a boy. Dogfights in the air. Pilots flying head over heels. They were real heroes. Dying for a reason. Not like this. Trussed up like a turkey, hanging on the end of a rope.”

“I’m sorry, Stephen,” said Mary. “I’m sorry about what has happened. It wasn’t what I…”

“No, Mary” interrupted her ex-lover, reaching out his hand. “Don’t say that. It’s not as if it’s your fault I’m here. You’ve nothing to be sorry for. Nothing at all.”

Over on the other side of the exercise yard, Henry Crean, the Queen’s hangman, waited patiently while a warder made unusually heavy work of finding the right key to open the door of Stephen’s cell. Inside the prison he often seemed to have this effect on people, making them nervous and uncomfortable, but he knew that there was nothing he could do about it even if he had wanted to. It came with the territory. Anyway, his mind was focused on what lay beyond the door. Usually he prepared the gallows on the day before an execution, but his assistant, a young Welshman called Owen Jones, was new to the job, and in this instance Crean had decided that two dry runs were required before he sent Stephen Cade to his maker.