Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

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.