Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

“Anyway, I unlocked the front door with the key I’d had made, closed it behind me, and it was only then, when it was too late to do anything about it, that I realised what I’d done. The gun I’d left behind was the one I’d killed Cade with. There were no fingerprints on it because I’d worn gloves. But Stephen wasn’t wearing gloves. A clean gun would be as bad as no gun at all, but there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing at all.

“I threw Silas’s hat and coat in the general direction of the hat stand and ran up the west-wing stairs to my room. I didn’t try to compose myself because it didn’t matter. Everyone was going to be upset. I came back down just in time to see Ritter’s wife in the hall. I must’ve missed with the hat and coat because she was hanging them up on the stand. I had no idea that she was protecting Silas. I thought she was just doing her job, being the housekeeper. She must’ve locked the front door too. I walked straight past her and down the corridor to the study. The door was open, and Ritter was inside with Stephen, smacking him across the face, and I could see the gun. It was on the side table by the door. Someone had picked it up off the floor and put it there. And for some reason I knew it wasn’t Ritter. He was a psychopath but he wasn’t stupid. It had to be Stephen. And I knew then that I was safe. The plan had worked better than I could have hoped for. Now that he’d touched the gun and the key, there was no reason for him to suspect me at all. All I had to do was visit him in Wandsworth Prison once a week and watch him getting ready to die.

“And, of course, that’s what I hadn’t reckoned with,” said Mary, with a bitter laugh. Her voice had been confident, proud even, as she told the story of the murder, but now her fluency deserted her as she returned to Stephen and the present.

“Don’t worry, Inspector, the irony hasn’t escaped me,” she went on after a moment. “I’m here because everything went too well. If the plan had gone as I’d anticipated and Stephen hadn’t come back to the study, then he’d probably have ended up suspecting me, just like you said. He’d have known that somebody had put his fingerprints on the gun and the key, and that person was likely to be me. And if he’d accused me of the murder, then I’d never have carried on visiting him in gaol and ended up feeling like this. I’d just have left justice to take its course.”

“Not justice,” said Trave. “Injustice. And, if you ask me, I don’t think you’d have left him to hang, whatever you say. You’re not as cold-blooded as you like to pretend, Miss Martin or Rocard or whoever you are. You’d have regretted what you’d done to that poor boy, whether you’d gone to see him once a week, twice a week, or not at all.”

Mary was about to respond, but the sudden harsh ring of the doorbell stopped her short. Paul was the first to react. He crossed the room as quickly and noiselessly as a cat and pressed the revolver up hard against Trave’s temple. His free hand was clamped over the policeman’s mouth. Mary stood by the door into the hall, listening. There was silence. And then the bell rang again. Longer this time. Afterward they could hear the sound of someone stamping their feet on the step. It was cold outside, and perhaps the visitor would go away. But instead he knocked on the door with his fist and called out for Trave to let him in. It was Clayton, and he obviously believed Trave was inside because of the light on in the living room. But Trave didn’t move a muscle. He wasn’t going to give the silent Frenchman any excuses. And after a moment they could hear footsteps receding down the road and a car engine gunning into life. Paul let go of Trave’s head and moved away toward the window.

“Who was that?” asked Mary.

“Someone who works for me,” said Trave.

“Will he be back?”

“I don’t know. It depends on what he wants.”

“Well, we’re not going to wait to find out. Is what you’ve got there enough if I sign it now?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. Confessions are usually best if they come with the people who make them.”

“Well, you can’t have everything, Inspector,” said Mary with a half smile. “This should make the difference, though, if those men in Whitehall need further persuading.”

Mary opened her bag and took out a rectangular black velvet case. Inside, spaces had been hollowed out for two revolvers. One was empty, but there was a little silver snub-nosed gun in the other. Trave recognized it immediately. It was an exact match for the one that he’d seized from Cade’s study on the night of the murder.

“I got them as a pair,” she said. “They’re an exact match. I can’t see them arguing with that. You can look if you want. It’s not loaded.”

But Trave didn’t take up the invitation. Not while the Frenchman still had him in his sights.

“Good. Now give me what you’ve written so I can see if you’ve got it all right before I sign it,” said Mary, picking up the papers. “Paul’ll make us some more coffee and then we can go.”

“We?” repeated Trave, surprised.

“Yes. You too. I’m not leaving you here to put out a general alert as soon as we’ve gone round the corner. What do you take me for?”

Mary went over to Paul and took the gun out of his hand. It seemed as if she whispered something as well, but Trave couldn’t he sure. It was too quick, and he was tired, dog tired. He needed the coffee if he was going to stay awake. She read the pages methodically, one by one, looking up at frequent intervals to check that Trave hadn’t got up from the chair Paul had moved him to in the far corner of the room, and then signed the statement at the end in the name of Mary Martin, formerly Marie Rocard. Trave witnessed her signature underneath.

“Why did Cade kill your parents?” he asked, finishing the coffee that Paul had put in front of him. “Stephen said it was about a book.”

“Yes. My father wouldn’t sell it to Cade and so he stole it. Then he killed everyone to cover his tracks.”

“It must have been some book. People don’t commit murder for nothing.”

“You’re probably right, but it was stolen when I was too young to know anything about such things. And I’ve never seen it since. Books don’t concern us, Inspector. That’s not why I’m here.”

Trave had other questions he wanted to ask. Questions about Sasha and Marjean Church, but for some reason he couldn’t find the words. His head was swirling, and he felt strange inside. It was like he was in a rudderless boat going up on the highest waves and down into the deepest troughs. It was more than fatigue. He knew that for a fact as he rolled in and out of consciousness, losing his unsuccessful fight with the drug that Paul had stirred into his coffee minutes before. Mary was still in the room when he fell down onto the floor, but he didn’t know if it was she or Paul who carried him over to the sofa and laid him out under a blanket.

“It’s all right. You’ll just sleep for a while,” she said. “And then when you wake up, you can go to London and save Stephen from the gallows. You’ll be a national hero. And I, I’ll be gone.”

She was by the door now, but her voice came floating through the air toward him one last time.

“Good-bye, Inspector,” she said. “Tell Stephen I’m sorry.”

He didn’t hear the door close.

Sasha woke up, blinking in the sunlight of a new Paris morning. Outside, the varied noises and smells of a fruit and vegetable market in the street below rose up toward her through the half-open window of her room, and for a moment she was still unaware of the significance of the day. But then her eye fell on the crumpled piece of paper lying spread out on the bedside table, and she immediately resumed the train of thought that had occupied almost every waking minute of her time since she’d driven away from the inn at Marjean three days earlier.