Simon Tolkien - Simon Tolkien Inspector Trave Trilogy - Orders From Berlin, The Inheritance, The King of Diamonds

‘Did your father talk about his will with you?’ he asked. ‘About whom he was leaving his money to?’

‘No, we didn’t have those kinds of conversations. He didn’t think it was a woman’s place to talk about money, to be involved in those kinds of decisions. But I assumed …’

‘What did you assume?’ Quaid pressed.

‘Well, that he would leave his property to me, I suppose. I’m his daughter and he has no other relatives as far as I know. At least none that are alive. He had a brother, but he died in the last war. On the Somme,’ she added irrelevantly.

‘Except he has a son-in-law, doesn’t he?’ said Quaid, looking grimly over at Ava’s husband, who had now retreated to a position just inside the door of the room, as if to enable him to beat a fast retreat at a moment’s notice.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Ava, clearly not understanding.

‘I mean that your father’s will provides for you and your husband, Dr Bertram John Brive, to inherit the estate jointly, and names your husband as the sole executor. There’s no mistake – it’s quite clear. Here, you can read it yourself if you want,’ said Quaid, passing the vellum pages over to Ava.

‘What about you? Is this news to you too, or did you know about your good fortune already?’ asked Quaid, turning his attention back to Bertram. The doctor seemed to be having competing reactions judging from the look on his face. He was certainly embarrassed, that much was obvious – a scarlet flush had spread across the expanse of his fat cheeks – but there was something else as well. Relief, maybe. Perhaps the will was what he’d been looking for when he’d raced up the stairs earlier; perhaps he’d been worried that it had disappeared.

‘I knew about it. Why shouldn’t I?’ Brive said defiantly. ‘Albert wanted it that way. It was his decision. Ava and I are married, and he thought that a husband should direct his wife’s affairs. I can’t see anything wrong with that.’

‘No, of course you can’t. Anything’s justified as long as the money ends up in your pocket,’ Ava burst out angrily, getting to her feet. ‘God damn you, Bertie. Now I understand why you’ve been spending so much time over here this last year, ministering to his hypochondria, writing him prescriptions for drugs he didn’t need, and filling them yourself at the pharmacy. It wasn’t him you cared about, was it? It was his stupid money.’

Trave put his hand on Ava’s arm, anxious that she might rush forward and physically attack her husband, but he needn’t have worried. Her angry outburst exhausted her and she collapsed back into her chair, sobbing.

Downstairs, Quaid paused in the hallway, drawing a deep breath of what appeared to be satisfaction as he pulled on his black leather driving gloves. Albert’s corpse had been removed, replaced by a chalk outline of where his body had lain.

‘Good work,’ he said, smiling benignly at his assistant. ‘We’ll let the medicine man stew in his juices tonight and see what we can find out about him tomorrow. Can I give you a lift home?’

‘No thanks. I’d like the walk. I don’t live too far from here,’ said Trave.

‘All right, suit yourself.’

Trave watched from the doorstep as the inspector got into his car and drove away, then waited until the Wolseley had turned the corner at the end of the street into Albert Bridge Road before he went back inside and knocked on the door of the ground-floor flat.

Quaid might be focused on the dead man’s son-in-law, but Trave was curious to know more about the victim and the mysterious visitor who’d left the note with the old lady downstairs – the note that had made Albert Morrison so agitated when he got back from the park. A fireside chat with Mrs Graves wasn’t on the list of Quaid’s instructions, but Trave didn’t feel he needed the inspector’s permission to ask her a few questions. The time to make a report would be after he’d found something out, not before.

As he’d hoped, Mrs Graves was still awake. The only change was that she had exchanged her black widow’s weeds for a floral dressing gown and curlers in her hair. Mourning was clearly not a night-time occupation. And instead of tea, she offered the young policeman something a little stronger from a bottle that she stood on a chair to get down from a high cupboard in her kitchen.

‘I think we need a little pick-me-up after all that’s happened,’ she said. ‘There’s not been a murder in this house before – at least not in my time.’

‘Well, I’d like to thank you for your kindness to Ava. I don’t think she’d have been able to answer the inspector’s questions if you hadn’t helped her out to begin with,’ said Trave.

‘It was the least I could do. She’s not had a very happy life, the poor girl, and now this …’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, should we, but her father wasn’t an easy man, you know. More often than not he looked daggers drawn if you so much as wished him good morning, and he didn’t like anyone except Ava going into his flat. Apart from her husband, of course – the doctor. He was always round here with his bag of tricks, ministering to Albert. Much good all that medicine did him, God rest his soul,’ said Mrs Graves, crossing herself before pouring Trave and herself two more generous measures from the half-empty whisky bottle on the table.

‘So he didn’t have any other visitors?’

‘No, like I said, he liked to keep himself to himself.’

‘But there was someone today, wasn’t there?’ asked Trave. ‘The man who left the note that you took up to Albert after he got back from the park. Ava told us about it.’

‘Oh, him. Yes, he’s been here before a few times, but not for a while now. Not until today.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘I don’t know … middle-aged, in his early fifties, maybe, with fair-coloured hair going bald at the top – a bit of grey in it, if I remember rightly. Not thin, not fat, average looking, I suppose. No glasses. He’d got yellow fingers like people do when they smoke all the time, and his suit was crumpled up like he’d slept in it – that I do remember. I doubt he’s married or got anyone taking care of him, looking like that.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Nice-sounding voice. I might remember his name if you give me a minute. He didn’t tell me it this time, but we had a chat once when he was here before and he wasn’t in such a hurry. Briars, maybe … no, something else that hurts – on plants.’ Mrs Graves scratched her head, searching for the word, and then abruptly found it. ‘Thorn – that’s it,’ she said, snapping her fingers. ‘I remember because it wasn’t the right name for him. He wasn’t prickly or up on his high horse like Ava’s husband. She’d have done a lot better marrying this bloke if she was going to go for someone older, if you ask me—’

‘You said he was in a hurry today,’ interrupted Trave, trying to get the widow back on track.

‘Yes, a real hurry. Couldn’t wait for Albert to get back, and so I got him a piece of scrap paper and he scribbled something on it, leaning over on the ledge in the hall where we leave the letters, so I couldn’t see what he was writing even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t, of course. It was none of my business. And then when he’d finished, he folded it up and made me promise to give it to Albert personally when he got back, which I did just as soon as he came in. I hope I did the right thing,’ she said anxiously, looking up at Trave for reassurance. ‘I hope that note didn’t have anything to do with what happened – you know, afterwards.’

‘I’m sure it didn’t,’ said Trave, injecting a note of certainty into his voice that he was far from feeling. ‘We just need to get the whole picture, that’s all. You understand.’