Kitabı oku: «The Inheritance»
SIMON TOLKIEN
The Inheritance
For my mother, Faith Tolkien
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Introductory Note
Prologue: Normandy 1944
Part One: 1959
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part Two
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Part Three
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Simon Tolkien
Copyright
About the Publisher
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The controversial executions of Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis in the 1950s increased public pressure in the United Kingdom for the abolition of hanging, and this was answered in part by the passing of the Homicide Act in 1957, which limited the imposition of the death penalty to five specific categories of murder. Henceforward only those convicted of killing police officers or prison guards and those who had committed a murder by shooting or in the furtherance of theft or when resisting arrest could suffer the ultimate punishment. The effect of this unsatisfactory legislation was that a poisoner or strangler acting with premeditation would escape the rope, whereas a man who shot another in a fit of rage might not. This anomaly no doubt helped the campaign for outright abolition, which finally reached fruition with the passage of the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act in 1965.
Death sentences were carried out far more quickly in England in the 1950s than they are in the United States today. A single appeal against the conviction but not the sentence was allowed, and, if it failed, the Home Secretary made a final decision on whether to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy on behalf of the Queen, marking the file ‘the law must take its course’ if there were to be no reprieve. There was often no more than a month’s interval between conviction and execution. Ruth Ellis, for example, spent just three weeks and three days in the condemned cell at Holloway Prison in 1955 before she was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint for the crime of shooting her boyfriend.
There was thus very little time available for lawyers or other interested parties trying desperately to uncover new evidence that might exonerate a client sentenced to die. They were quite literally working against the clock.
PROLOGUE
NORMANDY
1944
They were safe in the trees, waiting for the Germans to come. Carson had driven the Jeep off the drive, and the silver-grey branches had crackled and broken as he’d wedged it into its hiding place. And now they waited on either side of the road with their fingers on the triggers of their American-made machine guns. Nothing. No wind in the trees, no movement in the air, until just after eight o’clock, when the dust came up in a yellow cloud and the two trucks came round the corner.
And then Ritter felt the bullets feeding through the magazine, the quick vibrations in his arms from the gun, and saw the men in the trucks jumping up and down like puppets. There was one young soldier at the end who ran away down the road, but Colonel Cade walked out of the trees with his rifle and shot him in the back of the head just before he reached the corner. It was a good ambush.
Afterwards, Carson and Ritter pushed the trucks into the woods, while the colonel selected rifles and pistols from the bodies of their dead owners. Three of each. He made them leave their own guns behind.
And so they walked on up to the house with the dead soldiers’ rifles slung over their shoulders and the snub-nosed German Mauser pistols in their pockets. They were a strange, ill-assorted group. Walking in the middle, the tall, thin colonel towered over his two companions. His pale blue eyes were almost opaque, revealing nothing of the man inside, and his long aquiline nose gave him an ascetic look that seemed oddly at variance with his uniform. And yet he carried himself with an air of natural authority that made it obvious that he was the man in charge.
On the colonel’s right, Sergeant Ritter was far more clearly a military man with his clipped black moustache and polished shoes and buttons. He was a big man and he had begun to sweat in the evening heat. But he didn’t complain. He knew that they had work to do. Looking past the colonel, Ritter glared over at Corporal Carson, who was walking with a deliberate swagger, swaying his narrow hips and shoulders as he expertly flicked a piece of chewing gum from one side of his mouth to the other in time with each step he took. The young man’s disrespect disgusted Ritter. But he kept his peace. Carson had been the only soldier he could find to do the job. He’d have to do.
They walked past green stony fields and rows of overgrown vines until they came to a fork in the drive and passed an old sign on which someone had once upon a time painted the words ‘Proprieté Priveé.’ It was nailed to the trunk of a plane tree, and Carson read it out loud in his cockney accent and laughed like it was some kind of joke. But the colonel ignored him. He had other things on his mind.
One more turning and the trees stopped suddenly on both sides, and there was the house. It was much smaller than Ritter had expected – not his idea of a château at all. The glass was broken in several of the small windows that appeared at regular intervals in the stone façade, and the guttering was hanging loose from one corner of the roof. Over to the left, a solitary black-and-white cow stood in the shade of a primitive lean-to. Her great red tongue was lolling out of her mouth, and she had clearly been suffering in the afternoon heat. It was unusual for the time of year, and Ritter wondered inconsequentially whether she was aware of the lake that stretched out like a sheet of black glass several hundred yards beyond the house. On the far shore, the town of Marjean shimmered in the distance.
The church stood on a ridge above the château, and it was clearly the more impressive of the two buildings. Even Ritter could sense its antiquity. The bell tower glowed silver in the translucent evening light, and the gargoyles – devils and apes with deformed backs and monstrous faces – gaped down at the world below.
There had been devils here already – German devils – but they seemed to have left the church well alone. A swastika flag hung limply from a pole standing near the corner of the house, and a litter of papers on the dried-up lawn bore witness to the suddenness of the Germans’ departure. But their hosts had remained behind, and Henri Rocard and his wife were already standing in the doorway of their house when the three British soldiers came out of the trees and walked across the grass towards them.
It was the colonel who did the talking, and Ritter understood almost none of it, but then again he didn’t need to. He knew already that the colonel wanted something from these people, and he was here to help the colonel get it, if the colonel needed help. Back at the camp outside Moirtier, Cade had already explained that he was prepared to pay good money for what he wanted. More than the thing was worth. It was Rocard who was being unreasonable.
Ritter didn’t like the look of the Frenchman. He was thick and short, built like one of those middleweights that Ritter had gone to watch in Nottingham when he was a boy. And his dark eyes were small, staring out suspiciously from his wrinkled face. He had probably not yet turned fifty, but the sun had burnt his skin to a pale leather, ageing him beyond his years.
Madame Rocard seemed to be a little older than her husband, but she remained an attractive woman. She stood up straight, and her black hair was pulled back severely from her well-shaped face. She was full-breasted and defiant, and Ritter would have liked to have pushed her back into the cool interior of her house, down onto the red flagstones in the hall, and fucked her until he’d had his fill. They were collaborators, and they deserved everything that was coming to them – unless they were reasonable. And the anger in the squat little Frenchman’s voice, his evident hostility towards the colonel, didn’t make a peaceful solution seem likely.
Suddenly the colonel went forward and took hold of the Frenchwoman’s arm, pulling her towards him. And in the same movement, he took the German pistol out of his pocket and pushed it hard against the side of her handsome head. But still Rocard refused to give way, even when Cade let go of the woman’s arm and used his free hand to pull back the hammer of the gun.
Quick movement and sudden stillness. This was how Ritter remembered it all afterwards. The silence in the trees shattered by the sudden rat-a-tat-tat of the machine guns. And now the angry foreign words, followed by the colonel’s seizure of the woman, seemed to leave them all immobilized, frozen in a tableau of fear.
It was the dog that broke the stand-off. It must have been barking for some time, tied up somewhere inside the house, and Ritter was surprised that he hadn’t heard it before. All his attention must have been focused on the scene in the doorway. It was a black mongrel dog almost as big as a Labrador, and it came at them suddenly, its lip curled back over its yellow teeth. But it never got to bite anyone. The colonel had wonderfully quick reactions back then, and he pulled the gun down from the Frenchwoman’s ear and killed the animal with a single bullet.
It was funny that it was the dead dog, and not the threat to his wife, that cracked the Frenchman’s resolve. Or perhaps it was the killing of the dog that made him believe that the colonel would really kill his wife. Whatever the truth, they did not need to do any more. Rocard agreed to give the colonel what he wanted.
‘He’s going to get something for me, from inside the house,’ said the colonel to Ritter. ‘You go with him, Reg, and watch what he does. Check he hasn’t got a gun, and make sure he doesn’t get one while he’s in there.’
The Frenchman didn’t react when Ritter patted him down. He just kept his eyes fixed on his wife and on the gun that the colonel had brought back up to the side of her head straight after he’d killed the dog. Rocard had nothing in his pockets. Not even a penknife. But Ritter didn’t trust him, and he kept close behind when the Frenchman went back into the house, pressing the muzzle of his gun into Rocard’s back, feeling out the concave hollow between his shoulder blades.
It was cool inside. Crossing the hall, Rocard started up a narrow staircase in the corner and Ritter, following behind, found himself stepping from light into semi-darkness and back, again and again, as they crossed pools of evening sunlight let in by the small rectangular windows set high in the walls of the house. In the rooms on either side Ritter could see evidence of the Germans’ recent occupation – a photograph of the Führer hanging slightly askew on a whitewashed wall, a trestle bed lying overturned on its side, and papers, both handwritten and typed, strewn about everywhere. On one of the desks Ritter noticed the remains of someone’s supper – a crust of black bread and a half-eaten German sausage. The man who’d been eating it only an hour before was now lying in a pool of blood halfway down the drive, baking in the last of the sun. The thought made Ritter smile. Life was a funny thing sometimes.
They carried on up the stairs to a room at the very top. It was almost an attic, and Ritter had to half-stoop to get through the door. This was evidently where Rocard and his wife slept – the only place left to them after the house was occupied, and the bed was the main piece of furniture. It was old and ornate, with elaborate carving on its four posters, but it had lost its canopy and the coarse army-issue blankets covering it were out of keeping with its grand design. It took all Rocard’s strength to move it away from the wall, but he didn’t ask for any help, and he didn’t try to hide what he was doing when he pulled up one of the rough floorboards that he had exposed. Underneath, Ritter saw over the Frenchman’s shoulder that the hollow space contained an old thin book in a heavy leather binding. Wasting no time, he seized the book out of Rocard’s hands.
On the way back down, the Frenchman remained compliant until they turned a corner of the stairs and started down the final flight into the hall. Then, suddenly, there was an outbreak of shouting from beyond the entrance to the living room, and a second later Ritter caught sight of Carson framed in the doorway, and below and to the side of him an old man half-shouting, half-kneeling on the floor. He looked to be in his seventies, but he could have been older. Time seemed to have been kind to him up until now. He’d kept his teeth, and his hair hadn’t fallen out but had instead turned bright white with age. Now, however, Carson was using it to half-drag, half-pull him toward the front door. Halfway across the flagstones, Carson noticed Ritter on the stairs and laughed.
‘Here’s the old sod that let the dog out,’ he shouted to make himself heard above the old man’s cries of pain. ‘The colonel saw him peeping out the window and sent me in to bring him out. On all fours was my idea. Just like his fucking dog.’
Carson’s antics enraged the Frenchman. Seeing his old servant reduced to a howling animal, he started forward down the stairs, and Ritter had to drop the book and seize Rocard by the collar of his shirt to pull him back. At the same time he thrust the barrel of the gun hard into the small of Rocard’s back, and now the Frenchman stood almost doubled up with pain at the foot of the stairs, powerless to help his old servant as Carson dragged him out of the house, administering several kicks to the old man’s back and ribcage before he dumped him on the ground at the colonel’s feet, beside the dead dog.
‘He was hiding behind one of the big heavy curtains in there,’ said Carson, pointing back at the house. ‘And it was him that let the dog out. I found him with this bit of rope in his hands. Why don’t we use it to string him up? What do you say, Colonel? Let’s teach these Frenchies a lesson.’
‘That won’t be necessary, Corporal,’ said the colonel acidly. Carson was joking, but he had no time now for the man’s petty sadism. All his attention was focused on Ritter and the Frenchman. ‘Did you get it, Reg?’ he asked. ‘Show me what you got.’
‘Just this old book. He had it under the floorboards,’ said Ritter, handing over the thin leather-bound volume that he had seized from the Frenchman up in the attic. ‘Is that what you wanted?’
The colonel didn’t reply. His hands were shaking as he took the book from Ritter and let go of the Frenchman’s wife. She immediately went over to the old servant and raised him unsteadily to his feet. He couldn’t stand unsupported, but Carson did nothing to help her. He was still trying to control his laughter.
The colonel turned the pages quickly but carefully, ignoring the dust that flew up into his eyes.
‘It’s the codex, all right,’ he said as if to himself. ‘From the moment I read that letter in Rome, I knew it was here. Here all the time.’
‘Colonel,’ interrupted Ritter. They needed to decide what they were going to do with these people before someone from the regiment came looking for them.
‘Colonel, it’s getting late,’ he tried again a moment later.
This time Cade looked up from the book. ‘Where did you say it was, Reg?’ he asked, as if he hadn’t heard Ritter’s question.
‘In a hollow space under one of the floorboards in their bedroom,’ said Ritter.
‘Was there anything else in there? In the space?’
‘No. I checked.’
Still, the colonel seemed dissatisfied. He closed the book and began speaking to the Frenchman in his own language again. Quickly. Question after question. Ritter could understand almost nothing of what was being said, but it was obvious that the colonel was getting angry. He kept repeating a word that sounded like roi or croix in a voice that demanded a response, but it was a one-way conversation. The Frenchman raised his hands several times in a gesture that seemed to imply that he didn’t understand what the colonel was talking about, and then after a while he just looked away.
Suddenly the colonel took hold of the woman again, squeezing her wrist and saying that same word over and over again. Croix or roi. Roi was a king, and Ritter didn’t know what a king had to do with it, but perhaps that wasn’t the word. The woman struggled, and Ritter was about to go over to help restrain her, when she threw her head back and spat at the colonel full in his face. It made him drop the book, and he used his freed hand to slap her hard across both cheeks. They were hard blows and she fell to the ground, weeping.
‘We’ve got to decide what to do, Colonel,’ said Ritter. He felt worried now. The sun had almost set and they needed to stay in radio contact with the camp. The colonel seemed to be getting nowhere with the Frenchies.
‘All right, Reg, I know that,’ said the colonel. ‘It’s just that they know more than they’re saying. A little bit longer and I can get it out of them. I can feel it. Help me take them over to the church. We can work on them in there. And you, Carson, come up there with us and keep a lookout. We won’t be long.’
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
Detective Inspector William Trave of the Oxfordshire CID felt the pain as soon as he’d passed through the revolving entrance doors of the Old Bailey and had shaken the rain out from his coat onto the dirty wet floor of the courthouse. It hurt him in the same place as before – on the left side of his chest, just above his heart. But it was worse this time. It felt important. Like it might never go away.
There was a white plastic chair in the corner, placed there perhaps by some kind janitor to accommodate visitors made faint by their first experience of the Old Bailey. Now Trave fell into it, bending down over his knees to gather the pain into himself. He was fighting for breath while prickly sweat poured down in rivulets over his face, mixing with the raindrops. And all the time his brain raced from one thought to another, as if it wanted in the space of a minute or two to catch up on all the years he had wasted not talking to his wife, not coming to terms with his son’s death, not living. He thought of the lonely North Oxford house he had left behind at seven o’clock that morning, with the room at the back that he never went into, and he thought of his ex-wife, whom he had seen just the other day shopping in the Covered Market. He had run back into the High Street, frightened that his successor might come into view carrying a shared shopping bag, and had ducked into the Mitre in search of whisky.
Trave wanted whisky now, but the Old Bailey wasn’t the place to find it. For a moment he considered the possibility of the pub across the road. It was called The Witness Box, or some fatuous name like that, but it wouldn’t be open yet. Trave felt his breath beginning to come more easily. The pain was better, and he got out a crumpled handkerchief and wiped away some of the sweat and rain. It was funny that he’d felt for a moment that he was actually going to die, and yet no one seemed to have noticed. The security guards were still patting down the pockets of the public just like they had been doing all morning. One of them was even humming a discordant version of that American song, ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ A rain-soaked middle-aged policeman sitting on a chair in the corner, gathering his breath for the day ahead, was hardly a cause for distraction.
A sudden weariness came over Trave. Once again he felt weighed down by the meaninglessness of the world around him. Trave always tried to keep his natural nihilism at bay as best he could. He did his job to the best of his ability, went to church on Sundays, and nurtured the plants that grew in the carefully arranged borders of his garden – and sometimes it all worked. Things seemed important precisely because they didn’t last. But underneath, the despair was always there, ready to spring out and take him unawares. Like that morning, halfway down his own street, when a young man in blue overalls working on a dismembered motorcycle had brought back the memory of Joe as if he had gone only yesterday. And fallen apples in the garden at the weekened had resurrected Vanessa stooping to gather them into a straw basket three autumns before. It was funny that he always remembered his wife with her back turned.
Trave gathered himself together and made for the stairs. When he got time, he’d go and see his doctor. Perhaps the GP could give him something. In the meantime he had to carry on. Today was important. Regina v. Stephen Cade, said the list on the wall outside the courthouse. Before His Honour Judge Murdoch at twelve o’clock. Charged with murder. Father murder – patricide, it was called. And the father was an important man – a colonel in the army during the war and a university professor in civilian life. If convicted, the boy would certainly hang. The powers that be would see to that. The boy. But Stephen wasn’t a boy. He was twenty-two. He just felt like a boy to Trave. The policeman fought to keep back the thought that Stephen was so much like Joe. It wasn’t just a physical resemblance. Joe had had the same passion, the same need to rebel that had driven him to ride his brand new 600cc silver motorcycle too fast after dark down a narrow road on the other side of Oxford. A wet January night more than two years ago. If he’d lived, Joe would be twenty-two. Just like Stephen. Trave shook his head. He didn’t need the police training manual to know that empathizing with the main suspect in a murder investigation was no way to do his job. Trave had trained himself to be fair and decent and unemotional. That way he brought order to a disordered world, and most of the time he believed there was some value in that. He would do his duty, give his evidence, and move on. The fate of Stephen Cade was not his responsibility.
Up in the police room, Trave poured himself a cup of black coffee, straightened his tie, and waited in a corner for the court usher to come and get him to give his evidence. He was the officer in the case, and, when the opening statements were over, he would be the first witness called by the prosecution.
The courtroom was one of the oldest in the Old Bailey. It was tall, lit by glass chandeliers that the maintenance staff needed long ladders to reach when the bulbs blew out. On the wood-panelled walls, pictures of long-gone nineteenth-century lawyers stared out on their twentieth-century successors. The judge sat robed in black in a leather-backed armchair placed on a high dais. Only the dock containing the defendant and two uniformed prison officers was at the same level. Between them, in the well of the court, were the lawyers’ tables; the witness box; and, to right and left, the benches for the press and the jury. The jurors were now in place, and Trave felt them slowly relaxing into their new surroundings. Their moment in the limelight, when they stumbled over their oath to render a true verdict in accordance with the evidence, had come and gone. Now they could sit in safe anonymity while the drama of the murder trial played out in front of them. Everyone – members of the press, the jurors, and the spectators packed together in the public gallery above the defendant’s head – was focused on the prosecutor, Gerald Thompson, as he gathered his long black gown around his shoulders and prepared to begin.
‘What time did you arrive at Moreton Manor, Inspector?’ he asked, ‘on the night of the murder?’
‘Eleven forty-five.’ Trave spoke loudly, forgetting for a moment the acoustic qualities of the Old Bailey.
‘Were you the first policeman on the scene?’
‘No. Officers Clayton and Watts were already there. They’d got everyone in the drawing room. It’s across from the front hall.’
‘And the victim, Professor Cade – he was in his study. On the ground floor of the east wing.’
‘Yes. That’s right,’ said Trave.
There was a measured coldness and determination in the way the prosecutor put his questions, which contrasted sharply with his remarkable lack of stature. Gerald Thompson couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. Now he took a deep breath and drew himself up to his full short height as if to underline to the jury the importance of his next question.
‘Now, tell us, Inspector. What did you find?’
‘In the study?’
‘Yes. In the study.’
Trave could hear the impatience in the prosecutor’s voice, but he still hesitated before beginning his reply. It was the question he’d asked himself a thousand times or more during the four months that had passed since he’d first seen the dead man, sitting bolt upright in his high-backed armchair, gazing out over a game of chess into nothing at all. Shot in the head. Detective Inspector Trave knew what he’d found, all right. He just didn’t know what it meant. Not in his bones, not where it mattered. Pieces of the jigsaw fit too well, and others didn’t fit at all. Everything pointed to Stephen Cade as the murderer, but why had he called out for help after killing his father? Why had he waited to open the door to his accusers? Why had he not tried to escape? Trave remembered how Stephen had gripped the table at the end of their last interview in Oxford Police Station, shouting over and over again until he was hoarse: ‘I didn’t do it, I tell you. I didn’t kill him. I hated my father, but that doesn’t make me a murderer.’
Trave had got up and left the room, told the sergeant at the desk to charge the boy with murder, and walked out into the night. And he hadn’t slept properly ever since.
Thompson, of course, had no such doubts. Trave remembered the first thing the prosecution counsel had told him when the case was being prepared for trial: ‘There’s something you should know about me, Inspector,’ he’d said in that nasal bullying tone with which Trave had now become so familiar. ‘I don’t suffer fools gladly. I never have and I never will.’
And Trave was a fool. Thompson hadn’t taken long to form that opinion. The art of prosecution was about following the straight and narrow, keeping to the path through the woods until you got to the hanging tree on the other side. Defence lawyers spent their time trying to sidetrack witnesses and throw smoke in the jurors’ eyes to keep them from the truth. Trave was the officer in the case. It was his duty not to be sidetracked, to keep his language plain and simple, to help the jury do its job. And here he was: hesitant and uncertain before he’d even begun.
Thompson cleared his throat and glowered at his witness.
‘Tell us about the deceased, Inspector Trave,’ he demanded. ‘Tell us what you found.’
‘He’d been shot in the head.’
‘How many times?’
‘Once.’
‘Where in the head?’
‘In the forehead.’
‘Did you find the gun?’
‘Yes, it was on a side table, with a silencer attached. The defendant said he’d put it there after picking it up from the floor near the French windows, when he came back into the study from the courtyard.’
‘That was the story he told you?’
‘Yes, I interviewed him the next day at the police station.
‘His fingerprints were on the gun. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And on the key that he admitted he turned in order to unlock the door into the corridor. The defendant told you that as well in his interview, didn’t he, Inspector?’
‘Yes. He said the door was locked and so he opened it to let Mr Ritter into the study.’
‘Tell us who Mr Ritter is.’
‘He was a friend of Professor Cade’s. They fought together in the war. He and his wife had been living at the manor house for about seven years, as I understand it. Mrs Ritter acted as the housekeeper. They had the bedroom above the professor’s study, overlooking the main courtyard.’
‘Thank you, Inspector. All the fingerprint evidence is agreed, my lord.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said the judge, in a tone that suggested he’d have had a great deal to say if it hadn’t been. His Honour Judge Murdoch looked furious already, Thompson noted with approval. Strands of grey hair stuck out at different angles from under his old horsehair wig, and his wrinkled cheeks shone even redder than usual. They were the legacy of a lifetime of excessive drinking, which had done nothing to improve the judge’s temper. Defendants, as he saw it, were guilty and needed to be punished. Especially this one. People like Stephen Cade’s father had fought in two world wars to defend their country. And for what? To see their sons rebel, take drugs, behave indecently in public places. Stephen Cade had made a mistake not cutting his hair for the trial. Judge Murdoch stared at him across the well of the court and decided that he’d never seen a criminal more deserving of the ultimate punishment. The little bastard had killed his father for money. There was no worse crime than that. He’d hang. But first he’d have his trial. A fair trial. Judge Murdoch would see to that.
‘Let’s stay with the interview for a little bit longer,’ said Gerald Thompson, taking up a file from the table in front of him. ‘You have it in front of you, if you need to refer to it, Inspector. It’s an agreed version. The defendant told you, did he not, that he’d been arguing with his father shortly before he found Professor Cade murdered?’
‘Yes. He said that he went to the study at ten o’clock and that he and his father played chess and argued.’
‘Argued about his father’s will? About his father’s intention to change that will and disinherit the defendant?’
‘Yes. The defendant told me they talked about the will but that their main argument was over the defendant’s need for money.’
‘Which his father was reluctant to give him.’
‘Yes …’
Trave seemed to want to answer more fully, but Thompson gave him no opportunity. ‘The defendant told you in interview that he became very angry with his father. Isn’t that right, Inspector?’ asked the prosecutor.
‘Yes.’
‘The defendant admitted to shouting at Professor Cade that he deserved to die.’ The pace of Thompson’s questioning continued to pick up speed.
‘Yes.’
‘And then he told you that he left the study and went for a walk. That’s what he said, wasn’t it, Inspector?’
Thompson asked the question in a rhetorical tone that made it quite clear what he, at least, thought of Stephen Cade’s alibi.
‘He said he walked up to the main gate and came back to the study about five minutes later, when he found his father murdered.’
‘Yes. Now, Inspector, did you find any footprints to support Stephen Cade’s account?’
‘No. But I wouldn’t have expected to. The courtyard is stone and the drive is Tarmac.’
‘All right. Let me ask you this, then. Did you find any witnesses to back up his story?’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’
‘Thank you. Now one last question,’ said Thompson, smiling as if he felt he’d saved his best for last. ‘Did you find any of the defendant’s belongings in the study?’
‘We found his hat and coat.’
‘Ah, yes. Where were they?’
‘On a chair beside Professor Cade’s desk.’
‘And the professor himself. Where was his body in relation to this chair and in relation to the entrance doors to the room? Can you help us with that, Inspector?’
‘Why don’t you give the jury a chance to look at all this on the floor plan, Mr Thompson?’ said the judge, interrupting. ‘It might make it clearer.’
‘Yes, my lord, I should have thought of that. Members of the jury, if you look at the plan, you can see the courtyard is enclosed on three sides by the main part of the house and its two wings. Professor Cade’s study is the last room on the ground floor of the east wing. It faces into the courtyard, and you can see the French windows marked. The internal door in the corner of the room opens out into a corridor which runs the length of the east wing. You can take it up from there, Inspector,’ said Thompson, turning back to his witness.
‘Yes. The deceased was seated in one of the two armchairs positioned in the centre of the study, about midway between the two entrances,’ said Trave, holding up the plan. ‘The desk and the chair with the defendant’s hat and coat were further into the room.’
‘So the professor was between the doors and the defendant’s hat and coat?’
‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘Thank you, Inspector. That’s what I wanted to know. No more questions.’
Thompson sat down with a self-satisfied expression on his face and stole a glance at the jury. He knew what the jurors must be asking themselves: Why would Stephen Cade have gone for a walk at half past ten at night? And if he did, why didn’t he take his hat and coat? It was obvious he hadn’t been wearing them, because not even he could pretend that he put them back on the other side of his dead father’s body on his return.
No, the truth was inescapable. Stephen Cade never went for any walk at all. He was in the study the whole time, arguing with his father about his will, threatening him, and finally killing him with a pistol that he had brought along for that precise purpose.
Then, the next day, he’d told the police a ridiculous story in order to try to save himself. But it wouldn’t wash. With a little help from the prosecution, the jury would see right through it. It’d find him guilty, and then Judge Murdoch would make him pay for what he’d done. With his neck.
CHAPTER 2
That same evening, after court, Stephen Cade’s girlfriend, Mary Martin, came to visit him in Wandsworth Prison.
Sitting in the car in the early October twilight, she blocked out her companion and his anger and focused instead on the prison walls, which reared up high, black, and imposing at the end of the side street of terraced Victorian houses on which they’d parked a few minutes before.
Beside her, Paul kept his eyes half-closed and his breath came slowly, as if he was visibly trying to calm himself after his outburst moments earlier. But the grip of his hands on the steering wheel hadn’t relaxed and the whites of his knuckles showed through. Yet Mary remained impervious, her mind concentrated on preparing for the ordeal ahead. The first day of the trial was always going to be stressful, and the prison intimidated her for some reason – more each time she came. But that only increased her resolve to go through with the visit. She’d promised, and she wasn’t one to break her word, however much Paul pressed her to stay away.
Pulling down the mirror in the sun visor above the dashboard, she inspected herself closely. She was wearing no jewellery or cosmetics, but she didn’t need to. She had good, regular features, yet there was more to her face than just that. The fullness of her lips and the curves of her figure spoke of a sensuality that was half-belied by something watchful, almost withdrawn in her eyes. It made her mysterious and somehow challenging, and at times it almost made her beautiful.
Mary knew this, but the knowledge gave her no particular pleasure. She was a person entirely without vanity. Her pretty face was an asset to be exploited in her career. Nothing more. It got her better parts than plainer girls could hope for. And for that she was grateful. She certainly had no wish to be a poor actress. The life was difficult enough without being unsuccessful.
Satisfied with her appearance, Mary ran her hand through her thick chestnut-brown hair one last time, took a deep breath, and opened the door of the car. It was cold outside and she walked away quickly without a word to Paul or even a backward glance.
Inside the prison Mary waited with the other visitors in a whitewashed room dimly lit by a dusty tube of fluorescent lighting that flickered overhead as if it was just about to give up the ghost. All the walls were decorated with poorly typed notices about what could not be brought into the prison and what could not be taken out, and the biggest sign over on the far wall listed the penalties for assisting a prisoner to escape. Underneath it a young mother with an old face was trying to calm a screaming undernourished baby, while a warder sat behind a metal desk near the door reading a tabloid newspaper with his blue cap tipped down over his wide forehead.
Time passed slowly, and Mary counted out the minutes on the old black institutional clock hanging above the warder’s head. One, two, three, four, five, until exactly half past six when an invisible bell rang and everyone got to their feet, shuffling out into the main courtyard of the prison. It was almost dark now and Mary stayed at the back, following behind two local South London women who seemed to know each other well.
‘That’s where it happens. That’s where they do it. Florrie told me when I was last here,’ said one, adopting a theatrical stage whisper as she pointed excitedly over towards a two-storey red-brick building close to the west side of the perimeter wall. Its ordinariness was what made it noticeable. That and the lack of windows. There was only one, high up near the roof.
The unit, as it was known, was approached through a door in a wire fence, to which had been affixed a prominent ‘No Entry’ notice. The instruction did not seem necessary. Everyone in the courtyard, prisoners and warders alike, seemed to instinctively avoid going anywhere near the death house.
‘I know all about it. I’ve been here a lot more times than you, you know,’ said the other woman irritably. ‘I’ve seen them putting up the notices on the prison door in the early morning, and I’ve watched the families waiting outside, which is more than you have, Ethel. Huddled up in their cars in the cold. Some days they don’t let us in when there’s been a hanging. The prisoners get restless and the screws can’t control them properly. My Johnny’s told me what happens.’
‘Is that when they do it then? At dawn?’ asked Ethel, who was obviously used to accepting her friend’s sharp words without complaint.
‘No. It’s usually seven or eight o’clock in the morning, after the poor sod’s been nicely softened up by a night in the death cell, vomiting up his last meal if he was stupid enough to eat it in the first place. And stop bloody talking about it, Ethel. People don’t do that in here. You should know that.’
Ethel was silenced, and the two women covered the rest of the walk to the visitors’ block in silence, leaving Mary alone with her thoughts. She had known, of course, that they carried out executions here, but she had successfully managed to avoid identifying the actual place where it happened during her previous visits. She’d somehow assumed that it would be out of sight, but now she knew better. Ethel and her friend had seen to that, and Mary accepted the knowledge like an obligation.
At the door to the visits hall she paused, blinking in the sudden bright artificial glare of the overhead lights. There were no dark corners here where contraband could be passed across, under, or around the wooden tables, which were ranged in long rows from one end of the hall to the other. And along each wall warders in blue serge uniforms stood watching, occasionally stepping forward to enforce the rules forbidding any form of physical contact between inmates and outsiders.
Waiting in line for her pass to be checked at the front desk, Mary thought that the ceaseless unified drone of all the voices in the hall made the place seem like a vast beehive, but then she realized the comparison was far from apt. There was nothing productive happening here, and for most of the people in the room the short time together only made the subsequent separation from their loved ones even harder to bear. In the grip of a sudden claustrophobia, Mary half-wished she hadn’t come.
Directed to a table at the far end of the hall, Mary caught sight of Stephen before he saw her. His bright blue eyes were wide open but clearly unfocused on his present surroundings. Always the dreamer, she thought as she walked towards him down the aisle.
He had changed out of the suit he’d worn for court into the standard-issue prison uniform of blue-and-white-striped shirt and jeans, and he was now sitting in a characteristic pose: his elbows resting on the table, his head resting on his hands, and his long, tapering fingers interlaced as if in prayer, while his thumbs rhythmically caressed his Adam’s apple and the stubble on the underside of his chin. The top of his shirt was open, exposing the whiteness of his throat, and Mary suddenly stopped in her tracks, fighting to hold back images of the executioner fitting a noose around her lover’s neck, of the snap as the trapdoor opened beneath his feet, of Stephen hanging in the air, twisting and turning this way and that. All trussed up and dead. Everything around her suddenly seemed too real, too brightly lit, and she steadied herself for a moment against an empty chair.
I shouldn’t have listened to those bloody women, she thought as she caught Stephen’s eye and drew the outline of a smile across her suddenly pale face.
But for Stephen there was no effort. His face lit up as soon as he saw her. And the sudden glow transformed his features. The stubborn line that sometimes seemed fixed around his mouth disappeared in the radiance of his smile as he got up to pull out the chair on the other side of his table and instinctively brushed it down with a prison-issue handkerchief extracted from the pocket of his trousers.
‘Quite the gentleman,’ said Mary.
‘It’s the training,’ said Stephen. ‘English public schools, dinner parties at home, you know.’
‘Not exactly the ideal preparation for life inside this place,’ she said, looking around her at the lines of broken-down men in their ill-fitting prison uniforms. Stephen’s, surprisingly, fitted him quite well. He seemed to have the knack of making any clothes he wore seem like they were tailor-made.
‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong,’ he said, smiling. ‘My school had a lot in common with prison as a matter of fact. Lousy food, endless rules and regulations, an all-male population thinking about what they can’t have. And a whole lot of men in uniforms making sure they don’t get it.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Mary, laughing. ‘This is Wandsworth Prison, for God’s sake.’
‘True. And I’m sorry. I’m not thinking as usual. I hate you having to come here. It’s a horrible place. I wish they’d let me see you at court.’
Instinctively Stephen stretched out his fingers and touched the top of Mary’s hand for a moment. She looked up into his eyes for the first time since her arrival and thought how strange it was that he should be so concerned for her welfare when he was the one shut up inside this God-forsaken place, on trial for his life. He’d changed since Oxford, she realized. He wasn’t a boy any more; prison had made him a man.
‘Kissing’s not allowed, I’m afraid,’ he said, holding her gaze. ‘Strictly against the rules.’
Mary could understand why. She could hardly fail to have noticed the lust in many of the prisoners’ eyes when she’d walked past them. Sexual frustration hung in the air like a cloud of atmospheric pressure.
‘You looked good in court today,’ she said. ‘I liked the suit.’
‘I’m glad. Can’t say I did much. Made me feel like I was going to my own funeral.’
They were silent for a moment, both back in the courtroom with the dwarflike prosecutor relentlessly outlining the evidence against the accused.
‘You mustn’t worry, you know,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘I’ll be all right. Truth will out, you’ll see. Old Murder can do his damnedest, but it’s not his decision at the end of the day.’
‘Old Murder?’
‘Oh, sorry – that’s what they call our judge in here. They say he’s the worst of the lot. But the nickname’s pretty good, don’t you think? He looked at me today like he’d got half a mind to come down off his bench and throttle me himself. God knows why. It’s not like he even knows me.’
Stephen fell silent, as if frightened at how doubt had so quickly replaced his earlier optimism. But then his lips tightened in defiance. ‘I didn’t do it, you know,’ he said suddenly. ‘I couldn’t have killed him even if I’d wanted to. He was my father, for Christ’s sake. It’d be like murdering part of myself.’
‘You said you hated him,’ she said.
‘Yes. And I loved him too. Love and hate aren’t so far apart, you know.’
Stephen was silent again for a moment, and there was a faraway look in his eyes when he went on: ‘There’s not a day goes by that I don’t feel guilty about leaving him alone that night. Opening the door for whoever it was to walk straight in there and put a bullet through his head.’
‘How were you to know?’
‘I wasn’t. I just wish I hadn’t left him, that’s all. No one deserves to die like that.’
‘What about that family in France?’ asked Mary, leaning forward across the table. ‘He herded them into a church like cattle. That’s what you told me. Did they deserve what happened to them?’
‘No, I know. You’re right. There are just too many ghosts. That’s the trouble. Too many unanswered questions,’ said Stephen, returning to the present with a half-forced smile. ‘Like who killed my father. My defence team doesn’t seem to be getting too far with that one unfortunately. And there’s not much I can do to help them while I’m sitting here.’
‘You’ve got to trust them,’ said Mary. ‘You’ve got a good barrister. Everyone says so.’
‘I know, I know. You’re right as usual. But enough about me. Tell me about yourself. Are you working?’
‘No, of course not. How could I come to court if I was acting as well? The stress is bad enough as it is.’
‘You’re right. It’s not easy.’
Mary bit her lip, unable to understand her irritation. What was she doing complaining about stress when Stephen was on trial for his life?
‘How’s your mother?’ asked Stephen, trying to keep up the conversation. ‘Is she any better?’
‘A little, maybe.’
‘I’m sorry. Have you been to see her again?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your brother. Did he go too?’
‘No. Yes. What do you want me to say? Why do you always keep asking me about Paul?’ asked Mary, irritated again.
‘Sorry,’ said Stephen defensively. ‘I guess it just felt a bit strange that you never wanted to introduce him to me. That’s all. It doesn’t matter now. Let’s talk about something else.’
But there was no time. A speaker on the wall crackled into life giving a two-minute warning. And it had the same effect as on Mary’s previous visits, pressurizing them both into an awkward silence.
‘I love you, Mary,’ said Stephen.
‘And I love you too,’ she replied.
But it was too pat. The place robbed their words of meaning. And there was no time left to explain, to connect, to try to work out where everything had gone wrong.
Mary got up to go. And afterwards, left on his own at the table, Stephen followed her with his eyes until she disappeared into the throng of other visitors leaving through the door at the back of the hall. And involuntarily he wondered whether she would be driving away from the prison alone or whether there would be someone waiting to meet her on the other side of the high wall surmounted with barbed wire that separated him so entirely from the life he’d left behind.
CHAPTER 3
In court the next morning, Gerald Thompson watched his opposite number get slowly to his feet. John Swift was a tall, willowy, good-looking man in his late forties. He’d been a pilot in the war, one of those who’d led a charmed life, guiding his Spitfire through everything the Germans and later the Japanese had been able to throw at him without once being shot down. Things came easily to him. As a barrister, he had an instinctive ability to see what mattered, to find what was persuasive in a case and get it across to a jury in a way that they could understand. Except in this case. Here, everything seemed to point towards the defendant’s guilt, and on top of that Stephen Cade was his own worst enemy. He was headstrong and unmalleable. And his interview with the police was a disaster.
Swift was the son of the second to last Lord Chancellor, born with a solid silver spoon in his mouth. He’d been educated at Eton and Oxford. He was rich and well liked. A true war hero. He was, in short, everything that Thompson was not, and Thompson hated him for it, hated him secretly and with a passion. This high-profile case was exactly what Thompson had been praying for. He’d get his conviction, and he’d make a fool of John Swift in the process. No one would call him Tiny Thompson after this or poke fun at his working-class origins behind his back. Swift sensed the prosecutor’s malevolence, but there were other, more pressing things on his mind as he began his cross-examination of Inspector Trave. He couldn’t get a handle on the case. He needed a way in and he couldn’t find one, though it wasn’t for want of trying.
‘My client was arrested on the same night that his father’s body was discovered. Is that right, Inspector?’ asked Swift.
‘Yes. On the fifth of June. He was arrested on the basis of what we were told by Mr Ritter at the scene. That the defendant had unlocked the door of the study from the inside to let him in.’
‘And Mr Ritter was the first to respond to my client shouting in the study?’
‘I don’t think I can answer that, I’m afraid. I can only tell you the reason why we arrested Stephen Cade. I can’t give direct evidence about what happened in the house before I arrived.’
‘Of course he can’t. You shouldn’t need a policeman to tell you that, Mr Swift,’ said Judge Murdoch irritably. ‘How can the inspector know who shouted, or if anyone shouted for that matter?’
‘He can’t, my lord. I’m sorry. Let me ask you about the cause of death, Inspector. Only one bullet had been fired from the pistol that you found on the side table. Is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it had entered the professor’s forehead?’
‘Yes. And lodged in his brain.’
‘To use a popular expression, he’d been shot between the eyes.’
‘Just above a point between the eyes.’
‘Thank you. It was an execution-type shooting. That’s my point. Would you agree with that description?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘To achieve that kind of precision with a bullet, wouldn’t you need considerable skill as a marksman?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not an expert.’
‘No. Quite right, Inspector. You’re not,’ said the judge. ‘Is there evidence of the distance from which the shot was fired, Mr Thompson?’
‘About twelve feet according to the report, my lord,’ said the prosecutor, reading from one of his many files.
‘I see. Not exactly a great distance, Mr Swift.’
‘No, my lord. I’ve made my point. I’ll move on. You’ve told us about Mr and Mrs Ritter, Inspector. Who else was in the house on the night of the murder?’
‘The defendant’s girlfriend, Mary Martin; his elder brother, Silas Cade; and Sasha Vigne.’
‘Who’s she?’
‘She was Professor Cade’s personal assistant. The professor had a large collection of valuable manuscripts, which were housed in a gallery on the first floor of the main body of the house. It’s my understanding that she helped the professor with cataloguing them and with research for a book that he was writing on medieval art history.’
‘I see. Now where were these other people located in the house?’
‘Everyone was in the drawing room when I arrived. Awaiting questioning.’
‘No, that’s not what I meant, Inspector. Where were their bedrooms?’
‘All on the first floor of the west wing. Only the Ritters and Professor Cade himself slept on the east side.’
‘And what about the grounds? They’re quite extensive, aren’t they?’
‘Yes. There are stone terraces around the house with lawns beyond.’
‘And quite a lot of trees as well?’
‘Yes.’
‘The drive is tree lined, is it not?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘We don’t need a National Trust tour of the Moreton Manor gardens, Mr Swift,’ interrupted the judge. ‘What’s the point you’re trying to make?’
‘That an intruder could hide in the trees, my lord.’
‘If there was an intruder. You’d better ask the inspector about the security system. It looks fairly state-of-the-art in the photographs.’
‘I was just about to,’ said Swift, keeping a smile stretched across his features by an extraordinary effort of will. ‘Please do as his lordship asked, Inspector. Tell us about the security system.’
‘The main gate is the only exit from the grounds,’ said Trave. ‘A Tarmac drive leads up to it from the courtyard. Otherwise there’s a high brick wall surmounted by broken glass and electric wiring surrounding the estate. The wiring is connected to an alarm system operated from inside the house.’
‘I see. The professor must have been very worried about the possibility of a break-in. Would you agree that the system would have cost a lot of money?’
‘Yes. I’d say so.’
‘And what about the main gate? How is that opened?’
‘It’s also operated electronically either from a unit beside the gate or by remote control from inside the house.’
‘Was the gate open or closed when police arrived?’
‘Officers Clayton and Watts were the first to attend. It’s my understanding that they found the gate closed.’
‘And what about the doors of the house itself?’
‘I entered through the main front door, which was half open when I arrived. All the other exit doors of the property were locked except for the French windows in the professor’s study, which were also partially open, and the door at the front of the west wing, which was closed but not locked.’
‘These French windows to the study. There are thick, floor-length curtains in front of them. Isn’t that right, Inspector?’
‘Yes. They were half drawn.’
‘And there would be space between the curtains and the doors for a person to hide if he wanted to?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Making him invisible to a person inside the room.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you. Now Mr Thompson asked you some questions about my client’s interview …’
‘One moment, Mr Swift,’ interrupted the judge. ‘I’m sure you want the members of the jury to have a full picture of this security system. Isn’t that right?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Well, perhaps the inspector can help us with whether there is any record of the alarm going off on the night of the murder.’
‘No record, my lord,’ said Trave.
‘And is there any forensic evidence of anyone breaking into the house or the grounds? Any disturbance to the broken glass on top of the perimeter wall that you were telling us about? Any cut wires?’
‘No, there was nothing like that.’
‘Thank you, Inspector. I just wanted to clear that up, Mr Swift.’
‘Of course, my lord,’ said the defence counsel, trying not to allow his irritation to creep into his voice. ‘Now, Inspector, you will recall that my client told you that he walked up to the main gate twice that evening.’
‘Yes. Once before his interview with his father and once afterwards.’
‘And on the first occasion he told you that he found the main gate open.’
‘Yes. He said that he closed it. And that it was still closed when he went back there after seeing his father.’
‘Thank you. Now, what else did my client tell you about his first visit to the main gate?’
‘He said that he saw a black Mercedes parked on the verge a little further down the road on the opposite side from the gate. It was parked beside a public telephone box, and the door of the kiosk seemed to be wedged open. He said that he saw the same thing when he went back there an hour later.’
‘Did he say that he saw the driver of the car on either occasion?’
‘He said he could see the figure of the driver but nothing more than that.’
‘Why are we hearing about all this now, Mr Swift?’ asked the judge. ‘Your client’s interview can be read to the jury at the appropriate time, and he himself can give evidence about what happened if he chooses to.’
The judge’s tone of voice made it clear that he thought the defendant might have very good reasons for not going into the witness box and exposing himself to cross-examination. But Swift was ready for the judge this time.
‘It’s a matter of timing, my lord.’
‘I know that. That’s what I just said.’
‘No, I don’t mean that. I believe that the inspector will have something else to say about the Mercedes car on the night of the murder, and it’s important that my client told the police about it before the further information became available to them.’
‘All right. Well, get on with it then.’
‘Thank you, my lord. Inspector, were there any other relevant reports of a black Mercedes in the vicinity of Moreton Manor on that night?’
‘Yes. There was a car of that type stopped for speeding on the road from Moreton to Oxford. It was stopped at 11:15 p.m. The driver gave his name as Noirtier and provided an address in Oxford, which subsequently turned out to be false. He did not respond to a summons to attend court, and there has been no trace of him since. The record of the stop says that he was aged about thirty and spoke with a thick foreign accent.’
‘Did you notice the black Mercedes when you arrived at the manor house, Inspector?’
‘No. But I wasn’t the first to arrive.’
‘Yes. Officer Clayton may be able to help us. Returning to my client’s account of events in interview, Inspector, he told you that he wore his hat and coat on his first visit to the main gate. Isn’t that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘But he then left them in the study after his interview with Professor Cade.’
‘Yes, that’s what he said.’
‘The weather conditions on that night are going to be relevant here, Inspector. Would you agree that there was some light rain in the early part of the evening?’
‘Yes, it died out about eight, and it was dry after that.’
‘And the temperature was in fact quite warm.’
‘I’d say it was average for the time of year. There was some wind, as I said earlier.’
‘Thank you. Now, there’s just one other area that I want to cover with you, Inspector. My client, Stephen Cade, told you in interview about somebody else with a motive and desire to kill his father. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘He talked about certain events involving his father that occurred in northern France in the summer of 1944.’ Trave spoke slowly, as if he were choosing his words carefully.
‘Basically, Stephen told you that he and his brother Silas discovered about two years ago that their father and Sergeant Ritter, as he then was, had killed a French family and their servants at a place called Marjean, in order to obtain a valuable medieval manuscript known as the Marjean codex.’
‘Yes. That’s what he said.’
‘And that the professor was subsequently shot and wounded in his left lung during a visit to France in 1956, which was the cause of the serious ill health that he suffered from during the last three years of his life.’
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