The Inheritance. Simon Tolkien

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      CHAPTER 4

      Moreton Manor in the morning was a pleasing sight. The dappled early autumn sunlight glistened on the dew covering the newly mown lawns and sparkled in the tall white-framed sash windows that ran in lines around the manor’s classical grey stone façade, which rose in elegant symmetry above the ebony-black front door to a slanting, tiled roof surmounted by tall brick chimneys. A single plume of white smoke was rising into a blue, cloudless sky, but otherwise there was no sign of life apart from a stray squirrel running in unexplained alarm across the Tarmac drive, which cut the lawns in half on its way down to the front gate. An ornamental fountain in the shape of an acanthus plant stood in the centre of the courtyard, but it was a long time since water had flowed down through its basin. The professor had found the sound of the fountain an unwanted distraction from his studies, and without it the silence in the courtyard seemed somehow solemn, almost oppressive.

      Trave stood lost in thought, gazing up at the house. He’d been awake since before the dawn, restless and unable to sleep. He kept on turning over the events of the previous day in his mind: Stephen in his black suit looking half-ready for the undertakers; old Murdoch, angry and clever up on his dais; and the barristers in their wigs and gowns reducing a murder, the end of a man’s life, to a series of questions and answers, making the events fit a pattern neatly packaged for the waiting jury. But it was all too abstract: a post-mortem without a body. There was something missing. There had to be. Trave knew it in his bones.

      And so he’d driven out to Moreton in the early light and now stood on the step outside the front door, hat in hand, waiting. It was Silas who answered, and once again Trave was struck by the contrast between Stephen and his brother. Silas was just too tall, just too thin. His sandy hair was too sparse and his long nose spoilt his pale face. But it wasn’t his physical appearance that predisposed Trave against the elder brother; it was the lack of expression in the young man’s face and his obvious aversion to eye contact that struck Trave as all wrong. Silas was concealing something. Trave was sure of it. God knows, he had as much motive for the murder as his brother. They were both going to be disinherited. But then Silas wasn’t the one in his father’s room with the gun. That was Stephen, the one who reminded Trave so forcibly of his own dead son.

      ‘Hello, Inspector. It’s a bit early, isn’t it?’ There was no note of welcome in the young man’s flat, expressionless voice.

      ‘Yes, I’m sorry, Mr Cade. I was just passing. On my way to London for the trial.’

      Silas’s eyebrows went up, and Trave cursed himself for not thinking of a better excuse.

      ‘I just wanted to check a couple of things if it’s not inconvenient,’ he finished lamely.

      ‘Where?’ asked Silas.

      ‘Where what?’

      ‘Where do you want to check them?’

      ‘Oh, I’m sorry. In the study, the room where your father died.’

      ‘I know where my father died,’ said Silas, opening the door just enough to allow the policeman to pass by him and come inside.

      The room was just the same as Trave had described it in court the day before. And yet there was something else, something he was missing. His eyes swept over the familiar objects: the ornate chess pieces on the table, the armchairs and the desk, the thick floor-length curtains. And now Silas, standing and watching him by the door, the door his brother had unlocked on the night of the murder.

      ‘Did you like your father?’ Trave asked, catching the young man’s eye for the first time.

      ‘No, not particularly. I loved him. It’s not the same thing.’

      ‘And what about your brother? How do you feel about him?’

      ‘I feel sorry for him. I wish he hadn’t killed my father.’

      ‘Your father?’

      ‘Our father. What difference does it make? What’s done is done.’

      ‘And now someone has to pay for it.’

      ‘Yes, Inspector. Someone does. Look, is there anything else I can help you with? I have things to do. This isn’t a good time.’

      Silas made no effort to keep the impatience out of his voice, but Trave wouldn’t allow himself to be put off so easily.

      ‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Mr Cade? Is there something you know that I don’t?’

      Again Trave caught Silas’s eye, but it was only for a moment before the young man looked away.

      ‘No, Inspector,’ he said quietly. ‘I believe I made a very full statement to the police back in June. I’ve nothing to add.’

      As Silas led him back along the corridor, Trave wondered to himself what it was he had seen in Silas’s face. Guilt or fear, anger or remorse? He couldn’t put his finger on it; the glance had been too fleeting. Outside, Trave tried one last time.

      ‘You know where I am, if you think of anything else?’

      ‘Yes, Inspector. I know where you are,’ said Silas, closing the door.

      Back in his bedroom, Silas stood at the window and bit his lip as he watched the policeman drive away. He already felt nervous about having to give evidence, and Trave’s visit had broken the fragile calm that he’d worked so hard to achieve in recent weeks. Once again he felt the familiar sense of half-controlled panic that had engulfed him so often since the night of his father’s murder. It was the house that was the problem. It was his inheritance and his curse. He felt it weighing on him even when he took refuge outside. In fact, out there it was just as bad. The house seemed to be watching him. In defiance he had started taking pictures of it, concentrating particularly on the shadowy times of day – just before dusk and after the dawn – and had then found himself examining his prints for apparitions. He remembered a story he’d once heard about a haunted castle in Scotland where one afternoon the guests at a huge house party had gone to every room and waved coloured handkerchiefs out of every window all at the same time. The people watching down below had seen one empty window, but afterwards no one could ever find out which one it was. Silas didn’t believe in ghosts, but part of him knew that he couldn’t come to terms with the death of his father.

      Not that John Cade had been his real father. Silas had never been left in any doubt about that. He was adopted because Clara Cade couldn’t have children of her own, or thought she couldn’t – until Silas was three and his adoptive mother was forty-one, at which point Stephen appeared, kicking and screaming his way into the world. Silas had been forgotten in the drawing room downstairs, and he had sat СКАЧАТЬ