The Inheritance (43 page)

The truth was that it had all turned out wrong. Stephen hadn’t deserved any of this—she realised that now. It had just all seemed so much simpler before, when she was still in France and it was all about her parents, about getting them justice. Closing her eyes, Mary summoned up the image of her mother looking up at her in the window of the tower as she crossed the nave of Marjean Church for the last time. It was the memory that had haunted Mary and sustained her for the last fifteen years. Her own mother leaving behind her dead husband, slumped on the stone-flagged floor of the church, as the two Englishmen, Cade and Ritter, pushed her and old Albert through the door of the vestry and down the narrow winding stairs to the crypt. Mary had waited for them to come back, but instead she had heard the shouting and the cries of pain and the gunshots and the silence afterward. Always the silence that went on and on and on forever. It demanded retribution; it required the oath that she had sworn with Paul on the deserted hill outside Dijon all those years ago.

They had watched and they had waited, dreaming of a just revenge. And killing John Cade had been just that. She’d not felt one moment’s remorse for what she had done that night at Moreton Manor. She still rejoiced in it, when she wasn’t thinking about what had happened since, but almost from the outset this slow judicial murder of Cade’s son had begun to make her sick, until now she couldn’t stand it any longer. It was too cold-blooded, and Stephen wasn’t just Cade’s son anymore, either. She knew him too well, and, however hard she tried, she hadn’t been able to stay entirely detached from
the part she’d played with him in the months before his arrest. The trouble was that he had nothing to do with what had happened to her at Marjean. It wasn’t his fault that John Cade was his father. God knows, Stephen had walked away from the man because of what he’d done to her parents.

Mary had hoped that he’d be acquitted at the trial, but it hadn’t happened. The jury hadn’t bought Silas as the murderer, and now she could only save Stephen by exposing herself. And Paul wouldn’t hear of it. Not because he was frightened. That wasn’t in Paul’s nature. No, it was because of the plan. Always the plan. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—not just Cade but his son as well, which was fine when you were far away, working out details on a piece of paper. It was very different when Cade’s son was a man who loved you, a young man with his whole life in front of him, a life that you were trying to take away.

It was funny how Paul’s determination to carry out the plan to the letter seemed to have grown in direct proportion to the waning of her own enthusiasm for it. She and Paul had always been like brother and sister, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t become jealous of Stephen. Looking back, even Mary had to admit that there had been times in Oxford when she had forgotten that she was an actress playing a part. But that was in the past. All Mary knew now was that the time had come to change the script, with or without Paul. She’d already worked out what had to be done, but first she owed it to Stephen to tell him the truth, and that was the difficult part, she now realised; the rest would be far easier.

“It’s not over yet,” she said lamely, trying to buy time before she began her confession, but the remark infuriated Stephen.

“Yes, it is,” he shouted. “Over and out. I’m going through that trapdoor on Wednesday unless the real murderer comes forward, and I don’t think that’s very likely. Do you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe . . .”

Stephen shook his head violently, and Mary’s prepared speech died in her throat as she glimpsed the depth of his despair. He swallowed hard and looked up at the ceiling, fighting to keep back his tears. Brutally, he rubbed the back of each hand across his face, and then, blinking, he seemed to see Mary for the first time since he had come into the room.

“You know, this is probably the last time we’ll ever be together,” he said,
in a suddenly quiet voice. “Unless you believe in the afterlife, which I don’t. Since I was moved to the new cell, I’ve been reading the Bible at night when I can’t sleep. Trying to make sense of all this and failing. All that cursing and begetting. But I was wondering last night if that’s what all this is about.”

“What?”

“Being cursed through the generations. Like I’m dying, not for what I’ve done, but to atone for what my father did. As if his death wasn’t enough. It needs more blood to even up the scales.”

“Your father was an evil man.”

“Yes. But I’m not. I’ve always tried to do the right thing. And look where I’ve ended up. You know, I’ve always thought that this is about what happened to those people in France all those years ago. You and Swift persuaded me to accuse Silas, but I never thought he was capable of killing anyone, let alone our father. And I don’t think accusing him helped me at all in the end. It looked like opportunism, which is exactly what it was.”

“You had to try it,” said Mary defensively. “The stuff about Marjean wasn’t working. You know that.”

“No, I don’t,” said Stephen stubbornly. “That car was parked outside the gate for a reason that night. There was something about it. You’d know if you’d seen it. And the name the driver gave the police turns out to be almost the same as the next town up from Marjean. That’s not a coincidence. I know it’s not.”

“How do you know about the name?”

“It’s always been in the evidence. I just didn’t make the connection.”

“Who did?”

“Silas. He came to see me. I’m glad he did too. He said he didn’t believe I killed the old man anymore. He’s found out the chess pieces were changed after I left the study. Somebody else did that. And it wasn’t Silas.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. Silas says the policeman in charge of the case has gone to France to ask questions. Maybe he’ll find out something.”

Stephen’s face lit up as he clutched at this straw of hope.

“You’ve been good to me, Mary,” he said. “You’ve always believed in me. Not like everyone else. You were all I ever asked for, and then this happened. It seems like such a waste. You know what I can’t stand? If I’ve got to die, I’d
like to die for a reason. Not for nothing at all. I’m twenty years too late. That’s my problem. I remember the Spitfires and the Hurricanes up in the sky when I was a boy. Dogfights in the air. Pilots flying head over heels. They were real heroes. Dying for a reason. Not like this. Trussed up like a turkey, hanging on the end of a rope.”

“I’m sorry, Stephen,” said Mary. “I’m sorry about what has happened. It wasn’t what I . . .”

“No, Mary” interrupted her ex-lover, reaching out his hand. “Don’t say that. It’s not as if it’s your fault I’m here. You’ve nothing to be sorry for. Nothing at all.”

Over on the other side of the exercise yard, Henry Crean, the Queen’s hangman, waited patiently while a warder made unusually heavy work of finding the right key to open the door of Stephen’s cell. Inside the prison he often seemed to have this effect on people, making them nervous and uncomfortable, but he knew that there was nothing he could do about it even if he had wanted to. It came with the territory. Anyway, his mind was focused on what lay beyond the door. Usually he prepared the gallows on the day before an execution, but his assistant, a young Welshman called Owen Jones, was new to the job, and in this instance Crean had decided that two dry runs were required before he sent Stephen Cade to his maker.

Crean was a quiet, orderly man in his mid fifties, who took a professional pride in his work, and the thought of something going wrong was abhorrent to him. Press reporting of executions had long since been abolished, but news of a botched hanging had a way of leaking out, particularly in a case like this, where the public had got themselves so worked up about the condemned man. He was young and handsome, and the tabloid newspapers had recently taken to calling him Pretty Boy Cade. But Crean was oblivious to the character of his victim. In fact, he took pride in his detachment, knowing that pity made for hesitation and increased the risk of mistakes. In the last few moments of his life, the condemned prisoner’s best friend was a cold, quick executioner who knew exactly what he was doing.

Stephen had been weighed every day for the past week, and most mornings Crean had watched him as well, pacing up and down the condemned
cell, through the enlarged eyehole in the big iron door. Now, with two days left to go, Crean was confident that the Italian hemp rope was adjusted to just the right length to do what was required of it.

Stephen had known for over a week that he was scheduled to die at eight o’clock on Wednesday morning, but he had no idea that the prison gallows were set up less than twenty feet from where he slept, divided from his bed by no more than a thin partition. He’d been moved to his new cell immediately after the trial was over, and at first he had not been unhappy with the change. It was a larger room than he had before, on the second floor of a separate block, with more of the sky visible from the high barred window. But the biggest difference was that there were no other prisoners anywhere near, so that the cell was almost silent at night, which for some reason made it much more difficult to sleep. Time passed, and Stephen remained unaware of the fact that he was now living on the top story of a death house purpose built according to standard specifications issued by the Ministry of Works in Whitehall. The wooden wardrobe on the far wall was designed to turn on its base, revealing a concealed door that led straight onto the gallows, and below the trapdoors was another room known as the pit, where Stephen would hang suspended in midair until the prison doctor pronounced him dead and Crean and his assistant came in to cut him down and take him to the autopsy room next door. The whole block was an assembly line of death, with the prisoner in his cell unaware of what lay beside and beneath him until the moment of his execution arrived.

Once the wardrobe had been turned aside, Crean wasted no further time, leading his assistant through the door in the wall and out to the trapdoors. There was a
T
chalked in the middle to show where Stephen would need to be positioned, with warders standing on boards on either side to hold him in place.

“That’s in case he faints,” said Crean. “They do sometimes. Anyway, I’ve already pinioned his wrists behind his back right at the start, and so this is where you strap his ankles, just like I showed you before. Quick as you can, while I put the hood over his head. Then the noose goes nice and tight under the jaw. Check everything’s okay, and I release the doors. And he’s gone.” Crean snapped his fingers to underline the quickness and totality of the fall.

One by one, he held up the various pieces of the hangman’s equipment as
he instructed his assistant. The brown leather straps for wrists and ankles and the white cotton hood. It looked incongruous in Crean’s big hands, just like a small pillowcase.

“Why not hood him before?” asked Jones, sounding puzzled. “Before he comes in here and sees all this.”

“We used to do that, but it didn’t work so well. You wouldn’t think it, but they tend to be more frightened not knowing where they are, and so there’s more risk of them falling over. And it’d take longer. Twenty seconds from going in the cell to turning them off. Anything more is a failure. That’s what Pierrepoint used to say. And he was right.”

“Twenty seconds?” The assistant looked incredulous.

“Yes. You’ll see. Once we’re inside the cell, we’re in charge. No signals from the governor. Nothing like that. He’s just here to see it’s done right. And it will be. Believe me.”

Above the gallows, the rope hung coiled from a chain that was bolted to the ceiling, and with practised hands Crean attached a sandbag weighing just as much as Stephen to the end of it. Then he turned and removed the safety pin from the base of the operating lever behind him and pushed it forward to release the doors. The bag fell with sudden, ferocious force and jerked at the end of the rope.

Jones took a step back and almost lost balance. It was an instinctive reaction, and Crean grinned.

“You’ll be all right,” he said, clapping the younger man on the shoulder. “Just you wait and see. Now, we’ll let that bag hang there until tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“It stretches the rope out. If that happens at the hanging, then the force on the neck’s less, and he’ll end up strangling to death. We’ve got to break his neck, Owen. That’s what we’re paid to do.”

Jones nodded. Somewhere inside he felt disgusted with himself, but he quickly stifled the emotion. An execution was something important. Particularly this one. Everyone was talking about it. And assisting at it made him important too. Owen Jones from Swansea puffed out his chest a little as he helped Crean turn the wardrobe back in front of the door to the gallows.

A minute later and they were gone. Stephen’s cell was just as it had been
before. His black suit hanging in the wardrobe. The photographs of Mary and his mother standing on the shelf below the high window through which the bright winter sun was shining, filling the room with a transient light. It didn’t seem like such a bad place if you didn’t know what was on the other side of the wall.

“God, I feel so hot,” said Stephen, fiddling with the top button of his prison-issue blue shirt. “Are you hot, Mary?”

She shook her head. It was the end of November, and she had kept her outside coat on.

“The worst part is knowing what’s going to happen,” said Stephen. “Measuring out the time. Animals know too, you know. We’re not the only ones. People say they don’t, but they do. I remember there was this butcher’s shop in Moreton when I was a boy. Sawdust on the floor, a china pig in a blue and white apron inside the window. My mother used to buy our meat there. ‘Price and Sons, Family Butchers since 1878.’ That’s what it said over the door. I can see it now.” Stephen closed his eyes for a moment, remembering. “They did their own slaughtering in an abattoir out back. I went once with Silas. Hid and watched. The calves and cows were in these pens going from one to the other, and each one was narrower than the last, so that halfway to the shed they couldn’t turn round at all. And they knew then. I don’t know how, but I could tell they did. They were pushing and bellowing, climbing on top of each other, trying to go back, but they couldn’t. Maybe they could smell what was coming, because they couldn’t see inside. But we looked in and there was Price’s eldest son with a big white apron over his fat stomach. He had a great steel knife in his hands, and he slit this calf right down the middle. He was about ten feet away from us, and I saw the whole thing. And then I was sick. More sick than I’ve ever been. Silas had to pull me away while I was still retching, or otherwise they’d have seen us.