The Inheritance (47 page)

“Why?”

“Because he looked in the wrong place. Just like you did. And then he got impatient and opened up all the tombs, and still he found nothing. He tore the place apart, and that’s when Père Martin found him down here among all the skulls and bones, beating his head against the wall in frustration. I wish I could’ve seen him,” said Mary, with a faraway look in her eye.

“Cade told Père Martin he was looking for a jewelled cross that the Nazis had hidden somewhere in the church. Of course Père Martin knew it was a lie. He was the one who’d told me about the legend of the Marjean cross years before when he gave me the locket. But he said nothing. Just waited until
Cade had gone, and then he told me everything that had happened. I already knew that Cade was after the cross. After all, I’d heard him torturing my mother for it before he killed her. And after Cade came back, I made the connection between the Peter in the code and the Abbot Simon who was buried down here. But I didn’t need to open his tomb to know that the cross wasn’t there, because I knew from Père Martin that Cade had already done that. I realised the answer was somewhere else, but it still took me a long time to work it out.”

“So what is the answer? Where is the cross?” demanded Sasha, unable to contain her impatience any longer. But Mary ignored the questions. It was as if she was determined to tell the story her own way, and neither Sasha nor the gun were going to deflect her from her purpose.

“I found the cross and Cade didn’t,” she said, “because I knew this place a great deal better than he did. That was the difference between us. You probably haven’t noticed, but down beyond the house there are a few old broken-down walls. They’re almost disappearing in the long grass now, but I played there a lot when I was a child, spying on the German soldiers as they went backward and forward from the house. And one day I was digging, making a tunnel to Australia, and I found an old moss-covered stone buried in the ground with a Latin inscription indented in its surface. It was square, the wrong shape for a tombstone, and I never told anyone about it because it was my secret, my lucky stone, and I kept it covered up with leaves and grass. It was only much later, years after I’d left this place, that I realised it was the foundation stone of a chapter house for the monastery, laid by Simon, Abbot of Marjean, in the year of our Lord 1328.”

Mary spoke slowly, emphasising the date, but Sasha just looked perplexed, and Mary had to say the year again.

“1328, Sasha. Doesn’t it mean anything to you?” she asked pointedly. “It was the year after Abbot Simon died according to the dates on the wall over there. Except that that’s not what the dates mean. The foundation stone made me realise that. Look. You see the same thing all along both these walls. One date for each name. And the date is the year they became abbot. But Simon is different from everyone else. He has two dates. 1321 and 1327. Why’s that?”

“Because there are two Simons,” said Sasha breathlessly, suddenly beginning to understand.

“Yes. Two. And the second one died within a year of his promotion. That’s why the next abbot, Josephus, has the year 1328 under his name. And the beauty of the whole thing is that there’s no record anywhere of this second Simon. Nothing except the foundation stone lost under the grass. The monks who hid the cross must have seen to that. And so no one knew about his existence except me. That is, until I told Cade all about him in the summer of 1956.”

“Why? Why would you do that?” asked Sasha, shocked. It was the last thing she’d expected to hear.

“To lure him over here so I could take a shot at him. Give him back a little of what he’d done to my parents. The curé helped me, although perhaps he wouldn’t have done so if he’d known what I had in mind. But still there was no need to spell it out. Back in 1948 Cade had promised him a reward for any new information that might lead Cade to the cross, and so the opening was already there. Everything went perfectly. The curé wrote to him about the foundation stone, and less than two weeks later he was here with Ritter. I waited to see him come out empty-handed before I fired. That was part of what I’d promised myself. But I wasn’t brave enough, or perhaps I was just nervous. I shot him from too far away and he lived to tell the tale. Until I got inside the manor house last summer, that is, and did what I’d failed to do four years ago.”

“So the cross was in the tomb until he came. You had it all the time,” said Sasha. Her agitation was plain to see. The gun was trembling in her hand. But the threat of it still seemed to have no effect on Mary. She smiled and said nothing.

“Where is it now?” demanded Sasha, finally losing her self-control. “Tell me where it is or I’ll kill you.”

“It’s where it always was,” said Mary evenly. “I know of no better hiding place than the one the monks made for it six hundred years ago.”

Mary crossed over to Abbot Simon’s tomb. The lid was still slightly officentre, resting in the same position that Sasha had left it in the week before. But Mary ignored the top of the tomb. Instead she took a small chisel out of her pocket and chipped away the stone-coloured plaster in a line halfway down the side. It came off easily, and Sasha could see that it had only recently been applied. Soon a clear dividing line was visible, and it was obvious
that there were two tombs, one on top of the other. When Mary had finished removing the plaster, she pushed with only moderate force against one end of the lower sarcophagus, and the other end came swinging out into the open.

Sasha looked down into the open tomb and saw what she had been searching for all her life. The cross of St. Peter. It was lying between the two skeletal hands of the dead man, and the red rubies and green emeralds embedded in the ancient wood drew Sasha forward as much as the hollow eye sockets and empty mouth repelled her. The cross was bigger than she’d imagined and glowed with a kaleidoscope of colours, so that the wood of first-century Palestine was almost invisible underneath. The jewels were there because this object was as close as men could get in this world to the Son of God. Nothing was more precious than the true cross on which the Saviour had redeemed the sins of mankind and given back to a fallen race the hope of everlasting life.

Sasha remembered Sir Galahad, who had been the only one of Arthur’s knights worthy to drink from the Holy Grail. She was different too. Unique and separate. She leant forward and claimed the cross of St. Peter for her own.

Mary could have taken the gun from her then. It would have been easy, but she chose not to. Instead she went first up the stairs, leaving the crypt behind, crossed the main body of the church, and opened the door. Sasha looked out from behind her, checking there was no one in sight. She had already decided what to do. She pressed the revolver between Mary’s shoulder blades and pushed her back into the dusky interior.

“I’m going to lock you in,” she said. “I’ll phone someone to come and let you out once I’m far enough away.”

Mary didn’t react or resist. Her face remained inscrutable, and for a moment Sasha wondered why it had all been so easy. But not for long. She had the cross in her bag and nothing else mattered. She shut the heavy church door behind her and secured it with the padlock. There was no other way out. Mary couldn’t come after her. She walked out of the porch, heading for the path down to her car, but she had only gone a few steps when she felt the barrel of a rifle in the small of her back, forcing her down onto her knees. Her pistol spilt out onto the ground, and the flinty sharp stones cut into her skin,
causing her to cry out. She looked up at Paul Martin through the tears that had welled up in her eyes and realised what a complete fool she had been.

Too late, she remembered that day in Oxford when she’d last seen Mary. She’d been in a Jaguar with this same man. Sasha recognised his cold narrow eyes and the strange high cheekbones that accentuated the boniness of his face. How stupid she had been to assume that Mary was alone. The cross had blinded her to what should have been so obvious. Mary had planned it all from start to finish. Even the padlock. Paul opened it now with a key and stood aside to let Mary pass.

But perhaps it was not too late. Sasha reached out toward the pistol lying on the ground, but Paul was watching her. With a quick movement he fired past Sasha’s outstretched hand, and the revolver exploded in a rain of metal fragments. Sasha froze in shock. She cowered against the wall of the church while Paul reloaded again and again, took aim with an unerring accuracy, and shot out the tires of her car one by one. The shots reverberated around the empty landscape, losing their final echoes in the encircling woods as the car subsided down onto its useless wheels.

Quite gently, Mary unlaced Sasha’s fingers from around the handle of her bag, and then extracted the codex and the cross from inside.

“You’ve had what we agreed,” she said. “You’ve seen the cross of St. Peter. Now I’m taking what is mine, paid for with my parents’ blood. Don’t try to follow me. You understand me, don’t you, Sasha?”

Sasha nodded. She had no doubt about what Paul would do if they met again. She’d seen the way he used the rifle. Now he was pointing it at her again, and instinctively she obeyed its command, backing away into the church.

Mary looked her in the eye one last time, and then she closed the door. A moment later Sasha heard the snap of the padlock and the sound of footsteps walking away down the path. She was a prisoner inside the church.

For several minutes she remained where she was, numbed by the shock of her unexpected defeat. But then she remembered what Mary had said about the windows in the tower. She needed to see outside. Maybe there would be somebody she could call to, somebody who would help her escape. She took the steps two at a time. The first window was the one looking down into the
church that Mary had shown her earlier, and the second had a view toward the house. She looked down, but there was no one in sight. Just the car with its exploded wheels, a wreck beside the ruined house. Round the corner she came to the window on the other side. It was an extraordinary view. The ground sloped down toward the blue-black lake where a thin rowing boat was gliding across the still water toward the red tiled rooves of Marjean village. It was already too far away for Sasha to distinguish the faces of the two occupants, and soon it was barely more than a speck, almost invisible against the rays thrown by the bright winter sun as it sank toward the western horizon.

Marjean Church had given up its secret, and now Sasha was left alone with its ghosts. The silence weighed down on her as the light began to fade, and she felt a grey timeless despair settling down on her like so much dust. Sitting at the end of one of the pews in the centre of the nave, she stroked the scar tissue on her neck and shoulders and waited for the coming of the night.

Trave arrived at the pub first. He took his beer and went and sat down by the river. There were snowdrops and wild crocuses in the grass running down to the water, and there was a charge in the air that seemed to promise that winter would soon be over. The inspector felt changed by all that had happened, and yet everything was still the same. He still lived alone without any real hope of promotion, and it seemed now like Vanessa would never be coming back. There were even days when he didn’t think about her anymore. Not today, however: It was his son’s birthday, and Trave felt confused by the intense emotions that the anniversary had summoned up inside him. Birthdays were for the living: a celebration of continued life. You did not celebrate the birthdays of the dead, but did that mean that Joe’s day no longer had any significance except as an occasion for solitary recollection of half-forgotten presents and parties, fleeting moments that could never really be captured in the black-and-white photograph albums now gathering dust in a pile under the stairs? Trave had no answers. Time made him no wiser; its passing only helped dull the pain.

“Hullo, Inspector. I’m sorry I’m late.” Stephen Cade’s voice broke in on Trave’s reverie, and he was startled to realise that he had forgotten the reason he was here. Stephen had asked for the meeting, and Trave had agreed to it with some trepidation. He had done his best to save the boy from the gallows,
but without Mary’s confession he would probably have failed. He was too honest not to admit this truth to himself.

Stephen seemed different from the young man that he remembered from before. The intensity hadn’t disappeared from his bright blue eyes, but it was cloaked in a new watchfulness. Trave noticed that he was drinking whisky, and the glass shook slightly in his hand. Several times while they were talking, Stephen looked over his shoulder, as if he was expecting some enemy to come looking for him. Prison had clearly left its scars.

“How have you been?” asked Trave, sounding falsely jovial. “How’s life as a free man treating you?”

“Not too bad,” said Stephen with a forced smile, but it didn’t last. “No, why lie? I can’t sleep and I can’t eat properly. I’m a bundle of nerves. I went up to London two days ago to see my barrister and tie up some loose ends, and, you know, I couldn’t go through with it. I got halfway to his chambers in a taxi and then I had to turn around. I had no choice. The ride along the river reminded me of the prison van. I rang him from the station and got on the first train home.”

“Was Swift understanding?”

“Yes, completely. He couldn’t have been nicer. Said he’d come and see me at the manor house next week. And he wrote me a letter after the pardon came through saying it meant more to him than any verdict he’d ever achieved. I was touched by that.”

“Yes,” said Trave. “He told me the same. He’s a good man.”