The Inheritance Read online

  Sasha was wearing a sun hat that Silas had never seen before. Its wide brim concealed her face from Silas as he looked down on her from above and felt the usual agitation that she aroused in him. Sasha’s movements were erratic. She would spend days poring over manuscripts in the long gallery or in the professor’s study, and then would disappear without warning into Oxford. Silas had watched her, focusing his telephoto lens through the different windows, and it hadn’t taken him long to see that she was searching for something specific, something that she hadn’t yet found. Silas guessed at what it might be, but he hadn’t so far had the courage to talk to her about it. She was supposedly staying at the manor house to finish cataloguing the manuscripts, but that task must now be long done. Silas feared that any discussion of her reasons for remaining would force Sasha into an early departure, and that was something that he could not bear to contemplate.

  Acting on impulse, he pushed up the lower part of the sash window and called down.

  “Where are you going, Sasha?”

  Sasha jumped at the sudden noise breaking the stillness of the morning and put her hand on the crown of her head, as if to prevent her hat from falling off. It was the old preoccupation: Her elaborately structured brown hair and high collars were there to hide the livid red burn that disfigured her neck and shoulders. But the burn was too high, and she could never fully conceal it. Men were drawn to her brown eyes and full lips and the clear soft complexion of her face, but the contrast with the ravaged flesh below only increased their repulsion when they got closer to her. All except Silas, who seemed to follow her all the time. With his eyes. In person. Recently he’d seemed almost omnipresent. It was as if he was attracted by her disfigurement. She dreaded that one day he might ask her about it.

  “I’m going into Oxford. I need to do some things,” she said, filling her voice with all the discouragement that she could muster.

  But Silas was undeterred. Sasha’s upturned face and his position in the window above her gave him a sense of power.

  “Let me give you a lift. I can have the car out in a moment.”

  It was his father’s car. The Rolls-Royce was the first concrete proof of his inheritance. He wanted Sasha inside it, the sense of her body resting against the soft grey leather of the seat beside him, so that he could take his hand off the steering wheel and caress that place at the nape of her neck where her perfect skin met its burnt counterpart.

  Silas turned away from the window without waiting for Sasha to protest any further and ran down the stairs. Five minutes later he had his wish, and they were passing through the sleepy village of Moreton. In the valley below, the city of Oxford was spread out before them: rivers and parks and old stone buildings surrounded by high walls. The sun glinted on the silver and gold domes of the city’s churches, and Silas pressed his foot down on the accelerator and allowed the car to gather speed as it went down the hill and up again, past the scene of his mother’s death.

  “That policeman was here today,” he said, making conversation.

  “Which policeman?”

  “Trave. The one in charge of the case.”

  “What did he want?”

  “I don’t know. Just poking around, asking stupid questions.”

  “About what?”

  “What I felt about my father. Things like that.”

  “What did you feel about him?”

  “I don’t know. He was selfish—I mean really selfish. But you know that. It was like he didn’t feel anything. And yet he was clever. He knew a lot, more than I’ll ever know.”

  “You admired him?”

  “In a way. He was my father.”

  “I know that.” It sounded like an accusation.

  They lapsed into an uneasy silence and Silas found it almost painful not to reach out and touch Sasha, who sat with her head turned away, willing herself toward her destination.

  “Have you seen the Ritters today?” Silas asked, not because he was interested, but in order to get some reaction out of his companion.

  “Him, but not her. He said she was sick again.”

  “He probably hit her. Didn’t you hear the shouting two nights ago?”

  “Yes, he’s disgusting. Like an animal.” Sasha spoke with sudden passion, and at the same time, two bright red patches appeared in the centre of her normally pale cheeks.

  “I’ll ask him to leave if you like.” The idea had often crossed Silas’s mind since his father’s death, but he had never quite had the courage to go through with it.

  “That’s up to you. It’s your house. Perhaps you don’t want me there anymore either.”

  “No, I do. Really I do.”

  Silas cursed himself for raising the possibility of Sasha’s departure, and he turned round toward her to add emphasis to his words, taking his eye off the road as he did so.

  “Look out,” Sasha shouted, and Silas was only just in time to slam his foot down on the brake and bring the car to a shuddering halt, inches away from an old woman crossing the road in front of them. His arm shot out across Sasha to prevent her being thrown forward, and he felt her breast against his hand for a moment, before she pushed him away.

  “You’re an idiot, Silas,” she said angrily. “You could have killed that old woman, and us too.”

  Silas said nothing. Instead he bent down to help Sasha, who was busy picking up the papers and books that had fallen out of her bag onto the floor. There was one yellowed document that caught his attention. It was covered with a spidery handwriting that Silas didn’t recognize. He noticed the date 1936 in the top corner and a name, John of Rome. It seemed to be a translation of some kind, but Silas had no chance to read any more before Sasha snatched the paper out of his hand.

  “Its part of our work on the catalogue,” she said, even though Silas had not asked for any explanation. “Your father would have wanted me to finish it.”

  They drove on into Oxford in silence, passing Silas’s little photographic shop and studio on Cowley Road. He had spent hardly any time there since the murder, and he made a mental note to give the landlord notice at the end of the month. His inheritance at least meant that he wouldn’t need to earn his living as a humble portrait photographer any longer.

  Sasha got out of the car almost without warning at a traffic light in Holly-well and hurried away down a side street, clutching her shoulder bag tight to her side. Silas pulled over, half onto the pavement, and left the car unlocked as he ran after her. But she was already out of sight by the time he got to the first corner, and after a minute or two he gave up looking for her and went home.

  FIVE

  Sasha stepped out from behind the back gate of New College and looked around. Silas was nowhere in sight. She’d known instinctively that he’d try to follow her, although she still couldn’t understand his apparent infatuation. It repelled her, and she wished she could leave the manor house and never see its new owner again. Perhaps she should. In truth she was close to giving up on finding the codex. In the last five months, she’d turned the leaves of every manuscript that John Cade owned, but nothing had fallen out. She’d stared into every recess, tapped every wall, and found nothing—only the diary secreted in the hollow base of the study bookcase that she’d discovered two days ago.

  Sasha held the book close to her as she hurried through a network of narrow cobbled lanes, turning left and right, apparently at random. She remembered her excitement when she first found it. The study had been dark apart from her flashlight, and for a moment she felt as if Cade was there, watching her from the armchair where he used to sit, slowly rotating his thick tongue around his thin lips as he turned vellum pages one by one. Sasha had never been a superstitious person, but still she’d shivered and hurried away with the book to study it in the privacy of her room. Pausing for a moment to take a key out of her pocket, Sasha remembered the disappointment she’d felt as the first grey light had filtered through her window and she’d realised that the diary had taken her no nearer to the object of her
search. She felt certain now that the old bastard had had the codex, but she still had no idea where it was. It was a secret that he’d taken with him to the grave. Unless her father could help. He was her last chance.

  Sasha had stopped outside a tall old house that had clearly seen better days. The paint was cracked and dirty, and a row of bells by the door pointed to multiple occupation. But she didn’t press any of them. Instead she used her key to unlock the door, and then climbed four flights of a steep, uncarpeted staircase to the very top of the house, knocked lightly, and went in.

  A white-haired man in a threadbare cardigan sat in the very middle of a battered leather sofa in the centre of the room. He looked at least ten years older than his real age of sixty-seven. His whole body was painfully thin, his face was deeply lined, and he sat very still except for the hands that trembled constantly in his lap. In the corner, a violin concerto that Sasha didn’t recognise was playing on a gramophone balanced precariously on two towers of books. Everywhere in the room were similar piles, and Sasha had to navigate a careful path between them to reach her father. She arrived just in time to stop his getting to his feet. Instead, she kissed him awkwardly on the crown of his head and then went over to a rudimentary kitchen area beside the single dirty window and began making tea.

  “How have you been?” she asked.

  “Not bad,” said the old man just like he always did, speaking in the hoarse whisper that represented all that was left of his voice after the throat cancer he had fought off three years before. Now it was Parkinson’s disease that he was up against, and Sasha wondered how long his ravaged frame would hold out. She loved her father and constantly wished that he would allow her to do more, but he was obstinate, holding on fiercely to what was left of his independence.

  “You’ve brought something,” he said, looking down at the bag that Sasha had left on the sofa.

  “Yes, it’s Cade’s diary. I found it hidden in his study. It’s only for five years though. From 1935 through to 1940. Nothing after that. I don’t know whether he stopped writing it or whether the next one’s hidden somewhere else.”

  “It was the war,” said the old man. “Professor Cade became Colonel Cade, remember? No more time for autobiography.”

  “You’re probably right. The book’s pretty interesting, though. Except that there’s nothing in it about what he did to you. Look, here.” Sasha opened the book and pointed to a series of entries dating from late 1937. “Anyone reading this would think that he won that professorship on merit. It’s vile. He called himself a historian, and yet he spent his whole life falsifying history. He knew you were going to win, and so he fabricated that story about you and that student.”

  “Higgins. He wasn’t very attractive.” Andrew Blayne smiled, trying to defuse his daughter’s anger.

  “I thought I could get you back your good name.”

  “I know you did. But it doesn’t matter now. It’s all ancient history.”

  “It matters to me.” Sasha’s voice rose as her old sense of outrage took over. She felt her father’s humiliation like it had happened only yesterday. Cade had persuaded one of his rival’s pupils to allege a homosexual relationship and the mud had stuck. Andrew Blayne had lost the contest for the chair in medieval art history and had then been forced by his college to resign his fellowship. Since then he had supported himself through poorly paid private tutoring and temporary lecturing jobs at provincial universities, until ill health had put a stop even to that.

  His wife, Sasha’s mother, was a strict Roman Catholic and had chosen to believe every one of the scurrilous allegations against her husband. She’d left him in his hour of need, taking their five-year-old daughter with her and had then stopped the girl from seeing her father for most of her childhood. Sasha had always found this cruelty harder to forgive than all her mother’s neglect, and Andrew Blayne had remained the most important man in his daughter’s life.

  “Clearing my name wasn’t the main reason why you ignored all my objections and went to work for that man, was it, Sasha?” said Andrew reflectively, as he stirred the tea in his chipped mug. He noticed how Sasha had filled it only halfway to the top to avoid the risk of his spilling hot tea on his trousers. It suddenly made him feel like an old man.

  “You wanted to find the Marjean codex. Just like I did years ago. Because you thought it would lead you to St. Peter’s cross,” he went on when she did not answer. “You should be careful, my dear. You’re not the first to have followed that trail. Look what happened to John Cade.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with the codex,” said Sasha, sounding almost annoyed. “Cade’s son killed him. He’s on trial at the Old Bailey right now, and I’ve got to give evidence next week. Don’t you ever read the newspapers?”

  “Not if I can avoid it. And plenty of innocent people get put on trial for crimes they didn’t commit, Sasha. They get convicted too.”

  “Not this one. The evidence is overwhelming. But look, I didn’t come here to talk about Stephen Cade’s trial.”

  “You came here to talk about the codex.”

  “Yes.” Sasha’s voice was suddenly flat, full of her disappointment over all her fruitless searches of the last few weeks.

  “I’ll tell you again. I think you should leave it alone.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the codex, the cross—they should be yours. He stole everything from you.”

  “No, he didn’t, Sasha. I could have looked for the cross if I’d wanted to, but I didn’t. I chose not to.”

  “With no money?” said Sasha passionately. “What could you do after he’d taken your livelihood away?”

  The old man didn’t answer. He looked up at his daughter and smiled, before using both hands to contrive a sip of tea from his mug. But Sasha wouldn’t let it go.

  “I want to make it all up to you, Dad. Can’t you see that?”

  “I know you do, Sasha. But can’t you see that I don’t need objects? They mean nothing to me any more.”

  “I don’t believe you. Not this object.”

  Not for the first time her father’s quiet stoicism grated on Sasha. It was beyond her comprehension that he could be so indifferent to what had been taken from him. Did he know more than he was saying? about Cade’s death? about the codex? and the cross? Suspicion creased her brow.

  “Look, I can’t even hold a cup of tea properly in my hand,” said Blayne, gesturing with his shaking hand.

  “I know,” she said. “I know.” She felt foolish for a moment, ashamed of herself, looking down at her father’s ravaged body. She felt as if her long, fruitless search for codex and cross had started to make her see shadows in even the brightest corners.

  “I just want to have you and for you to be happy. That’s all,” said Blayne.

  It was hard to resist the appeal in his quavering voice or the tears glistening in his eyes, but Sasha’s face hardened, and she turned away from her father. Her jaw was set, and her lips folded in on themselves. She looked almost ugly.

  “I have to find it,” she said quietly. “I’ve gone too far to stop now.”

  Father and daughter looked deep into each other’s eyes for a moment before Andrew Blayne let go of Sasha’s sleeve and allowed his head to fall back against the sofa. He seemed to concentrate all his attention on a stain on the corner of the ceiling, and he kept his gaze fixed there even when he started speaking again.

  “Perhaps you’re wasting your time,” he said. “Perhaps Cade never even had the codex.”

  “But I know he did,” said Sasha passionately. “That’s why this diary is so important. Look, let me show it to you. You remember that he supposedly hired me to help him with research for his book on illuminated manuscripts?”

  “The magnum opus.”

  “Exactly. But he didn’t really care about that at all. He was obsessed with St. Peter’s cross. He kept sending me to this library and that, looking for clues. But it was a wild-goose ch
ase, and I think he half knew that deep down. He was like a man who’s followed a trail to its logical end and found nothing there. He goes back, taking every side turn that he passed before but without any faith that they’ll lead anywhere.”

  “And he needed you because he couldn’t do his own research. Because he wouldn’t go out.”

  “Yes, he was always frightened,” said Sasha. “But the interesting part was that he was always looking for the cross in any place except the one where it ought to be.”

  “In Marjean?”

  “Yes. It was like he already knew it wasn’t there. I tested him once. I showed him the John of Rome letter. It was a risk that he’d connect me with you, but I don’t think he did. I said that I’d found a copy in the Bodleian Library. But he wasn’t interested. He said it was a false trail. A waste of time.”

  “I remember you telling me that,” said the old man, becoming increasingly interested in spite of himself. “I was the one who showed him the letter back in 1936 when I thought we were friends. He pretended not to be interested then too.”

  “Except that he was,” said Sasha excitedly, pointing to an entry in the diary. “Here it is. May thirteenth, 1936. He’s copied out the whole of your translation, word for word.” Sasha held up the yellowed document covered with spidery blue handwriting that she’d snatched from Silas in the car. “Here’s your copy and that’s his. They’re the same.”

  Blayne took the manuscript in his trembling hand and began to read it aloud. The hoarseness seemed to go out of his voice, and Sasha felt herself transported back five hundred years, out of her father’s disordered attic room in Oxford to a wood-panelled library in the Vatican.

  Another old man in a black monk’s habit was writing a letter, dipping his quill in the inkwell at the top of his sloping mahogany desk. The sunshine sparkled on the Tiber and illuminated the parchment across which his old bony hand was moving steadily from side to side.

  My dear brother in Christ,

  Let me tell you then what I know of the cross of Saint Peter. It has long been lost, but is perhaps not destroyed. Perhaps you will one day see what I have never found.