“Because of what Silas told me. That he didn’t have long to live. Knowing that made everything seem different.”
“Yes. Particularly if you were going to be disinherited. That was the real reason you went back to Moreton, wasn’t it? To stop your father from changing his will. By any means possible.”
“No,” said Stephen. “The will was only one of the reasons.”
But Thompson didn’t let him finish. “You’d had enough, hadn’t you, Mr. Cade?” he went on, pressing home his advantage. “Two years of thinking about the injustice and the rejection, and then your brother tells you that your father’s going to disinherit you. It made you want to kill him, didn’t it? You’d had enough.”
“No, I wanted to talk to him. That’s all.”
“Are you sure about that? Remember what you said to Inspector Trave in your interview. That you told your father he deserved to die. Is that what you said?”
“Yes. But I didn’t mean it.”
“Didn’t you? It’s just a coincidence then that your father was murdered that evening?”
“Yes; I didn’t kill him.”
“So you say. But then who did?”
“Silas-it had to be Silas.” Stephen couldn’t keep the desperation out of his voice. “He must’ve hid in the curtains and slipped out after I came back. Jeanne Ritter saw him in the courtyard.”
“So she said. But she had a reason to lie. And so do you, Mr. Cade. From the outset you’ve tried to blame everybody but yourself. First of all it was the mysterious man in the Mercedes, and then you changed your mind and said it was your brother. Who will it be next?”
“I just know it wasn’t me.”
“Because you were there. Well, perhaps you better tell us again what happened between you and your father that evening.”
“We talked.”
“About what?”
“The will. Him dying. He said he wouldn’t discuss those things with me. I asked him for money for Mary, my girlfriend, because her mother needed to have an operation, but he refused to give it to me. He said I was lying to him. That I needed the money to pay debts, but that wasn’t true at all. He was just being cynical like he always was. So we argued, and then he said that I could have the money if I beat him at chess. It was ridiculous. He was just playing with me, like he used to do when I was a kid. He’d be black and play without one of his pieces, but he always won. And that evening was just the same. I don’t know why I went through with it. Perhaps I thought he’d do the decent thing for once.”
“And lose?”
“Yes. I know I was stupid.”
“And how did you feel when he didn’t do the decent thing?”
“I was upset. Obviously. The money meant nothing to him and everything to me.”
“Why everything?”
“Not everything. I’m exaggerating,” said Stephen nervously. “Mary said she’d have to go and look for work up in London if I couldn’t get the money from my father. I didn’t want her to go.”
“Because you were in love with her?”
Stephen didn’t answer, and the judge was quick to intervene.
“Answer the question,” he demanded, fixing Stephen with an unfriendly glare.
“Yes, I loved her,” said Stephen finally. “I still do.”
“So the game of chess was for high stakes?” asked Thompson, carrying on where he’d left off.
“I suppose so. It didn’t make me do any better, though. My father was black and without a knight, but he still beat me. Easily. I should never have played him.”
“Because it just made you angrier than you’d been before, when he refused to give you the money in the first place.”
“Yes. It’s not a crime to be angry, is it?” said Stephen defiantly. But Thompson ignored the question.
“What happened after you lost the game?” he asked.
“He grinned at me. Said, ‘better luck next time,’ or something sarcastic like that. I told him that I’d had enough, that I’d expose him, make everyone know what he’d done. I meant it as well. It wasn’t like before.”
“This wasn’t the first time you’d threatened to expose him then?” asked Thompson. As he had anticipated, Stephen’s desire to talk about how he had been treated had got the better of the unnatural reticence that his barrister had forced on him. All Thompson had to do was to nudge him along, and Stephen would soon reveal the full depth of his rage against the dead man.
“No, it wasn’t the first time,” said Stephen. “I said I’d do it when I first found out what he’d done to those people in France. Silas and I were listening outside the window of the study, and he and Ritter were gloating about it. How they’d left no survivors, and so it had to be Carson who’d written the blackmail letter. I made my father promise to stop Ritter going after Carson, and I left it at that. He was telling me how it would disgrace the family name if I went to the police and how he was too ill to cope with a trial. He had a way with words, but I shouldn’t have listened to him.”
“And so then two years later you threatened to expose him again. How did he react?”
“He laughed at me. He said there were no witnesses now. Nobody except him and Ritter. Then he went over to his desk and got out a newspaper cutting about Carson’s death. It was from a few months before, and it was obvious that Carson hadn’t fallen off a train. Ritter had pushed him. And my father had lied to me again. He hadn’t done anything to stop Ritter from murdering Carson. It probably just took them longer to find him than they’d first thought. Maybe if I’d gone to the police when I first found out about Marjean, Carson would still be alive.”
“And all this went through your mind when your father showed you that cutting, didn’t it, Mr. Cade?”
“Yes, of course it did,” said Stephen, leaning forward in the witness box and throwing caution to the winds. “He disgusted me, sitting there looking so smug with all that blood on his hands. People’s lives meant nothing to him. Nothing at all.”
“Yours included?”
“Yes.”
“And that made you angry?”
“Of course it did.”
“Very angry?”
“I don’t know.” Stephen’s voice was suddenly quiet as if he had just realised where his answers had led him.
“I suggest you do know,” said Thompson, switching seamlessly on to the offensive. “You were angrier with your father than you’d ever been in your life before. Everything suddenly came together. The changing of his will, his refusal to give you the money for your girlfriend, the way he’d toyed with you over the chess game, the shame that he’d brought down on your head, and all the lies he’d told you.” Thompson ticked off John Cade’s sins on his fingers one by one, but he left the worst for last. “Above all, you couldn’t stand his smug indifference to everything you cared about,” he said. “It drove you crazy, didn’t it, Mr. Cade?”
“I was angry, like I said before. I wasn’t crazy,” said Stephen doggedly.
“Are you sure about that?” asked the prosecutor. “It was after your father showed you the newspaper cutting that you told him that he deserved to die. Isn’t that right?”
“I don’t know. I must’ve been referring to what Silas told me. That my father had said to Ritter that he didn’t have long to live. I was saying that that’s what he deserved.”
“No, you weren’t,” countered Thompson. “You’re the one who’s lying now, and you know it. You said in interview that you shouted at your father that he deserved to die. Shouted, Mr. Cade. You shouted because you’d lost your temper. And that’s when you took the gun out of your pocket and shot your father dead.”
“No.”
“Yes. You murdered him. And then you locked the door to give yourself some time to think.”
“No, I didn’t,” shouted Stephen, losing his self-control. “I never locked the door. And I never killed my father. I left him sitting in his armchair and I walked down to the gate. And when I came back, he was dead. That’s what happened.” Stephen was breathing loudly now, and his knuckles were white from gripping the top of the witness box with his hands. Thompson’s tactics had paid off. Stephen would never have reacted to the accusation with such
