“I’d given him some sleeping powder. It wasn’t difficult. And so that was the plan. Wait for Stephen to leave the study, follow him in, kill Cade, and lock the door behind me before I went out through the french windows. Go back in the house through the front door and then wait for someone to find the body. And then when the police came, the gun would be in Stephen’s room with his prints on the magazine.”
“He’d have known it was you. Nobody else could have put his prints on the gun. Or the key.”
“Possibly. But, in any case, nobody would have believed him. He was the one with the motive, not me. And I hadn’t been in the study. He had.”
Trave nodded. “So what happened?” he asked. “When you went back?”
“Things turned out differently than I expected,” she said. “Just like they always do. After dinner I went down the drive and opened the gate. Paul had his car parked over by the phone box on the other side of the road, so I could call if anything went wrong, and then he would come and get me. It was a fail-safe. Nothing more than that. I didn’t expect to need to run away.
“Stephen had arranged to see his father at ten o’clock, and once he was inside the study, I went to get his hat and coat from his bedroom. I was going to wear them to cross the courtyard afterward, you see, so anyone looking down would think I was Stephen. Not that I expected anyone to see me. I hoped that all the lights would be out by then, and I had a silencer for the gun. But the hat and coat weren’t there. It was only afterward that I found out that Stephen had put them on to go for a walk up the drive before he saw his father. So I didn’t know at the time that he’d closed the gate and seen the Mercedes, and I’m glad I didn’t. It might have made me lose my nerve.”
Trave thought this unlikely, but he didn’t say so. He had his work cut out trying to write down everything that Mary was saying. She was speaking quicker now that she was reliving the events of the murder night, and Trave’s pen raced backward and forward across the paper. He tried not to think of Paul over by the door with the gun still aimed at his head.
“I ran downstairs from the bedroom,” Mary went on, “and I took Silas’s hat and coat from off the stand in the hall. I needed a disguise, and something was better than nothing. Then I went into the little book room off the east-wing corridor next to the study and waited. There was the sound of talking, but I couldn’t really make out any of the words until about thirty minutes had gone by. Then, suddenly, the voices got louder, and I could hear most of what Stephen was saying. He did tell his father that he deserved to die. And, you know, Inspector, it made me smile, standing waiting in the darkness on the other side of the wall, ready to kill that bastard just as soon as his son had gone on his way.
“Stephen went out through the french windows pretty soon after the shouting started, and I hadn’t expected that. I don’t really know why. I’d just anticipated him coming past me down the corridor. And he didn’t go across the courtyard to the front door either. I looked out of the window in the corridor and I didn’t see him, so he had to have walked away down the drive or out into the grounds. Either way, there was obviously a risk that he might come back, but I had to accept that. I’d gone too far to pull back with Cade a few feet away and the gun ready in my hand. I didn’t know when the chance might come again, now that he’d quarreled with Stephen. And I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. All the years of waiting came together in that moment when I went through the door of his study and there he was, bent down over his stupid chess game with his big wet tongue flicking round his lips, like he was some horrible bloodsucking insect that needed to be stamped on, put an end to, destroyed.”
Mary punched her clenched fist into the open palm of her other hand to give emphasis to her words, and then suddenly stopped short, as if realising that her narrative had carried her away. It struck Trave that she hadn’t just come to confess to Cade’s murder. She was also dictating a sort of testament.
“I didn’t shoot him straightaway,” she said after a moment, in a quiet, more measured voice. “I waited until he saw me. Because I needed him to know why he was going to die. That was important. So I let his watery pale blue eyes come up level with mine, focusing through his little gold half-moon glasses, and then I told him who I was. It took him a second or two to register the information, and then I shot him just as he opened his mouth to shout. One bullet right in the middle of his big shiny forehead. And it was done. Revenge for my parents; revenge for Albert and Marguerite. Good people who never did anyone any harm. It was the best moment of my life.
“But I didn’t lose my concentration; I didn’t waste any time. The plan was what mattered. I locked the door with the first key I’d copied, and then I took it out and replaced it with the second, the one with Stephen’s fingerprints on it. And I was just about to go over to the desk to remove Cade’s key from his ring when I heard footsteps outside. It was Stephen coming back. I couldn’t believe it. I was beside myself. I hid behind the curtains over the french windows, and he walked straight past me into the room. He never saw me at all. But I still made a mistake that could have cost me everything. Obviously I realised I had to change the plan now that Stephen had come back. I couldn’t put the gun in his room. He had to have it with him in the study. Otherwise nothing would make sense. But I didn’t have time to think it through. He started shouting for help, and I needed to get out of there. So I slid the gun in my hand, the wrong gun, out into the room, and then I walked quickly across the courtyard to the front door. Stephen didn’t hear me. He was too busy shouting. And until Ritter’s wife came to court and said her piece, I thought no one had seen me.
“Anyway, I unlocked the front door with the key I’d had made, closed it behind me, and it was only then, when it was too late to do anything about it, that I realised what I’d done. The gun I’d left behind was the one I’d killed Cade with. There were no fingerprints on it because I’d worn gloves. But Stephen wasn’t wearing gloves. A clean gun would be as bad as no gun at all, but there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing at all.
“I threw Silas’s hat and coat in the general direction of the hat stand and ran up the west-wing stairs to my room. I didn’t try to compose myself because it didn’t matter. Everyone was going to be upset. I came back down just in time to see Ritter’s wife in the hall. I must’ve missed with the hat and coat because she was hanging them up on the stand. I had no idea that she was protecting Silas. I thought she was just doing her job, being the housekeeper. She must’ve locked the front door too. I walked straight past her and down the corridor to the study. The door was open, and Ritter was inside with Stephen, smacking him across the face, and I could see the gun. It was on the side table by the door. Someone had picked it up off the floor and put it there. And for some reason I knew it wasn’t Ritter. He was a psychopath but he wasn’t stupid. It had to be Stephen. And I knew then that I was safe. The plan had worked better than I could have hoped for. Now that he’d touched the gun and the key, there was no reason for him to suspect me at all. All I had to do was visit him in Wandsworth Prison once a week and watch him getting ready to die.
“And, of course, that’s what I hadn’t reckoned with,” said Mary, with a bitter laugh. Her voice had been confident, proud even, as she told the story of the murder, but now her fluency deserted her as she returned to Stephen and the present.
“Don’t worry, Inspector, the irony hasn’t escaped me,” she went on after a moment. “I’m here because everything went too well. If the plan had gone as I’d anticipated and Stephen hadn’t come back to the study, then he’d probably have ended up suspecting me, just like you said. He’d have known that somebody had put his fingerprints on the gun and the key, and that person was likely to be me. And if he’d accused me of the murder, then I’d never have carried on visiting him in gaol and ended up feeling like this. I’d just have left justice to take its course.”
“Not justice,” said Trave. “Injustice. And, if you ask me, I don’t think you’d have left him to hang, whatever you say. You’re not as cold-blooded as you like to pretend, Miss Martin or Rocard or whoever you are. You’d have regretted what you’d done to that poor boy, whether you’d gone to see him once a week, twice a week, or not at all.”
Mary was about to respond, but the sudden harsh ring of the doorbell stopped her short. Paul was the first to react. He crossed the room as quickly and noiselessly as a cat and pressed the revolver up hard against Trave’s temple. His free hand was clamped over the policeman’s mouth. Mary stood by the door into the hall, listening. There was silence. And then the bell rang again. Longer this time. Afterward they could hear the sound of someone stamping their feet on the step. It was cold outside, and perhaps the visitor would go away. But instead he knocked on the door with his fist and called out for Trave to let him in. It was Clayton, and he obviously believed Trave was inside because of the light on in the living room. But Trave didn’t move a muscle. He wasn’t going to give the silent Frenchman any excuses. And after a moment they could hear footsteps receding down the road and a car engine gunning into life. Paul let go of Trave’s head and moved away toward the window.
“Who was that?” asked Mary.
“Someone who works for me,” said Trave.
“Will he be back?”
