Simon Tolkien Inspector Trave Trilogy: Orders From Berlin, The Inheritance, The King of Diamonds

‘I know it. Thank you,’ said Trave, putting away his pen.

Ava nodded. ‘And that was that,’ she said. ‘I went and waited with him outside, made sure he had his coat and scarf, tried to make conversation, but he wasn’t interested. Just kept looking at his watch, jumping about from one foot to the other, like every minute mattered. And then when the cab came he got in without saying goodbye, and that was the last time I ever saw him—’

Ava broke off, putting her hand up to her eyes as if trying to ward off the pain. Trave tried to get her to drink her tea, but she waved it away.

‘About what time was this – when he left?’ asked Quaid.

‘About half past four, maybe later. I’m not really sure.’

‘And was he carrying anything? A briefcase? Anything like that?’

‘No,’ said Ava, shaking her head.

‘What about this?’ asked Trave, showing Ava the piece of paper he’d taken from the dead man’s pocket downstairs – ‘Provide detailed written report. What are the chances of success? C,’ and the name written underneath with a question mark, Hayrich or Hayrick. ‘Have you seen this before?’

Ava shook her head.

‘Do you have any idea what it means?’

‘No.’

‘But it’s your father’s handwriting, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she said, looking at the piece of paper again.

‘So it can’t be the note that was left for him while you were out, not if he wrote it himself,’ said Trave, thinking aloud. ‘Do you know what happened to that note?’ he asked, ignoring Quaid’s look of irritation. He knew how the inspector liked to control the flow of an interview, bringing in his assistant only when it suited him, like when Ava had got upset and stopped answering his questions.

‘No,’ said Ava, shaking her head. ‘As I said, I saw him reading it when we got back from the park, and then I went in the kitchen. He was upset and I didn’t want him taking it out on me. I think he threw something on the fire at one point. I don’t know if it was the note.’

‘He had one burning – this afternoon?’

‘Yes, a few coals. It’s died out now.’

There was a pause in the conversation. The dead ashes in the fireplace added to the atmosphere of forlorn emptiness in the flat.

‘And these documents – were they there this afternoon?’ Quaid asked, pointing to the mess of papers on the floor by the desk that Brive had tried to pick up earlier, the ones that Trave had pointed out as being out of place when they first came into the room.

‘No. My father never has papers on the floor like that – everywhere else, but never there. I know the flat looks a mess, but really he knew where everything was. Do you think …?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid we do. Whoever killed your father was looking for something. I wonder whether he found it,’ said Quaid, leaning down to pick up a thick-looking legal document from underneath the other documents. ‘The last will and testament of Albert James Morrison of 7 Gloucester Mansions, Prince of Wales Drive, London SW11—’ he began to read once he’d opened the folded vellum. But then he broke off, running his eyes silently over the contents before he looked back over at Ava, frowning.

‘Did your father talk about his will with you?’ he asked. ‘About whom he was leaving his money to?’

‘No, we didn’t have those kinds of conversations. He didn’t think it was a woman’s place to talk about money, to be involved in those kinds of decisions. But I assumed …’

‘What did you assume?’ Quaid pressed.

‘Well, that he would leave his property to me, I suppose. I’m his daughter and he has no other relatives as far as I know. At least none that are alive. He had a brother, but he died in the last war. On the Somme,’ she added irrelevantly.

‘Except he has a son-in-law, doesn’t he?’ said Quaid, looking grimly over at Ava’s husband, who had now retreated to a position just inside the door of the room, as if to enable him to beat a fast retreat at a moment’s notice.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Ava, clearly not understanding.

‘I mean that your father’s will provides for you and your husband, Dr Bertram John Brive, to inherit the estate jointly, and names your husband as the sole executor. There’s no mistake – it’s quite clear. Here, you can read it yourself if you want,’ said Quaid, passing the vellum pages over to Ava.

‘What about you? Is this news to you too, or did you know about your good fortune already?’ asked Quaid, turning his attention back to Bertram. The doctor seemed to be having competing reactions judging from the look on his face. He was certainly embarrassed, that much was obvious – a scarlet flush had spread across the expanse of his fat cheeks – but there was something else as well. Relief, maybe. Perhaps the will was what he’d been looking for when he’d raced up the stairs earlier; perhaps he’d been worried that it had disappeared.

‘I knew about it. Why shouldn’t I?’ Brive said defiantly. ‘Albert wanted it that way. It was his decision. Ava and I are married, and he thought that a husband should direct his wife’s affairs. I can’t see anything wrong with that.’

‘No, of course you can’t. Anything’s justified as long as the money ends up in your pocket,’ Ava burst out angrily, getting to her feet. ‘God damn you, Bertie. Now I understand why you’ve been spending so much time over here this last year, ministering to his hypochondria, writing him prescriptions for drugs he didn’t need, and filling them yourself at the pharmacy. It wasn’t him you cared about, was it? It was his stupid money.’

Trave put his hand on Ava’s arm, anxious that she might rush forward and physically attack her husband, but he needn’t have worried. Her angry outburst exhausted her and she collapsed back into her chair, sobbing.

Downstairs, Quaid paused in the hallway, drawing a deep breath of what appeared to be satisfaction as he pulled on his black leather driving gloves. Albert’s corpse had been removed, replaced by a chalk outline of where his body had lain.

‘Good work,’ he said, smiling benignly at his assistant. ‘We’ll let the medicine man stew in his juices tonight and see what we can find out about him tomorrow. Can I give you a lift home?’

‘No thanks. I’d like the walk. I don’t live too far from here,’ said Trave.

‘All right, suit yourself.’

Trave watched from the doorstep as the inspector got into his car and drove away, then waited until the Wolseley had turned the corner at the end of the street into Albert Bridge Road before he went back inside and knocked on the door of the ground-floor flat.

Quaid might be focused on the dead man’s son-in-law, but Trave was curious to know more about the victim and the mysterious visitor who’d left the note with the old lady downstairs – the note that had made Albert Morrison so agitated when he got back from the park. A fireside chat with Mrs Graves wasn’t on the list of Quaid’s instructions, but Trave didn’t feel he needed the inspector’s permission to ask her a few questions. The time to make a report would be after he’d found something out, not before.

As he’d hoped, Mrs Graves was still awake. The only change was that she had exchanged her black widow’s weeds for a floral dressing gown and curlers in her hair. Mourning was clearly not a night-time occupation. And instead of tea, she offered the young policeman something a little stronger from a bottle that she stood on a chair to get down from a high cupboard in her kitchen.

‘I think we need a little pick-me-up after all that’s happened,’ she said. ‘There’s not been a murder in this house before – at least not in my time.’

‘Well, I’d like to thank you for your kindness to Ava. I don’t think she’d have been able to answer the inspector’s questions if you hadn’t helped her out to begin with,’ said Trave.

‘It was the least I could do. She’s not had a very happy life, the poor girl, and now this …’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, should we, but her father wasn’t an easy man, you know. More often than not he looked daggers drawn if you so much as wished him good morning, and he didn’t like anyone except Ava going into his flat. Apart from her husband, of course – the doctor. He was always round here with his bag of tricks, ministering to Albert. Much good all that medicine did him, God rest his soul,’ said Mrs Graves, crossing herself before pouring Trave and herself two more generous measures from the half-empty whisky bottle on the table.

‘So he didn’t have any other visitors?’

‘No, like I said, he liked to keep himself to himself.’

‘But there was someone today, wasn’t there?’ asked Trave. ‘The man who left the note that you took up to Albert after he got back from the park. Ava told us about it.’

‘Oh, him. Yes, he’s been here before a few times, but not for a while now. Not until today.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘I don’t know … middle-aged, in his early fifties, maybe, with fair-coloured hair going bald at the top – a bit of grey in it, if I remember rightly. Not thin, not fat, average looking, I suppose. No glasses. He’d got yellow fingers like people do when they smoke all the time, and his suit was crumpled up like he’d slept in it – that I do remember. I doubt he’s married or got anyone taking care of him, looking like that.’