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

‘I’m in trouble, Alec,’ she said. ‘I need your help.’

‘What kind of trouble?’ he asked. She could hear the concern in his voice.

‘It’s Bertram. He hit me, and I think he was the one who pushed my father. I’m frightened—’

‘Where is he now?’ asked Thorn, interrupting.

‘He left to go to the Probate Office a few minutes ago, and I think he’ll be gone for quite a while, so I’m fine for now. But I’m worried about when he gets back. …’

‘Stay there,’ said Thorn. ‘I’m on my way. You did right to call me.’

The line went dead and Ava breathed a sigh of relief. It was going to be all right. Alec would deal with Bertram. She went into the kitchen and made herself a sandwich and ate it standing up. She hadn’t eaten since the previous day, and she was ravenously hungry. But then, just as she was about to make herself another, the doorbell rang. At first she ignored it, but the caller was persistent and eventually she became curious about who could want to see her so badly, so she went out into the communal hallway and answered the door.

Seaforth was standing outside on the step. She was shocked. He was the last person she’d expected to see. She’d enjoyed her lunch with him at the Corner House and she was grateful to him for alerting her to Bertram’s status as the prime suspect in the police investigation, but she hadn’t expected to see him again, or at any rate not as soon as this.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, and then went on without waiting for an answer: ‘You can’t keep coming over like this, you know. It isn’t right.’

‘I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is cause trouble,’ said Seaforth, holding up his hands palm outward, as if to acknowledge that he was in the wrong. ‘It’s just I was worried about you. You know how yesterday I said I thought you’d be safe? Well, I kept thinking about it last night and then I wasn’t so sure …’

Seaforth stopped in mid-sentence, noticing how Ava’s hands had started to tremble as he was speaking. ‘What’s wrong, Ava?’ he asked, looking concerned. ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’

She looked away, biting her lip. She hardly knew Seaforth, and she didn’t want to confide in him. It was Alec Thorn she had called, looking for help. But in the state of fear and anxiety she was in now, she would have welcomed kindness and sympathy from almost anyone.

‘Bertram hit me,’ she said, speaking almost in a whisper. ‘And I did what you told me not to – I got angry and accused him – and he went crazy. I think he’d have killed me if I hadn’t barricaded myself in the bedroom. He did it, Charles. I know he did. He killed my father.’

She felt faint and thought she would have fallen if Seaforth hadn’t taken hold of her arm and helped her back inside. The door of her flat was open, and he steered her to a seat at the kitchen table.

‘Can I get you something – a drink, maybe?’ he asked, looking down at her solicitously.

Ava nodded, wiping her eyes and watching as Seaforth fetched Bertram’s whisky bottle from the sideboard and poured a generous measure into a glass that he’d found on the draining board beside the sink.

The alcohol revived her. ‘The awful part is that knowing he’s guilty isn’t enough,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘The police need more evidence to arrest him or they’d have done so already.’

‘What kind of evidence? Have they told you what they’re looking for?’ asked Seaforth.

‘They showed me a cuff link that they found on the landing outside my father’s flat. They wanted to know if it was Bertram’s.’

‘And was it?’

‘No, I didn’t recognize it. But I thought that maybe he might still have the other one, so I searched his drawers last night and it wasn’t there. And it’s not in any of his clothes pockets either. He’s probably thrown it away.’

‘Is there anywhere else he keeps things?’ asked Seaforth, looking round the room.

‘In his surgery. That’s where he has all his patient records.’

‘No, here – in this flat. He must have a desk, somewhere he writes letters.’

‘Yes, in there,’ said Ava, pointing through the open door at Bertram’s oak bureau standing against the wall in the sitting room. ‘But he keeps it locked.’

‘Well, then we’d better open it.’

‘How? I don’t have the key.’

‘We don’t need a key. I’m good at things like this, remember?’ said Seaforth, going over to the bureau. He squatted with his back to Ava, examining the lock. ‘Have you got a piece of wire of some kind – the thinner the better?’ he asked.

She looked around in the kitchen cupboards but despaired of finding anything until her eyes lit on the old wire soap basket by the sink.

‘Will this work?’ she asked, carrying it over to Seaforth.

‘It should do,’ he said, working at the wire with his fingers. Once he had a section free, he straightened it out and inserted it in the lock, turning it this way and that. ‘There,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Now you can look.’ He had the lid of the bureau open, resting down on the two wooden supports that he’d pulled out on either side, and he’d also opened the two drawers underneath.

She hesitated. Bertram had never let her near the bureau; he didn’t like her even to be in the same room when he was working at it. Searching it was crossing a line from which she would not be able to return. She shut her eyes, thinking of Bertram smacking her, thinking of her father falling through the air and lying dead at her feet; and she began going through the drawers.

She pulled out bundles of cards and letters tied together with rubber bands, tossing them aside without opening them, although she recognized several of the envelopes, ones that she had steamed open behind her husband’s back in a futile effort to find out what he was keeping secret from her. But the letters hadn’t explained anything – just demands for obscene sums of money from south London financial firms that she’d never even heard of. She was sure that Bertram had been lying when he blamed his debts on bad investments, and she wondered if she would ever find out the truth. Perhaps the answer was here among these letters, but there was no time to read them now.

She dug down, turning over cardboard files tied with red ribbon and a small photograph album – pictures of her wedding that made her feel ashamed of herself for a moment – and finally found the cuff link in the drawer where she’d started, the thin one at the top with the stationery. Pens and pencils; drawing pins and paper clips; and in amongst them the cuff link – it looked like it was made of onyx, with a gold crown embossed on a black background. She recognized it immediately and held it up in triumph.

‘Thank you for helping me,’ she said excitedly. ‘Bertram’s a hoarder. He never throws anything away. I should have remembered that. God, I hope it’s enough,’ she added as she went over to the telephone. ‘I’m going to call the police. I need this to be over – for my own sake as well as my father’s.’

‘Ava, wait,’ said Seaforth, putting his hand on her arm just as she was about to dial. ‘Do you think maybe you could keep me out of this, say you were alone when you found the evidence?’

‘Why?’

‘Well, it’s not the best thing in my line of work to have a lot of public exposure, and being a witness at a murder trial—’

‘Is something you’d rather avoid,’ said Ava, finishing his sentence. ‘Yes, I can understand that, and believe me, I’m sorry that I got you involved in this. But I can’t lie any more, Charles. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.’

Seaforth hesitated, as if considering a further appeal, but there was something about the steady, unwavering look in Ava’s green eyes that made him realize he’d be wasting his time. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Make the call.’

She spoke for several minutes and then replaced the receiver. ‘That was Inspector Quaid,’ she said. ‘He’s coming right over. We’re to wait here and not touch anything.’

‘Not even the whisky bottle,’ said Seaforth, raising his eyebrows in mock dismay. ‘I think we’d better put it away, don’t you? We don’t want the inspector to think that that’s what you usually drink with your breakfast.’

Ava smiled, grateful to Seaforth for defusing the tension.

CHAPTER 9 (#ulink_5649d5a0-6a59-554a-87d0-a11607fc7f83)

Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang. Ava knew straight away that it had to be Thorn. She couldn’t believe that she had forgotten he was coming, or maybe she’d unconsciously not wanted to tell Seaforth for fear that he would leave in order to avoid an encounter with his enemy. She couldn’t be sure Bertram wouldn’t come back, and she didn’t want to be left alone.

‘Who is it?’ Seaforth asked. Something about her change of expression made him think that she knew who was at the door.

‘Alec Thorn,’ she replied, looking embarrassed.

‘You’re joking,’ said Seaforth, horrified. ‘Of all people …’ He looked as if he were going to say more but stopped himself.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I called him earlier before you came. I needed help. I should have told you, but with all that’s happened since you got here, it went out of my head. I’ll see if I can get rid of him.’

The doorbell rang again and she went out into the communal hallway and opened the front door. As she’d suspected, Thorn was waiting on the step.