Fatal Inheritance (16 page)

‘Was Sebastian’s father alive then? Did you know him?’

‘Why, of course he was. He only died – let me see, when was it? It was five or six years ago. Yes, he was alive when I first came, though in poor health. He suffered badly from the gout, poor man. Such twinges he used to have in his toe. I helped him bathe his feet with special salts sometimes. Terrible, the shape they had.’

‘Poor man,’ I sympathised. ‘And tell me, what did he say about Sebastian becoming a musician?’

‘He said what will be, will be, and Sebastian should do what he wanted if he could make a success of it. Mrs Cavendish didn’t like it. She would have rather her husband support her point of view, I guess, but she was never one to make any kind of quarrel, so she put the best possible face on it and let him go to the music school and didn’t say anything about it any more. I guess she became proud of him later, when he started to play concerts in front of people and all. At least she would keep the concert programmes on her dressing table.’

‘I should think so,’ I said, quite intrigued by all that I was hearing. ‘I would be proud, too, to have a son who played the violin as well as that. But if the old violinist was really not her father, I suppose I can imagine that it might annoy her if people kept saying that Sebastian’s talent came from him, since she knew it wasn’t true yet didn’t like to publicly explain why. A person can hardly go around shouting that she is adopted.’

‘I don’t know anything about her being adopted or not,’ Mrs Munn repeated.

‘I have also heard that Mrs Cavendish had a sister,’ I said.

‘A sister? That’s news to me as well. I never saw anyone from the mistress’s family. I thought it was clear there wasn’t a soul left.’

‘Well, I know there was a sister, but I don’t know if she’s alive or dead now. But I have a rather strong suspicion that Sebastian didn’t know about that sister, and that he found out that she existed just before he died.’

‘You mean, when he looked in the papers in the desk?’ said Mrs Munn with a gleam of understanding. I looked up sharply.

‘What do you mean? When did he look at papers?’

‘I noticed him looking through some of his mother’s papers before he went away again,’ she said with an air of backing down quickly. ‘It doesn’t mean anything, though. He was just looking at papers.’

‘Why do you say that he went away again? Why “again”?’

‘Well, he had already been and gone to Switzerland with his violin, for some grand concert over there.’

‘Yes, of course. But that’s only one trip.’

‘Yes. And he came back, and left again.’

I was so excited that I forced myself to remain perfectly still for several moments, not wanting her to be startled and clam up, realising she had said something very important. Her words constituted the very first clue I had yet obtained about the gap – the missing hours between his arrival in London on December 30th (assuming that he had really left Zürich on December 29th as it seemed that he had) and his death on December 31st. From December 30th to December 31st, I still had no idea what he had been doing with himself. And now it seemed that a clue had suddenly fallen into my lap. And such a simple one!

‘When did you see him looking at papers?’ I asked very quietly.

‘On the afternoon of the day before the day he died. On the 30th, it would have been.’

‘At home, at the flat?’

‘Of course, that’s where I work. Naturally he came home after his trip. I did think that after having travelled in the train all day and all night, he’d be happy to get home and just stay there, but no. He was a restless one, he was. Off again right away, the same evening, and didn’t sleep in his bed.’

‘And you don’t know where he went?’

‘No, I’ve not the least idea. How should I?’

‘Did he talk to you at all?’

‘No, only just to say “Hello, Mrs Munn, how are you today?” He didn’t even call out to me when he left. And when he saw that I saw him at the desk, he closed the study door.’

‘Tell me exactly what you remember. What time did he come in and what did he do?’

‘I can’t be so exact. He came in in the afternoon and put his hat and overcoat and his violin and his suitcase all down in the hall. I heard him come in, then I don’t know, he poured himself a drink, I think, and went about the house. I heard nothing at first, being in the kitchen in the back. But after a while, I came looking for him to ask him if he’d like a bite to eat after all the travelling. He was sitting on the floor in the study with the desk drawers all open. Mrs Cavendish keeps her desk locked, but I never thought there was anything special in there, only that she kept her money inside sometimes. Not even that she’d have private letters or anything like that. It’s always been locked; no one ever paid attention, that was just her way. Master Sebastian grew up in that house, but I don’t think he ever bothered to wonder what was in his mother’s desk, for what should be there but ordinary papers and bills and such? Still, I’ll wager he knew where the key was, for she’d open the desk sometimes to take out some money, and she used to open it up to put in his school reports when he was younger. Kids are like monkeys – they know everything about their home.’

‘You must know quite everything there is to know about that flat, too, don’t you?’ I asked innocently. ‘After so many years, I mean.’

‘I never knew where she kept the key before and never asked myself,’ she replied. ‘I never came upon it in any of my work. But I know where it is now, for Master Sebastian put it away after he put the papers back. He came out of the study and I saw him go into his mother’s room, and I went in after he had gone to check nothing was out of place and I saw that the grey hatbox wasn’t stacked straight on top of the striped one as always, so I looked in. It was right inside the ribbons of the black bonnet she wore for mourning. It was a clever place to keep the key; no one would ever have any reason to look inside one of Mrs Cavendish’s hatboxes and come upon the key by accident. I certainly never did.’

‘What did you do with the key when you found it?’

‘Why nothing, I left it there, of course.’

‘And you never told Mrs Cavendish that Sebastian had looked through the desk?’

‘Certainly not. What business was it of mine? I never even thought of it. I mean, when I saw him looking in there, all I thought was that he was needing a bit of money quickly. It didn’t seem important.’

‘And then he left?’

‘Yes. Well, first asked me to draw him a bath, and he bathed and changed his clothing. And then he left.’

‘Did he take the suitcase with him?’

‘Yes, madam, he did. And the violin, too.’

I stared at her, digesting all of this information.

‘And you didn’t tell anyone about this?’

‘No one asked me about it,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know why you’re asking me now, madam. I can’t see that it has any importance. After all, he’s dead, poor young man.’

The day after Mrs Munn’s extraordinary revelations, I came to a decision: there was something that absolutely had to be done, but I could not do it by myself. I needed help, and I thought I knew just where I might find it. At least, I thought I knew, but now I began to feel slightly lost. I went past Petticoat Lane and on down the Whitechapel Road, hesitating slightly. Where was the place exactly?

Around me bustled the life of the East End, as familiar as my own past and as foreign as an exotic, distant country. Yes, this was it. I turned onto Fieldgate Street and walked along, studying the miserable surroundings, until I came to the dingy little opening to Settles Street and stopped in front of the familiar tenement house where I had once visited David and Rivka Mendel for help in solving a case, only to discover that they were more deeply involved that I could have imagined. Rivka’s cousin Jonathan had been courting my dearest friend Emily at the time, and although her subsequent engagement to the brilliant young mathematician Roland Hudson had put a stop to that, they had remained friends, and she mentioned him and his cousins to me now and again. Emily was always busy, however, trying to accomplish the feat of writing a doctoral thesis in mathematics at the University of London – the only one that would admit women to such a course of work – and I didn’t see her often any more. Four years had gone by since those days, and I was not even sure whether Rivka and David still lived in the same flat.

A strange woman, her head wrapped up in a turban-like shawl, answered my knock at once. She was both unfriendly and suspicious at first, and did not appear to have a particularly advanced grasp of the English language, but my querying repetitions of David and Rivka’s names eventually brought forth a response. She called forth a somewhat dirty small girl wearing an oversized dress and braids, and spoke to her in her own tongue. The girl grabbed me by the hand without ceremony and towed me unresistingly out of the house, down the street and around the corner to Greenfield Street. Unable to express the full wealth of her ideas, she grinned up at me, revealing an amusing mixture of large, small and half-grown teeth, and contented herself by repeating ‘Rivka, Rivka Mendel’ and nodding vigorously. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, so I followed along, emitting a concurring ‘Rivka Mendel’ with a satisfying feeling that our communication was by no means as impossible as might have been thought.

At a distance of between five and ten minutes from the old place, she stopped at another house, somewhat less peeling and rickety than her own. The front door stood open and a number of small children ran in and out, their faces, hands and knees of divers shades of lighter and darker grey.

‘Sammy!’ shouted the spunky child holding my hand, and one boy detached himself from the group and came over to her. I stared at him, admiring the wonders of time. A long-legged and knobbly-kneed child with bright brown eyes looked up at me, and I recalled the little Samuel tumbling about his mother’s knees four years ago, now a great lad of six. A smaller boy drew up next to him, and then a third, successively decreasing in size. These three listened to the girl’s explanations for a moment, then the oldest one turned to me and confirmed the situation by enquiring in perfect English: ‘You want to see Rivka Mendel? She is my mother. Come upstairs.’

I followed him, and the two smaller lads followed me; like a small train chugging up a mountain, we mounted higher and higher until we arrived at the very top floor, where Samuel flung open the door and shouted out,

‘Someone to see you, Ima!’

‘Oh!’ She turned around from where she had been bending over a baby, and straightened up, her hand to her head, pushing stray locks underneath the scarf that covered it, tied up in a knot at her nape.

‘Vanessa!’ she cried with real emotion as soon as she saw me, and ran into my arms with such pleasure that I felt that I had almost let slip a cherished friendship by keeping away for so long.

‘Are all these your children?’ I asked, amazed as the little group milled about the room, too curious to disappear back down the stairs.

‘Yes, four of them now,’ she said proudly. ‘This is our baby Esther; a precious little girl, finally, after three great boys!’ She picked up the little creature, enveloped in a cloud of pink and frills as though to celebrate the tiny femininity of her, and gestured me to an armchair, while she set about with one hand preparing a pot of tea, chattering all the while about the family’s improved circumstances, her husband’s promotion at his bank, the new flat with its three rooms and its own water closet and bath.

‘And you, Vanessa?’ she asked with interest, setting the teapot on the table and adding teacups, spoons, milk and sugar.

I was mentally searching for some explanation as to the stubborn invariability in the number of my children, when she clarified the real import of her question by adding,

‘Are you still solving mysterious cases?’

‘Sometimes,’ I admitted. ‘In fact, to be honest, that is why I came. I need help, and I thought that your husband’s brother, young Ephraim, might be able to do something for me.’ I blushed as I spoke, for I suspected that the plan I had in mind for the said Ephraim would not please his family, were they to know about it in any detail, although it would surely appeal to the adventurous temperament I remembered him to possess from my acquaintance with him four years earlier as an 11-year-old imp of exceptional capabilities.

A look of surprise crossed Rivka’s face, and she reflected for a moment, then said,

‘Well, I must say that I cannot imagine anything that would please him more.’ But she didn’t look absolutely delighted, and went on, ‘I must tell you that Ephraim has never forgotten you and your work and the help he gave you, and ever since that time he has nourished the desire to become a detective. David does not really approve of such intentions on the part of his young brother. He would much prefer him to start work as an errand boy in his own bank, and rise through the ranks. But he says that Ephraim’s fantasy will probably pass before he is an adult, and, at worst, he says it is surely better than the professions of most of the people in this part of town, who run about the streets of London with boxes, hawking everything from oranges to spectacles, and never knowing if they will sell enough to feed their family on any given day. Still, though, I’m afraid David won’t much like your idea.’ She stopped and sipped tea, then added, ‘And yet, finding out the truth as you do is a
mitzvah
. An act of pure goodness.’

Another moment of reflection, during which I remained prudently silent, and she finally said, ‘I think the fairest thing would be for you to talk to Ephraim yourself. He will be home from school at any moment. In fact, he may be home already if he has not dallied too much with his friends on the road. Shall I send Samuel to fetch him? Or perhaps we could simply walk there together? It is not far, and it will provide little Esther with an outing.’

She wrapped the baby up well – clearly there was no such item as a perambulator anywhere about, nor would it have been possible to negotiate one up and down four flights of stairs – and carried her in her arms, leaving her three tiny ones under the supervision of the oldest boy of the group at play about the doorway. She bounced the child gently up and down as we walked along the lane and around the corner, and turned right and left amongst ever more of the gloomy, dirty and rickety tenement houses that lined the road. Even the flowerpots in front of the occasional window, that must have cheered the miserable aspect of it all with a few bright-coloured geraniums in the spring, now held nothing but frostbitten, blackened stalks, and the roadway itself was covered with traces of slush, grit and unidentifiable filth. Yet the streets were very lively, filled with people, young and old, bustling about their activities; some stood at the doorways of their grimy shops and others wheeled carts, all calling out their wares; adults were making purchases and arguing about the prices, children were running about, playing, getting in the way and occasionally snatching a fruit that had rolled upon the ground with a gesture as quick as a monkey’s, to the tune of shouting and scolding from the annoyed vendor.

Eventually we reached the house where Ephraim still lived with his older brother and their mother, Rivka’s mother-in-law, and knocked at their door, from behind which enough sounds could be heard to tell us that more than one person was certainly at home.

The door was flung welcomingly wide, and Ephraim’s freckled face looked out. It burst into a spontaneous grin of pleasure at the sight of me, which unmistakably corroborated Rivka’s assertions. The impish child had grown up into a red-haired young man of fifteen, taller than me now in his stockinged feet, and with something of the relaxed pleasantness of his brother David, but more of a twinkle in his laughing eyes.

‘Mrs Weatherburn!’ he shouted, half at me, half back over his shoulder at the other occupants of the flat.

‘Mrs Weatherburn wishes to speak to you particularly,’ said Rivka in a low voice, glancing at me. ‘I think it might be better if she could speak to you alone, rather than go inside now. I will visit with your mother for a while, if that is all right; not for too long, however, since I’ve left the boys at home.’ Ephraim caught on instantly, pulled on his boots, leaving the laces dragging, and ushered Rivka inside with her baby – then he hurried onto the landing, pulling the door closed behind him.

‘Better not say anything to my mother,’ he said, ‘she’ll ask where I’m going and all. Oh, I’m pleased to see you again! I have so many things to ask you! But do tell me – how are you? What have you come for? You look very well indeed. Do tell me why you have come? Is it another mystery? Is it?’

He led me down the stairs and out of the building as we spoke, and we walked along the road. In spite of the crowd and the cold, it was certainly the best possible place for a discreet conversation, as no one had a spare moment to notice or overhear a thing, not even to mention that few of the people surrounding us had the good fortune to speak English as well as Ephraim. Like his brothers, he had been awarded a scholarship to a regular British day-school, to which his mother had wisely elected to send him instead of keeping him at the local institutions where the children studied nothing but the Bible and the laws of the Jewish religion, entirely in their own language. In my opinion this rendered them unfit to ever emerge from their own miserable corner of London, which resembled nothing more than an Eastern European village transported bodily across the continent and set down unexpectedly on the edge of the metropolis.

‘I do need help,’ I said, ‘and I cannot think of anyone who could possibly do what I need, except for you.’ I stopped and purposely heaved a melancholy sigh. ‘But I am afraid you will not want to do it. It is a problem.’

‘Oh, but I will!’ he said eagerly. ‘Of course I will! Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Because,’ I said, ‘it is unfortunately something that might appear to be both bad and somewhat dangerous. But it’s in a good cause.’

‘Oh,’ he said, very slightly crestfallen. He appeared to reflect for a moment, and I could hardly blame him. Surely if one is going to launch oneself into bad and dangerous activities at someone else’s behest, one wishes to be certain that the instigator is trustworthy. Our previous experiences together had left me with a great stock of moral credit within the Mendel family, but still, that was four long years ago and they knew very little about me. Ephraim had doubtless been brought up with strict moral values. I awaited his final decision with interest.

‘But you will tell me exactly what it is all about?’ he finally said, a little meekly.

I laughed.

‘It’s a bargain. I will, and, moreover, you are only to do what I ask if you are as convinced as I am that it is necessary, possible, and ultimately not harmful,’ I said. ‘What do you want to know first: the what, or the why?’

‘The what,’ he responded at once. ‘And probably I’d better know the when, as well!’

I hesitated. In spite of my innermost conviction of the justice, the necessity and the importance of what I was about to propose doing, some fundamental inhibition still prevented me from feeling quite open and above board about going so far as to rope a young and perfectly innocent boy into my plans. Yet I felt it really could not go wrong – at least, hardly – and the danger was only slight. A vision of Ephraim tearing down the streets of London pursued by bobbies shouting and waving their sticks streamed through my head.

‘If I were to ask you to commit a small crime in a just cause,’ I said, ‘which would very soon be made good, and in which no one is hurt, would you be able to consider it?’

‘Why not, if no one is the worse for it?’ he said cheerily. ‘What kind of crime?’

‘I need you to snatch an elderly lady’s bag and run away with it as fast as you can,’ I told him, ‘to a secret place which I will tell you, where I will be waiting for you. In her bag is a key to a flat. If you are willing to help me, we will go there together and you will stand guard at the door while I search inside as fast as I can.’

A frank mixture of astonishment, shock, dismay and admiration gleamed into his eyes.

‘Oh my,’ he remarked. ‘But you will you tell me what you’ve found, won’t you? But no, before I ask that, I should ask whether you mean the poor old lady to get her things back?’

‘Certainly. As soon as I am finished, you will take the bag to the lady’s house and give a penny to a small boy to carry it in to her, keeping an eye on him to see that he does it at once. And I will put something inside the bag to compensate her for the disagreeable experience. But we must make the search directly we get the key, for although I don’t think she would go to the police, she might just do so if an officer happened to be passing by on his beat. And if she tells him that she is frightened because she has a key to this flat in her bag and it was just stolen, he might rush there post-haste to check for thieves. I’m a little worried about that, and so we’ll have to work incredibly fast.’