‘You’ll just have to live with it,’ she said, and spooned more risotto into her own mouth.
She wondered privately if she should tell him the truth. They were both grown-ups now, after all. The truth wouldn’t have hurt him, but she knew it would bring acute embarrassment to her relatives. Ethan was not her uncle, she was not his niece. To be exact, they weren’t even remotely related. She and her mother were the only ones who knew that, and what her mother had told her on her deathbed had been said in strict confidence. In the end, she decided against telling him, for now at least. What harm could it do to let him go on believing they shared the same bloodline? The rest of the family thought so, and she did not relish the thought of disenchanting them.
About halfway through the meal, after Sarah had put second helpings on both their plates, she put her fork and spoon down and looked directly at Ethan.
‘Ethan, what will happen to Great-Granddad’s will? I mean, now there’s this murder inquiry taking place.’
He frowned and put his implements down as well.
‘I’m not quite sure,’ he said. ‘The study had been ransacked. Someone had spent time in there looking for something, maybe money, maybe something else. It’s far too early to say. If the will was still in there, it’s probably in the hands of the police. If not, it may have been among the things that were taken by the intruder. Or intruders, it’s too early to know anything definite. It’s not really important, though, not until the investigation’s fully under way. I don’t think anyone much wants to think about their inheritance at the moment.’
She blinked and picked up her fork, only to play with the food in front of her.
‘It was just…’ She paused, as if trying to put some thoughts together. ‘Ethan, did he ever mention his will to you?’
He shook his head.
‘Not that I remember. I wouldn’t worry about it, though, Gerald was always pretty careful about that sort of thing. He had good lawyers, as I remember, some firm over in Gloucester.’
‘Markham and Pritchett. They used to handle stuff for my father.’
He smiled.
‘Mine too. I think they were solicitors for the whole family. I’ll get in touch with them after the break. They’re bound to have at least one copy in their offices.’
‘The thing is, Ethan, Great-Granddad said something to me about three years ago, when I was still working on my PhD. He said that if anything happened to him, I had to find his will, that there was another document with it, a letter to me. He showed it to me once, but it was folded up so I could only see the outside. He wouldn’t say what was in it, but I gathered it wasn’t to do with an inheritance. It was important, though, he made a point of stressing that. He said I had to get hold of this letter the moment anything happened, that it contained instructions.’
‘Instructions? What about?’
‘That’s what I don’t know. Look, I’m probably not even in the will, or if I am I must be pretty far down the pecking order. But I have a funny feeling about this.’
‘Funny?’
‘Funny peculiar. I didn’t take it too seriously at the time, but when I think back, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t referring to his inevitable death a few years down the line. There was something in his manner, in the tone of his voice: as if he was worried that something unnatural might happen to him. And…well, it has done, hasn’t it? I think we should look for it. I think we should do that right away.’
6
Voices from the Dead
Over the next hour, Ethan made several telephone calls. He spoke to his father, to his uncles, to Bob Forbes at police headquarters, and to his grandfather’s solicitors. A copy of the will was with the solicitors, but no letter for Sarah. The police had found neither a will nor a letter in Gerald’s study.
Ethan found Sarah and explained that he’d drawn a blank.
‘Then it has to be somewhere else,’ she said. ‘Any ideas?’
He shook his head.
‘What about the library?’ she asked.
‘The library?’
‘You know, the room with books in it. Along the walls. On shelves.’
‘Oh, that room. Sounds more like your preserve than mine.’
‘Exactly. All I want is an hour or two in there, Ethan. Half an hour. I think the letter may be important. Your police friends won’t know what to look for, but I may be able to recognise it.’
It took an hour to persuade him to take her to the hall, help her slip beneath the yellow and black crime scene tape, and open the door with his personal key.
‘This is very irregular,’ he said. But she had piqued his curiosity. The letter just might hold something of relevance. So long as they kept away from the study, there was little risk of disturbing anything; the house had been filled with people for two days, and the crime scene officers had concentrated their efforts around the room where the murders had taken place.
They started with a stack of box files filled with journal articles, newspaper clippings, and an occasional letter. Ethan had to nudge Sarah every few minutes when, finding something of interest, she would stop searching and start reading. They moved on to two tall filing cabinets. The first contained records of book purchases, letters from antiquarian and modern booksellers, and correspondence with authors and editors. Ethan glanced through these, stunned to find his grandfather so assiduous in his studies. The second cabinet was stuffed with objects of an archaeological nature. Sarah’s eyes opened wide as she took in the range of them. Ethan almost had to drag her away.
‘Sarah, there’s nothing here, nothing addressed to you anyway. Wait till the will is opened, it may say something in there about it.’
‘Rubbish. You spoke to Markham from the solicitors, and he knew nothing about it. Either it’s in the study or whoever killed Great-Granddad and his friend took it. By the way, has anything been done to contact his family? The other man, I mean.’
‘Max Chippendale? Yes, I told Bob Forbes all I knew. He has Max’s bags, and he’s made enquiries. None of us knew anything about the man, except that he’d served in the war with Granddad. Tough old birds that lot. Desert Rats or something.’
‘Long Range Desert Group. You should know that. Tougher than the Desert Rats. Harder than the SAS. No wonder the ones who got through lived long lives.’
It was cold, and they decided to go back to the lodge for coffee and a plate of Mrs Salgueiro’s home-made cranberry shortbread. Ethan had lit a log fire earlier in the drawing room. While he tended it, Sarah made a coffee for him and a strong hot chocolate for herself. The shortbread was in an old tin with a tartan pattern. She remembered it from childhood visits.
‘We’re getting low on milk,’ she said, putting down the tray. ‘We’ll have to get some in the village tomorrow. Or drive into Gloucester.’
They sat in front of the fire, watching the flames lick through the beech logs, their appetite unquenchable. They talked again, less animated now after their lack of success in the library, but more deeply, more intimately than before. He spoke of how he’d met his future wife Abigail, the shortness of their courtship and the brevity of their life together, of the sleepless nights and empty days, of blind dates organised by well-meaning friends, none of which had gone to a second innings, of his steady recovery of a life of sorts, a life without a soul.
And she spoke of loves lost, of a life lived through books and periodicals, of academic colleagues who had never become companions, of sexual adventures that had drifted into animosity in a matter of weeks, of a heart that longed for something more than parchment or ink or voices from the dead.