lung. That man was real. He had a name: Carson, Corporal James Carson, once of the British army in France. The only problem was that he was dead.
Stephen remembered the first time he’d met Carson. How could he forget? He’d just turned thirteen and had been out running, practising for the cross-country season at his school. The man had been standing in the trees across the road from the front gate, looking up towards the house, and he had called to Stephen as he went past.
‘Cold weather to be out running, young man,’ he had said, stepping out into the road. He was wearing a heavy black army greatcoat with its collar pulled up around his ears, and yet he still seemed cold. There was a shiver in his voice, and when Stephen looked down, uncertain of what to say, he noticed a hole in the stranger’s boot.
Stephen muttered something indistinct and would have turned away if the man had not spoken again.
‘Are you the colonel’s son?’ he’d asked.
‘The colonel,’ Stephen had repeated, not following the stranger’s meaning.
‘Colonel John Cade. He used to be a military man like me. But perhaps he’s too proud to remember old comrades.’
‘Oh, yes. I’m sorry. Yes, I’m one of his sons.’ Stephen had stumbled over his words. The man had made him nervous, as if Stephen realized even then that this stranger’s coming would cause trouble.
The man hadn’t stayed long after Stephen had walked with him up the drive and knocked on the door of his father’s study. The professor had not been pleased to see his visitor. That much was obvious. Carson had raised his hand to his forehead in a mock salute, but Cade had not returned the gesture. He’d just stared angrily at Carson for a moment or two, and when he eventually spoke, it was his son he addressed, not his visitor.
‘Go to your room, Stephen,’ he’d said. There was a harsh edge to his father’s voice that had frightened Stephen, and he had backed away into the corridor. A moment later his father crossed to the door and shut it with a bang that reverberated right round the east wing of the house.
Stephen had done what his father told him to. He had gone to his room and stood by the open window, looking down into the courtyard where the rain had started to fall. And it was no more than ten minutes later that the French windows of his father’s study opened and Carson came out. Cade had stood on the threshold behind him, and Stephen had heard his father say quite clearly:
‘That’s all, Corporal. Don’t you come back here, because there’ll be no more. Do you understand me?’
‘Right you are, Colonel,’ the man had said, giving the same mocking salute that Stephen had seen earlier. Then he had walked away up the drive, making no effort to protect his head from the falling rain. Stephen had stood watching him until he disappeared from view.
Nearly a year passed before Stephen saw the man again. It was May, but he was wearing the same old greatcoat, and he had come into the courtyard shouting and waving a pistol in the air. He’d obviously been drinking. His sunken cheeks were bright red, and there was an alcoholic slur to his voice.
‘Come on out, Colonel,’ he’d shouted. ‘And bring your pretty wife too. I’ve got something to tell her about France. About being a war hero.’
Stephen had watched the pistol, wondering if it was loaded, but he never got to find out. His father came out of the front door holding a rifle and fired it twice, aiming just above Carson’s head.
The shock caused Carson to drop his pistol, and Cade walked over quite calmly and picked it up.
‘You could have killed me,’ said Carson, and Stephen, standing in the corner of the courtyard, could hear the fear and the anger equally present in the man’s voice.
‘I will. Next time I will,’ said Cade, and in one fluid movement he turned the rifle in his hands and hit Carson with the butt, full on the side of the head.
Carson fell to his knees, but amazingly the blow did not knock him out.
‘You’ll have no more from me. I won’t tell you that again,’ said Cade. ‘Now get off my property.’
Carson got up, holding his head, and began to stagger away down the drive. But after no more than a hundred yards, he turned around again.
‘Watch your fucking back, Colonel,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll find you when you aren’t looking. You’ll see.’
Stephen knew better than to ask his father about what had happened. Instead he had told his mother when she came back from the hairdresser’s in Oxford later that afternoon. Silas was away at school.
She had wanted to go to the police, but Cade wouldn’t hear of it.
‘He needed to be taught a lesson. I’ve done that, and now he won’t come here again. You can trust me, my dear.’
And Clara had left it at that. She had always trusted her husband, and there was no reason to stop now. Except that Stephen felt sure that his father did not believe his own optimism. It was only two weeks later that electronic gates were installed at the manor house and Sergeant Ritter began work on a new security system. Not that that saved Stephen’s mother.
Stephen did not want to think about that black Christmas. He did what he always did when he started to remember it. He began to count quickly, thinking about anything except that. The day the lights went out.
After the funeral he’d been sent away to school. Stephen knew what his father was thinking. He looked too much like his dead mother, and if it hadn’t been for Stephen’s Christmas present, she’d still be alive. Cade had stayed in his room when the car had come to take his sons away, and when they came back at the beginning of the holidays, Sergeant Ritter was installed in the east wing with his silent, frightened wife.
Stephen thought that Ritter would have come to live at the manor house earlier if it hadn’t been for his mother. Clara had always had an aversion to the sergeant, and it was an aversion her sons shared. Particularly Silas. Ritter was an expert at identifying a person’s weaknesses and then probing them relentlessly until his victim could stand it no more. Except that Silas never allowed his obvious anger to get the better of him. Ritter called him Silent Silas, or sometimes just Silence, and the name became increasingly appropriate.
Stephen could never forget those long horrible evenings around the dinner table at the manor house in the years after his mother died. Ritter, with his short curly black hair and his huge double chin, dominated the conversation, asking Silas when he was going to get a girlfriend, wondering why he didn’t have one. Stephen felt desperately sorry for his brother but powerless to protect him. The sergeant was too clever, too frightening.
Cade, meanwhile, would sit at the top of the table with a half-smile playing across his features, and Ritter would watch him out of the corner of his eye until the professor gave an imperceptible nod, and Ritter ended his performance for another night. Stephen wondered if Silas had noticed their father’s control over the obnoxious sergeant. He must have. Perhaps Silas did hate his father. Perhaps Swift was right.
No. Stephen was not Cain, about to spill his brother’s blood. It wasn’t Silas who’d accused him of murder, and he had no right to accuse Silas, however convenient it might be for his barrister. Stephen wished he could speak to his brother, but Swift had explained that the law said prosecution witnesses must not talk to the defendant.
Stephen
