The Inheritance by Simon Tolkien

they left, the Germans had taken the owner of the château and his wife into the church that was no more than two hundred yards from the house. There was an old family servant there too, and the Germans had shot all three of them. Then they had set the house on fire and an old woman, perhaps the wife of the servant, had died in the flames. The Germans had even shot the dog. This was how they had repaid their hosts’ hospitality. They’d been thorough as always.
    The report had been written by Cade and cosigned by another officer whose signature Stephen couldn’t read. Attached to it was a shorter handwritten document bearing the signature of a Charles Mason, Army Medical Officer. He stated simply that he’d been called to the church at Marjean by Colonel John Cade on August 28, 1944, and been asked to examine three dead bodies dressed in civilian clothing and located in the crypt. He hadextracted bullets from each of the deceased and was able to say that they were of German origin, fired from Mauser pistols of the type then in use by the German army.
    The documents seemed entirely authentic, and they were enough for Stephen. He wanted to believe his father, and so he did believe him. He had stayed on at school for an extra year and had got a place at New College to study history, and his father seemed proud of his achievement. The start of term was only two months away, and Stephen was busy planning how to decorate his rooms. Outside it was summer and everything seemed full of hope and possibility.
    But Stephen’s mood didn’t last. One night less than a week later, he had just got into bed and turned out the light when Silas knocked on his door.
    Perhaps if Stephen had known where they were going, he would have refused to follow his brother down the west-wing stairs, out through the door into the night, and round the back of the house. But Silas’s air of mystery drew Stephen forward, and when they got close to the study window, Silas’s hand on his arm meant that Stephen would have had to struggle to get himself free. The window was open, and Stephen was not prepared to risk discovery. And he needed to hear what Ritter and his father were saying. They were talking about the letter.
    One time only Stephen raised his head above the windowsill to look in, before Silas pulled him back. There was no light in the room except from the green reading lamp on his father’s desk. Ritter and Cade sat in the leather-backed armchairs in the centre of the room with their heads close together. They were talking about what to do, and it didn’t take Stephen long to realise that he had been lied to. The men inside the room were cold-blooded killers, and they were about to kill again.
    “There wasn’t anyone else, Colonel. You know that as well as I do.” It was Ritter talking. His voice was soft but pressing, with the usual tone of false jocularity entirely absent. It made Stephen feel cold inside, even though the night was warm.
    “I hope you’re right.” Cade sounded anxious, petulant almost, like a man who craves reassurance but can’t accept it when it’s offered to him.
    “It’s the house that worries me, Reg,” he went on after a moment. “You should have searched it before, when you got the book.”
    “Maybe I should’ve done. But you wanted to get them in the church straight away. It was your call.”
    “I wasn’t going to stand there asking them questions out in the open.”
    “And the church was safe. You knew that because you’d been there before.” Stephen sensed a slight impatience in the sergeant’s voice as if he’d been over this ground many times before. “The point is that it didn’t make any difference,” he went on after a moment. “No one left the house while we were in the church or Carson would’ve seen them. It wasn’t that dark, and he had a view of all the exits. I asked him about it afterward, and he had no reason to lie.”
    “He had no reason to shoot me.”
    “That was