Fatal Inheritance Read online

  ‘I completely understand, Mr Forrester.’ The portly solicitor gazes at Clifford with a look that seems to say, How put upon we are, we men of substance. ‘But with all due respect, it is only Mrs Forrester who is required to be present when the will is read.’

  ‘Impossible. Eve is not the adventurous sort, I’m afraid, Mr Wilkes. She has led a sheltered life. Why, she rarely ventures into the centre of Sutton, let alone crosses the Channel and travels through a country where she cannot even speak the language.’

  ‘Well, that’s not exactly true.’ Eve is surprised to find herself contradicting Clifford in public.

  ‘What I mean is, I do speak French. I learned it at school. Not well, admittedly, but certainly enough to get by.’

  Mr Wilkes beams as if she has single-handedly brought about world peace.

  ‘Excellent. And all the arrangements would be made by ourselves, or by Monsieur Gaillard at the office in France. So really all you would have to do is pack a small bag and voilà!’

  ‘But this is ridiculous,’ says Clifford. ‘Surely there must be a way to just find out what it is that she has been left without having to travel to the ends of the earth. It could turn out to be anything. A painting. Or a book.’

  Clifford says the word ‘book’ as if it is the lowest life form he can conceive of.

  ‘It is true that I have no idea what it is that Mrs Forrester has been left. And, of course, it is for the two of you to decide whether you are prepared to undertake such a journey. But I do think you ought to know that Mr Lester was a very wealthy man. His grandfather made a fortune out in India and Hong Kong at the end of the last century when there were such fortunes to be made, and Mr Lester inherited a very considerable trust.’

  That night, Eve lies in bed watching Clifford hang up his trousers, aligning them perfectly along the crease before putting them away in the huge mahogany wardrobe that dominates their bedroom.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ he says, as he has been saying periodically ever since they left the offices of Pearson & Wilkes earlier that afternoon. ‘I don’t like it at all.’

  Dressed in his stiff blue pyjamas, Clifford sits on the side of the bed to wind his watch before placing it on his bedside table with the strap folded so that the face will be visible when he is lying down. He has done the same thing in the same way every single night of their marriage, but suddenly Eve feels as if she will shrivel and die if she has to watch it happen just one more time.

  When Clifford pulls back the sheet and eiderdown to climb into bed, there is a waft of cold air, and Eve instinctively moves towards him in search of warmth. She puts her feet on his. Though they are freezing, they are the only part of him not covered in cotton twill. She feels him stiffen next to her, though he doesn’t pull away as he sometimes does.

  Emboldened, she rests her hand on his chest and then, when this encounters no resistance, she allows it to stray down his body. He reaches up suddenly and switches off the light so that they are plunged into darkness. There follows the usual silent manoeuvring of pyjama bottoms and then he is inside her so abruptly she exclaims ‘Oh,’ and then just as abruptly he is finished and out again, with only a trickle on her thigh to show he was ever there.

  ‘Am I doing something wrong?’ she asks, as he pulls up his pyjama trousers and shifts away from her. ‘Is there something you would like to do differently?’

  ‘Why must you always ask these infernal questions? I’ve told you before, there is no different way. This is simply how it is.’

  Eve, being worldlier than Clifford gives her credit for, knows that this is not simply how it is. There were enough fumbled encounters with Archie in cramped cloakrooms and on deserted park benches to teach her that sex is not always something wordless and dry and over within seconds.

  They lie side by side in the dark.

  Clifford clears his throat.

  ‘I’ve been thinking. Perhaps it would do you good to take a trip down to France. Build up your confidence.’

  And though Eve wonders if he just wants to be free from this for a few days, free from her, hope shoots white-hot through her veins.

  Long after Clifford turns away from her and starts to snore, she lies awake, feeling the trickle trace its delicate course along her thigh, and imagines it is a fingertip.

  3

  31 May 1948

  LE TRAIN BLEU.

  From the moment Mr Wilkes described how she would be travelling to the French Riviera on the overnight Blue Train from Paris, Eve has been rolling the words around on her tongue, imagining how it will be. But nothing has prepared her for the sheer luxury of it. The thrill as the train pulls away from the splendid Gare de Lyon, with its high vaulted glass ceiling and bustling little cafes, taking her along with it.

  Already she feels Clifford receding into the distance. She pictures him as he was that morning, standing stiffly on the platform at Victoria Station. Having given her a long list of types to watch out for and avoid, he was now adding to it furiously, conscious of the fast-approaching departure. ‘Beware of gypsies,’ he told her. ‘The women will try to entice you by telling you how pretty you are or offering you a flower, and then, bang!’ He clapped his hands together, startling her. ‘They’ve sold you into the white slave trade.’

  ‘I really don’t think—’ Mr Wilkes had started.

  But Clifford had cut him off. ‘We are men of the world,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid my wife will make easy pickings for the wrong sort of person.’

  It didn’t matter how many times Mr Wilkes explained that someone would be there to meet her when she arrived in Cannes to take her to her hotel. Clifford remained convinced that she would be set upon by thieves and opportunists the instant she set foot off the train.

  The parting had been awkward. Mr Wilkes – having pressed upon her a packet of Polo mints, which he insisted were the latest thing, though Clifford had viewed them with the utmost suspicion – had already left to return to his office. Eve suspected he was, in his usual delicate way, giving them privacy to say their goodbyes. Not that they’d needed it. They had run dry of conversation long before the train was due to depart and eventually Clifford had said, ‘Best be getting on before it leaves without you,’ and they’d stepped towards each other and she had gone to kiss him on the lips at the exact moment he had turned his face to peck her on the cheek, so she had ended up with a mouthful of whiskers.

  ‘Do take care of yourself,’ he’d mumbled at the last minute as he handed her on to the train steps. She’d had her back to him and so it had taken a few moments for her brain to catch up with her ears, and by the time she realized what he’d said, she was already on the train and someone else was coming up the steps behind her. From her seat she’d watched him frowning down at his watch, and then looking up at the station roof. Anywhere but into the carriage where she sat smiling fixedly and wishing the train would hurry up and leave.

  How uncomfortable he is in his own skin, she’d said to herself. And instantly she’d felt a softening towards him. I should go back out. Say a proper goodbye, she’d thought. Yet she hadn’t moved. And eventually the train driver had sounded the whistle and then the train was pulling out, with Clifford still standing there stiffly, one arm raised in farewell.

  Now, ensconced in the dining car, sucking on the remnants of one of Mr Wilkes’s sweets – how very odd to find a hole right there in the middle of it – she tries to hold on to her self-reproach, having been conditioned since childhood against letting herself too easily off the hook. But already Clifford is dissolving into the air like a heat haze.

  In his place there is wood panelling and white starched tablecloths and brass hooks on the walls for bags and coats. There are waiters in white jackets and slender vases of flowers on each table, and gold and blue plates with napkins folded into the shape of scallop shells. There is the anticipatory hum of people who are already starting to think about their first al fresco cocktail, that first ray of sun.

  Earlier, she had unpac
ked her overnight bag in her sleeper compartment, astonished to find she had it all to herself. A padded bench seat that converts to a bed, engraved panelling on the walls, a narrow shelf for her things, the repetitive, comforting movement of the train wheels underfoot. There she had changed out of her travelling clothes: the heavy wool tailored jacket and skirt, the matching navy blue hat. Now she has on a brown crepe dress with a slight V at the front that comes in at the waist and then flares out over her hips. It’s not a new dress, but it is ‘quality’, as her mother was keen to impress upon her when they bought it together just before the war. So clever of you to find a dress the exact same colour of your eyes, Archie had said that first time she wore it. Now there is a darn in the hem where she fell running to an air-raid shelter.

  When clothes rationing ends she will burn that wretched pink ration book and buy a wardrobe full of dresses in rainbow colours. ‘Make do and mend’ be blowed, she thinks now, comparing her own drab appearance with that of the French mama with her two teenaged daughters on the table behind, all three of them so effortlessly chic in pastel-coloured sweaters and fitted woollen skirts. But hot on the heels of that thought comes the inevitable question of where she would wear them. And for whom?

  On the whole, though, the other diners seem to be mostly English. On the table to her right, a man who looks to be around her own age is telling a long, convoluted story to the man and woman opposite him involving a missed train and a subsequent wild night in Paris. The woman has thick blonde hair that waves around her shoulders and a pretty if sulky face. She is in a blue silk dress with long billowing sleeves that come in tightly at the cuffs and she smokes an endless stream of cigarettes through a long silver cigarette holder.

  ‘Really, Duncan,’ she says languidly, as if the mere act of opening her crimson-painted mouth to speak had quite worn her out, ‘ought you really to have to work quite so hard at being dissolute? Ought it not to come quite naturally?’

  The man next to her is slightly older. Early thirties, Eve guesses. In contrast to the first man, who has soft, undefined features and hair that is already receding but nevertheless kept defiantly long, this man is broader, more solid, with a cleft in his square chin and dark eyebrows underneath which his eyes look startlingly green. He is drinking whisky and looking around the carriage as if trying to disassociate himself from his companions. At one stage his eyes alight briefly on Eve, but they slide off her almost instantly, as if she is of no more interest than the table itself, or the chair on which she sits.

  There is a middle-aged couple at the table directly in front of Eve, picking at their poached salmon starters in companionable silence.

  ‘Won’t you join us?’ the woman says, looking up and catching Eve’s eye. ‘We have a bottle of wine, as you see, that we shall need help drinking.’

  Eve feels her cheeks grow flushed. She has always harboured a dread of being the object of other people’s pity. But the woman’s smile is kind and genuine, and besides, she cannot now think of a reasonable excuse. So she gets awkwardly to her feet and makes her way to their table. The man with the green eyes flicks his gaze over her once more as she passes.

  The couple whose table she has just gate-crashed are called Rupert and Ruth Collett.

  ‘Thank God you’ve saved us from having to spend yet another meal entirely in each other’s company,’ says Ruth.

  ‘Poor Ruth has heard all my jokes a hundred times or more,’ says her husband. ‘She drafts in complete strangers off the street to avoid being subjected to them again.’

  Rupert is big and wide-shouldered, with a kind face and hangdog eyes. By contrast, his wife is slight and nervous-looking, her face all angles and shadows, through which her smile breaks like a crack in the clouds.

  They quiz Eve about her journey and pronounce themselves fascinated by the mystery of it all.

  ‘My husband thinks I will be a target for conmen and tricksters,’ says Eve, already adopting the Colletts’ gently amused way of speaking, and only belatedly realizing that she has already gone against Clifford’s advice by telling them the truth in the first place.

  ‘This is a possibility,’ says Rupert solemnly. ‘Or, on the other hand, you could be about to discover you are Princess Galina Nikolaevna, secret daughter of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, last surviving heir to the Romanov fortune.’

  Eve pretends to weigh up the two options. ‘On the whole, I prefer the second,’ she decides.

  It is a jolly meal. The Colletts turn out to be far more knowledgeable about their destination than Eve is. Ruth pretends to be scandalized that she has not even heard of the biggest news event of the season – the wedding the following week of Laurent Martin, heir to the Martin shipping fortune, and film star Gloria Hayes. ‘Everyone who is anyone will be descending on the Riviera,’ Ruth tells her. ‘We won’t be able to move without crashing into a matinée idol or a visiting royal.’

  ‘Well, I shall be long gone by then.’ Eve smiles. ‘You will have to crash into Marlene and Greta and Wallis without me.’

  Only when Eve questions her new friends about their reasons for being on this train hurtling towards the French Riviera does the levity slip.

  ‘We’re here for our oldest boy, Leo,’ says Ruth, a strange look on her face.

  ‘Well, that’s lov—’

  ‘He was killed during Operation Dragoon in 1944.’

  ‘Oh! I’m so sorry.’

  Eve, who is in the middle of eating her dessert, puts her hand to her mouth. Like everyone else, she has had too many conversations like this. Death and loss abutting the pleasantries of everyday discourse. Yet she has never grown used to it. Has never mastered the art of negotiating other people’s tragedies over afternoon tea or in the queue for the post office.

  ‘His ’chute didn’t open, you see,’ Rupert says, helpfully filling her in. ‘Just rotten luck. The rest of that operation was a glorious success, as you probably know.’

  The Allied victory in driving the Germans out of southern France following the surprise invasion on the beaches of the Riviera was often cited as one of the turning points in the war.

  ‘So he’s buried in France?’ Eve tries to match the Colletts’ almost matter-of-fact tone, but her voice wavers.

  Rupert shakes his head.

  ‘He didn’t die immediately. He was in hospital in Marseille for a few days and then they brought him home, only he didn’t make the journey,’ he says. ‘We’re just here to get a sense of how he spent his last days. We’re going to Marseille for a night and then we’ll head east to see where he came down, and then tour around Saint-Raphaël and the beaches where the other fellows landed. Make a bit of a holiday of it.’

  ‘Leo would never forgive us if we came to the South of France and moped about wearing black and wringing our hands,’ says Ruth, as if she feels the need to justify herself. ‘Our lives are very quiet without him. Luckily we have our Jack, Leo’s younger brother. He is coming to join us, in fact, in a day or two. We’ve just left him in Paris finishing up some research for his art history degree.’

  Later, when Ruth excuses herself to go to the bathroom, Rupert says, ‘She took it very badly. Leo’s death. The two of them were so close. We wanted to make the journey before, but the railways in France were so damaged, and to be frank I’m not sure Ruth was up to it.’

  When Ruth returns, her eyes are red, but she is smiling determinedly.

  ‘We have shamefully monopolized the conversation, Rupert and I,’ she tells Eve. ‘Now I insist on knowing all about you.’

  And so Eve finds herself talking, to her surprise, about Archie.

  ‘We got engaged on my eighteenth birthday. I wanted to get married straight away. My home life was not the happiest. My father died when I was fifteen, and my mother and I were not close. But Archie said we should wait until he finished college. Then war broke out at the end of his second year and of course he enlisted. He was killed in 1940. Dunkirk.’

  Now it is the Colletts’ turn to be
dismayed. But Eve feels like a fraud accepting their sympathies. The fact is that eight years have passed since then. And she is a different person now to the young woman who’d held Archie Saunders’ hand in the back row of the Picturehouse and kissed him around the corner from her mother’s home in Banbury. These days she struggles even to remember Archie’s face. When she thinks of him he comes back to her in a jigsaw puzzle of various separate features: the thrillingly dark thick hair on his arms, his square hands that felt so rough against her own, his surprisingly high-pitched laugh.

  ‘I’m so very glad you managed to find happiness again,’ Ruth says, glancing at her wedding ring.

  Eve hopes her cheeks are not flaming.

  ‘Oh yes. I met Clifford at a lecture just after the war. Well, to be accurate, I met his mother at the lecture and Clifford came to fetch her in his car and we got talking and, well, you know.’

  She does not mention how desperate she was to make a life for herself outside her mother’s house. Or how she told herself that she would grow to love Clifford. So many men – like Leo Collett – hadn’t made it through the war; she was fortunate, she reminded herself, to have found anyone willing to marry her. ‘You’re not exactly at your peak any more,’ her mother had said when she’d dared voice her doubts. And, ‘You young women need to understand that real life isn’t like the pictures. It’s not all handsome men and violins playing.’

  Clifford, already over thirty when fighting broke out and an only child with a history of respiratory weakness, had escaped being sent overseas, serving out the war doing something in transport administration for the Royal Army Service Corps. Eve hopes the Colletts won’t ask her about it as she is embarrassingly hazy on the details. You’ d find it very dull, my dear, Clifford says whenever she broaches the subject.