Inheritance

by Ellen Kefferty

  “Aren’t I allowed?” Edith cocked her head to one side. “You danced with Sarah!”

  “Not like you were dancing with Samuel!” Andrius grabbed Edith by the hand and dragged her out into the hallway. A single waiter darted away as he heard their raised voices. “Everybody could see how you were dancing with him!”

  Edith turned her head away in silence and jerked her hand from Andrius’s grasp. “Let go of me!”

  He raised his hands, took a step back, and straightened his bow tie. He put his hands on his hips and tapped a foot. She rolled her eyes and sighed. This was absurd.

  “What do you mean, Andrius? What do you mean that everybody could see how we were dancing?” She wasn’t going to explain and apologize just because he had thrown the accusation.

  “The way he was holding you, so...,” English did not usually fail Andrius, but there were still some words he had to search for, “...snug.”

  Edith snorted inadvertently. Andrius wrinkled his lip and a stroke of meanness crossed his face.

  “It looked like you were his wife! It looked like you two had gotten wed today!”

  Edith pushed the flat of her hand to Andrius’s chest. She shoved through and toward to the stairs.

  With her foot on the first step she span round to deliver her final blow. “Well, I’m sure as hell not your wife!”

  With that she began to climb the stairs. Andrius followed after her. Neither said a word until they reached the first landing. Edith felt his hand on her arm once more. Again she shook it off and kept climbing.

  “No, just don’t.” She waved backward dismissively.

  “But where are you going?”

  “Nowhere. Don’t follow me!”

  “I will do if I like.”

  At this Edith shouted, though without looking at Andrius, “You always do what you like! You’re an ass, do you know that?”

  Stunned, Andrius stopped then shook his head and shrugged. “I’m not an ass! Why am I an ass?”

  By now Edith had reached the top. She turned to face Andrius. What was left of her mascara had begun to run under new tears. “Do you know why Samuel held me like that? Do you want to know?”

  “Go on. Tell me.”

  “He was scared. Somebody is killing members of his family and we don’t know why. Somebody might want to kill him, and we don’t know why. This should be the happiest day of his life but he’s in fear of his life. Didn’t you realise that he’s terrified?”

  “No.” He couldn’t look at her. She had a point. “I should have thought have thought of that.”

  “Well I did. And I’m trying to do what little I can for him.” Edith raised a hand to her chest. “Not that there’s fuck all I can do. I hardly know where to start. I’m out of my depth, Andrius. I’m out of my fucking depth and am just doing what I can.”

  “By holding him like that on the dancefloor?”

  “No!” Edith held a hand up ready to slap Andrius, only to realize he was much too far away. Her hand lowered. “You’re drunk. Piss off.”

  He ignored her. “Where are you going?”

  “I said piss off.”

  “I’m not going.” He reached forward. “I’m going to help you. You need my help.”

  “They’re staying in this house tonight, their wedding night. I’m going to look like I’m doing something. Search their rooms. Give them some peace of mind.

  “Do you want to help me? Do you want to make yourself useful? If not, just go back to the party and find some bint who will dance with you!”

  Andrius put his hands in his pockets, tilted his head, and put on his most sorry–looking face. “Well...” He kicked his heels waiting for Edith to accept his glum face as sufficient apology.

  She didn’t respond.

  “Hey, what’s this on the carpet?” Andrius bent down and picked up a red petal, happy to change the subject.

  Edith looked up and down the landing. “The petals go to that door. It’s probably the main chamber where Samuel and Sarah are staying. It’s meant to be romantic.” Then, as an afterthought, because she wasn’t as angry as she wanted to be, she added, “Asshole.”

  “Hmm.” Andrius prodded the petals with the toe of his shoe, ignoring her final word. After a moment he noticed that Edith had walked to the door of the main chamber. He swiftly caught up. Her hand ready to turn the handle.

  The door didn’t open. Edith felt Andrius’s hand on hers, grabbing it and the handle tight. He stood behind her, his head to one side of hers. He breathed out deeply and then slowly whispered in her ear.

  “When we argue, you are beautiful. I want you.”

  Edith took a sharp breath and was on the brink of speech when she felt herself fall sideways. Andrius’s arms pressed beneath her back and legs. She squealed. “Hey!”

  “You could be my wife,” Andreas ignored Edith’s shock, “and this is how I would carry you on our wedding night.” He kicked open the door and bore Edith into the main chamber.

  The chamber was dimly lit. The pale blue walls were lined with lithe French furniture. The cerise carpet sat thick on the floor and the curtains hung like giant sails. The trail of roses crept toward the middle of the room where a four–poster bed draped in old pink and mounded with pillows stood waiting.

  Andrius stepped confidently toward the marital bed with Edith in his arms.

  “Andrius, put me down!” She beat lamely on his arms.

  “No.”

  “Put me down right now!”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “We can’t do this!” Edith began to laugh.

  “We can. I know you want to.”

  As he reached the edge of the bed he threw Edith down upon it with a great billowing of the sheets and strewing of pillows. She rested on an elbow watching Andrius climb onto the bed. She made no attempt to escape.

  “Andrius...”

  “That is my name.”

  Edith laughed. Then she stretched out her arms toward him. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Andrius bent over Edith and kissed her face. She fell backward and he ran his hands over her body. Edith writhed in her anger, saying nothing. It was only when Andrius’s reached the hem of her dress did she protest again.

  “You’re not listening to me.”

  “Okay,” Andrius got off the bed and stood up straight, “I’ll listen to you. We trust each other, and I would never do anything to throw that away.”

  “Not even dance with the most beautiful woman so that others comment?”

  “I didn’t dance with you.”

  “Andrius!” Edith threw a pillow at him. “Every woman is the most beautiful on her wedding day.”

  “In that case, I can’t wait to see you on your wedding day.”

  “I doubt my husband would invite you.” Edith lay back and laughed.

  Within moments Andrius was on top of her, kissing her all over.

  “God, I want you. You don't know it.” His words lost between the caresses of his lips. “Just how much I want you.”

  Edith fumbled at the belt of his trousers. Andrius pulled up her dress and kissed her thighs. He reached for her underwear.

  “Andrius?”

  “Yes?” Andrius paused.

  Edith left him hanging for tortured seconds. A sweet little punishment to put herself back in control. She blinked.

  “Turn out the light.”

  Andreas reached over to the lamp on the table by the side of the bed. As soon as it was out he returned to the only thing he cared about at that moment. Edith twisted as he kissed her, catching his kisses on the neck and the face. She sighed with the thought that she was betraying her promise by doing this here and now. But she encouraged Andrius with little words lightly whispered, conspiring with him to defile the nuptial bed.

  Edith groaned, then, suddenly, “Wait, stop!”

  “Huh?” Andrius did as he was told but protested, “Stop, stop?”

  “I just can’t.” She pushed her dress back do
wn. “I promised Samuel I would do something, anything, yet here I am breaking that promise.” Edith reached out and switched the lamp back on.

  Andrius stood up once again. He opened his mouth to speak.

  Glass shattered. A soft thud in the far wall.

  “Huh?” Andrius turned to the window.

  Another shattered pane. Andrius fell to the floor.

  “Andrius!” Edith shrieked. She crawled from the bed and slid to the ground. Her hands groped his body, grasping at his chest and limbs. Looking for blood. Looking for wounds.

  “Just get down!” Andrius yanked Edith’s head down. “I’m okay.”

  They lay together in silence, breath bated.

  No more shots came. Footsteps pounded on the stairs outside.

  The door flung open to reveal a security guard. He immediately looked down at Andrius and Edith on the floor, only half visible in darkness. Before the guard could speak the manager arrived. He reached for the main light.

  “What’s...? What’s going on?”

  Andrius and Edith sat up and looked to one another, unsure who should speak first. Unknowing glances bounced round the room. Before anybody could speak further a waiter arrived at the door, followed closely by Hugh Mountgrace. Then by Samuel, who pushed his way to the fore.

  Hugh grabbed Samuel by the upper arm. “Samuel. You don’t need to be here. You shouldn’t have followed me.” He pleaded to no response.

  Samuel surveyed the scene, unable to understand what he saw.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” He glanced between Edith and Andrius. He held out a hand to encourage them to speak. It trembled.

  Andrius pointed to the glass on the floor beneath the curtains, still without words.

  “You broke the window?” The manager was angry but uncertain. “Why did you break the window?”

  “No.” Edith shook her head. “No. It was...there were gunshots. Somebody shot at us.” She could hardly believe the words as they fell from her mouth.

  “What?” The manager looked at Samuel hoping that he, or somebody, would take control.

  Samuel’s mouth hung open.

  “What nonsense.” Hugh stepped toward Edith. “What are you even doing here, in this room?” He rested his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Samuel, you should rejoin the party. Look, this is all just nonsense.”

  Ignoring Hugh, the security guard strode forward and drew the curtains. Two panes, near the centre of the window, were shattered.

  Samuel ran his hand through his hair. Everybody wanted him to speak, though they had no idea what he might say. He mouthed a solitary word, ‘No’, which went unheard. He turned to face the door, away from the others. Shaking his head, he finally spoke. “No. Just an accident. I’m sure.”

  Edith motioned Andrius to act. He stood and walked to the wall opposite the window. The pale blue walls showed the holes clearly, each one ringed with a ragged fray of paper. With a finger Andrius dug into one of the holes and teased out the mangled remains of a bullet. He held it in his open palm and thrust it, almost cruelly, under Sam’s eyes.

  “No.” Samuel said once again, calmly and without emotion. Then he fell to the floor in a heap.

  Day 12: Sunday 12 November

  “Dad! Somebody tried to kill me, Dad!”

  Edith crouched against the far wall of her father’s room. Stood. Paced. Then squatted in her former position. The nervous excitement was unbearable. The need to get up. To run. To work away the fear of the night’s near miss.

  “Sweetheart, nobody tried to kill you,” Ben spoke between mouthfuls of his egg breakfast, “they tried to kill Samuel and his darling bride.”

  “That’s not the point, is it? I could have died had that bullet hit me!” She banged her head against the wall.

  “It is the point,” Ben paused for another mouthful, “even you should be able to understand that. It’ll do no good to get frustrated.”

  Edith screamed through her teeth. Her head plunged into her hands.

  “Look, you’re not dead, right? And nobody was trying to kill you. Not you specifically. So there’s no reason why you should be in harm’s way again, okay?” Ben pointed his cutlery at Edith in the dark.

  Edith stuck a finger up at her finger and mouthed, ‘bastard’. She had had enough. “I’m in harm’s way so long as I’m investigating this case, aren’t I?”

  “Well,” Ben privately conceded that she had a point. Then took it back. He scratched his head, sniffed twice, then found his answer in the cheapest way possible, “Sunny would never have worried about something like this. She would just take it as it came. She was such a good girl while she was working with me.”

  Edith stormed out the room, slamming both doors of the light–lock. She sat outside on the landing, staring into the long mirror and clenching her fists. She knew she could never match up to Sunny. She didn’t need it using as a weapon against her. How could a father make such a low blow against his daughter, again and again?

  She ran down the stairs and into the lounge. She kicked a waste bin and sent it flying into the far wall. She collapsed on the sofa.

  Was the only reason she agreed to this case to prove she could match up to Sunny? And who was she proving this to, her or her father? She had matched up her sister in one obvious way: she wanted nothing to do with that lump of shit upstairs. She would have run away too had she been brave enough.

  An hour passed before Edith was calm enough to re-enter her father’s room. What she had to say needed to be said without anger. Still she hesitated to speak. The knife she wielded would cut both ways.

  Courage found her.

  “Sunny told me this would happen,” Edith let the words linger while he understood that it was his beloved Sunny who had betrayed him, “she said that if I took one of your cases I would end up dead.”

  Ben raised his eyebrows, “Did she now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, she’s not dead, is she?”

  “No,” Edith had already gone beyond the bounds. It wouldn’t matter how much further she went, “but she’s dead to you.”

  Ben said nothing. Minutes passed in the dark and the silence. Edith thought she could hear him crying. Not sobbing, that would have been too obvious, but the very sound of tears tracking down his cheeks. She could have turned on a light at that very moment and exposed him, satisfied of the hurt she had caused. There were no lights and she was, deep down, a coward.

  “I’ll be better soon,” Ben broke the silence with his delusion, “then I’ll take over. You won’t be in harm’s way much longer. I promise you.”

  Edith would not answer. She didn’t believe it any than her father believed it himself.

  “Do you still have some leads to be getting on with?” Ben hadn’t been listening to what his daughter was saying. Only the surface words had meaning. Everything below them was opaque.

  “I quit.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not doing this anymore, Dad. I quit.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t give a fuck.”

  “You shouldn’t speak to your father like that.”

  Edith rose. She walked over to the windows and punched the shutters. She leant her head against them. “I think I’ve lost the plot.”

  “Well, I suppose it must have been stressful.”

  Edith snorted.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

  Ben kept his silence. He let his daughter speak.

  “I don’t understand what happened last night. I don’t even know what happened.

  “There were two shots. I remember that. And then everybody came into the bedroom. After Sam fainted the manager had the waiter usher me and Andrius into a kitchen away from the party. He said we were to wait there for the police. I’m not sure what happened to Sam.

  “I remember the waiter kept offering us drinks to calm our nerves. I recall Andrius saying, ‘I’m quite sober now.’ I bet he was.

  “After god knows ho
w long the manager appeared and said we could leave. We were so desperate to escape we never questioned the offer. I never spoke to the police.”

  Ben raised an eyebrow. “The police were never called?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t call them.”

  “That’s a bit...what’s that noise?”

  Edith’s phone was ringing out on the landing. She slipped through the lightlock and stood outside speaking. She returned to the room after a few minutes.

  “That was Sam. He’s at the airport. He wants to talk to me right away. He wouldn’t say what it was about.”

  “I thought you wanted out?”

  “I owe him.” Edith opened the first door. “Don’t think that I owe you.”

  Edith strolled along the travelator on the skylink to the airport’s terminals, her mobile in hand. There was a message from Sam. ‘I’ve bought you a ticket to Dublin so you can come to Terminal 1. You don’t need to get on a plane, just get through security.’ She had expected to find him hidden in the corner of a coffeeshop or secreted in a private lounge on the landside. He had instead sought the reassurance of airside security. He would be as safe and as inviolable as the planes.

  Edith reached the end of the travelator. The giant check–in hall of Terminal 1 opened up before her. She sighed. Had she known a free ticket to Dublin awaited she would have brought an overnight bag. A holiday would be welcome. Being shot at tended to suggest a long break far away.

  She dawdled at the back of the hall, reading the information Sam had sent. The airline, the flight, the booking number. It didn’t leave for three hours. No need to rush. She forgot for a moment that she would never board the flight.

  Nobody wanted to kill her, she knew that. Yet it was hard to shake the feeling less than a day later that she had dodged a worse fate. Accidental murder wasn’t an oxymoron. It was the kind of mistake that made even the murderer regret. Being killed for no reason had neither tragic meaning nor pathetic power, it was a damn shame and a shrug. Maybe Samuel would disagree—somebody really did want to kill him—but at least he had the crumb of comfort that to somebody, somewhere, it made sense. It was part of a plan, even if it was a plan that nobody wanted to be part of.