Angell, Pearl and Little God

by Winston Graham

  She shivered and went in. Angell was sitting crouched in his coat in the drawing-room, his shoulders hunched. Since those frantic twenty minutes after the shot, while Godfrey cooled between them on the floor, they had had no private conversation. Since those frenetic moments when she had taken charge.

  She said: ‘Let me get you to bed.’

  He did not reply, might not have heard. His thick hair was over his brow.

  After a minute she came and sat down opposite him. ‘Wilfred, what do you want me to do?’

  He looked at her, and it was as if Godfrey’s brief angry presence was still in the house.

  ‘Until the trial,’ she said. ‘What will you do?’

  He shrugged. ‘ I’ll go in the Clinic for a week or so. I’m on the verge of complete breakdown.’

  ‘Shall I get you tea now or a drink?’

  ‘I’ll never forgive you,’ he said, the words coming thickly in a froth to his lips. ‘Never as long as I live.’

  She folded her hands. Her features were wan, shadowed by the afternoon light, a firm-cut, austere mask. ‘Do you want me to leave you right away or to stay on until after the trial?’

  Before he could answer the telephone rang. She went into the hall and lifted the receiver. Presently she came back. ‘The Sunday Gazette.’

  ‘You didn’t speak to them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The scavengers of the press. The jackals. The carrion. They only foregather at such times. Sitting round howling to the moon …’

  There were things in the room needed tidying. After a sleepless night she had not been able to concentrate this morning. Upstairs, the rug had been taken away, and Mrs Jamieson had said she would try to get the stains off the wood of the floor. Godfrey. It had all happened in a few seconds. Feather-weight. Blown like a feather out of the world.

  She said suddenly: ‘If you think I invited him here yesterday you’re mistaken. That was all true, what I told the police. I can show you the scratches and bruises on my arms.’

  ‘I shall never forgive you,’ he whispered with hate and horror. ‘All this: I can’t ever forgive you for what you’ve done.’

  She paused in the mindless occupation of picking up a used ashtray. ‘Tell me, Wilfred. Just say. I’ll do whatever you say. Do you want me to leave at once, tonight?’

  He hesitated on the brink of assent: it wouldn’t do: his personal safety was at stake. ‘No.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘It would give the wrong impression. It would be wrong until after the trial.’

  ‘All right. Whatever you say.’

  ‘There’s no other way. Now that you’ve …’

  ‘Now that I’ve what?’

  ‘Told this story. Imposed this story on me.’

  ‘Wasn’t it the best? You didn’t want it to come out that you’d killed him as a betrayed husband, did you? And with your own gun.’

  ‘What did you do with the other packet of bullets for the Smith & Wesson?’

  ‘I pushed them down the toilet. I dropped them in and then pushed them out of sight with the brush.’

  ‘Do you realize what would have happened to your story if the police had found them?’

  ‘But they didn’t, did they.’

  He listened to this as to the voice of deception, the voice of the serpent.

  ‘And anyway,’ she said, ‘it’s not true – it wouldn’t have been true that you shot him because you were a – a betrayed husband. You did kill him in self-defence, because you thought he was going to attack you.’

  He levered himself out of the chair, lumbered like an old man into the kitchen, poured himself half a tumbler of whisky, splashed it with soda. At this moment he hated her almost as much for the way she had acted after Godfrey’s death as for the rest. Reeling as he was, fainting and retching with horror and nausea, she had come at him, dominating him, directing him, demanding information of him, telling him what to do, while he lay inert and only half conscious on the bed. Whose revolver was it? Who knew he’d got it? Where had he bought it? How did you put fingerprints on it?

  Today his acute legal brain had partly regained its equilibrium, and all day it had been busy finding variants of justification and defence; but all, all were restricted, circumscribed by the story she had told and insisted that he tell. All must conform to that. It might be, at least it might seem, that she had had the idea of saying that the revolver was Godfrey’s in order to save him, Wilfred, from infinitely worse trouble. If she succeeded, if they succeeded, and the police were proceeding on this assumption, it was indeed a brilliant idea which might save him from a prison sentence. But he could not appreciate it. She had had no right to have that idea. It was a criminal idea and a criminal deception, and if it were found out the consequence would be infinitely worse, even worse yet.

  He, the lawyer, should have taken control last night, not she, the guilty wife.

  When he went back into the drawing-room she was standing at the window looking out. For someone who usually stood so well, her dejected stance was like a confession of defeat. Youth had decayed in her heart.

  He said: ‘That story. This story you forced me to accept while I was in – in shock, that you imposed on me. Even if in your view at the time it was the best, it’s so weak, so shot full of holes. If the police find out the truth, as they will, it will be the worse for you as well as for me.’

  ‘I don’t see any reason why they should.’

  ‘You don’t know the police.’ He drank again, and the whisky went down like hope. ‘It was your reputation you were thinking of, not mine. Wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘For instance, how many people knew of your friendship with him before your marriage?’

  ‘It wasn’t a friendship. What I told the police was nearly true.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘A girl called Hazel Boynton. Two young men.’

  ‘Your family?’

  ‘No. He called twice when I was out.’

  ‘So if the police ask. These others, this girl, these young men, of course they will talk.’

  ‘They can only say I met him. I told the police I met him. It’s so near the truth that you could see it either way. There’s nothing to disprove at all!’

  ‘Were there letters? Before or after marriage?’

  ‘No.’ That note … But she had not signed it.

  ‘Did Lady Vosper know anything? So that she might have gossiped before she died?’

  ‘He said not. He wouldn’t want to make her – jealous.’

  He put his empty glass down. ‘I suspected as much. But you. Even then you … God, you make me feel sick! And his visits here? How many?’

  ‘Recently none. Until yesterday.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Three or four.’

  ‘Your visits to him?’

  She turned away from the window, her eyes stony, moving as if to get away.

  ‘Tell me, please.’

  ‘Three or four. But it was just a room he had. Not flats. You just walked up the stairs. I never saw a caretaker or a janitor.’

  ‘And what did you leave there? How many things? Handkerchiefs, shoes, a comb?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

  He did not immediately go to bed. She made some soup and opened a tin of tongue and baked four potatoes in their jackets and there was some cheese. All this time he had never been upstairs. They ate at the same table, separated by Godfrey. Twice they had telephone calls and once there was a ring at the bell, but each time it was the newspapers and they would give no satisfaction. When they spoke to each other it was of the only subject. At the end of the meal she asked him when he thought the trial would be.

  He said: ‘ Not until October at the earliest.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ She was horrified. ‘Not until … But why?’

  ‘It is the cross one has to bear. The next Law Term does not begin until October.’

  ‘Oh
, my God.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said drily. ‘My God.’

  She moved restlessly, her mind busy with all the implications. And he watched her with contained horror. Her white glinting teeth bit into a biscuit. Her red lips moved gently. A tip of tongue came out to take in a crumb. Her bare arms were like beautiful snakes. ‘Mr Mumford didn’t tell me that. But he said it will be just a formality when it does come off.’

  ‘Nothing is a formality. We do not yet know what the prosecution’s case will be.’

  ‘Three months or more.’ Must she stay with him like this for three months or more?

  ‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘I remain with this deep and terrible accusation hanging over me. The head of one of the most respected firms in the Fields. Until then the calumny will ruin our business. At the end of that time, even if I am acquitted, it will ruin me. Aren’t you happy about that?’

  ‘No, I’m not happy about that. I never wanted to ruin you. What good does it do to ruin you? My own life is ruined anyway.’

  ‘Your life,’ he said with contempt.

  ‘Do you think I’m not entitled to one?’

  ‘Not at the expense of people with whom you have ties of loyalty and honour.’ He had been going to say ‘contractual obligations’.

  She got up, pushing her chair back so that it screeched on the parquet floor. ‘ You forced him on me,’ she said.

  ‘What!’ He was outraged.

  ‘Oh yes, I’d met him before my marriage, I know, but I’d always choked him off – he was too crude and brutal – I would never have anything to do with him.’ Pearl moved tearfully to the door, but came back again. ‘It’s true! I told him if he wouldn’t leave me alone I’d call the police. So he did leave me alone. In the end he left me alone! Then when I married you, you insisted that he should call here at our house. You invited him! I asked you not to but you invited him! You had some reason. Heaven knows what it was. But you forced him on me. Don’t imagine the fault is all on one side.’ He was so indignant he was speechless. He stared at her, leaning

  back in his chair, consumed with anger that he could not off-load. ‘I did not know I had a wife who would go with any servant

  who called at the door.’

  She said: ‘I didn’t know I was a wife who would.’

  Just as her previous remark had contorted him with anger, this

  took the weapon out of his hands. He stared at her dumbly. She

  always surprised him. Perhaps he was unused to women, perhaps

  she was unique.

  He said: ‘ How am I to believe you?’

  ‘You don’t have to any more.’

  She put the plates together, again an involuntary action.

  It was Coalport china, King pattern Georgian silver, Waterford

  glass.

  ‘I’m glad I killed him,’ Angell said with sudden venom. I’m glad

  I shot him down.’

  ‘Don’t ever say that!’

  ‘Why? Because you loved him. That’s it, isn’t it. You still loved

  him in spite of it all. All his coarseness, his brutality …’

  She put her hands to her face, as if about to cry, but withdrew

  them. ‘I don’t know. How can I answer you when I can’t answer

  myself?’

  On the Friday Hazel rang.

  ‘How awful for you, dear, how awful. Really. Tell me how it happened.’

  ‘Just like it said in the papers,’ Pearl said. ‘ It’s been terrible. We’ve been quite distracted.’

  ‘And your husband, Mr Angell? Is he – d’you think he’ll … ?’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be all right. It was plain self-defence. This man had broken in and—’

  ‘This man? You mean Godfrey Vosper?’

  ‘Godfrey Brown. He only took the other name for his boxing.’

  ‘Well, it’s the same man, isn’t it? The one you went out with that night at the Trad Hall?’

  ‘I didn’t go out with him. I danced a few times and he drove me home. But that’s nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Well, I thought it might have, dear. The papers always get hold of the wrong end of the stick, and it says—’

  ‘It says he broke in with menaces and threats and demanded money. That’s it, dear. That’s all. It was Wilfred he was threatening, not me. Sorry. I just happened to be there.’

  ‘Oh, well, I see … It must have been absolutely awful for you, Pearl. I mean, did you see it all?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Look, Hazel, when were we going to meet again; was it this month or next?’

  ‘We didn’t actually fix a day—’

  ‘Well, I’d rather tell you all about it then. It’s difficult over the phone. There’s a few things I’d like to tell you, but just at the moment I feel so dazed and sick, and the telephone keeps going, and Wilfred is upstairs in bed with shock and I have to look after him, and Dad came to see me last night, and Rachel came this morning, for Heaven’s sake, I can’t think why, and the newspapers won’t leave us alone. I really don’t know whether I’m coming or going.’

  ‘Would you like me to come one evening?’

  ‘No, honestly, Hazel, by evening I’ve just about had as much as I can take. I just want to go to bed and forget it all. But in a week or two—’

  ‘When is the – er, trial?’

  ‘I haven’t heard yet,’ said Pearl. ‘But do let’s meet. It would be fabulous to have somebody really to talk to. And I could tell you all there is to know then.’

  ‘I thought you might have liked me to come with you to the trial. Perhaps you could ring me if you hear the date. I could take a day off work, say I was sick, and then I could sit by you all through. I thought it would be nice if you had someone of your own there.’

  ‘Well, it’s super of you, Hazel, but Dad’s offered, and I suppose he’s my nearest. Anyway they don’t think it will be much – I mean they don’t think it will last long, and I honestly don’t know when it will come up.’

  ‘Your husband – he’s free then while he’s waiting?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, he’s not a criminal. It’s just that the law has to take its course.’

  In the end, after another two sixpences in the box, Hazel rang off, with a promise to meet Pearl on the 12th August for lunch.

  Chapter Fourteen

  August passed, and September. Detective Chief Inspector Morrison was still not satisfied, but on the whole he kept his dissatisfaction to himself. In the first place it had been a borderline choice whether to charge Angell at all, and then, later another narrow decision whether or not to proceed with the case. Morrison and his superintendent had seen the Director of Public Prosecutions and they had considered at length the flimsiness of Morrison’s dissatisfaction. (a) A delay of twenty-five minutes in calling the police. How had it been filled? Did one faint and hesitate for as long as that before taking the simple action of dialling 999? If not, why not? (b) Morrison had a hunch that there had been a closer association between Brown and Mrs Angell than she would admit, but there was only the suspicion. Her friend, Hazel Boynton, implied as much, but under further questioning Mrs Angell was unshakeable. And no other evidence had come to light. (c) Why should a boxer, with all his trained aggression in his fists, bring an old revolver to the house, wave it threateningly around, and yet at the crucial moment allow himself to be dispossessed of it by a man twice his age and then contrive to be killed by it?

  Yet if the revolver were Angell’s, there was no evidence of his having recently bought it, and it seemed highly unlikely that a law-abiding solicitor of impeccable repute should have owned one for years without bothering to apply for a licence.

  And the fingerprints on the revolver were only Angell’s and Brown’s. If Mrs Angell had somehow come by the revolver and murdered Brown, and her husband was taking the responsibility, there was no way of proving it. Failing such proof, one could only accept the defence as it stood and at its face value.

  It was touch and go whether th
e case should be referred back to the coroner’s inquest with the intimation that the police were not proceeding with the charge. But in order to drop a charge, once it has been made, one has to be utterly sure. In the end the Director said: ‘Let it go on. Let it be publicly heard. It’s the best way. Angell’s profession is a disadvantage to him in this case. One must bend over backwards to remove any suspicion that the law is protecting the law.’

  … There is nothing induces a solidarity among people more than a feeling of danger from without. Wilfred and Pearl living together in a slow-slackening hate, were yet held by the long-delayed trial, were forced into consultation, discussion and connivance by the suspicions of the police. You can live in enmity but it cannot be in silent enmity if one of you has just had another interview with the police and been asked new questions that may affect the trial.

  It was a hot summer and a trying one. Having survived the worst of the shock, Angell felt he must remain visibly and actively in his firm, so that if embarrassment had to be faced it could be faced at once. In the office he never avoided an interview, but he avoided his club. This brought him home more and was a further trial to Pearl. Sometimes she considered despairingly why she had tried so urgently to save him, had not left him to face the consequences of his act. From discreet inquiry and by keeping her ears open, she learned that the charge might then have been murder. Quite possibly it would have meant several years in prison, as he had said at the time. Would she have been able to live with herself, known to the world as a guilty wife and knowing that her husband was languishing, perhaps dying, in gaol for an act which she had precipitated? That way at least she would have been free of him, free to live her own life, as she had often fervently wished. But would it have been a life at all?

  In Cannes, after a splendidly extravagant summer in the best hotels on the Riviera, Viscount Vosper bought a £30,000 yacht from Prince Nicholas of Lithuania – a bargain at the price – and announced that he would spend the next three months in it cruising in the Aegean. At home Sir Francis Hone ordered a large extension to his house in Eleuthera in the Bahamas and opened negotiations for the purchase of a private plane. Simon Portugal bought his wife a Mercedes 250 SL, hoping this would salve some of her discontents. In Handley Merrick, from dawn to dusk, one could hear the whine of chain saws cutting down the beech woods behind Merrick House.