Take My Life

by Winston Graham

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘It should be emphasized,’ Wells said, fingering the keys in his pocket, ‘that it is no part of the Crown’s intention to obtain a conviction at all costs. If the defence has made out a case which raises an element of doubt in your minds, then you, the jury, are in duty bound to return a verdict of not guilty. But … if the defence has not been able to produce facts to shake the evidence of the prosecution, then you are just as truly bound as responsible citizens to find the prisoner guilty – and no merely emotional appeals should be allowed to sway your judgment.’

  Nick tore a sheet off his pad and began to write a note:

  ‘Dear Joan, Where is Philippa? I can’t understand her not being here yet or not even having sent a message. Can anything have happened to her? Something must be done …’

  ‘The defence has asked you,’ Wells said, ‘if the prisoner looks like a murderer or a fool. What you should ask yourselves is not that, but whether in certain adverse circumstance he might not become a murderer and whether under stress following a crime he could not behave like a fool. The Crown does not ask you to imagine the prisoner as having cold-bloodedly planned his crime. We think it happened in passion and heat. Murder, when it occurs, is unnerving beyond my power to describe. Under the stress of such an event a man is not himself; he does not think calmly or act wisely.’

  (And what, Sidney Fleming might have asked two hundred and fifty miles away, what when you have lived with the thought for six weeks and believed yourself safe, and another woman comes between you and safety and one woman only, her life or yours, do you think coherently or act wisely then; and wherein lies wisdom, to wait or to act?)

  ‘Remember,’ said Wells, ‘the murderer thought the evidence was being destroyed by fire. It was not therefore so foolish a move to get his wound dressed before any description was circulated, before the hue and cry began. Remember that but for Mike Grieve’s prompt action there might have been no hue and cry at all.

  ‘As for this strange and ill conceived attempt to throw suspicion upon another man, this is not the place to discuss it at length. But do you seriously think that the police would not have covered such a possibility, if such a possibility had in fact existed. I will only ask you one question. If Grieve had committed this murder and had not seen Talbot coming out of the lodging-house, how was be able exactly to describe an injury he had never seen, an injury by which Talbot was first recognized and apprehended? Nothing, members of the jury, nothing the defence can say can lay the suspicion upon Grieve because of that.

  ‘We have been told too that no man would commit murder to rid himself of the tiresome attentions of a discarded mistress. Who, then, would believe that Seddon the poisoner, a man in comfortable circumstances, would commit murder for a mere thirty shillings a week? Just for a moment consider again the case of Nicolas Talbot: a charming adventurer, spendthrift, pleasure-loving, indolent, for the first time in his life secure, financially secure in the love of a beautiful and talented woman …’

  During the luncheon break Nick had asked Frobisher if the trial was likely to be over today, and Frobisher had said:

  ‘It depends very much on Wells. If he finishes his closing speech before three Mr Justice Ferguson will probably sum up at once and keep the court in session until the jury reaches its verdict.’

  Nick now looked at the clock and saw that it was only twenty-five minutes to three, and he could tell Wells was near the end.

  ‘Members of the jury, the facts speak for themselves. A woman is murdered. Two hours before her death she has paid most unwelcome attentions to an old lover who stands to lose much by her reappearance, and she has forced an assignment upon him. Five minutes after her death a man is seen leaving her lodgings with a wounded forehead. Half an hour later a man is picked up with an identical wound at a neighbouring hospital and proves to be the lover with whom she made the appointment. Further, he can offer no alibi for his movements and his silver pencil is found beside the body. Then he is positively identified by the man who saw the murderer leave. Old love letters from Talbot and a locket with his photograph are found on the body. These are facts, members of the jury, facts; and the defence has not been able to destroy one of them. Short of an actual witnessing of the crime, what more could you have? The whole picture is there. I do not ask for revenge, but I do ask for justice, a justice which you are bound before God to uphold, and justice demands that Nicolas Talbot should be brought in guilty.’

  He sat down at a quarter to three, and five minutes later the train drew in at York.

  Amid the bustle of the two ladies getting out, Philippa left her coat on her seat and ran along the platform. There was a newspaper kiosk opposite the restaurant car, and she looked eagerly about it as other people were served.

  ‘Have you an evening paper, please? she asked.

  ‘They’re not in yet. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said in disappointment, and did not move.

  ‘You might get one on the main platform by the booking-office.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She looked at the clock. There was at least five minutes yet.

  She ran up the steps and over the bridge, and at this larger book kiosk she was able to buy the local evening paper.

  Not that it was likely to be much use, she thought, as she fled back. Would it even mention the case?

  She reached her carriage, which she had some difficulty at first in finding, for both the deaf man and the two ladies were gone and a strange man sat opposite her seat, with his nose buried in The Times.

  She sat down rather breathlessly and quickly scanned the paper she had bought. As she found the brief item the train began to move again.

  It told her practically nothing. The cross-examination had been continued this morning with questions as to the exact movements of the accused man on the night of the murder.

  She read it through again, and in frustration and disappointment put the paper down and stared out at the disappearing suburbs of the city.

  Then she looked at the man opposite.

  As if aware that she was now interesting herself in him, he lowered his paper.

  ‘I didn’t recognize you until you played the organ, Mrs Talbot,’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Somehow she had known in the very marrow of her bones that it wouldn’t be all quite so easy as it seemed. Her reason had said, ‘Good, he can do nothing; Nick is saved and he will hang’; but instinct had all the time been sending out its warning signals. When she shook hands with him as she left the school she had sensed that he would not tamely give in.

  Now at this moment the train was gathering speed out of the suburbs of York, and instead of his being shivering, waiting for the arrival of the police in his school at Penmair, he was sitting opposite her here, and if there was a tremor moving through his body from time to time it was not fear.

  Slowly the shock began to pass out of her body, muscles moved again and heart beat. His eyes …

  ‘How did you trace her?’ he said.

  She did not reply. The communication cord. But she must not look at it.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘How did you trace her?’

  She licked her lips, tried to speak.

  ‘The way others will trace her in time.’

  He was eyeing her, assessing the truth of what she said. And every few seconds his glance would flick to the corridor and then out of the window. He’s waiting for something, she thought.

  ‘You’d never reach it,’ he said, as she glanced involuntarily upwards.

  And suddenly, she knew what he was waiting for. The embankments were mounting up beside the windows. A tunnel coming now … This was what – She saw the muscles tense in his hands as the train screamed.

  She had no breath. He was coming …

  And then the door of the compartment clicked. The deaf man

  had come back as they roared into the tunnel.

  Like effigies they faced each oth
er across the narrow carriage, while

  the man in the other corner took a paper off the rack and settled

  himself in his seat. In the unreal pallid light of the lamps she could

  see Fleming’s eyes still fixed on her.

  With a rush they were out in the open again, rain spots spattering

  the window. In the clearer light she could see that only great

  self-control had held his intention in check: even with the man

  there it had nearly happened. Slowly he was forcing his body into

  an easier attitude.

  The deaf man looked across at them.

  ‘I’ve been to inquire what time they serve teas,’ he volunteered.

  ‘They begin in a quarter of an hour.’

  Philippa looked at her deliverer.

  ‘Oh …’

  There was silence for a moment. Then the man turned his head

  again.

  ‘Did you say something?’

  Philippa shook her head. ‘No. I …’

  He glanced from one to the other of them, and his gaze lingered

  curiously for a moment on Fleming. He half smiled at Philippa.

  ‘It’s a great handicap, you know,’ he said apologetically as he

  picked up the paper.

  Fleming was watching him very closely. After a few seconds he

  said in a clear voice:

  ‘Which way is the restaurant car?’

  There was silence.

  Fleming said loudly: ‘Which – way – is – the – restaurant – car?’

  The man in the corner turned over his paper and began to read

  the Stock Exchange closing prices.

  Fleming’s eyes turned back to Philippa. The light brown pupils

  were intent and personal and comprehending. He put his hands on his knees and looked at her.

  It had come to her in these last moments that the deaf man’s presence was only a respite. Fleming was capable of anything as a last resort. She must fight him if she wanted to live: first with her mind and then perhaps with her hands.

  She said: ‘You killed her, didn’t you?’

  Fleming said: ‘Well, she left me, you know.’ It was a quiet, reasonable, almost confidential answer. They might have been talking of a friend’s visit.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  He hesitated, the first sign of hesitation, and a curious expression crossed his face. He leaned forward.

  ‘She was a fool … crying for the moon …’

  They rattled over a bridge and rushed alongside a broad stream. The rain was setting in steadily now. A woman passed along the corridor.

  And then suddenly it came. He could not resist it; there was plenty of time and he must wait; let her know, this woman, who soon must follow Elizabeth, or he would follow.

  ‘She was going to divorce me for cruelty,’ he said, ‘for mental and physical cruelty. She’d no grounds. No real – no morally justifiable grounds. I’m to be headmaster of Lovell’s now. It’s one of the finest schools in Scotland … I love my work. I’m a first-class schoolmaster. I shouldn’t have got Lovell’s if I hadn’t been. I’m a sane, well-balanced man. Perhaps you don’t believe that. Perhaps you think – people who kill must be mad or wicked. I’m neither mad nor wicked. I was a good man. But even a good man must have some weakness. Ask yourself: have you no weakness? Greed, sloth, jealousy. The most perfect of us. The Achilles heel is somewhere.’

  He was trying to justify himself, she saw, not merely to her but to himself.

  ‘Mine is anger. My judgements of myself are severe: so they are of other people. I can’t tolerate the ranker sins. At times I have an awkward temper. It never shows. I control it. I had controlled it. But she drove into that weakness. Have you ever had that happen to you? It’s like a drill on an exposed nerve. The one nerve that you have learned to govern and protect. My God! if there was cruelty, it was hers, not mine!’

  ‘Everybody says you’re a good schoolmaster,’ she replied.

  For a second there was agreement and pain in his eyes, showing through the fixed intention to kill.

  ‘I know. I have the finest understanding of boys. I can take the dull boy and give him the glow of a new ambition. I can steady the wayward, imaginative child and teach him true concentration; and above all I can give boys a sense of moral values, a thing more than ever vital to them today. But she wanted to snatch it all away, to smash that gift childishly for the vindictive pleasure. And she wasn’t merely destroying what I had built, she was depriving hundreds of children, some yet unborn, of what I had to give! It’s a thing so few have to give. D’you understand? D’you know what I’m talking about?’

  She felt that much of what he was claiming for himself was true.

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Did you know that she called herself Elizabeth Talbot? I never knew her real name until she was dead. She was in love with your husband. She saw him that night. D’you know she still believed he would come back to her? She told me so. I told her not to be a fool, but she said he would get tired of you and come back to her. It was a mania with her. D’you know why she married me? Because I reminded her of him. That’s all. She told me that that last night too. I knew something was wrong almost from the start of our marriage; but what chance had I against a myth of her own creating? D’you think I care if he swings? D’you think I care?’

  The old restraints were shpping, and the added censors of these last six weeks. He checked himself and glanced at the deaf man.

  ‘Yes. I think you care,’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘Then you’re wrong. Utterly, damnably wrong. He’s ruined my life –’

  ‘It wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘No,’ he said viciously, ‘it’s never their fault, the play-boys and the pleasure-seekers. They just follow their own impulses and other people be hanged! What would Talbot care that he broke up my life. Why should I care if the consequences come back on him!’

  She said: ‘Why didn’t you let her divorce you?’

  ‘Because it would have finished me. Divorce for cruelty would have finished my career. And she meant to finish me. Nothing else would satisfy her. She told me that. She’d got proof: she’d been to the doctor with some trifling bruises. Don’t you see?’

  The train flashed through a station: a porter wheeling luggage, a pram, two women staring. A level-crossing and a horse and cart; open country again.

  He was looking right through her, his angry uncompromising eyes narrowed and strained.

  ‘Weren’t you to blame at all?’ she asked.

  That brought his gaze back into focus. He half smiled in a contemptuous way.

  ‘My conscience is my own.’

  ‘And God’s.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘Your damned presumption …’ Her remark was the first somehow truly to touch him. ‘D’you think I don’t know that? I knew it even on the night.’

  ‘Then how could you kill her?’

  ‘I argued with her, pleaded with her. Yes, I did. Not all for my own sake but for hers. All I asked for myself was that the break between us should be done decently. She was amused at that, tormented me with – with my pride – my pride as a scholar, as a schoolmaster, my justifiable pride. In spite of everything else she might have been alive but for that …’

  He was breathing quickly now. ‘… But for that …’

  There was silence for some time. She knew she had done something, fended him off, that she had somehow shaken him if only for a second; but she did not know how to go on. She hadn’t the insight, the knowledge of him.

  Oh, God, she thought, show me what to say next.

  The deaf man had been rustling his paper, but she did not dare to take her eyes off Fleming.… Suddenly she was conscious that the deaf man was standing

  up. She turned her head to see him leaving the carriage.

  ‘Don’t go! Don’t go!’

  But his back was to her. She was too late.

  As s
he jumped to her feet. Fleming hit her between the eyes …

  She fell back upon her seat, the carriage swinging dizzy and sick.

  Fleming was fumbling with the carriage door. There was nothing

  to stop him now. But the train was rushing through a small town:

  hot here; it couldn’t be done here. He got up quickly and still

  watching her, pulled down the blinds on the corridor side.

  ‘What you do to me,’ Philippa got out desperately, ‘ won’t help

  you now.’

  He did not speak but pulled down the last blind.

  ‘I found a photograph of your wife,’ she said.

  He watched her in sudden alarm. ‘ You’re lying …’

  ‘On the school photograph,’ she whispered. ‘I bought a print.’

  That had struck him just like a physical blow in return. He saw

  the truth, that it was true. His eyes went to the suitcase.

  ‘I’ve posted it,’ she said, ‘ to Scotland Yard.’

  The train rushed out into the open country again, but he did

  not stir, standing by the corridor door. She suddenly realized that

  his breath was coming as quickly as hers.

  He moved to her suitcase, pulled it from the rack.

  He tore open the lid, began groping through it, paused to wipe

  the sweat out of his eyes, groped again, emptied the things out on

  the seat.

  He stopped. ‘Where is it?’

  He was like a man gone mad.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I posted it as soon as I bought it this morning, the man’s name

  was Baird, he charged half a crown. I marked the photo and posted

  it at the next stop but one, that was why I missed the first train.’

  She hardly knew what she was saying.

  He stared at her as if he could tear her to pieces. Her bag was

  behind her, out of sight. She fought the fear out of her eyes and

  stared back at him.

  Suddenly he sat down heavily opposite her. ‘You’re lying!’ he said again. ‘Oh God … Oh, God …’

  She leaned back upon her bag and watched him. He made no move. Twenty minutes, she thought I’ve got to fight for at least twenty minutes more. Help me. Help me.