Take My Life

  After twenty minutes he left the chapel and went out to his own car.

  She had left the hotel again, restless and unable to wait. Once she thought of calling on Harriet Wharton and telling her everything. She had looked a hard-headed, sensible woman. Even one friend in this village might make all the difference. But she shrank away from the awful difficulty of explaining, of trying to convince her that she was not a lunatic. Harriet Wharton would say what everyone would say: go to the local police. And if she did, the incredible explaining to them, their looks of astonishment, their side glances, their telephone calls. In all probability one of the first people they would ring up would be Sidney Fleming.

  She walked down the street and tried to think over all they had said together in the school. Had he betrayed himself in any way? Put herself in his place. If the song meant to him all that she thought it meant, then he surely must know that she knew. Might she not leave the next move to him?

  The thought gave her an unexpected twist of alarm and she glanced quickly up and down the street. There was hardly anyone about. She looked in the shop windows, most of which reflected her own image in their blinds. ‘Macpherson and Son, Grocers and Provision Merchants.’ That was the one she had looked in this morning. ‘Angus Baird, Newsagent and Stationer. Hardware. Photographic Supplies.’

  She moved on and then stopped, turned back. Angus Baird was a Jack-of-all-trades. In the list of his accomplishments were the words ‘School Photographer’.

  There flashed back into her mind the school groups on the walls of the covered way. Rows of anonymous faces. But as she recalled them she remembered also the little humps in the middle of each photograph where the rows curved upwards into the adults. Were there not women among them? Surely. And would not one be the headmaster’s wife? …

  She pressed her face against the glass of the shop and could just see behind the blind. There were photographs in the window, but none which looked like a school group. But the man would surely have some in stock. There would be a fairly steady sale for them.

  She stepped back and looked at the closed shop. There were two windows overhead and at the side a little wicket gate. She tried the gate and went in.

  Round the side was a vegetable patch, a chicken run, a few discouraged tulips.

  There was no knocker to the door, so she used her knuckles. She waited impatiently, then knocked again. Pray they were not all out for the evening, like the Bakers.

  The door opened eight inches and a small grey man peered out. He looked like a grey elderly ferret, disturbed and suspicious.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Please forgive me for troubling you,’ she said. ‘You are Mr Baird, the school photographer, aren’t you?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I saw the notice,’ she said apologetically. ‘I specially wanted a photograph of my nephew who was in last year’s group. I should be so very much obliged if you could sell me one.’

  The small elderly face regarded her without change of expression.

  ‘Aye … If ye come round in the morning the shop will be open and ye can see them in a proper manner.’ The door closed an inch.

  Philippa said anxiously: ‘I’m leaving Penmair in a few minutes to catch the London express from Edinburgh. Otherwise I shouldn’t have troubled you tonight. It’s really most important that I should take a photograph back with me. Really important. Perhaps you’ll let me explain …’

  The door closed another inch, defensively against her move. ‘The shop will be open at nine o’clock in the morning, but not until then.’

  ‘Mr Baird, it’s not just an ordinary purpose I want it for. Perhaps you’d stretch a point and sell me one tonight. I should be so deeply grateful –’

  ‘I neither buy nor sell on the Sabbath day.’

  ‘I don’t mind what I pay,’ said Philippa. ‘ I’ll give you whatever you ask –’

  ‘I have no interest in money,’ said Mr Baird, ‘until the morning.’ And he shut the door.

  ‘Listen, please! It’s vitally important!’ Almost in tears she used her fist on the panel. ‘Open this door!’

  There was no reply. For a few seconds she stared at it, anger and frustration choking her. She would cheerfully have picked up a brick and thrown it through the window. She could have kicked the toe off her shoe and the paint off the door. But the look in his eye discouraged her. He was the stuff of which inconvenient martyrs are made. There was no hope here.

  At ten the manageress of the hotel was coming out of the bar when a man walked into the hall of the hotel and looked about him.

  ‘Oh, good evening, Mr Fleming,’ she said. ‘Cold this evening, isn’t it?’

  He agreed. ‘Er – Mrs Drummond, have you a Mrs Newcombe staying here?’

  ‘Why, yes, we have. Did you want to see her? I b’lieve she’s just gone to bed.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. But I understood she was leaving tonight.’

  ‘Well, so did we, sir. She paid her bill and ordered a car. But at the last minute she cancelled it and was minded to stay on.’

  ‘Till the morning?’

  ‘That’s so. Till the morning. She’s ordered the car now for a quarter to nine.’

  ‘Did she give any reason for changing her plans?’

  ‘No, sir. I think perhaps it was the journey she didn’t fancy.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Fleming was turning to go.

  ‘Can I give her some message, sir?’

  ‘Er – no. It doesn’t matter. But perhaps you’d give her this. It’s a prospectus of the school. She forgot to take it earlier this evening.’

  ‘Oh, all right, Mr Fleming. Thank you. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, Mrs Drummond,’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  She dreamed strange things in the night: that she was on trial for her life and Fleming was the prosecuting counsel, that the trial was being held in the empty school and that no one was there besides themselves. He stormed and shouted, but all his shouts were soundless and the only thing that came to her ears was the steady striking of the school clock.

  The sound was so mournful echoing through the hollow shell of the school that she realized the trial was really over and that this was the tolling of the bell for the execution. She knew that the hanging was to take place in the chapel under the organ and that Fleming was to be the executioner. He was coming down from his rostrum now and holding out his hand …

  She woke cold and shivering to find that the eiderdown had slipped to the floor. Dawn was just breaking and there was no more sleep for her. She lay for a time wondering if she had been unwise in not telephoning home last night. If was really that she disliked having nothing tangible to tell them. The trial could not be over today unless it went on very late, and her train was due in at six. As soon as she had the proof she would phone or wire them.

  At seven she got up, and she was dressed and ready to go before the maid brought in her early morning tea. She had breakfast and was waiting on the step when Murray drove up in his Austin 14.

  She said: ‘I want you to go to Baird’s first, please. I’ve something I want to buy there.’

  They drove to Baird’s. It was still only twelve minutes to nine. They waited.

  Murray said: ‘I hope you’ll not be long in buying what you want. It’s a tidy way and not a road you can hasten over, and the Scotsman goes at ten.’

  At five past nine Philippa got out of the car and tried the shop door. It was still locked, so she rattled it. She waited and then heard movements in the shop. Presently one of the blinds went up and she caught sight of a small grey wispy woman retreating into the interior of the shop like a mouse surprised by a light. Then the other blind went up, and a few moments later the bolt was drawn back from the door.

  She went in.

  The were both in there, one at each counter, but as she came in Baird himself went off out of the shop.

  ‘May I see the school photographs, please,’ she said to Mrs Baird. ‘I want to
see last year’s specially.’

  The little woman blinked at her.

  ‘Aye. The school photographs. Aye … Angus!’

  ‘Aye?’ said a voice.

  ‘Where would the school photographs be now?’

  ‘Under the magazines. Behind the sweet bottles.’

  ‘Aye.’ The little woman shifted herself to the other end of the counter and began to fumble there. ‘ The new magazines, Angus?’

  ‘No, the used ones.’

  She shifted back again.

  ‘Please hurry,’ said Philippa. ‘I have a train to catch.’

  ‘Would these be they, Angus, in the grey album?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Mrs Baird slowly pulled out a thin album and spread it on the counter.

  ‘Angus generally likes to sairve these himself,’ she said Philippa pulled open the album and turned to the last filled page.

  Her eyes flew to the middle of the group and to Fleming sitting very recognizable as the head. The woman beside him …

  The woman beside him …

  ‘I want to buy this,’ said Philippa with a dry throat. ‘How much is it?’

  ‘Angus, how much would the photo be?’

  ‘Two and sixpence.’

  ‘Two and sixpence.’

  Philippa brought out her money and watched in a sort of daze the new search for a print that could be sold. But for a few seconds the impatience had gone from her. All this time. All through the inquiries and troubles of yesterday the little devils of doubt had never been quite silenced. She had met so many, so very many dead ends, that all the time the thin thread of scepticism had lived in her most passionate convictions. This morning, with nothing to show for her adventure at the school yesterday, she had begun to wonder again if it was all a self-delusion.

  Now she knew for certain it was not.

  She was there, there on the print, sitting beside him, without hat plain to be seen. Explain that, Mr Fleming.

  Philippa thrust the rolled print into her bag and ran to the car. Triumph. Glorious triumph in her heart. Nick was safe, safe, whatever the outcome of the trial.

  ‘I doubt we shall make it.’ said Murray, slamming the door.

  The car jerked into motion and accelerated harshly away down the street.

  And into her heart, edging the joy about, a new anxiety and fear slowly crept. It was not so much a fear of missing the train, though that was bad enough. But she was hundreds of miles from London. An hour’s drive by road, perhaps a wait in Edinburgh, then at least eight hours by train. All that time, until the photo was safely in the custody of the police, she was the bearer of Nick’s safety. On her safety depended his safety.

  And she was still afraid of Fleming.

  When Murray started his engine it was a quarter-past nine, and his elderly car was not in a fit state for speeding. As they ground slowly up hills and careered recklessly down them he explained over his shoulder that he had a new car on order but couldn’t get delivery. This didn’t help Philippa.

  Half-way there he glanced at the clock and then fumbled in the cubby-hole and passed her a railway time-table.

  ‘We’ll not make the Scotsman, but I think there’s a later train. You’ll find it all there.’

  But how much later, she wondered, turning the pages helplessly for some time and then, in sheer desperation, forcing herself to understand the cross-references in the guide. There was, so far as she could make out, a slightly slower train leaving for London at ten-fifteen. It offered some hope.

  At ten they were only on the outskirts of the city, and she began to wonder in panic if both trains would go without her. That would mean hours of waiting. At ten-past ten she pushed money into her driver’s hand, and ran into the gloom of the station.

  ‘The Scotsman?’ she cried to a porter.

  ‘Gone, ma’am.’

  ‘The next one? The ten-fifteen?’

  ‘Over there. Just leaving. You’d best hurry.’

  Hurry? What else was she doing? Faster than she had run for years she fled half the length of the station, turned in at the barrier and ran along the train. Whistle going. She opened a door and got in as the train whistled. Always last minute, she thought. But I’ve caught one of them. In London by seven now.

  There were three people in the compartment, two middle-aged ladies sitting opposite her and an elderly man in the corner seat by the corridor. They were all interested in her breathless arrival. She put her case on the rack and sat down.

  As always when a thing is put off, she thought, it never gets done. No telephone message, no wire. She might have time when the train stopped at York or somewhere: until then they would have no word of her in London. And all this day the trial would be going on without her.

  She had been in too much of a hurry to notice Sidney Fleming sitting by the barrier at the station or to see him open a door and get into the back of the train.

  As Nick stepped down from the witness-box he glanced at the empty seat beside Joan. Somehow, although he had complete faith in Philippa, he would have chosen that she should be here and have risked the loss of the possible evidence she might find in Scotland. He had had her note, but he wanted her presence today. It was nothing but her presence but he could not spare it.

  The rest of the cross-examination had been long and gruelling. Wells had done his best to convict him out of his own mouth, and though he had not succeeded Nick understood its effect on the jury. He suspected that the average juryman, if overwhelmed with a sea of evidence, would pick on some salient fact and cling to it for the rest of the trial. There were several such facts, all adverse, in Wells’s cross-examination.

  Now Tyler was doing his best to destroy the effect.

  ‘I believe, members of the jury, that the Crown made a mistake in ever bringing this case to trial. They expect us to believe that this old love affair was so dangerous to the married life of Nicolas Talbot that he went round to Miss Rusman’s flat on the very night of their meeting and murdered her. That is the only motive. The Crown has not pretended to advance any other. If, in order to raise the intent to kill in a man’s heart, no stronger compelling force than this was needed, murder would become a commonplace of life. I ask you frankly: if the existence of an old love affair were a sufficient motive for murder, which of us here has not such a motive?’

  With his brilliant compelling eyes Tyler turned towards the court, seeming to include everyone in his question, before returning to the jury.

  ‘Then they are asking us to believe that Talbot, wounded in the struggle, went immediately to the nearest hospital and asked for his wound to be dressed. Look at him in the dock! Look at him closely. If you can bring yourselves to believe that such a man would commit a brutal murder for so flimsy a reason, can you also believe mat he would be so fantastically careless as to advertise his injury near the scene of the crime? I ask you first if he looks like a murderer, and second if he looks like a fool.’

  Nick shifted under the scrutiny. Good logic, but change the angle, Tyler. I hate being held up like a prize cow.

  ‘… Yes … we have his identification, a subject on which there are more honest mistakes made by witnesses than in any other evidence. Honest mistakes, mark you. Ask yourselves only who had most to gain by the identification of Nicolas Talbot? Who was the only man in the lodging-house when Elizabeth Rusman came home? Who has already served a sentence in prison for assault on a woman? Whom would the police have been most likely to suspect if Talbot had not been so unfortunately convenient to hand? The police have said that Mike Grieve could not have seen the locket after they arrived. I will not dispute their assertion. But no one, no one alive, can say that Mike Grieve couldn’t have seen the locket before they arrived? …’

  Philippa took the photo out of her handbag and stared at it. There was no mistake. No one could deny it. With every mile that the train rushed on, her confidence was returning, her fears subsiding. She rolled the photo into a thin roll and put it back in the handbag. She
was glad she had done so, for at that moment the ticket collector came round.

  The two ladies were the first to find their tickets, then Philippa. The elderly man in the corner was late in producing his, and when it came it was a return half from London to Berwick-on-Tweed, so extra had to be paid. He was quite prepared for this, but it was all complicated because he had to screw something into his ear and switch on a battery in his pocket before the necessary talk could even be carried on in shouts.

  He beamed rather apologetically at the carriage, and his instrument went crick-crick, crack-crack for everyone to hear. Philippa wondered why some people thought deafness in others amusing; when as bad as this it was like a wall between a man and the rest of the world.

  For the moment her thoughts had wandered from the trial and what she carried in her bag. Somehow she felt that she too was deaf, deaf in the spirit not to hear, not to be able to know, what was going on at the Old Bailey when she so desperately needed and wanted to know …

  ‘Remember always that on your decision depends a man’s life,’ Tyler was at that moment saying. ‘You and only you can decide whether Nicolas Talbot shall die or whether he shall return to the woman who so passionately believes in his innocence. Remember that, before you can bring in a verdict of guilty, there must be no element of doubt in your hearts. You can take this man’s life away from him but you can never restore it. If new facts come to light, you, each one of you, will bear the responsibility of having sent an innocent man to be hanged. I do not believe you will accept that responsibility. I believe that a verdict of ‘‘Not guilty’’ is the only possible verdict you can return.’

  Nick glanced at Tyler as he sat down, knowing this was the final appeal. Nothing more could be said now. And, since the defence had called witnesses, the prosecution bad the last word.

  And Philippa had lunch, and the train stopped at Newcastle, and Mr Fleming got up from the very last compartment in the train and began to move along the corridor.