LEONARD. Well, actually only a few pounds. I was expecting some money in, in a week or two.
MYERS. How much?
LEONARD. Not very much.
MYERS. I put it to you, you were pretty desperate for money?
LEONARD. Not desperate. I—well, I felt a bit worried.
MYERS. You were worried about money, you met a wealthy woman and you courted her acquaintance assiduously.
LEONARD. You make it sound all twisted. I tell you I liked her.
MYERS. We have heard that Miss French used to consult you on her income tax returns.
LEONARD. Yes, she did. You know what those forms are. You can’t make head or tail of them—or she couldn’t.
MYERS. Janet MacKenzie has told us that Miss French was a very good business woman, well able to deal with her own affairs.
LEONARD. Well, that’s not what she said to me. She said those forms worried her terribly.
MYERS. In filling up her income tax forms for her you no doubt learned the exact amount of her income?
LEONARD. No.
MYERS. No?
LEONARD. Well—I mean naturally, yes.
MYERS. Yes, very convenient. How was it, Mr. Vole, that you never took your wife to see Miss French?
LEONARD. I don’t know. It just didn’t seem to crop up.
MYERS. You say Miss French knew you were married?
LEONARD. Yes.
MYERS. Yet she never asked you to bring your wife with you to the house?
LEONARD. No.
MYERS. Why not?
LEONARD. Oh, I don’t know. She didn’t like women, I don’t think.
MYERS. She preferred, shall we say, personable young men? And you didn’t insist on bringing your wife?
LEONARD. No, of course I didn’t. You see, she knew my wife was a foreigner and she—oh, I don’t know, she seemed to think we didn’t get on.
MYERS. That was the impression you gave her?
LEONARD. No, I didn’t. She—well, I think it was wishful thinking on her part.
MYERS. You mean she was infatuated with you?
LEONARD. No, she wasn’t infatuated, but she, oh, it’s like mothers are sometimes with a son.
MYERS. How?
LEONARD. They don’t want him to like a girl or get engaged or anything of that kind.
MYERS. You hoped, didn’t you, for some monetary advantage from your friendship with Miss French?
LEONARD. Not in the way you mean.
MYERS. Not in the way I mean? You seem to know what I mean better than I know myself. In what way then did you hope for monetary advantage? (He pauses.) I repeat, in what way did you hope for monetary advantage?
LEONARD. You see, there’s a thing I’ve invented. A kind of windscreen wiper that works in snow. I was looking for someone to finance that and I thought perhaps Miss French would. But that wasn’t the only reason I went to see her. I tell you I liked her.
MYERS. Yes, yes, we’ve heard that very often, haven’t we—how much you liked her.
LEONARD. (Sulkily.) Well, it’s true.
MYERS. I believe, Mr. Vole, that about a week before Miss French’s death, you were making enquiries of a travel agency for particulars of foreign cruises.
LEONARD. Supposing I did—it isn’t a crime, is it?
MYERS. Not at all. Many people go for cruises when they can pay for it. But you couldn’t pay for it, could you, Mr. Vole?
LEONARD. I was hard up. I told you so.
MYERS. And yet you came into this particular travel agency—with a blonde—a strawberry blonde—I understand—and . . .
JUDGE. A strawberry blonde, Mr. Myers?
MYERS. A term for a lady with reddish fair hair, my lord.
JUDGE. I thought I knew all about blondes, but a strawberry blonde . . . Go on, Mr. Myers.
MYERS. (To LEONARD) Well?
LEONARD. My wife isn’t a blonde and it was only a bit of fun, anyway.
MYERS. You admit that you asked for particulars, not of cheap trips, but of the most expensive and luxurious cruises. How did you expect to pay for such a thing?
LEONARD. I didn’t.
MYERS. I suggest that you knew that in a week’s time you would have inherited a large sum of money from a trusting elderly lady.
LEONARD. I didn’t know anything of the kind. I just was feeling fed up—and there were the posters in the window—palm trees and coconuts and blue seas, and I went in and asked. The clerk gave me a sort of supercilious look—I was a bit shabby—but it riled me. And so I put on a bit of an act—(He suddenly grins as though enjoying remembrance of the scene.) and began asking for the swankiest tours there were—all de luxe and a cabin on the boat deck.
MYERS. You really expect the Jury to believe that?
LEONARD. I don’t expect anyone to believe anything. But that’s the way it was. It was make-believe and childish if you like—but it was fun and I enjoyed it. (He looks suddenly pathetic.) I wasn’t thinking of killing anybody or of inheriting money.
MYERS. So it was just a remarkable coincidence that Miss French should be killed, leaving you her heir, only a few days later.
LEONARD. I’ve told you—I didn’t kill her.
MYERS. Your story is that on the night of the fourteenth, you left Miss French’s house at four minutes to nine, that you walked home and you arrived there at twenty-five minutes past nine, and stayed there the rest of the evening.
LEONARD. Yes.
MYERS. You have heard the woman Romaine Heilger rebut that story in Court. You have heard her say that you came in not at twenty-five minutes past nine but at ten minutes past ten.
LEONARD. It’s not true!
MYERS. That your clothes were bloodstained, that you definitely admitted to her that you had killed Miss French.
LEONARD. It’s not true, I tell you. Not one word of it is true.
MYERS. Can you suggest any reason why this young woman, who has been passing as your wife, should deliberately give evidence she has given if it were not true?
LEONARD. No, I can’t. That’s the awful thing. There’s no reason at all. I think she must have gone mad.
MYERS. You think she must have gone mad? She seemed extremely sane, and self-possessed. But insanity is the only reason you can suggest.
LEONARD. I don’t understand it. Ah, God, what’s happened—what’s changed her?
MYERS. Very effective, I’m sure. But in this Court we deal with facts. And the fact is, Mr. Vole, that we have only your word for it that you left Emily French’s house at the time you say you did, and that you arrived home at five and twenty minutes past nine, and that you did not go out again.
LEONARD. (Wildly) Someone must have seen me—in the street—or going into the house.
MYERS. One would certainly think so—but the only person who did see you come home that night says it was at ten minutes past ten. And that person says that you had blood on your clothes.
LEONARD. I cut my wrist.
MYERS. A very easy thing to do in case any questions should arise.
LEONARD. (Breaking down) You twist everything. You twist everything I say. You make me sound like a different kind of person from what I am.
MYERS. You cut your wrist deliberately.
LEONARD. No, I didn’t. I didn’t do anything, but you make it all sound as though I did. I can hear it myself.
MYERS. You came home at ten past ten.
LEONARD. No, I didn’t. You’ve got to believe me. You’ve got to believe me.
MYERS. You killed Emily French.
LEONARD. I didn’t do it.
(The LIGHTS fade quickly, leaving two spots on LEONARD and MYERS. These fade too as he finishes speaking and the Curtain falls.)
I didn’t kill her. I’ve never killed anybody. Oh God! It’s a nightmare. It’s some awful, evil dream.
CURTAIN
ACT THREE
Scene I
SCENE: The Chambers of Sir Wilfrid Robarts, Q.C. The same evening.
When the Curta
in rises, the stage is empty and in darkness. The window curtains are open. GRETA enters immediately and holds the door open. MAYHEW and SIR WILFRID enter. MAYHEW carries his brief-case.
GRETA. Good evening, Sir Wilfrid. It’s a nasty night, sir. (GRETA exits, closing the door behind her.)
SIR WILFRID. Damned fog! (He switches on the wall-brackets by the switch below the door and crosses to the window.)
MAYHEW. It’s a beast of an evening. (He removes his hat and overcoat and hangs them on the pegs up L.)
SIR WILFRID. (Closing the window curtains) Is there no justice? We come out of a stuffy Court Room gasping for fresh air, and what do we find? (He switches on the desk lamp.) Fog!
MAYHEW. It’s not as thick as the fog we’re in over Mrs. Heilger’s antics. (He crosses to the desk and puts his case on the up L. corner.)
SIR WILFRID. That damned woman. From the very first moment I clapped eyes on her, I scented trouble. I knew she was up to something. A thoroughly vindictive piece of goods and much too deep for that simple young fool in the dock. But what’s her game, John? What’s she up to? Tell me that. (He crosses below the desk to L.)
MAYHEW. Presumably, it would seem, to get young Leonard Vole convicted of murder.
SIR WILFRID. (Crossing down R.) But why? Look what he’s done for her.
MAYHEW. He’s probably done too much for her.
SIR WILFRID. (Moving up R. of the desk) And she despises him for it. That’s likely enough. Ungrateful beasts, women. But why be vindictive? After all, if she was bored with him, all she had to do was walk out. (He crosses above the desk to L.) There doesn’t seem to be any financial reason for her to remain with him.
GRETA. (Enters and crosses to the desk. She carries a tray with two cups of tea.) I’ve brought you your tea, Sir Wilfrid, and a cup for Mr. Mayhew, too. (She puts one cup on each side of the desk.)
SIR WILFRID. (Sitting L. of the fireplace) Tea? Strong drink is what we need.
GRETA. Oh, you know you like your tea really, sir. How did it go today?
SIR WILFRID. Badly.
(MAYHEW sits L. of the desk.)
GRETA. (Crossing to SIR WILFRID) Oh, no, sir. Oh, I do hope not. Because he didn’t do it. I’m sure he didn’t do it. (She crosses to the door.)
SIR WILFRID. You’re still sure he didn’t do it. (He looks thoughtfully at her.) Now why’s that?
GRETA. (Confidently) Because he’s not the sort. He’s nice, if you know what I mean—ever so nice. He’d never go coshing an old lady on the head. But you’ll get him off, won’t you, sir?
SIR WILFRID. I’ll—get—him—off.
(GRETA exits.)
(He rises. Almost to himself.) God knows how. Only one woman on the jury—pity—evidently the women like him—can’t think why—he’s not particularly—(He crosses to R. of the desk.) good looking. Perhaps he’s got something that arouses the maternal instinct. Women want to mother him.
MAYHEW. Whereas Mrs. Heilger—is not the maternal type.
SIR WILFRID. (Picking up his tea and crossing with it to L.) No, she’s the passionate sort. Hot blooded behind that cool self-control. The kind that would knife a man if he double-crossed her. God, how I’d like to break her down. Show up her lies. Show her up for what she is.
MAYHEW. (Rising and taking his pipe from his pocket) Forgive me, Wilfrid, but aren’t you letting this case become a personal duel between you and her? (He moves to the fireplace, takes a pipe cleaner from the jar on the mantelpiece and cleans his pipe.)
SIR WILFRID. Am I? Perhaps I am. But she’s an evil woman, John. I’m convinced of that. And a young man’s life depends on the outcome of that duel.
MAYHEW. (Thoughtfully) I don’t think the Jury liked her.
SIR WILFRID. No, you’re right there, John. I don’t think they did. To begin with, she’s a foreigner, and they distrust foreigners. Then she’s not married to the fellow—she’s more or less admitting to committing bigamy.
(MAYHEW tosses the pipe cleaner into the fireplace, then crosses to L. of the desk.)
None of that goes down well. And at the end of it all, she’s not sticking to her man when he’s down. We don’t like that in this country.
MAYHEW. That’s all to the good.
SIR WILFRID. (Crossing above the desk to R. of it) Yes, but it isn’t enough. There’s no corroboration of his statements whatsoever. (He puts his tea on the desk.)
(MAYHEW crosses to L.)
He admits being with Miss French that evening, his fingerprints are all over the place, we haven’t managed to find anybody who saw him on the way home, and there’s the altogether damning matter of the will. (He stands above the desk.) That travel agency business doesn’t help. The woman makes a will in his favour and immediately he goes enquiring about luxury cruises. Couldn’t be more unfortunate.
MAYHEW. (Moving to the fireplace) I agree. And his explanation was hardly convincing.
SIR WILFRID. (With a sudden complete change of manner and becoming very human) And yet, you know, John, my wife does it.
MAYHEW. Does what?
SIR WILFRID. (Smiling indulgently.) Gets travel agencies to make out itineraries for extensive foreign tours. For both of us. (He takes the tobacco jar from the mantelpiece and puts it on the desk.)
MAYHEW. Thank you, Wilfrid. (He sits L. of the desk and fills his pipe.)
SIR WILFRID. She’ll work it all out to the last detail and bemoan the fact that the boat misses a connection at Bermuda. (He moves to R. of the desk.) She’ll say to me that we could save time by flying but that we wouldn’t see anything of the country, and (He sits R. of the desk.) what do I think? And I say: ‘It’s all the same to me, my dear. Arrange it as you like.’ We both know that it’s a kind of game, and we’ll end up with the same old thing—staying at home.
MAYHEW. Ah, now with my wife, it’s houses.
SIR WILFRID. Houses?
MAYHEW. Orders to view. Sometimes I think that there’s hardly a house in England that’s ever been up for sale that my wife hasn’t been over. She plans how to apportion the rooms, and works out any structural alterations that will be necessary. She even plans the curtains and the covers and the general colour scheme. (He rises, puts the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece and feels in his pocket for a match.)
(SIR WILFRID and MAYHEW look at each other and smile indulgently.)
SIR WILFRID. H’m—well . . . (He becomes the Q.C. again.) The fantasies of our wives aren’t evidence, worse luck. But it helps one to understand why young Vole went asking for cruise literature.
MAYHEW. Pipe dreams.
SIR WILFRID. (Taking a matchbox from the desk drawer) There you are, John. (He puts the box on the desk.)
MAYHEW. (Crossing to L. of the desk and picking up the matchbox) Thank you, Wilfrid.
SIR WILFRID. I think we’ve had a certain amount of luck with Janet MacKenzie.
MAYHEW. Bias, you mean?
SIR WILFRID. That’s right. Overdoing her prejudice.
MAYHEW. (Sitting L. of the desk) That was a very telling point of yours about her deafness.
SIR WILFRID. Yes, yes, we got her there. But she got her own back over the wireless.
(MAYHEW finds that the matchbox is empty, throws it in the wastepaper basket and puts his pipe in his pocket.)
Not smoking, John?
MAYHEW. No, not just now.
SIR WILFRID. John, what really happened that night? Was it robbery with violence after all? The police have to admit that it might have been.
MAYHEW. But they don’t really think so and they don’t often make a mistake. That inspector is quite convinced that it was an inside job—that that window was tampered with from the inside.
SIR WILFRID. (Rising and crossing below the desk to L.) Well, he may be wrong.
MAYHEW. I wonder.
SIR WILFRID. But if so who was the man Janet MacKenzie heard talking to Miss French at nine-thirty? Seems to me there are two answers to that.
MAYHEW. The answers being . . . ?
SIR WILFRID. First that she made the whole thing up, when she saw that the police weren’t satisfied about its being a burglary.
MAYHEW. (Shocked.) Surely she wouldn’t do a thing like that?
SIR WILFRID. (Crossing to C.) Well, what did she hear, then? Don’t tell me it was a burglar chatting amicably with Miss French—(He takes his handkerchief from his pocket.) before he coshed her on the head, you old clown. (He coshes MAYHEW with the handkerchief.)
MAYHEW. That certainly seems unlikely.
SIR WILFRID. I don’t think that that rather grim old woman would stick at making up a thing like that. I don’t think she’d stick at anything, you know. No—(Significantly.) I don’t think—she’d stick—at—anything.
MAYHEW. (Horrified) Good Lord! Do you mean . . . ?
CARTER. (Enters and closes the door behind him.) Excuse me, Sir Wilfrid. A young woman is asking to see you. She says it has to do with the case of Leonard Vole.
SIR WILFRID. (Unimpressed.) Mental?
CARTER. Oh, no, Sir Wilfrid. I can always recognize that type.
SIR WILFRID. (Moving above the desk and picking up the tea-cups) What sort of a young woman? (He crosses to C.)
CARTER. (Taking the cups from SIR WILFRID) Rather a common young woman, sir, with a free way of talking.
SIR WILFRID. And what does she want?
CARTER. (Quoting somewhat distastefully) She says she ‘knows something that might do the prisoner a bit of good.’
SIR WILFRID. (With a sigh) Highly unlikely. Bring her in.
(CARTER exits, taking the cups with him.)
What do you think, John?
MAYHEW. Oh well, we can’t afford to leave any stone unturned.
(CARTER enters and ushers in a WOMAN. She appears to be aged almost thirty-five and is flamboyantly but cheaply dressed. Blond hair falls over one side of her face. She is violently and crudely made up. She carries a shabby handbag. MAYHEW rises.)
CARTER. The young lady. (CARTER exits.)
WOMAN. (Looking sharply from SIR WILFRID to MAYHEW) Here, what’s this? Two o’ yer? I’m not talking to two of yer. (She turns to go.)
SIR WILFRID. This is Mr. Mayhew. He is Leonard Vole’s solicitor. I am Sir Wilfrid Robarts, Counsel for the Defence.
WOMAN. (Peering at SIR WILFRID) So you are, dear. Didn’t recognize you without your wig. Lovely you all look in them wigs.