Take My Life (10 page)

‘Her husband disliked the sound of it, she said, and I'm not all that surprised, knowing the noises she made here from time to time. It was a whim, I imagine, and now she's tired of it.' Mrs MacArdle put on the potatoes to boil. Not until she heard a comfortable
bubble-bubble
from inside the pan did she release her firm grip of the handle.

Mr MacArdle's good right hand had been tugging at his tobacco pouch. He grunted his satisfaction as it came out, and he began to fill his pipe. He spilled shreds of tobacco on the floor.

‘The papers are making a rare fuss about this woman violinist who's been murdered,' he said. ‘ I haven't seen a photo yet.'

Mrs MacArdle said tartly: ‘Well, as she was killed last Monday and this letter was posted in Glasgie yesterday, it's not likely to be our Mrs Fleming now, is it? Besides, that woman was a
professional
…'

Philippa went to Queen's Bench Chambers to meet Mr Stephen Tyler,
KC
, who was looked on as a rising young man at the Bar. The fact that he was forty-four and nearly bald did not affect the issue in a profession where wigs are still worn and talent matures late. He had taken silk six months ago, after only eight years as a successful junior – and that separated from the post-war world by a long spell of military service – but the risk had already been justified.

With so much at stake Philippa would really have preferred an older and more experienced man, but Frobisher, grey and cautious enough himself, had scented out Tyler as the one man for whom this case seemed ideally suited; so to Tyler they came.

He greeted her with just the right amount of deference due to her as a beautiful woman, saw her in friendly fashion to a chair, resumed his own seat in some dignity and picked up the brief which he had read through for the first time an hour before.

They discussed it at some length, he treading delicately with his questions and comments, sizing up Philippa's attitude, careful to seek out the salient points of the prosecution, like a new general searching for his enemy's big guns, probing also into the lines he would have to defend, making himself aware of the weakness and the inconsistencies.

He did not ask too many questions at this first meeting for fear of upsetting her uncertain composure and for fear of appearing dubious of the result. But he got most of the information he wanted. He nodded slow approval of Frobisher's attitude at the police court, though privately he always had mental reservations on a policy of altogether withholding one's defence (there was the opinion of the general public to consider, from among whom twelve good men had necessarily to be chosen; and leaving a case unanswered before the magistrate meant leaving the prosecution with a clear field during the formative weeks).

‘Well, it's an mteresting case, Mr Frobisher,' he said eventually. ‘Mrs Talbot was fortunate to have a friend in you. I should like to study this further in the course of the week.' He flipped the brief, and his handsome prominent eyes met Philippa's. ‘Don't allow yourself to be worried in mis matter, Mrs Talbot,' he said positively. ‘As baldly stated, the case has its unfavourable aspects. But there are several very promising factors which haven't yet been given their full weight. There‘s a great deal to be done with it. That's always an encouraging sign. It's the case which seems to offer no scope for treatment that is the bugbear of counsel.'

‘You'll accept the brief?' Philippa asked, anxious to be quite clear.

‘Emphatically. I can already see one clear line of defence. But a great deal of preliminary detail remains to be clarified at present. It will give me very great personal satisfaction if I can help in preventing what would be a grave miscarriage of justice. I'll call you tomorrow, Mr Frobisher. We must make arrangements for visiting Captain Talbot.'

Philippa left the chambers feeling comforted. Apart from friends and some of Nick's relatives, like the Newcombes, the KC was the first man who had spoken so hopefully of the outcome. The cautious Frobisher and his partner had never committed themselves to definite statements of opinion. Discreetly and competently they had gone about their business and left speculation to others. Without meaning to, they had undermined her confidence. Tyler had handed it back to her with a determined gesture of his long white hands. She felt that both she and Nick had found a friend who really believed in his innocence and would make others think the same. Frobisher did not tell her that the barrister's peculiarly mobile, impetuous sympathy gave this impression to most of his clients.

When they had gone Tyler stalked across to the office on the other side of the passage where his devil, Arthur McNeill, was poring over some papers. McNeill looked up as a bundle of fresh papers was dropped on the table before him. Tyler did not speak but went and stood with his back to the fire, his brilliant eyes fixed on his colleague.

There was silence.

‘A fortnight's work for you, Arthur. Drop that other stuff and put your mind to this. This Talbot fellow, who's accused of strangling his mistress. It's all before you.'

‘You're leading?' McNeill said, screwing up his face as he stared at the top page. ‘What's the odds?'

‘Heavy against him, but it's all circumstantial. We can shake that. There are things in his favour, obvious things: his education, his army career, his good reputation –'

‘I shouldn't bank too much on that, Stephen.'

Tyler flung up his arm. ‘Rot. We can get an acquittal. There's one definite line. But I want your opinion. Go through it piece by piece. If you have any idea come and tell me. The man's innocent I feel, and it will be a good life to save.'

On Good Friday Philippa paid one of her usual visits to Nick, who had been moved to Brixton Remand Prison.

It took quite a lot to frighten Philippa, but this place did. From the outside it might have been a medieval castle built by some gloomy baron whose rule rested on terror and brute power. But inside it was much, much worse. As far as she could see it consisted – apart from the endless disinfected stone corridors and the blank lime-washed reception-rooms – of a number of great chambers with the cells in tiers, looking across at each other from among barred balustrades and iron ladders. Such things she had seen in American prison films but had never before quite believed in. Nick called them the Mappin Terraces.

But privately his sense of humour was wearing a little thin. While he was in Bow Street he had not quite been able to take the charge seriously; although he had hated it all he had not in his heart believed the police meant to bring him up on a capital charge. It was his move to Brixton, far more than the magistrates' committal, which had brought it home to the very last detail. The English law said he was innocent until proved guilty; but in the interim police law inevitably had to ensure that he was maintained, guarded, fed, regimented and preserved until such time as he came up for trial. He was treated kindly enough, allowed to keep his own clothes, to smoke and to read in off times and was allowed to see Philippa once a day. But he had been stripped, searched, medically examined, deprived of all articles which might tempt him to suicide and locked away in a cell. Each day he was exercised with other prisoners awaiting trial; each day the prison ate away his good spirits: the high draughty glooms of the place, the noises of clanking buckets and nailed boots, the hygienic but unsavoury smells. If he had been guilty he felt he would long since have lost all hope. It seemed even to implant a sense of guilt where none existed. Sometimes he woke in the night and began to swear at his thoughts.

To Philippa he was always bright enough, but she knew him well enough to see beneath the surface. Perhaps she even read into his mind some of her own feelings. At Bow Street he had said he didn't suffer from claustrophobia, but she felt that no one could fail to suffer from it in this place. Her own imprisonment in Italy had been in fairly pleasant surroundings and with plenty of latitude inside the camp, but even there the endless years had weighed so heavy on her that at times she had felt herself inside a tiny contracting cage against which she must beat her fists and cry out. How much worse must Nick feel inside what was
in fact
a tiny cage, knowing what was before him and knowing that all the time the law was working to get him more securely in its grip.

Sometimes, to deflect her obvious distress, he joined in her attempt at amateur detection, though he hadn't the slightest faith in them. He could see that her activity was useful to her if not to him. On only one point did he argue angrily with her, and that was on the breaking of her operatic career. He felt that her withdrawing at this stage would do him no good and herself untold harm. He was set on her becoming the leading European soprano of the day, and confident that nothing much stood in her way. He could fend for himself. In any case, irrespective of his own future, they must think of hers.

After two weeks of freedom Philippa was tired but not discouraged, and she was anxious to tell him her movements and her plans. She had been making inquiries, treading uselessly in the footsteps of the police. Wherever she went they had been first; but there was a consolation in this active response to Nick's imprisonment. Not only did it help to salve her conscience over that night, it also occupied her mind and body in the only way it was at present willing to work.

She had been to Elizabeth Rusman's lodgings, but had been turned away, she had met Mike Grieve and talked with him, but his response had been surly. Some of the lodgers were more agreeable, but their information hadn't helped, since they were out at the time of the murder. Later she had called on Mr Till, who had found Elizabeth Rusman her new engagement, and he had been very helpful in giving her the history of Elizabeth Rusman's pre-war employments. This had given her something to work on, and she had been all over the south of England.

Yet every alley was blind after a few turns, and every contact she made was curiously lacking in another respect. Nowhere could she find a friend of Elizabeth Rusman. Acquaintances enough, and one or two people who had known her pretty well, but none would agree to the description as applied to themselves. ‘Well,' they would say, ‘I knew her quite well and for a time we went about a bit together, but I wouldn't say we were exactly
friends
.' It seemed that when she came back to England after her long absence she had looked up none of these acquaintances she had made before. Philippa wondered why.

Of course there was much to be done yet – especially in America. But as she went about her quest this week she realized that through a mistaken sense of not wanting to re-open a subject which had been the cause of their quarrel she was neglecting a source which might supply the answer to that question and a number of others as well. There was one person who could not deny he had known Elizabeth intimately, and that was …

‘Nick,' she said, breaking in at the end of something he was saying, ‘I want you to tell me more about Elizabeth Rusman.'

He frowned, changing the direction of his thoughts; looked at her over the glass partition that was between them and lifted one eyebrow in quizzical concern.

‘Haven't we had enough of her?'

‘No. Not nearly enough, Nick. Since that awful night we've avoided her like the plague –'

‘I thought we'd done nothing else but talk of her.'

‘Oh, yes, of the murder. But not of what happened five years ago. I want to know all about that. It may give me some idea of why she acted as she did, going off to America –'

‘I've told the police all the facts.'

‘All they've asked. But not the whole history of it, where you met, what happened … Forget I was ever jealous, Nick. This is – above pettiness. Remember that she's dead and you're accused of killing her. You're in danger, terrible danger. No sort of false shyness must stand in our way over this. I want to know –'

‘What good will knowing it do you?'

‘I can't tell. I don't know till I hear. But I want to hear.'

He shrugged. ‘ Some time perhaps –'

‘No. Now.'

He was silent. ‘ Oh, it's nonsense.'

‘Tell me, please,' she said. ‘Tell me how you first met.'

He lit a cigarette, glanced at his watch.

‘It was after I came back from Nigeria – you know, I'd been prospecting for the government out there. I'd come back to join up and met her at a house party. We – more or less teamed up at once. I got very fond of her and in fact toyed with the idea of marriage; it was then that I wrote those letters the police found, but somehow it didn't really get round to marriage. We quarrelled and separated and came together again, and quite suddenly, without any special cause except the war, decided to go off together. We spent three weeks in Wales. Then we quarrelled again and that was the end of it. I was drafted abroad almost at once and never saw her again until the night at Covent Garden.'

He met his wife's gaze. His eyes were embarrassed but a little relieved, as if he was thankful that much was over.

‘But why did you quarrel?' she asked.

He looked at his cigarette. ‘I don't know.'

‘You must know.'

‘Damn it!' He knocked the ash off into a tray. ‘What does one quarrel about? The simplest, absurdest things. We should know.'

‘But you weren't going to leave me, were you?'

‘Of course not. You silly. That was quite different. Very soon after we went away I realized I didn't really love her. It made the last part of our three weeks a dismal failure. When –'

‘But what made you decide you didn't love her?'

He shook his head as if trying to shake away the question. ‘ I don't know, Philippa. She was pretty, she was fun; but it was one of those things. Intimacy is a sort of crucible, I think: either it refines one's love or the feeling disintegrates and proves to be fake. My feeling was fake. That was why I had rather a guilty conscience about her when we met again back stage.'