Take My Life (20 page)

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.

‘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?