Take My Life (13 page)

‘I didn't say nothing. She never seen me, because it was misty.'

‘And what did you do then?'

‘Had me pint.'

‘Was that before or after you went up to her bedroom?'

‘Before, of course.'

‘And how many pints did you have?'

‘I had two quick ones an' brought two back.'

‘Fortifying yourself, I suppose?'

‘That's right,' said Grieve, glad he could agree on something.

‘At what stage did you start feeling friendly?'

There was a moment's pause while Grieve stared at Tyler. Counsel for the Crown were whispering together. There was no sleepiness in the court now. Tyler's line was quite clear.

‘I don't know what you mean,' Grieve said at last.

‘At what stage did you start wanting to put your arm round some woman?'

Tyler's line was becoming clear even to Grieve.

‘Swelp me, I never did!' he exclaimed indignantly.

‘Well, tell us this. When you came back from fortifying yourself at the public house, how many women were there in the house?'

‘Which 'ouse?'

‘Yours.'

‘Why, only … 'er.'

‘Only Elizabeth Rusman. She was a pretty young woman, wasn't she?'

Grieve's eyes roamed uneasily about.

‘Yes, she was all right.'

‘Nice enough for you?'

‘Look,' said Mike Grieve in a hoarse whisper. ‘ What yer –'

But his answer was partly lost because Sir Alfred was on his feet again addressing the judge. It was, he said, his duty to protest most vigorously against Mr Tyler's line of cross-examination. It seemed, said Sir Alfred, that Mr Tyler was not now satisfied with attacking the credibility of the witness but was implying, etc., etc. Hypocritically Mr Tyler stood his ground and said he was implying nothing. It was very far from his business to accuse this witness or any witness of the murder of Elizabeth Rusman. His duty was to his client and his client only. And his client he would remind Sir Alfred, stood in the dock fighting for life and liberty. In such circumstances, said Mr Tyler, he would be grossly and personally negligent of his duty if he did not probe this astonishing weakness in the Crown's case to its very depths, etc., etc. Then the judge discussed the matter with them at some length, and in the end the issue seemed somehow to become not who had killed Elizabeth Rusman but what Lord Justice Bretherton had said in the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1921. Presently Mr Tyler conceded some point and Sir Alfred sat down and the judge picked up his pen and Mr Tyler turned his attention to Mike Grieve with undiminished venom.

‘Did you like Miss Rusman?'

‘… She was all right. What I seen of her.'

‘You didn't see as much of her as you would have liked?'

‘I tell you, she wasn't my sort!'

‘Wasn't worth the risk, I suppose?'

‘Eh?'

‘Not when sober.'

‘Oh, I was sober enough.'

‘So you went out to get a little courage.'

‘I went out to get a pint!'

‘You mean four pints.'

‘Well, yes …'

The man was sweating now.

‘And when you came back, duly fortified and feeling friendly, how long was it before you started thinking of the lonely woman upstairs?'

‘I didn't! I shouldn't have thought nothing about her if I 'adn't seen the man coming out as I was going in!'

‘What man?'

Grieve lifted up a short fat forefinger and pointed at Nick. ‘ That man!'

‘How did you recognize him?' Tyler asked quietly.

‘When?'

‘When you met him.'

‘I didn't. I never seen him before.'

‘Are you sure you saw him then?'

‘What?'

‘Are you sure there was any man there at all?'

‘Course I am! Think I was dreaming?'

‘No, I think you'd had four pints and were feeling friendly. I put it to you that you were far more interested in Elizabeth Rusman than in any man you may or may not have passed on the stairs.'

Grieve stared into the prominent handsome eyes of the counsel. ‘I weren't! I tell you I weren't! I only went up to see what was amiss.'

‘How did you know there was anything amiss?'

‘I didn't, but I smelt a rat.'

‘You mean to say you went upstairs to see if anything was wrong merely because you saw a man coming down?'

‘Well, 'e'd got blood on 'is 'andkerchief.'

‘How did you know which door to go to?'

‘I'd seen Rusman come in. I knew there was no one else in the 'ouse.'

So it went on. Without pause but without haste Tyler went on to Grieve's discovery of the body, calling in question step by step each part of his testimony. If it had not been for the fact that this man had, apparently with wilful malice, wrongly identified him, Nick would have felt sorry for Grieve. Tyler came to the arrival of Mrs Grieve on the scene, and by the phrasing of his questions suggested to the jury that, far from trying to put the fire out, Mike Grieve might well have been surprised in the act of burning down the house.

At last Tyler stopped for a few moments to collect his notes and Grieve, wiping his sweating face with a red handkerchief, made a half move to go. But Tyler stopped him.

‘Not yet, Mr Grieve. I haven't quite finished. You have given us your version of what happened before the police arrived. What happened when the police were in charge? Did they examine the body and the room and take a statement from you?'

‘That's right.'

‘Where were you when you gave them this statement?'

‘Sittin' on a chair.'

‘In the room where the murder was committed?'

‘That's right.'

‘Did you see what went on in the room?'

‘They was asking me questions all the time.'

‘Did you see the doctor take a locket from round the dead woman's neck?'

‘I seen 'im give it to the police.'

‘Was it open?'

‘The inspector opened it.'

‘Did he show it to the doctor?'

‘That's right.'

‘Did you see the photograph inside?'

‘What me? No.'

‘Could you have seen it if you'd wanted to?'

‘I dunno.'

‘You don't remember?'

‘That's right.'

Tyler hesitated a second. There were other questions he could put, but his sense of timing told him that this was the moment to sit down. He was conscious of the impression all this had made. He sat down and listened to the excited whispers of his colleague.

Mike Grieve, thankfully at almost any price to escape from the witness-box, was turning to go when he was again recalled.

‘Just one word more, Mr Grieve,' said Sir Alfred Wells. ‘ I understand that one pint of your beer was untouched when you discovered the fire. That means you had only drunk three. Now can you tell us approximately how many pints you had taken the day you put your arm round the lady in the bus?'

Grieve gazed at him sheepishly. ‘Oh … I dunno. About eight or ten …'

Wells breathed again. He had been hoping that his witness would see the point of the question.

‘So I imagine it takes considerably more than three pints to put you over the mark?'

‘Not 'arf, it don't!'

The judge lowered his pen and looked at Grieve distastefully. ‘Not half, it don't. Will you kindly tell the court whether that means yes or no.'

‘My Lord,' said Wells, ‘I think the witness means that it takes very much more than three pints.'

‘That's right, m'Lord. That's what I said.'

‘Now between the night that you found the body and the morning when you identified the prisoner, how much liquor did you drink?'

‘Not a drop,' said Grieve fervently.

‘Did you
at any time
see the photograph in the locket?'

‘No!'

‘Did you
at any time
speak to Elizabeth Rusman on the night of the murder?'

‘No!'

‘Thank you, Mr Grieve.' While the man was at last escaping, Wells was thoughtfully fingering his shabby gown. ‘ My Lord,' he said, ‘in view of the suggestions put forward by Mr Tyler in the course of his cross-examination, I ask your permission to recall Inspector Archer to the witness-stand.'

Tyler and Land had their heads together. Both of them had foreseen this move. But the judge glanced at the clock.

‘You may recall him tomorrow,' Sir Alfred,' he said, and rose.

The first day was over.

Four hundred and nine miles away Mr Sidney Fleming was reading the London papers which had just come in.

From where he was sitting he should have been able to hear C Form at their chanting under Mr Duncan – if the boys of C Form had not been scattered to the four corners of the kingdom and Mr Duncan, with sour patient enterprise, on a walking tour in Snowdonia.

The school clock chimed two-thirty and Fleming folded the papers on his desk. He put on his gown and went out. All the classrooms were empty and he met nobody, strolling through the various rooms of the school.

During this Easter vacation he had taken very much to spending his time in the school proper and neglecting his own house. Another might have found something eerie and uncomfortable about the big deserted building with the chapel and the new gymnasium attached. Seething and murmuring with life during term-time, it was now echoing and draughty and cold. Dawns came up and nights fell upon the dusty classrooms, and nothing stirred within them except the one silent lonely man pacing through them thinking his lonely thoughts.

But for him his own house was the one to be shunned. Matron had as usual gone off at the end of the term, and a day later he had told Mrs Turnbull not to come again until the school reassembled, as he was going away himself. At that time he had toyed with the idea of visiting his cousin in Birmingham; but it had come to nothing. So except for McLeod, the lodge-keeper, he was quite alone at the school. Not that he minded that, for he loved the school with all his heart.

The trouble with his own house was that he had not been able to move anything. Her bed was beside his own, the lamp-shade she had made still on the bedside light. He had cleared away the magazines – the empty, saccharine magazines with their society photos and their theatre talk; they'd always been a bone of contention – but the powder bowl, the pincushion, the half-empty jar of face cream he had not liked to move. A pair of shoes were still under the bed and a dressing-gown hung behind the door. And there was the wardrobe full of her clothes – clothes she had bought with his money and had left behind, it seemed, as a last contemptuous gesture. Even now that Mrs Turnbull did not come he had left them alone. The silent inanimate symbols of her being were uncomfortable to him, but he was strong enough to prefer them to the risk of comment. For two weeks he had endured her photograph on the piano downstairs; but one day when Mrs Turnbull was in the room he had contrived to brush it off with his sleeve so that the glass broke.

Soon, one more term, he would be leaving it all. Not too soon. It couldn't be a moment too soon.

Today he had read the papers with eager interest for any information about the opening of the trial. They really said very little, and, being so far away, he must wait until tomorrow to get any news of its progress.

A weaker man, he knew, might have gone to London, for there was nothing to tie him here until the school re-assembled next week. He might even have queued to watch the trial. But such a move would have been against his principles, and principle with him was always the strongest moving force. Never in all his life had he pushed, queued, forced himself, been moved by mob sentiment, curiosity, panic, to do the illogical, silly or conventional thing. Even in the crisis a month ago this inner calm had stood by him. Always he had acted as his reason told him. (Well always except that once, and then she had provoked him as so often before, and this time beyond the limits.)

He went into the chapel and shut the heavy door behind him and sat down on one of the pitch-pine pews. (Always there was a little skimping of the refinements, a cheese-paring tendency in Lady Clunes's generosity; a crying pity that this grand chapel had not been given the bench ends it deserved.)

He had spent many hours in here this last fortnight, impervious to the chill striking up from the stone floor. Between himself and God there were no secrets, and he had soberly faced the issues in his soul. Sometimes he was touched with feelings of horror and remorse, but that was when he woke up in the night, when the soft, emotional, conscience-ruled springs of his mind were freed from the censors of reason and logic. Here in the chapel with God to help him and his mind clear there was no such weakness: he had come to see that his killing of her was the only thing that could have happened; of two bitter evils he had chosen the lesser, not only on selfish grounds but on grounds of spiritual fitness. If one of two people had to go, then the one who was morally useless to the community must go before the one who was useful. That was surely as true on Christian as an Nietzschean principles.

Even Talbot's unexpected arrest was not impossible to fit into the pattern, though had it been anyone else he would have been faced with a very different problem.

Today he could not settle in his usual manner to an hour or so in the quiet. It was the Thing going on in London and the knowledge that any time now six copies of the
Edinburgh Evening News
would be delivered at Angus Baird's, the general shop in the village. One was for the rector, one for Dr Wishart, three others for regular customers. One sometimes was unsold or was read by Baird himself. Fleming never bought one. It was a principle of his to disapprove of the silly habit which needed the world's news twice a day.

He was wondering now whether his calling in for a paper at Baird's would be so unusual as to invite remark. He was wondering whether a Scottish evening paper would carry any early information of the progress of the trial.