Detective Chief Inspector Morrison said: ‘Can you tell us again briefly what happened, Mrs Angell? In your own words. Take your time. It would be a help to us all.’
‘If my husband …’
‘Dr Dawson is with him. We shall be told as soon as he comes round.’
‘It’s been a terrible shock.’
‘I quite understand … You say you knew this man?’
‘Yes. Godfrey Brown. He was a boxer. We – got to know him through a Lady Vosper who was a friend of my husband’s. Godfrey Brown worked as a chauffeur for her.’
‘But you said he was a boxer.’
‘Yes. He didn’t make enough to live on, and he acted as her chauffeur. Lady Vosper befriended him in all sorts of ways – almost adopted him. In the end he took her name, began to box as Godfrey Vosper, to call himself that.’
‘Is he still with her?’
‘No, she died last year. Since then he’s been on his own, at a loose end. I think that was the beginning of the trouble.’
‘How do you mean?’
Pearl wiped her lips. They tasted as if she had been sucking copper. ‘I think he expected a legacy from Lady Vosper and it was delayed. Probate or something. He thought he’d been cheated of it and for some reason blamed my husband.’
‘Is he – was he her solicitor?’
‘He wasn’t the family solicitor. But he acted for her sometimes. He advised her.’
They were in the drawing-room. Upstairs there was the sound of movement, the discreet, solemn, decent movement of professional men about an unpleasant business. Photographs were being taken, measurements, the rest. It would soon be time to move Godfrey out to the waiting ambulance. Little God, the undefeatable, the untameable, the irresistible, had disappeared, like a demon king in a puff of smoke; resisted, tamed, defeated for ever by a piece of lead and a whiff of cordite and the hysterical reflexes of a terrified middle-aged man. Tears flooded into Pearl’s eyes at the thought, and she dabbed at them with a fine cambric handkerchief. She was wearing a green turtle neck sweater and a short linen skirt. Morrison’s eyes went over her politely but speculatively. He noted that she was not wearing a brassiere under her sweater.
‘Well now, how did this trouble begin?’
‘Godfrey – Godfrey Brown accused my husband of poisoning Lady Vosper’s mind against him and so losing him his legacy. He threatened Wilfred.’
‘When?’
‘Oh … in February it began. When he thought he wasn’t going to get the legacy.’
‘Were these threats made before witnesses?’
‘I was there.’
‘Other witnesses?’
‘Not then.’
‘What did he say exactly?’
‘Well.’ Her lips gave a nervous quiver. ‘I can’t remember exactly. Something about getting even. “I’ll do you for this.”’
“‘I’ll do you for this.” I see.’ Morrison rubbed his long nose. ‘Was there any reason for Brown’s belief that your husband had turned Lady Vosper against him?’
‘Wilfred may have thought Lady Vosper was being taken in by Godfrey Brown. Other people did. He may have said something to her at some time, I don’t know. But it became a sort of obsession with Godfrey Brown. He kept calling here, asking to see Mr Angell.’
‘Did he see him?’
‘Not if we could help it.’
Godfrey was being brought down the stairs now. It was a slow and clumsy process. Pearl’s lips were still quivering under their blurred lipstick. But it was the quivering of a taut wire. Inside she was stretched, alert, raw.
Godfrey. Little God. Great God. Cruel God. She had responded at the last this afternoon but in an intensely masochistic way. At heart she was a conventional girl with a respectable background, and one could offend against that background too far. He had gone too far. At the time it was acceptable but to think of it after was intolerable. But Godfrey … Gone. It was impossible in so short a time. Destroyed. Disappeared. Sweet and bitter Godfrey.
‘And then? Coming to this afternoon …’
‘Before this afternoon,’ said Pearl, crying for she knew not what. ‘Some months ago, my husband had to go to Merrick House, which was the Vosper family seat. It was on business to do with the sale of the contents. I went with him. When he got there Godfrey Brown was there.’
‘Was this after Lady Vosper’s death?’
‘Oh, yes …’ she added: ‘He had no right there. But he’d been living there, camping out in the country house. When we surprised him he attacked my husband.’
‘Attacked him? Physically?’
‘Yes. Knocked him down. Cut his eye. Bruised his ribs. He had to have the doctor.’
‘Was a charge brought against Brown?’
‘No. My husband didn’t want all the fuss and bother. I tried to persuade him but he wouldn’t call the police.’
‘Always a mistake, Mrs Angell. Was anybody witness to this assault?’
‘I was. And also the chauffeur.’
‘This was some months ago, you say?’
‘Yes. In … it would be March.’
‘And since then, have you seen anything of him?’
Pearl shivered and tried to hide it. Underneath she was still unclothed. She had noticed the inspector’s earlier glance and she fancied that everyone could detect her nakedness. She still bore the marks of Godfrey’s hands. If they were to examine her …
‘Since then?’ prompted Inspector Morrison.
‘He came to the house twice when Wilfred wasn’t here, but I wouldn’t let him in.’
They had got him out of the door. A crowd of people staring were being moved on by the police. An hour ago. All that life.
‘What did Brown want, Mrs Angell?’
‘Want?’
‘Yes. There must have been some reason for him calling. It surely wasn’t just to threaten and bully.’
‘He wanted money – the money that he thought Mr Angell had cheated him of.’
‘He demanded money in your hearing?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She hesitated. ‘Several times. But he often seemed just to want to threaten and – and bully, as you say. Perhaps my husband when he comes round will be able to tell you …’
‘Of course. And to your knowledge did he ever give him any?’
‘No. He told me he never had.’
Morrison stretched his legs. This chair he was sitting in: it had been designed for an 18th-century dandy. ‘ Now could you just tell me in detail what happened this evening?’
‘What, again?’
‘Yes, please. If you wouldn’t mind.’
The doors of the ambulance slammed, the engine started up. A shadow moved across the window as the ambulance turned the corner. Good-bye, Little God. Good-bye now for ever. Those vilely grasping hands, the glinting impudent smile, the coxcomb hair, the courage, the sheer fighting guts, the cruelty, the energy, the strength. Above all the courage, the utter lack of fear. They at least shone out. And all destroyed by a flabby old man. She put her hands up to her face and burst into tears.
Morrison waited patiently. After a while Pearl blew her nose, wiped her eyes, dabbed at her streaked face. ‘ Sorry.’
‘Take your time. I know it’s been a great shock.’
‘Yes … He came while I was baking a cake. I went to the door. I was – upset when I saw him and tried to shut it. But he got his foot in. Then he pushed me back, forced his way in.’ Pearl showed her bruised knuckles. ‘He did that, pushing so violently.’
Morrison nodded. ‘What did he say?’
‘Well, it was then he took this huge revolver out of his pocket, started waving it at me. He seemed very excited. He said where was Mr Angell? He wanted to see him. I said he was out. He ranted at me, saying he’d just knocked out a man he had been sparring with and he’d knock me out if I – if I tried to call for help. He—’
‘Pardon me, did he threaten you with the revolver?’
‘To hit me with it, not to shoot. He said he didn’t know if it would shoot because it was a relic he’d brought from Merrick House – the Vospers’ place – but he was waiting to try it on my husband. He – he went through the ground floor rooms, seemed to think Wilfred was hiding from him. Then he went upstairs.’
‘Yes.’
Pearl crossed her legs, and then, catching Morrison’s involuntary glance, carefully uncrossed them. ‘After a minute or so I followed him. He had gone from Mr Angell’s bedroom through to mine. He was pulling things about, as if he wanted to – to destroy … just then Wilfred must have come in. I didn’t hear him because I was trying to telephone for the police, but Godfrey – Godfrey Brown pulled me away. I’ve got – I expect I have bruises on my arms and shoulders …’
‘Just so. Er – where was the revolver during all this?’
‘I think he must have put it on the dressing table. I don’t really remember.’ She cleared her throat, plunged on. ‘All I remember was that we were in my room there and I heard Wilfred come upstairs. I was terrified what was going to happen. Brown had stormed through into my bathroom and then he must have heard too because he came back and pushed past me into my husband’s bedroom and when I followed him he was holding the revolver and threatening Wilfred, who had backed against the door. And my husband said: “I am going to telephone the police, Brown. And don’t attempt to stop me.” And Brown laughed out loud, he laughed and said: “ If you do I’ll try my old revolver on you.” So I rushed for the telephone again, and Godfrey tried to grab me and Wilfred joined in and somehow he got hold of the revolver. And the next thing I knew he was backing against the door and saying: “ Keep your distance, I warn you, keep your distance.” And Brown was still laughing, and he said – or shouted – “The thing’s too old to work! I got it off the wall at Flora’s.” That is Lady Vosper’s. “But I’m going to do for you, Angell, I’m going to do for you!” And – and he took a couple of steps towards my husband and there was this terrible explosion, and then Brown was lying on the floor …’
This much true. The terrible explosion and Godfrey lying bleeding on the floor. Horror, horror, I had to pick up his hand. My heel got in the blood, I had to wash it off: it’s sticky, not like blood, like thin jam. And Wilfred helplessly fainting on his bed, vomit on his chin; and the thin spread-eagled, strangled, little boy-corpse of Godfrey with half his neck gone and terrible blood oozing; and the great revolver blue and polished shining between them. Only me, only me left with any consciousness, any working mind between us, only me left to think, to plan, to scheme, to try to salvage. Perhaps that’s justice because I’m the cause of it all …
‘What time was this, Mrs Angell?’
‘Time? … I don’t know. About half-past six, I suppose. What time is it now?’
‘Seven-twenty. Just seven-twenty. It would be about fifty-five minutes since this happened?’
‘I suppose so. I’ve lost touch. How long have you been here?’
‘Let’s see. Thirty-five minutes. It was at six twenty-five that Scotland Yard received your call. A patrol car reached you at six-thirty and I arrived at a quarter to seven.’
Pearl lifted her hair away from her face. ‘ Yes. Yes, if you say so. Why?’
‘One always likes to pinpoint the time if one can.’ A perfunctory frown crossed his long face. ‘According to the police surgeon who examined the body at seven, his estimate was that Brown had thenbeen dead about an hour.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Well, yes, Mrs Angell, it does rather.’
Pearl had seen the pitfall but there had been no way to avoid it. All that time. Those first minutes that had ticked away in frozen fear. A lonely midnight of the soul. Then sudden action like some galvanized robot. Shaking Wilfred into a semblance of consciousness; removing one impression of her bedroom, creating another. ‘The same story, Wilfred, if you can think, we must tell the same story.’ ‘I shall go to prison for this: several years. No licence for the gun, even.’ ‘ No licence then who knows you’ve got it?’ The sick horror of getting Godfrey’s fingerprints on it without getting her own; the deliberate wrecking of Wilfred’s bedroom …
‘I rang you as soon as I could, Inspector, but I can’t tell you how long it took. When – when I saw all that blood I felt so sick. I crawled back into my own room. I think I was trying to get water – I wasn’t sure if Wilfred was shot too – but I lay on the floor of my room and couldn’t get any further. I must have passed out.’ She shivered again. It was all right to shiver there. ‘ When I came to, my first thought was for Wilfred, and I went back and found him lying across the bed. I thought perhaps he was dead, but I found he was breathing – in fact he seemed half to recognize me – and I got his head on the pillow and his feet up …’
‘Where was the revolver at this time?’
‘Where you found it – where the police found it.’
‘You didn’t touch it at all?’
‘No.’ I wiped it clean and then used gloves. It can’t have left —
‘And when did you telephone?’
‘As soon as I’d made sure Wilfred was alive I went to it, but just then he began to moan so I went back to him and was with him three or four minutes more. Then – then I dialled 999. Then I sat there by the telephone not moving at all until your patrol man rang the bell …’
Morrison nodded and made a note in his book. It all looked plain and straightforward. Yet in cases where the wife is young and blonde and pretty and has a flared, wild, wide-awake look … And he had a slight uneasy feeling that although her evidence was very convincing, her second telling of events had been just a fraction too similar to the first.
‘Did Brown ever attempt to attack you, Mrs Angell?’
‘Me?’ She opened her clear eyes from which the tears had now almost gone. ‘No, he wasn’t that bad. Except in the way I’ve said – pushing me away from the door, stopping me from getting at the telephone.’
‘Has he used that sort of violence to you before – for instance at this house where he assaulted your husband?’
‘No. Never before.’
‘And at no time – his aims were never sexual?’
His gaze was very direct and she met it. ‘ Oh, no. Certainly not. It was my husband he came to see, not me. The only thing he had against me was if I got in the way.’
Morrison closed his notebook and snapped the elastic round it. Brown must have been blind then, he thought. ‘Do you happen to know his present address?’
‘Brown’s? Not since Lady Vosper died. But I think he worked for a man called Davis. Davis was his trainer or manager or something – arranged his fights.’
‘And d’you know Davis’s address?’
‘It was in Shaftesbury Avenue. Wilfred might know.’
‘Did Brown have any relatives in London?’
‘I’ve really no idea, Inspector. We didn’t know him well. You don’t get to know somebody else’s chauffeur well, do you. It’s very unfortunate that we ever met.’
‘Too true. Can you remember the date when you actually did first meet him?’
‘Oh, about a year last March.’
‘Before you married or after?’
‘Before. I met my husband about the same time.’
‘How did you first meet Brown?’
‘Well, I got to know Lady Vosper through Mr Angell, and Brown was her chauffeur. As I’ve told you. Oh, and there was a dance I went to with some friends. It was just a local dance, like a tennis dance, and Brown happened to be there. Everybody was very friendly, and he asked me to dance and I danced with him and he offered me a lift home in Lady Vosper’s car.’
‘Did you accept?’
She hesitated, on the brink of the wrong lie. ‘There were a lot of us and it happened to be more convenient. He just dropped me off at my house.’
‘So you were on quite friendly terms then?’
‘Casually, yes.’
‘Enough to dance with him?’
‘Well, yes. He asked me. It would have seemed snobbish to have refused.’
‘You didn’t mind him asking you?’
‘I was a bit surprised. But there seemed no harm in it.’
‘He was not – over-familiar then in any way?’
‘Oh, no. While Lady Vosper was alive he seemed perfectly normal in every way.’
‘Was that your only contact with him, apart from when you were with your husband?’
‘Well, I saw him with Lady Vosper. And he called at my parents’ home a couple of times with messages from her.’
‘Messages?’
‘Invitations. We were not on the telephone.’
‘Did your husband know about this?’
‘Know about what?’ There was a slight chill in her eyes.
‘I mean you knowing Brown before you were married.’
‘But of course. It was through Mr Angell that I met Lady Vosper.’
Well, she had all the answers. Morrison nodded gently to himself. ‘Did you know, by the way, that your husband appears to have pulled the trigger three times?’
She frowned. ‘I didn’t know. I only heard one shot.’
‘There was only one shot. The other two cartridges did not fire.’
‘I see … Well, you said it was an old revolver.’
‘Thirty years old, probably. Did you see Brown with it before?’
‘No.’
‘You never saw it in this Lady – er Vosper’s house?’
‘Lady Vosper’s house is enormous, Inspector. And it’s full of old armour and old guns … Er – how do you know my husband pulled the trigger three times? Brown may have tried it before he came. He said – I told you he said: “It’s too old to work.”’
‘You did.’ They looked at each other and it was Morrison who looked down to put his notebook away. Just then there was a tap on the door and a constable came in.
‘Excuse me, sir, the doctor says Mr Angell is coming round.’
‘Get Mumford,’ Wilfred had whispered in that terrible twenty-odd minutes before the police were called; but to avoid what might have seemed like too much forethought she did not ring him until after seven. He arrived just as Wilfred had finished giving his first account of what had happened. Wilfred had chosen Mumford because although he was not as clever as Esslin he was eminently English and solidly respectable. Wilfred needed above everything respectability at this time. They were closeted together with Inspector Morrison and a sergeant for upwards of an hour.
Thereafter the routine process of the law. Mumford protested at Angell’s having to go to the police station, arguing that his client was too unwell. But Morrison was politely pressing and Angell went. The horrors of a night there. Something ingrained for ever afterwards in the soul. As if he were a criminal. He who had lived all his life so scrupulously within the law and by the law. To be regarded as a criminal, to spend the night in a room in a police station. And with the horrifying prospect that in the lunatic world in which he now lived he might have to spend many other such nights. Mumford was reassuring but Angell was not reassured.
And in the early morning it was all too true. The police charged Mr Wilfred Angell with manslaughter. Detective Chief Inspector Morrison had found sufficient elements of dissatisfaction in the case. A Mrs Howard Leverett at No. 24 Cadogan Mews had heard the shot. She had been taking a bath and had her transistor radio in the bathroom with her and had just switched on the six o’clock news. It confirmed the surgeon’s estimate and left a gap of almost twenty-five minutes before Mrs Angell called the police. Twenty-five minutes was a long time for a swoon. It was the only evidence so far to put in doubt the story the Angells told. Yet there were other straws in the wind …
The inquest was opened and, after formal evidence had been given, was adjourned indefinitely. This was almost immediately followed by the hearing in the magistrate’s court. After a discussion which lasted nearly as long as the hearing, bail was allowed on a surety of £500. Angell was free to go home.
On the way home Mumford was furious with the police. It came to something, he said, when a householder of the greatest respectability, attacked in his own home and in defence of his own life, caused the death of a brutal intruder, and the police were so stupid as to bring a case. It was a monstrous piece of officialdom and should be brought to the notice of the Chief Commissioner. Of course, said Mumford, heartily, there was still no need to worry. The outcome, if even now it ever came to trial, was a foregone conclusion. Self-defence. Justifiable homicide. Just the same, it was as well to get the best man, one supposed. Whom did Angell fancy? There was Nigel John, a good solid chap with a long history of defence successes in the criminal court. Or there was Bergson. Or young Honiton; they were talking about him.
When they got home Mumford said, should he come in but Angell said, thank you, no, I’ll just get to bed.
After the car had driven away Pearl stood for a moment on the step, before following Wilfred into the house. A beautiful afternoon with thundery peach-bloom clouds drifting overhead. It was the day of one of the Royal Garden Parties: they had seen the toppered men and flowered women coming away as they drove home. The warm air of London was almost flowery after the police station and the court.
It was a lovely day but now for her everything was changed, everything had to be adjusted, nothing would ever be the same again. There had been reporters as they came out of court: lucky none was here to welcome them home.
She shivered and went in. Angell was sitting crouched in his coat in the drawing-room, his shoulders hunched. Since those frantic twenty minutes after the shot, while Godfrey cooled between them on the floor, they had had no private conversation. Since those frenetic moments when she had taken charge.
She said: ‘Let me get you to bed.’
He did not reply, might not have heard. His thick hair was over his brow.
After a minute she came and sat down opposite him. ‘Wilfred, what do you want me to do?’
He looked at her, and it was as if Godfrey’s brief angry presence was still in the house.
‘Until the trial,’ she said. ‘What will you do?’
He shrugged. ‘ I’ll go in the Clinic for a week or so. I’m on the verge of complete breakdown.’
‘Shall I get you tea now or a drink?’
‘I’ll never forgive you,’ he said, the words coming thickly in a froth to his lips. ‘Never as long as I live.’
She folded her hands. Her features were wan, shadowed by the afternoon light, a firm-cut, austere mask. ‘Do you want me to leave you right away or to stay on until after the trial?’
Before he could answer the telephone rang. She went into the hall and lifted the receiver. Presently she came back. ‘The Sunday Gazette.’
‘You didn’t speak to them?’
‘No.’
‘The scavengers of the press. The jackals. The carrion. They only foregather at such times. Sitting round howling to the moon …’
There were things in the room needed tidying. After a sleepless night she had not been able to concentrate this morning. Upstairs, the rug had been taken away, and Mrs Jamieson had said she would try to get the stains off the wood of the floor. Godfrey. It had all happened in a few seconds. Feather-weight. Blown like a feather out of the world.
She said suddenly: ‘If you think I invited him here yesterday you’re mistaken. That was all true, what I told the police. I can show you the scratches and bruises on my arms.’
‘I shall never forgive you,’ he whispered with hate and horror. ‘All this: I can’t ever forgive you for what you’ve done.’
She paused in the mindless occupation of picking up a used ashtray. ‘Tell me, Wilfred. Just say. I’ll do whatever you say. Do you want me to leave at once, tonight?’
He hesitated on the brink of assent: it wouldn’t do: his personal safety was at stake. ‘No.’
‘Then what?’
‘It would give the wrong impression. It would be wrong until after the trial.’
‘All right. Whatever you say.’
‘There’s no other way. Now that you’ve …’
‘Now that I’ve what?’
‘Told this story. Imposed this story on me.’
‘Wasn’t it the best? You didn’t want it to come out that you’d killed him as a betrayed husband, did you? And with your own gun.’
‘What did you do with the other packet of bullets for the Smith & Wesson?’
‘I pushed them down the toilet. I dropped them in and then pushed them out of sight with the brush.’
‘Do you realize what would have happened to your story if the police had found them?’
‘But they didn’t, did they.’
He listened to this as to the voice of deception, the voice of the serpent.
‘And anyway,’ she said, ‘it’s not true – it wouldn’t have been true that you shot him because you were a – a betrayed husband. You did kill him in self-defence, because you thought he was going to attack you.’
He levered himself out of the chair, lumbered like an old man into the kitchen, poured himself half a tumbler of whisky, splashed it with soda. At this moment he hated her almost as much for the way she had acted after Godfrey’s death as for the rest. Reeling as he was, fainting and retching with horror and nausea, she had come at him, dominating him, directing him, demanding information of him, telling him what to do, while he lay inert and only half conscious on the bed. Whose revolver was it? Who knew he’d got it? Where had he bought it? How did you put fingerprints on it?
Today his acute legal brain had partly regained its equilibrium, and all day it had been busy finding variants of justification and defence; but all, all were restricted, circumscribed by the story she had told and insisted that he tell. All must conform to that. It might be, at least it might seem, that she had had the idea of saying that the revolver was Godfrey’s in order to save him, Wilfred, from infinitely worse trouble. If she succeeded, if they succeeded, and the police were proceeding on this assumption, it was indeed a brilliant idea which might save him from a prison sentence. But he could not appreciate it. She had had no right to have that idea. It was a criminal idea and a criminal deception, and if it were found out the consequence would be infinitely worse, even worse yet.
He, the lawyer, should have taken control last night, not she, the guilty wife.
When he went back into the drawing-room she was standing at the window looking out. For someone who usually stood so well, her dejected stance was like a confession of defeat. Youth had decayed in her heart.
He said: ‘That story. This story you forced me to accept while I was in – in shock, that you imposed on me. Even if in your view at the time it was the best, it’s so weak, so shot full of holes. If the police find out the truth, as they will, it will be the worse for you as well as for me.’
‘I don’t see any reason why they should.’
‘You don’t know the police.’ He drank again, and the whisky went down like hope. ‘It was your reputation you were thinking of, not mine. Wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘For instance, how many people knew of your friendship with him before your marriage?’
‘It wasn’t a friendship. What I told the police was nearly true.’
‘How many?’
‘A girl called Hazel Boynton. Two young men.’
‘Your family?’
‘No. He called twice when I was out.’
‘So if the police ask. These others, this girl, these young men, of course they will talk.’
‘They can only say I met him. I told the police I met him. It’s so near the truth that you could see it either way. There’s nothing to disprove at all!’
‘Were there letters? Before or after marriage?’
‘No.’ That note … But she had not signed it.
‘Did Lady Vosper know anything? So that she might have gossiped before she died?’
‘He said not. He wouldn’t want to make her – jealous.’
He put his empty glass down. ‘I suspected as much. But you. Even then you … God, you make me feel sick! And his visits here? How many?’
‘Recently none. Until yesterday.’
‘And before that?’
‘I can’t remember. Three or four.’
‘Your visits to him?’
She turned away from the window, her eyes stony, moving as if to get away.
‘Tell me, please.’
‘Three or four. But it was just a room he had. Not flats. You just walked up the stairs. I never saw a caretaker or a janitor.’
‘And what did you leave there? How many things? Handkerchiefs, shoes, a comb?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’
He did not immediately go to bed. She made some soup and opened a tin of tongue and baked four potatoes in their jackets and there was some cheese. All this time he had never been upstairs. They ate at the same table, separated by Godfrey. Twice they had telephone calls and once there was a ring at the bell, but each time it was the newspapers and they would give no satisfaction. When they spoke to each other it was of the only subject. At the end of the meal she asked him when he thought the trial would be.
He said: ‘ Not until October at the earliest.’
‘Oh, my God!’ She was horrified. ‘Not until … But why?’
‘It is the cross one has to bear. The next Law Term does not begin until October.’
‘Oh, my God.’
‘Yes,’ he said drily. ‘My God.’
She moved restlessly, her mind busy with all the implications. And he watched her with contained horror. Her white glinting teeth bit into a biscuit. Her red lips moved gently. A tip of tongue came out to take in a crumb. Her bare arms were like beautiful snakes. ‘Mr Mumford didn’t tell me that. But he said it will be just a formality when it does come off.’
‘Nothing is a formality. We do not yet know what the prosecution’s case will be.’
‘Three months or more.’ Must she stay with him like this for three months or more?
‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘I remain with this deep and terrible accusation hanging over me. The head of one of the most respected firms in the Fields. Until then the calumny will ruin our business. At the end of that time, even if I am acquitted, it will ruin me. Aren’t you happy about that?’
‘No, I’m not happy about that. I never wanted to ruin you. What good does it do to ruin you? My own life is ruined anyway.’
‘Your life,’ he said with contempt.
‘Do you think I’m not entitled to one?’
‘Not at the expense of people with whom you have ties of loyalty and honour.’ He had been going to say ‘contractual obligations’.
She got up, pushing her chair back so that it screeched on the parquet floor. ‘ You forced him on me,’ she said.
‘What!’ He was outraged.
‘Oh yes, I’d met him before my marriage, I know, but I’d always choked him off – he was too crude and brutal – I would never have anything to do with him.’ Pearl moved tearfully to the door, but came back again. ‘It’s true! I told him if he wouldn’t leave me alone I’d call the police. So he did leave me alone. In the end he left me alone! Then when I married you, you insisted that he should call here at our house. You invited him! I asked you not to but you invited him! You had some reason. Heaven knows what it was. But you forced him on me. Don’t imagine the fault is all on one side.’ He was so indignant he was speechless. He stared at her, leaning
back in his chair, consumed with anger that he could not off-load. ‘I did not know I had a wife who would go with any servant
who called at the door.’
She said: ‘I didn’t know I was a wife who would.’
Just as her previous remark had contorted him with anger, this
took the weapon out of his hands. He stared at her dumbly. She
always surprised him. Perhaps he was unused to women, perhaps
she was unique.
He said: ‘ How am I to believe you?’
‘You don’t have to any more.’
She put the plates together, again an involuntary action.
It was Coalport china, King pattern Georgian silver, Waterford
glass.
‘I’m glad I killed him,’ Angell said with sudden venom. I’m glad
I shot him down.’
‘Don’t ever say that!’
‘Why? Because you loved him. That’s it, isn’t it. You still loved
him in spite of it all. All his coarseness, his brutality …’
She put her hands to her face, as if about to cry, but withdrew
them. ‘I don’t know. How can I answer you when I can’t answer
myself?’
On the Friday Hazel rang.
‘How awful for you, dear, how awful. Really. Tell me how it happened.’
‘Just like it said in the papers,’ Pearl said. ‘ It’s been terrible. We’ve been quite distracted.’
‘And your husband, Mr Angell? Is he – d’you think he’ll … ?’
‘Oh, he’ll be all right. It was plain self-defence. This man had broken in and—’
‘This man? You mean Godfrey Vosper?’
‘Godfrey Brown. He only took the other name for his boxing.’
‘Well, it’s the same man, isn’t it? The one you went out with that night at the Trad Hall?’
‘I didn’t go out with him. I danced a few times and he drove me home. But that’s nothing to do with it.’
‘Well, I thought it might have, dear. The papers always get hold of the wrong end of the stick, and it says—’
‘It says he broke in with menaces and threats and demanded money. That’s it, dear. That’s all. It was Wilfred he was threatening, not me. Sorry. I just happened to be there.’
‘Oh, well, I see … It must have been absolutely awful for you, Pearl. I mean, did you see it all?’
‘Oh, yes. Look, Hazel, when were we going to meet again; was it this month or next?’
‘We didn’t actually fix a day—’
‘Well, I’d rather tell you all about it then. It’s difficult over the phone. There’s a few things I’d like to tell you, but just at the moment I feel so dazed and sick, and the telephone keeps going, and Wilfred is upstairs in bed with shock and I have to look after him, and Dad came to see me last night, and Rachel came this morning, for Heaven’s sake, I can’t think why, and the newspapers won’t leave us alone. I really don’t know whether I’m coming or going.’
‘Would you like me to come one evening?’
‘No, honestly, Hazel, by evening I’ve just about had as much as I can take. I just want to go to bed and forget it all. But in a week or two—’
‘When is the – er, trial?’
‘I haven’t heard yet,’ said Pearl. ‘But do let’s meet. It would be fabulous to have somebody really to talk to. And I could tell you all there is to know then.’
‘I thought you might have liked me to come with you to the trial. Perhaps you could ring me if you hear the date. I could take a day off work, say I was sick, and then I could sit by you all through. I thought it would be nice if you had someone of your own there.’
‘Well, it’s super of you, Hazel, but Dad’s offered, and I suppose he’s my nearest. Anyway they don’t think it will be much – I mean they don’t think it will last long, and I honestly don’t know when it will come up.’
‘Your husband – he’s free then while he’s waiting?’
‘Oh, yes, of course, he’s not a criminal. It’s just that the law has to take its course.’
In the end, after another two sixpences in the box, Hazel rang off, with a promise to meet Pearl on the 12th August for lunch.