Yes, she had told him she was going to the special amateur show that her husband’s firm put on every year, and she couldn’t do a show with him. Had he been angry? No, not particularly, only disappointed, and only wondering what he could do to help her because he knew she was very unhappy. He had spent the evening at home with his father and mother. Had he had it in his mind then to go and intercept Mr. and Mrs. Starling on their way home? Nothing had been further from his mind. He had said to his father that he would go out for a breath of air. That was true, too … he had done so, and he had met Miss Elsa Beale and her fiancé on their way back from a theatre to Miss Beale’s home. They had stopped and talked. They all lived quite close to each other, but still he had had no idea of intercepting Mr. and Mrs. Starling; but after he had left Miss Beale and her fiancé, he had thought he would make one last effort to try and make Mr. Starling be more decent towards his wife, and he had walked across the road and into Saint Clement’s Square. Mrs. Starling had known nothing about it—in fact, he had just gone up to Mr. Starling and said to him that he couldn’t go on as they were; that he must let his wife go; and Mr. Starling made a movement towards him. He thought he was going to hit him. He was so sure of it that instinctively he had taken the spanner out of his pocket and hit back. Then he found himself with the spanner in his hand, and he supposed he ran away. It had all seemed so hopeless, he hadn’t known what to do. He was taken to the police station early next morning, where they had told him that Mr. Starling was dead. He simply couldn’t believe it.
Yes, he made his first statement. He did it to oblige the superintendent, who told him Mrs. Starling had been in the police station all night, and he wanted to help her to get out because she had nothing to do with it.
Leo’s counsel sat down and the man who was against them both got up and asked him many questions about that thing called “love,” about which Julia had once thought she knew so much. The suicide pact came in again … the game of the letters … how he had never imagined anything except that she was trying to show him how much she cared for him.
So it went on, question and answer, all more or less true, and yet not in the least like what their life had been.
“Why did you change your statement?”
“Because,” said Leo, “I was told that Mrs. Starling would be allowed to go home if I did.”
Again Leo reiterated that Mrs. Starling had not known he was going to meet her in the Square that night, that she hadn’t known he was going to make a last appeal to her husband. He maintained that they hadn’t discussed any desperate remedies at tea in the tea-shop.
Well, that was perfectly true. Couldn’t everybody see, thought Julia, with anguish, that it was perfectly true? Why, he had been very cross with her at tea that day.
His own counsel re-examined him, and Leo reiterated that he never believed in the fantastic suggestion of the letters. His counsel, as the man against them had done before, remarked: “That is our case.”
Leo left the box. Oh, he had made a wonderful impression, Julia told herself bitterly. Even through her misery she could see that, but what sort of impression had it been? It had been that of the gallant young man who refused to incriminate a woman, and by so refusing he had made himself more of a hero, and herself, in some queer way, more responsible than if he had blamed her.
She could hear a stir and rustle at the back of the court as he came back to the dock, still with his head held high. She felt that there was not a woman in the court who was not sorry for Leo, and who was not blaming her.
Only two witnesses were called for Leo, although his father, who had, so Julia gathered through the mist that surrounded her, been called for the prosecution, had somehow seemed a witness for the defence.
Now Leo’s mother came into the box, her voice filled with tears, and yet very calm and self-controlled. She had not lost dignity even at this pass. If Julia had been capable of feeling sorry for anyone but herself just then, she would have felt sorry for Leo’s mother.
“There had never,” said the old country woman, “been a better son,” but unfortunately that was about all she had to say. She had gone to bed when he went out that night. He hadn’t seemed in the least as though he were going to keep an appointment. She was sure she would have known if he had been, because it would have meant his coming in very late; and he was always thoughtful of her, always kind … her boy couldn’t be unkind.
She was not cross-examined, and she left the box in a hush that seemed to hold the court-room, so that her old boots, not shuffling, but still unfaltering, made the only sound that broke the stillness.
She was followed by somebody called Flight-Commander Ridgeway. He was reading from Service documents, explaining that they could not be handed up even to the judge; that the R.A.F. regulations did not permit that; but he read aloud where Leo had served; how he had always been marked as V.G. for conduct—that, of course, meant Very Good, as it did at school. Leo’s man asked him whether there was any record of Leo having been charged during the whole of his service with any offence as a consequence of shore leave, and the Flight-Commander said: “No, never. He was one of the most dependable men I had.”
And now, with a knowledge that Leo had made a favourable but somehow wrong impression fraying her nerves, it was Julia’s turn to go into the box. She took a last drink of water, settled the blue cloak about her shoulders, and fumbling a little at the steps went up into the witness-box. She, at last, would tell them the truth … everything would be all right now. How silly her solicitor and counsel had been, begging her not to go into the box. She could tell the truth, if others couldn’t—and, besides, she had always been able to make men believe her. Why shouldn’t she be able to do so now?
It started all right, and her spirits rose. Everything was going to be perfectly splendid. Her counsel led her on to describe her life with Herbert … how it had never been really happy. How she had never attempted Herbert’s life in the slightest way. Both these things were true. He read out to her passages from her letters … passages that she was able to explain truthfully. They had, indeed, referred to the suicide pact … to the trying to start a new life somewhere with Leo. Even some of the letters when she had been urging Leo—though she didn’t mean it—to bring “something home” so that she could “try it.” This she could explain away … it was perfectly simple.
It was true her counsel was helping her now, but again she thought: Oh, how foolish he had been to warn her not to go into the box. Even the judge, whom she hadn’t liked up to now, hadn’t interrupted her. She explained about the chlorodyne … she had bought it for herself because she had been ill, and she had never really given it to Herbert at all. She had only told Leo that she had. Well, that was perfectly true, too. If it came to that, she had never taken any of it herself. Her counsel read out more and more of her letters. Why, there was even that old one about the work-girls spitting out orange-pips! Her counsel went on to explain how everything she had written about poison had been because she wanted Leo to feel that she was willing to do anything for him, that that was absolutely all.
“Did you arrange with Carr to do nothing for three years?”
“Yes,” said Julia. “We were going to wait until I had got a good job, or until my husband would divorce me.”
The judge leaned slightly forward towards her now, and his voice was acid.
“The other witness,” he remarked, “said that they had agreed to put off committing suicide for three years. It’s the only sensible remark I’ve heard made yet,” and he leaned back against his crimson velvet cushion.
Julia felt momentarily stunned at this incursion of something inimical into her pleasant story that was going so well; but she agreed with her counsel that she had suggested they should kill themselves, and that she had agreed to put it off for three years.
The tea-room, that awful tea-room—if she had only known what a lot of talk there was goin
g to be about that tea-room, she would have spoken to Leo on the telephone that day—was now under discussion again. Yes, she had met Mr. Carr and told him that she could not go out with him that evening. It was an old engagement with her husband; this amateur dramatic performance was something they went to every year, and she could not possibly get out of going. No, she had had no idea that she was going to see Leo again that night. She knew he was spending the evening at home. She had not thought of him again until a man rushed up to them in Saint Clement’s Square and she had seen who it was. Yes, she had seen Mr. Carr hit her husband, but she had no idea he had a weapon or that he had killed him. But she had called out to Mr. Carr to stop, and when her husband fell down to the pavement, and Mr. Carr ran away, she called and called for help. When the two young men came, she had sent one for Dr. Ackroyd. When the policeman came she had taken him home to telephone. She had still no idea that her husband was dead. Even when she knew he was dead, she had no idea it was because of a blow from Mr. Carr. She thought he had hit his head on the edge of the pavement, because there was a little blood there. She had made her statement because she did not want to get Mr. Carr into trouble, although it was true she had recognised him.
After she saw him at the police station she made her second statement, because the inspector had told her—What was the good of saying that he didn’t do it, when he has told them that he did? Then she thought it was no good trying to shield Mr. Carr any longer, and so she had told the truth. Her counsel leaned forward towards her impressively:
“You had no idea, had you, Mrs. Starling, that Mr. Carr, or anyone else, was going to attack your husband on your way home that night?”
“Oh, none, none,” said Julia truthfully, and with a great sigh of relief. She had told her story, and it was all of it true. Surely they must believe her now?
But here was the other man, the man who was against them, standing up, and, at once, she became confused. He kept on asking her about her statement … about the first one being untrue—as though she had not already admitted that it was! He kept on and on until she could only say: “I don’t remember. I can’t remember. I didn’t notice, I was too upset.”
Now he was talking about the wretched letters again. Did she really maintain that such and such a sentence merely referred to a suicide pact? That three years merely referred to some fortunate future when they would have enough money to be able to go away together?
She said that her husband had threatened to make scenes at the shop where she worked.
Had he ever done so?
“No,” said Julia, “but he had always threatened to.”
“Quite … he threatened to, but he never actually did it, did he?”
“No,” she had to reply.
Then was read out the passage referring to what she had had done in Camden Town. They had warned her that she must not tell the truth about this. An English jury might think an illegal operation quite as bad as adultery—and adultery, apparently, was quite as bad as murder! It was awkward, because the letter, as this man read it, sounded just as though it referred to poisoning Herbert, as some of the other letters actually referred to poisoning him. They were right at it now, right in the middle of the letters.
“I never meant any of it,” she reiterated, “never. I was older than Mr. Carr—seven years older—and I was afraid of losing him. I thought …”—she stumbled and began again—“I thought if he realised I would do anything for him, he would never get tired of me.”
“Now, come, Mrs. Starling, can you really put that forward as a truthful explanation?”
“Absolutely. It is the truth.”
“But, Mrs. Starling, reflect—I do not wish to hurry you in any way—upon the letters that have been read out in court. You suggested to Carr that he should bring something … that you should give your husband something.”
“Yes, I know I did, but I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it.”
He went on with his terrible questions until she contradicted herself, until she hardly knew what she was saying, until, at last, he had cornered her into an admission that perhaps she had been willing to make her husband ill, just a little ill.
Why did I say that, thought Julia desperately. I never even tried that; but looking back carefully as she could upon the cross-examination, she could not see the point at which she had taken the wrong turning, at which it had become possible for the man to trap her into such an admission. She was still muddled and alarmed, the encouraging effect of the examination by her man entirely forgotten, when the court rose for the day.
The next morning, there he was at it again. All her letters, her precious, beautiful letters, building up the future, her future life with Leo—which she realised now she had always known at the back of her mind would never be an actuality—all these precious letters, the spun web of her fancy with which she had tried to enmesh him while he was miles away, continued to be read out in this blind, white place.
At last, after, it seemed, many hours, it was over, and her man was standing up again asking her if she had always done everything she could for Herbert, and she replied that she had. And then she was being told that she could leave the box. For a moment she stood, her hands gripping its ledge. Surely her part could not be all over? Surely there was more she could say, things that she could have put better? They didn’t seem to understand. But she was being led out; she was fumbling for the steps again, and she was back in the dock.
She hardly realised that now the witnesses on her side were being called. It all seemed to her to make very little difference.
She heard Emily talking in the box, saying what a good wife she had been; how she had done everything possible for Mr. Starling, and how she, Emily, had said: “What d’you want with that horrid stuff?” and Mrs. Starling had said: “Oh, I got it when I was so ill, but I didn’t need it, after all.” There had been no suggestion of Mr. Starling taking it. Mrs. Starling had never mentioned such a thing, and she, Emily, had said: “I don’t believe in such nasty things, anyway; you’re better without them,” and had put it in the back of the medicine-cupboard in the bathroom behind the Eno’s Fruit Salts.
“Then,” said Julia’s counsel, “there’s no truth at all in Mrs. Starling’s letters to Mr. Carr that she had given some of the chlorodyne to Mr. Starling, and that it had made him sick?”
“None at all,” said Emily stolidly. “She didn’t give him none of it, and Mr. Starling was never sick. I’d have known about it if he was. He made such a fuss if his little finger ached.”
There was a thin ripple of amusement in the court, and people eased themselves a little on their hard seats.
“It was, then, a sort of fairy story on Mrs. Starling’s part? She just ‘made it up,’ as the children say?”
“She must have,” said Emily. “She was a great one at being amusing, and telling stories. She didn’t expect you to think they were true; she just did it to be amusing. She’d always come into the kitchen and cheer me up with something.”
Good old Emily! thought Julia, with a faint glow of gratitude. She had somehow produced an element of humanity that had been missing since Gipsy had been in the box; and Emily’s was the sort of humanity that these people would recognise more easily than they did Gipsy’s.
Elsa came next, and Elsa did her best, although not, perhaps, without some slight pleasure in her own importance. Yes, she and her fiancé had met Mr. Carr as they were going home from the theatre that night. He had seemed quite undecided what to do. He had said: “You’re lucky, you two; some people have all the luck. Others can’t get fixed up anyhow.” No, he hadn’t said he was going to Saint Clement’s Square. She had said to him: “Well, you had better go back to bed, you’ve got to join your ship to-morrow,” and he said: “Yes, I think I will; that’s good advice. I’ll just walk round for a bit and try and get sleepy,” and he said good night, and that was all she had seen of hi
m.
Her fiancé followed her and gave the same account of the meeting.
Mrs. Almond came next. Her voice was so faint, she could hardly be heard. She didn’t look towards Julia. She trembled very much, and was allowed to sit down. She had very little to say beyond the fact that she had let Miss Beale in that night, and had exchanged a few words with Mr. Carr, who was standing on the steps with Miss Beale’s fiancé. He had certainly not mentioned seeing her daughter that night. He seemed very hesitating and undecided what to do. Her daughter had always been a very good daughter to her. She had always worked hard and helped to support her mother, and since her marriage had taken her away on holidays.
“Nobody,” said Mrs. Almond, gulping, “could have had a better daughter.” It was the first time she had thought so in her life, but she was convinced of it now. She was not cross-examined any more than Leo’s mother had been.
A very pink-faced man, whom Julia remembered having met at the amateur show, was the next witness. Yes, he had known Mr. and Mrs. Starling for several years. He had always looked on Mrs. Starling as a very devoted wife. She had seemed perfectly happy that night, not at all as though she had anything on her mind. He also was not cross-examined, and Julia’s counsel remarked: “That is the case for Mrs. Starling,” and gathered his robe about him and sat down.
This was Leo’s man standing up, and Julia, exhausted as she was, forced herself to listen. Leo’s man did not deny that Leo had killed Herbert—how, indeed, could he?—but pointed out that he hadn’t questioned Julia, although he might have done so, as his instructions from Carr had been that nothing was to be done that would in any way tell against Mrs. Starling. His client himself had had to go through the torture of being cross-examined. Again the impression of Leo’s nobility was disseminated throughout the court. He was being splendid, Julia supposed, but somehow this way of putting it seemed to help Leo and not help her, just as Leo’s whole attitude had done; but Leo’s man also insisted that what Leo and Julia had said was true—that there was no arrangement between them to meet that night. He went on and on about that, Julia noted thankfully. Then Julia was dropped out of the argument, and the counsel explained how Leo had thought he was going to be hit by Starling, and began to attack him. That, of course, thought Julia, is not true, but one couldn’t blame Leo for having said it.
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