by P. D. James
The court was very full, yet the air had no taste to it, no smell. Time stretched out to accommodate the leisurely charade. Counsel for the prosecution spoke with calm deliberation, accommodating his speed to the movement of the judge’s pen. From time to time there was a hiatus when no one spoke, when the bewigged lawyers would suddenly perk up and watch the judge, and the judge would appear sunk in a private reverie. And then the moment would pass. The judge’s pen would move again. Counsel would begin again his slow peroration. The court, almost imperceptibly, would relax.
There was one woman member of the jury from whom he had found it difficult to avert his eyes. Afterwards, whenever he thought about the trial, it was she who dominated his mind. The images of the accused and the judge faded, hers became clearer with the years. She was a stockily built grey-haired woman, wearing upswept diamanté-trimmed spectacles, dressed in a plaid cloak of red, green and yellow, the rolls of tightly curled hair topped with a matching cap. The brim was set straight across her intimidating brow, the crown was bulbous, as if stuffed with paper, the whole topped with a pompom in red wool. Like the other jurors, she sat very still throughout the trial, grim-faced under the ridiculous hat, only turning her head like an automaton to look at whoever was speaking, betraying no emotion.
Both the accused had been represented by the same counsel who had attempted in a voice of quiet reasonableness to persuade the jury that rape had been sexual assault, and murder manslaughter. The verdicts, when they came, conveyed no sense of climax or release. The judge pronounced the two sentences of life imprisonment with no more than the customary comment that this was a mandatory sentence provided by law. He rose without fuss and the court rose with him. The spectators shuffled out of the public gallery, casting last looks behind them as if reluctant to believe that the entertainment was over. The lawyers stuffed their papers and books into briefcases and conferred. The clerks bustled about the court, minds already occupied with the next case. It had been as undramatic and ordinary as the ending of a parish council meeting. Once there would have been a black cap, not a proper cap, but a small square of black cloth which the clerk would have placed grotesquely on top of the judge’s wig. Once there would have been a gowned chaplain and the sonorous “Amen” after the sentence of death. He had felt the need of some such bizarre and histrionic end to this formal celebration of reason and retribution. Something memorable should have been said or done, more worthy of the corporate ritual than the foreman’s carefully expressionless voice pronouncing the word “guilty” in response to the clerk’s two questions, the judge’s dispassionate judicial tone. For one wild second he had been tempted to leap to his feet and to cry out that it wasn’t over, that it couldn’t be over. It had seemed to him that the trial had been less a judicial process than a comforting formality through which all participants except himself had been purged or justified. It was over for them. It was over for the jury and the judge. It was over for Julie. But for him and for Mavis it had just begun.
The station clock jerked away the minutes and the hours. By eleven o’clock he was thirsty and would have liked to buy himself a coffee and a bun at the buffet, but he was afraid to leave his seat, to take his eyes off the entrance. But when at last he saw her, just after eleven-forty, he wondered how he could ever have doubted that he would know her again. He recognized her at once, and with such a physical shock that he instinctively turned away, terrified that she would feel across the concourse the surging power of his presence. It was impossible to believe that she could be here within yards of him, yet not be struck by the shock waves from that moment of recognition. Surely not even love could cry out so loudly for a response. He saw that she was carrying a small case, but apart from that he was aware of nothing about her, only of her face. The years dropped away and he was once again in that wood-cladded court gazing fixedly at the dock, but seeing her now with a dreadful knowledge which then he hadn’t had; that he could never escape her as she could never escape him, that both of them were victims. He moved behind a rack of paperbacks in front of the station bookstall, bending like a man in a spasm of pain, hugging the rucksack to his body as if his wrapping arms could stifle the potent signals of the knife. Then he became aware that a man carrying an official briefcase was glancing at him with concern. He straightened up and made himself look again at the murderess. It was then that he noticed the girl. In that moment of recognition there was nothing about Mary Ducton that was hidden from him. The girl was a blood relation. He knew with absolute certainty, even without noting the imprint of the murderess on this younger, more glowing face, without consciously deducing that the girl was too young to be her sister and unlikely to be her niece, that this was Mary Ducton’s daughter.
The girl proffered one ticket at the barrier together with a slip of paper, perhaps some kind of travelling warrant. The murderess stood back, her eyes fixed ahead like an obedient child under escort. He followed them through the gate and on to platform 8. There was a group of about twenty people waiting for the 11.40 train, and the murderess and her daughter walked some fifty yards further down the platform and stood alone, not speaking. He dared not make himself conspicuous by detaching himself from the main group. Now, with time to spare and nothing to do, they might well notice him. He opened his newspaper and with his back half-turned towards them, listened for the first vibrations of the approaching train. The first part of his plan was simple. He would move unhurriedly and unselfconsciously towards them as the engine drew in, and get into the same compartment. It was important to travel together if he were not to risk losing them at King’s Cross. He was glad that the modern inter-city trains had long open carriages. The old-fashioned corridor trains with their single compartments would have been a difficulty. Apart from the fear that the murderess might recall his face even after all these years, the prospect of having to sit opposite them, almost knee to knee, to feel their eyes straying to his face, momentarily intrigued, perhaps, by his ugliness, his insignificance, was intolerable.
The train drew in on time. Prudently he stood back to let a family with young children enter before him, but the two corn-coloured heads were plainly in sight. They had moved down the compartment and had seated themselves side by side facing the engine. He slipped into a vacant window seat just inside the door, kept his rucksack on the table in front of him, and took refuge again behind his paper. Once he was seated their faces were out of sight, but, over his paper, he kept a watchful eye on the far door in case they should, after all, decide on a different carriage. But the door was blocked with incoming passengers and they didn’t move.
Almost at once he realized that it had been a mistake to take a window seat. Just before the guard blew his whistle, a family of three, a fat, perspiring couple and their moonfaced teenage son, pushed through the door and settled themselves with grunts of satisfaction into the three empty seats. He shifted himself imperceptibly, disagreeably aware of the warm bulk of the woman urging his thighs nearer to the window. As soon as the trains got up speed she opened a bulging plastic bag, took out a Thermos flask and three disposable cups and a plastic sandwich box, and began distributing cheese and pickle sandwiches to her husband and son. A powerful reek of vinegar and cheese hung over the table. He had no room to spread his paper, but he folded it small and pretended an interest in the list of births and deaths on the last page. He hoped he wouldn’t need to visit the lavatory. The prospect of asking this hulk of a woman to shift herself intimidated him. But worse was the worry that he might be trapped at the end of the journey, that the murderess and her daughter might slip out of their seats and be gone before he could free himself.
He was hardly aware of the passing of time. For the first hour he sat stiffly, half fearing that the woman would hear the thudding of his heart, would sense the excitement that kept him rigid in his seat. For most of the time he stared out of the window at the bleak landscape of the Midlands, the rain-soaked fields and dripping trees, the alien towns with their blackened back-to-back houses a
nd the villages, like rejected outposts of a deserted civilization, while beside the track the glistening wires rose and fell. After about an hour the rain stopped and the sun came out, hot and bright, drawing from the sodden fields faint puffs of vapour like a crop of thin cotton wool. Once, by a trick of light, the carriage was reflected in the windows, and he saw a row of ghostly travellers borne through the air, sitting immobile as dummies, their faces cavernous and grey as the faces of the dead. Only once was his attention keenly caught. The train stopped momentarily outside Doncaster and in the brief unnatural calm he saw, in the grass verge, tall strong stalks of cow parsley, bearing their delicate white blossoms like a foam. The flowers reminded him of the Methodist Sunday school to which he had been sent every Sunday afternoon, he supposed to get him out of his mother’s way. Every August they had held a Sunday school anniversary service, and the children, by tradition, had decorated the church with wild flowers. It was an ugly Victorian building, its ponderous dark stone eclipsing the fragile beauty of the flowers. He saw again an earthenware jar of buttercups wilting against the pew end, and the cow parsley shedding its white dust over his new Sunday-best shoes. He had sat very still, huddled in his seat lest God should notice him, a Crippen sitting among the blessed, distancing himself from what he had no right to share, terrified he might be seeming to claim it. Sunday school had left him with nothing except that, for the rest of his life, at moments of stress and crisis, biblical texts, not always apposite, would slip unbidden into his mind. Remembering those long-drawn-out, anxiety-filled afternoons, it had never seemed to him a fair exchange.
Once during the journey he turned his eyes from the window and saw the girl coming down the compartment. She passed him without glancing at his table and tugged open the door. For the first time he took note of her and wondered how her existence might affect his plans. He wished her no particular harm. She was, he judged, some two to three years younger than Julie would have been. Julie was dead, she was alive. No other comparison between them was important in the face of that irrevocable alienation. But he doubted whether his gentle, timid daughter would have held herself with such assurance, would have surveyed the world with eyes so calmly confident in their own judgement. He watched her receding back, the tight corduroy trousers taut over her thighs, the casually worn jacket, the leather and canvas travelling bag slung over her shoulder, the thick pigtail of hair. The sheen of the corduroy curving over her inner thighs, the front zip which emphasized the flatness of the stomach and pointed to the gently swelling mound beneath it, had evoked in him as she passed a small prick of sexuality, so long dormant that the gentle disturbance released for a brief moment all the forgotten uncertainties and half-shameful excitements of adolescence.
The girl puzzled him. Try as he would he couldn’t remember ever having heard of her at the time of the trial. But then, neither he nor Mavis had been interested in the members of that family except for the rapist and the murderess. They alone existed and the fact of their existence was an abomination which would one day be purged. He wondered what had been happening to the daughter in the intervening years. She looked well-nourished, prosperous. There was nothing of deprivation in that proud carriage, that assured walk. She had presumably kept in touch with her mother since they were here together; but they didn’t look intimate. During the time he had observed them they had hardly spoken. Perhaps this journey was no more than a filial duty to be gratefully relinquished when the murderess was safely delivered at her final destination. Her unexplained and unexpected presence was a slight complication, but no more. But as she passed him on her return journey to her seat, balancing two covered plastic mugs and a pork pie, he noticed that there was a small identity tag attached by a narrow strap to the end of her travelling bag. It was just large enough to hold a visiting card, but the name was covered by a curling leather flap. Suddenly it occurred to him that if he could get close enough to her without attracting attention, perhaps in the crush when they were leaving the train, it might be possible gently to bend back the tag and get a sight of the name. The thought excited him. He spent the rest of the journey staring sightlessly out of the window imagining how it might be done.
It was two-fifteen before the train drew into King’s Cross, one minute late. As soon as it slowed he stood up and reached for his raincoat and case. The fat woman grudgingly made way for him and he was one of the first out of his seat. He saw that the murderess and her daughter were making for the door closest to them at the other end of the compartment. He edged his way down the carriage, obstructed now by standing passengers reaching for their bags and struggling into their coats. By the time the two women had reached the doorway he was immediately behind them. There was the usual delay as passengers manoeuvred their luggage through the door and clambered down the platform, and the women patiently waited their turn. Neither of them looked round. It was far easier than he had hoped. He let his rucksack rest for a moment on the floor then bent down and fumbled with his shoelace. As he rose his eyes were on a level with the dangling tag. It was the work of a second to lift the covering flap with his small cunning hands. The light was poor but it didn’t matter. The name wasn’t in small print on a visiting card but written by hand in a black elegant script. P. R. Palfrey.
He hoped that the next stage wouldn’t be by taxi. It would be too risky to stand in the queue immediately behind them and, even if he did, he was unlikely to hear their directions. In the library books he remembered from his boyhood the hero leapt into the next cab shouting to the driver to follow the one in front. He couldn’t see himself doing that, nor did it seem a practicable ruse in the tangle of traffic outside a major London terminus. But to his relief, the girl led the way down the steps to the Underground. This was what he had hoped. He followed about twenty feet behind them, feeling in his pocket for his loose change. There must be no delay at the booking office. With luck he might get close enough to hear their destination. At worse he would be able to watch the machine from which they got their tickets. But as long as he again travelled with them all would be well. He felt a surge of confidence and excitement. So far it had been easier than he had dared to hope.
But suddenly the entrance tunnel was clamorous with shouting and the clatter of rushing feet. Another train must have disgorged its passengers, and a crowd of youths had hurled themselves down the steps and were shouting and jostling their way past him, forcing him against the wall of the tunnel and momentarily obstructing his view. Desperately he pushed his way forward and saw again the two pale bobbing heads. They passed the entrance to the Northern and Bakerloo lines and, walking on, eventually turned right down the wide steps leading to the concourse of the Metropolitan and Circle lines. The crowd had swollen here and there was a long queue at the ticket office. The girl didn’t join it, nor did she attempt to press through the jabbering crowd of travellers at the ticket machines. Instead he saw with horror that she had bought two tickets in advance and that she and the murderess were calmly making their way through the barrier. And the ticket collector was meticulously looking at every ticket. There was no chance of forcing his way through and to try would only draw attention to himself. He almost fought his way to the first machine. His tenpenny piece seemed to stick in his fingers. His hand was trembling as he pushed it home. There was a clatter as the coin, rejected, fell into the waiting receptacle. He pushed it in again, and this time the machine delivered his ticket. But the air was already loud with the clatter of an approaching train, and as he pushed his way through the crowd at the barrier, the noise stopped. He dashed to the westward platform, the one they had taken, just in time to see the doors of the Circle line train close in his face. Apart from two turbaned Indians, and a tramp laid out asleep on a bench, the platform was empty. Even as he looked up, the train moved, the words “Circle Line” disappeared from the indicator and the Hammersmith train was signalled.
2
Only when he reached Liverpool Street was he aware of hunger. He bought himself a coffee and roll b
efore catching the train home. It was nearly four before he put his key in the latch. The silence of the house received him conspiratorially as if it had been watching for his return and was waiting to share his failure or success. Although it was still early, he felt very weary and his legs ached. But this positive tiredness was a new sensation, different in kind from the lassitude which had dragged his homeward footsteps at the end of each working day, and had made the half-mile trudge from the station into a small daily tribulation. He made himself a high tea of sausages and baked beans, followed by a jam tart from a packet of four in the refrigerator. He supposed that he was hungry, certainly he was rapacious for the food. The sausages split and burned under the grill and the gas flared under the saucepan of beans. He ate voraciously, yet he hardly tasted the meal, aware only of a physical need that demanded satisfaction. As he made a pot of tea in a small back kitchen, taking down the blue and white teapot with its patterned base of roses which he and Mavis had bought together on their honeymoon, he felt for the first time some affection for the house, and a tinge of regret that he must leave it. This struck him as odd. Neither he nor Mavis had ever been at home in it. They had bought it because it was the sort of house they were used to at a price they could afford, and because they needed to leave Seven Kings with all its memories and 19 Alma Road had been available. In the suburbs you could buy anonymity by moving three stations down the line, by changing your job. He remembered how they had first been shown over it, Mavis passing listlessly from room to room while the house agent, desperately trying to evoke some response, had extolled its advantages. At the end of the inspection she had said tonelessly: “It’ll do. We’ll take it.” The man must have been amazed at so easy a sale. They had done little to it in the last eight years, some repainting, new paper in the seldom-used front sitting room, the minimum structural repairs necessary to preserve their small investment in it. Mavis had worked conscientiously, though without interest, but it had always looked clean. Something about it repelled dust and wear as it repelled intimacy, happiness, love. How strange it was that only now was he beginning to feel that he belonged here, that he would leave something of himself behind its prim laurel hedge. The sense of the house’s participation in his enterprise grew so strong that he found himself wondering whether he dared leave it, whether the strangers who would unpack their kettles and saucepans in this kitchen would pause in temporary unease and imbibe from the very air some secret knowledge that here murder had been planned. But he knew that he had to go. The quarry was in London, and in London would be run to earth. And he needed to be free, free even of this new sentience between him and the house, free of personal belongings, however meagre, free to begin his search, moving unrecognized and rootless amongst strangers.
