by P. D. James
Today she had managed to get through the morning session without too much trauma. The court rose at one and it was then the custom for the three magistrates to lunch together at a small Italian restaurant in Crawford Street. This morning her fellow magistrates were Group Captain Carter and Miss Belling. The Group Captain was a grey-haired, stiff-moving punctilious man who treated her with an old-fashioned courtesy which she could sometimes mistake for kindness. Miss Belling, forthright and keen-eyed behind her immense horn-rimmed spectacles, was the senior English mistress at one of the outer London comprehensive schools. She made Hilda feel like a not particularly bright fourth-former, but as this accorded with her private view of herself she didn’t resent it. Neither of them was particularly frightening and she might almost have enjoyed her lasagne and Beaujolais if she hadn’t been worried in case the Group Captain, always punctilious in inquiring about her family, should ask what Philippa was doing.
But the first case on the afternoon list had only been in progress for about twenty minutes when she felt the quickening drum of her heart and immediately the scarlet tide surged over her neck and face. She was holding her handkerchief in her lap and now she raised it to smother her mouth and nose, pretending to stifle an irritating spasm of coughing. During the morning session and in the intervals at lunch her restless hands had tangled the handkerchief to a moist rag. Now it smelled rankly of sweat, meat sauce and wine. As she hacked away, the simulated cough sounding unnatural even to her own ears, the social worker giving evidence hesitated, glanced at the Bench, then went on speaking. Miss Belling in the chair, without glancing at Hilda, pushed across the carafe of water. Hilda reached for the glass, her hands shaking. But as the water, stale and lukewarm, slid over her tongue she knew that the worst was over. This had been a mild attack. The scarlet tide was receding. She would be all right now until the session ended, all right until the next time.
Crumbling the handkerchief into her lap, she looked up and found herself staring into a pair of terrified eyes. At first she thought that the girl sitting alone two feet from the bench was the juvenile defendant. Then she remembered. This was a care case based on allegations of ill treatment and the girl was the baby’s mother. She was a wan-faced, lanky teenager with blonde straggling hair and a sharp narrow nose above a mouth whose top lip was full and curved, the lower slack and almost bloodless. She wore no make-up except for a smudged black line round her eyes. The eyes themselves were remarkable, large, grey and wide-spaced. They looked into Hilda’s with a desperate appeal.
For the first time Hilda noticed the incongruity of her dress. Someone must have advised her to wear a hat to court. Perhaps the wide-brimmed straw with the bunch of cherries with crushed and faded leaves drooping from the side of the brim had originally been bought for her wedding. She wore a faded fawn cotton top faintly patterned with some slogan which had been washed out, above a short black skirt. On the top was pinned a metal brooch in the shape of a rose. It dragged at the thin cotton. Her legs were bare, the knees scabbed and knobbly as a child’s. On her feet she wore sandals with thick cork soles and plastic straps wound round her ankles. She was nursing a bulging black handbag, old-fashioned in shape and very large, clutching it desperately to her chest as if afraid that one of the magistrates might leap from the bench and snatch it from her. And still her eyes gazed unwaveringly at Hilda. The fixed stare conveyed nothing but a wordless cry for help, but Hilda was aware of a more complicated and personal communication, an impulse of painful pity. She yearned to lean over the bench and stretch out her hands to the girl, to get out from her seat and fold the rigid body in her arms. Perhaps in that impossible embrace both of them would receive comfort. She too was under judgement, officially deemed incompetent, bereft of her child. Her lips cracked in an inadmissible smile. It wasn’t returned. The girl—she looked little more than a child—was too petrified to respond even to so timid and suspect an attempt at friendship.
She seemed not to be listening as the local authority social worker continued her evidence. Her child, a ten-week-old boy, was now in a home under a place-of-safety order and the local authority were applying for a second interim care order while they prepared their case for the final hearing. At the end of the submission Miss Belling turned first to Group Captain Carter and then to Hilda. She whispered: “We renew the interim care order then, for another twenty-eight days. That should give the local authority time to prepare their case.”
Hilda didn’t reply. Miss Belling said again: “We make an interim care order, then?”
Hilda found herself saying: “I think we ought to talk about it.”
With no sign of irritation, Miss Belling informed the court that the magistrates would retire. Surprised, the court shuffled to its feet as Miss Belling led her colleagues out.
Hilda knew that there was nothing she could do or say which would make any difference, that this sick confusion of pity and outrage was futile. They had to protect the baby. The machinery of justice, majestic, well meaning, fallible, would roll inexorably onward and there was nothing that she could do or say to halt it. And if it were stopped, then perhaps the baby might be harmed again, might even die. In the dull claustrophobic retiring room her fellow justices were patient with her. After all, she hadn’t given them any trouble before. Group Captain Carter attempted to explain what she already knew.
“We’re only proposing a twenty-eight-day interim care order. The local authority won’t be ready with their case for another three or four weeks. We must continue to protect the baby in the meantime. Then it will be for the court to decide what order to make.”
“But they took her baby away from her six weeks ago! Now she’s got to wait another four weeks. And suppose they don’t let her have him back then?”
Miss Belling said with surprising gentleness: “It’s the court that will decide that. It’s us, not some anonymous they. The child is being protected under a place-of-safety order. That expires tomorrow. I don’t think we can just ignore the local-authority application for a second interim order; in effect that would mean sending the baby home. It’s too big a risk. You heard the medical evidence, the round burns on the inside of the thighs suggestive of cigarette burns, the healed broken rib, the bruises to the buttocks. Those weren’t caused accidentally.”
“But the social worker said that the husband had left home. He’s walked out on them. If he’s the one responsible then the baby will be all right now.”
“But we don’t know whether he was the one responsible. We don’t know who ill-treated the baby. It isn’t our job to establish that in law. We aren’t an adult criminal court. It’s our job to consider the welfare of the child. We must continue to protect him until the substantive care proceedings.”
“But then she’ll lose her baby completely, I know she will. He’s only ten weeks old and they’ve been parted for six weeks. And who’s going to talk for her?”
Miss Belling said: “That’s what worries me about these cases. Until the Government implements section sixty-four of the Children Act 1975 there’s no chance of a mother in her situation having a lawyer from legal aid to look after her interests. The child gets the lawyer, not the parent. It’s a scandal that section sixty-four hasn’t been implemented. There ought to be some procedure for looking at Acts of Parliament which are never brought into force, or which are delayed as long as this. But that’s not our concern. There’s nothing we can do about it. What we have to do now is decide whether there is sufficient evidence to justify us making an interim order. I don’t think we have any real choice. We can’t prevent the husband from returning home anytime he chooses; presumably the girl wants him to come home. And even if she didn’t ill-treat the child herself, she was obviously powerless to prevent him from ill-treating it.”
Hilda whispered: “I wish I could take her and the baby home with me.”
She thought of Philippa’s room, so clean and empty. Philippa hadn’t wanted it, had rejected it, but the girl would be safe and happy there. The
y could put the cot under the south window where it would get the sun. The girl looked as if she needed feeding up; it would be lovely to cook for someone who was really hungry. She heard Miss Belling say: “You must try and remember what you were told when you were trained. The juvenile court isn’t a welfare tribunal. The local authority has the job of looking after the child. We must act judiciously, within the law, within the rules.”
When they had resettled themselves on the Bench and Miss Belling had briefly announced the expected decision, Hilda didn’t again meet the girl’s eyes. She was only aware that one moment the skinny figure clutching the outsized bag was standing like a condemned prisoner to receive sentence, and the next moment was gone. For the rest of the afternoon she made herself attend assiduously to every case. They passed before her, the sad procession of the inadequate, the criminal, the dispossessed. She read each social inquiry report with its catalogue of poverty, fecklessness, misery and failure and felt the increasing weight of her own powerlessness, her own inadequacy. After the session had ended, and as she stood alone in the sun outside the courthouse, she felt a sudden and overwhelming need to find Philippa, to see that she at least was all right. She wanted to speak to her. She knew that this wasn’t possible. Philippa had made it so plain that the break, however temporary, had to be complete. But she knew where they were, and Delaney Street was so very close. It wouldn’t hurt just to have a look at the outside of their flat, find out exactly where they were.
She walked as usual with her eyes down, carefully avoiding the lines between the paving stones. She had known since early childhood that to step on the line was bad luck. She wondered whether this might be an unpropitious time to risk visiting Delaney Street. If they were both working, and surely they were, they might be coming home about now. It would be dreadful if she ran into them. Philippa would think that she was spying. She had been so insistent that she wanted to be private. No one was to be told where they were, no one was to call. She had only given Hilda the address so that her letters could be sent on, and so that they could contact her in an emergency. What kind of emergency? Hilda wondered. How ill would Maurice have to be before that counted as an emergency? She didn’t believe that she herself would ever count. She prayed: “Please God, don’t let them see me.” Her life was punctuated by such desperate and irrational petitions. “Please God, make the crème brûlée a success.” “Please God, help me to understand Philippa.” “Please God, don’t make me blush this session.” “Please God, make Maurice love me again.” The crème brûlée was invariably a success, but she could have managed that on her own. The other petitions, those extravagant demands for love, went unheard. It didn’t surprise her. She had stopped going to church after her marriage and she could hardly expect her prayers to be answered when it was so apparent that she feared Maurice more than she feared God.
She made her way towards Marylebone Road without noticing the silent watcher about twenty yards down on the opposite pavement who hurried his footsteps so that he caught the traffic lights, crossed the road with her and followed her at a careful distance past Marylebone Station, across Lisson Grove, and up Mell Street.
18
So he had found them at last. He stood looking down Delaney Street, outwardly composed, the mild eyes blinking behind his spectacles, but he could have reared his arms and shouted in exultation. A part of him, some memory of that boy who had knelt in the Methodist Chapel at Brighton, wanted to kneel now, to feel his knees pressing the hard pavement. He had been right, they were in London. They were here, within yards of where he stood, living in a flat above a greengrocer’s shop at number 12. Here less than ten minutes ago he had seen Mrs. Palfrey loiter, look up, walk quickly past the shop, retrace her steps, look up again. If she had been an agent provocateur paid to lead him to his quarry, she couldn’t have improved on that mime of betrayal. After about two minutes of this pacing she had bought two oranges from the stall, her eyes slewing up to the flat windows, afraid perhaps that they might appear. He wondered why she was so nervous. Had the girl perhaps insisted on privacy? What exactly was the relationship between her and her adoptive parents, if adopted she had been? But of course she had been adopted. There could be no doubt that she was the murderess’s daughter, and no doubt either that her name was now Palfrey. Perhaps her adoptive parents had disapproved of her leaving home. He felt a surge of fresh excitement when it occurred to him that this tentative visit by Mrs. Palfrey might be the first step to a reconciliation. If the girl went back to Caldecote Terrace and abandoned the murderess to live alone here then his task would be easy.
After buying the oranges she had walked more quickly than usual up Mell Street to the Edgware Road and had stood in the queue for the 26 bus to Victoria. She was on her way home. He need follow no longer. He had almost run back to Delaney Street, terrified that he might miss the sight of them, the confirmation that they were really here. But, standing at the corner of the street and looking down its drab length, he had no doubt. The intoxication of triumph and fear was familiar. He felt again the sick excitement of the ten-year-old boy standing on the wet sands under Brighton pier with the roar of the sea in his ears, and holding in his small hands the spoils of his latest theft. Then, as now, he felt no guilt. It was extraordinary that during the years of innocence he had lived under a perpetual burden of guilt; paradoxically, only when he became a thief had that weight lifted. It was the same with Julie’s death. He knew that when he drove the knife into Mary Ducton’s throat he would drive out guilt from his mind forever. He had no way of telling if he could free Mavis’s spirit; he only knew how he could free his own.
And then they appeared. The sight of them was less traumatic than when he had seen them in Regent’s Park, and he was better able to control himself. The girl shut the front door, saying something to her mother, and they both turned towards Mell Street. They were casually dressed, both wearing slacks and jackets; the girl had her travelling bag slung over her shoulder. He turned quickly to the right up Mell Street, judging that they would be on their way to Baker Street and the West End. But, glancing back, he saw that they were taking the same path and were only about forty yards behind him. He turned quickly down a side street and loitered there until he had seen them pass.
Back in Delaney Street he surveyed it like a strategist. Now that he knew they weren’t there to observe him he could take his time. The problem was to know where without attracting attention to himself he could safely keep watch. The pub, the Blind Beggar, was an obvious possibility, quickly rejected. In a small London pub all the regulars were known to the publican and each other; a new and frequent customer would be noticed. They wouldn’t force themselves on him; nowhere would he be safer from intrusion. But when the body was discovered he would be bound to be among the suspects. If he had the kill here on the murderess’s home ground, the police would come with their photographs and questions. And depending on whether the publican and his customers had reason to oblige the police, someone sooner or later would talk. Besides, he drank very little and the prospect of sitting there in the fumes of tobacco and beer under the curious glances of the regulars, trying to make his pint last, repelled him. And it wouldn’t really do as a vantage point. Like in all Victorian pubs, he saw that little could be glimpsed of the interior from outside. Short of standing up and peering over the ornately painted glass, he would see nothing.
The bookshop next to the pub and the junk shop adjacent to the greengrocer’s both afforded an opportunity to browse and loiter. But, here again, he would be noticed and remembered if he became too frequent a visitor. Perhaps the launderette was the best bet. The prospect of burdening himself with his small supply of spare clothes for frequent and unnecessary washings was a disadvantage; but then he told himself that he needn’t wash anything. Once the launderette was reasonably busy, he had only to sit there patiently like the others with his plastic bag and newspaper, and it would be assumed that his washing was either being pounded in one of the washing machines, or w
as revolving in a drier. During Mavis’s illness he had taken their sheets to the local launderette. He knew that it was common practice for people to come and go, shopping or visiting the pub until their washing was ready. But here too he would have to be careful. It was a less likely place for the police to make their inquiries, but he couldn’t sit there day after day. It was a place though, where the woman herself or her daughter might well come. Surely they would use a launderette so conveniently close.
More and more it seemed to him that he ought to try and get access to the flat. He walked slowly but purposefully down that side of the road and noticed the lock. It was a simple Yale, one of the easiest to break open. The greengrocer’s shop occupied what had obviously been the front room of the original house. He saw that there was a door at the side of the shop which must lead into the downstairs hall and that this, too, was fitted with a Yale.
He went across to the second-hand booksellers and began to look through the four trays of paperbacks set out on trestles. Suddenly it occurred to him to wonder why he was here, why he hadn’t followed the murderess and her daughter. He had his knife with him. What had prevented him from following them and seizing his opportunity? It had been done before. He had read about it in newspapers often enough, the crowded pavement, the press of bodies at the tube station entrance, the silent attacker slipping in his knife and making his escape before the onlookers, embarrassed, then puzzled and finally horrified, realized what had happened. It was partly, he decided, that it had all been too sudden, too unexpected. Psychologically he wasn’t yet ready for the kill. His mind had been preoccupied with the problem of tracking them down; he had not yet turned his thoughts to the deed itself. But there was something more important; that wasn’t how it was meant to be, a sordid street crime, public, hurried, clumsy, perhaps even botched. That wasn’t how he saw it. In his imaginings he and the murderess were alone together. She was lying on a bed asleep, her neck stretched out, the pulse beating. The execution, the plunge of the knife into her throat, would be unhurried, ceremonious, a ritual of justice and expiation.
