After the Act

by Winston Graham

  ‘It has a purpose. I wouldn’t have thought it a difficult question to answer. Not one in which concealment is necessary.’

  ‘There is no concealment. If I prefer to keep my private life private, what is there in that?’

  Baker slipped the notebook in his pocket and tapped the Biro impatiently on the teeth.

  ‘This person who asserts that you confessed to the murder of your wife must be making the whole thing up, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Made it up from start to finish? That would be a pretty crazy thing to do, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sensation-seeker perhaps, eh? Wants to be noticed by the police perhaps. That would be your explanation, eh?’

  I didn’t speak, feeling out of breath.

  ‘Would you say that, Mr. Dickinson? D’you think that likely?’

  Tim got up, his leg clicking. He smoothed his smooth hair. ‘ I don’t think this is getting you anywhere, Baker. There’s nothing more you can do.’

  ‘Apparently not. Not here, anyway.’ The sergeant went out of the room. Tim limped after him. I followed them and stood in the doorway of the room. Baker had a hard-looking trilby which he put on carefully in front of the mirror. He looked like an income-tax inspector or a bank cashier.

  ‘I’ll stay for a bit,’ Tim said. ‘Mr. Scott and I will talk this over, sergeant.’

  ‘That’s very nice of you, Tim,’ I said, ‘but I’d really rather be on my own. We can talk some other time.’

  ‘I thought you might need the company. We’ve been pretty close these last weeks and—’

  I smiled. ‘Thanks no.’

  He eyed me doubtfully. ‘ I really think …’

  ‘I know what you really think.’

  ‘But about tomorrow …’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  Reluctantly he took up his overcoat. Sergeant Baker at the front door smoothed his lapels. Tim turned, his eyes coolly assessing me again. I stared back at him. Sergeant Baker cleared his throat impatiently.

  They went out.

  I watched them walk down the garden path to the lane. The wooden gate clicked. After a minute or so they had moved out of the oblong of light and one could only hear footsteps crunching. It was already freezing. The cold air moved round my face and throat.

  The last person I had seen leaving this cottage …

  I waited until the engine of a car was started, then I went in and slammed the door and bolted it and stood with my back to it. I was dizzy and faint and not able yet to climb the stairs to the bedroom.

  But I had become stone cold sober.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Morris Scott,’ said the clerk of the court.

  ‘Morris Scott,’ said the usher. ‘This way, please.’

  It was just on eleven. I had got there at ten, shaven and still sober, but feeling pretty ill. A high square room with Gothic windows, much lighter than the ordinary courtroom, agreeably empty. There were two magistrates, a man and a woman. A police solicitor shared a bench with Tim Dickinson. Three witnesses for the prosecution, two policemen, a couple of other officials, and a half-dozen rather seedy spectators at the back. A ginger-haired young man glared at me. It was the first time I had seen the driver of the Mini since the night when he was lying unconscious by the roadside and we were waiting for the ambulance.

  I wasn’t taken into the dock but sat on a chair to the right of the bench. The clerk stood up and asked me if I was Morris Scott of Spanish Place, London W.1. I said I was. He then read the charge.

  ‘This is a matter,’ said the clerk, ‘ which gives you the right, if you so wish, to elect to be tried before a judge and jury at the next quarter sessions, instead of summarily in this court.’

  The chairman of the bench was a man of sixty-odd with square face tightened up like a clenched fist, well-cut silvery hair, an Uppingham tie. The woman beside him was about fifty, in a blue hat, fair hair touched up, blue-rimmed spectacles matching her outfit, a double row of pearls.

  ‘I wish to be dealt with summarily,’ I said.

  ‘Very well. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Guilty,’ I said.

  There being not above twenty people in a court designed to accommodate a hundred, surprise, like emotion in a half-empty theatre, dissipated itself quickly. But heads came up all round. There was a stirring of paper like a rustling of birds.

  The clerk said: ‘You wish to plead guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Guilty.’

  The magistrates whispered together. The chairman leaned forward: ‘Do I understand you want to change your plea?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Which of you gentlemen …? Oh, of course …’

  Tim was on his feet. ‘I represent the defendant, your worship.’

  ‘Is this news to you?’

  ‘Entirely. Nothing was said to me before the case began.’

  ‘Would you care to have a word with your client now?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The woman magistrate wore no wedding ring. I wondered what she knew about life, except at second hand.

  Tim Dickinson was beside me. ‘What is it, Morris? What has changed your mind?’

  ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Yes, but just what are you doing?’

  ‘Keeping you out of my affairs.’

  We stared at each other. He had flushed slightly, but I knew my own face to be expressionless.

  ‘I don’t want you to think, Morris, that anything that happened last night would influence my handling of this case. I’m simply here in a professional capacity.’

  ‘Well, I prefer not to avail myself of your professional capacity.’

  He hesitated. ‘It’s too late to get anyone else, if your objection really is mainly to me.’

  ‘I’ll do this my own way now.’

  The chairman of the bench coughed,

  Tim swung round. ‘My client, your worship, still wishes to plead guilty, so I can take no further part in this case.’

  He went across to pick up his papers from the bench. The police lawyer was standing also.

  The magistrate said: ‘ In that event we shall have no need of the witnesses called. I trust you appreciate, Mr. Scott, that because of your earlier intention to plead not guilty, you will have added substantially to the costs you will be required to pay.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Very well. Go on.’

  A police sergeant got up behind me.

  That at 7.45 P.M. on the 1st September last defendant, Morris Scott, travelling from Abingdon and proceeding in a southernly direction along the A329 road at a speed estimated at approximately sixty miles an hour, when four miles from Pangbourne …

  Nothing, I thought, was as yet irrevocable in my break with Alexandra. Supposing after this case was over I telephoned her at Neuilly … Or better still took the afternoon plane. Called at the house this evening. She would be dining with the Fayardes, would come out to me in the hall. I would say that after two days of despair I had come to the conclusion that … Would she forgive the cruelty and harshness of the break I had made? Would she still, after what I had said, be prepared to risk marriage? … It seemed likely, otherwise she disowned her own arguments, her own nature.…

  The chairman of the bench said: ‘In what circumstances did the defendant become angry and quarrelsome?’

  ‘In the course of his examination by the police surgeon, your worship. He appeared to take great exception to the questions asked him. The surgeon said to him: ‘‘ Is it true you have just come from a wedding?’’ Defendant replied …’

  But what had changed since Alexandra had left? What had changed in me? In what way did the joy of reconciliation and the excitement of her soft young arms absolve me of even one of the conclusions come to before the break was made? The obstacles, every last one of them, were still there. Not one of the arguments I had used to her was a degree less valid by being two days older. The only differen
ce was that giving her up was even more terrible than I had thought.…

  Someone was tapping me on the shoulder. I turned and saw that the usher was motioning me to stand. I did so. The two justices were conferring together. The woman magistrate had her face so close to the chairman that I wondered if she got some pleasure from it.

  The chairman said: ‘ Mr. Scott, we are a little puzzled about all this—that you should have gone to the trouble and expense of bringing a solicitor from London to contest the case, and put the Crown to some trouble too, and then have decided to plead guilty. May we ask why?’

  ‘It was a change of mind at the last moment.’

  ‘Yes, well, we understand that,’ said the J. P. ‘Your solicitor, I see, is still in court. Do you wish him to make a plea on your behalf?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you would like to make some personal statement in mitigation of the offence?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  The chairman looked nonplussed. He stared down at the papers in front of him and then at the clerk, who was no help. Then he looked at me again. ‘What was the visibility like at this time?’

  ‘We were driving on sidelights. It was shadowy.’

  ‘Was it raining?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The roads were dry?’

  ‘Yes, quite dry.’

  ‘And the double white line—was this clear to you?’

  ‘Yes, quite clear.’

  He stared at me. ‘Then why did you choose to ignore it?’

  ‘I was talking to my wife.’

  ‘This is the only excuse you have to offer?’

  ‘I don’t offer it as an excuse.’

  They conferred together again. The magistrate leaned over to the clerk. ‘Anything previous?’

  ‘No, your worship. Defendant has held a licence for twelve years. No endorsements.’

  There was a longer consultation. ‘My cripes,’ the van driver had said, ‘ people like you ought to be strung up, mate. And if I was in charge of the laws of the land I’d take bloody good care you was!’ Sitting in the well of the court today he looked quiet and placid and incapable of such feelings. But who was capable or incapable of what feelings? The longer I lived the less I was able to relate feeling to behaviour. Even in my own case, looking at my head and heart from the inside, as it were, nothing took shape. Everything I did was empirical: I was a quack reasoning without true knowledge, reaching for something, some motive or purpose that might not even exist. I could not understand now why I had been so angry at the police station at Pangbourne. Drink sometimes made me angry, just as it made Harriet tipsy. Was all behaviour a matter of hormones, glandular deficiency or excess?

  ‘Mr. Scott,’ said the magistrate, ‘you are a well-educated man with a clean motoring record and a position in society. Your attitude today suggests that you realise the gravity of the offence you have committed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This would perhaps incline one to clemency, for an offence regretted is an offence not likely to be repeated. But I do not feel that, however this may be regarded, it can carry a light sentence. You endangered life, not only your own and your wife’s, but those of other road users, and one of them, Mr. Smith, suffered severe bodily injury as a result. I understand you are a playwright—a successful playwright?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So that a fine, even a heavy one, can hardly carry for you the penalty it would for another. For contravening a traffic sign you will be fined ten pounds. For driving to the danger of the public you will be fined fifty pounds and disqualified from driving for nine months.’

  The clerk’s office was round the back. I made out the cheque and got a receipt. The clerk said: ‘Your licence will be kept here temporarily, sir, and then forwarded to the county council that issued it. When the disqualification is up, all you have to do is to apply to them for a new licence in the ordinary way.’

  I went out into the metallic November sunlight. I walked across to the big white Alfa parked in the forecourt and got in, fumbled for the keys in my pocket and then remembered.

  As I climbed out, Tim came limping towards me.

  ‘Are you going back to London?’

  ‘No, to the cottage.’

  ‘I’ll give you a lift back that far.’

  ‘I’ll have to make some arrangements about this car.’

  ‘Your garage in London will pick it up. It’ll be all right here until tomorrow.’

  I hesitated, uncertain whether I wanted any more of him. Then I followed him slowly across to his Rover. He said: ‘Won’t you be at the first night tonight?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  He got in. I hesitated again and then took the seat beside him.

  He put the key in the ignition, settled himself, said irritably: ‘Why did you change your plea? I could probably have got you off with a fine.’

  ‘It’s a suitable paradox, the way it is. Anyway I feel sure you wouldn’t have wanted to suffer my gratitude.’

  ‘Can’t we do without this rather stupid sarcasm?’

  I didn’t say any more, so he switched on the engine and turned the car out of the car park. He drove easily for a man with a false leg.

  ‘Sarcasm,’ I said, ‘is the only way to treat this. Isn’t it? Otherwise we can drop the trimmings and speculate on the sort of speech you might have made in my defence. ‘‘Mr. Scott, whose wife, having narrowly escaped death in this motoring accident, met her death in another accident three weeks later.…’’ ’

  ‘You believe I might have said that?’

  ‘Or something better phrased. Something to attract the press and make the innuendo stick.’

  We stopped at traffic lights and he took off his glasses to rub them on a handkerchief. ‘Isn’t the innuendo true?’

  ‘You’ve spent quite a lot of time and money trying to prove it so.’

  The lights changed and we started off. He said: ‘ Could you just clean that left lens? I’m not used to the things yet and they’re always steaming up.’

  I took the glasses and the handkerchief.

  ‘I must admit,’ he said, ‘ that I thought you’d break up last night. You’re tough, Morris, tougher than I ever thought. I suppose the really successful killers have to be. Even the once-only compulsive ones like yourself.’

  I said: ‘Did you bring Baker? It was a bluff, wasn’t it? Didn’t he sail pretty near the wind saying what he did, that he had a sworn statement from somebody when he had not?’

  I gave him back his glasses. He said, ‘Thanks,’ and pushed them on. ‘In fact someone did inform on you, Morris. Detective Sergeant Baker was in possession of a sworn statement as he said, otherwise he could not have come.’

  We drove on a little way. It seemed obvious that he was telling the truth. From whom I trust may God guard me.… But I held my tongue now. I was getting better all the time at knowing when not to speak.

  He said: ‘ Do you believe me?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by ‘‘ inform on me,’’ I said. ‘Obviously Baker must have had something to go on.’

  He was holding out a hand for his handkerchief. I gave it him. He said: ‘Did you know I’d had you followed ever since you came home from Paris?’

  ‘… No.’

  ‘I knew you’d visited this clergyman, Martin. I went to see him. He refused to tell me anything you’d discussed, but it wasn’t difficult to guess, was it? Then there was this Buddhist you went to last week. That wasn’t hard to guess either. Then I reckoned you probably told your girl. Didn’t you? Wasn’t my reasoning right?’

  We drove through Riseley.

  He said: ‘I reasoned that a man who had spoken of his act three times was getting pretty tongue loose. I thought it would, with a little prompting, come out again. So I went to the police and told them you had confessed to me.’

  I stared at him. ‘You …’

  ‘Well, it was almost literally true, wasn’t it? You’d told me all but that.… It was a calcu
lated risk, of course. I said you’d given me this information as a friend, not as a client. Which, so far as it went, was true.’

  He took a corner slowly, drew out at a road-works sign, accelerated away.

  I said: ‘You must have wanted to pin this on me very badly.’

  ‘It’s occupied too much of my time and my thoughts. But I felt it was worth it. I felt it was something that ought to be—pinned.’

  ‘But you haven’t done it. You’ve failed.’

  ‘I know. Baker’s a persistent man, but he can’t go on longer than his chiefs will let him. And that won’t be long. Oh, yes, I’ve failed. Last night was the big attempt. When you stood up to that I knew there was nothing more to do. I know now that nothing will ever catch you, nothing will ever break you down.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  In a few minutes we crossed the A30.

  He said: ‘And yet I don’t feel that all the time and effort and money has been altogether wasted. I know you so much better. We both know each other so much better. I’ve learned a lot, not only about you but about myself. The thing has been an obsession for us both. We’ve gone round and round the one fact, never touching it, never mentioning it, but sketching its shape by omission until all the outlines are there—like someone chipping away the air instead of the stone.…’

  I said: ‘Last night—’

  ‘Last night is in some ways the only part I regret about these weeks. It was a mistake ever to try to bring in the police—to try to prove something that doesn’t have to be proved. I’ve learned that too this last week. Your business—indeed our business—is to go on living.’

  We drove quietly on to the cottage. I waited for him to continue but he had no more to say. I looked at him again as he drew up at the end of the lane. A man of forty-six, thin, stooping, lame, greying, but urbane, deep thoughted, patient. Several times today and yesterday I had been near losing my temper—but it seemed to be important that I should not do so with him, even if goaded beyond endurance. Indeed it was vital, for this was a trial of strength between us; of strength and of patience. We both knew it, and the knowledge was not altogether unwelcome. In a sense the problem between us was bigger than either of us.