by P. D. James
My view of the court was almost as good as that of the judge. Below, to the left, was the large dock with its glass screen at the back and the sides, opposite us the jury, to the right the judge, and below us the barristers. Mr. Froggett told me that the front row in the public gallery was the place from which the only photograph of a defendant being sentenced to death had been taken. The people in the dock had been Crippen and his mistress, Ethel Le Neve. The photograph had been printed in a daily paper and it was this that had led to the new law that there could be no photography in court.
He was full of these snippets of history and information. When I commented on the smallness of the witness box, the neat wood stand with a canopy above it like a minuscule pulpit, he explained that the canopy was a relic of the days when courts were held in the open air and a witness needed protection. When I wondered aloud why the judge, splendid in his scarlet, never sat in the centre seat, he told me that this was reserved for the Lord Mayor of London, the Chief Magistrate of the City. Although he no longer presides at trials, he arrives in state four times a year and processes through the Grand Hall to Number One Court, the procession headed by the City Marshal, the Sheriffs, the Swordbearer and the Common Cryer carrying the sword and mace. Mr. Froggett spoke with regret; it was a procession he would have liked to have seen.
He told me too that this was the court in which some of the greatest criminal trials of the century had been held. Seddon, found guilty of murdering his lodger, Miss Barrow, with arsenic; Rouse of the Blazing Car Murder; Haigh, who had dissolved his victims in acid—all had been sentenced to death in that dock. The stairs beneath it had been trodden by men and women in the throes of a desperate hope or filled with the terror of death; some had been dragged down screaming or moaning. Somehow I had expected the very air of the courtroom to be polluted by the faint, half-imagined taint of terror; but I breathed it feeling nothing. Perhaps it was the very ordered dignity of the court—smaller, more graceful, more intimate than I had imagined, the richness of the splendid carving of the royal coat of arms behind the dais, the sixteenth-century Sword of Justice of the City, the robes and wigs, the courteous formality, the unraised voices; all imposed a sense of order and reason, and of the possibility of justice. And yet it was an arena; it was as much an arena as if the floor had been strewn with blood-soaked straw and the antagonists had entered to the sound of trumpets, half naked, with their breastplates and swords, to make their obeisance to Caesar.
And it was in Court Number One at the Old Bailey that my search ended. It was here that I first saw Ashe. By the third day of the trial I knew that I had found my man. If I could still have prayed, I would have been praying for an acquittal. But I felt no real anxiety. This, too, was pre-ordained. I watched him day after day as he sat there, motionless and upright, his eyes on the judge. I sensed the power, the intelligence, the ruthlessness, the greed. My concentration on him was so intense that, when, for the only time, he looked up at the public gallery and scanned us with a glance of contempt, I felt a momentary fear that he had guessed my purpose there and was seeking out my face.
I left the court as soon as the verdict was announced. Mr. Froggett was, I know, hoping that we might have tea together and talk about the finer points of the defence. As I pushed my way out, he was on my heels saying: “You know the point when she won the case, don’t you? You recognized that fatal question?”
I told him that I had to hurry, that I had someone arriving for the evening and must get home to cook. But we walked together to the Central Line at St Paul’s Station, he to go east, I west. I had it all planned. First the train to Notting Hill Gate, then by the District or Circle Line to Earls Court, a few minutes in my flat to write the two notes to Ashe, and then off at once to his address. The notes—one for the front door, one for the back—took only minutes. I had decided weeks ago what I would say: the subtle flattery, the appeal to curiosity, the bribe which might not make him co-operate but would certainly make him open the door. I wrote it carefully but didn’t print it: it had to be personal. Rereading it, I didn’t think I could do better.
“Dear Mr. Ashe. Forgive me for intruding on you in this way but I have a proposal to put to you. I’m not a journalist and I have no connection with officialdom, the police, social services, or any other busybodies. I have a job I need doing and you are the only one who can do it successfully. If you succeed, the payment is twenty-five thousand pounds in cash. The job isn’t illegal or dangerous but it does require skill and intelligence. It is, of course, confidential. Please see me. If your answer is no I won’t bother you again. I am waiting outside.”
I had planned that, if there were lights in the house, I would put the letter through the front-door letter-box, ring or knock and then quickly conceal myself. He had to read the note before he saw me. If he wasn’t at home I would put a note through both the front and back doors and await his return, preferably in the garden if I could gain access.
I had his address, but until the trial was over I didn’t visit the house; it would have been too like tempting fate; but I knew that it was on Westway stretching out from Shepherd’s Bush. It wasn’t a road I normally used. If there were buses that went there, I had never needed to take them. So, to save time and energy, I decided on a taxi, giving the driver a house number twenty away from the one I needed. I would walk the last hundred yards or so, arriving without attracting the notice of neighbours. And by now it was getting dark. I needed the darkness.
But when the cab turned off the main road, onto a slip road, and then drew up, I thought for a moment that something was wrong with the engine and that he had been forced to stop. Surely no one could still be living in this wasteland? Right and left, floodlit in the glare of the overhead lamps as if it were a film set, stretched an urban desolation of boarded-up windows and front doors, peeling paint and crumbling stucco. The house before which I stood had part of its roof missing, where demolition had already begun, whilst to the left of it the destruction had been completed and no roofs were visible behind the high boarding. On the boarding, beside the official notice announcing the road-widening scheme, were painted the forceful expressions of contemporary protest and the obscene scribbles of incoherent rage, all of them saying, Look at me! Listen to me! Take note of me! I am here! I walked under that hard glare between the dead condemned houses and the ceaseless roar of the uncaring traffic and felt that I was walking through an urban hell.
But when I reached Number 397 I saw that it was one of the few still showing signs of occupation. It was on a corner, the last of a long line of identical semi-detached houses. The three panes of the bay window to the right of the porch were boarded with what looked like reddish-brown metal, as was the smaller window to the left, but the door looked as if it were still in use and there were curtains at the upstairs window. What had once been a small front garden was now a patch of weeds and tufted grasses. The front gate, the wood splintered, swung on its rusted hinges. I could see no lights. Standing in the shelter of the porch, I pushed open the letter-box and put my ear to the aperture. I could hear nothing. Then I put one of my notes through the slot and thought that I heard it drop.
Next I tried the gate at the side of the house. It was bolted from the other side and too high to climb. There was no access this way. But I preferred to wait at the back of the house rather than loiter in the street. I went back to the road, walked to the corner and turned left down the side street. Here I was luckier. The garden was fenced and, moving slowly down it and putting out an exploring hand, I found a place where a plank had been broken. I kicked it vigorously, choosing a moment when the noise from the road was particularly loud. The wood splintered inward with a crack which I feared would alert the whole street, but all was silent. I leaned against the adjoining planks with all the strength I could muster and heard the nails giving way. The fence was old and the supports swayed as I leaned against them. Now I had a gap just wide enough to squeeze through. I was where I wanted to be: in the back garden.
>
I didn’t need to conceal myself—no eyes could be watching at those dead, boarded-up windows. On each side the homes had been dark since the first crash of the demolition crane’s swinging ball. The small garden was a wasteland, grass almost waist-high. Still, I felt happier out of sight, and I squatted between the black wall of the shed and the boarded-up kitchen window.
I had come well prepared: a warm coat, a woolly cap into which I’d tucked my hair, a torch and a paperback copy of twentieth-century poetry. I knew that the wait might be long. He could be out celebrating with friends, although I didn’t think of Ashe as a boy who had friends. He could be drinking, and I hoped that he wasn’t. Our negotiations would be delicate enough. I needed him sober. He could be looking for sex after the months of deprivation. I didn’t think he was. I had seen him only for those few weeks, but I felt that I knew him and this meeting was predestined. Once I would have rejected such a thought as sentimental irrational nonsense. Now, at least with part of my mind, I knew that fate or luck had led me to this moment. I knew that in the end he would come home. Where else could he go?
I sat there, not reading but waiting and thinking, in a silence and seclusion that seemed absolute. I had the feeling, always agreeable to me, that I was absolutely alone since no one in the world knew where I was. But the silence was internal. The world around me was full of noise. I could hear the constant rhythmic boom of the traffic on Westway, seeming sometimes as close as a wild and threatening sea, and at others an almost reassuring memory of that ordinary and safer world of which I had once been part.
I knew when he had come home. The kitchen window, like the others, had been boarded up, but only partly, enough to ensure security. There was a narrow slit at each end. Now a light shone through and I knew that he was in the kitchen. Slowly I drew myself up, feeling the ache of my muscles, and stared at the door willing him to open it. But I knew that he would. Curiosity if nothing else would compel him. And now, at last, the door opened and I saw him, a black silhouette outlined in bright light. He didn’t speak. I shone the beam of my torch upwards on my face. Still he didn’t speak. I said:
“I see you got my note.”
“Of course. Wasn’t I meant to?”
I had heard his voice before: those two firmly spoken words in court, “Not guilty,” and his answers in examination and cross-examination. It wasn’t unattractive but was somehow unnatural, as if he had acquired it by practice and wasn’t yet sure whether he wanted to keep it.
He said, “You’d better come in,” and stood aside.
I smelt the kitchen before I saw it. These were old, sour smells embedded in wood and walls and in the corners of cupboards, never to be got rid of now until the house crashed down in rubble. But I saw that he had made an attempt to clean up and I found this disconcerting. And then he did something else that surprised me. He took a clean handkerchief from his pocket—I can remember now the size and whiteness of it—and flicked it over a chair seat before motioning me to sit. He sat down opposite and we regarded each other across the stained and torn vinyl that covered the kitchen table.
I had thought of all the ploys I might need. How to appeal to his vanity and his greed without making it obvious that I judged him to be vain and greedy. How to compliment without being suspiciously fulsome. How to offer money without suggesting that he was being patronized or too easily bought. I had expected to be frightened; I would, after all, be alone with a murderer. I’d sat through the whole of the trial. I knew that he had killed his aunt, and killed her no more than yards from where I was sitting now. I had thought about what I’d do if he threatened violence. If I became unduly frightened I would say that someone I trusted knew where I was and would send the police if I didn’t return within the hour. But, sitting opposite him, I felt curiously at ease. He didn’t at first speak, and we sat in a silence that was neither oppressive nor embarrassing. I had expected him to be more volatile, trickier than he was proving to be.
I put my proposition to him simply and without emotion. I said: “Venetia Aldridge has a daughter, Octavia, who is just eighteen. I’m willing to pay you ten thousand pounds to seduce her and another fifteen thousand if she agrees to marry you. I’ve seen her. She’s not particularly attractive and she isn’t happy. That last should make it easier. But she is an only child and she does have money. For me it’s a matter of revenge.”
He didn’t reply, but the eyes looking into mine grew blank, as if he had retreated into a private world of calculation and assessment.
After a minute, he got up, filled and switched on a kettle and took down from a cupboard two mugs and a jar of instant coffee. There was a plastic shopping bag beside the sink. He had called at a supermarket for food and a carton of milk on his way home. When the water boiled he poured it onto a heaped teaspoonful of coffee in each of the mugs, placed one in front of me and pushed the sugar and the carton of milk towards me.
He said: “Ten grand to fuck her, another fifteen if we get engaged. Revenge comes dear. You could have Aldridge killed for less.”
“If I knew who to hire. If I was willing to risk blackmail. I don’t want her killed, I want her to suffer.”
“She’d suffer if you kidnapped the girl.”
“Too complicated and too risky. How would I do it? Where would I hold her? I don’t have access to people who manage these things. The beauty of my revenge is that no one can touch me for it even if they find proof. But they won’t find proof. They won’t be able to touch either of us. And she’ll mind it more than a kidnapping. Kidnapping would gain her sympathy, good publicity. This will hurt her pride.”
I knew from the second that the words left my mouth that they were a mistake. I shouldn’t have suggested that an engagement to him would be demeaning. I saw the mistake in his eyes, the second of blankness and then the pupils seeming to widen. I saw it in the tensing of his body as he leaned across the table towards me. I smelt for the first time his masculinity as I might smell a dangerous animal. I didn’t speak too quickly; he mustn’t see that I’d recognized my error. I let my words drop into the silence like stones.
“Venetia Aldridge likes to be in control. She doesn’t love her daughter, but she wants her to conform, to do her credit, to be respectable. She’d like her to marry a successful lawyer, someone she’s chosen and approves of. And she’s a very private woman. If you and Octavia are romantically linked it will make a good story for the tabloids; they’ll pay good money for it. You can imagine the headlines. It’s not the kind of publicity she’d welcome.”
It wasn’t enough. He said very quietly: “Twenty-five grand for a bit of social embarrassment. I don’t believe it.”
He was demanding the truth. He knew it already but he was insisting that I put it into words. And if I didn’t, then there would be no bargain. It was then that I told him about Dermot Beale and my granddaughter. But I didn’t tell him Emily’s name. I couldn’t bring myself to speak it in that house.
I said: “Aldridge thinks that you killed your aunt. She believes you to be a murderer. That’s how she gets her kicks, defending people she thinks are guilty. There’s no triumph in defending the innocent. She doesn’t love her daughter, that’s her guilt. How do you think she’ll feel if Octavia gets engaged to someone her mother believes is a killer, someone she defended? She’ll have to live with that knowledge—but she won’t be able to do a thing about it. That’s what I want. That’s what I’m willing to pay for.”
He said: “And what do you believe? You were at the trial. Do you think I did it?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
He leaned back. I could almost believe that I heard the satisfied release of his breath.
He said: “She thinks she got me off. Is that what you think?”
And now to risk the flattery. “No, you got yourself off. I heard your evidence. If she’d kept you out of the witness box you’d be in prison now.”
“That’s what she wanted to do at first, keep me out of the box. I t
old her, no way.”
“You were right, but she has to take all the credit. It has to be her victory, her triumph.”
Again that curiously companionable pause. Then he said: “So what are you paying for? What do you want me to do?”
“Sleep with the daughter, make her love you. In the end, marry her.”
“And what do you want me to do with her after I’ve married her?”
It was only when he spoke those words that I began to realize what I was dealing with. He wasn’t being ironic or sarcastic. The question was perfectly simple. He could have been speaking of an animal, an article of furniture. If I’d been capable of turning back, I would have turned back then.
I said: “You do what you like. Fly to the Caribbean, take her on a cruise, go to the Far East and dump her, buy a house and settle down. You could separate whenever you wanted, divorce without consent after five years. Or her mother would probably pay you off, if that’s what you want. You won’t lose anyway. After I’ve paid over the last of the money I shan’t be in touch with you again.”
I had realized by then that he was both more perceptive and more intelligent than I had expected. That made him more dangerous, but paradoxically it made him easier to deal with. He had summed me up, had known that I wasn’t some elderly freak, that the offer was genuine, the money there for the taking. And once he’d known that, then his decision was made.
And that was how it was done, in that stinking kitchen over that stained table, two people without conscience bargaining over a body and soul. Except, of course, that I didn’t believe that Octavia had a soul or that there was anything in that room except the two of us, or any power which would alter or influence what we said and did and planned. The bargaining was perfectly amicable, but I knew that I had to let him win. He mustn’t be humiliated, even by a minor defeat. Equally, he would despise me for a too-easy capitulation. In the end I gave way to an extra thousand on the preliminary payment and an extra two on the final sum.
