by Ellis Peters
Counsel led him, coolly and practically and without any gentleness, through the story of his meeting with Theo and Suspiria, his association with them, his love affair, and the few days of grace for which Suspiria had asked in Theo’s interests. What had she hoped to do? To manage to induce Theo to understand their situation, and help to resolve it without avoidable damage to anyone. They had hoped to keep his friendship, and thought it worth waiting for. Dennis answered the questions in rather a low voice, but one which carried easily to every ear; even from his voice, she thought, some slightly defensive, slightly truculent overtone had been exorcised by the reality of this danger, with which no imaginary grievances could live.
As soon as Perleman got to his feet, with that deliberate swirl of his gown about him, as insolently provocative as the shooting of a Georgian cuff, Suspiria knew that he had selected Dennis as the weaker vessel, and was about to set out on a long and calculating offensive to break him down. Perhaps he hoped to shatter her nerves, too, by tormenting her darling; she could well imagine him thinking in that way. The process, too, would be something he knew how to enjoy. He began modestly, almost tenderly, like a cat fondling a mouse, regarding Dennis across the court with a gentler face than Sir Howard had shown him, and an almost vague smile.
‘I should like to be sure that I have understood you correctly, Mr. Forbes, in the matter of your attitude to this – romantic attachment. You wish us to infer that from the beginning there was no secrecy about it? That it was as open as the day?’
‘There was no secrecy about it,’ said Dennis. ‘There was something that might have been mistaken for it, though. You don’t have to be feeling guilty about a thing to want to keep it private and safe, if you value it very much.’
‘But you had no desire to hide it from Mr. Freeland. That, I believe, is the gist of what you have said?’
‘Not quite! I said she had no desire to hide it from him, and never thought it might look as if she was. At first I did want to hide it from him.’
Counsel’s thick, straight eyebrows rose a little. ‘I see! Why did you not make that plain in your answers to my learned friend?’
‘I thought I had. If not, I’m glad to do so now. Certainly I wanted to keep it from him, at first. For maybe two or three weeks I felt like that.’
‘So you did feel guilt in the matter, and did anticipate the kind of vulgar trouble which attends on affairs with other men’s wives! The prospect of facing an outraged husband had some terrors for you, then, after all?’
Dennis looked back at him fixedly, and his cheeks were stained with two hot pinpoints of colour, but his composure survived the long, inimical stare without a tremor. There was no one left in his consciousness but the two of them, and there unseen, watching them, Suspiria, whose safety was at the moment the only thing on earth that mattered to him.
‘There was something of that in it,’ he said, ‘naturally. Instinctively I was a bit scared of the kind of row there might be – that is, the kind husbands are supposed to make in the circumstances. But that had to come soon or later, if it was coming. What I was more afraid of was that we’d bring on the whole scene, and all for nothing. I didn’t expect to be able to last long with her. I never thought she could feel about me as I did about her. And if I had to get out and let them alone in a very few weeks, what was the good of spoiling things for him? He might have had it on his mind all his life.’
‘I see! It was pure consideration for the husband! Now we understand! You appear to be as modest as you are considerate, Mr. Forbes, since it seems you found it improbable that you possessed the necessary qualities to hold Mrs. Freeland’s interest for long. May I ask how long it took to disabuse your mind of that idea?’
‘I suppose after two or three weeks I began to believe that she – that it was going to last, after all.’
‘So, of course, acting on the same heroic principles, you made a clean breast of the whole thing to Mr. Freeland. It was no longer a point of decency to preserve your secrecy – I beg your pardon, reticence! – but rather a point of honour to tell him the full truth. You did that at once, of course? There appears to be a confusion in the dates here, Mr. Forbes. I understood from the evidence of Mr. Malcolm that it was not until January 29th that Mr. Freeland learned the facts.’
‘I agree with that date. I have already agreed with it.’
‘Then how do you account for the lapse of those additional weeks? You knew now that the case was serious, and that the only fair thing to do was to tell him. Why didn’t you?’
Dennis said patiently: ‘There were two reasons. Having begun by keeping silent about it, it seemed harder afterwards to change course. And then, it had to be agreed between the two of us, it couldn’t be a gesture by one. And I found it very difficult to begin to talk about it to Suspiria.’ He looked a little startled, even for a moment a little disconcerted, at having called her by that name, as if he had given away a piece of her which could be used in offensive magic. ‘It was so obvious that she hadn’t thought about it at all. I made several tries. That night – the Wednesday, January 28th, I managed it. As soon as she understood what was on my mind – as soon as she thought about his side of it – she agreed that we must have it straight with him. She told him the same night.’
‘She told him? You were not present yourself?’
‘No. She told him after I’d gone home.’
‘Your own part in it doesn’t seem to have been a very heroic one, does it?’
‘We weren’t concerned with what anyone else was going to think about either of us,’ said Dennis. ‘It was a simple matter of economy. It had to cost him the least we could make it, and she said that was the best way for him, and I knew she was right.’ But he was affronted, his mind was rubbing the place that had been hit, and Perleman knew it. ‘We agreed I should go back the next night, and we—’
‘Thank you, yes, we quite understand. You agree, then, that whatever the reasons, the affair was suppressed – will you allow me that word? – for seven weeks from the beginning of your liaison? It seems that you shrank from the scene which would probably follow. Is that a fair statement?’
‘I did. I wanted it out, but I won’t pretend I looked forward to the process.’
‘Mrs. Freeland, you wish me to infer – since you differentiate so carefully – Mrs. Freeland had no scruples?’ asked Perleman pleasantly.
‘Mrs. Freeland had no doubts or fears.’ All his wincing indignation left him when he reverted to her. His voice was full, assured, assuaged, his tongue found the right words instinctively.
‘Mr. Forbes, I would ask you to remember that you are on oath.’ The volcanic eruption of Perleman’s voice cast a startled cloud of ash over that good impression, knowing when to thunder. ‘You have stated on oath that this – this humane and voluntary interview between husband and wife was the manner of Freeland’s enlightenment, and that it took place at your will – yours and the prisoner’s. After nearly two months of a liaison so careful, so furtive, that this man could live constantly in the same house with it, and have no suspicions, you ask us to believe that suddenly you and your partner in guilt decide to do the right thing, and tell him the truth! Out of your fundamental love of honesty, no doubt! Really, it won’t do, you know! Let me help your memory! Wasn’t what happened more like this: you were alone with Mrs. Freeland that night, while Freeland was painting, probably, in his studio. You were not, I suggest, wasting your time in talking. You had other ways of passing the evenings, had you not? And in the middle of your absorption in each other – he came in! It was that night he learned the truth, yes, but he learned it because he was so indiscreet as to walk in upon you in the act. And in a week he was dead! I put it to you that this – this, and not your gentle fiction – was the manner of Theodore Freeland’s discovery of his wife’s misconduct, and that you had everything to fear and you knew it. And one of you or both of you took steps accordingly! Answer me! He caught you in the act, did he not?’
‘No,
’ said Dennis vigorously, grateful for the prompt weight of his own lie anchoring his mind to what was essential. ‘He did not.’ The shock of Perleman’s inspired guess had passed by without even grazing him, because it was necessary for Suspiria’s life that he should feel nothing, nothing at all, but what touched her. He wanted to look at her, but it was impossible, his eyes must hold Perleman fast, and give no sign of fear, or anger, or pain. The wide, patient, prolonged stare was certainly a victory.
Sir Howard was on his feet, ready to advance the obvious objection but it was not necessary. The old Judge leaned forward in his husk of clothes to observe with acidity: ‘There appears to be support for this witness’s version of the events in question, from one of your own witnesses. Precisely which witness are you trying to discredit, Mr. Perleman?’
‘I am suggesting, my lord, that while Edward Malcolm’s truthfulness is not in question for a moment, the account he had of that evening came from a deeply shocked man, who may very well have told him the truth, and nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth. I am suggesting that a discovery by the husband preceded and precipitated the wife’s confession, and that, indeed, that confession would never have been made at all but for that discovery. I think it does not require much imagination, my lord, to understand why the husband did not feel like confiding the full extent of his injury, even in the state he was then in.’
‘He does not appear to have been in the mood to keep very much back,’ said the Judge dryly. ‘However – very well, proceed!’
‘You know the meaning of perjury, I trust, Mr. Forbes?’
‘Yes, I know it.’
‘And you insist on maintaining this most improbable version of the events of that evening? You don’t wish to add anything?’
‘It is what happened. I can’t add anything, there was nothing else to add.’
‘He can’t know anything,’ thought Suspiria, watching the smooth, recovered placidity of Perleman’s face. ‘If Theo didn’t tell Malcolm he wouldn’t tell anyone else.’ But the recoiling pain of that moment of discovery, that moment that need never have happened, lay cold and quiet in her heart.
‘Very well! Let us go on to the evening of the following Wednesday, the eve of Freeland’s death. I would like to take you through the details of that evening once more—’
It went on and on, item by item through this and through that, dwelling suggestively on the week between, the renewed visits, the rapid death. All too apt, and too significant. He kept it up for over three hours, eliciting every smallest detail which might show Dennis up discreditably, and displaying an inspired gift for finding the most sensitive nerves of his victim’s body; but there were no breakages. Her own examination and cross-examination, which occupied most of the following day, held no such terrors for Suspiria as she had felt for Dennis. She watched his eyes growing hollow and haggard in his head, and all the youth, all the colour, draining slowly out of him, and she was filled with an unbearable, a frenzied anger.
At the end of it, when Perleman relinquished him, Sir Howard Fallon rose, and said in his detached voice: ‘Just one minute more, Mr. Forbes. Since your position has been somewhat obscured in an avalanche of detail, I would like to have it clearly restated for the jury’s benefit. I’ll be very brief. First, through no contrivance of yours or hers, you met and loved Mrs. Freeland, and she you?’
‘Yes. Loved and love her! And she me.’
‘Second, this love appeared to you both – appears to you both, I should say – as a sacred reality, which ought not to be either denied or relinquished?’
‘Yes, that is how it appears to us.’
‘Or defaced by any meanness? You can answer, perhaps, only for yourself, but I ask you to consider very gravely how you answer.’
‘I can answer for both of us! We wanted it to be unmarked.’
‘And have you – either of you – done anything to deface it? Have you, in particular, sought to make it permanent and safe by the final meanness of murder?’
‘No. There was no need! It is permanent and safe. It always was.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Forbes, that is all.’
6
The struggle between Suspiria and Perleman was longer and more deadly, but it came to the same thing in the end. He could not break her down on any detail of her story, or shake her steady denials; she could not close every avenue of doubt he opened. The impression she made in the witness-box, however, was good; her replies were all prompt, alert, forceful and angry, she fought him savagely, but with as much precision as if she had considered every answer beforehand. After that duel, the final speeches scarcely seemed to add anything.
Throughout the trial the little Judge had sat huddled in his robes, looking shrivelled and vindictive, and as if he could not get warm, for all the May sunshine that glittered between the showers. His rare interventions had all been phrased so briefly that it seemed impossible he could utter more than one short sentence at a time, but when he stirred irritably and emerged from his silence to sum up, there came out of his shrunken body a startlingly cold, lucid and musical voice, like a mountain river, that spoke in formed and fluent phrases, distastefully manipulating the exact measure of justice.
He knew that he would not last many more years. Perhaps this was the last woman who would ever sit with her eyes fixed insatiably on his face, trying to wrest the verdict out of his mind without reference to all those crippling intermediary stages through which it must pass before reaching her, his words, the mixed and imperfect understandings of the jury, their prejudices, their obstinacies. He did not look at her as he spoke, but he knew how she was looking at him. Every woman in the dock is only a variant, not a new species; even a woman like this one, who happens to be an artist and a lover as well.
He thought: ‘I shall not destroy her, but I think the process of her destruction may already have begun, by another way.’ And he looked at the boy, clinging to her clean across the court with the sick grey anxiety of his handsome eyes, and for a moment he almost pitied them. ‘Ah, well, it’s too late for anyone to save them from each other now,’ he said to himself, relinquishing the instinct of regret with hardly a pang. ‘It’s gone too far – they’ll never escape, now. Not even a strength like hers can drag them out of it after this.’
The summing-up was a model of its kind, comprehensive and just but without too much obscuring detail. He wondered that it had to be so long, when there was really only one thing to say, the thing they must surely have seen for themselves from the beginning:
‘Remember that the onus is not on the defence to prove the prisoner’s innocence, nor to suggest an alternative theory to account for the death. It is the business of the prosecution to prove the prisoner’s guilt beyond any reasonable doubt. If you think that a doubt does remain in this case – and if you do not, you are not fit to serve on a jury, but you won’t be the first jurors of whom that could be said! – you must give the accused the benefit of that doubt. You are not entitled to toss for it mentally, however much you would like to get out of it that way, and however much you dislike her, and would like to retain a chance of convicting her; you must find her not guilty.’
That was not what he said, though he would have taken pleasure in addressing them at last with that extreme and offensive simplicity. After all, guilty or innocent, why should they mind letting go? She was taken care of! She had made ber bed, and installed that wretched child in it, and there they would both find their particular circle of hell, like Paolo and Francesca locked for ever in an indissoluble and unremitting embrace, and blown about the windy spaces of their own emotions by uncontrollable winds of passion and despair. The headlines had married them, and no divorce would ever deliver them out of hell again. Two whom notoriety had joined might look in vain for a God or a man ingenious enough to prise them asunder.
They suffered, no doubt, a great deal during the eighty minutes of the jury’s absence, and the woman’s eyes when she came back into the dock to hear the verdict were
sunken hollow and deep into her head, and the green flames within them cast a fierce despairing light upward out of the pit of her exhaustion. She wanted her life, that woman, she had stood over it like a wildcat for five days, daring them to try and take it; and now, if they gave it back to her, there was nothing on earth for her to do with it but put it into the arms of that terrified boy who had died with her so many times already. Much good it would do her there, but she had not looked beyond the verdict yet. She was standing in the dock, tearing at the foreman with the fury of her eyes, willing him to say the right words. And he, poor devil, looked as if he had been dragged through a few hedges and ditches during the retirement. Which of them had wanted to kill her, doubt or no doubt? The women?
‘You are agreed upon your verdict?’
‘We are, my lord?’ He looked at the woman then, defending himself hurriedly from that fierce green stare.
‘Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty of murder?’
‘Not guilty, my lord!’
Her face of stone and flame softened and became flesh and blood before the old man’s eyes, her hands relaxed upon the edge of the dock, and a surge of warm colour flooded her cheeks miraculously, like the sudden blooming of a rose. She turned her head, and looked full at the young man Forbes, and his eyes were like mirrors of her own, alive, eased, dazed with joy. They didn’t understand properly yet; they thought they were free.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
The Chained Lovers
1
Dennis brought her home to Little Worth next day, in a car lent by George Grover. The loan was offered with a warmth for which he felt a childish and unsuspecting gratitude, though even in the moment of acceptance it seemed to lay an unaccountable weight upon his spirit, slight but perceptible, like the touch of a reminding finger. It was something he did not understand, and was too tired to examine. He accepted it as pure kindness, like his mother’s offer to go up to the house and put fires in, and air the bed for Suspiria’s return, and Winnie’s sudden whispered suggestion that it would be nice if they put some flowers in the living-room to welcome her. It was the soft compulsion of relief moving them all to demonstrative acts of kindness, and in his own still dazed state it made him tremble with gratitude, and weaken into an unreasoning affection. How good people were, after all, how generous!
