Take My Life (15 page)

‘I knew she had written her address down for me. I put it straight into my pocket and never looked at it.'

‘If you had read the message, would you have construed it as a threat?'

‘Of course not. Elizabeth wasn't in the least the sort of person to threaten anyone.'

‘Finally, did you see or speak to Elizabeth Rusman again after leaving her at the theatre?'

‘I never saw her again.'

‘Thank you, Mr Talbot.'

There was a stir in court. The usher looked at the clock. There was still a little time to go.

Nick stared at Wells, who was standing there pushing out his lips at him.

‘Mr Talbot, did you love Elizabeth Rusman?'

Nick's eyes did not waver. It was a nasty question at the outset.

‘How do you mean?'

‘I should have thought the question a simple one.'

Simple but double-edged. ‘At one time I was – fond of her. I never loved her as I love my wife.'

‘You loved for a little and then tired. So you slipped away and left her, and that was all – so far as you were concerned?'

‘If you wish to put it that way.'

‘Don't the facts put it that way?'

Quietly now. This was a different Wells from the one who had cross-examined Philippa. Terribly polite still, but with a little hidden sneer behind his eyes.

‘Yes, I suppose so,' Nick said.

‘Don't you usually find that in such circumstances the lady is inclined to make trouble?'

‘What do you imply?'

‘Well, surely this is not the only case of its kind you've had experience of?'

‘Of that kind, yes.'

‘Come, Mr Talbot. The only one?'

‘I suppose you could say there was one other.'

‘You suppose you could say there was one other.' Sir Alfred took a slip of paper out of his brief.

‘Might I crave your Lordship's permission to read a number of names from this paper?'

Mr Justice Ferguson inclined his head.

Sir Alfred read out five names.

‘Do these names mean anything to you, Mr Talbot?'

‘Some of them.'

‘Not all of them?'

‘Not all of them in the sense you mean. I knew two of them well, three of them less well.'

‘Your memory is bad, Mr Talbot?'

‘Not in the least,' Nick said icily. ‘But is there any point in bringing up the name of every girl I've taken out to dinner?'

He caught a glint in Sir Alfred's eye. So counsel was not above being irritated by the contemptuous answer.

‘Not ‘‘ taken out to dinner'', no. I agree that would be an impossible task. But are you saying you knew these five women no better than that?'

‘I knew them better than that … But they …'

‘Go on.'

‘Were the ordinary sort of flirtation … Not at all important …'

‘In other words, your affair with the murdered woman was of some importance in your life?'

‘Certainly more than those.'

‘You will agree that it was important to her.'

‘My Lord,' said Tyler, half rising, ‘how can the witness judge what Elizabeth Rusman felt in the matter?'

‘My Lord,' said Wells, ‘ I think the existence of the letters and the locket give us direct evidence of the importance she attached to her love affair with Nicolas Talbot.'

Mr Justice Ferguson looked over his glasses. ‘Do we then need the witness's concurrence?'

‘I submit, my Lord, that the prisoner knew all along that Elizabeth Rusman loved him deeply, and my submission is that the callousness of his earlier conduct towards her was all of a piece with his behaviour on the night of the murder.'

‘Very well, Sir Alfred. Go on.'

Wells turned his beak round to the witness-box.

‘Did your wife know of your early liaison with Elizabeth Rusman?'

‘No, of course not.'

‘Of course not? Why didn't you tell her?'

‘It was long past, and it didn't occur to me to do so.'

‘Do you think she would have married you if she had known?'

‘I'm certain of it.'

‘Yet on the evening of her learning of it, according to your story, you had a most violent quarrel and she threw something at your head?'

‘Yes.'

‘Tell me, Mr Talbot, did you ever promise to marry Elizabeth Rusman?'

‘No.'

‘At least she didn't have it in black and white, eh?'

‘She didn't have it that way or any other way.'

‘But those two letters she kept. Perhaps it might at this point be worth glancing again at what the letters have to say.' He paused a moment while the letters were handed to him. Then he caused them to be passed on to Nick. ‘ Perhaps you would kindly read us the one dated five years ago last month; the marked passage, please.'

Nick stared at the letter. The court waited expectantly. His eyes for a second moved to Philippa, and he saw her looking at him with an expression that seemed to say, ‘D'you think
I
care what you said to her five years ago. Go on, Nick; it won't hurt me.'

‘ ‘‘My very sweet Elizabeth,'' ' he began in a low voice. ‘ ‘‘Life here without you is proving even more impossible than I thought. Your letters are a help, but precious little compensation for the long days without you. I begin to believe you were right in saying we should never part at all. At this particular moment I feel very sure you are …' '

‘Thank you, Mr Talbot. Don't those words constitute an offer of marriage?'

‘They might have suggested it.'

‘Can you tell the court that you never at any time contemplated marriage with Elizabeth Rusman?'

‘No, I cant say that.'

‘Now let us turn to the writing on the programme. You say in your evidence you never saw the message Elizabeth Rusman wrote under her address, and that even if you had seen it you wouldnt have thought of it as a threat?'

‘Certainly not. How could it have been?'

‘Does the message convey nothing to you at all?'

‘Yes, she was obviously urging me to go to see her.'

‘And ‘‘Alas! the love of women!''?'

Nick said: ‘Oh, yes. It's from Byron.'

‘Tell us what that conveys to you.'

‘When we were – away together we …' He hesitated: ‘… we read Don Juan.' Why did these admissions sound so humiliatingly silly in a court of law. ‘ ‘‘Alas the love of women!'' became rather a joke between us. Elizabeth used often to quote it.'

‘And what do you think might have been her purpose in putting it on the programme?'

‘She must have wanted to remind me of the time we'd spent together.'

‘As you know your Byron, Mr Talbot, perhaps you can complete the stanza for me.'

‘I've no idea how it goes on.'

‘Sure?'

Nick stared at the other man.

‘I've told you. I've no idea how it goes on.'

‘Perhaps she expected you to remember.'

‘Does it matter?'

‘It does most emphatically. Let me refresh your memory.' Sir Alfred pouted his lips at his junior who hastily handed him a leather volume open at the right place. Sir Alfred began to read:

‘Alas! the love of women! it is known
To be a lovely and a fearful thing;
For all of theirs upon that die is thrown,
And if 'tis lost, life hath no more to bring
To them but mockeries of the past alone.'

Here he paused, and added the last lines with some deliberation:

‘And their revenge is as the tiger's spring,
Deadly and quick and crushing …'

Wells glanced at the jury to see if they had taken in its significance, then turned again to Nick.

‘I put it to you that there was a very definite threat implied in the writing on the programme. I put it to you that you were terrified that Elizabeth Rusman intended to cause a break between you and your wife.'

‘I wasn't in the least terrified,' Nick said. ‘ The idea's quite absurd.'

When Wells spoke again it seemed to be on a new tack. ‘Will you tell the court the nature of your present employment.'

Nick had been half expecting this. ‘At present I am acting as agent for my wife in arranging concert tours and generally represent her in a business capacity.'

‘I see. Then all the money she earns comes into your hands?'

‘It goes
through
my hands. I take a small percentage and the rest goes straight into her personal account.'

‘Apart from this income from your wife, what other personal money have you?'

Nick hesitated and glanced at the judge. ‘Is that necessary, my Lord?'

Mr Justice Ferguson's pen came to a stop. ‘ I think it's a relevant question.'

‘I have about two thousand pounds in cash and certain shares in an East African mining syndicate.'

Sir Alfred considered the answer. ‘Not a big fortune as fortunes go.'

‘Not as yours goes, perhaps.'

Careful! Nick, thought Philippa. Careful, darling.

Sir Alfred had turned to the judge.

‘My Lord, I ask to be protected from such unwarranted remarks.'

His Lordship said severely: ‘You must answer the questions in a proper manner, Mr Talbot.'

‘Yes, my Lord,' said Nick, ‘ if they are put in a proper manner.'

The judge continued to look at him.

‘I don't think this attitude will help you.'

Nick, Nick, thought Philippa, have patience.

‘Your father, I understand, was Brigadier Talbot, a soldier of some repute. Is it true that you were on bad terms with him?'

‘Far from it. On the whole we got on well together.'

‘On the whole. But you had strong differences of opinion?'

‘Yes. Chiefly over a matter of my career.'

‘Why was that?'

‘He wanted me to become a professional soldier like himself. I wanted to become an engineer.'

‘But you are not an engineer?'

‘No. Unhappily, we compromised by my becoming neither.'

‘How much money did your father leave you?'

‘About ten thousand pounds.'

‘Most of which you spent?'

‘Most of which I spent,' Nick said contemptuously. He wasn't going to go into details of the mining company that had failed.

‘Tell me, Mr Talbot, have you ever worked regularly in your life?'

Mr Tyler got up. ‘My Lord, I hope Sir Alfred has not forgotten that Mr Talbot has just been demobilized after a distinguished war service of five years – and that he is now only thirty. It doesn't leave a great deal of time for him to have worked regularly – or even irregularly – at anything else.'

Sir Alfred amended his question. ‘ Would it be true to say, Mr Talbot, that in the few years prior to the war you were a bit of a rolling stone?'

‘I travelled a certain amount.'

‘And gathered no moss?'

‘I made no money.'

‘Far from making money, you spent your father's.'

‘I invested it unfortunately.'

‘So that when you met Miss Shelley you had only a couple of thousand to your name?'

‘Yes.'

‘Just enough to make a show on?'

‘I didn't marry my wife for her money, if that's what you mean.'

Joan Newcombe put her hand on her sister-in-law's arm.

Nick added: ‘When I married my wife she had less money than I had.'

‘But a big future?'

‘It was not at all assured.'

‘It was assured on the night Elizabeth Rusman appeared, suddenly at Covent Garden?'

‘I'm glad to say it was.'

‘So that, in the event of a break up of your marriage, you then stood to lose not merely your wife's affections but her money as well?'

‘There was no possibility whatever of a break up of our marriage.'

‘
If
there was a break up,' said Wells, ‘did you or did you not stand to lose financially?'

‘I stood to lose far more than that.'

‘But you did stand to lose financially.'

Nick said angrily: ‘ Yes!'

Wells, satisfied, glanced again at his brief, but Mr Justice Ferguson had laid down his pen. ‘I think, Sir Alfred, that would be a suitable place at which to

adjourn.'
He stood up.
The second day was over.

Before he was taken back to Brixton for the week-end Philippa managed to get ten minutes with Nick. It was a matter largely at the discretion of the authorities, and in this case the authorities said yes. Philippa suspected Archer had had something to do with it.

She smiled at Nick with lips that were trying to look confident, and then he held her close. They forgot the attendant warder and knew only that they were together again. He was not lost yet – they both knew he was not lost – but they both felt it was going to be touch and go. As she came out of court she had heard a strange barrister say, ‘So Tyler's gamble isn't going to come off after all.' And another one replied, ‘Still it was quite the best use of the poor material.'

Nick mustn't know that.

‘That beastly counsel and his cheap sneers!' she said.

‘Cheap but effective.'

‘Oh, I don't think so. I don't really, my darling.'

Nick said: ‘Wells knows his juries. He's rubbed it in about my immorality for all he's worth, and he's also got it firmly planted in their minds that I intended to live exclusively off you. There'll be all the week-end for it to sink in, then on Monday hell really get going. D'you realize he's not even
come
to the crime yet.'

‘You're looking on the black side. It isn't so. You mustn't doubt for a single moment. There's only one possible result to this trial, and we know it.'

‘I wish the jury knew it.'