The Literary Lord Peter

 

Chapter III

 

Talboys: Crown Celestial

 

 

So here I'll watch the night and wait

To see the morning shine

When he will hear the stroke of eight

And not the stroke of nine.

 

A. E. Housman: A Shropshire Lad

 

 

After the magistrates' court they were free until the Assizes. So they finished their honeymoon in Spain, after all.

 

 

The Dowager Duchess wrote that the furniture had been sent up to Talboys from the Hall and that the painting and plastering were done. It would be better to leave work on the new bathroom until the frosts were over. But the house was habitable.

 

And Harriet wrote back that they were coming home in time for the trial, and that no marriage had ever been so happy as theirs—only, Peter was dreaming again.

 

 

Sir Impey Biggs, cross-examining:

 

"And you expect the jury to believe that this remarkable piece of mechanism went unnoticed by the deceased from 6.20 to 9 o'clock?"

 

"I expect nothing. I have described the mechanism as we constructed it."

 

Then the judge:

 

"The witness can only speak to his knowledge of the facts, Sir Impey."

 

"Quite so, m'lud."

 

The point made. The suggestion implanted that the witness was a little unreasonable....

 

"Now, this booby-trap you set for the prisoner...."

 

"I understood the witness to say that the trap was set by way of experiment, and that the prisoner arrived unexpectedly and sprang it before he could be warned."

 

"That is so, my lord."

 

"I am obliged to your lordship.... What effect did the accidental springing of this booby-trap have upon the prisoner?"

 

"He seemed very much frightened."

 

"We may easily believe that. And astonished?"

 

"Yes."

 

"When suffering under this very natural surprise and alarm, was he able to speak coolly and collectedly?"

 

"He was anything but cool and collected."

 

"Did you think he was aware of what he was saying?"

 

"I can scarcely be a judge of that. He was agitated."

 

"Would you go as far as to call his manner frenzied?"

 

"Yes; that word describes it very well."

 

"He was out of his mind with terror?"

 

"I am not qualified to say so."

 

"Now, Lord Peter. You have explained very clearly that this engine of destruction at the lowest point of its swing was not less than six feet from the ground?"

 

"That is so."

 

"Anybody less than six feet in height would be perfectly safe from it?"

 

"Exactly."

 

"We have heard that the prisoner's height is five feet and ten inches. He was, therefore, not at any time in danger from it?"

 

"Not in the slightest."

 

"If the prisoner himself had arranged the pot and chain as the prosecution suggest, he would know better than anybody else that it could not even touch him?"

 

"In that case, certainly he must have known it."

 

"Yet he was very much alarmed?"

 

"Very much alarmed indeed."

 

 

An exact and non-committal witness.

 

Agnes Twitterton, an excited and spiteful witness, whose very obvious resentment against the prisoner did him if anything more good than harm. Dr. James Craven, a highly technical witness. Martha Ruddle, a talkative and circumlocutory witness. Thomas Puffett, a deliberate and sententious witness. The Rev. Simon Goodacre, a reluctant witness. Lady Peter Wimsey, a very quiet witness. Mervyn Bunter, a deferential witness. P.C. Joseph Sellon, a witness of few words. Superintendent Kirk, an officially impartial witness. A strange ironmonger from Clerkenwell, who had sold the prisoner a quantity of lead shot and an iron chain, a damaging witness.

 

Then, the prisoner himself, witness in his own defence: a very bad witness indeed, sullen and impudent by turns.

 

 

Sir Impey Biggs, eloquent on behalf of the prisoner—"this industrious and ambitious young man"; hinting at prejudice—"a lady who may have some cause to fancy herself ill-used"; indulgently sceptical about "the instrument of destruction so picturesquely constructed by a gentleman whose ingenuity is notorious"; virtuously indignant at the construction placed upon "words uttered at random by a terrorised man"; astonished to discover in the case for the Prosecution "not a scintilla of direct proof"; passionately moving in his appeal to the jury not to sacrifice a young and valuable life on evidence so flimsily put together.

 

Counsel for the Prosecution, gathering up the threads of proof that Sir Impey had tossed into disorder, weaving them into a rope as thick as a cable.

 

The Judge, undoing the twist again to show the jury exactly what was the strength of each separate strand, and handing the materials back to them, neatly assorted.

 

The Jury, absent for an hour.

 

 

Sir Impey Biggs came over. "If they hesitate all this time, they may acquit him in spite of himself."

 

"You ought to have kept him out of the box."

 

"We advised him to stay out. I think he got swollen head."

 

"Here they come."

 

 

"Members of the jury, are you agreed upon your verdict?"

 

"We are."

 

"Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty of the murder of William Noakes?"

 

"Guilty."

 

"You say he is guilty and that is the verdict of you all?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Prisoner at the bar, you have been arraigned upon a charge of murder, and have placed yourself upon your country. That country has now found you guilty. Have you anything to say why judgment of death should not be pronounced upon you according to law?"

 

"I say I don't care a damn for the lot of you. You've proved nothing against me. His lordship's a rich man and he had a down on me—him and Aggie Twitterton."

 

"Prisoner at the bar, the jury, after a careful and patient hearing have found you guilty of murder. In that verdict I entirely concur. The sentence of the court upon you is that you be taken from hence to the place from which you came, and thence to a place of execution, and you be there hanged by the neck until you be dead and your body buried in the precincts of the prison in which you shall last have been confined, and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul."

 

"Amen."

 

 

One of the most admirable features of the English criminal law is said to be its dispatch. You are tried as soon as possible after your arrest, the trial takes three or four days at most, and after your conviction (unless, of course, you appeal), you are executed within three weeks.

 

Crutchley refused to appeal, preferring to announce that he done it, that he'd do it again, and let them get on with it, it made no odds to him.

 

Harriet, in consequence, was left to form the opinion that three weeks was quite the worst period of waiting in the world. A prisoner should be executed the morning after his conviction, as after a court-martial, so that one could get all the misery over in a lump and have done with it. Or the business should be left to drag on for months and years, as in America, till one was so weary of it as to have exhausted all emotion.

 

The worst feature, she thought, about those three weeks, was Peter's determined courtesy and cheerfulness. Whenever he was not over at the county gaol, patiently inquiring whether there was anything he could do for the prisoner, he was at Talboys, being considerate, admiring the arrangement of the house and furniture, or putting himself at his wife's disposal to tour the country in search of missing chimney-pots or other objects of interest. This heart-breaking courtesy was punctuated by fits of exigent and exhausting passion, which alarmed her not only by their reckless abandonment, but by being apparently automatic and almost impersonal. She welcomed them, because he would sleep afterwards as though stunned. But every day found him more firmly entrenched behind some kind of protective fortification, and herself becoming less and less a person to him. In his present mood, she felt unhappily, almost any woman would have done.

 

She was unspeakably grateful to the Duchess, who had forewarned and so, to some extent, forearmed her. She wondered whether her own decision "not to be wifely and solicitous" had been a wise one. She wrote, asking for counsel. The Duchess's reply, ranging over a variety of subjects, amounted to saying, "Let him find his own way out." A postscript added: "One thing, my dear—he is still there, and that's encouraging. It's so easy for a man to be somewhere else."

 

 

About a week before the execution, Mrs. Goodacre turned up in a state of considerable agitation. "That wretched man Crutchley!" she said. "I knew he would get Polly Mason into trouble, and he has! And now what's to be done? Even supposing he could get leave to marry her and wanted to do it—and I don't suppose he cares a rap for the girl—is it better for the child to have no father or one who's been hanged for murder? I'm sure I don't know! Even Simon doesn't know—though naturally he says he ought to marry her. I don't see why he shouldn't—it won't make the least difference to him. But now the girl doesn't want him to, either—says she doesn't want to be married to a murderer, and I'm sure I can't blame her. Her mother's in a great way, of course. She should have kept Polly at home or sent her into good service—I told her she was much too young to go into that drapery shop at Pagford, and not really steady, but it's too late to say that now."

 

Peter asked whether Crutchley knew anything about this development.

 

"The girl says not.... And goodness me!" said Mrs. Goodacre, suddenly waking up to a whole series of possibilities, "suppose old Mr. Noakes hadn't lost his money and Crutchley hadn't been found out, what would have happened to Polly? He meant to have that money by hook or by crook ...if you ask me, my dear Lady Peter, Polly's had a narrower escape than she thought for."

 

"Oh, it mightn't have come to that," said Harriet.

 

"Perhaps not; but one undiscovered murder makes many. However, that isn't the point. The point is what we're to do about this baby that's on the way."

 

Peter said he thought Crutchley ought at least to be told about it. He thought it was only fair that the man should be given the chance to do what he could. He offered to take Mrs. Mason over to see the governor of the prison. Mrs. Goodacre said it was very good of him.

 

Harriet, escorting Mrs. Goodacre down the path to the gate, said it would do her husband good to have something definite to do about Crutchley: he worried a good deal.

 

"Very likely he does," said Mrs. Goodacre. "You can see he's that sort. Simon's just the same if he has had to be severe with anybody. But that's men all over. They want the thing done and then, of course, they don't like the consequences. Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds."

 

 

Peter reported in the evening that Crutchley had been very angry and refused categorically to have anything further to do with Polly or any more blasted women. He had, in fact, refused to see either Mrs. Mason or Peter or anybody else, and had told the governor to damn' well leave him alone. Peter then began to worry about what ought to be done for the girl. Harriet let him wrestle with this problem (which had at least the merit of being a practical one) and then said:

 

"Couldn't you put Miss Climpson on to it? With all her High-Church connections she ought to be able to hear of some job that would do. I've been to see the girl, and she doesn't seem to be a bad sort, really. And you could help with money and that sort of thing."

 

He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time for a fortnight.

 

"Why, of course. I think my brain must have gone mushy. Miss Climpson is the obvious person. I'll write to her at once."

 

He got pen and paper, wrote the address and "Dear Miss Climpson," and sat blankly, pen in hand.

 

"Look here—I think you could write this better than I could. You've been to see the girl. You can explain.... Oh, God! I'm so tired."

 

It was the first crack in the defences.

 

 

He made his last effort to see Crutchley on the night before the execution. He was armed with a letter from Miss Climpson containing the outline of some very excellent and sensible arrangements for Polly Mason.

 

"I don't know when I shall be back," he said. "Don't wait up for me."

 

"Oh, Peter——"

 

"I say, for God's sake don't wait up for me."

 

"Very well, Peter."

 

Harriet went to look for Bunter, and found him running over the Daimler from bonnet to back axle.

 

"Is his lordship taking you with him?"

 

"I couldn't say, my lady. I have had no instructions."

 

"Try and go with him."

 

"I will do my best, my lady."

 

"Bunter...what usually happens?"

 

"It depends, my lady. If the condemned man is able to display a friendly spirit, the reaction is less painful for all concerned. On the other hand, I have known us take the next boat or aeroplane to a foreign country at a considerable distance. But the circumstances have, of course, been different."

 

"Yes. Bunter, his lordship has particularly said he does not wish me to sit up for him. But if he should return to-night, and he doesn't...if he should be very restless..." That sentence did not seem to be ending properly. Harriet began again. "I shall go upstairs, but I don't see how one could possibly sleep. I shall sit by the fire in my room."

 

"Very good, my lady."

 

Their eyes met with perfect understanding.

 

 

The car was brought round to the door.

 

"All right, Bunter. That will do."

 

"Your lordship does not require my services?"

 

"Obviously not. You can't leave her ladyship alone in the house."

 

"Her ladyship has been good enough to give me permission to go."

 

"Oh!"

 

A pause during which Harriet, standing in the porch, had time to think: Suppose he asks me whether I imagine he needs a keeper!

 

Then Bunter's voice, with exactly the right note of dignified injury:

 

"I had anticipated that your lordship would wish me to accompany you as usual."

 

"I see. Very well. Hop in."

 

 

The old house was Harriet's companion in her vigil. It waited with her, its evil spirit cast out, itself swept and garnished, ready for the visit of devil or angel.

 

It was past two o'clock when she heard the car return. There were steps on the gravel, the opening and shutting of the door, a brief murmur of voices—then silence. Then, unheralded by so much as a shuffle on the stair, came Bunter's soft tap at the little door.

 

"Well, Bunter?"

 

"Everything has been done that could be done, my lady." They spoke in hushed tones, as though the doomed man lay already dead. "It was some considerable time before he would consent to see his lordship. At length the governor persuaded him, and his lordship was able to deliver the message and acquaint him with the arrangements made for the young woman's future. I understand that he seemed to take very little interest in the matter; they told me there that he continued to be a sullen and intractable prisoner. His lordship came away very much distressed. It is his custom under such circumstances to ask the condemned man's forgiveness. From his demeanour, I do not think he had it."

 

"Did you come straight back?"

 

"No, my lady. On leaving the prison at midnight, his lordship drove away in a westerly direction, very fast, for about fifty miles. That is not unusual; I have frequently known him drive all night. Then he stopped the car suddenly at a cross-roads, waited for a few minutes as though he were endeavouring to make up his mind, turned round and came straight back here, driving even faster. He was shivering very much when we came in, but refused to eat or drink anything. He said he could not sleep, so I made up a good fire in the sitting-room. I left him seated on the settle. I came up by the back way, my lady, because I think he might not wish to feel that you were in any anxiety about him."

 

"Quite right, Bunter—I'm glad you did that. Where are you going to be?"

 

"I shall remain in the kitchen, my lady, within call. His lordship is not likely to require me, but if he should do so, he will find me at hand, making myself a little supper."

 

"That's an excellent plan. I expect his lordship will prefer to be left to himself, but if he should ask for me—not on any account unless or until he does—will you tell him——"

 

"Yes, my lady?"

 

"Tell him there is still a light in my room, and that you think I am very much concerned about Crutchley."

 

"Very good, my lady. Would your ladyship like me to bring you a cup of tea?"

 

"Oh, Bunter, thank you. Yes, I should."

 

When the tea came, she drank it thirstily, and then sat listening. Everything was silent, except the church clock chiming out the quarters; but when she went into the next room she could hear faintly the beat of restless feet on the floor below.

 

She went back and waited. She could think only one thing, and that over and over again. I must not go to him; he must come to me. If he does not want me, I have failed altogether, and that failure will be with us all our lives. But the decision must be his and not mine. I have got to accept it. I have got to be patient. Whatever happens, I must not go to him.

 

It was four by the church clock when she heard the sound she had been waiting for: the door at the bottom of the stair creaked. For a few moments nothing followed, and she thought he had changed his mind. She held her breath till she heard his footsteps mount slowly and reluctantly and enter the next room. She feared they might stop there, but this time he came straight on and pushed open the door which she had left ajar.

 

"Harriet...."

 

"Come in, dear."

 

He came over and stood close beside her, mute and shivering. She put her hand out to him and he took it eagerly, laying his other hand in a fumbling gesture on her shoulder.

 

"You're cold, Peter. Come nearer the fire."

 

"It's not cold," he said, half-angrily, "it's my rotten nerves. I can't help it. I suppose I've never been really right since the War. I hate behaving like this. I tried to stick it out by myself."

 

"But why should you?"

 

"It's this damned waiting about till they've finished...."

 

"I know. I couldn't sleep either."

 

He stood holding out his hands mechanically to the fire till he could control the chattering of his teeth.

 

"It's damnable for you too. I'm sorry. I'd forgotten. That sounds idiotic. But I've always been alone."

 

"Yes, of course. I'm like that, too. I like to crawl away and hide in a corner."

 

"Well," he said, with a transitory gleam of himself, "you're my corner and I've come to hide."

 

"Yes, my dearest."

 

(And the trumpets sounded for her on the other side.)

 

 

"It's not as bad as it might be. The worst times are when they haven't admitted it, and one goes over the evidence and wonders if one wasn't wrong, after all.... And sometimes they're so damned decent..."

 

"What was Crutchley like?"

 

"He doesn't seem to care for anybody or regret anything except that he didn't pull it off. He hates old Noakes just as much as the day he killed him. He wasn't interested in Polly—only said she was a fool and a bitch, and I was a bigger fool to waste time and money on her. And Aggie Twitterton could go and rot with the whole pack of us, and the sooner the better."

 

"Peter, how horrible!"

 

"If there is a God or a judgment—what next? What have we done?"

 

"I don't know. But I don't suppose anything we could do would prejudice the defence."

 

"I suppose not. I wish we knew more about it."

 

 

Five o'clock. He got up and looked out into the darkness, which as yet showed no sign of day's coming.

 

"Three hours more.... They give them something to make them sleep.... It's a merciful death compared with most natural ones.... It's only the waiting and knowing beforehand.... And the ugliness.... Old Johnson was right; the procession to Tyburn was kinder.... 'The hangman with his gardener's gloves comes through the padded door.'... I got permission to see a hanging once.... I thought I'd better know...but it hasn't cured me of meddling."

 

"If you hadn't meddled, it might have been Joe Sellon or Aggie Twitterton."

 

"I know that. I keep telling myself that."

 

"If you hadn't meddled six years ago, it would almost certainly have been me."

 

That stopped him in his caged pacing to and fro.

 

"If you had had to live through that night, Harriet, knowing what was coming to you, I would have lived it through in the same knowledge. Death would have been nothing, though you were little to me then compared with what you are now.... What the devil am I doing, to remind you of that horror?"

 

"If it hadn't been for that, we shouldn't be here—we should never have seen one another. If Philip hadn't been murdered, we shouldn't be here. If I'd never lived with Philip, I shouldn't be married to you. Everything wrong and wretched—and out of it all I've somehow got you. What can one make of that?"

 

"Nothing. There seems to be no sense in it at all."

 

He flung the problem away from him and began his restless walk again.

 

Presently he said:

 

"My gracious silence—who called his wife that?"

 

"Coriolanus."

 

"Another tormented devil.... I'm grateful, Harriet—— No, that's not right; you're not being kind, you're being yourself. Aren't you horribly tired?"

 

"Not the least bit."

 

She found it difficult to think of Crutchley, baring his teeth at death like a trapped rat. She could see his agony only at second-hand through the mind that it dominated. And through that mind's distress and her own there broke uncontrollably the assurance that was like the distant note of a trumpet.

 

 

"They hate executions, you know. It upsets the other prisoners. They bang on the doors and make nuisances of themselves. Everybody's nervous.... Caged like beasts, separately.... That's the hell of it ...we're all in separate cells.... I can't get out, said the starling. ... If one could only get out for one moment, or go to sleep, or stop thinking.... Oh, damn that cursed clock!... Harriet, for God's sake, hold on to me...get me out of this...break down the door...."

 

"Hush, dearest. I'm here. We'll see it out together."

 

Through the eastern side of the casement, the sky grew pale with the forerunners of the dawn.

 

"Don't let me go."

 

 

The light grew stronger as they waited.

 

Quite suddenly, he said, "Oh, damn!" and began to cry—in an awkward, unpractised way at first, and then more easily. So she held him, crouched at her knees, against her breast, huddling his head in her arms that he might not hear eight o'clock strike.

 

 

Now, as in Tullia's tomb one lamp burnt clear

Unchanged for fifteen hundred year,

May these love-lamps we here enshrine,

In warmth, light, lasting, equal the divine.

Fire ever doth aspire,

And makes all like itself, turns all to fire,

But ends in ashes; which these cannot do,

For none of these is fuel, but fire too.

This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong arts

Make of so noble individual parts

One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts.

 

John Donne: Eclogue for the Marriage of the Earl of Somerset.