The Sleep of Reason (48 page)

Benskin was much too shrewd not to have worked this out. In fact, he wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to talk much. Not that he need have been so cautious, for she was responding as little, as deadeningly, as she had done to me. She sounded as though she were utterly remote, or perhaps more exactly as though there was nothing going on within her mind. Light, practised, neutral questions – not friendly, not indulgent, for Benskin had chosen his tone – made no change in her expression: each was answered by the one word, no.

He had begun straight away upon the killing. Did she now remember any more about it? No. Had she anything to say about it? No. Could she describe the events of the Sunday evening? No.

“You don’t deny, Miss Ross, that you were associated with the killing?”

“What’s the use?”

But she still had nothing to say of how it happened? No. Or when? No. She had no memory of it? No. Had she ever had blocks of memory before? She didn’t know. Did she remember meeting Miss Pateman for the first time? Yes. When? At the — café, in a crowd. (I didn’t glance at George: it was one of his favourite rendezvous.) Did she remember setting up house with Miss Pateman? Yes. When? November 17, 1961. The answer came out fast, mechanically. But she had no memory of the boy’s death? No.

“I have to press you, Miss Ross. Has it quite vanished?”

Cora gave something like a smile, stormy, contemptuous. Her reply wasn’t immediate.

“No,” she said.

“You mean, you have some recollection?”

“Something happened.”

“Can you say anything more definite?”

“No.”

He went on; when she said “something happened”, what did that mean? She returned to saying no. It might have been, so people thought afterwards, that she had given away more than she intended: or, as Matthew Gough believed, that there was only a vague sense of tumult, of whirling noise, remaining to her, something like the last conscious memory of a drunken night.

But she didn’t deny, Benskin asked, that there had been planning to get the boy out to the cottage? No. The planning had taken place, she hadn’t forgotten it? No. Then what had she to say about that?

“When you set out to do something, you do it.”

“Someone must have thought about it for quite a time beforehand?”

She answered, head thrown back: “I thought about it.”

“Can you tell us how you discussed it with Miss Pateman?”

“No.”

When he repeated some versions of this question, she merely answered No. Here, I at least was sure that this was a willed response: she could have told it all if she chose.

“Well. What state of mind were you in, can you tell us that?”

“No.”

“Come, Miss Ross, you must realise that you have done terrible things. Do you realise that?”

She stared to one side of him, face fixed, like the figurehead on an old sailing ship.

“If you had heard of anyone else doing such things, you would have thought they were atrocious beyond words. Isn’t that so?”

Again she stared past him.

“So can’t you tell us anything about your state of mind, say the fortnight before?”

“No.”

“You said, a moment ago, you set out to do something. Meaning those atrocious things. Why did you set out–”

She said: “I suppose you get carried away.”

Benskin said: “Miss Ross, we really want to understand. Can’t you give us an idea what you were thinking about, when you were making those plans?”

“I thought about the plans.”

“But there must have been more you were thinking about?”

“That’s as may be.”

“Can’t you give us an idea?”

“No.”

Benskin said: “Miss Ross, aren’t you sorry for what you’ve done?”

Cora Ross replied, not looking directly at Kitty: “I’m sorry that I dragged her into it.”

Suddenly, as though on impulse, Benskin nodded, sat down, examination over. Some lawyers thought later that he ought to have persevered: to me, sitting in the silent, baffled courtroom, his judgment seemed good. On his feet, Bosanquet asked his first question in a voice as always quiet, but not so punctiliously unemotional: “Miss Ross, you have just told my learned friend that you are sorry to have involved Miss Pateman. Is that all you are sorry for?”

“I’m sorry I dragged her in.”

“You know perfectly well that you have done what have just been called atrocious things. Aren’t you sorry for that?”

No answer.

“You mustn’t pretend, Miss Ross. You must have some remorse. Are you pretending not to understand?”

“You can think what you like.”

Bosanquet was, of course, meeting precisely the opposite difficulty to her own counsel’s. If he drew dead responses like that last one, or any response which seemed outside human sympathy, then he might, paradoxically, be helping her. Momentarily he had himself been shocked. With professional self-control, he started again, quite calmly.

(Remorse. I was distracted into thinking of genuine remorse. Whenever I had met it, in myself or anyone else, there had always been an element of fear. Fear perhaps of one’s own judgment of what one had done: often, far more often, of the judgment of others. I wondered if this woman was one of those, and they existed, who were incapable of fear.)

Carefully, on his new tack, Bosanquet was setting out to domesticate her life. She had lived with her mother until she died? Yes. She had had a normal childhood? She had gone to school like everyone else? She had never been under medical inspection? She had not been in any sort of trouble? She had done satisfactory work at school, she had been good at games? No one treated her as different from anyone else?

“In fact,” said Bosanquet, “no one had any reason to consider that you were?”

“I was.” For once she had raised her voice.

Bosanquet passed over that answer, repeating that no one treated her differently–?

“I’ll answer for myself.” It was an angry shout, like the tirade to the court the week before, mysterious-sounding. She might have been giving out a message – or just stating how, to her own self; she was unique.

With a smooth and placid transition, Bosanquet moved on to her ménage with Miss Pateman. They were living very comfortably when they pooled their resources, weren’t they? Their incomes added together came to something like £1,600, didn’t they? They paid Miss Pateman’s father, £200 for their room? It was an eminently practicable and well-thought out arrangement, their joint establishment, wasn’t it?

It was at this stage that I made my way out of court and round to the official box, so that I missed a set of questions and answers. From the court record, when I read it later, Bosanquet was making it clear that their domestic planning was far-sighted and full of common sense. There were exchanges about insurance policies and savings. Altogether they had been more competent than most young married couples, and as much anticipating that their relation would last for ever.

When I slipped into my place in the box, Bosanquet had just finished asking: “So you managed to live a pleasant leisurely life, didn’t you?”

“We did our jobs.”

“But you had plenty of leisure outside office hours?”

“I suppose so.”

“What did you do with your leisure?”

“The usual things.”

“Did you read much?”

“She was the reading one.”

As Bosanquet tried to discover what Cora Ross read, the answer seemed to be nothing. Certainly no books, scarcely a newspaper. Music she listened to, for hours on end: all kinds of music, apparently, pop, jazz, classical. Television, often the whole evening through. Films of any kind, but more often on television in their room (they had another set at Rose Cottage) than by going to a cinema. Yes, sometimes they went to a cinema: no special kind of film, they went to see stars that they “liked” – a word which had a sexual aura round it.

Music, the screen. She had been drenched and saturated with sound. No printed words at all: or as little as one could manage with, in a literate society. In an earlier age, would she have wanted to learn from books?

“You had everything sensibly organised, Miss Ross,” said Bosanquet in his level tone. “Then you thought you might do a little sensible organisation about – something else?”

“No.”

“Think a moment. What you did to this boy, beginning with the kidnapping, that required a good deal of organisation?”

“No.”

“It required just as much careful thinking as the way you planned your household accounts?”

“No.”

“We know already how you sensibly allocated your combined income. A certain proportion to the drinks bill–”

“She didn’t drink.”

“No, you were a careful household. But you gave exactly the same sort of attention when you decided to make away with a harmless child?”

Sensible, careful, organised: Bosanquet was reiterating the words, letting no one forget how competent they were. It made an extraordinary picture, just because it was so commonplace: the two of them coming back to their room, Cora allowing herself a couple of evening drinks (a bottle of whisky lasted them a fortnight). It made too extraordinary a picture, for there were many in court, uneasy, disturbed, feeling that their life together, even well before the crime, couldn’t have been quite like that. Yet at times it might or must have been.

“You did a great deal of careful planning – when you decided it was a good idea to make away with a harmless child?”

“No.”

“Of course you did. You have told your own counsel so. We have all heard how you picked on that child weeks beforehand. You organised the whole operation just as thoughtfully as you did your household, isn’t that so?”

“No.”

“Do you deny that you planned it?”

She raised her head. “I thought about one or two things.”

“You planned it step by step?”

No answer.

“Every inch along the way?”

With a kind of scorn or irritation, she said: “It wasn’t like that.”

“You planned it very lucidly, Miss Ross. It’s not for me to find an answer to why you did so. Were you getting bored with everything else in your life together?”

“No.” Her face was convulsed.

“Were you ready for anything with a new thrill?”

“No.”

“Well then. What put this abominable idea into your head?”

For some instants it seemed that she was not going to answer. Then, as though she were wilfully getting back into the groove, or as though it were an answer prepared beforehand, she repeated what she had said to Benskin: “You get carried away.”

Bosanquet, looking up at her, said again that it was not for him to find an answer. He returned to the planning, extricating each logistic point, sounding as temperate as though it were a military analysis. By this time – perhaps it was a delayed reaction – Cora had lost her temper. Her monosyllables were shouted, her expression changed from being wild and riven to something like smooth with hate. Then she sank back into sullenness, but her fury was still smouldering. When he finished with her, her eyes for once followed him: she stared down upon him, face pallid, minatory, deadened.

Benskin half-rose, then thought better of it, and left that impression of her, standing there.

There was not time to begin Kitty’s examination before lunch. After the judge’s procession had departed, I went out, and found his clerk waiting for me. A car was ready to drive me to the judge’s lodgings, in the old County Rooms in the middle of the town: he would be following at once with another guest.

In fact, as I walked into his dining-room, white-panelled, perhaps later than Georgian, but light and lively on the eye, the judge was hallooing cheerfully behind me. “We caught you up, you see,” said Mr Justice Fane.

Do you two know each other? he was saying. Yes, we did, for his other guest was Frederick Hargrave, whom I kept meeting on the University Court. For an instant I was surprised to see him there, he looked so quiet, unassuming, insignificant beside the judge’s bulk: I had to recall that Hargrave (whose grandfather and father had lived in the town like simple Quaker businessmen) was a deputy lieutenant of the county and not unused to entertaining circuit judges.

Still wearing his red gown – he had taken off only his wig – Mr Justice Fane stood between us, as tall as I was, weighing two or three stone more, very heavily boned and muscled, offering us drinks. No, that’s no use to you, he corrected himself; speaking to Hargrave: his manners were just as cordial and attentive out of court as in. So Hargrave was equipped with ginger beer, while the judge helped me to a whisky and himself to a substantial gin and tonic.

“It’s very good of you both to have luncheon with me today,” he said. “I don’t like being lonely here, you know.”

As we stood up, there was some talk of common acquaintances: but the judge, like the barristers at Rose’s house, couldn’t keep from living in the trial.

“You haven’t listened to much of it, have you?” he said to Hargrave, who replied that he had attended one afternoon.

“It can’t have been a pleasant experience for you, Eliot,” said the judge.

“Terrible,” said Hargrave in a gentle tone.

“I think it’s as terrible as anything I’ve seen,” the judge added. In a moment, he went on, his Punch-like nose drawn down: “I don’t know what you think. All this talk of responsibility. We are responsible for our actions, aren’t we? I’m just deciding whether to have another gin and tonic. Eliot, if you give me five pounds on condition that I don’t have one, I’m perfectly capable of deciding against. That’s my responsibility, isn’t it? As you don’t show any inclination to make the offer, then I shall, with equal responsibility, decide to have another one. And I shall bring it to the table, because it’s time we started to eat.”

That was a Johnsonian method of dealing with metaphysics, I thought as we sat down, one on each side of the massive old man. The long table stretched away from us, polished wood shining in the airy elegant room.

The judge told us he had ordered a light meal, soup, fish, cheese. He and I were to split a bottle of white burgundy. He was brooding, he was drawn back – as obsessively magnetised as any of us, despite his professional lifetime – to the morning in the court.