The Confessions of Frannie Langton (2022–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Episode #1.4 - full transcript
We're off to Long reach tomorrow.
What's in Long reach?
Mr Benham's brother, Lord Percy.
Baby brother, where the devil
have you been hiding, hm?
Meg is carrying on with the girl
right under your nose.
You stole my trust
by taking what is mine.
Madame!
But the trouble wit' you, you
couldn't leave the people dem alone.
Why am I here?
Olaudah was a friend to me once.
I don't know what happened.
I was sleeping.
Double murder is a hanging offence,
Miss Langton.
How can I be sure I didn't do it?
FOOTSTEPS APPROACH
KEYS JANGLE
FRANNIE: Every English trial
is a story of a crime,
not a person.'
DIN OF COURTROOM
Murderess!
By the time
they've finished with you,
they could almost
make you hate your own self.
And mine...'
I will have silence in this court!
...was no different.'
Frances Langton is indicted
of the wilful murder
of George Benham
and Marguerite Benham.
In that on the 17th day of February
in the year of our Lord 1826,
she did strike and stab them
until they were dead.
Mr Jessop to conduct
the prosecution.
And may it please your lordship.
Gentlemen, I appear for the Crown
and my learned friend Mr, er...
...Pettigrew appears for the accused.
The Crown's case
could not be simpler.
On the evening of the 17th,
Mr and Mrs Benham
were stabbed to death.
He in his library,
she in her own bedchamber.
This woman, the prisoner at bar,
stands accused of those crimes.
The medical evidence
will show that the victims succumbed
to stab wounds
to the chest and throat
and that Mrs Benham
was with child.
COURT GASPS
The foetus was recovered
from beneath the prisoner's bed.
Stored in an apothecary jar.
Together with this...
It has been identified as the weapon
used to commit those crimes.
I never touched that knife!
JUDGE: Prisoner at the bar!
I told him,
someone must have put it there!
Prisoner at the bar,
I will have silence.
Mr Jessop, you may proceed.
Thank you, my lord.
You will hear from guests
who attended the Benhams' soiree
that earlier that night,
she confronted them
in their own drawing room
and threatened them with death.
RIPPLE OF GASPS
You will also hear that
she was turned out for thieving
and that she took to prostitution.
And that when she returned
to the Benhams' household last week,
she had revenge in mind.
You will also hear
that when she was apprehended,
she was found beside...
They looked at me
and saw only anger.
God forbid they saw the truth.'
Sit down, both of you.
Have you asked her?
Not yet. Then ask her now.
Mr Benham's man of affairs
has located a house in Cornwall,
somewhere discreet...
...and arranged an annuity for you.
After the child is born, Mr Benham
and I will go back to London...
...and you will stay there.
You're asking what?
You'll take the child and raise it.
And do what with it?
Whatever you want.
It will have nothing to do with us.
This is why you sent for me?
I'm sorry. I thought that you...
You thought
I would do anything for you?
In the meantime,
so far as the gossips are concerned,
everything in this household
will continue as usual.
Tomorrow, I will host our soiree
as planned.
I expect you
to play the glittering wife.
Give them marvellous Meg.
You never saw Meg anywhere
without that girl in tow.
There was something
rather obsessive about it.
Thank you, Miss Elliot.
No further questions, my lord.
Are you suggesting
that there was something sinister
in the behaviour
of a dutiful Abigail
towards her mistress, Miss Elliot?
I'm merely telling the jurors
what I observed.
But you would agree that it
formed part of my client's duties
to serve as companion to Mrs Benham?
Yes.
How would you describe your own
feelings towards Mrs Benham?
We were fond of each other.
Is it fair to say that she could
be mean at times? Selfish?
I refuse to slander a friend.
If your answer would be slander,
Miss Elliot, that is the answer.
She did not afford you
the same courtesy.
I have here
an extract of a manuscript
she was working on late last year.
"Hep is far from handsome,
but she does have handsome thoughts.
"We both wanted to live as men.
Now she proves an irritant."
"She calls it selfishness
that I am not prepared to be"
"consumed by her,
by her affections."
I shouldn't be surprised.
Meg "the magpie", I called her.
Behind her back, naturally.
She was always collecting things.
Collecting people.
You think it was different...
for you?
Miss Elliot, please direct
your answers towards me or the jury.
Don't fool yourself
that you were the only one,
or that she felt an ounce
of real love for you.
It was lust.
SCATTERED GASPS
Lust!
She never cared that she hurt people
and then just left us.
She left us!
She was a bitch!
JUDGE: Miss Elliot!
I'm going to stop you there,
to prevent you
from slandering a dead woman,
even if you insist
on slandering yourself.
She and I might have been
equal in our devotion,
but we were equal in our anger,
too.'
Now you both want me
to wash away your sins?
Frances, I am so sorry.
I am so sorry.
He said he would divorce me,
leave me with nothing.
If I was to have a Black child,
in the wake of a divorce,
I would be on the streets.
I have to do what he wants.
A Black child.
I would be finished,
and you know it.
I must give up the child...
...and then I must give you up.
We wish to call Dr Wilkes, my lord.
JUDGE: Call Dr Wilkes.
They had each sustained deep gashes
to the upper and middle chest.
The constable delivered
a butchering knife to the hospital,
which he said had been discovered
beneath the prisoner's bed.
I matched the blade
directly to the victims' wounds.
And did you notice anything else?
Nothing unusual.
Except Mrs Benham
had recently been with child.
There were very clear signs,
enlargement of the uterus,
general flaccidity,
oedema of the bladder.
It couldn't have been born alive.
But that's not to say
it couldn't also
have fallen victim to whatever
caused its mother's death.
By God's hand, or a savage one.
Gentlemen, she killed her
and then carved
the unborn child from her womb.
FRANNIE: She miscarried.
Prisoner at the bar,
I will have silence!
Mr Pettigrew, I hope you've
been able to assure yourself
that your client's capable
of understanding
the nature of these proceedings
and following along
like a civilised person.
Where is it?
I took it upstairs.
What will you do with it?
Will you keep it?
My husband always said it was
my fault there were no children.
She had brought it on herself.
But like so many things,
we just didn't speak about it.'
Jane. Come.
Martha!
Come!
What is it, Sal? Is it Fran?
You're not gon' believe it.
That man was there today,
testifying against her.
Wilkes. Wilkes?
Something not right.
No way Wilkes can just pop up
out of nowhere
to point fingers against Frannie.
Uh-uh. That don't make no sense.
What can we do? Find Farley.
Make him stay put.
Them lawyers of hers
too hard-ears to do them job right,
but we goin' make them listen.
JESSOP: Now, my lord,
we wish to call Eustacia Linux.
Mrs Linux, you were housekeeper
for Mr George Benham?
For seven years.
And for Sir Percy before him.
Let me take you back
to that evening.
Can you tell us what happened?
She came downstairs to the parlour,
went right up to Mrs Benham
and said she was going to kill her.
That's not true!
She said, "This means death."
SHOCKED MURMURS
After we had finished tidying up
downstairs,
I went up to his library
to discuss
what was to be done with her, to...
And that's when I found him...
VOICE BREAKS.
My poor master.
One last thing, Mrs Linux.
Do you recognise this knife?
It is my butchering knife.
When did you last see it?
While we were tidying up that night.
I locked it away in the cupboard.
Did the prisoner
have access to the kitchen?
Yes. Thank you.
According to your testimony,
you went straight
from your master's dead body
to your mistress's bedchamber?
I'm waiting for your answer,
Mrs Linux.
Well, I'm waiting for your question.
RIPPLE OF LAUGHTER
You did not send for the constable
after discovering Mr Benham.
Your own evidence
puts you in both places
where crimes were committed
before anyone had discovered them.
I put it to you, that in order
to cover your own tracks,
it suits you to implicate my client.
That is utterly ridiculous!
You'd been quarrelling with your
master in recent months, hadn't you?
You were angry about
the fact that he'd allowed
the prisoner to live in the house.
We knew nothing about her.
Only that she came from
a savage place.
And you argued
with your mistress, too.
You complained often about having
to serve a "damned French woman".
Has she told you all this?
You have admitted here that
the murder weapon belonged to you.
You were angry with the Benhams.
That night,
you announced you'd prefer death
to enduring it a minute longer...
JUDGE: My lord!
You had every opportunity
to kill them,
moving unobserved about the house...
That's quite enough, Mr Pettigrew.
I did nothing that night,
except what I have always done.
Nor was I the one threatened to
kill them who was covered in blood.
Blood that could have
transferred onto my client
as she lay there sleeping.
Her own mistress massacred right
next to her, and yet she never woke?
No further questions, my lord.
This is what made it so difficult
to be sure I hadn't done it.
I still couldn't
make sense of it, even then.'
JUDGE: We'll adjourn until, erm...
two o'clock.
All rise.
Pettigrew. Pettigrew!
Yes? We need to talk.
I just...
I don't see how Frances...
The prisoner, sir.
I-I don't see how
she could have done this thing.
You call her a savage,
but that's not what I knew of her,
not at all.
Maybe we're just not
used to seeing blacks here.
I'd never met one before,
but it turned out she had two thumbs
like the rest of us.
She wasn't used to some of the ways
of an English house
and she always felt the cold...
Thank you, Miss Rattray.
...but once she started waiting
on Madame, her spirits improved.
They were so fond of each other
that I just don't see how Frances
could have done this thing.
Thank you, Miss Rattray.
I won't trouble you further.
No questions, my lord.
DOCTOR:
These somnambulistic states,
trances, I suppose
a layperson would call them,
involve the consciousness
and unconsciousness
to the same degree
and at the same time.
The person affected
can still have the will to act,
but the moral nature
is entirely wanting,
because they've lost the
regulating power of their own mind.
In other words, they're not
responsible for their actions?
Quite!
It's a kind of insanity.
Could the same state be produced
by an excessive amount of opium?'
Yes, indeed.
We are, of course,
talking not about a sleeping state
but a soporific one.'
Please stop crying, you're free now.
Isn't that what you wanted?
You are being cruel.
I am being honest.
But you have no idea
what honesty looks like.
You'll have no more use for me now.
Come with me.
Please. Oh, Frances.
Frances, wake up!
How many times?
What do you think
the two of us would do?
Live happily
in a little cottage by the sea (?)
I believe, from what you've told me,
that this might be
what affected your client
on the night in question.
DOOR CREAKS
JUDGE: Thank you, Dr Lushing.
My lord, you are suggesting
that the prisoner
took herself upstairs,
killed her master, then... CLAPS.
Presto!
Killed her mistress,
all in this alleged trance.
It is a form of derangement.
Well, there we agree.
It would be the first
in my experience,
and in English law,
if a woman could simply
get away with murder
by claiming she didn't remember
committing it.
No further questions, my lord.
Mr Pettigrew?
My lord,
I have an urgent application.
There have been
some new developments
over the luncheon adjournment.
New evidence
brought to my attention.
We wish to recall Dr Wilkes.
JUDGE: I hope this
isn't an attempt to time waste.
This trial is already taking up
too much time.
Very well. We will adjourn.
All rise!
We've had some good news,
thanks to your friend.
It seems we can
mount an attack on Wilkes.
Meaning what?
Dr Wilkes,
when you testified this morning,
you said you examined
Mrs Benham's stomach contents.
As I said,
I found nothing of any note.
Only the remains of the food
Mrs Benham had eaten.
Nothing else? No.
In other words,
you found what you were looking for.
I beg your pardon?
What did you know about Mrs Benham
before you cut her open, Dr Wilkes?
Did you know how often she indulged
in laudanum, for example?
Dr Wilkes?
I had been told
she had a prescription
from the family physician.
Did you test for it?
There would have been no point.
It would have been entirely
consistent with her medical history.
I suppose what I'm wondering,
Dr Wilkes, is how you would know
that the quantities present
were consistent
with Mrs Benham's medical history
if you did not test?
My lord!
My lord,
I have tolerated a great deal
during the course
of these proceedings,
but I cannot,
I cannot sit idly by
while my sister-in-law
continues to be slandered!
Her private affairs,
my brother's private affairs,
picked over by vultures
in this courtroom.
Is there no concern
for the dignity of the deceased?
You may rest assured I would
allow no such thing, Lord Benham.
You may wish to resume your seat.
Dr Wilkes, I put it to you
that you deliberately overlooked
the presence of opium
in Mrs Benham's stomach contents.
JUDGE: Mr Pettigrew, you've had
quite some time on this path now.
I suggest that you
set yourself on another.
I believe I'm entitled
to cross-examine this witness.
You cross-examined this witness
this morning.
Now you seem
to be digging old ground.
My lord, I assure you,
this is new ground entirely.
A witness has come forward.
Dr Farley.
He was Dr Wilkes's
former assistant at St Thomas's.
It was Dr Farley who performed
both autopsies, not Dr Wilkes!
Absurd!
JUDGE:
Have you called this Dr Farley?
My solicitor informs me that it
has not been possible to locate him.
He had assured us
that he would attend court.
I suspect
he's understandably concerned
about what might happen to him.
According to my instructions,
his employment was terminated at
the behest of Lord Percival Benham.
JUDGE: Mr Pettigrew...
No doubt in an attempt
to discredit him.
Mr... To silence him,
and it seems to have worked.
I am warning you not to stray
into contempt of this court.
If you cannot produce this doctor,
then nothing he might have said
may be relied upon,
nor can you expect to cross-examine
Dr Wilkes on that.
I must be able to cross-examine
about these matters.
You well know, you may not.
It is a matter of grave importance.
Dr Farley concluded that.
Mrs Benham died by opium poisoning,
not by stabbing!
My lord!
Given her habits,
any overdose would have been
most likely self-administered.
In fact, this would not have been
the first time.
Madame.
There were no knife wounds
found on her body. None. Look!
His clothes are soaked,
yet hers stained
in a manner consistent with a woman
who had just lost a child.
JUDGE: Mr Pettigrew,
this is your last warning.
Dr Wilkes, you do not have to answer
any further questions.
Dr Wilkes, I put it to you
that you conspired
with Lord Percival Benham
to ensure that word of Mrs Benham's
overdose would never become public.
My lord, this is pandemonium!
WHISPERS: She was not stabbed.
That you altered notes
made by your junior doctor,
who performed the autopsy.
Mr Pettigrew, that is enough!
Silence in court!
I didn't do it.
JUDGE: Mr Pettigrew,
your behaviour disgraces the bar.
Dr Wilkes, you are discharged.
You were, in fact,
discharged several moments ago.
Gentlemen, please disregard
everything that you've just heard.
This is my fault entirely.
I have allowed matters
to get beyond me.
We will, erm...
adjourn until tomorrow morning.
My lord! All rise!
LOCK CLICKS
I will never understand
these people.
It's true?
It was the laudanum that kill her.
No doubt about it.
Wilkes never even went
anywhere near the bodies,
him only pretended afterwards.
But how did you find out?
Remember when me tell you
about the doctor that got paid off
when Benham cripple the girl?
Well, it was Wilkes.
Me knew something not smell right
when me see him.
And Farley was his assistant
back then also.
Me found him in his cups.
There's a pub right there
where the pair of them always went.
Some of the women knew
because they been
keeping an eye on them
ever since what happened.
Farley told me Lord Percy
got to Wilkes,
paid him to lie against you.
Said there not goin' be
a suicide in him family tree.
She killed herself.
Farley still
too coward to come forward.
But at least this time
him tell the trut'.
I don't know what to say.
You did this, Sal.
It might not make no difference.
After all that.
She lose her baby,
them say you do it.
She kill herself,
them say you do it.
When it goin' stop?
JUDGE: Mr Jessop,
you may call you next witness.
My lord, we wish to call Dr Pears.
He was the family physician
to the Benhams for many years.
He will testify... SPEECH FADES.
You never stop thinking
about yourself, do you?
You still won't take
responsibility... for anything.
Gentlemen, I instruct you
to disregard everything
that you have heard
regarding the cause of death
of either Mr or Mrs Benham,
except Dr Wilkes' evidence in chief,
given yesterday morning.
My lord!
I direct that no further reports
be made of any of the evidence,
in respect of which
I have now directed an embargo.
Prisoner at the bar,
this is your chance to address
the jurors in your own defense.
Your barrister cannot speak for you.
Do you understand?
You must tell the jurors,
in your own words,
whatever it is
you have to say for yourself.
But I didn't do it.
LOW MURMURS
I could think of nothing to say
that any of them would believe.
So... I told the truth.'
I loved her.
SURPRISED MURMURS
If I am guilty of anything,
I am guilty of that.
I was a woman who loved a woman.
Chief among all of the womanly sins.
Like barrenness...
...and thinking.
You bring people here. You try them.
You make them beg.
Tell them what
they can and can't say.
In the whole sum of human history,
by what order have you white men
been wrong
more than you've been right?
You will never try yourselves.
You will never take responsibility.
You build statues for men
who build themselves
on the backs of other men.
You celebrate yourselves,
the way you celebrate George Benham.
You think he was a good man.
A great one.
Your finest mind.
No man who owns slaves can be good.
That is enough.
My lord, I find this all
rather edifying.
Perhaps the prisoner
should be allowed to conclude?
Very well.
According to all of you,
John Langton
is a monster in plain sight.
But what was the difference
between him and George Benham?
JUDGE: Prisoner at the bar,
what are you looking at?
I thought I was lucky.
You told me it wasn't luck.
Remember?
You told me. You were right.
I wish I had never
set foot inside that place.
All I wanted was just to have
the pages of a book
beneath my fingers.
Fresh air.
Early mornings.
A mirror.
I told myself
I didn't have any choice.
Prisoner at the bar,
I should warn you
not to waste this court's time.
I'll tell them the truth
about what happened there.
And what I helped them with.
John Langton wanted
to prove that the African
is not a member of the human species
by doing experiments
on the people he owned...
Don't bring me into this!
GAVEL BANGS Mr Langton, silence.
Cadavers, at first.
But then surgeries...
...with no ether.
It was George Benham
who told him where to look,
who to buy,
who wanted all of it done
in the first place.
LOW WHISPERS
John Langton bought
a boy and his mother last year.
Even after the trade
had been abolished,
he bought them illegally...
...and George Benham financed it.
He wanted to conduct a study
of an albino...
GAVEL BANGS
...and Langton had found him one.
There was a woman there at Paradise.
My mother.
She tried to save him.
I had been left to watch the boy,
she came to get him...
...but I didn't know
what Langton would do.
I was afraid.
We fought so long
that by the time she did manage
to get him away from me...'
It was too late.
If you gave me the choice
of one moment to undo,
to take back...
...it would be the day
I let you down.
I was a coward,
and because of that,
because of me...
Prisoner at the bar.
Have you finished?
John Langton murdered her for it.
My mother.
He murdered her!
How can I sit here while
you let her slander me?! Enough!
I knew had to spring myself
from his trap.
I saved that boy.
I burned it all down.'
Every blade of grass,
every plank of wood
on his damn estate!
You bitch!
You ruined me, you bitch!
LANGTON SCREAMS
You'll hang!
GAVEL BANGS
JUDGE: Please, take him away.
You bitch!
Mr Jessop. Your cross.
My lord.
I did not hear a denial from you
in that whole unedifying speech.
I am denying it now.
Then I assume your sleepwalking
defense is now withdrawn.
He might have been saying that.
I am not.
I see.
By your own admission, a moment ago,
you have done monstrous things.
I say you are the monster
who murdered George Benham.
The monster who murdered his wife.
No.
I suppose you would have
murdered John Langton, too,
given half the chance.
Someone should.
RIPPLE OF MURMURS
Which is exactly what you thought
about George Benham, too, isn't it?
Isn't it?
Furthermore, you claim to have been
in love with your mistress.
You knew she was pregnant
with her husband's child.
And you could not tolerate
this symbol of her rejection of you.
And so you killed her.
I did not.
You killed her and then carved
the unborn child from her womb.
She miscarried.
She was in no fit state
for anything.
But he was still forcing her
to go down there.
To play his glittering wife.
What do you think
the two of us would do?
Live happily in a little cottage
by the sea?!
I have to go downstairs. Stay here.
You are the one who is cruel.
Cruel and a coward.
That child is better off!
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
This is death. This is death!
But that's not all you did, is it?
No.
Because in that moment,
according to your lawyer,
you were some sort of automaton.
A killing machine.
And now you'd been given
a reason to kill. No.
He was turning you out. Again.
And so you killed him,
you killed his wife.
No. Didn't you?!
No. You killed George Benham.
He deserved to die!
HUSHED VOICES
He deserved to die.
She's ill.
You need to send for a doctor.
No. Please!
It's the damned drug,
you know it is.
Look at you, you're on it yourself.
No. It's not that.
Something's very wrong.
Get off me!
Tomorrow, she'll still be the same
thorn in my side that she always is!
And even if she's ill,
I think it was de Sade who said,
"It's better to have a dead wife
than an unfaithful one."
The only man that she had to avoid
in the whole of London
happened to be the one she fucked.
And as for you, do you know what,
you're worse than both of them.
The things that you did at Paradise
and now here, under my own roof.
You really are
John Langton's bastard, aren't you?
You're animal, do you understand?
You're filthy!
You're disgusting!
You should be ashamed of...
FRANNIE SCREAMS
JESSOP: And so you killed him?
I killed him.
SHOCKED MURMURS
I am not sorry
for what I did to him.
I had just had enough of everything.
Of all of it.
Afterwards, I went upstairs.
What choice did I have?
I should have run, of course,
taken myself back into the streets.
But I went back up...
...to her.'
When they told me she was dead...
...I thought, at first,
it was because she was ill.
She was burning up.
But when they told me
she had been stabbed...
...and after what I had done, I...
...I didn't know.
I didn't know and I needed to know.
I know you think I should have
confessed everything at the start.
But I needed to know
I hadn't killed her first.
I needed to know.
I needed to know.
I don't know about you,
but I've never seen anything quite
like this in a very long career.
Nevertheless, there are still
procedures to follow.
JESSOP:
My lord, gentlemen of the jury,
you may be bewildered
by what has happened here today,
but, in fact, I have never seen
a more straightforward case.
VOICES FADE AND MERGE
...laboured under a state of mind
so disordered
to deprive her of responsibility,
as Mr Pettigrew suggests...
...Mr Benham was stabbed to death,
he in his library,
she in her own bedchamber.
Gentlemen of the jury.
Have you reached a verdict?
We have.
Guilty, my lord.
Both?
Guilty of both?
JUDGE: Frances Langton,
the scriptures say
that whosoever shall spill blood,
his blood also shall be spilled.
I now impose upon you
the sentence of the law
and direct that you,
Frances Langton,
be taken from here
to the place whence you came,
and thence
to the place of execution
where you shall be hanged
from the neck until you are dead.
LOCK CLICKS
I'm sorry.
Is there anything I can do for you?
Anything you need?
No.
Thank you.
You didn't say anything...
about me and her.
Thank you.
I could never understand why.
How...
What happened between you and her?
What did she say?
That she was lost.
That she searched you out.
That she feared she'd hurt you
all over again
in her moment of madness.
And hurt me, too, by doing it.
She was...
Lost, I mean.
So was I...
I suppose it was the same grief.
The same fear.
The same... confusion.
And then I didn't know
what would become of her.
Of me.
Of the child.
It was all, as usual,
within his control.
He deserved to die.
Since I came to this country,
so many people have said to me
that being owned
must have taught me to hate.
But the truth is
there was love as well as hate.
The truth is the love hurt worse.'
I'm afraid.
KEYS JANGLE
FOOTSTEPS SLOWLY APPROACH
What's in Long reach?
Mr Benham's brother, Lord Percy.
Baby brother, where the devil
have you been hiding, hm?
Meg is carrying on with the girl
right under your nose.
You stole my trust
by taking what is mine.
Madame!
But the trouble wit' you, you
couldn't leave the people dem alone.
Why am I here?
Olaudah was a friend to me once.
I don't know what happened.
I was sleeping.
Double murder is a hanging offence,
Miss Langton.
How can I be sure I didn't do it?
FOOTSTEPS APPROACH
KEYS JANGLE
FRANNIE: Every English trial
is a story of a crime,
not a person.'
DIN OF COURTROOM
Murderess!
By the time
they've finished with you,
they could almost
make you hate your own self.
And mine...'
I will have silence in this court!
...was no different.'
Frances Langton is indicted
of the wilful murder
of George Benham
and Marguerite Benham.
In that on the 17th day of February
in the year of our Lord 1826,
she did strike and stab them
until they were dead.
Mr Jessop to conduct
the prosecution.
And may it please your lordship.
Gentlemen, I appear for the Crown
and my learned friend Mr, er...
...Pettigrew appears for the accused.
The Crown's case
could not be simpler.
On the evening of the 17th,
Mr and Mrs Benham
were stabbed to death.
He in his library,
she in her own bedchamber.
This woman, the prisoner at bar,
stands accused of those crimes.
The medical evidence
will show that the victims succumbed
to stab wounds
to the chest and throat
and that Mrs Benham
was with child.
COURT GASPS
The foetus was recovered
from beneath the prisoner's bed.
Stored in an apothecary jar.
Together with this...
It has been identified as the weapon
used to commit those crimes.
I never touched that knife!
JUDGE: Prisoner at the bar!
I told him,
someone must have put it there!
Prisoner at the bar,
I will have silence.
Mr Jessop, you may proceed.
Thank you, my lord.
You will hear from guests
who attended the Benhams' soiree
that earlier that night,
she confronted them
in their own drawing room
and threatened them with death.
RIPPLE OF GASPS
You will also hear that
she was turned out for thieving
and that she took to prostitution.
And that when she returned
to the Benhams' household last week,
she had revenge in mind.
You will also hear
that when she was apprehended,
she was found beside...
They looked at me
and saw only anger.
God forbid they saw the truth.'
Sit down, both of you.
Have you asked her?
Not yet. Then ask her now.
Mr Benham's man of affairs
has located a house in Cornwall,
somewhere discreet...
...and arranged an annuity for you.
After the child is born, Mr Benham
and I will go back to London...
...and you will stay there.
You're asking what?
You'll take the child and raise it.
And do what with it?
Whatever you want.
It will have nothing to do with us.
This is why you sent for me?
I'm sorry. I thought that you...
You thought
I would do anything for you?
In the meantime,
so far as the gossips are concerned,
everything in this household
will continue as usual.
Tomorrow, I will host our soiree
as planned.
I expect you
to play the glittering wife.
Give them marvellous Meg.
You never saw Meg anywhere
without that girl in tow.
There was something
rather obsessive about it.
Thank you, Miss Elliot.
No further questions, my lord.
Are you suggesting
that there was something sinister
in the behaviour
of a dutiful Abigail
towards her mistress, Miss Elliot?
I'm merely telling the jurors
what I observed.
But you would agree that it
formed part of my client's duties
to serve as companion to Mrs Benham?
Yes.
How would you describe your own
feelings towards Mrs Benham?
We were fond of each other.
Is it fair to say that she could
be mean at times? Selfish?
I refuse to slander a friend.
If your answer would be slander,
Miss Elliot, that is the answer.
She did not afford you
the same courtesy.
I have here
an extract of a manuscript
she was working on late last year.
"Hep is far from handsome,
but she does have handsome thoughts.
"We both wanted to live as men.
Now she proves an irritant."
"She calls it selfishness
that I am not prepared to be"
"consumed by her,
by her affections."
I shouldn't be surprised.
Meg "the magpie", I called her.
Behind her back, naturally.
She was always collecting things.
Collecting people.
You think it was different...
for you?
Miss Elliot, please direct
your answers towards me or the jury.
Don't fool yourself
that you were the only one,
or that she felt an ounce
of real love for you.
It was lust.
SCATTERED GASPS
Lust!
She never cared that she hurt people
and then just left us.
She left us!
She was a bitch!
JUDGE: Miss Elliot!
I'm going to stop you there,
to prevent you
from slandering a dead woman,
even if you insist
on slandering yourself.
She and I might have been
equal in our devotion,
but we were equal in our anger,
too.'
Now you both want me
to wash away your sins?
Frances, I am so sorry.
I am so sorry.
He said he would divorce me,
leave me with nothing.
If I was to have a Black child,
in the wake of a divorce,
I would be on the streets.
I have to do what he wants.
A Black child.
I would be finished,
and you know it.
I must give up the child...
...and then I must give you up.
We wish to call Dr Wilkes, my lord.
JUDGE: Call Dr Wilkes.
They had each sustained deep gashes
to the upper and middle chest.
The constable delivered
a butchering knife to the hospital,
which he said had been discovered
beneath the prisoner's bed.
I matched the blade
directly to the victims' wounds.
And did you notice anything else?
Nothing unusual.
Except Mrs Benham
had recently been with child.
There were very clear signs,
enlargement of the uterus,
general flaccidity,
oedema of the bladder.
It couldn't have been born alive.
But that's not to say
it couldn't also
have fallen victim to whatever
caused its mother's death.
By God's hand, or a savage one.
Gentlemen, she killed her
and then carved
the unborn child from her womb.
FRANNIE: She miscarried.
Prisoner at the bar,
I will have silence!
Mr Pettigrew, I hope you've
been able to assure yourself
that your client's capable
of understanding
the nature of these proceedings
and following along
like a civilised person.
Where is it?
I took it upstairs.
What will you do with it?
Will you keep it?
My husband always said it was
my fault there were no children.
She had brought it on herself.
But like so many things,
we just didn't speak about it.'
Jane. Come.
Martha!
Come!
What is it, Sal? Is it Fran?
You're not gon' believe it.
That man was there today,
testifying against her.
Wilkes. Wilkes?
Something not right.
No way Wilkes can just pop up
out of nowhere
to point fingers against Frannie.
Uh-uh. That don't make no sense.
What can we do? Find Farley.
Make him stay put.
Them lawyers of hers
too hard-ears to do them job right,
but we goin' make them listen.
JESSOP: Now, my lord,
we wish to call Eustacia Linux.
Mrs Linux, you were housekeeper
for Mr George Benham?
For seven years.
And for Sir Percy before him.
Let me take you back
to that evening.
Can you tell us what happened?
She came downstairs to the parlour,
went right up to Mrs Benham
and said she was going to kill her.
That's not true!
She said, "This means death."
SHOCKED MURMURS
After we had finished tidying up
downstairs,
I went up to his library
to discuss
what was to be done with her, to...
And that's when I found him...
VOICE BREAKS.
My poor master.
One last thing, Mrs Linux.
Do you recognise this knife?
It is my butchering knife.
When did you last see it?
While we were tidying up that night.
I locked it away in the cupboard.
Did the prisoner
have access to the kitchen?
Yes. Thank you.
According to your testimony,
you went straight
from your master's dead body
to your mistress's bedchamber?
I'm waiting for your answer,
Mrs Linux.
Well, I'm waiting for your question.
RIPPLE OF LAUGHTER
You did not send for the constable
after discovering Mr Benham.
Your own evidence
puts you in both places
where crimes were committed
before anyone had discovered them.
I put it to you, that in order
to cover your own tracks,
it suits you to implicate my client.
That is utterly ridiculous!
You'd been quarrelling with your
master in recent months, hadn't you?
You were angry about
the fact that he'd allowed
the prisoner to live in the house.
We knew nothing about her.
Only that she came from
a savage place.
And you argued
with your mistress, too.
You complained often about having
to serve a "damned French woman".
Has she told you all this?
You have admitted here that
the murder weapon belonged to you.
You were angry with the Benhams.
That night,
you announced you'd prefer death
to enduring it a minute longer...
JUDGE: My lord!
You had every opportunity
to kill them,
moving unobserved about the house...
That's quite enough, Mr Pettigrew.
I did nothing that night,
except what I have always done.
Nor was I the one threatened to
kill them who was covered in blood.
Blood that could have
transferred onto my client
as she lay there sleeping.
Her own mistress massacred right
next to her, and yet she never woke?
No further questions, my lord.
This is what made it so difficult
to be sure I hadn't done it.
I still couldn't
make sense of it, even then.'
JUDGE: We'll adjourn until, erm...
two o'clock.
All rise.
Pettigrew. Pettigrew!
Yes? We need to talk.
I just...
I don't see how Frances...
The prisoner, sir.
I-I don't see how
she could have done this thing.
You call her a savage,
but that's not what I knew of her,
not at all.
Maybe we're just not
used to seeing blacks here.
I'd never met one before,
but it turned out she had two thumbs
like the rest of us.
She wasn't used to some of the ways
of an English house
and she always felt the cold...
Thank you, Miss Rattray.
...but once she started waiting
on Madame, her spirits improved.
They were so fond of each other
that I just don't see how Frances
could have done this thing.
Thank you, Miss Rattray.
I won't trouble you further.
No questions, my lord.
DOCTOR:
These somnambulistic states,
trances, I suppose
a layperson would call them,
involve the consciousness
and unconsciousness
to the same degree
and at the same time.
The person affected
can still have the will to act,
but the moral nature
is entirely wanting,
because they've lost the
regulating power of their own mind.
In other words, they're not
responsible for their actions?
Quite!
It's a kind of insanity.
Could the same state be produced
by an excessive amount of opium?'
Yes, indeed.
We are, of course,
talking not about a sleeping state
but a soporific one.'
Please stop crying, you're free now.
Isn't that what you wanted?
You are being cruel.
I am being honest.
But you have no idea
what honesty looks like.
You'll have no more use for me now.
Come with me.
Please. Oh, Frances.
Frances, wake up!
How many times?
What do you think
the two of us would do?
Live happily
in a little cottage by the sea (?)
I believe, from what you've told me,
that this might be
what affected your client
on the night in question.
DOOR CREAKS
JUDGE: Thank you, Dr Lushing.
My lord, you are suggesting
that the prisoner
took herself upstairs,
killed her master, then... CLAPS.
Presto!
Killed her mistress,
all in this alleged trance.
It is a form of derangement.
Well, there we agree.
It would be the first
in my experience,
and in English law,
if a woman could simply
get away with murder
by claiming she didn't remember
committing it.
No further questions, my lord.
Mr Pettigrew?
My lord,
I have an urgent application.
There have been
some new developments
over the luncheon adjournment.
New evidence
brought to my attention.
We wish to recall Dr Wilkes.
JUDGE: I hope this
isn't an attempt to time waste.
This trial is already taking up
too much time.
Very well. We will adjourn.
All rise!
We've had some good news,
thanks to your friend.
It seems we can
mount an attack on Wilkes.
Meaning what?
Dr Wilkes,
when you testified this morning,
you said you examined
Mrs Benham's stomach contents.
As I said,
I found nothing of any note.
Only the remains of the food
Mrs Benham had eaten.
Nothing else? No.
In other words,
you found what you were looking for.
I beg your pardon?
What did you know about Mrs Benham
before you cut her open, Dr Wilkes?
Did you know how often she indulged
in laudanum, for example?
Dr Wilkes?
I had been told
she had a prescription
from the family physician.
Did you test for it?
There would have been no point.
It would have been entirely
consistent with her medical history.
I suppose what I'm wondering,
Dr Wilkes, is how you would know
that the quantities present
were consistent
with Mrs Benham's medical history
if you did not test?
My lord!
My lord,
I have tolerated a great deal
during the course
of these proceedings,
but I cannot,
I cannot sit idly by
while my sister-in-law
continues to be slandered!
Her private affairs,
my brother's private affairs,
picked over by vultures
in this courtroom.
Is there no concern
for the dignity of the deceased?
You may rest assured I would
allow no such thing, Lord Benham.
You may wish to resume your seat.
Dr Wilkes, I put it to you
that you deliberately overlooked
the presence of opium
in Mrs Benham's stomach contents.
JUDGE: Mr Pettigrew, you've had
quite some time on this path now.
I suggest that you
set yourself on another.
I believe I'm entitled
to cross-examine this witness.
You cross-examined this witness
this morning.
Now you seem
to be digging old ground.
My lord, I assure you,
this is new ground entirely.
A witness has come forward.
Dr Farley.
He was Dr Wilkes's
former assistant at St Thomas's.
It was Dr Farley who performed
both autopsies, not Dr Wilkes!
Absurd!
JUDGE:
Have you called this Dr Farley?
My solicitor informs me that it
has not been possible to locate him.
He had assured us
that he would attend court.
I suspect
he's understandably concerned
about what might happen to him.
According to my instructions,
his employment was terminated at
the behest of Lord Percival Benham.
JUDGE: Mr Pettigrew...
No doubt in an attempt
to discredit him.
Mr... To silence him,
and it seems to have worked.
I am warning you not to stray
into contempt of this court.
If you cannot produce this doctor,
then nothing he might have said
may be relied upon,
nor can you expect to cross-examine
Dr Wilkes on that.
I must be able to cross-examine
about these matters.
You well know, you may not.
It is a matter of grave importance.
Dr Farley concluded that.
Mrs Benham died by opium poisoning,
not by stabbing!
My lord!
Given her habits,
any overdose would have been
most likely self-administered.
In fact, this would not have been
the first time.
Madame.
There were no knife wounds
found on her body. None. Look!
His clothes are soaked,
yet hers stained
in a manner consistent with a woman
who had just lost a child.
JUDGE: Mr Pettigrew,
this is your last warning.
Dr Wilkes, you do not have to answer
any further questions.
Dr Wilkes, I put it to you
that you conspired
with Lord Percival Benham
to ensure that word of Mrs Benham's
overdose would never become public.
My lord, this is pandemonium!
WHISPERS: She was not stabbed.
That you altered notes
made by your junior doctor,
who performed the autopsy.
Mr Pettigrew, that is enough!
Silence in court!
I didn't do it.
JUDGE: Mr Pettigrew,
your behaviour disgraces the bar.
Dr Wilkes, you are discharged.
You were, in fact,
discharged several moments ago.
Gentlemen, please disregard
everything that you've just heard.
This is my fault entirely.
I have allowed matters
to get beyond me.
We will, erm...
adjourn until tomorrow morning.
My lord! All rise!
LOCK CLICKS
I will never understand
these people.
It's true?
It was the laudanum that kill her.
No doubt about it.
Wilkes never even went
anywhere near the bodies,
him only pretended afterwards.
But how did you find out?
Remember when me tell you
about the doctor that got paid off
when Benham cripple the girl?
Well, it was Wilkes.
Me knew something not smell right
when me see him.
And Farley was his assistant
back then also.
Me found him in his cups.
There's a pub right there
where the pair of them always went.
Some of the women knew
because they been
keeping an eye on them
ever since what happened.
Farley told me Lord Percy
got to Wilkes,
paid him to lie against you.
Said there not goin' be
a suicide in him family tree.
She killed herself.
Farley still
too coward to come forward.
But at least this time
him tell the trut'.
I don't know what to say.
You did this, Sal.
It might not make no difference.
After all that.
She lose her baby,
them say you do it.
She kill herself,
them say you do it.
When it goin' stop?
JUDGE: Mr Jessop,
you may call you next witness.
My lord, we wish to call Dr Pears.
He was the family physician
to the Benhams for many years.
He will testify... SPEECH FADES.
You never stop thinking
about yourself, do you?
You still won't take
responsibility... for anything.
Gentlemen, I instruct you
to disregard everything
that you have heard
regarding the cause of death
of either Mr or Mrs Benham,
except Dr Wilkes' evidence in chief,
given yesterday morning.
My lord!
I direct that no further reports
be made of any of the evidence,
in respect of which
I have now directed an embargo.
Prisoner at the bar,
this is your chance to address
the jurors in your own defense.
Your barrister cannot speak for you.
Do you understand?
You must tell the jurors,
in your own words,
whatever it is
you have to say for yourself.
But I didn't do it.
LOW MURMURS
I could think of nothing to say
that any of them would believe.
So... I told the truth.'
I loved her.
SURPRISED MURMURS
If I am guilty of anything,
I am guilty of that.
I was a woman who loved a woman.
Chief among all of the womanly sins.
Like barrenness...
...and thinking.
You bring people here. You try them.
You make them beg.
Tell them what
they can and can't say.
In the whole sum of human history,
by what order have you white men
been wrong
more than you've been right?
You will never try yourselves.
You will never take responsibility.
You build statues for men
who build themselves
on the backs of other men.
You celebrate yourselves,
the way you celebrate George Benham.
You think he was a good man.
A great one.
Your finest mind.
No man who owns slaves can be good.
That is enough.
My lord, I find this all
rather edifying.
Perhaps the prisoner
should be allowed to conclude?
Very well.
According to all of you,
John Langton
is a monster in plain sight.
But what was the difference
between him and George Benham?
JUDGE: Prisoner at the bar,
what are you looking at?
I thought I was lucky.
You told me it wasn't luck.
Remember?
You told me. You were right.
I wish I had never
set foot inside that place.
All I wanted was just to have
the pages of a book
beneath my fingers.
Fresh air.
Early mornings.
A mirror.
I told myself
I didn't have any choice.
Prisoner at the bar,
I should warn you
not to waste this court's time.
I'll tell them the truth
about what happened there.
And what I helped them with.
John Langton wanted
to prove that the African
is not a member of the human species
by doing experiments
on the people he owned...
Don't bring me into this!
GAVEL BANGS Mr Langton, silence.
Cadavers, at first.
But then surgeries...
...with no ether.
It was George Benham
who told him where to look,
who to buy,
who wanted all of it done
in the first place.
LOW WHISPERS
John Langton bought
a boy and his mother last year.
Even after the trade
had been abolished,
he bought them illegally...
...and George Benham financed it.
He wanted to conduct a study
of an albino...
GAVEL BANGS
...and Langton had found him one.
There was a woman there at Paradise.
My mother.
She tried to save him.
I had been left to watch the boy,
she came to get him...
...but I didn't know
what Langton would do.
I was afraid.
We fought so long
that by the time she did manage
to get him away from me...'
It was too late.
If you gave me the choice
of one moment to undo,
to take back...
...it would be the day
I let you down.
I was a coward,
and because of that,
because of me...
Prisoner at the bar.
Have you finished?
John Langton murdered her for it.
My mother.
He murdered her!
How can I sit here while
you let her slander me?! Enough!
I knew had to spring myself
from his trap.
I saved that boy.
I burned it all down.'
Every blade of grass,
every plank of wood
on his damn estate!
You bitch!
You ruined me, you bitch!
LANGTON SCREAMS
You'll hang!
GAVEL BANGS
JUDGE: Please, take him away.
You bitch!
Mr Jessop. Your cross.
My lord.
I did not hear a denial from you
in that whole unedifying speech.
I am denying it now.
Then I assume your sleepwalking
defense is now withdrawn.
He might have been saying that.
I am not.
I see.
By your own admission, a moment ago,
you have done monstrous things.
I say you are the monster
who murdered George Benham.
The monster who murdered his wife.
No.
I suppose you would have
murdered John Langton, too,
given half the chance.
Someone should.
RIPPLE OF MURMURS
Which is exactly what you thought
about George Benham, too, isn't it?
Isn't it?
Furthermore, you claim to have been
in love with your mistress.
You knew she was pregnant
with her husband's child.
And you could not tolerate
this symbol of her rejection of you.
And so you killed her.
I did not.
You killed her and then carved
the unborn child from her womb.
She miscarried.
She was in no fit state
for anything.
But he was still forcing her
to go down there.
To play his glittering wife.
What do you think
the two of us would do?
Live happily in a little cottage
by the sea?!
I have to go downstairs. Stay here.
You are the one who is cruel.
Cruel and a coward.
That child is better off!
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
This is death. This is death!
But that's not all you did, is it?
No.
Because in that moment,
according to your lawyer,
you were some sort of automaton.
A killing machine.
And now you'd been given
a reason to kill. No.
He was turning you out. Again.
And so you killed him,
you killed his wife.
No. Didn't you?!
No. You killed George Benham.
He deserved to die!
HUSHED VOICES
He deserved to die.
She's ill.
You need to send for a doctor.
No. Please!
It's the damned drug,
you know it is.
Look at you, you're on it yourself.
No. It's not that.
Something's very wrong.
Get off me!
Tomorrow, she'll still be the same
thorn in my side that she always is!
And even if she's ill,
I think it was de Sade who said,
"It's better to have a dead wife
than an unfaithful one."
The only man that she had to avoid
in the whole of London
happened to be the one she fucked.
And as for you, do you know what,
you're worse than both of them.
The things that you did at Paradise
and now here, under my own roof.
You really are
John Langton's bastard, aren't you?
You're animal, do you understand?
You're filthy!
You're disgusting!
You should be ashamed of...
FRANNIE SCREAMS
JESSOP: And so you killed him?
I killed him.
SHOCKED MURMURS
I am not sorry
for what I did to him.
I had just had enough of everything.
Of all of it.
Afterwards, I went upstairs.
What choice did I have?
I should have run, of course,
taken myself back into the streets.
But I went back up...
...to her.'
When they told me she was dead...
...I thought, at first,
it was because she was ill.
She was burning up.
But when they told me
she had been stabbed...
...and after what I had done, I...
...I didn't know.
I didn't know and I needed to know.
I know you think I should have
confessed everything at the start.
But I needed to know
I hadn't killed her first.
I needed to know.
I needed to know.
I don't know about you,
but I've never seen anything quite
like this in a very long career.
Nevertheless, there are still
procedures to follow.
JESSOP:
My lord, gentlemen of the jury,
you may be bewildered
by what has happened here today,
but, in fact, I have never seen
a more straightforward case.
VOICES FADE AND MERGE
...laboured under a state of mind
so disordered
to deprive her of responsibility,
as Mr Pettigrew suggests...
...Mr Benham was stabbed to death,
he in his library,
she in her own bedchamber.
Gentlemen of the jury.
Have you reached a verdict?
We have.
Guilty, my lord.
Both?
Guilty of both?
JUDGE: Frances Langton,
the scriptures say
that whosoever shall spill blood,
his blood also shall be spilled.
I now impose upon you
the sentence of the law
and direct that you,
Frances Langton,
be taken from here
to the place whence you came,
and thence
to the place of execution
where you shall be hanged
from the neck until you are dead.
LOCK CLICKS
I'm sorry.
Is there anything I can do for you?
Anything you need?
No.
Thank you.
You didn't say anything...
about me and her.
Thank you.
I could never understand why.
How...
What happened between you and her?
What did she say?
That she was lost.
That she searched you out.
That she feared she'd hurt you
all over again
in her moment of madness.
And hurt me, too, by doing it.
She was...
Lost, I mean.
So was I...
I suppose it was the same grief.
The same fear.
The same... confusion.
And then I didn't know
what would become of her.
Of me.
Of the child.
It was all, as usual,
within his control.
He deserved to die.
Since I came to this country,
so many people have said to me
that being owned
must have taught me to hate.
But the truth is
there was love as well as hate.
The truth is the love hurt worse.'
I'm afraid.
KEYS JANGLE
FOOTSTEPS SLOWLY APPROACH