The Confessions of Frannie Langton (2022) s01e04 Episode Script

We're off to Longreach tomorrow.
What's in Longreach?
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?
Every English trial
is a story of a crime, not a person.
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.
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!
- 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.
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.
Lust!
She never cared that she hurt people
and then just left us.
She left us!
- She was a bitch!
- 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.
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
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
- 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.
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.
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.
Thank you, Dr Lushing.
My lord, you are suggesting
that the prisoner took herself upstairs,
killed her master, then
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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?
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
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 defence.
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.
I could think of nothing to say
that any of them would believe.
So I told the truth.
I loved her.
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?
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!
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.
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
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!
You'll hang!
- 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
defence 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.
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!
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
And so you killed him?
I killed him.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.