Final Witness

Chapter 14

Greta left the courthouse by a side exit and walked down to Blackfriars Pier. Peter was at an unavoidable meeting and she was glad to be alone, even though it was her husband that she was thinking about as she stared into the gray water lapping against the platform where she sat. It wasn’t the sea, but the river helped her remember that morning the previous summer when she had followed her employer, as he then was, down to the beach at Flyte.

She’d run out of the front door wanting to put as much space as possible between herself and the dead dog lying on the floor in the hall. She must have gone past that sour old shrew Jane Martin, in the drawing room, without knowing she was there.

Outside she’d turned to her right — God knows why! — and caught sight of him just as he was going through the north door into the lane. The same door that Miles was getting himself so worked up about. And then she’d followed him. Again she hadn’t any idea why. She just did. Through the door and down the lane to the beach. She’d come up to him where he stood almost at the water’s edge skimming stones into the sea.

He looked so sad and out of place, and when he spoke, his voice came out all tangled up and choked like it belonged to someone else. Not Peter at all.

“I’m sorry about what she said, Greta. I really am. She should never have said that to you.”

“It’s all right. I don’t mind. I’ll live.” She was nervous and said the first words that came into her head.

“I don’t know what’s gone wrong with this family,” he said after a while. “It’s something about this place. I’ve never been happy here and I never will be. It’s so bloody lonely and desolate, and this sea’s so cruel. Do you remember that dead fisherman lying on the ground down at the harbor? And that dog today?”

“It’s a coincidence.”

“No, you belong here or you don’t. That’s what she said to you, wasn’t it? But she could just as well have been talking about me. My life is in the city with things I can understand, things I can control. This place defeats me.”

“Nothing defeats you, Peter. Nothing.” She said it like it was a statement of belief, an article of faith.

“But you’re wrong,” he replied just as certainly. “This house does, and yet Annie loves it so much. More than anything else in the world, I think, except Thomas. It’s in her blood I suppose. I have tried, God knows I’ve tried to make it work. Long walks on the marsh, sailing on the river, shivering down by the harbor, but every time I come here I feel more alien with my city suit and my city brain. Look at me today. I had to go into Flyte as soon as I woke up to get the newspapers. Came back and killed the bloody dog.”

“It’s just bad luck, Peter, that’s all,” said Greta soothingly.

“No, it’s more than that. I don’t belong here. I guess that’s why I want Thomas to go away to school, because I don’t feel like he’s my son as long as he’s living here.”

“He’s a good boy. He’s just a little frightened of you.”

“I know. You’re always so perceptive, Greta. That’s what I like about you. You understand me. Nobody else seems to.”

“You can count on me, Peter. You know that.”

Peter did not reply, and Greta didn’t know if he had heard her own soft response above the noise of the breaking waves. However, she said no more. Peter’s silence commanded her own, and after a little while she left him standing by the sea and walked back up the lane to the house to face his family.

Overhead the Suffolk sky had been gray and overcast. Just like today, thought Greta as she turned to walk away from the river.

Crossing Fleet Street on her way back to the court, Greta put a hand up to her face to brush away the rain that was now falling fast. But there were tears in her eyes too. She was crying not for herself but for Peter and the fractured soul that he had first begun to reveal to her on that beach the year before. She thought of it as a precious gift that this intensely private man should have opened himself up to her. And now he depended on her completely. Anne was gone and Thomas had turned on his father like a viper. She had to win this crazy trial. For Peter’s sake as much as for her own.

Greta’s life had not been easy, and Peter’s need for her had given her a sense of purpose that she had never felt before. It made her feel powerful and whole, and it filled her with determination. Greta clenched her fists and held her head up high as she walked past the reporters into the courtroom and took her place in the dock.

Less than five minutes later, the old housekeeper was back in the witness box with her handbag on her knees.

“Are you ready to proceed, Mrs. Martin?” asked the judge, looking down at her from his high chair.

“I am.”

“On the basis that I made clear to you before lunch?”

Mrs. Martin replied with a curt nod.

She won’t keep those lips buttoned for long, thought Miles Lambert. Not if I have anything to do with it.

But John Sparling had a long way to go yet.

“Now, Mrs. Martin, I want to move on to the day of the murder; the thirty-first of May last year. Where were you on that afternoon?”

“I was at the house until just after five o’clock, when I left with Thomas in my car.”

“Where were you going?”

“To my sister’s in Woodbridge. I often go there on a Monday evening and stay the night. Tuesday’s my day off.”

“Was Thomas going there too?”

“No. I dropped him off at the house of a friend of his in Flyte. He was going to stay the night there.”

“Did you have anything to do with the making of that arrangement?”

“No. Greta told me that Mrs. Ball, the mother of Thomas’s friend, had rung her up and invited Thomas. I offered to give him a lift.”

“Did you discuss the arrangement with Lady Anne?”

“No. I assumed she knew about it, obviously.”

“What did you do before you left the house with Thomas?”

“What I always do. I checked the doors and windows to see that everything was secure.”

“Which doors?”

“The doors of the house and the door in the north wall as well. I also checked the east gate, the one above the beach, and then I drove out through the west gate and locked it after me.”

“That leaves the door in the south wall. What about that?”

“No, it’s hardly ever used. There’s Lady Anne’s roses growing over it. I never check the south door.”

“I see. Now tell us about the door in the north wall.”

“I already did. I locked it just before I left and I put the key in the back passage, just like I always do. When I went, all the doors in the house were locked except the front door. I left that open.”

“What about the windows?”

“They were all shut. Upstairs and downstairs. Except for the drawing room where my Lady and Sir Peter were.”

“Where was the defendant?”

“In the study, working on her computer.”

“What about the windows in the study?”

“Shut.”

“Moving on, Mrs. Martin, can you tell us what time you arrived at the Balls’ house?”

“Sometime before five-thirty. I remember Thomas was complaining all the way over there about how he didn’t want to go. My Lady had got one of her headaches, and I think he wanted to stay home with her.”

“But you said that you had left Lady Anne with Sir Peter in the drawing room?”

“That’s right. She was lying on the sofa. She used to do that sometimes rather than go up to bed, and I suppose she wanted to have the time with Sir Peter before he left.”

“When was he leaving?”

“Later in the evening. With Greta. He had to get back to London for some business meeting early the next day.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Martin. I want to move on to a different subject now. You were familiar with Lady Anne’s jewels?”

“Yes, I was. I looked after the jewelry for thirty years. I knew every stone in every necklace, and now they’re all gone. Emeralds, rubies, and diamonds. Beautiful things.”

The housekeeper’s hard voice softened as she remembered the jewels, and Miles Lambert had a sudden picture of the old lady passing the bracelets and necklaces through her bony fingers, licking her pale lips as the glittering stones went by.

“And you have prepared this list of the items that were taken from the safe in Lady Anne’s bedroom on the night of her murder.”

Sparling handed a document to Miss Hooks, who handed it on to the witness. The housekeeper did not read it immediately but instead opened her handbag and took out a pair of small, black-framed reading glasses. After she had put them on, she snapped the spectacle case shut and then snapped the clasp of the handbag as well. Snap, snap. Miles thought the old lady looked very pleased with the two uncompromising noises, as she held the jewelry list close to her distrustful nose and passed her bony index finger down its list of contents.

“Everything there?” asked John Sparling a little impatiently.

“Yes, that’s my list,” said Mrs. Martin decisively. “Lovely things they were. I remember my Lady wearing the ruby necklace when she first came out. It was a ball at St. James’s Palace, and she looked so beautiful. Her tawny brown hair done up high and diamond drops in her ears — ”

“Thank you, Mrs. Martin,” interrupted Sparling. “I don’t mean to be rude but we must press on. It’s an agreed list, my Lord, and there are copies for the jury with an insurer’s statement of valuation attached. You will see that the net value of the pieces stolen is in excess of two million pounds.”

“Yes, very well, Mr. Sparling,” said Judge Granger, ignoring the half-suppressed gasps of astonishment that the figure had elicited from several of the jurors. “The jury can have these.”

Mrs. Martin kept her glasses on while Miss Hooks distributed the copy documents to the jury. She stared at John Sparling over her oval lenses as if seeing him properly for the first time and registering just how thoroughly nasty a specimen of humanity he was. She was clearly not about to forget the rudeness of his most recent interruption.

Sparling, however, was undeterred.

“It’s also agreed that none of the items on this list have been recovered, with one exception,” he went on. “That is this gold locket, prosecution exhibit number thirteen: I’d like you to have a look at that now, Mrs. Martin, please. Do you recognize it?”

“Yes, Sir Peter gave that to my Lady after their wedding. There’s a picture of them both inside it.”

“When did you last see that locket, Mrs. Martin?”

“Well, I can’t be absolutely sure, but I think that my Lady was wearing it on the day she died. She had on a blouse and so I couldn’t see the locket, but I remember noticing the gold chain on her neck when we were eating lunch. She was very fond of the locket. She used to wear it a lot.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Martin. That’s all I want to ask you.”

Miles Lambert got to his feet, pulled his gown around his shoulders and smiled at his adversary. Mrs. Martin swiveled her head toward him in response with a movement that made Miles think of a tank commander redirecting his gun as a new enemy came into view.

“The first thing I want to ask you, Mrs. Martin, is about your late employer’s walking habits.”

“What?”

“Not what but where and when is my question. She liked to walk, did she not?”

“Yes, she did. Every day she’d go for a walk. Nothing wrong with that.” The housekeeper didn’t like questions like this; she didn’t know where they were going.

“Nothing wrong at all, far from it,” said Miles, who walked as little as he possibly could in spite of his doctor’s orders to the contrary. “Walking must be very enjoyable in a beautiful place like the coast of Suffolk,” he went on musingly. “Lady Anne must have loved going out on warm summer evenings. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Martin?”

“I suppose so.”

“And Lady Anne would usually go down to the beach to walk, would she not?”

“That’s right.”

“Through the north door and down the lane. I expect that sometimes she may have forgotten to lock the door when she came back in. Isn’t that possible, Mrs. Martin? On particularly beautiful evenings.”

“Oh, I see what you’re up to. You’re trying to say my Lady left the door unlocked for those men to come through. Well, you can forget it; she didn’t.”

“But you don’t know, do you, Mrs. Martin? You’d already left. At just after five o’clock. That’s what you told Mr. Sparling.”

Miles spoke quickly, having thrown off his lazy air like an unwanted mask, and then moved on giving the housekeeper no time to respond.

“I want to go back to what you were telling us about before lunch, Mrs. Martin. To the events following the death of that unfortunate dog. Now, let’s be quite clear. You’re not saying that my client knew that the dog had to be kept in.”

“I don’t know one way or the other. I didn’t tell her about it. I had as little conversation with her as I could.”

“Mr. Lambert, we’ve already been over this,” said the judge.

“Yes, my Lord. I just wanted to get things clear. Now you say that Thomas went for my client. That must mean that she was only doing the minimum to defend herself when she pushed him back.”

“He was just a boy. She shouldn’t have touched him.”

“But what choice did she have if he was attacking her?”

The housekeeper transferred her attention from Miles Lambert to the ceiling but didn’t otherwise respond.

“Well, I shall assume that you don’t have an answer for that, Mrs. Martin. Perhaps you will agree, however, that my client showed remarkable restraint when Lady Anne came downstairs and attacked her. She’d done nothing wrong, after all.”

“She had. She’d got the little dog killed and then afterward she said those things behind my Lady’s back that made my hair stand on end. I don’t call that restraint.”

“She didn’t, Mrs. Martin. She didn’t say those things.”

“She did. As God is my witness, she did.”

Mrs. Martin half shouted her answer with her hands now gripping the wooden edge of the witness box in front of her. The black leather handbag had fallen with a thud to the floor.

Miles Lambert smiled.

“You believe my client committed this offense, don’t you, Mrs. Martin?”

The old lady had her eyes fixed on the defense barrister now. She nodded once.

“You hate her for it, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“You’ve always hated her, haven’t you?”

“No, I hate her because of what she did.”

“She acted superior to you, didn’t she? You’d been the housekeeper all those years, and then she came down and treated you like a servant. That made you angry, didn’t it?”

“No, it didn’t surprise me. She was just like a lot of these young people nowadays. They aren’t brought up to respect their elders like we were.”

“Badly brought up and putting on airs. Is that right, Mrs. Martin?”

“If you say so,” said the old lady. She was visibly trying to keep her emotions in check.

“It’s not what I say; it’s what you say that matters. You didn’t like the way she tried to get Thomas away from you either, did you?”

“He saw through her in the end. It just took him a bit longer.”

“You hated her from the first,” pressed Miles, allowing the witness no time to think, and this time the old lady could no longer resist his challenge.

“She’s poison!” she shouted.

“You want her convicted, don’t you?”

“I want justice. For my Lady. For Thomas.”

“At any cost. You’d do anything to get what you want, wouldn’t you, Mrs. Martin?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do. I’m talking about giving false evidence. My client never said, ‘You’ve fucking had it now, Mrs. Posh.’ She never said that.”

“Yes she did. She wouldn’t have done if she’d known I was there, but she didn’t. More fool her.”

The old lady positively spat these last words out at Miles, who responded with one of his most pleasant smiles.

“Well, Mrs. Martin, I’m sorry to see that you’re getting so upset. Let’s move on a bit and see if we can shed any more light on what happened. Now, where did my client go after this little speech that you say she gave?”

“Out the front door. Same way Sir Peter had gone.”

“I see. And when and where did you see her again?”

“She was in the study a bit later on.”

“How much later on?”

“Later on in the morning. I don’t know more than that. She must have come in through the side door. I was in the kitchen on the other side of the hall when I noticed she was back.”

“How did you come to notice my client’s presence in the study, Mrs. Martin?”

“Because my Lady went in there to talk to her. She had Thomas with her, and she wanted to make things up. She was like that, my Lady was: too good for the rest of us, but she should never have done it if you ask me. She should have left that Greta to pack up and be off. That’s what she should have done.”

“I see. And did you offer your Lady this advice, Mrs. Martin?”

“No, of course I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been my place. I told her what that Greta had said, though.”

“In the hallway?”

“That’s right.”

“And this would have been before Lady Anne went into the study to make things up with my client.”

“It would.”

“Isn’t that rather unlikely, Mrs. Martin?”

“What?”

“You tell Lady Anne that my client has just called her a ‘fucking stuck-up bitch’ behind her back and Lady Anne goes straight into the study to make things up with her. It doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

“You didn’t know my Lady.”

“It doesn’t make sense because it’s not true, is it, Mrs. Martin? You’re lying again.”

The old housekeeper went white with anger, but instead of venting it on Miles, she turned round in her seat and looked up at the judge.

“Listen, Your Lordship or whatever you call yourself, I want you to stop him talking to me like that,” she said. “You’ve had a go at me; now you deal with him.”

“Mrs. Martin, I’m sorry if you feel that Mr. Lambert is being rude to you because I don’t think that’s his intention,” said the judge. “He’s got to put his case to you and examine your evidence, and that’s what he’s doing. Now please answer his questions.”

“Thank you, my Lord,” said Miles. “Now, Mrs. Martin, I want to ask you about what happened in the study. Did you hear everything that was said?”

“I did.”

“You must have gone out into the hallway then.”

“I may have done.”

“To listen. Well, I’m sure that that was very natural. You say that Lady Anne went in to make things up. Does that mean that she apologized to my client?”

“She did. I couldn’t believe it. It was that Greta who should have been doing the apologizing. Down on her knees, she should have been.”

“And did my client accept Lady Anne’s apology?”

“Of course she did. She must have thought it was her lucky day. She didn’t want to have to leave.”

“And so they made up their quarrel and they were friends. Yes?”

“No, they most certainly weren’t. My Lady apologized because she thought it was right, not because she liked Greta. She didn’t like her any more than I did. And Greta, she hated my Lady. I know she did. I saw the way she used to look at her, and I heard what she said in the hall.”

“Well, we’ve already dealt with that, Mrs. Martin,” said Miles. “Can you move on now and tell us about Thomas?”

“What about him?”

“Did he and Greta have any conversation in the study?”

“Oh, yes. She was saying how sorry she was about letting the dog out and how she wished she’d known. She probably was sorry. She was always after Thomas. My Lady always felt like Greta wanted to take him away from her. Not that there was much chance of that.”

“And how did Thomas react to Greta saying she was sorry?”

“He was very upset, but he didn’t seem so angry with her as he was before. He always liked Greta, until he found out what sort of person she really was. Teenagers can be blind like that sometimes.”

“We’ll let the jury be the judge of that,” said Miles, turning to a new page in his notes. “I want to talk to you about this locket now. Lady Anne was very fond of it, was she not?”

“Yes, it was one of her favorite things.”

“And so you would agree with me that she took it to London with her when she went up for the Chelsea Flower Show on the Thursday before she died.”

“She may have done.”

“You helped her pack, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And the locket was in the suitcase?”

The old lady didn’t answer.

“Come on, Mrs. Martin. Lady Anne took jewelry with her to London, didn’t she? You helped her choose it, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And the locket was one of the pieces she took.”

Again no answer.

“Wasn’t it, Mrs. Martin?” Miles spoke louder this time, with more urgency in his voice, and the housekeeper finally gave way.

“Yes, she took it but she brought it back too.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I saw it on her neck the day she died. I said that already.”

“You saw the top of a gold chain. That could have been the gold chain to some other piece of jewelry.”

“I don’t think so.”

“And you’ve never mentioned this bit of gold before today, have you? It’s not in your statement.”

“I didn’t know it was important when I made the statement. That was before Tom found the locket.”

“You’ve never made a statement since he found it, though, have you? And so we can no doubt safely assume that you’ve never told the police about it.”

“I didn’t know I had to.”

“The locket was found more than nine months ago, Mrs. Martin. You’ve had all that time to come forward and say something, and yet you wait until today to do so. Isn’t that because you only thought of it recently? On one of those long evenings that you’ve been spending with Thomas Robinson down on the coast with nothing to do except talk about this trial.”

“I’ve got plenty to do. I’ve been running that house single-handed since Lady Anne died.”

“Have you talked to Thomas about the locket, Mrs. Martin?”

“I may have done.”

“Of course you have, and that’s why you’ve come up with this story, isn’t it? Because he’s told you how important it is that somebody else should say that they saw the locket on Lady Anne after she came back from London. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Martin?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t know what I’m talking about. I see. Well, let me ask you a general question about the jewelry. Lady Anne liked talking about her collection, didn’t she?”

“She was proud of it, yes.”

“And she made no secret of the fact that she kept the jewels in the house, did she? It was well known among people who knew her, wasn’t it?”

“It was well known to her,” said the old lady, pointing toward the dock. “Greta knew. That’s why she sent those men.”

“All right, Mrs. Martin. Let’s talk about that. Let’s move on to the day of the murder. You say that my client told you that Mrs. Ball had invited Thomas for the night.”

“That’s right.”

“When did she tell you this?”

“The day before, I think — the Sunday, unless it was the morning of the day it happened. I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure. And do you remember where you were when this conversation took place?”

“No, I don’t. It’s more than a year ago now.”

“That’s right. You don’t remember where or when you spoke to my client, so how can you be so sure of what she said?”

“I know what she said.”

“But why should you remember it, Mrs. Martin? Surely it wasn’t the issue of who came up with the idea of Thomas going to Edward’s that would have been significant to you. What was important was that you could give Thomas a lift.”

“So who made the arrangement if it wasn’t Mrs. Ball?” asked the housekeeper, trying to turn the tables on the defense barrister.

“Lady Anne asked Greta to ring up Mrs. Ball. Greta didn’t tell you that because she had no reason to. She simply told you about the arrangement.”

“My Lady would never have asked Greta to do that. She’d have asked me.”

“But you were out on the Sunday afternoon, weren’t you, Mrs. Martin? Out and inaccessible.”

“What’s Sunday afternoon got to do with it?”

“Because that’s when the call was made. Mrs. Ball has told us that.” Miles’s tone suggested that he felt he had won this particular argument.

“Let’s go on to Monday afternoon. You say you checked all the doors and windows before you left.”

“All except the door in the south wall.”

“It’s the one in the north wall that concerns me. Are you quite sure that it was locked?”

“Positive. I remember walking across the lawn and turning the key in the lock.”

“I see. And what about the windows?”

“All shut except for the ones in the drawing room.”

“And that would include the window in Thomas’s bedroom?”

“Yes. All of them.”

“It was a warm afternoon, wasn’t it, Mrs. Martin? That’s why Sir Peter and Lady Anne had the window open in the drawing room.”

“I expect so. It was a summer’s day.”

“Yes. Now, one last question about that day, Mrs. Martin. We know that Lady Anne took a sleeping tablet in the evening. It was normal, was it not, for her to do this?”

“Yes. She always had trouble sleeping, poor love. Ever since she was a girl.”

“Thank you. Now finally, Mrs. Martin, I want to ask you about what happened at the House of the Four Winds nine days ago. On the evening of Wednesday July fifth, to be precise.”

“What about it?” The old lady suddenly looked suspicious and distrustful.

“You went out at about six o’clock to the Women’s Institute meeting in Flyte. Is that right?”

“Yes. About that time.”

“Before you left, you checked the doors and gates, I expect. All except the one in the south wall.”

“I did.”

“And the door in the north wall, was it locked?”

“It was.”

“You’re as sure about that as you are about it being locked on the night of the murder?”

“I am.”

“What about the doors of the house? Were they also locked?”

“Yes, they were. Tom had the keys if he wanted to open them.”

“And when you came back from the Women’s Institute, there were policemen in the house?”

“Yes, there were four of them. Looking in everything, turning the place upside down. Those men had come again. That’s what Tom told me.”

“Ah, yes, unless of course he was making it up.”

Miles Lambert sat down suddenly, leaving the old housekeeper high and dry in the witness box.