Final Witness

Chapter 21

“Right, Mr. Lambert, remember the age of the witness and remember what I have directed about the photographs,” said Judge Granger, fixing the defense barrister with a hard look as he got to his feet to cross-examine.

It was two o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, and Thomas had already been in the witness box for more than two hours. John Sparling had finished asking him questions at five to one, and then there had been only an hour to walk the unfamiliar crowded streets around the court and try to compose himself for what was to come.

Giving evidence had so far been both better and worse than he had expected. Better because he found that he had been able to shut Greta out of his mind, even though she was sitting only a few yards away, watching him intently all the time. Worse because Sparling had made him tell the jury all the terrible details of what had happened on the landing when he was shut inside the bookcase and those men were murdering his mother on the other side. Telling it made it real and the reality had made him cry. Thomas had hated that. Crying in front of that bitch, Greta, while the little usher woman brought him a box of tissues and a glass of water. Thomas swore to himself that there would be no repeat of such emotion this afternoon, whatever Greta’s fat barrister might do to him.

“I want to start with this man Rosie,” said Miles Lambert in a friendly tone. “You say you first saw him outside your father’s house in London?”

“Yes.”

“In the dark?”

“He was standing under a streetlight.”

“With his back to you.”

“Yes.”

“And he never turned around.”

“No, he didn’t. He’d have seen me if he had.”

“So you never saw his face.”

“Not that time. No.”

“Just the back of his head where he had a scar.”

“Yes, it was long and thick too. I saw it because he had his hair in a ponytail.”

“Ah yes, the ponytail. Plenty of men have ponytails though, don’t they, Thomas? Scars too.”

“Not like that one. Somebody must have taken a knife to him to do that.”

“Very dramatic. The point I’m making, Thomas, is that you can’t possibly say that the man under the streetlight is the same as the man who murdered your mother on the basis of a view from behind.”

“I’m sure it was the same person.”

“Even though you only saw the man in your house for a few seconds through a spy hole in a bookcase?”

“I will never forget his face.”

“You saw one man from behind and the other for only a few seconds when you were beside yourself with terror and distress and you jumped to a conclusion, which was based on very weak evidence. That’s the truth, isn’t it, Thomas?”

“They were the same person.”

“You jumped to the conclusion because you wanted to blame Greta Grahame for what had happened.”

“No.”

“Because you felt guilty that you hadn’t been able to save your mother from those men when you had saved yourself, and so you needed someone to blame.” Miles went on relentlessly.

“No, it’s not true. I couldn’t have saved her. She was behind me. She pushed me forward in there. I didn’t shut the bookcase — ”

“It’s all right, Thomas,” said the judge kindly. “Try to calm down. I know this is difficult for you. Mr. Lambert, try to be less confrontational.”

“Yes, my Lord. Thomas, I’m not saying you were to blame in any way for what happened that night. That’s the last thing I’m trying to say. I’m just suggesting that you feel guilty about it. People do feel guilty even though they shouldn’t when someone close to them dies. You know what I’m saying, don’t you, Thomas?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Thomas reluctantly.

“And if you feel guilty, then you need someone else to blame, don’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were upset with Greta at that time, though, weren’t you? Before your mother died.”

“In a way.”

“In a way. You were upset with her because she had rejected you.”

Thomas said nothing but he blushed deeply. He turned involuntarily to look at Greta in the dock and found her staring at him intently.

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Thomas? She took you out in London, and on the way back home in a taxi you told her that she was beautiful and that you loved her, and she rejected you. She said you were too young. Isn’t that right, Thomas?”

“Yes,” said Thomas almost in a whisper.

“I can’t hear you, Thomas,” said Miles Lambert. “Was that a yes?”

“Yes.”

There was silence in the courtroom. Sparling shifted uncomfortably in his seat. This revelation had come as an unpleasant surprise. There was nothing about it in Thomas’s statement. What else had the boy left out? Sparling wondered.

Miles Lambert allowed the silence to build, and with it Thomas’s discomfort, before he asked his next question.

“All this happened less than two months before your mother’s death, didn’t it, Thomas?”

“Yes.”

“So the rejection was fresh in your memory?”

“I didn’t think about it.”

“Are you sure about that, Thomas? You told Greta that you loved her.”

“I didn’t mean it.”

“So you told her something that was untrue?”

“No. I meant it at the time, I suppose, but it was just something that happened that afternoon. It was just something that came into my head.”

“I see. Love is a strong emotion, Thomas, isn’t it? Comes up on you unawares, like hate. Are you sure you didn’t start hating Greta because she didn’t love you like you wanted her to?”

“No. It wasn’t like that.”

“But you hate her now, don’t you, Thomas?”

“I hate her for what she did to my mother.”

“Can you remember not hating her?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t hate her that afternoon in the taxi. It seems so long ago now.”

“I suggest that’s when you did start hating her, Thomas. Then a chance similarity between two men brought your hate and your guilt together, and that’s where all this started, isn’t that right?”

“Don’t answer that, Thomas,” said the judge. “Make your questions clear and direct, Mr. Lambert. We’re not here to listen to you give us a lecture on psychiatry.”

“No, my Lord,” said Miles. “Thomas, I want to take you back to the night in London when you saw the man with the scar. You never saw him with Greta, did you?”

“No.”

“You can’t say that the man under the streetlight was the same as the person that Greta was talking to in the basement?”

“No. I know it was, though. They both went upstairs because they heard those creeps looking for me. Greta thought they might be burglars.”

“Did you hear Greta tell the other person in the basement to go upstairs?”

“No.”

“Did you see him go up the basement steps to the street?”

“No, I ran upstairs to get away. Like I said before.”

“And then you just saw the man standing there. You didn’t see where he’d come from.”

“I didn’t see but I knew.”

“Well, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for your knowledge, Thomas. Let’s just go back to the man in the basement, whom we can agree about.”

But Thomas had had enough of being manipulated.

“Why? She didn’t agree about it,” he said angrily. “She lied about being down there. She said she was in Manchester. That’s what she told my father the next evening. I heard her.”

“Thomas, you’ve already given evidence about that,” said the judge. “Try just to answer Mr. Lambert’s questions.”

“You’ve told Mr. Sparling what Greta said to the man,” pursued Miles, “and I don’t have any argument about that, but I want to be quite clear about one thing. You just don’t know whether Greta said ‘Can’t you see I haven’t got it yet,’ or ‘Can’t you see I haven’t got him yet.’ Is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Good. Then Greta said she was going upstairs, and you told us before lunch that she said: ‘Mrs. Posh won’t hear.’ I dispute that, Thomas. My client never called your mother Mrs. Posh.”

“Yes she did. Just like Aunt Jane heard her saying about Mum after Mattie died. She called her Mrs. Posh then too.”

“Did I hear that right, Thomas? Do you agree that you’ve been talking to Mrs. Martin about her evidence?”

“I talked to her about what happened after it happened. Of course I did.”

“You talked to her before she gave her evidence, compared notes. Is that what you’re saying, Thomas?”

“We talked, yes. We weren’t comparing notes. She heard what she heard and I heard what I heard.”

“And they both turned out to be the same thing. Very convenient. Now, Thomas, I want to turn to the day of your mother’s death. Let me assure you in advance that none of my questions should distress you too much — ”

“I’m glad to hear it, Mr. Lambert,” interrupted the judge. “Let’s get on and have the questions, though, shall we? We don’t need a prologue.”

This time Miles Lambert ignored the judge’s interruption. He wasn’t going to be put off his stride at this — the most important point of the trial — because of old Granger’s concern for a sixteen-year-old. Thomas was the one who had gathered the evidence that had made it possible for the prosecution to put his client in the dock. Those were hardly the actions of a vulnerable boy — more those of a determined young man. The case depended on Thomas’s credibility, and the jurors were entitled to hear a proper cross-examination of his evidence. Judge Granger’s interruptions wouldn’t stop Miles from doing his job.

“You have told us this morning that you assumed from what your mother said that the initiative for the arrangement for you to stay with your friend Edward Ball on the Monday evening came from Edward’s mother.”

“That’s right.”

“Did your mother say that the Balls had invited you?”

“I think so. I’m not sure of exactly what she said.”

“Could your mother have said that it was her idea for you to go to the Balls?”

“I don’t think so.”

“All right, is it possible that your mother didn’t say who had made the arrangement but that you just assumed that Mrs. Ball had invited you.”

“I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible.”

“Thank you. Now, you’ve given evidence that you became anxious when Mrs. Ball told you that it was in fact Greta who had arranged for you to go over there.”

“That’s right.”

“Why did you get anxious, Thomas?”

“Because that wasn’t her job. She had nothing to do with my arrangements.”

“Fair enough, but it would be different if your mother had asked her to ring up Mrs. Ball, wouldn’t it?”

“My mother would never have done that.”

“Why not? She had a headache on the Sunday afternoon when the arrangement was made, didn’t she?”

“I’m not sure. I think so.”

“So why wouldn’t she have asked Greta to do her a favor?”

“She’d have asked Aunt Jane, not Greta.”

“Mrs. Martin was out on Sunday afternoon.”

“My mother would have waited until she got back then, or rung up herself.”

“Why not ask Greta though? She was there.”

“Because my mother would never have asked Greta for anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because she didn’t like her.”

“I see. And what makes you say that, Thomas?”

“It was obvious. She avoided Greta. She never went to London because of her.”

“But she took you to London in April when you made your declaration in the taxi, and she went up for the Chelsea Flower Show four days before she died. Greta was there both times.”

“She always went to the Flower Show. She had to because of the roses.”

“I see. Did she tell you that she was avoiding London because of Greta?”

“No. I knew it though.”

“You knew it. Did she tell you that she didn’t like Greta?”

“No. She didn’t tell me but she told Greta. After Greta let my dog out and pushed me over. My mother told her that she’d turned my father against us and that she was poisonous, poisonous like a snake.”

“That wasn’t all your mother said to Greta that day though, was it, Thomas? She went into the study with you and apologized to Greta for those things that she’d said, and Greta accepted the apology. Isn’t that right, Thomas?”

“Yes. She didn’t mean it though.”

“Who didn’t mean it?”

“Greta. She hated my mother. No, that’s not it. She wanted to become her. That’s why she sent me to Edward’s. Because she wanted to save me. I was part of what she was going to get.”

“Well, thank you for giving us the benefit of your theory, Thomas, but that’s all it is, isn’t it? You haven’t got one shred of evidence to support what you’ve just said, have you?”

“I saw the way she looked at my mother. She tried on her clothes.”

“Yes, she did, but that’s not quite the same as arranging to have your mother killed, now, is it?”

“I know what she did.”

“So you say. Now, you’ve told us that you decided to come home from the Balls after you couldn’t reach your mother on the telephone. Mrs. Ball drove you home and dropped you off at the front gate. How did you get in?”

“I had keys. To the front door too.”

“About what time was this?”

“I don’t know. Sometime around half past eight.”

“How long after you made the phone call to your mother did you get home?”

“I don’t know. Twenty minutes, half an hour. I wasn’t wearing a watch.”

“Did you leave immediately after you phoned up and got no reply?”

“No, we talked about it a bit and Mrs. Ball’s husband called about something.”

“So you got home, and you’ve already told us that you closed the window that you found open in the study. Then you went upstairs and opened the window in your bedroom.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Because it was a warm evening?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you keep it open when it started raining?”

“Yes, it wasn’t a storm.”

“You were lying on your bed and your mother was asleep in her room.”

“Yes. I’d just turned my light off when I heard the car drive up. Then I saw them coming across the lawn toward the study window, and one of them was really upset that the windows were all closed.”

“‘Fuck. They’re all fucking closed.’ That’s what you told us earlier that the man said.” Miles seemed to enunciate the swear words with particular relish.

“Yes,” replied Thomas. “He was angry.”

“Did you see the man say it?”

“No. I was sitting on my bed. They were below the window.”

“So you can’t say that the man was outside the study window when he swore. He could have been by the side door or the dining room windows just as easily.”

“I suppose so.”

“He could have been talking about all the windows on that side of the house in fact.”

“Not mine, because it was open.”

“On the lower level I mean.”

“Yes, he could have been.”

“Thank you. Now I’ve got nothing else to ask you about that night at this stage. I want to concentrate instead on this locket that you found in your father’s house last October.”

Miles Lambert picked up prosecution exhibit number thirteen and held it for a moment by its clasp so that the golden heart-shaped locket swung to and fro on its chain like a hypnotist’s pendulum.

“You have told us that your mother was very fond of this locket.”

“She was.”

“Did she wear it every day?”

“Not every day, no. She wore it a lot.”

“You made no mention of the locket to the police of course until after you found it.”

“I had no reason to.”

“No. I can see that that might make sense, but it doesn’t explain why you mentioned nothing in your first statement about Rosie bending down over your mother and then putting something gold in his pocket. That comes in your second statement, made after you found the locket.”

“I was upset when I made the first statement. My mother had just died.”

“Five days before. Your first statement is very detailed, Thomas. Sergeant Hearns and you took a lot of trouble over it. You’d think you wouldn’t leave out something as important as Rosie taking gold from your mother’s dead body.”

Thomas didn’t answer. Lambert’s brutal last words had felt like a punch in the face.

“You left the gold out of your first statement because it never happened. That’s the real explanation, isn’t it, Thomas?”

“No, it’s not. It did happen. He ripped it off her neck. That’s why they found a scratch there.”

“A small scratch. The locket wasn’t broken, though, when you found it in the desk, was it?”

“No. They could have repaired it.”

“There’s no sign of any repair on the clasp or the chain that I can see,” said Miles, making a show of carefully examining the locket as he held it up to his golden half-moon spectacles between two of his fat fingers.

“No doubt the jury will want to examine exhibit thirteen themselves when they are considering the evidence,” Miles added casually as he replaced the locket on the table in front of him.

“Now, there’s no dispute that you found the locket in the desk, Thomas. What I do have a problem with is what you say that my client said about it.”

“Which bit?”

“‘Give that to me. It’s mine.’ That bit.”

“She shouted it at me just as she tried to get hold of it — ”

“Yes, so you told us,” interrupted the barrister. “And then you pushed Greta over and you shouted at her: ‘No, it’s not. It’s my mother’s. That bastard took it from her and he gave it to you.’ That was what you told Mr. Sparling that you said when he asked you this morning. Do you agree?”

“Yes. Something like that.”

“No, not something like that. Word for word. I wrote it down when you said it this morning, and I wrote exactly the same thing down when your friend Matthew Barne told us what you said when he gave evidence yesterday. You’ve put your heads together about this, haven’t you, Thomas? You and Matthew?”

“Of course we’ve talked about it. We go to school together and he’s my best friend, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“You both stole a paperweight at school from your headmaster, isn’t that right, Thomas?”

“It was a dare. We were going to put it back.”

“So, you found the locket and then you made your second statement to Detective Sergeant Hearns.”

“That’s right.”

“And you said in there that your mother was wearing the locket on the night of her death?”

“I saw it when I got her up. There was a V at the throat of her nightdress.”

“It seems a funny thing for you to notice at such a terrible moment. You could hear the men breaking in downstairs, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“What happened is that you found that locket and then you set about concocting evidence to show that my client received it from your mother’s killer.”

“No.”

“You sat down with Matthew Barne to agree upon a false version of what was said in the drawing room before your father arrived.”

“It’s not a false version. It’s a true version.”

“You invented this story about your mother having the locket on under her nightdress and seeing the glint of gold when Rosie bent over her on the landing. Then as a final touch you got Jane Martin to say that Lady Anne was wearing the locket at lunch on the Monday.”

“I never saw it then.”

“Well, thank you for that, Thomas. You can see what I’m getting at. I suggest that you made all these things up because you’d already decided that Greta was guilty and so you had to make sure that she got charged.”

“I knew she was guilty, but that didn’t make me lie. It made me look for proof. That’s how I found the locket.”

“And yet your reasons for believing she was guilty didn’t amount to much, did they?”

“Mr. Lambert, we’ve already been over that,” said the judge irritably. “Try not to argue with the witness. Cross-examination is about asking questions.”

“Yes, my Lord,” said Miles. “Let’s move on, Thomas. Let’s talk about what happened on the fifth of July.”

Thomas shifted in his seat but otherwise did not respond. Miles did not carry on immediately but allowed a silence to build before he spoke again.

“Let’s make sure I’ve got the setting right first. Jane Martin left at six, having locked all the doors. You were in the dining room eating your dinner, with all the windows open.”

“Yes, it was a warm evening.”

“So it was. And you had your panic button next to your plate ready to call the emergency services if the need should arise?”

“No, it was in my pocket. Sergeant Hearns told me to keep it with me all the time. He’s the one who got it for me.”

“He told you there was a risk of the men coming back, the men who had killed your mother.”

“Not exactly.”

“Did he put that idea in your mind, Thomas?”

“No, he said it was better to be safe than sorry, that’s all.”

“I see. So the men came through the north door in the perimeter wall, crossed the lawn, and entered the house, and you stayed in this bench while they were looking for you?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t have been able to see very much from inside that.”

“I could see out through the holes in the eyes, like I said before.”

“Ah, yes. The holes in the eyes. They wouldn’t exactly have given you a grandstand view of what Lonny and Rosie were up to though, would they?”

“No. Not really.”

“And yet you say in your statement that ‘they looked around the rooms downstairs for a while but they didn’t touch anything.’ Were you able to watch them all the time then, see that they weren’t touching anything?”

“No. I meant that when I could see them, they weren’t touching anything. Rosie did later, though.”

“And Rosie just happened to mention my client by name.”

“That’s right. He said that she’d told him how the hiding-place mechanism works.”

“It’s very convenient, isn’t it, Thomas?”

“You don’t need to answer that, Thomas,” interrupted the judge. “Ask the witness questions; save your comments for the jury. I shouldn’t need to keep telling you that, Mr. Lambert.”

“No, my Lord.” Miles smiled affably up at the judge. Old Granger’s interruptions and instructions seemed to have no effect whatsoever on Lurid Lambert, who carried on relentlessly along his charted course, guiding the witness slowly but surely onto the rocks.

“Was it Rosie who said: ‘Fuck, they’re all fucking closed’ about the windows on the night of your mother’s murder?”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought about that a lot, but I just don’t know.”

“Yet you say in your statement about Rosie’s return that you would recognize the voice of the man with the scar.”

“Yes. If I heard it again I would, but my mother got killed a year before they came back.”

“So you can’t say if the man with the scar said the words about the windows but you remember the words clearly?”

“That’s right.”

“I see. Well, let’s go on to the end of your story. You hear the siren. Rosie stops talking in midsentence, and he and Lonny run out the front door. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“You get out of the bench and answer the intercom.”

“I buzzed the police in through the front gate.”

“Having spoken to Officer Hughes through the intercom first. Isn’t that right, Thomas?”

“I don’t remember.”

“He told us what happened when he gave evidence yesterday. He said that you asked him who he was and he identified himself as a police officer. Then you opened the gates by remote control. Do you agree with his account, Thomas?”

“I suppose so. I was in a panic. I don’t remember everything that was said.”

“Well, I’ll take that as a yes. Now, you knew from Officer Hughes that the police were at the front gate. You knew that Rosie and Lonny had parked their car in the lane. You must have assumed that they were running back to their car. You knew all that, and so why didn’t you tell Officer Hughes through the intercom to drive down to the lane and cut them off instead of buzzing him in through the front gate?”

Miles had asked his final question with a fierce directness that sparked the jury into a concentrated focus on Thomas, who didn’t answer immediately. He looked like a chess player who has suddenly seen his king exposed to a massive unforeseen attack and now looks around desperately but in vain for a move that will stave off inevitable defeat.

“I don’t know,” Thomas said eventually. “I didn’t think. Those men would have killed me if they’d found me. I suppose I wanted to feel safe.”

“But you were safe. The men had left. This was your opportunity to catch your mother’s killers.”

“I didn’t think.”

“You didn’t think. It makes no sense, Thomas. It makes no sense because none of this really happened, did it?”

“Yes, it did. I swear it did.”

“Just like it makes no sense that the police found the north door locked.”

“They must have locked it when they left because they would have known how it would look.”

“Like they’d never been there?”

“Yes.”

“It looks like that because that’s the truth, isn’t it, Thomas? You’ve made all this up. You didn’t think the locket would be enough, and so you invented Rosie’s return and a casual reference to Greta and the bookcase just to be sure of getting your stepmother convicted. Isn’t that right, Thomas?”

“No! No!” The denial seemed to be wrenched from somewhere deep inside. Thomas’s face was contorted with pain, but this did nothing to deter Miles from driving home his point.

“You were the one who opened the front door before the police got close enough to see what you were doing.”

“No, they left it open.”

“Who?”

“Rosie and Lonny.”

“Rosie and Lonny! I don’t know where you got those names from, Thomas — unless it was some late-night TV movie — but the point is you made them up just like you made up this whole sorry story.”

“No, I didn’t. They came for me, I tell you. They’ll come again.”

“Will they, Thomas? Will they?” Miles Lambert wore an expression of sorrowful incredulity on his round face. He was not looking for an answer to his question, and he sat down before Thomas could give one.