Final Witness

Chapter 23

Peter paced the rooms after Greta had left, checking off each minute that passed on his watch. His mind was in a ferment. One moment he was certain that Greta could have nothing to do with the murder, and the next doubts flooded back as he remembered the words that he had overheard in the basement a year earlier.

At 6:25 he left the house and walked around to the town hall. Thomas was sitting at the top of the steps. He was wearing the same outfit that he’d had on at court: a navy blazer with gold buttons, a pair of tan trousers and a pale blue Oxford shirt. The only difference was that the black loafers that had been shiny with recent polishing at court were now scuffed at the toes, as if Thomas had been using them to kick the curb in frustration. Peter was suddenly touched by the thought that Thomas would have had to decide for himself what to wear to court. He had no parents to advise him. His mother was dead, and his father had gone away. Peter felt a momentary sensation of guilt, but his nerves were too frayed for him to retain any emotion for long.

Thomas got to his feet and came halfway down the steps toward his father. Their eyes met for a moment and then Peter looked away. In his excitement he had not realized how traumatic it would be to see his son again. The meeting called for a reconciliation, but that of course was not why Peter had asked Thomas to come. He needed answers to the questions that had been pounding in his mind for the previous two hours, but he could not pay for the answers with soft words; that would be too much of a betrayal, and so he launched straight into his questions without saying anything by way of greeting.

“What did this Rosie say about Greta?” he asked breathlessly.

“He said she had told him how the hiding place opened. It’s all in my statement. Haven’t you read it?” Thomas had gone back up a step and now looked down at his father angrily.

“No, I haven’t read it,” said Peter. “I need to know about this from you.”

“Why?” Thomas threw out the question like a challenge. It conveyed all his pent-up resentment. He’d come across the city at the bidding of his father, negotiating the subway for only the second time in his life, and his father hadn’t even bothered to say hello to him. They hadn’t properly seen each other since the day of his mother’s funeral, and now his father had nothing for him except questions about Rosie. Thomas felt he’d had enough of questions. He’d heard nothing else all day.

“I’m asking you because you were the only other person there. You’re the only one who’s met this Rosie.”

“Apart from your wife,” said Thomas.

“All right, I don’t want to argue with you. I just need to know some things.”

“What things?”

“What else did he say about Greta?”

“He didn’t say anything else about Greta.”

“Are you sure he was called Rosie?”

“That’s what Lonny called him.”

“Could it have been Rose? Could you have heard it wrong?”

“No, I didn’t hear it wrong. And he did say it and it did happen. I’m sick of people saying it didn’t. Sick of people not believing me. Like you. You don’t believe me.”

It came to Peter that his son had changed in the year since the funeral. The desperation that he remembered from their interview in the little terrace house in Woodbridge had been transformed into a new, dogged determination. Thomas’s defiance was now far more than skin deep.

“I don’t know what to believe, Thomas. That’s why I need to ask you these questions.” Peter realized immediately after he spoke how much he had betrayed Greta by his words. He felt an overwhelming self-disgust, which in turn made him angry with his son.

Thomas, however, thought nothing of his father’s concession. He regretted coming. Seeing his father only made him realize how little the man loved him. He was better off not seeing him at all.

“I’m going,” he said. “I wish I hadn’t come.”

Thomas came down the steps heading for the street, and Peter instinctively put out a hand to stop him.

“One more question,” he said. “Just one more. Was Rosie his first name or his last?”

“How should I know? The other man just called him that. What is it about his name that’s so important?”

The angry tone of his son’s voice incensed Peter. Part of him wanted to push Thomas away or even strike him again, like he had in Woodbridge, but the need for an answer stayed his hand. There was nobody except Thomas whom he could talk to about the conversation he’d overheard. He had to know if there was a connection.

“On the night after your mother’s funeral, I heard Greta talking to someone on the phone,” said Peter slowly. “I just heard the end of the conversation; that’s all. She said to whoever it was: ‘Don’t call me that. I’m not your Greta Rose. Not anymore.’ Then afterward I asked her what that meant and she said it was her name, that Rose was her middle name.”

“And then today you heard about Rosie for the first time and you wondered — ”

“I don’t know what I wondered.”

“You wondered about Rosie and Greta. You wondered…” Thomas stopped in midsentence. He didn’t need to spell it out for his father. If he could prove a connection, then he could still win.

“Have you looked through her things?” Thomas asked.

“For what?”

“To see if she’s really called Greta Rose. She must have a passport or a birth certificate or something like that.”

“I suppose I could,” said Peter doubtfully. Talking to Thomas behind Greta’s back was a betrayal, but going through her papers would be worse, far worse.

“Where is she now?” asked Thomas.

“She’s talking to her barrister.”

“Cooking up more lies.”

“No, going through her evidence,” said Peter angrily. He swung like a pendulum between his loyalty to Greta, which made him feel almost violent toward his son, and the doubts about her innocence that he couldn’t get out of his head.

“When’s she coming back?” asked Thomas.

“I don’t know. Not before eight.”

“There’s time then. Let’s go and look.”

They began walking toward the house. Peter’s agitation became more evident with every step they took.

“I can’t give evidence like this,” he said as they turned the corner. “I need to know first.”

“When are you giving evidence?”

“I don’t know. Sometime on Thursday probably. The prosecution have still got some statements to read, and then there’s Greta. I don’t know how long she’ll take.”

Peter was talking in order not to think about the significance of what he was doing as he beckoned to Thomas to follow him into the house.

Thomas expected his father to turn into the room on the right, but instead he carried on up the stairs to the first floor and went over to the very same oak bureau in the corner of the drawing room where Thomas had found the locket the previous October.

“Greta keeps most of her papers in here now,” said Peter, opening the bureau.

“Not much point in looking in the secret place, I wouldn’t think,” said Thomas from behind his father’s shoulder. He was right. The recess was empty, but in the drawer below Peter found his wife’s passport. It had been issued the previous year, three months before Greta’s marriage. There was an unflattering photograph taken just after Greta had had an unusually severe haircut, and next to it the details of the holder. Last name, Grahame. Given names, Greta. Nothing else. Just Greta.

Thomas leaned across his father and jabbed his finger against the name so hard that the passport almost fell out of Peter’s trembling hand.

“Look, Dad. No Rose. No nothing. She lied to you about it being her middle name. That’s not why she used to be called Greta Rose.”

“It’s not enough,” said Peter stubbornly. “It doesn’t mean anything. Greta told me herself that she stopped calling herself Greta Rose after she left Manchester, and so it makes sense that she’d leave it off her renewal application. It’s the birth certificate that’s important. It’ll be here somewhere.”

“Let me look,” said Thomas impatiently. “You’re taking forever.”

“No, I don’t want you touching anything,” said Peter angrily.

“Look in the drawer where the passport was, then,” said Thomas. “She’s going to keep all those kind of documents together.”

Thomas was right. There was an old black address book held together by a liberal application of masking tape and underneath it a thick brown envelope with the word certificates written on it in Greta’s neat handwriting.

Peter emptied the contents of the envelope out onto the writing surface of the bureau. At the top was a much newer piece of paper than the others, which turned out to be the certificate of Greta’s marriage to Peter. Underneath it was a document headed University of Birmingham, and then a copy of a death certificate for a George Grahame, and at the bottom the certified copy of an entry of birth for Greta Rose Grahame, a girl born on November 17, 1971, at 2 °Cale Street in Manchester. Greta Rose had had a home birth.

Peter felt an overwhelming surge of relief flood his body. For a moment it was ecstasy. He was like a soldier told that he’s lost a leg who then looks down to find the leg still there. Peter’s spinning world righted itself, and he forgot for a moment that Thomas was the enemy.

“Thank God,” he said. “Deep down I always knew she was Greta Rose. She dropped the Rose because she had a bad time up north. Just like she said.”

“She may be called Rose, but that doesn’t mean a thing,” said Thomas furiously. He felt crushed by the disappointment that the birth certificate had inflicted upon him. For a moment he had really believed that the nightmare of the last year was going to end. He wouldn’t be alone anymore; people wouldn’t say he was a liar. But now it was worse. Doubt removed is certainty redoubled. Thomas felt his final defeat approaching. Greta had almost won. He made a last appeal to his father.

“It’s not the birth certificate that matters, Dad. It’s me and you. I heard Rosie talking about Greta. I saw him outside this house. She had Mum’s locket in this desk.”

The smile on Peter’s face faded and the light went out of his eyes. It was as if Thomas’s words had reminded him of who Thomas really was. His son was the enemy. He’d brought all this about. He was the reason why his wife was on trial for murder when she was innocent, entirely innocent.

“You saw; you heard,” said Peter angrily. “It’s always you. Not you and me. You and your lies.”

“I’m not lying. What do you think I am? Why would I want to make it up?”

“Because she rejected you when you tried to — ”

“Tried to what?”

“Tried to… I don’t know what you did. I wasn’t there, but I know what you wanted. Greta told me.”

“What did I want?”

“To sleep with her.”

“And she said no and I went crazy. Is that the idea?”

“You feel guilty too. That’s another reason why you’ve done what you’ve done.”

“Guilty! You’re the one who should be guilty. You left Mum on her own all those years and she never complained. And you left me too even though I was small and would have liked to have had a father. What did you ever do with me?”

Peter said nothing. Thomas didn’t know if he was even listening, but it did him good to tell his father what he felt. He probably wouldn’t have another opportunity.

“I can’t even remember you taking me for a walk. You just weren’t there. Your career was too important for you to spend time with your family.”

“I was earning money for you and Anne,” said Peter defensively.

“No, you weren’t. You were suiting yourself. And it got better, didn’t it, when Greta came along. Green-eyed Greta. That’s what Mum used to call her. You and her in this house. You and her and your brilliant career.”

“I never slept with her before…”

Peter stopped in midsentence and Thomas finished it for him.

“Before Mum died, but you did on the night of her funeral, didn’t you? That’s how you heard that conversation that rattled you so badly, wasn’t it?”

Thomas’s words were pouring out in a flood now. There was no chance for Peter to reply to his questions even if he had wanted to.

“Your first wife spending her first night in the ground and you fucking your secretary up in London. What a picture.”

“Shut up, Thomas,” said Peter. There was a warning note in his voice that Thomas ignored.

“And somewhere deep down you must know that she sent those men to kill Mummy, but it wasn’t enough to sleep with your wife’s murderer — you needed to marry her as well. You’re a pig, Dad, and this place, it’s your fucking sty.”

Thomas was shouting now and he had brought his face close to his father’s, so he had no chance of defending himself when Peter lashed out. His fist was clenched this time, and he hit Thomas on the side of his mouth with a swinging punch that sent his son crashing against the bureau and from there to the floor.

Peter put a hand out toward his son and then immediately pulled it back. He felt disgusted with himself for what he’d done but at this moment of crisis he wasn’t man enough to face his guilt. Instead he swamped it beneath a torrent of self-justification. It was Thomas who had brought all this about with his crazy witch hunt against his stepmother.

“You shouldn’t have talked to me like that,” said Peter, as Thomas slowly got to his feet clutching the side of his face.

“Fuck you, Dad.” The anger had gone out of Thomas’s voice, and he spoke the words softly like a curse.

“Here, take my handkerchief,” said Peter, but Thomas backed away. The blood had seeped through his fingers and dripped down onto his shirt.

“You don’t want my blood on the carpet, do you? You don’t want your bitch wife to know I’ve been here.”

“Shut up, Thomas.”

“Shut up or you’ll hit me again. Is that it?”

“No, it’s not. I’m sorry I hit you, but I’m not going to let you say those things about Greta.”

“So it’s perfectly all right for her to have killed my mother?”

“She didn’t kill your mother. I don’t want to talk to you about it anymore, Thomas.”

“But you did half an hour ago. You thought it was a possibility then, didn’t you? It’s wonderful what a birth certificate can do.”

“I was stupid. I feel ashamed of myself, but that’s between me and my own conscience.”

“If you’ve got one.”

“This is pointless,” said Peter wearily. “We’ve got nothing to say to each other.”

Thomas turned away. He didn’t disagree with what his father had said. His objection was that his father had no right not to love him, but there was no point in telling him that. He couldn’t make his father feel things if he didn’t. At the door, Thomas turned back. The situation called for a parting shot, but Thomas could think of nothing suitable to say. He felt suddenly exhausted. A sense of utter desolation overwhelmed him, and his father’s words came to him as if over a great distance.

“You can stay in the house for as long as you like. Jane too. It’s just I can’t see you. Not after all that’s happened.”

Down below, the front door opened. Greta had come home early.

Looking back on the moment later in the evening, Thomas wondered why he hadn’t walked down the stairs to meet his stepmother. He could have told her that he was there at his father’s invitation to search through her personal papers. How could their marriage have survived the revelation of his father’s doubt? The only explanation that occurred to Thomas for his decision to hide was that a victory based on doubts that his father no longer felt would be no victory at all. He could only properly avenge his mother by showing up Greta for what she really was. He needed proof. The birth certificate was not that proof. He could not use it against Greta now.

Peter had been talking when the door opened. He had his eyes on his son, and Thomas saw the fear in them as Greta began to climb the stairs.

He stepped back into the drawing room, putting the open door between himself and the landing, and at the same time he motioned with head and hand to his father to go past him.

“Are you here, Peter?” Greta called from the stairs.

Peter went out onto the landing.

“You’re home early,” he said.

“I didn’t stay long. I was worried about you. You looked so awful earlier. Are you any better?”

“Yes, much better.”

Peter’s voice sounded fraught with anxiety to Thomas standing on the other side of the door, but Greta seemed to accept her husband’s assurance.

“Come up and talk to me while I get changed,” she said. “But don’t talk about the trial. Anything but the trial. I’ve had enough of it for one day.”

Thomas listened to the sound of his father following his stepmother up the stairs to the second story and turned back into the room. So much had happened here. He remembered his mother showing him the secret recess in the bureau on that first morning in London and the day he opened it six months later and found her golden locket inside. There must be something else that would connect Greta with his mother’s killers. Something that couldn’t be explained away, something that wasn’t just his own assertion. The birth certificate was not the end of the line. For his father, perhaps, but not for him. There had to be something or someone in Greta’s past that would connect her.

Thomas’s eyes fastened on the old bandaged address book sitting on the writing surface of the bureau under the documents that his father had spilled out of the brown envelope. There was no time to lose. He could hear footsteps moving about on the floor above his head. It must be Greta changing out of whatever dress she had worn to charm her fat slippery barrister. She’d be down in a minute ready for his father to mix her a Bloody Mary.

Thomas moved across the room on tiptoes. He carefully put back all the documents, including the birth certificate, in the envelope and replaced them in the drawer. Then he picked up the address book and shut the bureau.

At the door he took a last look around the room as if committing it to memory and then went quietly down the stairs. He let himself soundlessly out of the house and stood on the top of the steps for a moment before he walked rapidly away without looking back. He held Greta’s address book concealed under his jacket.