Final Witness

Chapter 25

The Family Records Office opened at ten o’clock on Thursday morning, and by five past ten Thomas was already well embarked on an argument with a cadaverous young man wearing a plastic badge on his lapel identifying him as Andrew, Applications Clerk. Thomas seemed completely unaware of Matthew’s efforts to calm him down and of the disapproving impatience of the people queuing for priority collections behind him.

“I know it’s ten-oh-five and the receipt says twelve twenty-one,” said Thomas, allowing his exasperation to increase the volume of his voice still further. “I know that. I’m just asking you as a special favor to see if my certificates are ready. Maybe they are, maybe they’re not, but it won’t hurt you to try, will it, Andy?”

“I’m not Andy, I’m Andrew,” said the clerk.

“I’m sorry,” said Thomas. “Really I am. I didn’t mean to offend you, Andrew. Won’t you just do me this favor?”

“I can’t help you, sir,” said Andrew for the third time. “You’ll simply have to wait like everyone else.”

“Can’t or won’t?” shouted Thomas, losing his temper. “You government employees are all the same. Everything’s got to be by the bloody rule book, and meanwhile justice goes down the drain.”

“All right, Thomas, calm down,” said Matthew, pulling his friend away from the counter. He’d noticed Andrew’s hand straying toward a buzzer on the side of his desk and feared ejection would follow any minute at the hands of the two burly security guards whom they had passed at the front of the building.

“I’m sorry about all this,” Matthew said to Andrew. “He’s got big problems with his family. We’ll come back later.”

“Twelve twenty-one,” said Andrew mechanically, ignoring the explanation.

“Twelve twenty-one,” agreed Matthew as he shepherded Thomas toward the door to the cafeteria.

The court sat late on Thursday morning. It was eleven o’clock when Greta resumed her place in the witness box and Sparling started his cross-examination. The reporters had divided eleven to three in favor of Greta at the end of the prosecution case. Even the three still holding out for a conviction had agreed that Miles Lambert had gotten the better of Thomas. They all thought that the victim’s son had made up at least some of his evidence in order to strengthen the case against his stepmother.

The jurors were hard to read. The Italian man in the designer suit had seemed to be a sure vote for Greta from the start, and the reporters had noticed that at least three of the other male jurors appeared to have been won over to the defendant’s charms in the last couple of days. The Mrs. Thatcher look-alike sitting in the foreperson’s position looked more furious with each passing day, and the general view among the press was that this was due to the growing number of her colleagues deserting the prosecution’s side as the case unfolded. A single vote for a guilty verdict wouldn’t be enough to stop Greta from being acquitted after the judge had given a majority direction. It wouldn’t matter in those circumstances if the single voter was forewoman of the jury or not.

Miles Lambert had taken Greta gently through her evidence on the previous afternoon, and now she stood with a soft smile on her pretty face, waiting for Sparling to do his worst. Her air of confidence irritated the old barrister, making him launch into his cross-examination with more aggression than he might otherwise have chosen to use.

“You told this jury yesterday that you got on reasonably well with Lady Anne,” he said. “Did you really mean that?”

“We had a few arguments, but I’d say that was inevitable when I was in her house so often over a period of years. By and large, we got on quite well.”

“Didn’t you mind when she called you lower-class and told you that you didn’t belong in her house?”

“Yes, I was hurt, but then she came and apologized and I forgave her.”

“It was that easy, was it?”

“Yes, she was genuinely sorry. I admired her for coming to talk to me. It can’t have been easy for her to do that.”

“No. And it can’t surely have been as easy for you to forgive Lady Anne as you say. She told you that you were poisonous like a snake, didn’t she?”

“That’s right.”

“And it made you say, ‘You’ve fucking had it now, Mrs. Posh.’ Isn’t that right?”

“No, it’s not. That’s a fabrication.”

“Just like it’s a fabrication by Thomas that he overheard you referring to your employer’s wife as Mrs. Posh in the basement of the house in Chelsea?”

“Yes.”

“It seems to be something of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say, Lady Robinson?”

“Yes, I would, Mr. Sparling, and not an accidental coincidence I should say either.”

“Oh?”

“They’ve put their heads together and came up with this Mrs. Posh phrase. It’s not one I would ever use.”

“Even when Lady Anne was insulting you for being lower-class?”

“She apologized.”

“Yes, and you admired her for doing so. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes. She didn’t need to say sorry. It was her house.”

“You’d admired Lady Anne for a long time, hadn’t you? Even when you were a girl living in Manchester, you admired her.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Just like you admired all those fashionable aristocratic women whose pictures you cut out of those magazines and put in your scrapbooks. I think Sergeant Hearns told us they contained more than two thousand pictures.”

“I’ve always liked fashion. Is it so very wrong to have interests when you’re young?”

“No, not at all. But does an interest in fashion justify trying on someone else’s clothes without their permission?”

“No, it doesn’t. I shouldn’t have done that. I just couldn’t afford those kinds of clothes, and I wanted to see what they looked like on me.”

“There was only one way that you could afford them, wasn’t there? To become Lady Robinson yourself.”

“What are you suggesting, Mr. Sparling? That I murdered Lady Anne for money? There’s no evidence for that, you know. Nothing’s gone into my bank account. You’ve got the records. Whoever’s got those jewels has got nothing to do with me.”

“I wasn’t asking you about the jewels, Lady Robinson. I was suggesting that you wanted what Lady Anne had: her title, her husband, and her husband’s money.”

“But not her jewels.”

“Please don’t argue with counsel, Lady Robinson,” said the judge, intervening for the first time in the morning. “Just try to answer his questions.”

“I’m sorry, my Lord,” said Greta, bestowing one of her most winning smiles on the old judge.

“That’s all right. Please carry on, Mr. Sparling.”

The barrister turned a page of his notes and changed tack.

“What were you talking to your midnight visitor about in your basement apartment in April of last year?” he asked.

“Money. It was a man I owed money to. I was asking for more time to pay.”

“So it was in the nature of a business meeting. Why were you conducting business in the middle of the night, Lady Robinson?”

“I wasn’t. We went out earlier, and then he came back to my flat and stayed late. I thought that an evening’s entertainment might make him more…”

“More compliant?”

“Yes. More willing to give me more time.”

“Were you right? Was he more willing?”

“Yes. He agreed to wait.”

“How much money did you owe this man, Lady Robinson?”

“About ten thousand pounds.”

“And have you repaid it now?”

“Most of it.”

“How?”

“I saved money, and my husband has helped me a bit.”

“Even though you lied to him about meeting this man. You’ve already admitted that in your interview. You told your husband that you were with your mother in Manchester.”

“I lied because I was ashamed of owing the money.”

“You lied because you didn’t want anyone to know that you had been meeting the man who was going to kill Lady Anne. That’s the truth, isn’t it?” Sparling’s accusation came accompanied with a sudden aggression of voice and gesture, but neither seemed to have any effect on Greta. She smiled at Sparling before answering his question slowly and deliberately.

“No, it’s not the truth, Mr. Sparling. I lied because I was ashamed of being in debt. I did not want Sir Peter or Lady Anne to think badly of me.”

“Did you say to your visitor, ‘Can’t you see I haven’t got him yet’?”

“No, I would never have said that. I would’ve said: ‘Can’t you see I haven’t got it yet,’ about the money. If you recall, Mr. Sparling, Thomas couldn’t be sure if I said ‘him’ or ‘it.’ I’m sure it’ll be in your notes.”

“So you weren’t referring to not yet having secured Sir Peter. Is that right?”

“I was talking about the money.”

“Your visitor was the man who killed Lady Anne, I suggest. Thomas recognized him as such.”

“He saw a man from behind. And that man can’t have been the man in my flat anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because the front door of the basement was locked when I went up to the main house via the internal staircase. I always kept it locked from the inside because of burglars.”

“Why couldn’t your visitor have unlocked it?”

“Because I had the key.”

“You never mentioned this in your interview, Lady Robinson. Why not?”

“Because I didn’t think of it.”

“And that’s not all you failed to mention, was it? Sergeant Hearns asked you again and again to give the name of your visitor. Again and again you refused to provide it. Why? What had you got to hide?”

“I had nothing to hide. The man’s name is Andrew Relton.”

Sparling stopped, momentarily taken aback. He hadn’t expected Greta’s reply, and he had never heard this name before. But it took no more than a second or two for him to regain his composure and return to the attack.

“You tell us now when your trial’s almost over and so the information’s useless,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you tell the police when you were interviewed? That’s when it mattered.”

There was a pause, and then Sparling went on as if Greta’s silence was exactly what he had expected.

“You aren’t answering because you haven’t got an answer, have you, Lady Robinson? You didn’t name this man to the police because you didn’t want them to investigate your story.”

“No, I didn’t want Andrew dragged into all this, and what’s wrong with that?” said Greta angrily. “My debts are my own affair. They’ve got nothing to do with this trial. Nothing at all.”

“You didn’t want to name your visitor because he’s the man who murdered Lady Anne. That’s the truth, isn’t it?” Sparling had drawn himself up to his full height as if to emphasize his accusation.

“No, it’s not,” said Greta with equal emphasis.

“The same man who went back to deal with Thomas just before your trial.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“The man whom his friend called Rosie.”

“I don’t know anyone called Rosie or Rose,” said Greta firmly. “Man or woman. It’s a ridiculous name.”

Immediately Sparling regretted asking about the murderer’s return to the House of the Four Winds the previous week. He’d thrown away the advantage gained by highlighting Greta’s evasiveness with the police and instead concentrated the jury’s attention on the weakest part of his case. Now he had no choice but to continue.

“He referred to you by name. He said you were the one who showed him how the hiding place worked.”

“No, he didn’t. Thomas has made that up. It’s pretty convenient, isn’t it, that this Rosie character should mention me by name just when he could be sure that Thomas would overhear?”

“Please just answer the questions, Lady Robinson,” said Sparling in an effort to keep control of his cross-examination. But he was being beaten back and he knew it. He’d noticed out of the corner of his eye how several of the jurors had nodded in agreement immediately after Greta’s last observation. Sparling was in fact half relieved when the judge chose this moment for a ten-minute midmorning adjournment.

At the very moment that Judge Granger was sitting back in his easy chair in the privacy of his chambers inhaling the smoke from his first cigarette of the day, Thomas and Matthew were sitting at a table in the cafeteria of the Family Records Office with an array of half-drunk cups of coffee and empty soft-drink cans in front of them. They’d just returned from a third unsuccessful attempt to persuade Andrew the applications clerk to expedite their application.

“Bastard, officious bastard.” Thomas spat out the words while giving further expression to his feelings by crushing an empty Coke can in his hand.

“I know,” said Matthew. “But if you’d carried on, we’d probably have gotten thrown out and then we wouldn’t get the certificates at all.”

Thomas didn’t answer. He’d begun work on another can.

“We should still be okay even if we get the certificates at twelve-twenty. It’s not far from here to the court in a taxi, and then we’ve only got to find Sergeant Hearns. He’ll sort it out, Tom.”

“If he can. But it may be too late by then. My father told me that Greta’s not calling any other witnesses except him, so once he’s given evidence, we’ve had it. Hearns said that there can’t be any more evidence after the defense has closed its case.”

“We should have gotten him to help with this.”

“I couldn’t get hold of him all day yesterday, and he’s not going to get the information any quicker this morning than we are. Besides, what we’ve got out of the index book doesn’t really amount to that much if you think about it. Jonathan B. Rowes married a Someone Grahame somewhere in Liverpool sometime in 1989. So what! Why should Rowes be Rosie? Why should Grahame be Greta?”

“Because they are,” said Matthew fervently. “Because of what your father heard Greta saying on the telephone. That she wasn’t his Greta Rose anymore.”

“But she can explain that. Greta Rose is her real name. That much is in the index books.”

“His Greta Rose. That’s what she said.”

“All right, Matthew,” said Thomas, suddenly smiling. “You’re right. We’ve got to keep our hopes up and stop speculating.”

But Thomas’s frustration returned as he gazed up at the cafeteria clock for the hundredth time that morning just as the hands came together at noon.

The bells of the City’s many churches had just finished tolling the hour when John Sparling rose from his chair to resume his cross-examination of Lady Greta Robinson. The courtroom was packed, but there was no noise at all. The world outside seemed a very long way away.

“Let’s focus on the events surrounding the murder of Lady Anne Robinson,” said the prosecution barrister.

“If you wish,” replied Greta in a tone that implied that she didn’t mind if they did or they didn’t.

“You told us yesterday that you rang up Mrs. Ball at Lady Anne’s request to ask if Thomas could go over there.”

“That’s right. It was on the Sunday afternoon.”

“Had Lady Anne ever asked you to do such a thing before?”

“She may have done. I don’t recall. It didn’t seem a very significant request at the time. She had one of her headaches and so she asked me to make the call.”

“Did Lady Anne say why she wanted Thomas to go to his friend’s for the night?”

“No.”

“Didn’t the request strike you as being a bit strange?”

“No. As I said, the whole thing didn’t seem very significant.”

“But Lady Anne had never asked you to make any arrangement for Thomas in all the two and a half years that you’d been working for her husband. Isn’t that right, Lady Robinson?”

“I told you, Mr. Sparling. I don’t recall.”

“You don’t recall. Do you recall lying to Jane Martin about how the arrangement came to be made?”

“No, but I recall Jane Martin lying to this court about what I said to her. I never told her that Mrs. Ball had invited Thomas.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I simply told her about the arrangement. I said nothing about whose idea it was. There was no reason to. She didn’t ask and I didn’t tell her.”

“Why wouldn’t Lady Anne have called Mrs. Ball and made the arrangement herself?”

“Because she had a headache. I told you that already.”

“It must have been a pretty bad headache to stop her making a quick telephone call.”

“It was. They weren’t really headaches, they were more like migraines that she got. She couldn’t do anything when she had them.”

“Except that on this particular Sunday she was able to give you instructions about ringing up Mrs. Ball and making an arrangement for Thomas.”

“That’s right. It didn’t take long.”

“But nor would it have taken her long to make the call.”

“I don’t know. Maybe Anne thought that Mrs. Ball would keep her on the phone.”

“Where’s all this heading, Mr. Sparling?” asked the judge, stirring restlessly in his chair. “We seem to be going round in circles. I think it would be best if you just put your case on this issue and then moved on.”

“Yes, my Lord. My case is this, Lady Robinson. You telephoned Mrs. Ball and made the arrangement yourself without consulting anyone and then you told Lady Anne and Jane Martin afterward that it was Mrs. Ball who had called up to invite Thomas.”

“Why would I do all this, Mr. Sparling?” asked Greta evenly. “Why would I make this arrangement?”

Sparling did not answer immediately. He made it a policy not to allow defendants to start asking the questions. That meant surrendering control over the cross-examination; it meant surrendering his greatest advantage. However, the situation here was different. He could see the jurors looking at him expectantly out of the corner of his eye. They wanted to hear his answer. The trouble was that this was not the strongest part of his case. Sparling inwardly cursed the judge for his intervention. It had forced him onto his back foot, and now the defendant was trying to push him over.

“You did all this because you wanted Thomas Robinson out of the house on the Monday evening so that Lady Anne would be alone and defenseless when the killers came.”

“So I basically wanted to kill the mother but save the son. Is that what you’re saying, Mr. Sparling?” asked Greta with a look of bafflement on her face.

“That’s right, Lady Robinson,” said Sparling. “You had no reason to suspect that Thomas had seen you with your accomplice in London.”

Greta was about to respond, but Sparling pressed straight on to his next question before she could do so.

“You left the study window open for them, didn’t you?”

“No, I just forgot about it.”

“Thomas found it wide open when he got back to the house from the Balls.”

“Yes, I opened it wide because it was stuffy in the study when I was working in there. I’m not the only one who says it was a warm evening. Besides, Anne hadn’t gone to bed when we left.”

“Are you saying you expected her to close it?”

“No, I’m saying I forgot about it. It wasn’t dark and I didn’t think.”

“The men who came expected to find it open though, didn’t they, Lady Robinson? That’s why one of them said that they’re all fucking closed.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“And that’s why they smashed the glass in the window that you left open. Not the other study window; not the windows in the dining room. They smashed that window because that’s the one they expected to get in by if Thomas hadn’t closed it.” Sparling’s voice became more insistent as he pressed his point home.

“I told you already. I had nothing to do with these men. I left the window open by mistake. I admitted it to Sergeant Hearns the same night. I didn’t try to make a secret of it.”

“You don’t admit leaving the door in the north wall open though, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“But the killers came through there even though Jane Martin locked the door at five o’clock. How do you explain that?”

“It must have been Anne who opened it when she went for a walk after we left.”

“If she went for a walk! I suggest she did no such thing. You got Thomas out of the house, you opened the door in the north wall, and you opened the window in the study. Then you left with Lady Anne’s husband, knowing that she would be dead before you got back to London. What do you say about that, Lady Robinson?”

“I say it’s a lie. A wicked lie. I’m not guilty of this charge,” Greta’s voice rang with conviction. Miles Lambert thought she looked quite stunning with her flashing green eyes and two spots of color in the center of her wide cheeks.

“Not guilty, eh? Well, we’ll leave that to the jury to decide, shall we? I want to ask you about Lady Anne’s locket now. Why did you say to Thomas, ‘Give that to me, it’s mine’ when he first showed you the locket?”

“I didn’t. I said no such thing.”

“So both Thomas and Matthew Barne lied to this court about that, did they?”

“Of course they did. They’d gotten their story worked out together by then. It was different on the day. That boy Matthew ran out of the house when Peter asked him if it was true that I’d said that.”

“And Thomas and Jane Martin are lying about Lady Anne wearing the locket after she came back from London, are they?”

“Yes. Well, Thomas is anyway. I don’t think Jane said she did see the locket; just something gold, which she thought was the locket. That’s how I remember what she said.”

“Thomas saw something gold too though, didn’t he, when Rosie straightened up after bending down over Lady Anne’s body? That was when Rosie took the locket, wasn’t it, Lady Robinson, leaving that scratch mark on Lady Anne’s neck, which Detective Constable Butler told us about last week?”

“No. She left it in the bathroom in Chelsea when she was up for the flower show. Then we all went down to the coast together on the Saturday, and so no one was in the bathroom again until I used it in the middle of the following week. Peter stayed down in Flyte after the murder.”

“But why did you use that bathroom? It’s at the top of the house, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s on the third floor, not the fourth, and the cleaner was in the downstairs lavatory when I used it.”

“Yes, I understand that, but why not use your own bathroom in the basement? That would be nearer, wouldn’t it, if you were working on the ground floor?”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain that. Maybe because the bathroom upstairs is nicer than the one in the basement. Maybe I just felt like a change of bathroom.”

“And that made it worth climbing three flights of stairs instead of going down one, did it?”

“I guess so.” Greta shrugged.

“You never found that locket in any bathroom, did you, Lady Robinson? You got it from Lady Anne’s killer.”

“Why would I want it? It’s not exactly the most valuable of the Sackville jewels, is it, Mr. Sparling?”

“Because you wanted it as a trophy. The locket and the photograph inside it were a symbol of your employer’s marriage, and now Lady Anne was dead and you could marry Sir Peter.”

“So I put it in the desk and waited for someone to find it,” said Greta mockingly. “That makes a lot of sense.”

“No, you hid it in the desk in a secret recess. Lady Robinson, I must remind you that I’m not here to answer your questions. It’s the other way round. You’re here to answer mine.” Greta looked away from Sparling toward the jury and smiled. The barrister turned a page of his notes and asked her his next question.

“Why didn’t you tell Sir Peter about the locket?”

“Because I didn’t want to upset him.”

“But it was already a week after the murder when he got back to London. Surely it would have been a comfort to him to have the locket. It showed how much Lady Anne cared about him, didn’t it? That she should have been wearing a locket containing a picture of him only a couple of days before her death; that she took it to London with her.”

“I didn’t see it that way.”

“But you thought it was important, didn’t you? That’s why you put it in the secret recess.”

“I thought it would be safe there.”

“So why didn’t you give the locket back to Sir Peter after he had calmed down?”

“Because I forgot about it. I had a lot on my mind. You seem to forget that I was arrested on the day of Lady Anne’s funeral, Mr. Sparling.”

“You forgot about it even though you had taken the trouble to put it in such a safe place and had decided not to speak to Sir Peter about it because you thought it would upset him. That doesn’t make much sense, does it, Lady Robinson?”

“I don’t know whether it makes sense or not, Mr. Sparling. All I can tell you is that last summer was one of the most stressful periods of my life. I got arrested for murder. My employer had lost his wife. And his son was conducting a witch-hunt against both of us, aided and abetted by the Suffolk police. Personally I’m not that surprised that I forgot about the locket.”

“But I suggest that you did not forget about it, Lady Robinson. You knew it was there. You just didn’t expect anyone to find it.”

“I forgot about it.”

“Mr. Sparling,” said the judge. “I notice that we are fast approaching one o’clock. Do you have much more, or would this be a convenient time to stop for lunch?”

“I have only one more question, my Lord. Perhaps it would be better if I asked it now rather than waiting.”

“Certainly, Mr. Sparling. Carry on.”

“Lady Robinson, I put it to you that you received this locket from the man called Rosie, who visited you in your flat in April of last year and killed Lady Anne at the end of May. The same Rosie who returned to the House of the Four Winds two weeks ago, when he referred to you by name. You conspired with him to commit murder and to divide the spoils between you.”

“I conspired with no one,” said Greta. “And what’s more, I don’t know anyone called Rosie or anyone with a name remotely like that. I’ve already told you that, Mr. Sparling.”

“My Lord, I have no more questions,” said the prosecution barrister. He wished he could have done more with Greta, but she seemed — just like Matthew Barne had said — to have an answer for every question. Repeating his questions would only make them sound weaker. Sparling felt the case slipping out of his grasp. It filled him with angry frustration, and he looked down at his papers to ensure that none of the jurors would be able to read the irritation written so plainly on his face.

“Mr. Lambert, do you have any other witnesses?” asked the judge once Greta had resumed her seat in the dock.

“One more, my Lord. My client’s husband, Sir Peter Robinson.”

“Well, we’ll hear from him at two o’clock then. Enjoy your lunch, members of the jury,” said the judge, avoiding the eye of the furious forewoman. She looked at that moment like she wanted to attack someone with her black leather handbag. Judge Granger felt grateful that he didn’t have to have his lunch with her.