Final Witness (17 page)

    “Mr. Sparling,” said the judge in an authoritative voice. “I am a little concerned and I am sure that Mr. Lambert is too. The defendant is not charged with murdering a Highland terrier, is she?”

    “No, my Lord.”

    “And there is in fact no evidence as I understand it to suggest that she knew that she would be endangering the dog’s life by letting her out the front door. That’s not your case, is it, Mr. Sparling?”

    “No, it isn’t, my Lord. Not at all.”

    “Good. Well then, I understand your wish to allow Mrs. Martin to tell things her own way, but please ensure that it’s done properly.”

    “Yes, my Lord. Now, Mrs. Martin, where had the defendant come from?”

    “She’d been in the dining room having her breakfast. On the other side of the hall from me.”

    “Thank you. What happened next?”

    “Sir Peter brought the dog up to the house. She was obviously dead, poor little thing. He laid her out on the settle in the hallway.”

    “What settle is that, Mrs. Martin?”

    “It’s like an old black bench that opens up. There are carvings on the front. It’s been in the house for as long as I have.”

    “I see. Please carry on.”

    “Well, that was when Tom came down. He was in a terrible state. He’d only had the little dog for just over a week, and to see it all dead like that was horrible for him. I remember him touching her side and then he had blood on his hand. It’d have been better in a way if Sir Peter hadn’t brought her in, but I don’t know what else he was supposed to do.

    “Anyway, when Tom realized what had happened, that Greta had let the dog out, he really lost his temper.”

    “Who told him?” asked Sparling.

    “I think I did. He asked and I told him.”

    “I see. So what did Thomas do when he lost his temper, Mrs. Martin?”

    “He went for her. Greta, I mean. I don’t know if he hit her or not because it all happened so quick, but I know that she pushed him back.”

    “Pushed him where?”

    “In the chest. With both hands. He fell back onto the settle and knocked the little dog off it onto the floor. The whole thing was really horrible. There was a lot of crying and shouting.”

    “Who by?”

    “Tom first of all, and then everyone joined in. My Lady was at the top of the stairs. I could see her from where I was in the doorway of the drawing room, and when Greta pushed Tom back onto the settle, she, my Lady that is, she got really angry. I’d never seen her like that before, and I’d been with her since she was just a girl.”

    “What did she do?”

    “She came rushing down the stairs like the house was on fire, shouting to leave her boy alone, and then she gave Greta a piece of her mind. Quite right too, if you ask me.”

    “Mr. Sparling didn’t, Mrs. Martin,” said the judge firmly. “Please do not give us your opinion of how people behaved. Just tell us what happened.”

    Mrs. Martin turned away from the judge even before he’d finished speaking to her and pursed her pale lips. There was a defiant look in her eyes, a determination to stand her ground.

    “Please tell us what Lady Anne said to the defendant,” asked Sparling, injecting a placatory tone into his voice.

    “She told her she was common and that she didn’t belong in the house.”

    “Did she swear?”

    “Who?”

    “Lady Anne. Did she use abusive language to the defendant?”

    “My Lady never used foul language. Never. Not like that Greta.”

    “We’ll come on to that in a moment, Mrs. Martin, but we do need you to tell us everything in the right order. Now, you’ve told us what Lady Anne said to the defendant. What happened next?”

    “Well, that was when Sir Peter got involved. He got between my Lady and the defendant, and he was telling my Lady not to talk to Greta that way. That she was being unfair. I mean, I couldn’t believe it. He was attacking his wife when he should have been defending her.”

    “Mrs. Martin,” said the judge. “I won’t warn you again.”

    Again the housekeeper pursed her lips and looked defiant, but this time she didn’t need to be asked to continue.

    “Well, that’s what my Lady told him, so it’s not just my opinion. And what did Sir Peter do? He turned round and walked out the front door. We didn’t see him for more than an hour after that. I don’t know where he went.”

    “What about everyone else in the hallway? What did they do?” asked Sparling.

    “My Lady told Greta a few other home truths.”

    “What did she say, Mrs. Martin?” asked Sparling when the housekeeper did not elaborate.

    “I can’t remember everything, but I know my Lady said that Greta had turned her husband against her and given Thomas bad ideas. She told her she was poisonous. That was the word she used. Poisonous like a snake.”

    “I see. Did the defendant respond, say anything herself?”

    “No, it was funny, that. She didn’t say anything at all. Not until my Lady had gone off with Thomas and she thought she was alone.”

    “Why did she think that?”

    “Because I’d stepped back into the drawing room when all the fighting and shouting started. It wasn’t my place to be standing there in the middle of all that.”

    “But you heard something that the defendant said after the others had gone?”

    “Yes. She was still in the hall and she said…”

    Mrs. Martin stopped in midsentence, hesitated and then looked up at the judge.

    “Do you want me to say all the words?” she asked. “She used disgusting foul language, like I’ve said before.”

    “Yes, Mrs. Martin,” replied the judge. “All the words please.”

    “Well, she called my Lady ‘a fucking stuck-up bitch,’ and then she said, ‘You’ve fucking had it now, Mrs. Posh. Just you wait and see.’ Those were her exact words. And she spoke in this hard, coarse accent that I’d never heard her use before. It was like she was talking through her teeth. Like her true character was coming through.”

    “Mrs. Martin, I have had to remind you over and over again to tell us what you saw and heard and not what you thought about what you saw and heard,” said the judge. “Your refusal to abide by my instructions is soon going to have a prejudicial effect on this trial. I am going to adjourn now slightly earlier than I had intended for lunch so that you can think about what I have said, and when we resume I will want your assurance that you will do as I have asked. Very well. We will meet again at two o’clock.”

    Judge Granger was out of the courtroom well before Mrs. Martin had had any chance to formulate a reply, even if she had wished to do so.

    

    

    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?”