Final Witness (19 page)

    “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.

    

    

    “HOW WAS IT, honey?” asked Peter.

    He was sitting in the back of the Daimler with Greta. John the chauffeur was driving them home from court. London went by smoothly outside the car’s black tinted windows.

    “It was good, I suppose,” she replied. Her voice was tired and came as if from far away, even though she was sitting right beside her husband, leaning against his shoulder. It was like the voice of a soldier who’d come back from the front, he thought: shell-shocked.

    Peter felt the anger rising in him again like it had a thousand times before, invading his throat, making his temples throb. He couldn’t get used to the unfairness, the injustice, and he fought for self-control. He didn’t speak until he had unclenched his fists and got sure of his voice again. Peace and calm were what his wife needed now.

    “Who were the witnesses today?” he asked.

    “There was a policeman and then Mrs. Ball from Flyte and Jane Martin. It’s incredible how that woman hates me. It’s like she won’t be satisfied until she sees me hanging from a tree. A tall tree.”

    “Don’t talk like that.”

    “She kept pointing at me. Looking at me. Saying I was poison. Things like that.”

    “I should have dismissed her ages ago. It’s just I didn’t know what to do about Thomas.”

    “It’s not just her. I feel like some caged animal in there. A caged animal who everyone’s got a license to mistreat.”

    “I just wish I could be there with you. Perhaps I should talk to Miles.”

    “No,” said Greta, and her voice was suddenly firm. “I don’t want you to hear those things they’re saying, and we must do what Miles says. He’s good, you know. He made Aunt Jane look just like the nasty bit of work she is.”

    “Well, that’s something,” said Peter. He took her delicate hand in his and gently stroked the back of it with the tips of his fingers, mapping all the tiny bones that radiated out from her thin wrist. It was something that he’d often done with Anne in the early years, before they grew apart.

    “What about the other witnesses? How did Miles deal with them?”

    “All right. He’s made it so it’s perfectly possible that Anne took a walk down to the beach after we’d gone and then left the door unlocked when she came back.”

    “Which door?”

    “The one in the north wall. There would’ve been time for her to do that and go to bed before Thomas came back. She’d have been out when he telephoned.”

    “Well, that’s good,” he said, trying to sound a note of encouragement when it was the opposite of what he really felt.

    Not for the first time Peter was aware of a tiny pinprick of doubt on the outer edge of his consciousness. He remembered Anne lying on the sofa in the drawing room with her face knotted in pain. She didn’t look like she was about to go for a walk, but perhaps she felt the air would clear her head. Peter fought down his momentary feeling of unease almost without thinking.

    “I won’t need you again today, John,” he said to the chauffeur as he helped his wife out of the car. “Lady Greta and I will be staying in tonight.”

    “Very good, sir,” said the chauffeur, touching his peaked cap. Peter could not read his expressionless features. Perhaps he was looking for another job. Scandal does not sit well with men in high places.

    

    Later, lying in bed, Peter could not sleep. Greta was turned away from him with her knees brought up almost to her stomach. She had slept in this fetal position for weeks now, and he could feel the tension in her back even without touching her. Sometimes she cried out strange words and names that made no sense, and he would be struck with how little he really knew his wife. She seemed to have no real friends or relatives; just the half-disabled mother in Manchester that she traveled up to visit every few weeks. Greta’s solitude in the world made Peter even more painfully protective toward her than he might otherwise have been. The trial made him feel that he was letting her down even though he knew that there was nothing he could have done to prevent it. He contrasted the way in which Greta had helped him over the years with his inability to help her now.

    He closed his eyes and remembered how she had been there for him when Anne died. It had been just about this time – eleven at night – when the telephone had rung beside the bed and he had answered it, waking blearily from sleep to hear the news that shattered his life. The same telephone was there now less than a yard from his outstretched hand sitting pale and silent in the half darkness.

    It was Hearns who made the call. He must have been standing in the drawing room where Peter had been sitting with his wife only four hours before.

    “You don’t know me, sir. I’m Detective Sergeant Hearns of the Ipswich Police. I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. It’s your wife…”

    Peter could still remember the exact words Hearns had used. It was like a tape recorder had been turned on in Peter’s brain when he answered the telephone. He could remember Hearns’s tone too. The intrusive, pressing quality of it that he later got to know so well as the policeman pulled his net around Greta, although he couldn’t have closed it without Thomas. Nothing would have happened without Thomas, thought his father bitterly.

    Disbelief was the first thing he’d felt after talking to Hearns. Peter remembered how the news seemed to bear no relation to reality. There was no violence in the ordered bedroom where he was standing in a pair of clean pajamas. There were no shouts or screams coming from the quiet street below. Everything was normal, and yet 130 miles away this event had happened. There would have been no call if it hadn’t. He dialed the House of the Four Winds and a policeman answered. Another policeman. Peter put the phone down and felt the panic beginning in his chest, spreading down into his legs as the news seeped through into his brain, overwhelming the pathetic defenses that it had tried to throw up against the horror.

    Peter sat down on the end of the bed. He did not cry, but his upper body shuddered convulsively. As he steeled himself against these tremors, a thought came into his mind. It was the thought of Greta. He needed help, he needed not to be alone. He picked up the telephone again and dialed her number.

    “Please hold. The person you are calling knows you are waiting,” said the operator’s mechanical voice, once, twice, three times. He put the phone down and the shudders began again. Two minutes later she called him back.

    After that it was a blur. He didn’t remember getting dressed or much of how he told Greta or of her reaction. He remembered that her phone had been engaged, though, and he wondered not for the first time who she’d been talking to so late at night.

    She’d brought the Range Rover round to the front of the house and insisted on driving. It didn’t seem as if they’d even discussed whether or not she should go; he had just assumed it.

    At the last moment he got out of the car and went back into the house, returning a minute later with a half-drunk bottle of whisky. It was almost empty by the time they passed through Carmouth at quarter to two. The little seaside town was deserted, but the lights were on in the police station.