“I see. Now tell us in your own words, Matthew, what the idea was. Why did you go to the house?”
“Because the girlfriend of Tom’s dad had her stuff there. Tom read in the paper the weekend before that his dad was going to Paris for some political thing, and Tom said his dad’s girlfriend goes everywhere with him because she’s his assistant too.”
“So they’d be away. What was the significance of that?”
“So that Tom could go through her stuff. He thinks she was behind his mum getting killed, and he wanted to find something to prove it. Because that’s what the police told him. That they needed more evidence.”
Miles Lambert had caught Judge Granger’s eye while Matthew was talking, and the judge now leaned forward to speak to the prosecution barrister before he asked his next question.
“I know it’s difficult, Mr. Sparling, but please try and cut out the hearsay. Thomas Robinson can tell us about his motives when he gives his evidence. We don’t need Matthew here to do it for him.”
“No, my Lord,” said Sparling. “I hear what you say. Matthew, tell us what time you got to the house.”
“It was in the afternoon. About half past four. Tom had a key to the front door, but he rang the bell first. We watched to see if anyone answered, but they didn’t. He did the same downstairs in the basement. Then when we were inside, there’s a door that goes downstairs in the hall, and he went through that.”
“How?”
“There was a key in the door. He was down there for quite a while.”
“Where did you go?”
“I stayed upstairs. There was a room off the hall with a whole lot of computer equipment, and I sat in there. I didn’t touch anything.”
“What happened next?”
“Tom came back, and then he went through the stuff in the computer room.”
“What stuff?”
“He looked in the drawers and he turned on the computer and went through the files. He didn’t find anything though. We were there for ages and I wanted to go but he said we had to go upstairs. He said that his dad and his assistant were living together and so she’d have personal stuff in the bedroom.”
“Mr. Sparling,” said the judge in a warning voice.
“Yes, my Lord. Matthew, try to stick to what happened and don’t tell us what Thomas said. Okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right, tell us what happened upstairs. Did you go up there too?”
“Yes, but I only stood in the doorway while Tom went in. She did have stuff in there like Tom said she would, but he didn’t find anything to do with his mother in any of her clothes or her drawers or anything like that, and so we started to go back downstairs. Tom was really upset. He was frustrated at not finding anything when he’d been going on about how he was going to get Greta all the way up on the train. He – ”
“Yes, Matthew,” interrupted Sparling. “We do need to focus on what happened in the house. You said you were going downstairs. Tell us what happened next.”
“Well, we were one floor up from the computers. On the landing. And there was a door open into this big room.”
“The drawing room?”
“I guess so. Anyway, Tom saw this old desk in the corner, and he was saying that his mother used to use it when she was in London and that it had this really neat secret drawer. That was where he found the locket.”
“He showed it to you? You saw it up close?”
“Yes, sir. It was gold with a chain, and there was a little photograph inside. Tom said it was his parents. In the photograph I mean.”
“Thank you, Matthew. Now I’d like to show you one of our exhibits. It’s number thirteen, my Lord. Do you recognize that, Matthew?”
“It looks like it. Yes, I’d say it’s the same as the one Tom found.”
“Thank you. Now, Matthew, please tell us what happened after Tom found the locket.”
“He was really excited. Talking a lot and everything. I guess that’s why we didn’t hear the door open downstairs. We didn’t hear anything until she was on the stairs.”
“Who? Who was on the stairs?”
“Greta. She… she’s over there.” Matthew pointed at the dock where Greta was sitting forward in her chair watching him intently.
“What happened next?”
“Tom was in the doorway, and I think she saw him first. She was really angry, shouting at him, using all this really bad language.”
“We need you to tell us everything she said, Matthew,” said Sparling in a fatherly voice. “I know it’s not easy, but we need to know even if the words are bad.”
“She called Tom a fucking little sneak. I remember that. It was scary. Tom backed away into the room and almost knocked me over. I was behind him. Tom was holding up this locket thing in front of her saying, ‘Look what I’ve found’ or something like that. He was really angry too. They were both shouting.”
“What was Greta shouting, Matthew? Help us with that.”
“She said, ‘Give that to me. It’s mine.’ That’s what she said. She made a grab for it but she missed. Tom pulled it away and then he pushed her back. I don’t know what she was going to do. Scratch him or something I guess.”
“What happened when he pushed her back, Matthew? Where did she go?”
“She was on the floor and Tom was standing over her and he was like shouting down at her.”
“What did he shout?”
Matthew’s brow furrowed as if he was concentrating hard to remember something exactly.
“He said, ‘No, it’s not. It’s my mother’s. That bastard took it from her and he gave it to you. He gave it to you.’ And then just after that, Tom’s dad came in.”
“Sir Peter. What did he do?”
“He was really upset. It’s not surprising really. I mean we weren’t supposed to be there, and there was his girlfriend lying on the floor and Tom shouting at her.”
“Was Thomas shouting when his father came into the room?”
“I don’t know. It all happened really quick. Tom backed off when his dad came in. I remember that, and then his dad got Greta up off the floor and put her on the sofa. She was crying. I don’t know if she got hurt when Tom pushed her over.”
“Yes, I see. Carry on, Matthew. What happened next?”
“Tom’s dad asked Greta what happened, and she said how Tom had pushed her. She said Tom had attacked her, and then it was like this guy was going to hit Tom. I know he’s done that before because Tom told me. He had his fists clenched and he was going toward Tom, and that’s when Tom showed his dad the locket. He was holding it up like it was some magic charm or something and telling his dad where he’d got it from. He said that Greta must have gotten it off the man who killed his mother.”
Matthew’s words had come slowly at first, but now he spoke in a rush with sentences tumbling into one another until at the end he seemed to have entirely lost control of the torrent of words falling from his mouth.
“All right, Matthew, I think we’ve all got that,” said Sparling, “but please try to go a bit slower from now on; calm down a little; take your time. Now, how did Greta respond to what Thomas said?”
“She didn’t at first. She was crying, like I told you before, but then she said that it wasn’t true; that she’d found the locket in the bathroom a day or two after Tom’s mother got shot and that she’d put it in the secret drawer to keep it safe. That’s when Tom started asking her all these questions and she was answering them too. It was like she realized she needed to give some sort of explanation.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know. To Tom and to Tom’s dad too, I guess. Tom was the one asking the questions, though.”
“Okay. Then tell us what they said, please, Matthew.”
“Tom was asking what she was doing in the bathroom because it was like near the top of the house, when Greta works on the ground floor where all that computer equipment was; and she said that the cleaner was in the downstairs loo and so she’d gone upstairs. Then Tom said that the basement would’ve been nearer. It was going back and forth like that, and then he asked her why she’d put it in the secret drawer in the desk. Greta said something about it being Anne’s desk and so it was a natural place to put it. Something like that.”
“Did Thomas’s father, Sir Peter, ask anything?”
“Yes, he wanted to know why Greta hadn’t given him the locket, and she said that she hadn’t wanted to upset him and then she’d forgotten about it. She seemed to have an answer for everything.”
There was a pause while John Sparling looked for something in his notes. Miles Lambert turned round to his client and smiled. The witness’s last comment had been a gift.
“Was anything else said, Matthew?” asked Sparling.
“Tom’s dad seemed to believe what Greta was saying, and he got really angry with Tom and with me too. It was scary. He said we were to get out and go back to school or he’d call the police.”
“Yes, Matthew, but was there anything else that anyone said before Sir Peter told you that? Have you left anything out?”
Matthew looked blank and Sparling tried again.
“What happened to the locket, Matthew?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, Tom showed it to his father again and told him what Greta had said about it before his dad came in.”
“What was that?”
“That it was hers. She denied saying it even though I knew she did. I heard her.”
“Yes, Matthew. Now you’ve said that Sir Peter told you to get out. Did you do so?”
“You bet I did. I ran down the stairs so fast that I almost fell over. Tom caught up to me outside. He didn’t run like me. I was really scared that his dad would write to my parents, get me expelled or something like that, but nothing happened. Not until the police came to see me.”
“When was that?”
“A couple of days later. It was Mr. Hearns and he said I’d done really well, which was the opposite of what I expected to hear. It was really weird.”
Matthew gulped and then smiled at the memory. The smile transformed his face and made him suddenly attractive, so that he was no longer a nervous schoolboy in an ill-fitting suit but rather a real person with a strange story to tell. Several of the jurors smiled too, and Sparling realized instinctively that he’d reached the high point in his examination of his witness. The high point was the point at which to stop; Sparling didn’t need to be told that.
“Thank you, Matthew,” he said as he sat down, with something closely resembling a smile playing across his usually funereal features.
“I think we’ll take a ten-minute break there,” said Judge Granger before Miles Lambert could get to his feet. “You can have a chance to stretch your legs, Matthew, and the jurors can have a cup of coffee.”
In his room Judge Granger sat in an easy chair facing out toward the London skyline and drew deeply on an unfiltered cigarette. The room filled with blue smoke as he exhaled so that Miss Hooks appeared as if out of a cloud when she arrived with his cup of morning coffee.
“Everything all right, Miss Hooks?” he inquired as he always did once the cup of coffee had safely been passed over. The judge had never rid himself of an anxiety that Miss Hooks would stumble over her floor-length black gown at the vital moment and fall down on him in a rain of scalding black coffee, but it hadn’t happened yet.
“Yes, your Lordship. Jury are in their room,” replied Miss Hooks, just as she always had done, except for that memorable day two years before when a younger juror had given Miss Hooks the slip and escaped from the building in midtrial.
Miss Hooks was a creature of routine, and to Judge Granger she was as much a part of the courtroom landscape as the barristers’ wigs and gowns and the old clock that kept the time above the defendant’s head. He’d never had a meaningful conversation with her, and to the extent that he had ever thought about it, he assumed that she did not pay attention to any of the evidence after she’d gotten the witness seated and sworn in. That wasn’t her department. The old judge imagined what a good job she’d have made of placing the black cap on his head if capital punishment were still in force. She’d probably have a little iron in the ushers’ room, where she could get the cap nicely pressed in anticipation of a guilty verdict.
Judge Granger did not believe in God, but he thanked him anyway that he had never had to sentence anyone to death. There were always cases where he did not feel sure. Like this one for instance. She was a strange fish, this Lady Greta Robinson. He had sat opposite her for two days now, making sure not to catch her glittering green eyes, and he still didn’t know what to make of her. She was obviously clever, as well as pretty, and she had nothing in common with the usual listless defendants fidgeting in their chair as incomprehensible legal arguments droned on in front of them. The judge had watched the way she balanced her notebook on her knee, looking at each witness intently and occasionally passing notes to Miles Lambert. He certainly seemed to believe in her.
John Sparling kept producing all these bits of evidence like they were links in a sturdy chain, but they didn’t feel like that to the judge. An unlocked gate and an open window. The victim could have left the gate unlocked herself, and the window might not be sinister at all. The defendant had admitted leaving it open after all, and it had been a summer evening. What else? A few angry words muttered in a hallway; an identification from behind, and now this locket. Would this clever young lady really have kept such a dangerous trophy? And what did she need a trophy for when she’d gotten the husband and the money? So much seemed to depend on this boy, Thomas. It certainly wasn’t usual for the chief prosecution witness to testify last, but of course there was a reason for that. Sparling said the boy had been traumatized by the return of the killers a week before the trial began. If this had happened, trauma would be too mild a word for the boy’s experience. But had it happened? What was it the statement said: the killer had looked for him in the house but hadn’t found him because he was hidden in a bench, and so this “Rosie” had gone away, but not before he’d implicated Greta, the defendant, by name. There was something all too convenient about this reappearance; something that just didn’t feel right.