Final Witness

by Simon Tolkien

  The judge turned his head toward the counsel for the prosecution and nodded imperceptibly.

  John Sparling got slowly to his feet and gathered his gown about him.

  “Good morning, members of the jury. Let me begin by introducing myself to you. I am John Sparling, and I am appearing for the prosecution in this case, and on my right is Miles Lambert, who is representing the defendant. She is sitting in the dock.”

  Sparling paused after the word dock, on which he had laid a heavy emphasis, as if he wished to imply that that was where the defendant should be.

  “Members of the jury, I am now going to open this case to you, and that has nothing to do with keys and doors.” Sparling laughed gently, eliciting the same response from several of the jurors. He knew the importance of making contact with the jury, and he never made the mistake of talking down to them, treating them instead with an unwavering courtesy. “No, the opening is designed to help you.”

  Miles Lambert grimaced. Sparling always used this trick of portraying himself as the jury’s assistant helping them to reach the only possible verdict: guilty as charged.

  “To help you to understand the evidence by giving you a framework within which to place it. This is particularly necessary because the Crown’s most important witness will be giving evidence last.”

  Sparling did not say why. He did not tell the jury that Thomas Robinson was too traumatized to come to court to give evidence today. Instead he made it seem as if this were the Crown’s decision. To save the best for last.

  “And so, members of the jury, let me tell you what this case is about. It is about an old house and the people who lived there. The House of the Four Winds was built in the sixteenth century and is famous for its rose gardens and an ornamental staircase that curves up from the front hall to the first floor above. The staircase is important, and I shall come back to it later.

  “The house is on the outskirts of a fishing town called Flyte on the coast of Suffolk. The Sackville family have lived there for generations. Lady Anne Sackville was born in the house, and her mother had no other children. At about nine-thirty on the evening of the thirty-first of May last year she was murdered in the house by two men, who have not to this day been identified. The hunt to apprehend them continues.

  “Lady Anne married Peter Robinson. You may have heard of him, members of the jury. He is now Sir Peter Robinson, and he is the minister for defense in the present government. They had one son, Thomas, who is now aged sixteen. You will be hearing from him next week.

  “Sir Peter had a personal assistant, who is the defendant. She has now become his second wife, and the Crown says that that is part of what she hoped to achieve when she entered into a conspiracy to murder Lady Anne Robinson.

  “It is clear that Sir Peter came to depend heavily on the defendant’s assistance, and he would take her with him on his weekend visits to the House of the Four Winds. I will leave it to the witnesses to describe to you how the relationships between the family members and the defendant developed in the ensuing two years, but it is right to say that by the spring of 1999 the defendant and Lady Anne were certainly not friends.

  “I come now to the day of the murder. The thirty-first of May 1999. The housekeeper, Mrs. Martin, left at five o’clock, as she was going to stay with her sister in Woodbridge. This was something that she almost always did on a Monday evening, but on this occasion she was accompanied in her car by Thomas. Mrs. Martin was giving him a lift to a friend’s house in Flyte, where he was due to spend the night. You will hear evidence from the mother of this friend that it was the defendant who made this arrangement. This had never happened before, members of the jury, and the Crown says that it is highly significant. It shows that the defendant wished Lady Anne to be alone in the house later in the evening.

  “Before she left, Mrs. Martin checked that the windows and doors in the house were secure, and she also checked that the east and west gates and the door in the north wall were locked. This was her custom, and she did not deviate from it on the afternoon of the thirty-first of May.”

  Sparling paused and drank some water. He appeared to hesitate and then picked up some documents from the table in front of him as if coming to a decision.

  “I have spoken of doors and gates, and before I go any further I need to explain the layout of the house and its grounds. There are photographs and a plan.”

  Again Sparling paused while the diminutive usher with the long gown distributed copies to the jury. His opening was going well. Sparling could see that. The eyes of all the jurors were fixed upon him. He had their undivided attention.

  “You will see the points of the compass in the corner of the plan, members of the jury. To the east of the house is the sea and to the west the main road connecting the coastal towns of Flyte and Carmouth. To the south are the grounds of another property, and to the north is a small, unpaved stretch of road that runs from the main road down to the beach alongside the north wall of the property, and it was here that the two killers parked their car at about half past nine that evening. There were tire marks found in this lane, which are consistent with a car turning at speed.

  “They parked their car and then entered the grounds through the door in the north wall, which was unlocked. The police found footprints on both sides of the door, but there were no signs that the door had been forced or that the lock had been picked. It was unlocked at half past nine, but at five o’clock Mrs. Martin had left it locked. The Crown says that it was unlocked by the defendant before she left the house at half past seven with Sir Peter Robinson in order to drive down to London, where Sir Peter was to attend a government meeting early the next day.

  “Turn now to your album of photographs, members of the jury. You can see the lane and the door in the first two photographs, and then there are pictures of the outside of the house. Notice the wide lawn that the killers had to cross to get to the house from the north wall.”

  Greta sat in the dock listening to Sparling even though she would have preferred not to. She could see how the jurors were hanging on the loathsome lawyer’s every word as he slowly set the scene and painted in his characters. All of them had names, of course, except her. She was the defendant.

  And now there were photographs to look at. They were supposed to help the jury imagine what the place was really like, except that the small police photographs could convey nothing of its reality, thought Greta. The reality of the murder, perhaps, but not the haunted beauty of the House of the Four Winds. The leaded windows set in the old stone weathered by thousands of North Sea storms. The symmetry of the six ancient yew trees standing guard over the front approach and the wide lawns shimmering under the elm trees. All of it encircled by the high stone wall covered by generations of lichens and mosses.

  Greta pictured to herself the two wooden doors in the wall, each bearing an inscription in faded early-nineteenth-century gold lettering. Beyond Lady Anne’s rose gardens to the right of the house was “the South Wind,” and that opening onto the lane was “the North Wind.” Greta did not know if there had once been west- and east-wind doors set in the walls at the front and the back of the house, but if so, they were now long gone, replaced by black wrought-iron gates of intricate design.

  Greta had never seen the south door open. Over the years it had become half obscured by a rampant rambling rose, which flowered brilliant white in the summer. However, the north door was in constant use, as it was the most frequently taken route from the house to the beach. It was opened with a huge key that hung from a nail in the back hall, and Greta well remembered the part played by the old key in the games that a younger Thomas used to play when she first visited the house with Peter more than three years before. It was the key of the castle, and seeing it as she came down the back stairs from her bedroom in the mornings, Greta had caught herself wondering more than once what it would be like to be the mistress of the House of the Four Winds.

  “The two killers crossed the lawn and came to a halt in
front of the study windows.” Sparling had finished showing the jury the exterior photographs and had now resumed his account of the night of the murder.

  “‘Fuck,’ said one of them. ‘They’re all fucking closed.’

  “He said this because he expected at least one of the windows to be open. You will recall that Mrs. Martin checked the windows before she left at five o’clock and they were secure, but when Thomas came home unexpectedly at eight-thirty he discovered that the window facing onto the north lawn was open. He closed it before he went up to his bedroom. The Crown says that it was the defendant who left that window open.

  “Thomas Robinson came home because he had found that it was the defendant who had arranged for him to spend the night at the house of his friend in Flyte and he had been unable to get his mother to answer the telephone. On his return he found her asleep, and there is agreed medical evidence that Lady Anne took a sleeping tablet that evening. Her son did not wake her but went himself to his bedroom at the end of the corridor overlooking the north lawn.

  “He had turned out his light but was not asleep when he heard a car drive up and park in the lane. Going to his window, he saw two figures crossing the lawn and then come to a halt in front of the study window below where Thomas was standing. It was then that Thomas heard one of the men say those important words: ‘Fuck. They’re all fucking closed.’

  “Foul language, members of the jury. Foul language and foul play.

  “Within seconds the men began to smash out the glass in one of the study windowpanes. It is possible that the butt of a handgun was used for this purpose. One of them then leaned in and opened the window latch. Either at this point or as they climbed into the study, one of the men cut himself slightly on the broken glass, and the small amount of blood that was left on the windowsill was sufficient to yield a DNA profile. Unfortunately, however, no match for the profile has been found on the police national DNA database.

  “Once inside the two men made their way through the study into the main entrance hall. You can see the layout of the ground floor on the plan, members of the jury. By this time Thomas had gone to his mother’s room and shaken her awake. It was his idea to go to the hiding place that is situated at the top of the front stairs, and he pulled his mother along after him. She was wearing a long white nightdress and no slippers.

  “This hiding place is almost as old as the house, members of the jury, and you can see it in your photographs. It was made for Catholic priests to hide in when the Protestant government was searching for them in the sixteenth century, and it is clever but simple as the best of these priests’ holes are. There is a wide bookcase at the top of the stairs, which turns on its axis when a certain set of books is pressed. Behind them is a lever, which operates the mechanism.

  “Thomas and his mother could hear the breaking of glass and the men moving down below. They got to the bookcase just as the men arrived in the hall. The men heard the movement at the top of the stairs when Thomas opened the bookcase, and they shone their flashlights up the staircase. He heard one of them shout: ‘There she is. She’s up there. Look, she’s up there.’ And then he felt the bookcase close so that he was shut in the hiding place alone. His mother had shut him in to save him. She knew that they had seen her, but her son was already inside and she hoped that they would not see the bookcase close. She was right. She did save her son, but she could not save herself.

  “They shot her twice. The first bullet was fired upward from the bottom of the stairs and hit her in the shoulder as she stood in front of the bookcase. She fell down screaming, and then one of the two men came up the stairs and shot her again. Shot her in the head and killed her while her son was no more than ten feet away. Less than the distance that I am from you now, members of the jury.”

  Sparling stopped. He had achieved his purpose. He could see anger in the eyes of the jurors. Surprise and horror but above all anger. Now was the time to show them the final set of photographs.

  “Here is the murdered woman lying on the carpet with the bookcase behind her. Thomas would have been invisible behind that. And here is the staircase curving up from the hall below. One shot fired from there and then another from point-blank range at the top of the stairs. You can see the wounds. These men came to kill. This was no robbery gone wrong. They came to kill and to rob. And who sent them, members of the jury? Who sent them? That’s the question.”

  Sparling stopped, allowing his gaze to move slowly from one juror to the next. The answer, he seemed to be saying, is to your left. Sitting in the dock with her head bowed because she doesn’t want to look you in the eye.

  The judge looked up and cleared his throat. Sparling was going beyond the boundaries of an opening address. It was time to move on.

  “Yes, Mr. Sparling,” he said, allowing a note of irritation to creep into his voice.

  “Yes, my Lord. I’m sorry,” said the counsel for the prosecution as he closed the album of photographs with visible reluctance.

  The moment was past, but it had been just as unpleasant as Miles Lambert had warned Greta it might be. The photographs were bad. She knew that. They made people angry, seeing all that beauty destroyed by lead bullets. The home invaded. The boy hiding in the dark only a few feet from his mother. There were sacred principles here that had been transgressed, and someone would have to pay. That was the problem. Miles had told her that. The need to make someone responsible. Otherwise the photographs were unbearable.

  “They left her lying there, members of the jury, and went into her bedroom and ransacked it. They took their time because they believed there was no one else in the house. They broke into the small safe concealed behind the portrait of Lady Anne’s grandmother and took the jewelry that Lady Anne kept there. Necklaces, rings and bracelets of enormous value. Heirlooms that had been handed down through generations of Lady Anne’s family, the Sackvilles, going back as far as when the House of the Four Winds was built more than four hundred years ago.

  “Then they left, stepping over the body of Lady Anne to go down the staircase. There is a spy hole in the wall of the hiding place, and Thomas was able to see the faces of the two men in profile as they went past. One of them had a ponytail and a scar behind his right jawbone. Thomas had seen a man with a ponytail and a similar scar with the defendant in London six weeks before, and he believes that the two men are one and the same, although he only saw the man in London for a short time and from behind. It will be for you to weigh up the strength of that evidence when you hear from Thomas Robinson, members of the jury.

  “However, two other matters are significant with regard to the man with the scar. First, neither he nor his companion were wearing masks. They wore gloves but no masks, and the Crown says that this is because they did not care whether Lady Anne saw them or not. Their intention was to kill her, and the dead can tell no tales. They cannot give evidence or attend identification parades.

  “Second, Thomas saw the man with the scar bend down out of sight for a moment as he crossed from the bedroom to the stairs. Thomas could not see the body of his mother, but he knew where she had fallen, and when the man got up Thomas could see him putting something in his pocket. He could see the glint of gold, members of the jury.

  That glint of gold is vitally important. The Crown says that it was a locket that the man with the scar had torn from the dead woman’s neck, leaving a scratch mark there as he did so. That locket subsequently found its way into the possession of the defendant, members of the jury. Into her desk in her husband’s house in London.”

  The jury turned to look at Greta, and she involuntarily bit her lip. That bloody locket, she thought to herself. To be having to sit here exhibited like an animal in a zoo because of a trinket. She turned away, resolved to shut her ears to the rest of Sparling’s speech. That was what Miles had half-jokingly suggested she should do when they had talked about the case in his chambers on Saturday.

  “It’s not evidence, Greta. It’s the evidence we need to worry about. Leave ol
d Sparling to me.”

  She should have taken his advice.

  “The prosecution has the first word, my dear, but we have the last. Remember that. We have the last.”

  Greta smiled. She had a lot of faith in Miles.

  Chapter 8

  One hundred and twenty miles to the east of the Old Bailey the boy who was figuring so prominently in John Sparling’s opening address was standing at his bedroom window in the House of the Four Winds looking out over the broad expanse of the north lawn. It was a bright summer’s day, and the sun shone down through the branches of the elm trees, creating a fantastic play of shadows on the newly mowed grass.

  One hundred yards from where Thomas was standing, the north gate of the property stood closed and locked. Thomas shivered as he looked at it even though his room was warm, even hot. As had happened so often in the last few months, Thomas could not stop his mind from going back to the previous summer, to the night of his mother’s murder.

  In his imagination, Thomas saw the man with the scar and his sidekick pulling up in the lane in the dark. The sidekick would have been driving, Thomas thought, with the other giving directions in his soft, cruel voice. Pushing through the unlocked door in the wall, Thomas imagined that they must have hesitated for a moment while the man fingered the scar running down behind his jaw and let his eyes run over the house, visible in the pale moonlight. Thomas thought of him in that moment as if he were a cat enjoying the defenselessness of what he was about to destroy before he set off across the lawn with the gun hard and metallic in his pocket. He knew where he was going, and nothing would deflect him from his purpose.