by Ruth Mancini
I stop talking and pick up my drink, indicating that I’ve finished. I take a sip and peer at Will over the top.
Will lets out a whistle. ‘So, let me guess,’ he says. ‘Eleanor paid the au pair to distract Jay for a moment while she pushed little George into the lake?’
‘I don’t know,’ I tell him. ‘But it looks as though I’m going to have to find out.’
Will smiles and narrows his eyes. ‘How are you going to do that?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’m still working on it.’
Will nods, slowly. ‘I’ll bet you are.’
He looks at me for a long moment and then pulls his file of papers towards him. He slides out the page with the prosecution batting order. He says, ‘Well, I estimate that you’ve got until Thursday. I think that’s the day when Lady Barrington-Brown will take the stand. In the meantime, I’ve got a whole lot of cross-examination to prepare.’
‘And I have to go and get Ben.’ I stand up. ‘So how do we play it in the meantime, in terms of strategy?’
Will smiles. ‘I’ll just challenge everything,’ he says.
21
Tuesday and Wednesday are uneventful, in that the evidence we hear is broadly consistent with the all too familiar statements I’ve pored over with Ellie and Will for the past six months. We hear from a host of professionals: social workers, nurses, doctors and experts. We see colour exhibits of Finn’s burns and bruises and we see him hooked up to life support equipment in the PICU at St Martin’s. I watch the faces of the jurors – seven women and five men – as the jury bundles are opened and the evidence of Finn’s suffering is sifted through. I try to imagine how they must feel, especially those who are parents. I know that behind their dispassionate faces, Carmel has made sure that emotions are running high.
At each stage, Will does the best he can to raise as many questions as he can in the minds of the jury, but, if I’m honest with myself, little ground has been gained. The toxicologist is especially intransigent, dodging Will’s question as to whether it’s at all possible that the sodium levels in Finn’s body could be accounted for by a badly made up oral rehydration solution, given to him in hospital after he’d already become ill, and steadfastly refusing to concede that anything that Finn might have swallowed accidentally could have caused a sodium level this high. Will’s cross-examination closes awkwardly, with a resounding declaration from the expert that ‘Young children do not spontaneously and voluntarily ingest sufficient quantities of salt to cause significant hypernatraemia. Significant levels such as these are more usually associated with child abuse.’
On Thursday, Ben wakes me at five o’clock and I climb out of bed with a heavy heart, my final late-night online trawl through the archives of the Esher News and Mail having failed to provide me with any reference to George Barrington-Brown, either living or dead. I’d spotted several more mentions of his parents and the Grove Park estate through the late seventies and early eighties, and there were even one or two photos of the family, including Jay, but never George. Any hopes I’d had of finding a skeleton in the Barrington-Brown closet have been dashed. Will’s ‘challenge all’ strategy is the only one we’ve got.
I give Ben his breakfast and then sit at the kitchen table, sipping my tea and checking my emails while Ben sits in his chair opposite me, his finger-food breakfast of bread, egg and chunks of melon spread out in front of him. He swipes up a piece of bread with his fist, pushes as much as he can into his mouth, and plonks the rest down again on the table, his plastic plate having been pushed to one side.
I hear a clunk as my mail drops through the door, and I go out into the hallway to fetch it. It’s now been four working days since I ordered the copy death certificate for George and it should have arrived by now. But there’s nothing on the mat except for a bank statement and a postcard that is actually an advert from an estate agency. I bend down and pick up Ben’s sippy cup from the floor for the tenth time this morning, before sitting back at the table and logging on to genesandarchives.com. I look for a phone number, but there is only a contact form, which I half-heartedly complete and submit; I’m never sure if those website forms are going to reach an actual person. But it doesn’t matter much, anyway, I tell myself. Even if the death certificate had arrived in time, it would only have confirmed the cause of death, not the circumstances behind it. If Eleanor had, indeed, paid the au pair to push little George into the lake, we’d still be unable to prove a thing.
Once we’re both dressed, I drop Ben at school and then take the Tube to court. For once, Ellie is there early and Will ushers us into an alcove, where we run through her instructions again. At five to ten the tannoy sounds and all parties in the case of Stephens are called into the courtroom. The usher unlocks the door to the dock and Ellie steps inside and sits down.
As Eleanor Barrington-Brown enters the courtroom, there’s a respectful silence. All eyes are on her as she crosses the room. She exudes wealth and style; she’s wearing a white cashmere cape over a pair of black trousers. Her hair has been highlighted and is pulled up onto the top of her head in a French twist, almost identical to the one Ellie was wearing on Monday. She’s older, of course, but they are similar in height and stature. Watching her from a distance, I can now see how easily Mary’s description of Eleanor might have been misinterpreted by the police. She steps into the witness box and turns, elegantly, lowering her head slightly as the usher appears behind her and whispers into her ear. She is then handed a copy of the Bible and is sworn in.
Carmel asks her to identify herself for the court and as she answers the first few questions I’m surprised to detect a hint of nervousness in her voice. As Carmel takes her through her evidence, however, her confidence increases and her answers become more lengthy and profound. She smiles, modestly, as she tells the court of her charitable adoption of Ellie into the family, once she had got over the initial shock of hearing that her son had impregnated a teenage girl that he had only just met. She makes no mention of Ellie’s occupation, although she openly admits to having had reservations about the couple’s intention to keep and raise the baby between them, whilst living in separate homes. This was not, however, because she had any ill feeling toward Ellie – quite the contrary, she says. She felt sorry for her and wanted to help her. But she could see that Ellie was far too immature and insecure to be a mother.
Eleanor shakes her head sadly as she tells the court that she had known from the outset that Ellie was not ready to have a baby. She had suspected that she was never going to cope, and had mentally prepared herself to be on standby, ready to pick up the slack. She had been unprepared, however, for Ellie’s insistence that she was a perfectly adequate parent and had been completely frustrated in her efforts to try and help.
‘So what was Ellis like as a mother?’ Carmel asks.
‘Unpredictable. Impatient. And – worst of all – incorrigible,’ says Eleanor. ‘She thought she knew best and wouldn’t be told.’
‘Can you give me an example?’
‘She would leave Finn lying on the bed, when he was just a few weeks old. I told her that he could roll off and hurt himself, but she wouldn’t listen. We had several arguments about that. On another occasion, on my husband’s birthday, I noticed that Finn was having trouble breathing. I told her that he needed to see a doctor, and she told me to mind my own business. She took Finn and stormed off out of the house in anger.’
‘What else did she do – or not do – that concerned you?’ Carmel asks.
‘She shouted at him. She lost her temper with him, more than once, in my presence. She didn’t seem to understand that he was just a baby, that all babies cry.’
‘Well, they usually cry for a reason, don’t they?’ Carmel says. ‘How in tune was Ellis with Finn, do you think?’
‘She wasn’t at all in tune with him,’ Eleanor says. ‘She acted as though he was just crying to annoy her. Most of the time, she seemed more interested in her mobile phone than she did in him.’
I
can hear movement to my left. I turn round to see Ellie, standing up in the dock, leaning forward and passing a slip of paper down to the usher. I hold out my hand and the usher passes it to me. I open it. It says, in large capital letters, THIS IS BULLSHIT. NONE OF THIS IS TRUE!
I turn round and make an ‘it’s OK’ gesture with my hand. Ellie mouths, ‘What the fuck?’ but she sits back down again.
When I turn back again, Eleanor is being asked about the bruises on Finn’s body.
‘Of course, if I’d seen them, if I’d known, I would have reported her to the police,’ she says, ruefully. ‘I did feel that she was handling him too roughly. When I tried to suggest that she needed to be more careful with him, she became angry and defensive. That was one of the last times I saw him, before he was admitted to hospital in April; after that argument, she pretty much stopped bringing him round.’
Eleanor’s evidence in chief lasts for over an hour. Her shock and horror at Ellie’s subsequent ill-treatment of Finn knows no bounds. She looks straight at the jury, dry-eyed and stoic, as she describes the pain she’d felt on finding out that her grandson had been poisoned. But she is unable to hide her distress when she tells them how hard it had been to sit next to his bed in the intensive care ward while ‘the poor little mite’ battled, a second time, for his life. She sinks down into her seat with her hands over her face, and her shoulders begin to heave. Carmel steps back and waits in a satisfied silence while Eleanor is offered a tissue and a glass of water by the usher. Judge Collins sits there for a moment, too, looking uncomfortable and muttering, ‘Take your time, Lady Barrington-Brown.’ But when there is still no sign of her sobs subsiding, he gives her fifteen minutes to compose herself. She is released under instruction not to talk to anyone about the case and the jurors are told to take a break.
Will looks at me and winces. This is the atmosphere in which his cross-examination of her is about to begin. I glance across at the jurors as they file solemnly out of the courtroom; while their faces remain expressionless, they can’t fail to have been moved by everything they’ve just heard.
I pull my phone out of my pencil case as Eleanor Barrington-Brown is led out of the courtroom by the usher. I can see that I have missed a call from the school. When Judge Collins rises, I rise too.
‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I say to Will and indicate the same to Ellie, who remains seated in the dock. I pick up my bag and leave the room, running straight into an alcove opposite and quickly dialling the school office number, without listening to the message that’s been left.
The receptionist answers.
‘Oh hello, Ms Kellerman. There’s nothing to worry about. Ben’s fine. But you didn’t fill out the consent form for the school trip this afternoon. We just want to know if he can go?’
I breathe a sigh of relief. ‘Of course. I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘I’ll send you an email right away.’
I end the call and swipe my phone screen to the right. The email inbox icon tells me that I have twenty-five new emails. I know this is not the case; my stupid phone seems to keep marking ‘read’ emails as ‘unread’. I open up the inbox and am about to click on the ‘Compose’ icon when a thought suddenly occurs to me. I go into my settings and into my junk folder, and heave a sigh of annoyance with myself as I see that, sitting there, marked as spam, is a two-day-old email from [email protected]. George’s death certificate.
I open up the email and click on the attachment, but, frustratingly, it won’t open. I put my phone down on the table in front of me and pull my iPad out of my bag. I open my email folder and scroll down to ‘Junk’, find the email and click on the attachment. This time it works and the death certificate appears.
My eyes scan quickly past the name, date and place of death (Grove House, Esher, Surrey) to the ‘Cause of Death’ section. But when I read what’s written there, in large spidery handwriting, I am completely knocked for six.
I stand there in the alcove for a moment, my heart racing. I then pull myself together and run across the hallway and back into Court One.
‘Careful,’ smiles the usher, as I collide with her in the doorway. ‘You’ve got another five minutes yet. No need to run.’
Ellie looks up from the dock in bewilderment as I dash past her and slide into the advocates’ bench next to Will. He looks up from his papers, his red pen poised above his draft cross-examination of Eleanor Barrington-Brown. He pushes his glasses back onto his nose and looks at me, absently. I can tell his mind is still on the task ahead.
I take a deep breath and put my hand against my chest.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asks, when he notices my face.
Carmel glances over at us. The usher has returned to the courtroom with a fresh jug of water and is also looking in my direction. I can hear rattling and chattering from up above as the public gallery fills up again. There are three reporters sitting directly to my left.
I push my iPad across the desk towards Will and put my mouth to his ear. ‘It’s George Kent’s death certificate,’ I whisper. ‘Look at the cause of death.’
I watch Will’s face as he first checks out George’s name, and date and place of death. Then I see his eyes slide across the page and his mouth fall open. Carmel is still watching us from across the bench. She puts her head to one side and sucks on her bottom lip.
Will turns to face me. His eyes widen behind his glasses and seek out mine. We sit there, speechless, just looking at each other for a moment. I pull my lips together to stop a smile spreading across my mouth.
‘Right. OK,’ Will mutters, finally. He looks from Carmel to the usher and back again and then stands up. ‘I need to—’ he begins, but before he can say any more we hear a familiar tap on the door and the usher says, ‘All rise.’
Judge Collins strides over to his seat and nods to the usher. ‘Can the jury be brought in?’
‘No!’ says Will, abruptly.
The judge narrows his eyes and asks, ‘Mr Gaskin? Do you have something to say?’
‘I do apologise, My Lord,’ says Will, ‘but a matter of some importance has arisen. May I address you before the jury returns?’
Judge Collins peers at him for a moment. Carmel seizes the moment and rises to her feet.
‘My Lord,’ she says. ‘I haven’t been made aware of any issue by the defence.’
The judge looks from Will to Carmel and then back to Will again. ‘Mr Gaskin?’
Will clears his throat. ‘My Lord, that’s because I have only, in the past few moments, been made aware of it myself. A document has come to my attention, one which sheds a rather different light on the defence case and the way we may wish to present it. With your permission, and of course, after having made my learned friend aware, there are some matters of a rather unexpected nature that I may wish to put to the witness, Lady Barrington-Brown.’
Carmel frowns and shakes her head.
Judge Collins says, ‘Well, what is it, then? What is this change of direction?’
‘I wish to make a non-defendant bad character application. The defendant believes that Lady Barrington-Brown is lying and is, in fact, the perpetrator of these crimes against her grandson.’
There is an audible gasp from the public gallery. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the reporters, their eyes wide with suppressed shock and delight.
Carmel leaps to her feet. ‘I oppose the application!’ she shrieks. ‘This is preposterous! Lady Barrington-Brown is a witness, not a suspect in this case.’
‘So what is this document?’ asks the judge.
Carmel makes an exasperated face as I slide my iPad towards Will. He picks it up and moves over to where Carmel is sitting. He passes her the iPad.
‘It’s a copy death certificate, My Lord. It’s the death certificate of Lady Barrington-Brown’s first-born child.’
Carmel puts on her glasses and peers disdainfully at the death certificate. ‘How do we know that it’s genuine?’ she splutters, angrily. ‘It’s an electronic copy. It could ha
ve come from anywhere. And the surname’s “Kent”. How do we even know that this is her child?’
‘“Kent” is the maiden name of Lady Barrington-Brown,’ says Will. ‘She should be able to tell us if it’s her child.’ He adds, ‘She’s known professionally as Dr Kent.’
A shadow of recognition crosses Carmel’s face as she turns to look at Will, her mouth slightly open. I know that she has made the connection; she’s a clever woman, there’s no doubt about that. She looks back down at the iPad and studies it carefully before handing it back to Will.
‘My Lord, if this is Lady Barrington-Brown’s child, he would have been just five years old when she lost him,’ she says, anxiously. ‘She will be distraught. You can’t possibly allow the defence to pursue such an insensitive line of questioning.’
Will passes the iPad to the usher who hands it up to the judge. He considers it, gravely, for a moment, his eyes flickering across the screen and alighting on the cause of death. He narrows his eyes and draws his head back as he reads. He then looks up at Will and hands the iPad back to the usher without comment, other than to say, ‘Any further observations, Ms Oliver?’
‘The defence are required to put the Crown on notice before making a bad character application,’ Carmel says, but her voice lacks conviction.
Will rises to his feet. ‘As I said, My Lord, this document was only brought to my attention a matter of minutes ago, just before you came into the courtroom.’
Judge Collins makes a note on his pad and squints pensively at it for a moment before saying, ‘I will allow the application. Do you have any proof of origin in relation to the certificate, Mr Gaskin?’