Final Witness (31 page)

    “I want to start with this man Rosie,” said Miles Lambert in a friendly tone. “You say you first saw him outside your father’s house in London?”

    “Yes.”

    “In the dark?”

    “He was standing under a streetlight.”

    “With his back to you.”

    “Yes.”

    “And he never turned around.”

    “No, he didn’t. He’d have seen me if he had.”

    “So you never saw his face.”

    “Not that time. No.”

    “Just the back of his head where he had a scar.”

    “Yes, it was long and thick too. I saw it because he had his hair in a ponytail.”

    “Ah yes, the ponytail. Plenty of men have ponytails though, don’t they, Thomas? Scars too.”

    “Not like that one. Somebody must have taken a knife to him to do that.”

    “Very dramatic. The point I’m making, Thomas, is that you can’t possibly say that the man under the streetlight is the same as the man who murdered your mother on the basis of a view from behind.”

    “I’m
sure
it was the same person.”

    “Even though you only saw the man in your house for a few seconds through a spy hole in a bookcase?”

    “I will never forget his face.”

    “You saw one man from behind and the other for only a few seconds when you were beside yourself with terror and distress and you jumped to a conclusion, which was based on very weak evidence. That’s the truth, isn’t it, Thomas?”

    “They were the same person.”

    “You jumped to the conclusion because you wanted to blame Greta Grahame for what had happened.”

    “No.”

    “Because you felt guilty that you hadn’t been able to save your mother from those men when you had saved yourself, and so you needed someone to blame.” Miles went on relentlessly.

    “No, it’s not true. I couldn’t have saved her. She was behind me. She pushed me forward in there. I didn’t shut the bookcase – ”

    “It’s all right, Thomas,” said the judge kindly. “Try to calm down. I know this is difficult for you. Mr. Lambert, try to be less confrontational.”

    “Yes, my Lord. Thomas, I’m not saying you were to blame in any way for what happened that night. That’s the last thing I’m trying to say. I’m just suggesting that you feel guilty about it. People do feel guilty even though they shouldn’t when someone close to them dies. You know what I’m saying, don’t you, Thomas?”

    “Yes, I suppose so,” said Thomas reluctantly.

    “And if you feel guilty, then you need someone else to blame, don’t you?”

    “I don’t know.”

    “You were upset with Greta at that time, though, weren’t you? Before your mother died.”

    “In a way.”

    “In a way. You were upset with her because she had rejected you.”

    Thomas said nothing but he blushed deeply. He turned involuntarily to look at Greta in the dock and found her staring at him intently.

    “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Thomas? She took you out in London, and on the way back home in a taxi you told her that she was beautiful and that you loved her, and she rejected you. She said you were too young. Isn’t that right, Thomas?”

    “Yes,” said Thomas almost in a whisper.

    “I can’t hear you, Thomas,” said Miles Lambert. “Was that a yes?”

    “Yes.”

    There was silence in the courtroom. Sparling shifted uncomfortably in his seat. This revelation had come as an unpleasant surprise. There was nothing about it in Thomas’s statement. What else had the boy left out? Sparling wondered.

    Miles Lambert allowed the silence to build, and with it Thomas’s discomfort, before he asked his next question.

    “All this happened less than two months before your mother’s death, didn’t it, Thomas?”

    “Yes.”

    “So the rejection was fresh in your memory?”

    “I didn’t think about it.”

    “Are you sure about that, Thomas? You told Greta that you loved her.”

    “I didn’t mean it.”

    “So you told her something that was untrue?”

    “No. I meant it at the time, I suppose, but it was just something that happened that afternoon. It was just something that came into my head.”

    “I see. Love is a strong emotion, Thomas, isn’t it? Comes up on you unawares, like hate. Are you sure you didn’t start hating Greta because she didn’t love you like you wanted her to?”

    “No. It wasn’t like that.”

    “But you hate her now, don’t you, Thomas?”

    “I hate her for what she did to my mother.”

    “Can you remember not hating her?”

    “I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t hate her that afternoon in the taxi. It seems so long ago now.”

    “I suggest that’s when you did start hating her, Thomas. Then a chance similarity between two men brought your hate and your guilt together, and that’s where all this started, isn’t that right?”

    “Don’t answer that, Thomas,” said the judge. “Make your questions clear and direct, Mr. Lambert. We’re not here to listen to you give us a lecture on psychiatry.”

    “No, my Lord,” said Miles. “Thomas, I want to take you back to the night in London when you saw the man with the scar. You never saw him with Greta, did you?”

    “No.”

    “You can’t say that the man under the streetlight was the same as the person that Greta was talking to in the basement?”

    “No. I know it was, though. They both went upstairs because they heard those creeps looking for me. Greta thought they might be burglars.”

    “Did you hear Greta tell the other person in the basement to go upstairs?”

    “No.”

    “Did you see him go up the basement steps to the street?”

    “No, I ran upstairs to get away. Like I said before.”

    “And then you just saw the man standing there. You didn’t see where he’d come from.”

    “I didn’t see but I knew.”

    “Well, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for your knowledge, Thomas. Let’s just go back to the man in the basement, whom we can agree about.”

    But Thomas had had enough of being manipulated.

    “Why?
She
didn’t agree about it,” he said angrily. “
She
lied about being down there. She said she was in Manchester. That’s what she told my father the next evening. I heard her.”

    “Thomas, you’ve already given evidence about that,” said the judge. “Try just to answer Mr. Lambert’s questions.”

    “You’ve told Mr. Sparling what Greta said to the man,” pursued Miles, “and I don’t have any argument about that, but I want to be quite clear about one thing. You just don’t know whether Greta said ‘Can’t you see I haven’t got
it
yet,’ or ‘Can’t you see I haven’t got
him
yet.’ Is that right?”

    “Yes, that’s right.”

    “Good. Then Greta said she was going upstairs, and you told us before lunch that she said: ‘Mrs. Posh won’t hear.’ I dispute that, Thomas. My client never called your mother Mrs. Posh.”

    “Yes she did. Just like Aunt Jane heard her saying about Mum after Mattie died. She called her Mrs. Posh then too.”

    “Did I hear that right, Thomas? Do you agree that you’ve been talking to Mrs. Martin about her evidence?”

    “I talked to her about what happened after it happened. Of course I did.”

    “You talked to her before she gave her evidence, compared notes. Is that what you’re saying, Thomas?”

    “We talked, yes. We weren’t comparing notes. She heard what she heard and I heard what I heard.”

    “And they both turned out to be the same thing. Very convenient. Now, Thomas, I want to turn to the day of your mother’s death. Let me assure you in advance that none of my questions should distress you too much – ”

    “I’m glad to hear it, Mr. Lambert,” interrupted the judge. “Let’s get on and have the questions, though, shall we? We don’t need a prologue.”

    This time Miles Lambert ignored the judge’s interruption. He wasn’t going to be put off his stride at this – the most important point of the trial – because of old Granger’s concern for a sixteen-year-old. Thomas was the one who had gathered the evidence that had made it possible for the prosecution to put his client in the dock. Those were hardly the actions of a vulnerable boy – more those of a determined young man. The case depended on Thomas’s credibility, and the jurors were entitled to hear a proper cross-examination of his evidence. Judge Granger’s interruptions wouldn’t stop Miles from doing his job.

    “You have told us this morning that you assumed from what your mother said that the initiative for the arrangement for you to stay with your friend Edward Ball on the Monday evening came from Edward’s mother.”

    “That’s right.”

    “Did your mother say that the Balls had invited you?”

    “I think so. I’m not sure of exactly what she said.”

    “Could your mother have said that it was her idea for you to go to the Balls?”

    “I don’t think so.”

    “All right, is it possible that your mother didn’t say who had made the arrangement but that you just assumed that Mrs. Ball had invited you.”

    “I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible.”

    “Thank you. Now, you’ve given evidence that you became anxious when Mrs. Ball told you that it was in fact Greta who had arranged for you to go over there.”

    “That’s right.”

    “Why did you get anxious, Thomas?”

    “Because that wasn’t her job. She had nothing to do with my arrangements.”

    “Fair enough, but it would be different if your mother had asked her to ring up Mrs. Ball, wouldn’t it?”

    “My mother would never have done that.”

    “Why not? She had a headache on the Sunday afternoon when the arrangement was made, didn’t she?”

    “I’m not sure. I think so.”

    “So why wouldn’t she have asked Greta to do her a favor?”

    “She’d have asked Aunt Jane, not Greta.”

    “Mrs. Martin was out on Sunday afternoon.”

    “My mother would have waited until she got back then, or rung up herself.”

    “Why not ask Greta though? She was there.”

    “Because my mother would never have asked Greta for anything.”

    “Why not?”

    “Because she didn’t like her.”

    “I see. And what makes you say that, Thomas?”

    “It was obvious. She avoided Greta. She never went to London because of her.”

    “But she took you to London in April when you made your declaration in the taxi, and she went up for the Chelsea Flower Show four days before she died. Greta was there both times.”

    “She always went to the Flower Show. She had to because of the roses.”

    “I see. Did she tell you that she was avoiding London because of Greta?”

    “No. I knew it though.”

    “You knew it. Did she tell you that she didn’t like Greta?”

    “No. She didn’t tell me but she told Greta. After Greta let my dog out and pushed me over. My mother told her that she’d turned my father against us and that she was poisonous, poisonous like a snake.”

    “That wasn’t all your mother said to Greta that day though, was it, Thomas? She went into the study with you and apologized to Greta for those things that she’d said, and Greta accepted the apology. Isn’t that right, Thomas?”

    “Yes. She didn’t mean it though.”

    “Who didn’t mean it?”

    “Greta. She hated my mother. No, that’s not it. She wanted to become her. That’s why she sent me to Edward’s. Because she wanted to save me. I was part of what she was going to get.”

    “Well, thank you for giving us the benefit of your theory, Thomas, but that’s all it is, isn’t it? You haven’t got one shred of evidence to support what you’ve just said, have you?”

    “I saw the way she looked at my mother. She tried on her clothes.”

    “Yes, she did, but that’s not quite the same as arranging to have your mother killed, now, is it?”

    “I know what she did.”

    “So you say. Now, you’ve told us that you decided to come home from the Balls after you couldn’t reach your mother on the telephone. Mrs. Ball drove you home and dropped you off at the front gate. How did you get in?”

    “I had keys. To the front door too.”

    “About what time was this?”

    “I don’t know. Sometime around half past eight.”

    “How long after you made the phone call to your mother did you get home?”

    “I don’t know. Twenty minutes, half an hour. I wasn’t wearing a watch.”

    “Did you leave immediately after you phoned up and got no reply?”

    “No, we talked about it a bit and Mrs. Ball’s husband called about something.”

    “So you got home, and you’ve already told us that you closed the window that you found open in the study. Then you went upstairs and opened the window in your bedroom.”

    “Yes, I did.”

    “Because it was a warm evening?”

    “That’s right.”

    “Did you keep it open when it started raining?”

    “Yes, it wasn’t a storm.”

    “You were lying on your bed and your mother was asleep in her room.”

    “Yes. I’d just turned my light off when I heard the car drive up. Then I saw them coming across the lawn toward the study window, and one of them was really upset that the windows were all closed.”

    “‘Fuck. They’re all fucking closed.’ That’s what you told us earlier that the man said.” Miles seemed to enunciate the swear words with particular relish.

    “Yes,” replied Thomas. “He was angry.”

    “Did you see the man say it?”

    “No. I was sitting on my bed. They were below the window.”