about it. Jonathan B. Rowes married a Someone Grahame somewhere in Liverpool sometime in 1989. So what! Why should Rowes be Rosie? Why should Grahame be Greta?”
“Because they are,” said Matthew fervently. “Because of what your father heard Greta saying on the telephone. That she wasn’t his Greta Rose anymore.”
“But she can explain that. Greta Rose is her real name. That much is in the index books.”
“His Greta Rose. That’s what she said.”
“All right, Matthew,” said Thomas, suddenly smiling. “You’re right. We’ve got to keep our hopes up and stop speculating.”
But Thomas’s frustration returned as he gazed up at the cafeteria clock for the hundredth time that morning just as the hands came together at noon.
The bells of the City’s many churches had just finished tolling the hour when John Sparling rose from his chair to resume his cross-examination of Lady Greta Robinson. The courtroom was packed, but there was no noise at all. The world outside seemed a very long way away.
“Let’s focus on the events surrounding the murder of Lady Anne Robinson,” said the prosecution barrister.
“If you wish,” replied Greta in a tone that implied that she didn’t mind if they did or they didn’t.
“You told us yesterday that you rang up Mrs. Ball at Lady Anne’s request to ask if Thomas could go over there.”
“That’s right. It was on the Sunday afternoon.”
“Had Lady Anne ever asked you to do such a thing before?”
“She may have done. I don’t recall. It didn’t seem a very significant request at the time. She had one of her headaches and so she asked me to make the call.”
“Did Lady Anne say why she wanted Thomas to go to his friend’s for the night?”
“No.”
“Didn’t the request strike you as being a bit strange?”
“No. As I said, the whole thing didn’t seem very significant.”
“But Lady Anne had never asked you to make any arrangement for Thomas in all the two and a half years that you’d been working for her husband. Isn’t that right, Lady Robinson?”
“I told you, Mr. Sparling. I don’t recall.”
“You don’t recall. Do you recall lying to Jane Martin about how the arrangement came to be made?”
“No, but I recall Jane Martin lying to this court about what I said to her. I never told her that Mrs. Ball had invited Thomas.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I simply told her about the arrangement. I said nothing about whose idea it was. There was no reason to. She didn’t ask and I didn’t tell her.”
“Why wouldn’t Lady Anne have called Mrs. Ball and made the arrangement herself?”
“Because she had a headache. I told you that already.”
“It must have been a pretty bad headache to stop her making a quick telephone call.”
“It was. They weren’t really headaches, they were more like migraines that she got. She couldn’t do anything when she had them.”
“Except that on this particular Sunday she was able to give you instructions about ringing up Mrs. Ball and making an arrangement for Thomas.”
“That’s right. It didn’t take long.”
“But nor would it have taken her long to make the call.”
“I don’t know. Maybe Anne thought that Mrs. Ball would keep her on the phone.”
“Where’s all this heading, Mr. Sparling?” asked the judge, stirring restlessly in his chair. “We seem to be going round in circles. I think it would be best if you just put your case on this issue and then moved on.”
“Yes, my Lord. My case is this, Lady Robinson. You telephoned Mrs. Ball and made the arrangement yourself without consulting anyone and then you told Lady Anne and Jane Martin afterward that it was Mrs. Ball who had called up to invite Thomas.”
“Why would I do all this, Mr. Sparling?” asked Greta evenly. “Why would I make this arrangement?”
Sparling did not answer immediately. He made it a policy not to allow defendants to start asking the questions. That meant surrendering control over the cross-examination; it meant surrendering his greatest advantage. However, the situation here was different. He could see the jurors looking at him expectantly out of the corner of his eye. They wanted to hear his answer. The trouble was that this was not the strongest part of his case. Sparling inwardly cursed the judge for his intervention. It had forced him onto his back foot, and now the defendant was trying to push him over.
“You did all this because you wanted Thomas Robinson out of the house on the Monday evening so that Lady Anne would be alone and defenseless when the killers came.”
“So I basically wanted to kill the mother but save the son. Is that what you’re saying, Mr. Sparling?” asked Greta with a look of bafflement on her face.
“That’s right, Lady Robinson,” said Sparling. “You had no reason to suspect that Thomas had seen you with your accomplice in London.”
Greta was about to respond, but Sparling pressed straight on to his next question before she could do so.
“You left the study window open for them, didn’t you?”
“No, I just forgot about it.”
“Thomas found it wide open when he got back to the house from the Balls.”
“Yes, I opened it wide because it was stuffy in the study when I was working in there. I’m not the only one who says it was a warm evening. Besides, Anne hadn’t gone to bed when we left.”
“Are you saying you expected her to close it?”
“No, I’m saying I forgot about it. It wasn’t dark and I didn’t think.”
“The men who came expected to find it open though, didn’t they, Lady Robinson? That’s why one of them said that they’re all fucking closed.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“And that’s why they smashed the glass in the window that you left open. Not the other study window; not the windows in the dining room. They smashed that window because that’s the one they expected to get in by if Thomas hadn’t closed it.” Sparling’s voice became more insistent as he pressed his point home.
“I told you already. I had nothing to do with these men. I left the window open by mistake. I admitted it to Sergeant Hearns the same night. I didn’t try to make a secret of it.”
“You don’t admit leaving the door in the north wall open though, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“But the killers came through there even though Jane Martin locked the door at five o’clock. How do you explain that?”
“It must have been Anne who opened it when she went for a walk after we left.”
“If she went for a walk! I suggest she did no such thing. You got Thomas out of the house, you opened the door in the north wall, and you opened the window in the study. Then you left with Lady Anne’s husband, knowing that she would be dead before you got back to London. What do you say about that, Lady Robinson?”
“I say it’s a lie. A wicked lie. I’m not guilty of this charge,” Greta’s voice rang with conviction. Miles Lambert thought she looked quite stunning with her flashing green eyes and two spots of color in the center of her wide cheeks.
“Not guilty, eh? Well, we’ll leave that to the jury to decide, shall we? I want to ask you about Lady Anne’s locket now. Why did you say to Thomas, ‘Give that to me, it’s mine’ when he first showed you the locket?”
“I didn’t. I said no such thing.”
“So both Thomas and Matthew Barne lied to this court about that, did they?”
“Of course they did. They’d gotten their story worked out together by then. It was different on the day. That boy Matthew ran out of the house when Peter asked him if it was true that I’d said that.”
“And Thomas and Jane Martin are lying about Lady Anne wearing the locket after she came back from London, are they?”
