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.
