her use before. It was like she was talking through her teeth. Like her true character was coming through.”
“Mrs. Martin, I have had to remind you over and over again to tell us what you saw and heard and not what you thought about what you saw and heard,” said the judge. “Your refusal to abide by my instructions is soon going to have a prejudicial effect on this trial. I am going to adjourn now slightly earlier than I had intended for lunch so that you can think about what I have said, and when we resume I will want your assurance that you will do as I have asked. Very well. We will meet again at two o’clock.”
Judge Granger was out of the courtroom well before Mrs. Martin had had any chance to formulate a reply, even if she had wished to do so.
Chapter 14
Greta left the courthouse by a side exit and walked down to Blackfriars Pier. Peter was at an unavoidable meeting and she was glad to be alone, even though it was her husband that she was thinking about as she stared into the gray water lapping against the platform where she sat. It wasn’t the sea, but the river helped her remember that morning the previous summer when she had followed her employer, as he then was, down to the beach at Flyte.
She’d run out of the front door wanting to put as much space as possible between herself and the dead dog lying on the floor in the hall. She must have gone past that sour old shrew Jane Martin, in the drawing room, without knowing she was there.
Outside she’d turned to her right — God knows why! — and caught sight of him just as he was going through the north door into the lane. The same door that Miles was getting himself so worked up about. And then she’d followed him. Again she hadn’t any idea why. She just did. Through the door and down the lane to the beach. She’d come up to him where he stood almost at the water’s edge skimming stones into the sea.
He looked so sad and out of place, and when he spoke, his voice came out all tangled up and choked like it belonged to someone else. Not Peter at all.
“I’m sorry about what she said, Greta. I really am. She should never have said that to you.”
“It’s all right. I don’t mind. I’ll live.” She was nervous and said the first words that came into her head.
“I don’t know what’s gone wrong with this family,” he said after a while. “It’s something about this place. I’ve never been happy here and I never will be. It’s so bloody lonely and desolate, and this sea’s so cruel. Do you remember that dead fisherman lying on the ground down at the harbor? And that dog today?”
“It’s a coincidence.”
“No, you belong here or you don’t. That’s what she said to you, wasn’t it? But she could just as well have been talking about me. My life is in the city with things I can understand, things I can control. This place defeats me.”
“Nothing defeats you, Peter. Nothing.” She said it like it was a statement of belief, an article of faith.
“But you’re wrong,” he replied just as certainly. “This house does, and yet Annie loves it so much. More than anything else in the world, I think, except Thomas. It’s in her blood I suppose. I have tried, God knows I’ve tried to make it work. Long walks on the marsh, sailing on the river, shivering down by the harbor, but every time I come here I feel more alien with my city suit and my city brain. Look at me today. I had to go into Flyte as soon as I woke up to get the newspapers. Came back and killed the bloody dog.”
“It’s just bad luck, Peter, that’s all,” said Greta soothingly.
“No, it’s more than that. I don’t belong here. I guess that’s why I want Thomas to go away to school, because I don’t feel like he’s my son as long as he’s living here.”
“He’s a good boy. He’s just a little frightened of you.”
“I know. You’re always so perceptive, Greta. That’s what I like about you. You understand me. Nobody else seems to.”
“You can count on me, Peter. You know that.”
Peter did not reply, and Greta didn’t know if he had heard her own soft response above the noise of the breaking waves. However, she said no more. Peter’s silence commanded her own, and after a little while she left him standing by the sea and walked back up the lane to the house to face his family.
Overhead the Suffolk sky had been gray and overcast. Just like today, thought Greta as she turned to walk away from the river.
Crossing Fleet Street on her way back to the court, Greta put a hand up to her face to brush away the rain that was now falling fast. But there were tears in her eyes too. She was crying not for herself but for Peter and the fractured soul that he had first begun to reveal to her on that beach the year before. She thought of it as a precious gift that this intensely private man should have opened himself up to her. And now he depended on her completely. Anne was gone and Thomas had turned on his father like a viper. She had to win this crazy trial. For Peter’s sake as much as for her own.
Greta’s life had not been easy, and Peter’s need for her had given her a sense of purpose that she had never felt before. It made her feel powerful and whole, and it filled her with determination. Greta clenched her fists and held her head up high as she walked past the reporters into the courtroom and took her place in the dock.
Less than five minutes later, the old housekeeper was back in the witness box with her handbag on her knees.
“Are you ready to proceed, Mrs. Martin?” asked the judge, looking down at her from his high chair.
“I am.”
“On the basis that I made clear to you before lunch?”
Mrs. Martin replied with a curt nod.
She won’t keep those lips buttoned for long, thought Miles Lambert. Not if I have anything to do with it.
But John Sparling had a long way to go yet.
“Now, Mrs. Martin, I want to move on to the day of the murder; the thirty-first of May last year. Where were you on that afternoon?”
“I was at the house until just after five o’clock, when I left with Thomas in my car.”
“Where were you going?”
“To my sister’s in Woodbridge. I often go there on a Monday evening and stay the night. Tuesday’s my day off.”
“Was Thomas going there too?”
“No. I dropped him off at the house of a friend of his in Flyte. He was going to stay the night there.”
“Did you have anything to do with the making of that arrangement?”
“No. Greta told me that Mrs. Ball, the mother of Thomas’s friend, had rung her up and invited Thomas. I offered to give him a lift.”
“Did you discuss the arrangement with Lady Anne?”
“No. I assumed she knew about it, obviously.”
“What did you do before you left the house with Thomas?”
“What I always do. I checked the doors and windows to see that everything was secure.”
“Which doors?”
“The doors of the house and the door in the north wall as well. I also checked the east gate, the one above the beach, and then I drove out through the west gate and locked it after me.”
“That leaves the door in the south wall. What about that?”
“No, it’s hardly ever used. There’s Lady Anne’s roses growing over it. I never check the south door.”
“I see. Now tell us about the door in the north wall.”
“I already did. I locked it just before I left and I put the key in the back passage, just like I always do. When I went, all the doors in the house were locked except the front door. I left that open.”
“What about the windows?”
“They were all shut. Upstairs and downstairs. Except for the drawing room where my Lady and Sir Peter were.”
“Where was the defendant?”
“In the study, working on her computer.”
