and treated you like a servant. That made you angry, didn’t it?”
“No, it didn’t surprise me. She was just like a lot of these young people nowadays. They aren’t brought up to respect their elders like we were.”
“Badly brought up and putting on airs. Is that right, Mrs. Martin?”
“If you say so,” said the old lady. She was visibly trying to keep her emotions in check.
“It’s not what I say; it’s what you say that matters. You didn’t like the way she tried to get Thomas away from you either, did you?”
“He saw through her in the end. It just took him a bit longer.”
“You hated her from the first,” pressed Miles, allowing the witness no time to think, and this time the old lady could no longer resist his challenge.
“She’s poison!” she shouted.
“You want her convicted, don’t you?”
“I want justice. For my Lady. For Thomas.”
“At any cost. You’d do anything to get what you want, wouldn’t you, Mrs. Martin?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do. I’m talking about giving false evidence. My client never said, ‘You’ve fucking had it now, Mrs. Posh.’ She never said that.”
“Yes she did. She wouldn’t have done if she’d known I was there, but she didn’t. More fool her.”
The old lady positively spat these last words out at Miles, who responded with one of his most pleasant smiles.
“Well, Mrs. Martin, I’m sorry to see that you’re getting so upset. Let’s move on a bit and see if we can shed any more light on what happened. Now, where did my client go after this little speech that you say she gave?”
“Out the front door. Same way Sir Peter had gone.”
“I see. And when and where did you see her again?”
“She was in the study a bit later on.”
“How much later on?”
“Later on in the morning. I don’t know more than that. She must have come in through the side door. I was in the kitchen on the other side of the hall when I noticed she was back.”
“How did you come to notice my client’s presence in the study, Mrs. Martin?”
“Because my Lady went in there to talk to her. She had Thomas with her, and she wanted to make things up. She was like that, my Lady was: too good for the rest of us, but she should never have done it if you ask me. She should have left that Greta to pack up and be off. That’s what she should have done.”
“I see. And did you offer your Lady this advice, Mrs. Martin?”
“No, of course I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been my place. I told her what that Greta had said, though.”
“In the hallway?”
“That’s right.”
“And this would have been before Lady Anne went into the study to make things up with my client.”
“It would.”
“Isn’t that rather unlikely, Mrs. Martin?”
“What?”
“You tell Lady Anne that my client has just called her a ‘fucking stuck-up bitch’ behind her back and Lady Anne goes straight into the study to make things up with her. It doesn’t make much sense, does it?”
“You didn’t know my Lady.”
“It doesn’t make sense because it’s not true, is it, Mrs. Martin? You’re lying again.”
The old housekeeper went white with anger, but instead of venting it on Miles, she turned round in her seat and looked up at the judge.
“Listen, Your Lordship or whatever you call yourself, I want you to stop him talking to me like that,” she said. “You’ve had a go at me; now you deal with him.”
“Mrs. Martin, I’m sorry if you feel that Mr. Lambert is being rude to you because I don’t think that’s his intention,” said the judge. “He’s got to put his case to you and examine your evidence, and that’s what he’s doing. Now please answer his questions.”
“Thank you, my Lord,” said Miles. “Now, Mrs. Martin, I want to ask you about what happened in the study. Did you hear everything that was said?”
“I did.”
“You must have gone out into the hallway then.”
“I may have done.”
“To listen. Well, I’m sure that that was very natural. You say that Lady Anne went in to make things up. Does that mean that she apologized to my client?”
“She did. I couldn’t believe it. It was that Greta who should have been doing the apologizing. Down on her knees, she should have been.”
“And did my client accept Lady Anne’s apology?”
“Of course she did. She must have thought it was her lucky day. She didn’t want to have to leave.”
“And so they made up their quarrel and they were friends. Yes?”
“No, they most certainly weren’t. My Lady apologized because she thought it was right, not because she liked Greta. She didn’t like her any more than I did. And Greta, she hated my Lady. I know she did. I saw the way she used to look at her, and I heard what she said in the hall.”
“Well, we’ve already dealt with that, Mrs. Martin,” said Miles. “Can you move on now and tell us about Thomas?”
“What about him?”
“Did he and Greta have any conversation in the study?”
“Oh, yes. She was saying how sorry she was about letting the dog out and how she wished she’d known. She probably was sorry. She was always after Thomas. My Lady always felt like Greta wanted to take him away from her. Not that there was much chance of that.”
“And how did Thomas react to Greta saying she was sorry?”
“He was very upset, but he didn’t seem so angry with her as he was before. He always liked Greta, until he found out what sort of person she really was. Teenagers can be blind like that sometimes.”
“We’ll let the jury be the judge of that,” said Miles, turning to a new page in his notes. “I want to talk to you about this locket now. Lady Anne was very fond of it, was she not?”
“Yes, it was one of her favorite things.”
“And so you would agree with me that she took it to London with her when she went up for the Chelsea Flower Show on the Thursday before she died.”
“She may have done.”
“You helped her pack, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And the locket was in the suitcase?”
The old lady didn’t answer.
“Come on, Mrs. Martin. Lady Anne took jewelry with her to London, didn’t she? You helped her choose it, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And the locket was one of the pieces she took.”
Again no answer.
“Wasn’t it, Mrs. Martin?” Miles spoke louder this time, with more urgency in his voice, and the housekeeper finally gave way.
“Yes, she took it but she brought it back too.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw it on her neck the day she died. I said that already.”
“You saw the top of a gold chain. That could have been the gold chain to some other piece of jewelry.”
“I don’t think so.”
“And you’ve never mentioned this bit of gold before today, have you? It’s not in your statement.”
