“Any reexamination, Mr. Sparling?” asked the judge.
“Just one question, my Lord. Officer, you’ve said that you parked outside the front gate. Could you see the exit from the lane from where you were?”
“No, sir. The gate is set back from the road a little way, and there’s a row of trees between the wall and the curb. We wouldn’t have had a view from where we were parked, sir.”
“Thank you, Officer. That’s all.”
Police Constable Hughes put on his cap and headed for the door on his way back to Carmouth and obscurity.
The day wore on. At one o’clock everyone broke for lunch. John Sparling wasn’t hungry but made a concession to the time of day by picking at a green salad, which he washed down with a glass of mineral water in the barristers’ canteen upstairs.
Miles Lambert, however, took his bulk round the corner to a little Italian restaurant where Dino kept him a table in the corner. A glass of thick red wine and a plate of Dino’s mother’s special lasagna fortified him for the afternoon. Afterward he ordered himself a cup of sweet Turkish coffee and sat back in his chair wearing an expression of heavy contentment.
Miles felt well pleased with how the trial had gone so far. The prosecution’s case was not standing up to cross-examination, and he could hardly wait to get at their main witness. It was obvious that Thomas had gotten the old housekeeper and his schoolfriend to back up his story. And he’d also made up the Lonny and Rosie characters, for whom there was not a shred of evidence outside of his statement.
Miles knew that he could rely on his client to put on an Oscar-winning performance in the witness box when her turn came. Every day he grew more confident of an acquittal, and he felt sure that that would be the right verdict in this case. Miles had decided long before the trial began that Lady Greta was the most beautiful client he had ever had. Now, having seen Sparling’s witnesses, he had no doubt of her innocence.
Detective Sergeant Hearns had, of course, precisely the opposite view of the defendant, and he ruminated on her guilt in the police room as he chewed the big cheese-and-pickle sandwiches that he had brought down with him from Ipswich.
At two o’clock he fastened his double-breasted jacket over a pickle stain in the center of his polyester shirt and went down to court to begin giving his evidence. It was a hot day and the jurors were sleepy. Sparling asked questions to which they felt they already knew the answers. It was only when Miles Lambert got to his feet and asked for them to be sent out of court that they really started paying attention.
“Will this take long, Mr. Lambert?” asked the judge.
“No, my Lord. Not long.”
The jury filed out looking perplexed, and Miles waited to speak until the door had finally closed behind them.
“It’s about my client’s character, my Lord,” said Miles. “You will see that she has one minor indiscretion recorded against her from nearly eleven years ago but nothing since.”
“A conviction, Mr. Lambert. Not an indiscretion.”
“Yes, my Lord, but it is only for possession of a very small amount of drugs.”
“Cocaine, Mr. Lambert. A class-A drug.”
“Yes, my Lord, but she was a juvenile at the time.”
“What’s your application?”
“For my client to be treated as a lady of good character. The conviction is old and not serious in nature.”
“What do you say, Mr. Sparling?”
“I’d say that possession of cocaine is not minor, my Lord. Mr. Lambert does not need to raise the issue of his client’s character, but if he does so, the jury should know all about her. Of course your Lordship has discretion.”
“Yes, I do, and I shall exercise it in favor of the defendant on this occasion. The conviction is indeed old and it is not for violence or dishonesty. Lady Greta may be presented as a lady of good character, Mr. Lambert.”
“Thank you, my Lord.”
“Sergeant Hearns, I want to ask you about a conversation you had with my client outside the House of the Four Winds,” said Miles once the jury was back in place.
“I’ve only ever had one conversation with her there, sir, and that was when Sir Peter drove down with her after I told him about the murder.”
“That’s the one. Now you’d already spoken to Thomas Robinson.”
“No, sir, I hadn’t. He was too upset. I spoke to Christopher Marsh, who spoke to Thomas. I did that because I needed to know where the perpetrators had gone in the house. And the grounds, sir,” the policeman added as if it were an afterthought.
Sergeant Hearns’s lugubrious smile was set in place above the big tie and the bulging stomach. He was clearly determined not to let the lawyer set the pace of their exchanges.
“All right, you’d spoken to Christopher Marsh and you had discovered that Thomas had found the study window open on his return to the House of the Four Winds.”
“At about half past eight. Yes, sir.”
“Now, you asked my client about whether she was responsible for leaving the window open, did you not, Sergeant?”
“No, sir.”
“No?”
“No, I asked Sir Peter. He said that he had not been in the study, and then Sir Peter asked your client and she said that she may have left the window open.”
“She didn’t refuse to answer, did she, Sergeant Hearns? She didn’t say Thomas was lying. She freely admitted leaving the window open.”
“She said she didn’t know but she may have done. She looked anxious at the time, sir. Very anxious.”
“Like Sir Peter?”
“No, he looked more determined than anxious. Your client had gone on ahead of us, sir.”
“Perhaps she was anxious to see Thomas?”
“Perhaps, sir.”
“Did she not also say that she’d left the window open because it was a warm evening?”
“Yes, she did say that, sir.”
“Now, you didn’t arrest her that night, did you, Sergeant, even though you knew she’d left the window open?”
“No, I did not, sir. I arrested your client after I had taken statements from Thomas Robinson and Jane Martin. It was only then that she became a suspect.”
“You took the statements on Saturday, the fifth of June. Five days after the murder. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir. That was the first occasion that Thomas felt able to talk to me about what had happened.”
“And you arrested Greta Grahame, as she then was, the next day. The Sunday. The day of the funeral?”
“Yes, sir. In the morning. We went to her apartment in Chelsea at seven twenty-five A.M.”
“And you searched the premises.”
“Yes, we had a warrant.”
“I don’t doubt it. Did you find anything?”
“Nothing relevant to the allegation. No, sir.”
“Then you took Miss Grahame to Ipswich and interviewed her.”
“Yes. She denied the allegation.”
“And then you released her without charge, didn’t you?”
“She was bailed to return. Pending advice from the Crown Prosecution Service.”
“And they advised that she should not be charged because there was no realistic prospect of conviction. Isn’t that right, Sergeant Hearns?”
“They advised that she should not be charged, sir.”
“Yes. No charge even though you had the window that she’d admitted leaving open and the unlocked north gate. You had the arrangement for Thomas to go to the Balls and his identification of the man outside my client’s apartment with the killer. You had all that and the statement of Jane Martin, but you still didn’t have enough to
