“It might seem a bit strange,” she began. “Me here defending myself, without a lawyer.”
“I’m sorry,” said Judge Munday. “I have to interrupt here. Please be careful what you say, Ms. Hardy.” She turned to the jury. “As you will have seen, Ms. Hardy has chosen to represent herself. And as you may know, this is unusual in a case of such importance but it is her free choice. She is perfectly entitled to make it. I want to say two things: the first is that certain parts of the trial may appear more informal as a result.” She looked at Tabitha with a frown. “That will not be an excuse for the breaking of the rules of evidence. And secondly, the fact of her defending herself should have no influence on you, either for or against her.” She looked back at Tabitha. “You may proceed.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I mean, thanks, madam. My Lady. I’m not going to say much.” The interruption had helped her to gather her thoughts. “I’m not going to go through the whole case the way the other guy did.”
“Please call him Mr. Brockbank,” said Judge Munday.
“Sorry. Mr. Brockbank. Obviously I’m not an expert. One thing I know is that technically I don’t have to prove I’m innocent. I just have to show that you can’t rely on the evidence against me. I know that lawyers do it with tricks and creating confusion.” She glanced nervously at Judge Munday, who was frowning at her and slowly shaking her head. She looked back at the jury. “I don’t want to do that. I want to show you that I didn’t do it.”
She sat down and for a moment there was a silence broken only by a couple of coughs. Tabitha looked around. Was something the matter? Brockbank stood up.
“Excuse me, My Lady, but can we send the jury out?”
The jury members looked baffled and displeased as they were led out of their seats, round the side of the room and out through the door. As soon as they were gone, Brockbank stood up and said that Tabitha should have given a detailed description of her defense.
“How can I do that until I’ve seen what people are going to say?” she said.
“You have seen. It’s in the prosecution statement you received.”
Judge Munday shook her head. “We can’t be too rigid about all of that,” she said. Then she looked more sternly at Tabitha. “That does not apply to your treatment of witnesses. There are strict rules about direct cross-examination of witnesses by the accused. About those there will be no latitude whatever.”
Tabitha had no idea what these rules were, but she just nodded humbly. Judge Munday looked up at the clock.
“I think we’ll have time for the first witness,” she said.
Dr. Leonard Garner was a consultant pathologist with an alarmingly long list of qualifications. He was tall, with a long, gaunt, serious face and hair that was almost white. He stood erect in the witness box like someone who had been there many times before. He also had a spotted bow tie and some of his hair was combed across his bald head. Tabitha had never understood either of these style choices. When he started to speak, he gave a small sound at the end of each sentence, a kind of hum, and Tabitha quickly found it irritating. It was difficult not to listen to the hum instead of what he was saying.
Dr. Garner had examined Stuart Rees’s body at the scene and he had also conducted the autopsy. With almost maddening detail, Brockbank led Dr. Garner through a description first of his own qualifications, then of the body as he had found it at the scene, then the results of the autopsy. Tabitha had already seen the photographs of the stab wounds, but here they had been blown up and stuck on large sheets of cardboard and put on a trestle at the side of the court.
Dr. Garner described the cause of death, shock caused by catastrophic bleeding. One of the multiple knife wounds had virtually severed the carotid artery. Rees would have died within minutes. The wounds were caused by one knife, a single-edged, non-serrated knife, with a maximum width of 3.4 centimeters. A knife from Tabitha’s kitchen was produced. Dr. Garner was asked if it was possible that this knife had been used in the murder and he said, yes, it was possible.
Tabitha looked down at Michaela and hissed at her and rapped on the Plexiglas. She looked round.
“Are you taking notes?” Tabitha said.
“Please, Ms. Hardy,” said Judge Munday.
“What am I meant to do?” said Tabitha. “I can’t whisper to her. She wouldn’t be able to hear me.”
“Please let the witness continue without being interrupted.”
Tabitha wrote the word “knife” on her pad. It was the first note she had taken. She had been looking at the jury while Dr. Garner gave his evidence. When they were shown the photographs of the wounds, two of the women put their hands over their mouths and the man-bun man rubbed his eyes and went very white.
The only surprise came when Dr. Garner was asked about the time of death. He said that because of the temperature of the body at the scene and the progress of rigor mortis and the pooling of blood in the body, he put the time of death at between about 1 P.M. and about 3.30 P.M. Tabitha wrote a note of that with a question mark.
Simon Brockbank thanked Dr. Garner and sat down.
Again everyone turned to Tabitha. She stood up and for a moment she felt as if the court had rotated slightly. She lurched and had to hold on to her chair to stop herself from falling.
She had a vague sense that she ought to say something to defend herself, but she wasn’t clear what Dr.
