“It was shocking. It was very shocking. But I didn’t tell anyone else.”
“Why not?”
Pauline Leavitt pursed her lips and looked solemn. “I’m not a gossip,” she said.
Tabitha let out a small snort and Judge Munday glared warningly at her.
“I thought it best to keep quiet,” the old woman continued. “Though of course if I’d believed for a single minute that . . .” Her voice wavered. She took a sip from her glass of water with a trembling hand. “If only I’d known,” she said.
It was Tabitha’s turn. She stood up and looked toward Pauline Leavitt, who looked calmly back at her. In a rush, Tabitha understood the old woman actually hated her. She took a steadying breath and turned slightly toward Judge Munday.
“How far from me were you standing?” she asked without raising her voice.
“Sorry? Can you repeat that?”
“It must have been substantially further away than you are from me now,” Tabitha said in the same even tone, still looking toward the judge.
“I didn’t quite catch—” said Pauline Leavitt. She halted and looked at Brockbank.
Tabitha grinned. “Thank you. I have no further questions, My Lady.”
She sat down. Someone in the public gallery gave a loud guffaw and out of the corner of her eye she saw Michaela give one of her thumbs-up signs again. Brockbank rose swiftly.
“The accused cannot seriously be suggesting that there is no difference between hearing a heated argument on the street and hearing someone talk from the dock, with a wall of Plexiglas seriously impeding audibility.”
“I’m just saying,” said Tabitha, getting to her feet again, “she and me are much closer to each other now than we were then and she obviously couldn’t hear me so why should anyone believe what she’s saying? I don’t. What’s more, she”—Tabitha pointed to Judge Munday—“Our Lady, that is, or sorry, My Lady, has already said very emphatically that my audibility is not impeded which is why it’s all right for me to be up here, so are you saying the judge is wrong?”
“You were deliberately lowering your voice,” said Brockbank. On his face was an expression of studied outrage.
“That’s enough,” said Judge Munday.
“I’m just—” began Tabitha.
“I know exactly what you’re doing. I do not need your help, thank you. I do the ruling in this court.” She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, looking suddenly older and less impregnable. “Very well, we will break for lunch and after that you may sit on the bench.”
“Really?”
“Does that mean, My Lady,” said Simon Brockbank quickly, “that my point about the inaudibility of the accused from the dock is accepted by the court?”
“No, it does not. It simply means that the accused can take her place on the lawyer’s bench.”
Fifty-Seven
“Well played,” Brockbank murmured an hour and a half later as she took up her new position.
“This isn’t a game.”
“You should learn how to take a compliment.”
“Fuck off.”
“Ms. Hardy,” Judge Munday said and Tabitha looked round. Had she been overheard?
“Before the jury come in, I want to warn you. I have grave concerns about allowing you to cross-examine Laura Rees.” She pushed her wig back slightly to scratch her head and Tabitha was startled to glimpse short red hair.
“I have to,” she said. “It’s my right.”
“It’s for me to decide what your rights are. She is the wife of the man who you are accused of murdering. There are strict rules about this kind of thing. If you step out of line, I will come down heavily on you. Do you hear?”
“I don’t know what the rules are.”
Judge Munday sighed. “Keep to your brief. Don’t ask questions that are irrelevant or unnecessarily distressing. Basically, behave like a decent and rational human being, if that’s not beyond you. If you step out of line, I will force you to have representation.”
“Can you do that?”
“As you so usefully reminded Mr. Brockbank, I rule this court.”
Laura Rees made a good witness. She was dressed soberly, in a dark suit that she probably wore to funerals, with low-heeled shoes and a flowery blue scarf tied carefully round her neck. Her hair was neat but softer than usual. She looked like what she was: a solidly respectable, trustworthy, unflamboyant Englishwoman in her middle age who would tell the unvarnished truth and be incapable of lying.
The press gallery was crammed and the public gallery too. Glancing up, Tabitha saw strangers looking down at her with greedy curiosity.
There was complete silence as Laura Rees was led through her testimony. Elinor Ackroyd was asking the questions, woman to woman. She had a beautiful voice, low and clear. Her face was eloquent with sympathy. Tabitha, seated at the bench with a pile of papers in front of her and her notebook on her lap, could hardly bear to listen.
It began, as she had known it must, with the abuse of fifteen years ago. She kept her head ducked down as Laura Rees answered the questions, but even so she felt dozens of eyes watching her, examining her, undressing her until she was naked and a wretched teenager again, and she had a sense of such shame and vulnerability that if she could have crawled under the desk she would have done.
Yes, Laura Rees had been aware of the episode at the time. (Tabitha scribbled a note on the use of the singular noun.)
Yes, her husband had confessed to her. He had been very upset and contrite. He had promised nothing like this had ever happened before and it would never happen again.
Elinor Ackroyd asked, very delicately, about the illegality of it: he was in his forties and her teacher; she had been fifteen. Laura Rees answered her steadily, though her voice was slightly hoarse and every so often she stopped to take a sip of water. It was very wrong, she said. But her husband had sworn that Tabitha had initiated it and he had been weak and foolish. Michaela hissed something inaudible under her breath.
Yes, Laura continued, she had chosen to believe him. (Tabitha scribbled another note about
