Simon Tolkien - Final Witness

“Foul language, members of the jury. Foul language and foul play.

“Within seconds the men began to smash out the glass in one of the study windowpanes. It is possible that the butt of a handgun was used for this purpose. One of them then leaned in and opened the window latch. Either at this point or as they climbed into the study, one of the men cut himself slightly on the broken glass, and the small amount of blood that was left on the windowsill was sufficient to yield a DNA profile. Unfortunately, however, no match for the profile has been found on the police national DNA database.

“Once inside the two men made their way through the study into the main entrance hall. You can see the layout of the ground floor on the plan, members of the jury. By this time Thomas had gone to his mother’s room and shaken her awake. It was his idea to go to the hiding place that is situated at the top of the front stairs, and he pulled his mother along after him. She was wearing a long white nightdress and no slippers.

“This hiding place is almost as old as the house, members of the jury, and you can see it in your photographs. It was made for Catholic priests to hide in when the Protestant government was searching for them in the sixteenth century, and it is clever but simple as the best of these priests’ holes are. There is a wide bookcase at the top of the stairs, which turns on its axis when a certain set of books is pressed. Behind them is a lever, which operates the mechanism.

“Thomas and his mother could hear the breaking of glass and the men moving down below. They got to the bookcase just as the men arrived in the hall. The men heard the movement at the top of the stairs when Thomas opened the bookcase, and they shone their flashlights up the staircase. He heard one of them shout: ‘There she is. She’s up there. Look, she’s up there.’ And then he felt the bookcase close so that he was shut in the hiding place alone. His mother had shut him in to save him. She knew that they had seen her, but her son was already inside and she hoped that they would not see the bookcase close. She was right. She did save her son, but she could not save herself.

“They shot her twice. The first bullet was fired upward from the bottom of the stairs and hit her in the shoulder as she stood in front of the bookcase. She fell down screaming, and then one of the two men came up the stairs and shot her again. Shot her in the head and killed her while her son was no more than ten feet away. Less than the distance that I am from you now, members of the jury.”

Sparling stopped. He had achieved his purpose. He could see anger in the eyes of the jurors. Surprise and horror but above all anger. Now was the time to show them the final set of photographs.

“Here is the murdered woman lying on the carpet with the bookcase behind her. Thomas would have been invisible behind that. And here is the staircase curving up from the hall below. One shot fired from there and then another from point-blank range at the top of the stairs. You can see the wounds. These men came to kill. This was no robbery gone wrong. They came to kill and to rob. And who sent them, members of the jury? Who sent them? That’s the question.”

Sparling stopped, allowing his gaze to move slowly from one juror to the next. The answer, he seemed to be saying, is to your left. Sitting in the dock with her head bowed because she doesn’t want to look you in the eye.

The judge looked up and cleared his throat. Sparling was going beyond the boundaries of an opening address. It was time to move on.

“Yes, Mr. Sparling,” he said, allowing a note of irritation to creep into his voice.

“Yes, my Lord. I’m sorry,” said the counsel for the prosecution as he closed the album of photographs with visible reluctance.

The moment was past, but it had been just as unpleasant as Miles Lambert had warned Greta it might be. The photographs were bad. She knew that. They made people angry, seeing all that beauty destroyed by lead bullets. The home invaded. The boy hiding in the dark only a few feet from his mother. There were sacred principles here that had been transgressed, and someone would have to pay. That was the problem. Miles had told her that. The need to make someone responsible. Otherwise the photographs were unbearable.

“They left her lying there, members of the jury, and went into her bedroom and ransacked it. They took their time because they believed there was no one else in the house. They broke into the small safe concealed behind the portrait of Lady Anne’s grandmother and took the jewelry that Lady Anne kept there. Necklaces, rings and bracelets of enormous value. Heirlooms that had been handed down through generations of Lady Anne’s family, the Sackvilles, going back as far as when the House of the Four Winds was built more than four hundred years ago.

“Then they left, stepping over the body of Lady Anne to go down the staircase. There is a spy hole in the wall of the hiding place, and Thomas was able to see the faces of the two men in profile as they went past. One of them had a ponytail and a scar behind his right jawbone. Thomas had seen a man with a ponytail and a similar scar with the defendant in London six weeks before, and he believes that the two men are one and the same, although he only saw the man in London for a short time and from behind. It will be for you to weigh up the strength of that evidence when you hear from Thomas Robinson, members of the jury.

“However, two other matters are significant with regard to the man with the scar. First, neither he nor his companion were wearing masks. They wore gloves but no masks, and the Crown says that this is because they did not care whether Lady Anne saw them or not. Their intention was to kill her, and the dead can tell no tales. They cannot give evidence or attend identification parades.

“Second, Thomas saw the man with the scar bend down out of sight for a moment as he crossed from the bedroom to the stairs. Thomas could not see the body of his mother, but he knew where she had fallen, and when the man got up Thomas could see him putting something in his pocket. He could see the glint of gold, members of the jury.

That glint of gold is vitally important. The Crown says that it was a locket that the man with the scar had torn from the dead woman’s neck, leaving a scratch mark there as he did so. That locket subsequently found its way into the possession of the defendant, members of the jury. Into her desk in her husband’s house in London.”

The jury turned to look at Greta, and she involuntarily bit her lip. That bloody locket, she thought to herself. To be having to sit here exhibited like an animal in a zoo because of a trinket. She turned away, resolved to shut her ears to the rest of Sparling’s speech. That was what Miles had half-jokingly suggested she should do when they had talked about the case in his chambers on Saturday.

“It’s not evidence, Greta. It’s the evidence we need to worry about. Leave old Sparling to me.”

She should have taken his advice.

“The prosecution has the first word, my dear, but we have the last. Remember that. We have the last.”

Greta smiled. She had a lot of faith in Miles.

One hundred and twenty miles to the east of the Old Bailey the boy who was figuring so prominently in John Sparling’s opening address was standing at his bedroom window in the House of the Four Winds looking out over the broad expanse of the north lawn. It was a bright summer’s day, and the sun shone down through the branches of the elm trees, creating a fantastic play of shadows on the newly mowed grass.

One hundred yards from where Thomas was standing, the north gate of the property stood closed and locked. Thomas shivered as he looked at it even though his room was warm, even hot. As had happened so often in the last few months, Thomas could not stop his mind from going back to the previous summer, to the night of his mother’s murder.