‘Mrs Nash,’ Sir Jasper was at his most emollient, ‘I don’t think we need concern ourselves about the fountain today.’
‘Sorry, Sir Jasper.’ Georgina Nash looked at the judge, unsure if she should apologize to him too, but she pressed on. ‘I think the champagne lasted about half an hour. Then we began to bring people up to the Long Gallery where the food was to be served. There were two seating plans on display in the garden for people to see where they were going and another two indoors, one in the Great Hall and another at the top of the stairs.’
‘In my experience, Mrs Nash, not that I possess a Long Gallery like yours in my modest home, these manoeuvres involving large numbers of people can take a long time, far longer than one would think.’
Charles Augustus Pugh scribbled a quick note to his junior Richard Napier. ‘Bentinck’s modest home runs over five floors in Holland Park,’ the message said. ‘Enormous garden the size of three or four tennis courts. Platoons of servants. Must be worth a bloody fortune.’
Georgina Nash carried on: ‘How right you are, Sir Jasper.’ She smiled a bright smile at him. Pugh thought you could almost hear Sir Jasper purr. ‘It did take a long time, far longer than I had thought.’
‘So here we are, Mrs Nash, a grand wedding in a grand country house, the guests sipping their champagne in the garden then making their way up to the Long Gallery for the wedding lunch. Perhaps you could tell us, Mrs Nash, how you first became aware of the unfortunate incident which has brought us here today. Were all the guests seated by then?’
‘No, they were not, Sir Jasper. Some of them were still milling about looking for their places. I remember thinking how noisy it all was. Then there was a sharp bang from the rooms at the end of the Long Gallery which I later gathered was the gun being fired.’
‘And how were you informed of what had happened, Mrs Nash?’
Georgina Nash paused. ‘The first I knew about it was when Charlie Healey, our butler, rushed in looking very strained. He whispered something to my husband. Willoughby told me what had happened, about Mr Randolph Colville lying dead on the floor and Mr Cosmo Colville sitting on a chair holding the gun. Everything became something of a blur after that. I felt so sorry for my daughter with her big day ruined and for the guests, many of whom had come a long way.’
‘Quite so, Mrs Nash, quite so.’ Sir Jasper made it sound as if he himself had been one of the unfortunate long distance travellers whose celebration of a wedding turned into a wake. He pressed on with a few more questions about the arrival of the police before he sat down.
Pugh had originally intended to let the early witnesses go, not to ask any questions at all. But the lack of weapons in his armoury left him no choice but to cross-examine them all. Doubt, he said to himself, doubt. I can’t possibly persuade them that Cosmo didn’t do it, I just need to plant some doubt. Enough doubt and I might get an acquittal if we’re lucky.
‘Mrs Nash,’ he began, trying to sound as friendly as he could, ‘did you say you had a hundred guests at this wedding? And how many of them were known to you personally, the guests I mean?’
‘I’m not sure I understand you,’ said Georgina Nash. ‘Are you suggesting that I didn’t know who I’d invited to my own daughter’s wedding?’
‘Not at all, Mrs Nash, I can’t have been making myself clear. Let me try again. I suggest that if there were a hundred guests, half were on your side and half on the Colville side. Roughly speaking that is. So you would probably have known all the guests invited on your side, and some, but probably not the majority, of those invited through the Colvilles. Would that be right?’
‘I see what you mean,’ said Georgina Nash. ‘Yes, that is more or less right.’
‘So, of the hundred guests drinking your champagne and looking for their tables in your Long Gallery, there might be about forty you did not know and had never met?’
‘If you choose to put it like that I suppose that must be the case.’
Georgina Nash didn’t sound happy at being represented as the principal hostess at a party of a hundred where forty of them were completely unknown to her.
‘So these people could have been English or French or of any nationality at all?’ Pugh was determined to introduce the notion of a villainous Frenchman, garlic-chewing if possible, beret-wearing, onion-carrying, frog’s-legs-munching, into the minds of the jury.
‘I’m pretty sure they were all English, British anyway,’ Georgina Nash said loyally.
Pugh made a non-committal sort of noise that hinted at disbelief, a sound referred to by his junior as a muted grunt. ‘Could you enlighten us, Mrs Nash, about the various entrances and exits to the Long Gallery? It is the contention of the defence that a person or persons unknown may have made their way into your grand room, killed the unfortunate Mr Colville and made his escape long before the police arrived on the scene. Could you enlighten us about the principal ways in and out? We don’t need to know about the back stairs.’
‘Well,’ said Georgina Nash, ‘the principal way in is up the main staircase in the Great Hall – that’s the route the guests were taking. Then there’s a smaller staircase at the far end of the Long Gallery near the lake. And there’s another little staircase out of the state bedroom itself, now I come to think of it.’
‘So, Mrs Nash,’ said Pugh, taking delivery of a diagram of the first floor of Brympton Hall from Richard Napier and pointing to the relevant sections as he referred to them. ‘Here is the main staircase, slightly set back from the Long Gallery, here is the little staircase at the other end of the room, and here is another, a third staircase, in the very room where the murder was committed.’ Pugh had moved right over to the jury benches and showed them the various staircases on his diagram. He left the illustration with the foreman of the jury in case they needed to refer to it in the future.
Mrs Nash did not say anything. She was beginning to feel that this whole business of giving evidence was rather distasteful. Pugh pressed on. ‘Let me try, Mrs Nash, if I may, to pull together some of the strands of your evidence. On your own account, there were approximately forty people roaming around at your wedding reception that you had never seen before. And we have seen from the diagram of your beautiful house that there are three separate ways in and out of the relevant rooms a murderer among the forty unknowns could have used to kill Randolph Colville and make his escape.’
‘Objection, my lord.’ Sir Jasper was on his feet. ‘This is pure speculation, my lord, almost fantasy. My learned friend has no more proper evidence for saying these things than I would have for saying the earth is flat.’
‘Mr Pugh?’ A judicial pencil span rapidly through judicial fingers.
‘I was merely trying to point out to the members of the jury that Mr Colville could have been murdered in a completely different fashion to that put forward by the prosecution.’
‘Objection overruled,’ said the judge, ‘but try to confine your comments to the facts in future, Mr Pugh. Carry on.’
‘I have no further questions for this witness,’ said Pugh, bowing slightly to Mrs Nash. He had, he thought, done as much damage as he was capable of to the prosecution case. But his victory over the objection, he suspected, was Pyrrhic. These tactics of suggestion and innuendo were all he had until Powerscourt returned. Maybe they would still be all he had after Powerscourt returned.
Sir Jasper moved majestically on. Charlie Healey, the Nash butler, was in the witness box now, being guided through his role on the day of the murder. Pugh waited until the police had been called and Charlie’s role returned to that of attendant lord rather than major player. Sir Jasper looked particularly pleased with himself as he sat down.