“No, not really,” said Greta irritably before she added in a softer voice: “I’m sorry, Thomas. It’s the past. I don’t like talking about it. It’s not your fault.”
She smiled up at him, but the afternoon’s spell was broken. Big Ben struck three, and Greta pulled herself up to a sitting position.
“Come on,” she said. “Time to pack up. We’ve got to be home in twenty minutes.”
“Why?” asked Thomas, shaking his arm about in a vain attempt to rid himself of the cramp, which was now transforming itself into a painful attack of pins and needles.
“I’m meeting your father there. On the way to the next set of meetings. Let’s hope he’s managed to sort out the Saudis.”
“Sort out who?”
“The Saudis. The ones with the Islamic sensibilities. Don’t you remember anything?”
Thomas didn’t answer. He did dimly remember the reason that Greta had given for his father’s absence, but it didn’t seem important. His father was always absent, always letting him down. What mattered was the afternoon with Greta: the sun and the white wine, her head resting on his thigh, his hand in her hair, and now it was all going to be over. Why? Because of his father and his stupid work. Thomas wished that he didn’t remind Greta of his father at all, but perhaps that was what she liked about him. He felt he couldn’t win.
They were on the sidewalk for less than a minute when a taxi pulled up. Greta seemed to attract them like a magnet, Thomas thought bitterly as they sped off down the road by the river toward Chelsea. There was hardly any traffic to hold them up, and every one of the signals seemed to turn to green just as they approached.
Greta was checking the voice-mail on her mobile phone as she sat beside him in the back of the taxi, and Thomas felt as if she’d already moved on to the next part of her day, leaving him and their picnic far behind. Thomas thought that it might be weeks before he saw Greta again. She and his father had not been down to Flyte in over a month, and it might be just as long before they came again, and then there was always the possibility that Greta might not come at all, given the hostility that Thomas’s mother so clearly felt toward her.
Thomas was too young to cope with the violent emotions that had taken such a firm hold on him. He was like a boat in a storm that had broken free of its moorings and was now tossed about rudderless in uncharted waters. He forgot his loyalty to his mother and his suspicions of Greta. All he wanted was to say what he felt before his time with Greta was over. Before the taxi got them home.
At last a traffic light turned red. They were by Chelsea Bridge, and Thomas knew it was now or never.
“Greta,” he said, and his voice came out in a whisper, contradicting the power of the emotion that had led him to break his silence.
Greta heard him, however. She’d put her mobile away in her bag and was gazing half wistfully at Thomas’s profile when he spoke her name.
“Yes, Thomas. What is it?” The sensual sweetness was back in her voice, and it gave him the courage to continue.
“You know how I feel about you.”
“How do you feel about me, Thomas?”
“I feel that you are so beautiful.”
Greta heard the longing in Thomas’s voice, and she didn’t know how to respond.
“You’re very sweet,” she said lamely.
“No, I’m not,” he said with sudden vehemence as his voice broke through his earlier whisper. “You are beautiful. I’ve never met anyone as beautiful as you are.”
“But you will, Thomas. I promise you, you will.”
“Don’t say that,” he said. “I love you, Greta. Can’t you see that? I love you. Not anyone else. You.”
“You mustn’t say that, Thomas. It’s not right.”
“Don’t you feel anything about me at all?”
“I like you. No, more than that. I’m very fond of you. But that’s all it can be. I’m too old, Thomas. Too old for you.”
Tears had formed in the boy’s eyes, and they now began to trickle down his cheeks. Greta put her hand under his chin and turned his half-resistant head toward her. Then, leaning forward, she kissed him on the forehead.
“Don’t cry, Thomas,” she said. “Don’t spoil our wonderful afternoon.”
Thomas did not reply. There was no time. The taxi drew up in front of the house, and he could see his father on the doorstep waiting impatiently for his personal assistant to get out. Thomas hung back for a moment before he followed Greta out onto the sidewalk. He did not know in that instant whether he loved or hated this mysterious green-eyed woman with whom he had become so obsessed.
Looking up at the house as he got out of the taxi, Thomas caught sight of his mother standing framed in one of the high windows of the drawing room on the first floor, and he never afterward forgot the look of infinite sadness on her face. It was as if she knew that she had less than two months left to live.
Chapter 12
“And now, with your Lordship’s leave, I will call my first witness,” said John Sparling, turning his attention away from the jury and focusing on the old judge above him, who was busy sharpening a set of colored pencils.
Sparling felt his opening had gone well. The jury had stayed attentive and seemed suitably upset when shown the murder photographs. Now was the time to build on that effect, and who could be better for the purpose than the crime-scene officer? Detective Constable Butler would keep the jury concentrating on the appalling circumstances of Lady Anne’s death, and the more the jury thought about that, the more they would want to find someone responsible for it. The more they would be prepared to follow Sparling’s lead down the paths of circumstantial and uncorroborated evidence that led to the defendant.
Sparling had no doubt in his mind that Lady Greta had conspired to murder her husband’s first wife, but proving it was quite another matter, particularly when he had Old Lurid Lambert to contend with. He did not underestimate his opponent; he’d lost too many guilty defendants to Miles over the years to allow himself to do that.
Detective Butler came into court preceded by Miss Hooks, the diminutive usher, who looked no more than half his height as he towered above her in the witness box and read the oath from the card that she held up in front of his solar plexus.
He must be six feet six. Detective Giant, thought Greta as she looked across at the crime-scene officer and imagined the back pain that he must endure bending over to examine floors and recesses for tiny bits of forensic evidence.
“I arrived at the House of the Four Winds at ten fifty-five P.M., having been called to the scene by the two officers who had attended in response to the original 999 call,” said Detective Butler, adopting the impersonal voice of the professional witness.
“It’s agreed, members of the jury, that that was made by Thomas Robinson from the house of a neighbor, Christopher Marsh,” said Sparling, speaking across his witness. “He’d gone there to raise the alarm.”
“Yes, that’s correct,” said Butler. “The officers had entered the house through the open side door by which Thomas Robinson had exited. They had climbed the back stairs and discovered the body, and they had afterward gone through the rooms in the house in order to ascertain if there were any other persons present.”
“Any intruders, you mean?”
“Yes. They found nobody, and they did not disturb the scene of the crime. I was satisfied that upon my arrival it was in the same condition as when Thomas Robinson had left the property to raise the alarm.”
“Why would he have needed to do that?”
“Because the telephone cable on the outside wall of the house by the side door had been cut. It is my opinion that a pair of garden shears were used for the purpose, although none were recovered from the scene.”
“What else did you find in that area?”
“The side door was open, as I have already said. There was a key in the lock on the inside of the property, suggesting that it had been unlocked from the inside. There is a study room to the left of this side entrance with two windows that look out over the north lawn.”