Showtime, she whispered to herself softly before she turned and padded over to the bed, where her husband lay sleeping. Looking at her at that moment, youd have had to say that she was just like a cat. A sleek, well-cared-for white cat with a pair of glittering green eyes.
He looked good for his age, she thought. A full head of black hair with not too many silver flecks, a strong and wiry body; its outlines were clear and firm where he had wound himself up in his sheet during the long hot night. He had been sleeping badly for some time now, and she had often woken at three or four to see him standing by the open window gazing out into the night as if he could find some answer to his difficulties in the empty street below.
There had always been an inflexibility about the man, even before he was overtaken by disaster. He gave the impression of holding his features firm by an effort of will. It was apparent in the set of his jaw and the rigidity of his head upon his neck, but in the last year the lines on his forehead had become deeper and more pronounced. Recently he had formed a habit of passing his thumb and index finger along these furrows as if this was the only way of resting his piercing blue eyes, which never seemed to close. Except in his sleep, of course, like now, with little more than three hours to go before his second wife would go on trial for conspiring to murder his first.
Greta sat on the side of the bed and gently stroked her husbands cheek with the tip of her finger, feeling the bristly facial hair that had grown there during the night above the hard jawbone. You dont know how to fight, do you, darling? she whispered. Youre pretty good at conquering but not so good at fighting. Thats the trouble. You cant step back and defend yourself; you just keep on coming until youve got nothing left. Nothing left at all.
Whats left? asked Sir Peter Robinson, looking up at his wife in the confusion of his first awakening. What is it, Greta?
Nothing. Nothing at all, darling. Except that its nearly half past seven and its time to get up and face the jury.
Oh, Christ. Jesus Christ and all his saints. Christ.
I agree we could do with some help, but perhaps thats asking too much. Come on, Peter. I need you today. You know that.
Sir Peter unclenched his fists with a visible resolve and got out of bed. Greta stood and stepped back into the middle of the room. She put her hands on her hips.
How do I look?
Ravishing. Like, like
Im waiting.
Like Audrey Hepburn in that movie. What was it called?
Breakfast at Tiffanys. Well, lets hope Judge Stranger likes old movies.
Granger, Greta. Granger.
Whatever.
Two hours later John the chauffeur was driving Sir Peter and Lady Greta along the side of the River Thames in the black Daimler with the darkened windows that insulated the minister for defense so successfully from the population that had reelected his party into government three years before. Two short years ago Sir Peter had been riding high with a beautiful wife in the country and a personal assistant named Greta Grahame, whose bright efficiency had made him the envy of all his colleagues in the Palace of Westminster. But today the Daimler did not stop at the House of Commons or at Sir Peters offices in Whitehall but purred on toward an unfamiliar destination under the shadow of St. Pauls Cathedral: the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court built on the foundations of Newgate Prison. Less than fifty years ago men and women had been sent by the Queens judges to death by hanging after being convicted of crimes just like that for which Lady Greta was about to be tried.
At the entrance to the courthouse the crews of photographers and journalists with their long, insidious lenses and soft woolly microphones were waiting for Sir Peter and his wife to arrive.
Against all the odds, the prime ministers support had kept Peter in his position for far longer than any of his friends or enemies had ever expected. But Peter knew that he could not continue to defy political gravity if the trial didnt go Gretas way. Everything he had achieved was hanging in the balance, threatened with imminent destruction. And who did he have to thank for this state of affairs? His son, Thomas. His own flesh and blood.
Thomas, who had had everything he ever wanted and was now repaying him with this. Thomas the little bastard, who was so determined to bring everyone down because of what had happened to his mother. God knows, he wasnt the only person whod been hurt.
Sir Peter felt a surge of rage against his only child run through his body like electricity, and instinctively he gripped his wifes arm.
God, Greta, Im sorry.
Dont be. Its not your fault, she replied, understanding that it was everything, the whole sorry mess that he was referring to and not the sudden grip, which had left a red mark on her slender wrist.
Fucking little rat. Thats what he is. A rat.
Greta did not respond. Instead she turned to look out the window. This was not a time to let their feelings show. The car had turned into the Old Bailey and was encircled by the swarm of reporters as it slowed to a crawl over the last 150 yards of its journey. She thought they looked just like people caught in a flash flood, holding their cameras high above their heads as if they were the only belongings they could hope to save from the rushing waters.
But that was wrong, of course. She was the one at risk of drowning. And as her husband had just said: all because of that boy. The fucking little rat. Her stepson, Thomas.
Chapter 3
It hadnt always been like this between Greta and Thomas. Three years ago everything had been fine, or as near to fine as it could be between them. Thomas was just thirteen, and shed just started out working as Peter Robinsons personal assistant.
He was as dreamy a boy as shed ever met. He had fair hair the color of summer straw, which he wore long so that it fell forward over his forehead. He had already developed a habit of brushing his hair away from his eyes with the back of his hand before he spoke, a habit that would stay with him all his life. It was part of a natural diffidence, which led him to speak in a tone of uncertainty even when he was sure of what he wanted to say. Yet underneath he had already developed the qualities of stubbornness and determination that were to become so evident after his mothers death.
He had inherited his mothers liquid, blue eyes and delicate mouth, which endowed his face with an attractive half-feminine quality. He also had her fine hands and long, tapering fingers, suggesting a future as an artist or a musician. Not a future that his practical-minded father wanted for his only son.
Peter had had such grand hopes for Thomas when he was small. On the boys sixth birthday Peter got down the model airplanes that he and his father had made together when he was Thomass age. He arranged them lovingly in squadrons on the nursery floor and told his son their names. But Thomas only pretended to be interested. As soon as his father had left the room, he picked up the book of fairy stories that he had been reading and left the Hurricanes and Spitfires to gather dust.
Two weeks later the dog pursued a ball into the corner and broke the model of the bomber that his grandfather had flown in over Germany fifty years before. That evening Peter packed all the model airplanes away in a box and took them with him when he went back to London. Already his political career was keeping him away from home during the week, and Anne would not hear of selling the House of the Four Winds. Peter felt it was not him but the house that his wife really cared about. Her house and her son.
Peter could sense the expectation in his son when he was about to leave at the end of each weekend. He grew to hate the way the boy seemed to cower when he spoke to him. There was no reason for it. Peter had done nothing to deserve such treatment. He had struggled all his life to make his own father proud of him, and there was not a day that he did not thank Providence for letting the old man live just long enough to know that his son had become the minister of defense. But Thomas didnt care what his father thought. He had no pride in his fathers family, no interest in his fathers achievements. Thomass heart and mind belonged to his mother and to the house in which her family, the Sackvilles, had lived for generations.
As the years passed, father and son moved ever further apart. Thomas loved stories he couldnt get enough of them but Peter never read fiction. It was almost a matter of principle. His mind was fixed on the here and now, and he felt nothing but irritation on rainy days when Thomas lay reading for hours at a time. The boy would stretch himself out on the window seat in the drawing room with cushions piled high under his head so that he could see over the dunes to the North Sea, where great waves crashed upon the shingle beach. He would imagine the postmans knock on the back door as signaling the arrival of Long John Silver and his pirates come to claim their treasure from Billy Bones. Or when he was out walking the dog in the evening he would be looking for Heathcliff striding across the moors in search of a bloody revenge.
Thomas knew where all the wrecks were to be found off the coast. He had their locations marked with black crosses on a map on his bedroom wall, and he would swear on a stack of Bibles that he had heard the church bells of the lost city of Dunwich tolling bleakly in the small hours from their resting place beneath the waves. But such legends had no meaning for Thomass father, who saw their only value as keeping up the local tourist trade.
Within only a few months of being hired Greta made herself indispensable to Sir Peter and so began to accompany him on his weekend visits to his family at the House of the Four Winds. For at least half of the time they would be working in either Sir Peters study or the drawing room, with its French windows leading onto the garden where Lady Anne spent so much of her time planting and pruning and tending the rose walks for which the House of the Four Winds had become so famous in recent years. And Thomas would be out there too, wheeling a barrow or unraveling a hose. Always helping his mother. The two were inseparable.
Greta made a great effort to get on with Thomas, and by and large she succeeded, for a time at least. She was a good listener when she wanted to be, and she read as much as she could about Suffolk and its history so that Thomas began to come to her when he needed information for the stories he was always writing and reading to his mother in the evenings. Lady Anne raised her eyebrows and laughed in a disconcerting way when she heard of the assistance being given her son by her husbands P.A., but otherwise she said nothing. Greta, however, felt an obscure disapproval emanating from Lady Anne, a sense that the mistress of the house had found her out but chose to let events take their course without interference.