Everything went just as Thomas had predicted. Once his father was alone, he went straight into the waiting room to confront him. Thomas had had time to think out his strategy beforehand. He had to tell his father what he had discovered at the Records Office. Handing him the certificates would not be enough. His father might refuse to look at them. What Thomas had not reckoned on was the level of his father’s hostility. It stopped Thomas in his tracks almost as soon as he had gotten through the door.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Peter shouted, getting to his feet. “I thought I told you to stay away from me.”
It took every ounce of Thomas’s courage to shut the door of the little room behind him and stand his ground as his father advanced on him. Thomas knew that the shouting would be audible inside the court if the door remained open.
“Look, Dad, I know it’s a bad time but — ”
“Bad time!” interrupted his father furiously. “It’s not a bad time, Thomas. It’s no time. My wife’s in that court on trial for murder because of you. You’ve tried everything, haven’t you?”
“No, Dad — ”
“Everything! You’ve perjured yourself, you’ve gotten other people to perjure themselves and now you’re going to try and interfere with my evidence. Well, you won’t get away with it, Thomas. I promise you that.”
A frenzy seemed to take possession of Peter. He seized hold of his son’s shirt just as he’d done on the day of Lady Anne’s funeral a year before, and he shook Thomas as he spoke.
“Dad, you’ve got to listen to me. I’ve found out something — ”
“New lies, Thomas. I’ve had enough of your lies. Now get out of my way.”
Using all his strength, Peter thrust his son to one side and wrenched open the door of the waiting room. Then he strode out into the hall, leaving his son in a heap in the corner. The door of the courtroom remained closed, but Thomas knew that Miss Hooks would be opening it any minute to summon his father inside. Thomas’s legs felt weak underneath him, and he needed all his willpower to get to his feet and go outside.
Peter was standing by one of the high windows on the other side of the hall. Thomas took the envelope out of his pocket and removed the two certificates, keeping his eye on his father all the time.
“Damn you, boy,” hissed Peter as his son approached. “Get away from me.” The two of them looked, at that moment, like they were playing some strange but deadly game.
“She’s not your wife, Dad.”
“Shut up, Thomas. Do you hear me? Shut up. I won’t tell you again.”
“Sir Peter Robinson,” called the shrill voice of Miss Hooks behind Thomas. He did not look around but instead grabbed his father by the wrist. At the same time Thomas used his other hand to force the certificates into his father’s grasp, pushing Peter’s fingers down over the paper.
“Take these,” he said. “Read them before you say anything. For Mummy’s sake. Do it for Mummy’s sake, if not for mine.”
“Sir Peter Robinson,” called Miss Hooks even more shrilly than before, and Thomas felt his father move past him toward the door of the court. There was a pause. Then a few moments later it shut with a bang.
Thomas might never have known what happened in the court after his father had gone into the witness box if Matthew had not at that moment arrived at the top of the stairs. He found Thomas standing as if turned to stone, looking vacantly up through a high window toward a patch of blue sky. The aftershocks of his encounter with his father were sending shudders through Thomas’s thin frame, and Matthew could see the tears in his friend’s dark blue eyes.
“Where’s your father?” he asked. “Where are the certificates? Talk to me, Tom.”
“I gave them to him, but I don’t know if he’ll read them. He wouldn’t let me speak, Matt. I think I’ve screwed it up. I’m so sorry. I should have listened to you.”
“There’s no time for that now. Has your father gone inside?”
Thomas nodded miserably.
“Well, we’ve got nothing to lose then, have we? Let’s see what happens. We haven’t come this far to miss out on the last act.”
Matthew started to pull Thomas toward the door of the court.
“Sergeant Hearns told us not to go back in court after we’d finished giving evidence,” protested Thomas weakly, but Matthew took no notice. The fight had gone out of Thomas, and he put up no resistance as Matthew pushed open the door and pulled him down onto a seat at the back of the court.
A ripple of interest ran along the press benches as the reporters turned to look at the teenagers, but then they all settled back into their seats as Sir Peter Robinson took the oath. His voice sounded dead and his face was white, but Greta’s attention was concentrated on Thomas. It filled him with a raw pleasure to watch the anxiety growing in her green eyes until finally he could not resist the temptation to bait her any longer. He looked at his father and then he looked back at Greta and smiled meaningfully. The effect on Greta was instantaneous. She gripped the rail of the dock and the color drained from her face. Then she was suddenly writing something on a piece of paper and trying to get the attention of Patrick Sullivan sitting several yards away with his back to the dock. Thomas watched him turn around and get up to speak to Greta while with another part of his brain Thomas listened to the beginning of his father’s evidence.
“Tell us your name, please,” asked Miles Lambert.
“I am Sir Peter Robinson.”
“And your occupation?”
“I am the minister of defense.” Peter’s voice was entirely flat, without any intonation or emphasis.
Patrick Sullivan put a note in front of Miles Lambert, but the barrister did not look down to read it. There was no reason to. All he was doing was introducing his witness to the jury, getting them warmed up for the glowing character reference that Sir Peter was going to give his wife.
“How long have you known Lady Greta Robinson?” he asked.
“About three and a half years. She started working for me in 1997.”
“And it’s right to say that you were married last December.”
“Right and wrong.”
“Excuse me, Sir Peter. I don’t quite understand that answer.”
“Let me clarify it for you then,” said Peter evenly. “We certainly went through a ceremony of marriage at the Chelsea Registry Office on the twentieth of December last year, but it is now quite clear to me in the light of these documents that the ceremony was not valid.”
“Not valid?”
“Yes. Because the person I thought I was marrying was already married to someone else, and I have every reason to think that her husband was then, and in fact still is, very much alive.”
Miles’s mouth opened and closed and opened again, but for the first time in many years no words came out. He glanced down too late at the scrawled note that Patrick Sullivan had put on the table in front of him.
“Miles,” it said. “Don’t ask him any questions. He’ll destroy us if you do. Close the case now. Greta.”
She might have told me before, thought Miles bitterly. Before her bloody husband or whoever he is got up there and smashed up all my work.
The judge allowed the heavy silence to build in the courtroom for a few moments before he broke it himself.
“I see that you’ve got two documents there, Sir Peter,” he said in his usual courteous manner. “Perhaps you’d be good enough to tell us what they are.”
“This one’s Greta’s marriage certificate,” said Peter. “The certificate for her first marriage, I mean. It shows that she married Jonathan Barry Rowes on November twenty-sixth, 1989, in Liverpool — ”
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Sir Peter, but did you just say ‘Rose’?” asked the judge. “As in the flower?”
“Yes, that’s right. It’s spelled R-O-W-E-S but it’s obviously pronounced like the flower.”