The House in the Woods (Atticus Priest Book 1) Read online

  She looked at her sergeant. “Tristan?”

  “A few butterflies, boss.”

  Lennox had given evidence before, but none of those cases had the profile that this one did. That was reasonable enough; none of the cases that Mack had worked before had enjoyed the same profile, either. Lennox was a steady, solid policeman. He was reliable and diligent, the kind of officer who would not let you down. If there was a weakness, it was that he was not—at least in Mack’s opinion—blessed with the sharpest of minds. Her meeting with Atticus in the corridor came back to her. Atticus and Lennox had clashed while they had both worked the Burns case, and Mack knew that Lennox’s resentment towards Atticus was entirely because Lennox found it impossible not to compare the two of them. Inevitably, Lennox knew that he would always come up short. Mack had also wondered whether the revelation of her affair with Atticus had bothered Lennox, too; he had always thrived on her approval, and now here was evidence that she preferred his rival in every way. She remembered his gleeful reaction to the news of Atticus’s dismissal and had wondered whether he had been the one who had tipped off Andy. They had never spoken about it.

  He was looking at her now as if for a blessing. “You’ll be fine,” she said, trying to find a reassuring smile. “Just answer the questions.”

  “Just what I said,” Abernathy said.

  “But Crow is sharp. What if he trips me up?”

  “Stick to the facts,” she said. “No one is going to ask you to speculate.”

  “And the movement in the window?”

  “We can’t talk about the evidence now,” Abernathy said. “You just have to deal with it.”

  “But if the jury agrees with me…”

  Abernathy spread his hands. “We put our case against Mallender to the best of our ability. If they can introduce a reasonable doubt to say that he didn’t do it, then we have to take that on the chin and accept it.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Mack said again.

  Abernathy looked at his watch and stood up. “I agree. For what it’s worth, I don’t think they can do too much damage. We’ve got Lamza’s testimony, the arguments at the house, the fact that Mallender would get a fortune in the event of the death of his family. We’ve got enough. You’ll be fine, Sergeant, like Mack says. And so will we, even if today is a little bumpy. We’ll all be fine.” Abernathy took off his glasses and slipped them into his pocket. “I’ll see you inside.”

  They all stood as Abernathy left for the robing room.

  Mack went to Lennox and patted him on the arm. She noticed that he was wearing a new suit and that the caps of his shoes had been buffed to a high sheen. “I’m not worried at all,” she said. “You’ve got this.”

  “Thanks, boss,” he said.

  “You ready?”

  He nodded. “Let’s get it over with.”

  30

  Atticus took his seat and looked around the courtroom. The second day was just as busy as the first, with the small public gallery once again full to capacity. Journalists were pressed together shoulder to shoulder as they discussed proceedings in hushed and excited terms. Allegra was sitting in the same seat as yesterday. He scanned the court for Mack and saw her in the same seat as before, her arms crossed as she waited for the proceedings to begin.

  The associate called for the court to rise and everyone did, the shuffle of feet accompanying the judge as he came inside and sat down.

  “Are you ready, Mr. Abernathy?”

  “Yes, my Lord. The prosecution calls Detective Sergeant Tristan Lennox.”

  The usher opened the door and called Lennox inside. Atticus watched as the detective made his way to the witness box to be sworn in. He looked apprehensive, with a sheen of sweat on his forehead that caught the harsh glare of the overhead lights. Atticus wasn’t fond of Lennox, and he knew that the antipathy was mutual. Lennox had found him smoking a joint in the toilets at Bourne Hill, and his fateful drug test had been just a day or two later; the suspicion that Lennox was responsible for it was easy to credit.

  “Can you confirm your name, please?” Abernathy said.

  Lennox leaned forward, a little too close to the microphone; a buzz of feedback burst out of the speakers.

  “Sorry,” he said, causing it to feed back again.

  “No need to be quite so close,” Abernathy said gently. “Your name and rank, please.”

  “Detective Sergeant Tristan Lennox. I work at the major crimes unit, Wiltshire Constabulary.”

  “Thank you, Detective Sergeant. I would like to begin with your summary of the events of Christmas Eve last year.”

  “Of course,” Lennox said. “I was duty CID that night. I was passing through Wilton when I heard the call from the control room. A civilian reported that he had observed a body in a property in Grovely Woods, near Wilton, and that he suspected that foul play was involved. I immediately drove to the property.”

  “This is Grovely Farmhouse?”

  “Yes, sir. I arrived there soon after the 999 call.”

  “And you were first on the scene?”

  “I was.”

  Abernathy led Lennox through the narrative of his testimony: his arrival at the farmhouse, his early interactions with Mallender—what he said, his behaviour and what Lennox made of him—and then the arrival of reinforcements. Atticus watched. He could see that Lennox was nervous to start, but, at Abernathy’s patient prompting, he saw that he found his confidence and settled into a more relaxed delivery.

  “Could you speak a little about the house itself?”

  Lennox took a sip of water and nodded. “The external doors were found to be locked from the inside. All of the windows were latched. The rear door had been secured with a mortice lock, and the key had been left inside. The window to one of the upstairs spare rooms was open, although access through it was discounted as extremely unlikely given that scaling the wall at that part of the house would have been almost impossible.”

  “And your initial view—taken at that early stage—was that it would not have been possible to get into the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that changed?”

  “It did. Hugo Mallender’s brother subsequently demonstrated to us that access was possible through an old coal hole at the front of the house. The misapprehension that the house was secured from the inside had lent weight to our initial theory that it must have been a murder-suicide, with the killer taking his own life.”

  “Because it wouldn’t have been possible for someone else to have committed the crime and then locked the doors from the outside?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you believed that Cameron Mallender was responsible?”

  “We did.”

  “Please explain what you found inside the house, Detective Sergeant.”

  Lennox described the crime scene in precise and unemotive language. “Hugo Mallender was found in the kitchen. His wife, Juliet, and his daughter, Cassandra, were found shot to death in the sitting room where Cameron Mallender’s body was also found. The pistol at Cameron’s side was later confirmed as the weapon that was responsible for all four deaths.”

  “That fact is not in issue,” Abernathy noted to the jury.

  Lennox went on. “The crime scene technicians spent several hours going about their work. They took more than three hundred photographs, including shots of the victims, their positioning in the rooms in which they were found, the disturbed furniture in the kitchen, the firearm, the spent ammunition, and anything else that might have been of subsequent interest. The bodies were then removed from the property after the technicians had released it to us, and were taken to Holly Tree Lodge Mortuary in Dorset.”

  “And what happened next?”

  “The defendant was taken to Bourne Hill CID in Salisbury for interview. Detective Chief Inspector Jones and myself were responsible for that. Mr. Mallender admitted that there had been a row with his mother and father earlier in the evening, and that, after stopping for a drink in the
Greyhound pub in Wilton, he had decided to return so that he might smooth things over.”

  “How did you find the defendant?”

  “Much as you would expect, under the circumstances.”

  “Did you find him credible?”

  “At that stage, yes, I did. The other officers who interacted with him, too—we all did.”

  “We’ll hear from them all in due course,” Abernathy said, nudging Lennox away from giving hearsay evidence. “What happened next?”

  “We worked through the whole of the next day.”

  “This was Christmas Day?”

  “It was,” Lennox said.

  “My sympathy,” Abernathy said, turning to the jury with a knowing look. “I doubt that went down well with your family.”

  “I’m single,” he said. “But it didn’t go down well for my boss.”

  There was a titter of laughter, and Atticus couldn’t prevent a wry smile. He knew that Andy, Mack’s husband, would have kicked up a stink. He had never really understood his wife’s dedication to her job and had often complained that she pursued her career to the detriment of her family. And this was Christmas Day. Atticus could imagine how he would have reacted to her phone call telling him that she wouldn’t be home.

  Abernathy pointed back to the dock. “And was the defendant still not seen as a suspect?”

  “No,” Lennox said. “Not at that stage.”

  “When did that change?”

  “The post-mortems took place on Boxing Day. The first time we realised something wasn’t quite as it appeared was when the pathologist reported that it was his opinion that the weapon had been fired into Cameron Mallender’s head in such a way that made it unlikely that he had fired it himself.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It was possible that Cameron had fired it, but it was more likely that it was fired by someone else. That, obviously, made us question our working assumption that this was a murder-suicide.”

  Abernathy turned to the jury. “We’ll hear from the pathologist in due course,” he said. He returned to Lennox. “What else made you change your mind?”

  “We were approached by several people—relations of the Mallenders, mostly—who said that the defendant’s relationships with his family were not what he had suggested to us. They told us that there was no love lost between them. There was also reported to have been an argument earlier on Christmas Eve between the defendant and his family.”

  “Go on, Detective.”

  “I interviewed the cleaner—Mrs. Grant. She was there that afternoon, and she said that the argument between Ralph and the rest of the family was much worse than he had told us.”

  “Again, we will hear from Mrs. Grant.” Abernathy flipped the pages in his folder of notes.

  “We learned about the coal hole, too,” Lennox said. “We realised that there was a way in and out of the house even when it was locked. That opened up the pool of potential suspects beyond the victims inside the property.”

  Abernathy flipped pages. “You were also contacted by Mr. Freddie Lamza.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Once more, members of the jury, we will hear from Mr. Lamza in due course, but he will say that the defendant expressed hatred for his family and said that he wanted to kill them.”

  “That’s what he said,” Lennox said.

  “And did that change your opinion?”

  “It made me question the conclusion that we had drawn. All of it did.”

  “So, you no longer thought it was Cameron?”

  “No,” Lennox said.

  “And your new conclusion?”

  “We started to look very closely at the defendant.”

  “Indeed,” Abernathy said. “Now, then—we need to address something that you note in your witness statement. You said that you believe you saw movement in the upstairs window of the house soon after you arrived. Is that correct?”

  Atticus leaned forward, his attention focused on Lennox.

  Lennox took another sip from his glass. “It is, sir.”

  “Would you mind telling us what you thought you saw?”

  “I’ve given it a lot of thought since then,” Lennox said. “And the honest answer is that I don’t know. It was dark. There was no light in that particular window. I thought I saw something moving.”

  “What do you think you saw?”

  “A person.”

  “I see. And how confident are you that you saw someone?”

  “Can I swear to it? No, I can’t. But do I think it is possible that I saw what I thought I saw? Yes, I do. It’s possible. I’m sorry I can’t be more certain.”

  “That’s fine. Thank you, Detective Sergeant. Please stay there—Mr. Crow will probably have some questions for you.”

  31

  Abernathy sat down. Atticus watched Lennox as he looked over at Mack. She smiled back at him, and Atticus could see that she was trying to impart a little confidence. They would both have known that his evidence-in-chief would be the easy part, and that the cross-examination would be where things might become more difficult.

  Christopher Crow stood up and folded his arms behind his back so that his elbows protruded. “I do indeed have some questions,” he said. “Detective Sergeant Lennox—I think I only need detain you to clarify one point of your evidence. It’s the matter of the person you saw in the window of the farmhouse.”

  “The person I thought I saw.”

  “Indeed. And this is a crucial question, is it not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Because, Detective Sergeant, if there was someone in the house who was still alive when you arrived, then it means the case against the defendant could not possibly be made.”

  “I suppose so, sir.”

  “You suppose so? I think we can be more categorical than that. If someone was alive inside the house while Mr. Mallender was outside it, then surely the suggestion that he was responsible for what happened can finally be described for what it really is: patent nonsense.”

  “Those are your words.”

  “Then perhaps you could give us some of yours, Detective. If the defendant was outside the house with you when someone else was still inside, what impact would that have on the question of the defendant’s guilt or otherwise?”

  “It would make it less likely,” Lennox said.

  “‘It would make it less likely,’” Crow repeated with a stagey, knowing look at the jury. “I should think it would. Do you still believe that you saw someone moving in the house?”

  Atticus leaned forward, watching carefully; Lennox was known for having a bit of a temper, and he knew him well enough to know that he would find Crow’s attitude both pompous and aggressive. He had seen him lose his rag to lesser provocations.

  “All I can say is what I said before. I thought I saw something that night. I’ve thought about it a lot since, and I still can’t say for sure.”

  “But it is possible?”

  “Yes. It’s possible.”

  Crow smiled. “Thank you, Detective Sergeant. I have no further questions.”

  Abernathy was quickly back on his feet for his re-examination. “I think we ought to just reiterate the evidence that you gave, Detective Sergeant. It was dark and there was a lot going on in the farmyard—that’s correct, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “And when I asked you earlier, you couldn’t say for sure that you saw someone—is that still your evidence?”

  “It is.”

  “It could have been something as simple as a reflection? The moon, perhaps? Or a torch?”

  “Yes, sir. It could.”

  “Thank you, Detective Sergeant. That is all. You may stand down.”

  The judge looked to Abernathy. “I see that it is nearly one o’clock. Perhaps this might be an opportunity to break for lunch?”

  “Of course, my Lord.”

  “Good. We’ll adjourn and continue with the prosecution’s next witness this afternoon.”

  Th
e judge stood.

  “All rise,” the associate called out.

  32

  Atticus followed the rest of the gallery out into the lobby and saw that Allegra was waiting for him with Dafyd Cadogan. The solicitor saw him approaching and instinctively reached down to button his jacket. It was defensive, closed body language that Atticus recognised; it often signified that a person was uncomfortable. Cadogan was full of bluster, but Atticus could see beneath it easily enough and didn’t mind at all that he had that effect on him.

  “I asked Dafyd about you going to see Ralph,” Allegra said.

  “I’m not sure what it’ll achieve,” Cadogan said, barely attempting to conceal his disdain.

  “I like to be thorough,” Atticus said. “Is it possible?”

  “He can see you this evening.”

  “What time?”

  “Court should finish between four and five. Ralph should be back in prison by six. We have some things to do first—you should aim to arrive around seven. I’ll arrange for a Visiting Order to be left for you.”

  “Where’s he being held?”

  “HMP Winchester. Main building. You’ll need to bring ID.”

  Atticus was tempted to tell him that he had visited people in prison before and knew the procedure, but held his tongue. “Thank you.”

  Allegra thanked Cadogan and waited as he made his way to the exit. She took Atticus aside.

  “What did you think? About this morning?”

  “Lennox?” he said.

  “You say you’re good at reading people.”

  “He was clearly very uncomfortable. I doubt he wanted to be there, but that’s not surprising. No one enjoys giving evidence, not even the police—it’s stressful. Stress and discomfort actually make it more difficult to read a person. When someone is comfortable, the nonverbal signs that might suggest deceit are easier to see. The trouble with an environment like a courtroom is that we can’t find a baseline.”