Break and Enter (8 page)

“Like I said,” she repeated without being asked, “I was in bed listening to the radio and the lights of the car went past the window, and then after he parked he came in the door and we spoke and then said good night. As simple as that. It was a regular night, you know what I mean? No big deal. Just a regular night.”

“It had rained that evening, right?”

“I think so.”

“Yes, there was a summer storm. Now, let me ask, there are a number of cars on the estate?”

“Yes.”

“Do the boys—the Robinson sons—drive them all?”

“Yes.”

“So the sound or appearance of one car doesn’t signal a particular son?”

“That’s right.”

“And the cars are generally parked where?”

“Around the side of the house.”

“Where, exactly?”

“The wider part of the driveway.”

“Where is that?”

“The driveway comes up toward the front of the house and then goes around the side by the kitchen and there’s a little lot.”

“It’s a big house.”

“Oh, there are bigger houses in the neighborhood.”

“Is it an average-size house, would you say?”

“Perhaps a little bit larger than usual.” She shrugged.

“How many rooms?”

“Maybe, uh, about thirty rooms.”

“That’s a very large house—that’s a mansion.”

“I’ve lived there so long it seems normal.”

“Well, it’s certainly not normal in a city where some people live on top of one another like rats, right?”

“No, I suppose—”

Morgan shot his hands into the air as if he were receiving a long touchdown pass. He beseeched the judge: “Your Honor, what are we talking about here? The prosecution is going on and on about general crime patterns, how big or small the house is—all, I protest, absolutely meaningless issues, meritless in regard to the issue at hand.”

“Mr. Scattergood,” the judge said, “please demonstrate, if you would, that your line of questioning has some apparent intent to it.”

Peter turned back to the witness.

“So Mr. Robinson had to walk a very far way from where he parked to the door where he came in, isn’t that right?”

“No,” she protested, “it’s not far.”

“How far?”

“I’m not good with distances …”

“The depth of this courtroom?”

“Perhaps.”

“So at least fifty feet.”

“I guess so.” She shrugged. “I don’t see what difference it makes.”

“Perhaps none at all. Now then, when Mr. Robinson came into the foyer and then the living room, you spoke with him?”

“My room,” she sighed, clearly having lost patience, “is just off the master staircase, over the front door. The car came up the drive, the lights shine right into my room—”

“You sleep in that room so you’ll know who is coming and going?”

“Yes.”

“Please continue.”

“So the car went by the room and then a minute or so later he came in and I got out of bed and looked over the balcony and we talked.”

“Tell me about the foyer.”

“It’s just a place where you come in.”

“Double set of doors?”

“Yes.”

“Does it have any special features, like a little Oriental rug, or artwork?”

“There’s a very fine jade dragon on the hall table that Mrs. Robinson loves, as a matter of fact.”

“So this is the formal entry of the house, the entry used on special occasions, dinner parties, etcetera. Right? When the plumber comes to fix the sink, he doesn’t use this entry, is that right?”

“Yes,” Mrs. McGuane said with unmistakable pride.

“Is there a carpet underneath?”

“It’s wall to wall in that part of the house.”

“What color, if I may ask?”

“Oh, I’d say it’s an off-white, a bone white.”

“Okay, what did you two talk about?”

“I think we talked about whether or not his parents were returning from Nantucket.”

“Their summer home?”

“Yes.”

He’d wage a little class warfare on behalf of the jury: “Is that home also a spacious mansion?”

The housekeeper bristled. “No.”

“And what was the conclusion of the conversation regarding the plans of Mr. and Mrs. Robinson?”

“I think I told Billy that his mother had called to say that the boat needed something, it needed a sail repaired, and so they were going to be delayed by a day.”

“You have a good memory, Mrs. McGuane.”

“Thank you,” she said, bustling in her chair, eager to answer the next question with similar competence.

“So this was normal, mundane news,” Peter summarized. “Just information that you were delivering as you might do any day?”

“Yes.”

“What else did you talk about?”

“I think that was about it.”

“How many sentences did you exchange?”

“Maybe five.”

“It was a brief conversation?”

“Yes.”

“You probably spoke to each other about a minute once he was inside the front door?”

“Yes, not much more than that.”

“And did anything remarkable happen thereafter that evening?”

“No, I went back to bed.”

“I repeat the question: Did anything unusual or traumatic occur then?”

“No, I just went back to bed.”

“That is correct? You’re sure of it?”

“Yes, I heard him come through the front door, I got up and saw him, and then I went to bed. How many times do I have to say it?” she concluded, taking her glasses off to clean them—a common and unconscious mannerism of bad witnesses; unable to see their questioner’s face, they lied more easily, and thus more convincingly. Peter waited while she cleaned and recleaned her glasses. When she realized he was waiting for her, she put them back on.

“You are speaking the truth?”

“Yes,” Mrs. McGuane said, hinting irritation. She pursed her lips and lifted her eyebrows innocently.

He walked over to the bar and faced her down.

“Do you swear it?”

“Yes,” she snapped.

“I’m just trying to get things straight here. You say you are telling the truth? You are telling the
absolute truth
to this court?”

“Yes. I maybe didn’t finish my schooling, but I’m
not
ignorant, Mr.—”

“Scattergood.”

“Yes, I may seem that way to you, but I assure you I understand everything we say here and that I’m telling God’s truth. May he strike me down if I’m lying.”

“I am glad to hear you’re so certain of that, Mrs. McGuane—”

“Objection!”

Morgan jumped to his feet, arms up, and executed a small angry dance around the table. “Your Honor, I absolutely object to the treatment of this witness. I move for a mistrial on the grounds—”

“I’ll be happy to demonstrate why, exactly, I am skeptical,” Peter interrupted.

“The motion is denied,” the judge said. “Go on, Mr. Scattergood, but get to it. This is not yielding much, as far as I can see.”

Robinson, who was smarter than his attorney, looked at Peter and suddenly smiled, perhaps now understanding Peter’s strategy. Peter turned back toward the witness. “Would you tell me the first thing that you do in the morning?”

“I get up and go down to the kitchen.”

“Are you usually the first one up?”

“Yes.”

“What about the sons?”

“They usually sleep until ten on the weekends.”

“And what do you do?”

“I make the coffee and go outside and get the paper.”

And now Mrs. McGuane looked toward him with sudden concentration, her eyes unblinking, seeing past him, past the room and the assembled people, and into her habits of the morning. She knew now what the prosecutor wanted from her.

“The paper is delivered to the kitchen door?” Peter pressed.

“Yes,” she said in a quieter voice.

“Because that’s the door where you or the Robinsons like to have it delivered?”

“Yes.”

“Is there a nice, big breakfast table where people spread out the paper?”

“Yes.”

“The paper comes to that door and not the front door?”

“Yes, the boy brings it around.”

“And why is that?”

“Because that’s the door that’s easiest,” she said vaguely.

“What’s so easy about it?”

“Well, I’m there in the morning.”

“Now then, you have told us about the remarkable security system the Robinson house has. I am certainly no expert on such systems, but I do know that generally speaking there is a control box or a numeric keyboard where the home-owner—or in this case the housekeeper—can turn the alarm on or off. For example, the alarm must be turned off before a window may be opened. Does that sound like your system?”

“Yes.”

Peter had priced a system for his own house last summer, what with the crack addicts getting bolder by the month, using hacksaws and hydraulic tire jacks to get through window bars. He had researched several options, even. But then he and Janice spent the money on a Caribbean vacation, hoping to get closer.

“The alarm is on at all times?”

“Yes.” The housekeeper kept her eyes downcast, toward Peter’s feet.

“The company that installs these systems usually programs them. The electronics are very complicated. Is that the case with your system?”

“Yes.”

“Would it be a fair statement to say that once the installation was complete, it was not changed by you or anyone else in the household?”

She nodded.

“Let the record show that the witness nodded in an affirmative manner,” Peter directed toward Benita, the court reporter. “And, as the person who runs this household, is it true to the best of your knowledge that the company installing the service would keep a record of when and how that was done?”

“Yes.”

“The Robinsons would want a first-rate alarm service company that kept scrupulous records, is that true?”

“They wanted the best, yes.”

“Is it a correct statement to say that in order for you to go get that newspaper each morning you have to turn off the alarm?”

“Yes.”

“You turn off the system by punching in a password or a code?”

The witness looked at the judge. “I don’t think I should tell the answers to these questions.”

The judge leaned forward. “Don’t tell the court any special codes, but otherwise please answer all questions.”

“All right,” she agreed. “Yes, you punch in a code.”

“Just for the kitchen door or the whole system?”

“I can do either.”

“But you must do this to turn off the alarm?”

“Yes.”

“For any of the doors or any of the windows?”

“Yes.”

“And where is the control box?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Where?”

“In one of the cabinets.”

“In the kitchen proper?”

“Yes.”

“And this is the only way the alarm system is deactivated?”

“Yes.”

“So if someone comes in the kitchen door using a key, the alarm immediately goes off?”

“No.”

“And why is that?”

“Because that door is set to wait a little bit so that you can get to the box and punch in the code.”

“And how long does the timer wait? Five minutes?”

“Oh no,” she said. “It’s only thirty seconds.”

“Is this true for all the doors?” Peter followed quickly.

“No, just that door.”

“Then why and how in the world would William Robinson park his car next to the kitchen door, the door that he would know was the only door that would allow him to go in without making the alarm go off, and then walk fifty feet out of his way, come through the master entry in wet feet on a white rug usually used only for formal occasions, stop, see you and talk about this and that, without the alarm going off?”

Mrs. McGuane glanced anxiously toward Robinson, and in this Peter nearly felt remorse for what he was forcing her to do.

“Oh, maybe I made some silly mistake,” she blurted out, “but I
know
Billy was home that night.”

Peter waited for this statement to dissolve harmlessly. It was plausible that the housekeeper genuinely believed in Robinson’s innocence or was, at some level, lying to herself, unable to accept his guilt. Billy Robinson was, after all, one of the children she never had. Addendum to a tragedy: a mother’s heart broken. Peter let the witness and the court pause silently for a moment. He liked the feeling he had. It was not smugness, but a better form of satisfaction. He had done his job well and it was about to pay off, for this was the sudden quiet moment, he knew from seven years’ experience, in which the jurors would find themselves realizing the defendant was guilty. He paused, drank some water from the glass next to the pitcher. The radiators clanked, the water cooler hummed. The three court officers, men and women who had heard it all, had returned to their self-involved rituals of time wasting: fondling their watches, cleaning lint off the cuffs of their blue nylon blazers, chewing gum. Peter ordered his points in his mind, making adjustments for the testimony he had just heard. He wished Janice were there to see him work. He seemed to have lost all her respect.

“The mistake you have just alluded to
appears
to be in your whole story, Mrs. McGuane, and I’m going to point it out to you so that you may
clarify
yourself. From what I understand, the sons all sleep in a different part of the house, over the kitchen. They each drive all the cars. So you cannot tell which son is which by the sound of the car. The cars are usually parked next to the kitchen. You wanted the police to believe that you saw Billy come in that night and so you told them when they questioned you that you had seen him come in the front door. But there is no reason, by your own testimony, for him to do that. Why in the world would Billy Robinson park there, then walk fifty feet across wet grass or gravel, avoiding the kitchen door, which leads directly to his bedroom, and enter through the formal entry if the front-door alarm would go off? I submit that this version of events doesn’t make sense, not to me, Mrs. McGuane. There seems no reason to do that. Why would William Robinson, Billy Robinson, set off the alarm on purpose, especially if he
knew you were resting comfortably in bed? Right? See what I’m getting at? You said it was a normal night. The kitchen-door alarm timer is set so that people can go in and out without setting off the alarm. It’s next to where the car was parked, by your own description. And for good reason. Either he goes in the front door and the alarm goes off, or he does what he always does, goes in the kitchen door, and the alarm doesn’t go off. Those are the only logical options, based on your testimony here this morning. And yet your version of the events doesn’t match either one of those. What really happened, I submit, is that he came in that night, sometime after you went to sleep, and he came in through the kitchen and out of habit punched in the code in the thirty seconds before the alarm went off. That seems to be the only possible chain of events, Mrs. McGuane. And since that is so, you cannot truthfully say exactly when William Robinson came in that night, whether at the time in question or an hour or two later. Wouldn’t you agree?”