A Traitor to Memory

“My father told me as much,” I said.

“Yes. Well. Beckett saw the German girl's patience growing thin. The child—your sister—got her up three or four times each night, so she was short of sleep as well and that, in conjunction with the difficulties of morning sickness, wore her down. She began to leave Sonia too much alone, which was something that Miss Beckett came to realise since she gave you your lessons on the same floor of the house as your sister's nursery. Ultimately, she felt it her duty to report to your parents that Wolff was derelict in her duties. This precipitated a confrontation, which resulted in Wolff being sacked.”





“On the spot?” Libby asked.

Cresswell-White consulted a file for the answer to this, saying, “No. She was given a month's notice. Your parents were quite generous considering the situation, Gideon.”





“But she never said in court that she saw Katja Wolff abuse my sister?” I asked.

The barrister closed the folder, saying, “Beckett testified that they'd rowed—the German girl and your parents. She testified that Sonia, over a period of days, was left to cry for as long as an hour in her cot. She said that on the evening in question, she heard the German girl giving Sonia her bath. But she couldn't name the time or the place where she'd witnessed any direct physical abuse.”





“Who did?” Libby asked.

“No one,” the barrister replied.

“God,” I murmured.

Cresswell-White seemed to know what I was thinking, because he set the folder back on the coffee table along with his cup and he spoke to me urgently. “A case in court is like a mosaic, Gideon. If there's no eyewitness to the crime itself—as there wasn't in this situation—then each piece of the case that the Crown presents must ultimately form a pattern from which an entire picture can be seen. The entire picture is what convinces the jury of the defendant's guilt. And that's what happened in Katja Wolff's case.”





“Because there was other testimony against her?” Libby asked.

“Yes, indeed.”





“Whose?” My voice was weak—I could hear the weakness as well as I could hate it and as fully as I could not remove it from my tone.

“The police who took her first and only statement, the forensic pathologist who did the post-mortem, the friend with whom Wolff had initially claimed to be on the phone for one minute during which she left your sister alone, your mother, your father, your grandparents. It's less a case of encouraging anyone to say something directly against a defendant than of unfolding for the jury the situation as it existed and allowing them to draw their own conclusions about that situation. So everyone contributed to the overall mosaic. What we ended up with was a twenty-one-year-old German girl who had reveled in the publicity she got when she escaped from her country, who was able to emigrate to England because of the good will of a group of nuns, whose celebrity—which had fed her ego—quickly faded upon her arrival here, who was given a job that included room and board, who got herself pregnant, fell consequently ill, failed to cope, lost her job, and snapped.”





“Sounds like manslaughter, not murder,” Libby said.

“And would probably have gone down as such had she been willing to testify. But she wasn't. It was amazingly arrogant but quite in keeping with her background if it comes down to it, I suppose. She wouldn't testify. And she made matters worse for herself by refusing to speak to the police more than that single time, as well as by refusing to speak to her solicitor, or even her barrister.”





“Why'd she clam up?” Libby asked.

“I couldn't say. But the post-mortem showed there were previously healed fractures on your sister's body that no doctor could account for and no one else was able to explain, Gideon, and the fact that the German girl would say nothing to anyone concerning Sonia didn't make it look as if she was in the dark about those older injuries. And while the jury was instructed—as they were in those days—that Wolff's silence could not be held against her, juries are only human, aren't they? That silence is going to influence their thinking.”





“So what I said to the police—”





Cresswell-White waved my words away, saying, “I read your statement. Naturally, it was part of the brief. I re-read it, in fact, when you phoned me. And while I would have taken it into account twenty years ago, believe me, I wouldn't have prosecuted Katja Wolff on the strength of it alone.” He smiled. “After all, you were eight years old, Gideon. I had a son the very same age, so I was well aware of what boys are like. I had to consider the fact that Katja Wolff might have sorted you out about something in the days preceding your sister's death. And if that had been the case, you might have used your imagination for a bit of revenge on her, without knowing where your statement to the police could lead.”