Read The Sculptress for Free Online

taught you that much at theological college. God talks
in a whisper at the best of times.’
    It would be easier, he thought sometimes, if he could despise Olive. But he had never been able to.
He feared and disliked her but he did not despise her.
‘What can I do for you?’
    ‘You had some new diaries delivered this morning.
I’d like one.’
    ‘Are you sure, Olive? These are no different from
the others. They still have a religious text for every
day of the year and last time I gave you one you tore
it up.’
    She shrugged. ‘But I need a diary so I’m prepared
to tolerate the little homilies.’
    ‘They’re in the vestry.’
    ‘I know.’
    She had not come for a diary. That much he could
guess. But what did she plan to steal from the chapel
while his back was turned? What was there to steal
except Bibles and prayer books?
    A candle, he told the Governor afterwards. Olive
Martin took a six-inch candle from the altar. But she,
of course, denied it, and though her cell was searched
from top to bottom, the candle was never found.
     

Three
    GRAHAM DEEDES WAS young, harassed, and black. He
saw Roz’s surprise as she came into his room, and he
frowned his irritation. ‘I had no idea black barristers
were such a rarity, Miss Leigh.’
    ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked curiously, sitting
down in the chair he indicated.
    ‘You looked surprised.’
    ‘I am, but not by your colour. You’re much
younger than I expected.’
    ‘Thirty-three,’ he said. ‘Not so young.’
    ‘No, but when you were briefed to appear for Olive
Martin you can only have been twenty-six or twenty-seven.
That is young for a murder trial.’
    ‘True,’ he agreed, ‘but I was only the junior. The
QC was considerably older.’
    ‘But you did most of the preparation?’
    He nodded. ‘Such as there was. It was a very
unusual case.’
    She took her tape-recorder from her bag. ‘Have
you any objections to being recorded?’
    ‘Not if you intend to talk about Olive Martin.’
    ‘I do.’
    He chuckled. ‘Then I’ve no objections, for the
simple reason that I can tell you virtually nothing
about her. I saw the woman once, on the day she was
sentenced, and I never even spoke to her.’
    ‘But I understood you were preparing a diminished
responsibility defence. Didn’t you meet her in the
course of doing that?’
    ‘No, she refused to see me. I did all my work from
material her solicitor sent me.’ He smiled ruefully.
‘Which wasn’t much, I have to say. We would, quite
literally, have been laughed out of court if we’d had
to proceed, so I was quite relieved when the judge
ruled her guilty plea admissible.’
    ‘What arguments would you have used if you had
been called?’
    ‘We planned two different approaches.’ Deedes
considered for a moment. ‘One, that the balance of
her mind was temporarily disturbed – as far as I recall
it was the day after her birthday and she was deeply
upset because instead of paying her attention the
family teased her about being fat.’ He raised his eyebrows
in query and Roz nodded. ‘In addition, I
believe, she made a reference in her statement to not
liking noise. We did manage to find a doctor who was
prepared to give evidence that noise can cause such violent distress in some people that they may act out
of character in trying to stop it. There was no psychiatric
or medical evidence, however, to prove that Olive
was of this type.’ He tapped his forefingers together.
‘Two, we were going to work backwards from the
appalling savagery of the crime and invite the court
to draw what we hoped to persuade them was an
inescapable inference – that Olive was a psychopath.
We hadn’t a cat’s chance on the balance of her mind
argument, but the psychopathy’ – he made a see-saw
motion with one hand – ‘maybe. We found a professor
of psychology who was prepared to stick his neck out
after seeing the photographs of the bodies.’
    ‘But