'That would have been our administrator, Joel Nelson. I think he took Eva's call.'
'Did anyone else apart from you and Mr Nelson know that Eva was at home that evening?'
'The entire congregation. As I recall, Lennox Strong made an announcement explaining that she couldn't be with us.'
'Had she done this before?'
Turnbull had to think before answering. 'No, I don't remember her having missed an important engagement.'
'So this was a formal engagement?'
For the first time since he started giving evidence, Turn- bull glanced at his lawyers, looking for a prompt. Jenny's eyes were on Sullivan before he could offer one. Turnbull was left to answer alone.
'Not formal in the sense that she was being paid for it,' he said without conviction.
'But she was expected to address the crowd?'
'She had offered to.'
'And instead she stayed at home and opened a bottle of wine.' Jenny picked up the booklet of police photographs and turned to a shot with a clear view of the bottle. 'It looks as if she had drunk about two-thirds of it by the time she died.'
Turnbull made no comment.
'Was she much of a drinker, do you know?'
'Not that I was aware of.'
Jenny studied the photograph again. There was a single, partially full glass of wine on the counter, and next to it a corkscrew and an ashtray containing several butts. On the counter opposite, a peninsula unit, was some broccoli wrapped in cellophane. There was no sign of cooking in progress. It looked as if Eva had opened the bottle and stayed at the counter drinking.
'Lord Turnbull,' Jenny said, 'are you aware of any reason, other than the one Miss Donaldson gave, as to why she might have stayed at home that night?'
'No.'
'I see,' Jenny said, leaving him in no doubt that she wasn't persuaded. Up to her eyes in debt, alone, traipsing around the country delivering the same lines for an employer who refused to give her a rise: it was impossible not to suspect that Eva was becoming more than a little resentful. Added to the fact that two weeks before she'd had her crotch tattooed, it painted a picture of a young woman who was going through a rough patch of turbulence, to say the least.
Sullivan was the only lawyer to cross-examine. 'Miss Donaldson's indebtedness has been alluded to. Am I right in saying she wrote to you in November of last year asking for a pay rise?'
'She did. I put the request to the board and they decided it would be inappropriate, given the fact that she had been employed for less than a year.'
'How did she react to that refusal?'
'She understood the reasons and accepted them.' He turned to the jury. 'Look, I think we have to acknowledge that we are talking about a fallible human being here, not a saint. Eva came under the same pressures as the rest of us.'
'One more thing,' Sullivan said, with a dismissive glance in Jenny's direction, 'I think what Mrs Cooper may have been intending to ask, but didn't quite, is whether to your knowledge Miss Donaldson was planning to meet someone at her home the evening she was killed.'
'I don't know of any such arrangement.'
'And she's not the only one of us to have had a glass of wine alone at the end of a hard day.'
'Quite.'
Jurors smiled. They liked the idea of Eva having an Achilles heel.
Christine Turnbull was just as skilful as her husband at evading the issue of Eva's state of mind. Composed and dignified, she described a purely professional, arm's length relationship between them. In her capacity as a member of Decency's board, she met Eva mostly to discuss forthcoming engagements and to plan strategies with their media consultants. Eva had impressed everyone with her ability to operate under pressure without letting emotion intrude, which was a remarkable feat given her painful history. Their social contact had been limited to a few dinners and the odd cocktail party Decency had hosted at the Houses of Parliament. Even on these occasions their conversation had rarely become personal, let alone intimate. 'I got the impression that in public she was above all concerned to maintain her dignity,' Christine said. 'To have discussed intimacies would have been out of the question. I'm sure there were people with whom she did have such discussions, but they weren't with me. I think she saw me very much as an employer. She was comfortable with that, and so was I.'