Mansfield said he "hasn't a donkey's show" of finishing his cross-examination of Morris before 5pm, so Justice Lang has decided to take the evening adjournment. 

Court will resume 10am tomorrow for Morris' cross-examination. 

Morris did not return to clean the home after the death of Pauline Hanna.

Dickey asks if messages were sometimes left for her.

No really, the housekeeper replies, although Hanna had once asked if she could empty the dishwasher.

"One time... there was a note saying Philip was in conference and not to enter," Morris says.

Dickey refers Morris to a police photo of the guest bedroom upstairs, which is in a state of disarray.

Had she ever seen the room in this state? he asks.

"No, never," said Morris. She had never seen the bed stripped like in the photograph, taken after Hanna's death, or the pillows all over the floor.

Morris described her work as "surface management really" and said the home was never very dirty.

Polkinghorne was the only one who came home when Morris was cleaning, arriving on occasion to pick up phones.

She could not remember if anyone was home on her last visit, on April 1. 

Morris said her work mostly involved ironing and cleaning floors and occasionally making a bed. 

Did you do the laundry? asks Dickey.

No, says Morris, but she ironed and folded shirts – Polkinghorne's mostly.

In her first email, Hanna told Morris she would occasionally have to make the bed in the upstairs guest bedroom, where she said Polkinghorne sometimes slept when he was working late.

Morris told the court she had made the guest bed maybe four times in the months she worked in the house. 

Earlier, the jury heard Hanna slept in this room, while Polkinghorne spent the night in the master bedroom.

"We were doing something bigger than ourselves," Alabastro says.

She had heard Hanna's mother died on February 5, 2021, but was not told by Hanna directly. Nor was she told the only time Hanna took off was to travel to Hastings for the day of the funeral and back to work the following day.

Alabastro is now free to go and the Crown calls Sheryl Morris, Pauline Hanna and Philip Polkinghorne's housekeeper.

Morris started working for the couple on December 15, 2020, and finished on April 1, 2021.

She would work Tuesday and Thursday, four hours a day, she  told prosecutor Brian Dickey.

"Sorry that this is a wee bit onerous," he comments.

"I feel a bit fatigued myself now."

Mansfield is now, at length, going through email after email sent between the witness and Hanna and others to hammer home his point.

Did Hanna ever tell Alabastro, asks Mansfield, that she was finding the job incredibly difficult and lonely?

No, said Alabastro.

The lawyer is referring again to reams of emails Hanna sent after midnight and into the small hours, sometimes and 2am, 3am and 4am or thereabouts, resuming again at dawn, after full work days. 

He aims to show how long her hours were to add to his case she was stressed and overworked. 

In another email, Hanna says she had worked eight weeks without a break and was being bullied.

One of the latest set of emails was sent to Alabastro at 1am, telling her about planned vaccine sites.

Sometimes Hanna would say "don't you worry, leave it with me" and then come in the next day and say it was sorted, Mansfield suggested; Alabastro agreed.

In her police statement, Alabastro said she did not think Hanna would tell her if she was feeling stressed. They each had care for each other, she said.