Death Has Deep Roots (19 page)

“I knew it, anyway.”

“Yes. You told me you were precocious. It sounds as if it might be something. It’s the sort of character we’re trying to build up for Wells, anyway. Do you think we could have a word with the charmer?”

“I’m afraid she’s gone. She wasn’t here when I came back at the end of the war. Mother Potts may know where she is. Shall we walk down?”

“We shan’t be able to get in. It’s out of hours.”

“Don’t you believe it,” said young Mr. Evans. “I’ve known the back way into that pub since I was ten.”

They walked together across the playing fields. It was very pleasant in the autumn sunshine. On one pitch thirty tiny boys were being taught the art of Rugby football by their enthusiastic seniors. An open-air gym class was being instructed by an ex-sergeant-major who appeared to McCann to be using methods which the Army had abandoned just after the Boer War. A number of boys muffled in sweaters and scarves were running round and round the perimeter of the field dripping with perspiration. Everyone in sight seemed to be busy hurting himself or somebody else.

Buster smiled genially, paused for a moment to advise two boys to “pack lower and get their heads in,” and led the way through the shrubbery, out of a wicket gate, across a road and into the back yard of the Mulberry Tree.

Mrs. Potts, whom they found in her parlour, was helpful.

She remembered Ivy, Miss Ivy Pratt. A nice girl she had thought. Cheerful and a worker.

“A fast worker,” suggested Buster.

“Now, now, Mr. Evans,” said Mrs. Potts. “You mustn’t say things like that. What’s gone is gone.”

“Do you know where she is now?”

“Why, Mr. Evans, you don’t say you’re after her?”

“That’s it,” agreed Buster. “She lighted a flame in my heart at the age of thirteen which has never quite died out. No, Ma. It’s my friend here. He’s an insurance agent. If he can find Miss Pratt she will hear something to her advantage.”

“There, now,” said Mrs. Potts. “Think of that. Well, she went to Winchester – the White Lion in Priestgate. But I did hear a year or two ago that she’d gone on to Salisbury. It wasn’t one of the big houses and, wait a minute and I’ll think of it. It was a funny name. The Dean’s Frolic. That was it.”

Sergeant Walter Cleeve of the Fingerprint Department at New Scotland Yard. [An
extract only from his examination-in-chief by Mr. Trouncer, Mr. Claudian Summers’ learned junior.
]

“You took this knife for expert examination?”

“Yes.”

“Would you tell us what you found?”

“Fingerprints and thumbprints were visible on the handle of the knife. It is a flat wooden handle, and a very good surface for the recording of prints.”

“Were these prints examined against prints taken from all the persons present in the hotel on March fourteenth?”

“Yes.”

“With what results?”

“Many of the fingerprints were old and so blurred as to be unidentifiable. I was able, however, to identify one set of three prints – prints of the middle finger, ring finger and little finger apparently – with the sample taken from the prisoner. There was a clear print of the thumb, also of the left hand, corresponding with the prisoner’s thumb. I found in examination of the three fingerprints, sixteen, fourteen, and sixteen points of agreement. In the thumb twelve points. I have omitted a number of partial fingerprints in which four, five or six points of agreement were obtained.”

“Were any of the prints identifiable with any other person in the hotel?”

“Yes. A set of right-hand finger – and thumbprints were identified as belonging to Mrs. Morrison.”

“She is the cook, who comes in daily?”

“So I understand.”

“Were the prints – the prisoner’s and Mrs. Morrison’s – clear and sharp?”

“No. It was necessary to photograph even those prints I have mentioned in oblique light to obtain a clear picture.”

[
In view of Macrea’s admissions in cross-examination, a good deal of technical evidence is here omitted. Sergeant Cleeve produced enlargements of all the fingerprints mentioned above and these were circulated to the jury. This part of the evidence alone occupied more than an hour.
]

“One last question, sergeant. Can you give an explanation of the consistent blurring of all the fingerprints you obtained?”

“Yes. There could be a number of explanations. Such a result might have been obtained by wiping the handle lightly with a cloth.”

“Sergeant Cleeve,” said Macrea. “May I take that last point first. You use the word ‘lightly.’ It is not, I take it, at all
difficult to
clean fingerprints from a handle?”

“No, not at all difficult.”

“A moderately vigorous polishing would do it?”

“Yes.”

“And once it was done, none of your oblique rays and scientific taradiddles will bring them up again.”

“Once they are gone they are gone.”

“Even beyond the reach of the Forensic Science Laboratory?”

“We certainly can’t produce what isn’t there.”

“I am not criticising you, sergeant. I would like to say that I thought you gave your evidence very fairly. I should like to clear the air by saying that we do not deny that the three fingerprints and the thumbprint already mentioned – and no doubt many of the partial prints – were all made by the prisoner. Why should we deny it? It was a knife she used almost every day of her life. My point is this, however. You stated that
one
explanation of the blurring of the prints – the way their outlines were dragged in one direction – would be consistent with their being wiped across with a cloth.”

“Yes.”

“There might be other explanations?”

“Certainly.”

“Can I put one to you? That after the prints were made the knife was used – vigorously used – by someone wearing a glove.”

“Yes. That might produce the same effect.”

“It is at least as probable as the explanation that the handle was wiped?”

“Yes.”

“In fact, even more probable—since, as you yourself agreed, a person wiping the handle, if he used moderate industry, would have wiped the prints out altogether?”

“It is difficult to say that one explanation is more likely than another.”

“Quite so. They are equally likely. I am quite satisfied with that. Now another point. Would you take the knife?”

The knife was handed to the witness.

“Now, sergeant. Will you assist us by imagining that you are in the kitchen. You are preparing a meal. You are cutting up meat, or chopping parsley, or doing one or other of the things people do with a knife in a kitchen. Remember that the prisoner was left-handed in all her ordinary tasks. That’s right. Use the edge of the box as a chopping block and show the jury.”

Macrea swung round suddenly, and said in a very loud clear voice to a solicitor’s clerk who seemed to find the sight of what the witness was doing amusing. “I should have imagined, sir, that if you came to a trial, at which the prisoner stood in peril for her life, you would have the manners to remember that you were not at a performance playhouse.” He returned as swiftly to the witness.

“Now,” he said. “Would you be good enough to reverse your grip and hold the knife in the manner already explained in evidence – with the point upward. That is correct. Would you show it to the jury, please? Now you find, do you not, that your fingers are in a very different position to what they were before.”

“I am afraid—”

“There is no need, sergeant, to tell us that you are not an expert on knives. We appreciate that. This is quite a simple point that I want the jury to see and I should like your help. You can be quite a passive agent in the matter.” Macrea smiled genially and turned to the jury. “I hope you were able to observe,” he said, “that when the sergeant held the knife for chopping or cutting – with the point, that is, straight out and the blade downward – his thumb was the controlling factor. It was pressed very hard against the top of the right-hand side of the handle. If he had been using his right hand, it would have been the left-hand side, but the principle is the same. Once again, if you would be so good, sergeant. You see what I mean? Now when he holds the knife point upward, for stabbing, the thumb hardly touches the wood at all. The handle is gripped in the crook of the fingers. Is that not so, sergeant?”

“Well, yes. It is. The thumb might be touching the handle.”

“Touching, but not pressing against it.”

“That is correct.”

“So that the presence of a clear thumbprint in conjunction with the three fingerprints suggests that those particular marks almost certainly
did
come there when the knife was used in the kitchen.”

“I shouldn’t have said that it was a certainty.”

“But very probably.”

“Well, as you put it, yes – probably.”

“Thank you,” said Macrea. “That is all—oh, no. Wait a minute. There was just one thing more.”

Only Mr. Rumbold, who knew him so well, guessed that there was anything at all behind Macrea’s casual manner. Mr. Rumbold had seen it too often to be deceived. The close of the main cross-examination. The witness getting ready to step out of the box, relaxing. The sudden last deadly question.

“I take it, Sergeant Cleeve, that you made a general inspection for fingerprints in the room? I mean, you didn’t only examine the knife?”

“Oh, no. We looked at everything.”

“There was no lack of prints, I take it?”

“There certainly wasn’t,” said Sergeant Cleeve with a smile. “We found prints which we identified as belonging to the deceased, the prisoner, Monsieur Sainte, Camino, the last three occupants of the room, and a man who had been in two mornings before to see to the electric light.”

“And all these were people who would have had legitimate reasons for being in the room at one time or another—?”

“That is so. We didn’t make anything out of them. The prints were just what would have been expected in the ordinary use of the room.”

“Quite,” said Macrea. “I am sure you examined the room very thoroughly. Was there a fingerprint on the bell-push?”

There was a moment of dead silence.

“No, sir,” said Sergeant Cleeve, “there wasn’t.”

“I see,” said Macrea. “Thank you.”

“Sergeant Cleeve,” said Mr. Summers, re-examining. “Two points that my learned friend has put to you – the absence of certain prints from the knife handle and the blurring of existing prints – they would all equally be accounted for if – I only put it to you, as a supposition – the prisoner had herself been wearing gloves at the time of the murder?”

“Yes. That is so.”

“Speaking as an expert, that would account for all these—er—phenomena?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. That is all.”

Macrea grinned gently. He thought that his cross-examination must have been unexpectedly effective if it had sufficed to lead so old a bird as Claudian Summers into so lightly spread a net.

Eleven o’clock on Tuesday morning. The second day of the trial. At the Old Bailey Colonel Trevor Alwright was giving his evidence-in-chief. Nap was in a train, paying a flying visit from Angers to Saumur. Angus McCann was walking across Salisbury Market Place.

Preparations were already on foot for the next day’s market. Damp men in leggings were hammering in the posts to which, later, the hurdles of the sheep pens would be lashed. The weather had broken overnight and the south wind, which reaches Salisbury fresh from the Solent, was lashing the fine autumn rain backward and forward across the square. It was like being underneath a giant lawn sprinkler, thought McCann, as he turned up the collar of his raincoat. It came at you from every direction at once.

He was looking for the Dean’s Frolic and he had to ask twice before he found it, hidden away in the egg box of streets which have stood, little changed, since the cathedral masons struck for a rise of pay and celebrated their victory by naming Penny Farthing Street.

It was worth finding: real beam and wattle, not fake Tudor, the saloon bar had one of those smooth red brick floors which must be trodden upon for a hundred years before they come to their prime. There was a lot of clean brass, a cheerful fire and, at that hour of the morning, no other customer.

The beer wasn’t bad, either.

“I remember this place well during the war,” said McCann to the stout grey-haired man who drew his beer for him into a pint glass. He looked as if he might well be the Jas Firmin who was licensed, according to the spidery writing over the low doorway, to sell ales, wines and spirits by retail.

“Ah—you’d have been in camp here, I expect.” He didn’t really sound interested. It was just professional talk.

“Larkhill,” said McCann. “1942.”

That was a safe gambit too. A million gunners passed through Larkhill during the war.

“I thought first,” said the man, “that you might have been Air Force. Then I thought, no. Not enough hair-cream.”

He even managed to put this one across mechanically, as if he’d said it a thousand times before. Probably he had.

“One thing I remember about this place – you might call it a feature of the place – that very pretty barmaid you had—?”

“Had plenty of them. What was her name?”

“Wait a minute now – I’m wrong.” McCann took a long pull at his beer. “It wasn’t when I was here in forty-two. It was when I came back again, in forty-five. Ivy. That was her name.”

“Well, now,” said the man. “So you’re a friend of Ivy’s.” McCann caught the glint of amusement in his eye, and looking past him he saw that there was a girl, standing in the hatchway which led to the next bar.

He had to take a chance on it.

“Talk of the devil,” he said. “What’ll it be, Ivy?”

“A gin and pep,” said Ivy.

McCann saw a brown-haired, sensible-looking girl of about thirty. She was quietly dressed, had good brown eyes, bad teeth, a generous mouth and an appealing band of freckles over the bridge of her nose. McCann thought that if he had met her anywhere else he would have put her down without hesitation as a nursery governess.