Death of an Expert Witness (13 page)

Howarth stared at the two dummies as if he had never seen them before. He seemed to think that they required
explanation. For the first time he had lost some of his assurance. He said: “That’s Liz and Burton. The staff dress them in a suspect’s clothes so that they can match up bloodstains or slashes.” He added: “Do you want me here?”

“For the moment, yes,” answered Dalgliesh.

He knelt by the body. Kerrison moved to stand beside him. Howarth and Mercer stayed one each side of the door.

After two minutes Dalgliesh said: “Cause of death obvious. It looks as if he was struck by a single blow and died where he fell. There’s surprisingly little bleeding.”

Kerrison said: “That’s not unusual. As you know, you can get serious intracranial injury from a simple fracture, particularly if there’s extradural or subdural haemorrhage or actual laceration of the brain substance. I agree that he was probably killed by a single blow and that wooden mallet on the table seems the likely weapon. But Blain-Thomson will be able to tell you more when he gets him on the table. He’ll be doing the PM this afternoon.”

“Rigor is almost complete. What sort of estimate did you make of the time of death?”

“I saw him just before nine and I thought then that he’d been dead about twelve hours, perhaps a little longer. Say between eight and nine p.m. The window is closed and the temperature pretty steady at sixty-five Fahrenheit. I usually estimate a fall in body temperature in these circumstances of about one-and-a-half degrees Fahrenheit an hour. I took it when I examined the body and, taken with the rigor which was almost fully established then, I’d say it was unlikely that he was alive much after nine p.m. But you know how unreliable these estimates can be. Better say between eight-thirty and midnight.”

Howarth said from the door: “His father says that Lorrimer rang him at a quarter to nine. I went to see the old man this
morning with Angela Foley to break the news to him. She’s my secretary. Lorrimer was her cousin. But you’ll be seeing the old man, of course. He seemed pretty confident about the time.”

Dalgliesh said to Kerrison: “It looks as if the blood flowed fairly steadily, but without any preliminary splashing. Would you expect the assailant to be bloodstained?”

“Not necessarily, particularly if I’m right about the mallet being the weapon. It was probably a single swinging blow delivered when Lorrimer had turned his back. The fact that the murderer struck above the left ear doesn’t seem particularly significant. He could have been left-handed, but there’s no reason to suppose he was.”

“And it wouldn’t have required particular force. A child could probably have done it.”

Kerrison hesitated, disconcerted. “Well, a woman, certainly.”

There was one question which Dalgliesh had formally to ask although, from the position of the body and the flow of the blood, the answer was in little doubt. “Did he die almost immediately, or is there any possibility that he could have walked about for a time, even locked the door and set the alarms?”

“That’s not altogether unknown, of course, but in this case I’d say it was highly unlikely, virtually impossible. I did have a man only a month ago with an axe injury, a seven-inch depressed fracture of the parietal bone and extensive extradural haemorrhage. He went off to a pub, spent half an hour with his mates, and then reported to the casualty department and was dead within a quarter of an hour. Head injuries can be unpredictable, but not this one, I think?”

Dalgliesh turned to Howarth. “Who found him?”

“Our Clerical Officer, Brenda Pridmore. She starts work at eight-thirty with Blakelock. Old Mr. Lorrimer phoned to say that his son hadn’t slept in his bed, so she went up to see if
Lorrimer were here. I arrived almost immediately with the cleaner, Mrs. Bidwell. Some woman had telephoned her husband early this morning to ask her to come to my house to help my sister, instead of to the Lab. It was a false call. I thought that it was probably some stupid village prank, but that I’d better get in as soon as possible in case something odd was happening. So I put her bicycle in the boot of my car and got here just after nine. My secretary, Angela Foley, and Clifford Bradley, the Higher Scientific Officer in the Biology Department, arrived at about the same time.”

“Who at any time has been alone with the body?”

“Brenda Pridmore, of course, but very briefly, I imagine. Then Inspector Blakelock came up on his own. Then I was here alone for no more than a few seconds. Then I locked the Laboratory door, kept all the staff in the main hall, and waited there until Dr. Kerrison arrived. He was here within five minutes and examined the body. I stood by the door. Superintendent Mercer arrived shortly afterwards and I handed over the key of the Biology Lab to him.”

Mercer said: “Dr. Kerrison suggested that I call in Dr. Greene—he’s the local police surgeon—to confirm his preliminary findings. Dr. Greene wasn’t alone with the body. After he’d made a quick and fairly superficial examination I locked the door. It wasn’t opened again until the photographers and the fingerprint officers arrived. They’ve taken his dabs and examined the mallet, but we left it at that when we knew the Yard had been called in and you were on your way. The print boys are still here, in the Police Liaison Officer’s room, but I let the photographers go.”

Putting on his search gloves, Dalgliesh ran his hands over the body. Under his white coat Lorrimer was wearing grey slacks and a tweed jacket. In the inside pocket was a thin
leather wallet containing six pound notes, his driving licence, a book of stamps, and two credit cards. The right outer pocket held a pouch with his car keys and three others, two Yale and a smaller intricate key, probably to a desktop drawer. There were a couple of ballpoint pens clipped to the top left-hand pocket of his white coat. In the bottom right-hand pocket was a handkerchief, his bunch of Laboratory keys and, not on the bunch, a single heavy key which looked fairly new. There was nothing else on the body.

He went over to study two exhibits lying on the central workbench, the mallet and a man’s jacket. The mallet was an unusual weapon, obviously handmade. The handle of crudely carved oak was about eighteen inches long and might, he thought, have once been part of a heavy walking stick. The head, which he judged to weigh just over two pounds, was blackened on one side with congealed blood from which one or two coarse grey hairs sprouted like whiskers. It was impossible to detect in the dried slough a darker hair which might have come from Lorrimer’s head, or with the naked eye to distinguish his blood. That would be a job for the Metropolitan Police Laboratory when the mallet, carefully packed and with two identifying exhibit tags instead of one, reached the Biology Department later in the day.

He said to the Superintendent: “No prints?”

“None, except for old Pascoe’s. He’s the owner of the mallet. They weren’t wiped away, so it looks as if this chap wore gloves.”

That, thought Dalgliesh, would point to premeditation, or to the instinctive precaution of a knowledgeable expert. But if he came prepared to kill it was odd that he had relied on seizing the first convenient weapon; unless, of course, he knew that the mallet would be ready to hand.

He bent low to study the jacket. It was the top half of a cheap mass-produced suit in a harsh shade of blue with a
paler pinstripe, and with wide lapels. The sleeve had been carefully spread out and the cuff bore a trace of what could have been blood. It was apparent that Lorrimer had already begun the analysis. On the bench was the electrophoresis apparatus plugged into its power pack and with two columns of six paired small circles punched in the sheet of agar gel. Beside it was a test-tube holder with a series of blood samples. To the right lay a couple of buff-coloured laboratory files with biology registrations and, beside them, flat open on the bench, a quarto-sized loose-leaf notebook with a ring binding. The left-hand page, dated the previous day, was closely covered in hieroglyphics and formulae in a thin, black, upright hand. Although most of the scientific jottings meant little to him, Dalgliesh could see that the time at which Lorrimer had started and finished each analysis had been carefully noted. The right-hand page was blank.

He said to Howarth: “Who is the Senior Biologist now that Lorrimer’s dead?”

“Claire Easterbrook. Miss Easterbrook, but it’s advisable to call her Ms.”

“Is she here?”

“With the others in the library. I believe she has a firm alibi for the whole of yesterday evening, but as she’s a senior scientist she was asked to stay. And, of course, she’ll want to get back to work as soon as the staff are allowed into the Laboratory. There was a murder two nights ago in a clunch pit at Muddington—that jacket is an exhibit—and she’ll want to get on with that as well as coping with the usual heavy load.”

“I’d like to see her first, please, and here. Then Mrs. Bidwell. Is there a sheet we could use to cover him?”

Howarth said: “I imagine there’s a dust sheet or something of the kind in the linen cupboard. That’s on the next floor.”

“I’d be grateful if you’d go with Inspector Massingham and show him. Then if you’d wait in the library or your own office I’ll be down to have a word when I’ve finished here.”

For a second he thought that Howarth was about to demur. He frowned, and the handsome face clouded momentarily, petulant as a child’s. But he left with Massingham without a word.

Kerrison was still standing by the body, rigid as a guard of honour. He gave a little start as if recalling himself to reality and said: “If you don’t want me any longer I ought to be on my way to the hospital. You can contact me at St. Luke’s at Ely or here at the Old Rectory. I’ve given the sergeant an account of my movements last night. I was at home all the evening. At nine o’clock, by arrangement, I rang one of my colleagues at the hospital, Dr. J. D. Underwood, about a matter which is coming up at the next medical committee. I think he’s already confirmed that we did speak. He hadn’t got the information I was waiting for but he rang me back at about a quarter to ten.”

There was as little reason to delay Kerrison as there was at present to suspect him.

After he had left, Mercer said: “I thought of leaving two sergeants, Reynolds and Underhill, and a couple of constables, Cox and Warren, if that will suit you. They’re all sound, experienced officers. The Chief said to ask for anyone and anything you need. He’s at a meeting in London this morning, but he’ll be back tonight. I’ll send up the chaps from the mortuary van if you’re ready for them to take him away.”

“Yes, I’ve finished with him. I’ll have a word with your men as soon as I’ve seen Miss Easterbrook. But ask one of the sergeants to come up in ten minutes to pack up the mallet for the Yard Lab, will you? The chopper pilot will want to get back.”

They spoke a few more words about the liaison arrangements
with the local Force, then Mercer left to supervise the removal of the body. He would wait to introduce Dalgliesh to his seconded officers; after that, his responsibility would end. The case was in Dalgliesh’s hands.

Two minutes later Claire Easterbrook was shown into the laboratory. She entered with an assurance which a less experienced investigator than Dalgliesh might have mistaken for arrogance or insensitivity. She was a thin, long-waisted woman of about thirty, with a bony, intelligent face and a cap of dark curling hair which had been layered by an obviously expert, and no doubt expensive, hand to lie in swathes across the forehead and to curl into the nape of her high-arched neck. She was wearing a chestnut-brown sweater in fine wool belted into a black skirt which swung calf length above high-heeled boots. Her hands, with the nails cut very short, were ringless and her only ornament was a necklace of large wooden beads strung on a silver chain. Even without her white coat the impression she gave—and no doubt intended—was of a slightly intimidating professional competence.

Before Dalgliesh had a chance to speak she said, with a trace of belligerence: “I’m afraid you’ll be wasting your time with me. My lover and I dined last night in Cambridge at the Master’s Lodge of his college. I was with five other people from
eight-thirty until nearly midnight. I’ve already given their names to the constable in the library.”

Dalgliesh said mildly: “I’m sorry, Ms. Easterbrook, that I had to ask you to come up before we were able to remove Dr. Lorrimer’s body. And as it seems impertinent to invite you to sit down in your own laboratory, I won’t. But this isn’t going to take long.”

She flushed, as if he had caught her out in a social solecism. Glancing with reluctant distaste at the shrouded, lumpen shape on the floor, at the stiff protruding ankles, she said: “He’d be more dignified if you’d left him uncovered. Like this he could be a sack of rubbish. It’s a curious superstition, the universal instinct to cover up the recently dead. After all, we’re the ones at a disadvantage.”

Massingham said lightly: “Not, surely, with the Master and his wife to vouch for your alibi?”

Their eyes met, his coolly amused, hers dark with dislike.

Dalgliesh said: “Dr. Howarth tells me you’re the Senior Biologist now. Could you explain to me, please, what Dr. Lorrimer was doing here last night? Don’t touch anything.”

She went at once over to the table and regarded the two exhibits, the files and the scientific paraphernalia.

She said: “Would you open this file, please?”

Dalgliesh’s gloved hands slipped between the covers and flipped it open.

“He rechecked Clifford Bradley’s result on the Pascoe case. The mallet belongs to a sixty-four-year-old fen labourer called Pascoe whose wife has disappeared. His story is that she’s walked out on him, but there are one or two suspicious circumstances. The police sent in the mallet to see if the stains on it are human blood. They aren’t. Pascoe says that he used it to put an injured dog out of its misery. Bradley found that
the blood reacted to anti-dog serum and Dr. Lorrimer has duplicated his result. So the dog it was that died.”

Too mean to waste a bullet or send for a vet, thought Massingham savagely. It struck him as odd that the death of this unknown mongrel should, for a moment, anger him more than the killing of Lorrimer.