Death of an Expert Witness (16 page)

Massingham said: “It’s odd about the missing white coat, sir. It can hardly have been removed or destroyed to prevent us learning about the fight between Middlemass and Lorrimer. That unedifying but intriguing little episode must have been round the Lab within minutes of its happening. Mrs. Bidwell would see to that.”

Both Dalgliesh and Massingham wondered how far Mrs. Bidwell’s description of the quarrel, given with the maximum
dramatic effect, had been accurate. It was obvious that she had come into the laboratory after the blow had been struck, and had in fact seen very little. Dalgliesh had recognized, with foreboding, a familiar phenomenon: the desire of a witness, aware of the paucity of her evidence, to make the most of it lest the police be disappointed, while remaining as far as possible within the confines of truth. Stripped of Mrs. Bidwell’s embellishments, the core of hard fact had been disappointingly small.

“What they were quarrelling about I couldn’t take it on myself to say, except that it was about a lady, and that Dr. Lorrimer was upset because she’d telephoned Mr. Middlemass. The door was open and I did hear that much when I passed to go in to the ladies’ toilet. I dare say she rang him to arrange a date and Dr. Lorrimer didn’t like it. I never saw a man more white. Like death he looked, with a handkerchief held up against his face all bloodied, and his black eyes glaring over the top of it. And Mr. Middlemass was turkey red. Embarrassed, I dare say. Well, it’s not what we’re used to at Hoggatt’s, senior staff knocking each other about. When proper gentlemen start in with the fists there’s usually a woman at the bottom of it. Same with this murder if you ask me.”

Dalgliesh said: “We’ll be getting Middlemass’s version of the affair. I’d like now to have a word with all the Lab staff in the library and then Inspector Massingham and I will start the preliminary interviews: Howarth, the two women, Angela Foley and Brenda Pridmore, Blakelock, Middlemass and any of the others without a firm alibi. I’d like you, Sergeant, to get on with organizing the usual routine. I shall want one of the senior staff in each department while the search is going on. They’re the only ones who can tell whether anything in their lab has changed since yesterday. You’ll be looking—admittedly without much hope—for the missing page of Lorrimer’s
notebook, any evidence of what he was doing here last night apart from working on the clunch pit murder, any sign of what happened to the missing coat. I want a thorough search of the whole building, particularly possible means of access and exit. The rain last night is a nuisance. You’ll probably find the walls washed clean, but there may be some evidence that he got out through one of the lavatory windows.

“You’ll need a couple of men on the grounds. The earth is fairly soft after the rain and if the murderer came by car or motorcycle there could be tyre marks. Any we find can be checked against the tyre index here; we needn’t waste time going to the Met Lab for that. There’s a bus stop immediately opposite the Laboratory entrance. Find out what time the buses pass. There’s always the possibility that one of the passengers or crew noticed something. I’d like the Laboratory building checked first, and as quickly as possible so that the staff can get back to work. They’ve a new murder on their hands and we can’t keep the place closed longer than is absolutely necessary. I’d like to give them access by tomorrow morning.

“Then there’s the smear of what looks like vomit on the first basin in the men’s washroom. The smell from the pipe is still fairly distinct. I want a sample of that to go to the Met Lab urgently. You’ll probably have to unscrew the joint to get at the basin of the U-bend. We shall need to find out who used the room last yesterday evening and whether he noticed the smear on the basin. If no one admits to having been sick during the day, or can’t produce a witness that he was, we shall want to know what they all ate for the evening meal. It could be Lorrimer’s vomit, so we’ll need some information on his stomach contents. I’d also like a sample of his blood and hair to be left here at the Lab. But Dr. Blain-Thomson will be seeing to that.”

Reynolds said: “We take it that the crucial time is from six-fifteen, when he was last seen alive in his lab, until midnight?”

“For the present. When I’ve seen his father and confirmed that he made that call at eight forty-five we may be able to narrow it down. And we shall get a clearer idea of the time of death when Dr. Blain-Thomson has done the PM. But judging from the state of rigor, Dr. Kerrison wasn’t far out.”

But Kerrison didn’t need to be far out, if he were the murderer. Rigor mortis was notoriously unreliable, and if he wanted an alibi for himself, Kerrison could shift the time of death by up to an hour without suspicion. If the timing were tight he might not need even an hour. It had been prudent of him to call in the police surgeon to confirm his estimate of the time of death. But how likely was Dr. Greene, experienced as he might be in viewing bodies, to disagree with the opinion of a consultant forensic pathologist unless the latter’s judgement was manifestly perverse? If Kerrison were guilty, he had run little risk by calling in Greene.

Dalgliesh got to his feet. “Right,” he said. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

Dalgliesh disliked having more than one other officer present with him at his preliminary and informal interview, so Massingham was taking the notes. They were hardly necessary; Dalgliesh, he knew, had almost total recall. But he still found the practice useful. They were sitting together at the conference table in the Director’s office, but Howarth, perhaps because he objected to sitting in his own room other than at his desk, preferred to stand. He was leaning casually against the fireplace. From time to time Massingham lifted an unobtrusive eyebrow to glance at the clear-cut, dominant profile outlined against the classical frieze. There were three bunches of keys on the table: the bunch taken from Lorrimer’s body, that handed over by Inspector Blakelock, and the set which Dr. Howarth, manipulating the security lock, had taken from its box in the cupboard. Each set of keys was identical, one Yale key and two security keys to the front door, and one smaller key on a plain metal ring. None was named, presumably for security reasons.

Dalgliesh said: “And these are the only three sets in existence?”

“Except for the set at Guy’s Marsh Police Station, yes. Naturally, I checked earlier this morning that the police still have their set. The keys are kept in the safe under the control of the station officer, and they haven’t been touched. They need a set at the police station in case the alarm goes off. There was no alarm last night.”

Dalgliesh already knew from Mercer that the station keys had been checked. He said: “And the smallest key?”

“That’s the one to the Exhibits Store. The system is for all incoming exhibits, after they’ve been registered, to be stored there until they’re issued to the head of the appropriate department. It’s his responsibility to allocate them to a specific officer. In addition, we store the exhibits which have been examined and are awaiting collection by the police, and those which have been presented to the court during the case and are returned to us for destruction. Those are mainly drugs. They’re destroyed here in the incinerator and the destruction witnessed by one of the Laboratory staff and the officer in charge of the case. The Exhibits Store is also protected by the electronic alarm system, but, obviously, we need a key for internal security when the system hasn’t been set.”

“And all the Laboratory internal doors and your office were protected last night once the internal alarm system was set? That means that an intruder could only have got out undetected through the top-floor lavatory windows. All the others are either barred or fitted with the electronic alarm?”

“That’s right. He could have got in that way too, of course, which was what concerned us most. But it wouldn’t have been an easy climb, and the alarm would have gone off as soon as he tried to gain access to any of the main rooms in the Laboratory. We did consider extending the alarm system to the lavatory suite soon after I arrived, but it seemed unnecessary.
We haven’t had a break-in in the seventy-odd years of the Lab’s existence.”

“What are the precise arrangements about locking the Laboratory?”

“Only the two Police Liaison Officers and Lorrimer as the Deputy Security Officer were authorized to lock up. He or the Police Liaison Officer on duty was responsible for ensuring that no staff were left on the premises and that all the internal doors were shut before the alarm was set, and the front door finally locked for the night. The alarm system to Guy’s Marsh Police Station is set whether the door is locked on the inside or the out.”

“And these other keys found on the body, the three in this leather pouch and the single key. Do you recognize any of those?”

“Not the three in the pouch. One is obviously his car key. But the single one looks very like the key to the Wren chapel. If it is, I didn’t know that Lorrimer had it. Not that it’s important. But as far as I know, there’s only one key to the chapel in existence and that’s hanging on the board in the Chief Liaison Officer’s room. It isn’t a security lock and we’re not particularly worried about the chapel. There’s nothing left there of real value. But occasionally architects and archaeological societies want to view it, so we let them borrow the key and they sign for it in a book in the office. We don’t allow them through the Laboratory grounds to get at it. They have to use the back entrance in Guy’s Marsh Road. The contract cleaners take it once every two months to clean and check the heating—we have to keep it reasonably warm in winter because the ceiling and carving are rather fine—and Miss Willard goes there from time to time, to do some dusting. When her father was rector of Chevisham, he used occasionally to
hold services in the chapel, and I think she has a sentimental regard for the place.”

Massingham went out to Chief Inspector Martin’s office and brought in the chapel key. The two matched. The small notebook which he had found hanging with the key showed that it had last been collected by Miss Willard on Monday, 25th October.

Howarth said: “We’re thinking of transferring the chapel to the Department of the Environment once we occupy the new Laboratory. It’s a constant irritation to the Treasury that our funds are used to heat and maintain it. I’ve set up a string quartet here, and we held a concert on 26th August in the chapel, but otherwise it’s completely unused. I expect you will want to take a look at it, and it’s worth seeing in its own right. It’s a very fine specimen of late seventeenth-century church architecture, although, in fact, it isn’t by Wren but by Alexander Fort, who was strongly influenced by him.”

Dalgliesh asked suddenly: “How well did you get on with Lorrimer?”

Howarth replied calmly: “Not particularly well. I respected him as a biologist, and I certainly had no complaints either about his work or about his co-operation with me as Director. He wasn’t an easy man to know, and I didn’t find him particularly sympathetic. But he was probably one of the most respected serologists in the Service, and we shall miss him. If he had a fault, it was a reluctance to delegate. He had two scientific officer serologists in his department for the grouping of liquid blood and stains, saliva and semen samples, but he invariably took the murder cases himself. Apart from his casework and attendance at trials and at scenes of crime, he did a considerable amount of lecturing to detective-training courses, and police familiarization courses.”

Lorrimer’s rough notebook was on the desk. Dalgliesh pushed it towards Howarth and said: “Have you seen this before?”

“His rough notebook? Yes, I think I’ve noticed it in his department, or when he was carrying it with him. He was obsessively tidy and had a dislike of odd scraps of paper. Anything of importance was noted in that book, and subsequently transferred to the files. Claire Easterbrook tells me that the last page is missing.”

“That’s why we’re particularly anxious to know what he was doing here last night, apart from working on the clunch pit murder. He could have got into any of the other laboratories, of course?”

“If he’d switched off the internal alarm, yes. I believe it was his usual practice, when he was last on the premises, to rely on the Yale lock and the bolt on the front door and only check the internal doors and set the security alarm before he finally left. Obviously it’s important not to set off the alarm accidentally.”

“Would he have been competent to undertake an examination in another department?”

“It depends on what he was trying to do. Essentially, of course, he was concerned with the identification and grouping of biological material, blood, body stains and the examination of fibres and animal and plant tissues. But he was a competent general scientist and his interests were wide—his scientific interests. Forensic biologists, particularly in the smaller laboratories, which this has been up to now, become pretty versatile. But he wouldn’t attempt to use the more sophisticated instruments in the Instrument Section, the mass spectrometer, for example.”

“And you personally have no idea what he could have been doing?”

“None. I do know that he came into this office. I had to look up the name of a consultant surgeon who was giving evidence for the defence in one of our old cases, and I had the medical directory on my desk when I left last night. This morning, it was back in its place in the library. Few things irritated Lorrimer more than people removing books from the library. But if he was in this office last night, I hardly imagine it was merely to check on my carelessness with the reference books.”

Lastly, Dalgliesh asked him about his movements the previous night.

“I played the fiddle at the village concert. The rector had five minutes or so to fill in and asked me if the string quartet would play something which he described as short and cheerful. The players were myself, a chemist, one of the scientific officers from the document examination department, and a typist from the general office. Miss Easterbrook should have been the first cello, but she had a dinner engagement which she regarded as important, and couldn’t make it. We played the Mozart Divertimento in D major and came third on the programme.”