Death of an Expert Witness (21 page)

Settling himself some distance from Dalgliesh on the extraordinarily lumpy sofa, Massingham opened his notebook. Thank God the old man was calm anyway. You could never tell how the relatives were going to take it. Dalgliesh, as he knew, had the reputation of being good with the bereaved. His condolences might be short, almost formal, but at least they sounded sincere. He took it for granted that the family would wish to co-operate with the police, but as a matter of justice, not of retribution. He didn’t connive at the extraordinary psychological interdependence by which the detective and the bereaved were often supported, and which it was so fatally easy to exploit. He made no specious promises, never bullied the weak or indulged the sentimental. And yet they seem to like him, thought Massingham. God knows why. At times he’s cold enough to be barely human.

He watched Dalgliesh stand up as old Mr. Lorrimer came in to the room; but he made no move to help the old man to his chair. Massingham had glanced briefly at his chief’s face and seen the familiar look of speculative detached interest. What, if anything, he wondered, would move Dalgliesh to spontaneous pity? He remembered the other case they had worked on together a year previously, when he had been a detective sergeant; the death of a child. Dalgliesh had regarded the parents with just such a look of calm appraisal.

But he had worked eighteen hours a day for a month until the case was solved. And his next book of poems had contained that extraordinary one about a murdered child which no one at the Yard, even those who professed to understand it, had had the temerity even to mention to its author. He said now: “As Mrs. Swaffield explained, my name is Dalgliesh and this is Inspector Massingham. I expect Dr. Howarth told you that we would be coming. I’m very sorry about your son. Do you feel able to answer some questions?”

Mr. Lorrimer nodded towards the kitchen. “What’s she doing in there?”

His voice was surprising; high timbred and with a trace of the querulousness of age, but extraordinarily strong for an old man.

“Mrs. Swaffield? Making soup, I think.”

“I suppose she’s used the onions and carrots we had in the vegetable rack. I thought I could smell carrots. Edwin knows I don’t like carrots in soup.”

“Did he usually cook for you?”

“He does all the cooking if he isn’t away at a scene of crime. I don’t eat much dinner at midday, but he leaves me something to heat up, a stew from the night before or a bit of fish in sauce, maybe. He didn’t leave anything this morning because he wasn’t at home last night. I had to get my own breakfast. I fancied bacon, but I thought I’d better leave that in case he wants it for tonight. He usually cooks bacon and eggs if he’s late home.”

Dalgliesh asked: “Mr. Lorrimer, have you any idea why anyone should want to murder your son? Had he any enemies?”

“Why should he have enemies? He didn’t know anyone except at the Lab. Everyone had a great respect for him at the Lab. He told me so himself. Why would anyone want to harm him? Edwin lived for his work.”

He brought out the last sentence as if it were an original expression of which he was rather proud.

“You telephoned him last night at the Laboratory, didn’t you? What time was that?”

“It was a quarter to nine. The telly went blank. It didn’t blink and go zigzag like it sometimes does. Edwin showed me how to adjust the knob at the back for that. It went blank with just one little circle of light and then that failed. I couldn’t see the nine o’clock news, so I rang Edwin and asked him to send for the TV man. We rent the set, and they’re supposed to come at any hour, but there’s always some excuse. Last month when I telephoned they didn’t come for two days.”

“Can you remember what your son said?”

“He said that it wasn’t any use telephoning late at night. He’d do it first thing this morning before he went to work. But, of course, he hasn’t. He didn’t come home. It’s still broken. I don’t like to telephone myself. Edwin always sees to everything like that. Do you think Mrs. Swaffield would ring?”

“I’m sure that she would. When you telephoned him did he say anything about expecting a visitor?”

“No. He seemed in a hurry, as if he didn’t like it because I phoned. But he always said to ring the Lab up if I was in trouble.”

“And he said nothing else at all except that he’d ring the TV mechanic this morning?”

“What else would he say? He wasn’t one for chatting over the telephone.”

“Did you ring him at the Laboratory yesterday about your hospital appointment?”

“That’s right. I was supposed to go in to Addenbrooke’s yesterday afternoon. Edwin was going to drive me in. It’s my leg, you see. It’s psoriasis. They’re going to try a new treatment.” He made as if to roll up his trouser leg.

Dalgliesh said quickly: “That’s all right, Mr. Lorrimer. When did you know the bed wasn’t available after all?”

“About nine o’clock they rang. He’d only just left home. So I phoned the Lab. I know the number of the Biology Department, of course. That’s where he works—the Biology Department. Miss Easterbrook answered the phone and said that Edwin was at the hospital attending a post-mortem but she would give him the message when he got in. Addenbrooke’s said they’d probably send for me next Tuesday. Who’s going to take me now?”

“I expect Mrs. Swaffield will arrange something, or perhaps your niece could help. Wouldn’t you like her to be here with you?”

“No. What can she do? She was here this morning with that friend of hers, the writing woman. Edwin doesn’t like either of them. The friend—Miss Mawson, isn’t it?—was rummaging around upstairs. I’ve got very good ears. I could hear her all right. I went out of the door and there she was coming down. She said she’d been to the bathroom. Why was she wearing washing-up gloves if she was going to the bathroom?”

Why indeed? thought Dalgliesh. He felt a spasm of irritation that Constable Davis hadn’t arrived sooner. It was perfectly natural that Howarth should come with Angela Foley to break the news and should leave her with her uncle. Someone had to stay with him, and who more suitable than his only remaining relative? It was probably natural, too, that Angela Foley should send for the support of her friend. Probably both of them were interested in Lorrimer’s will. Well, that too was natural enough. Massingham shifted on the sofa. Dalgliesh could sense his anxiety to get upstairs into Lorrimer’s room. He shared it. But books and papers, the sad detritus of a dead life, could wait. The living witness might not again be so
communicative. He asked: “What did your son do with himself, Mr. Lorrimer?”

“After work, do you mean? He stays in his room mostly. Reading, I suppose. He’s got quite a library of books up there. He’s a scholar, is Edwin. He doesn’t care much about the television, so I sit down here. Sometimes I can hear the record player. Then there’s the garden most weekends, cleaning the car, cooking and shopping. He has quite a full life. And he doesn’t get much time. He’s at the Lab until seven o’clock most nights, sometimes later.”

“And friends?”

“No. He doesn’t go in for friends. We keep ourselves to ourselves.”

“No weekends away?”

“Where would he want to go? And what would happen to me? Besides, there’s the shopping. If he isn’t on call for a scene-of-crime visit he drives me into Ely Saturday morning, and we go to the supermarket. Then we have lunch in the city. I enjoy that.”

“What telephone calls did he have?”

“From the Lab? Only when the Police Liaison Officer rings up to say that he’s wanted at a murder scene. Sometimes that’s in the middle of the night. But he never wakes me. There’s a telephone extension in his room. He just leaves me a note and he’s usually back in time to bring me a cup of tea at seven o’clock. He didn’t do that this morning of course. That’s why I rang the Lab. I rang his number first but there wasn’t any reply so then I rang the reception desk. He gave me both numbers in case I couldn’t get through to him in an emergency.”

“And no one else has telephoned him recently, no one has come to see him?”

“Who would want to come and see him? And no one has telephoned except that woman.”

Dalgliesh said, very quietly: “What woman, Mr. Lorrimer?”

“I don’t know what woman. I only know she rang. Monday of last week it was. Edwin was having a bath and the phone kept on ringing so I thought I’d better answer it.”

“Can you remember exactly what happened and what was said, Mr. Lorrimer, from the time you lifted the receiver? Take your time, there’s no hurry. This may be very important.”

“There wasn’t much to remember. I was going to say our number and ask her to hang on, but she didn’t give me any time. She started speaking as soon as I lifted the receiver. She said: ‘We’re right, there is something going on.’ Then she said something about the can being burnt and that she’d got the numbers.”

“That the can had been burnt and she’d got the numbers?”

“That’s right. It doesn’t sound sense now, but it was something like that. Then she gave me the numbers.”

“Can you remember them, Mr. Lorrimer?”

“Only the last one, which was 1840. Or it may have been two numbers, 18 and 40. I remembered those because the first house we had after I was married was number 18 and the second was 40. It was quite a coincidence, really. Anyway, those numbers stuck in my mind. But I can’t remember the others.”

“How many numbers altogether?”

“Three or four altogether, I think. There were two, and then the 18 and 40.”

“What did the numbers sound like, Mr. Lorrimer? Did you think she was giving you a telephone number or a car registration, for example? Can you remember what impression they made on you at the time?”

“No impression. Why should they? More like a telephone number, I suppose. I don’t think it was a car registration. There weren’t any letters you see. It sounded like a date; eighteen forty.”

“Have you any idea who was telephoning?”

“No. I don’t think it was anyone at the Lab. It didn’t sound like one of the Lab staff.”

“How do you mean, Mr. Lorrimer? How did the voice seem?”

The old man sat there, staring straight ahead. His hands, with the long fingers like those of his son, but with their skin dry and stained as withered leaves, hung heavily between his knees, grotesquely large for the brittle wrists. After a moment he spoke. He said: “Excited.”

There was another silence. Both detectives looked at him. Massingham thought that here again was an example of his chief’s skill. He would have gone charging upstairs in search of the will and papers. But this evidence, so carefully elicited, was vital.

After about a moment the old man spoke again. The word, when it came, was surprising. He said: “Conspiratorial. That’s what she sounded. Conspiratorial.”

They sat, still patiently waiting, but he said nothing else. Then they saw that he was crying. His face didn’t change, but a single tear, bright as a pearl, dropped on to the parched hands. He looked at it as if wondering what it could be. Then he said: “He was a good son to me. Time was, when he first went to College up in London, that we lost touch. He wrote to his mother and me, but he didn’t come home. But these last years, since I’ve been alone, he’s taken care of me. I’m not complaining. I dare say he’s left me a bit of money, and I’ve got my pension. But it’s hard when the young go first. And who will look after me now?”

Dalgliesh said quietly: “We need to look at his room, examine his papers. Is the room locked?”

“Locked? Why should it be locked? No one went into it but Edwin.”

Dalgliesh nodded to Massingham, who went out to call Mrs. Swaffield. Then they made their way upstairs.

It was a long, low-ceilinged room with white walls and a casement window which gave a view of a rectangle of unmown grass, a couple of gnarled apple trees heavy with fruit burnished green and gold in the autumn sun, a straggling hedge beaded with berries and beyond it the windmill. Even in the genial light of afternoon the mill looked a melancholy wreck of its former puissance. The paint was peeling from the walls and the great sails, from which the slats had fallen like rotten teeth, hung heavy with inertia in the restless air. Behind the windmill, the acres of black fenland, newly sliced by the autumn ploughing, stretched in glistening clumps between the dikes.

Dalgliesh turned away from this picture of melancholy peace to examine the room. Massingham was already busy at the desk. Finding the lid unlocked, he rolled it back for a few inches, then let it drop again. Then he tried the drawers. Only the top left-hand one was locked. If he were impatient for Dalgliesh to take Lorrimer’s keys from his pocket and open it, he concealed his eagerness. It was known that the older man, who could work faster than any of his colleagues, still liked
occasionally to take his time. He was taking it now, regarding the room with his dark sombre eyes, standing very still as if he were picking up invisible waves.

The place held a curious peace. The proportions were right and the furniture fitted where it had been placed. A man might have space to think in this uncluttered sanctum. A single bed, neatly covered with a red and brown blanket, stood against the opposite wall. A long wall shelf above the bed held an adjustable reading lamp, a radio, a record player, a clock, a carafe of water and the Book of Common Prayer. In front of the window stood an oak working-table with a wheel-back chair. On the table was a blotter and a brown and blue pottery mug stacked with pencils and Biro pens. The only other items of furniture were a shabby, winged armchair with a low table beside it, a double wardrobe in oak to the left of the door, and to the right an old-fashioned desk with a roll-top. The telephone was fitted to the wall. There were no pictures and no mirror, no masculine impedimenta, no trivia on desktop or table ledge. Everything was functional, well used, unadorned. It was a room a man could be at home in.

Dalgliesh walked over to look at the books. He estimated that there must be about four hundred of them, completely covering the wall. There was little fiction, although the nineteenth-century English and Russian novelists were represented. Most of the books were histories or biographies, but there was a shelf of philosophy: Teilhard de Chardin’s
Science and Christ
, Jean-Paul Sartre’s
Being and Nothingness: A Humanist Outlook
, Simone Weil’s
First and Last
, Plato’s
Republic
, the
Cambridge History of Late Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy
. It looked as if Lorrimer had at one time been trying to teach himself Greek. The shelf held a Greek primer and a dictionary.