Death of an Expert Witness (30 page)

Miss Willard waved them to the chaise longue. “My own little den,” she said gaily. “I like to be private, you know. I explained to Dr. Kerrison that I could only consider coming if I had my privacy. It’s a rare and beautiful thing, don’t you think? The human spirit wilts without it.”

Looking at her hands, Dalgliesh thought that she was probably in her middle forties, although her face looked older. The dark hair, dry and coarse and tightly curled, was at odds with her faded complexion. Two sausages of curls over the brow suggested that she had hurriedly snatched out the rollers when she heard their knock. But her face was already made up. There was a circle of rouge under each eye and the lipstick had seeped into the creases pursing her mouth. Her small, square, bony jaw was loose as a marionette’s. She was not yet fully dressed and a padded dressing gown of flowered nylon, stained with tea and what looked like egg, was corded over a nylon nightdress in bright blue with a grubby frill round the neck. Massingham was fascinated by a bulbous fold of limp cotton just above her shoes, from which he found it difficult to avert his eyes, until he realized that she had put on her stockings back to front.

She said: “You want to talk to me about Dr. Kerrison’s alibi, I expect. Of course, it’s quite ridiculous that he should have to provide one, a man so gentle, totally incapable of violence. But I can help you, as it happens. He was certainly home until after nine, and I saw him again less than an hour later. But all this is just a waste of time. You bring a great reputation with you, Commander, but this is one crime which science can’t solve. Not for nothing are they called the black fens. All through the centuries, evil has come out of this dank soil. We can fight evil, Commander, but not with your weapons.”

Massingham said: “Well, suppose we begin by giving our weapons a chance.”

She looked at him and smiled pityingly. “But all the doors were locked. All your clever scientific aids were intact. No one broke in, and no one could have got out. And yet he was struck down. That was no human hand, Inspector.”

Dalgliesh said: “It was almost certainly a blunt weapon, Miss Willard, and I’ve no doubt there was a human hand at the end of it. It’s our job to find out whose, and I hope that you may be able to help us. You housekeep for Dr. Kerrison and his daughter, I believe?”

Miss Willard disposed on him a glance in which pity at such ignorance was mixed with gentle reproof. “I’m not a housekeeper, Commander. Certainly not a housekeeper. Shall we say that I’m a working house-guest. Dr. Kerrison needed someone to live in so that the children weren’t left alone when he was called out to a murder scene. They’re children of a broken marriage, I’m afraid. The old, sad story. You are not married, Commander?”

“No.”

“How wise.” She sighed, conveying in the sibilant release of breath infinite yearning, infinite regret.

Dalgliesh persevered: “So you live completely separately?”

“My own little quarters. This sitting room and a bedroom next door. My own small kitchenette through this door here. I won’t show it to you now because it’s not quite as I should like it to be.”

“What precisely are the domestic arrangements, Miss Willard?”

“They get their own breakfast. The doctor usually lunches at the hospital, of course; Nell and William have something on a tray when she bothers to prepare it, and I look after myself. Then I cook a little something in the evenings, quite simple, we’re none of us large eaters. We eat very early because of William. It’s more a high tea really. Nell and her father do all the cooking during the weekend. It really works out quite well.”

Quite well for you, thought Massingham. Certainly William had seemed sturdy and well nourished enough, but the girl looked as if she ought to be at school, not struggling, almost unaided, with this isolated and cheerless monstrosity of a house. He wondered how she got on with Miss Willard.

As if reading his thoughts, Miss Willard said: “William is a sweet little boy. Absolutely no trouble. I hardly see him really. But Nell is difficult, very difficult. Girls of her age usually are. She needs a mother’s hand. You know, of course, that Mrs. Kerrison walked out on her husband a year ago? She ran away with one of his colleagues at the hospital. It broke him up completely. Now she’s trying to get the High Court to reverse the custody order and give her the children when the divorce is heard in a month’s time, and I’m sure it’ll be a good thing if they do. Children ought to be with their mother. Not that Nell’s really a child any longer. It’s the boy they’re fighting over, not Nell. If you ask me, neither of them cares about her.
She gives her father a terrible time of it. Nightmares, screaming attacks, asthma. He’s going to London next Monday for a three-day conference on forensic pathology. I’m afraid she’ll make him pay for that little jaunt when he gets back. Neurotic, you know. Punishing him for loving her brother more, although, of course, he can’t see that.”

Dalgliesh wondered by what mental process she had arrived at that glib psychological assessment. Not, he thought, that it was necessarily wrong. He felt profoundly sorry for Kerrison.

Suddenly Massingham felt sick. The warmth and feculent smell of the room overpowered him. A blob of cold sweat dropped on his notebook. Muttering an apology, he strode over to the window and tugged at the frame. It resisted for a moment then slammed down. Great draughts of cool reviving air poured in. The frail light before the carved Madonna flickered and went out.

When Massingham got back to his notebook, Dalgliesh was already asking about the previous evening. Miss Willard said that she had cooked a meal of minced beef, potatoes and frozen peas for supper, with a blancmange to follow. She had washed up alone and had then gone to say good-night to the family before returning to her sitting room. They were then in the drawing room, but Dr. Kerrison and Nell were about to take William up to bed. She had seen and heard nothing else of the family until just after nine o’clock when she had gone to check that the front door was bolted. Dr. Kerrison was sometimes careless about locking up and didn’t always appreciate how nervous she felt, sleeping alone and on the ground floor. One read such terrible stories. She had passed the study door, which was ajar, and had heard Dr. Kerrison speaking on the telephone. She had returned to her sitting room and had switched on the television.

Dr. Kerrison had looked in shortly before ten o’clock to talk to her about a small increase in her salary, but they had been interrupted by a telephone call. He had returned ten minutes or so later and they had been together for about half an hour. It had been pleasant to have the opportunity of a private chat without the children butting in. Then he had said good-night and left her. She had switched on the television again and had watched it until nearly midnight, when she had gone to bed. If Dr. Kerrison had taken out the car, she felt fairly sure that she would have heard it since her sitting-room window looked out at the garage, which was built at the side of the house. Well, they could see that for themselves.

She had overslept the next morning and hadn’t breakfasted until after nine. She had been woken by the telephone ringing, but it hadn’t been until Dr. Kerrison returned from the Laboratory that she knew about Dr. Lorrimer’s murder. Dr. Kerrison had returned briefly to the house shortly after nine o’clock to tell her and Nell what had happened and to ring the hospital to say that any calls for him should be transferred to the reception desk at the Laboratory.

Dalgliesh said: “I believe Dr. Lorrimer used to drive you to the eleven o’clock service at St. Mary’s at Guy’s Marsh. He seems to have been a solitary and not a very happy man. No one seems to have known him well. I was wondering whether he found in you the companionship and friendship he seems to have lacked in his working life.”

Massingham looked up, curious to see her response to this blatant invitation to self-revelation.

She hooded her eyes like a bird, while a red blotch spread like a contagion over her throat. She said, with an attempt at archness: “Now I’m afraid you’re teasing me, Commander. It is Commander, isn’t it? It seems so odd, just like a naval rank.
My late brother-in-law was in the Navy, so I know a little of these matters. But you were talking of friendship. That implies confidence. I should like to have helped him, but he wasn’t easy to know. And there was the age difference. I’m not so very much older, less than five years, I suppose. But it’s a great deal to a comparatively young man. No, I’m afraid we were just two reprobate High Anglicans in this Evangelical swampland. We didn’t even sit together in church. I’ve always sat in the third pew down from the pulpit and he liked to be right at the back.”

Dalgliesh persisted: “But he must have enjoyed your company. He called for you every Sunday, didn’t he?”

“Only because Father Gregory asked him. There is a bus to Guy’s Marsh, but I have to wait half an hour and, as Dr. Lorrimer drove past the Old Rectory, Father Gregory suggested that it would be a sensible arrangement if we travelled together. He never came in. I was always ready and waiting for him outside the drive. If his father were ill or he himself was out on a case, he’d telephone. Sometimes he wasn’t able to let me know, which was inconvenient. But I knew that if he didn’t drive up at twenty to eleven he wouldn’t be coming, and then I’d set off for the bus. Usually, of course, he came, except during the first six months of this year when he gave up Mass. But he rang early in September to say that he would be stopping for me as he used to. Naturally I never questioned him about the break. One does go through these dark nights of the soul.”

So he had stopped going to Mass when the affair with Domenica Schofield began, and had resumed his churchgoing after the break. Dalgliesh asked: “Did he take the Sacrament?”

She was unsurprised by the question. “Not since he started coming to Mass again in mid-September. It worried me a little,
I confess. I did wonder whether to suggest to him that if anything was troubling him he should have a talk with Father Gregory. But one is on very delicate ground. And it really wasn’t any concern of mine.”

And she wouldn’t want to offend him, thought Massingham. Those lifts in the car must have been very convenient.

Dalgliesh asked: “So he did very occasionally telephone you. Have you ever rung him?”

She turned away and fussed herself plumping up a cushion. “Dear me, no! Why should I? I don’t even know his number.”

Massingham said: “It seems odd that he went to church at Guy’s Marsh instead of in the village.”

Miss Willard looked at him severely. “Not at all. Mr. Swaffield is a very worthy man, but he’s Low, very Low. The fens have always been strongly Evangelical. When my dear father was rector here, he had constant fights with the Parochial Church Council over Reservation. And then I think that Dr. Lorrimer didn’t want to get drawn into church and village activities. It’s so difficult not to once you’re known as a regular member of the congregation. Father Gregory didn’t expect that; he realized that Dr. Lorrimer had his own father to care for and a very demanding job. Incidentally, I was very distressed that the police didn’t call for Father Gregory. Someone should have called a priest to the body.”

Dalgliesh said gently: “He had been dead some hours when the body was discovered, Miss Willard.”

“Even so, he should have had a priest.” She stood up as if signifying that the interview was at an end. Dalgliesh was glad enough to go. He said his formal thanks and asked Miss Willard to get in touch with him immediately if anything of interest occurred to her. He and Massingham were at the door when she suddenly called out imperiously: “Young man!”
The two detectives turned to look at her. She spoke directly at Massingham, like an old-fashioned nurse admonishing a child: “Would you please shut the window which you so inconsiderately opened, and relight the candle.”

Meekly, as if in obedience to long-forgotten nursery commands, Massingham did so. They were left to find their own way out of the house and saw no one. When they were in the car fastening their seat belts, Massingham exploded: “Good God, you’d think Kerrison could find someone more suitable than that old hag to care for his children. She’s a slut, a dipsomaniac, and she’s half mad.”

“It’s not so simple for Kerrison. A remote village, a large, cold house, and a daughter who can’t be easy to cope with. Faced with the choice of that kind of job and the dole, most women today would probably opt for the dole. Did you take a look at the bonfire?”

“Nothing there. It looks as if they’re periodically burning a lot of old furniture and garden rubbish which they’ve got stacked in one of the coach houses. William said that Nell made a bonfire early this morning.”

“William can talk, then?” Dalgliesh asked.

“Oh William can talk. But I’m not sure that you’d be able to understand him, sir. Did you believe Miss Willard when she gave that alibi for Kerrison?”

“I’m as ready to believe her as I am Mrs. Bradley or Mrs. Blakelock when they confirmed Bradley’s and Blakelock’s alibis. Who can tell? We know that Kerrison did ring Dr. Underwood at nine and was here to receive his return call at about ten. If Miss Willard sticks to her story, he’s in the clear for that hour, and I’ve a feeling that it’s the crucial hour. But how did he know that? And if he did, why suppose that we should be able to pin down the time of death so precisely? Sitting with his daughter
until nine and then calling on Miss Willard just before ten looks very like an attempt to establish that he was at home during the whole of that hour.”

Massingham said: “He must have been, to take that ten-o’clock call. And I don’t see how he could have got to Hoggatt’s, killed Lorrimer and returned home in less than sixty minutes, not if he went on foot. And Miss Willard seems confident that he didn’t take the car. I suppose it would just be possible if he took a short cut through the new Laboratory, but it would be a close thing.”

Just then the car radio bleeped. Dalgliesh took the call. It was from the Guy’s Marsh control tower to say that Sergeant Reynolds at the Lab wanted to contact them. The Met Lab report had been received.