Death of an Expert Witness (31 page)

They opened the door together. Mrs. Bradley held a sleeping child in her arms. Bradley said: “Come in. It’s about the vomit, isn’t it? I’ve been expecting you.”

They moved into the sitting room. He gestured Dalgliesh and Massingham to the two chairs and sat down on the sofa opposite them. His wife moved close to him, shifting the baby’s weight against her shoulder.

Dalgliesh asked: “Do you want a solicitor?”

“No. Not yet, anyway. I’m ready to tell the whole truth and it can’t hurt me. At least, I suppose it can lose me my job. But that’s the worst it can do. And I think I’m almost beyond caring.”

Massingham opened his notebook. Dalgliesh said to Susan Bradley: “Wouldn’t you like to put the baby in her pram, Mrs. Bradley?”

She gazed at Dalgliesh with blazing eyes, and shook her head vehemently, holding the child more tightly as if she expected them to tear her from her arms. Massingham was grateful that, at least, the child was asleep. But he wished that
neither she nor her mother were there. He looked at the baby, bunched in her pink sleeping suit against her mother’s shoulder, the fringe of longer hair above the tender hollowed neck, the round bare patch at the back of the head, the close-shut eyes and ridiculous, snubbed nose. The frail mother with her milky bundle was more inhibiting than a whole firm of recalcitrant anti-police lawyers.

There was a lot to be said for bundling a suspect into the back of a police car and taking him off to the police station to make his statement in the functional anonymity of the interrogation room. Even the Bradleys’ sitting room provoked in him a mixture of irritation and pity. It still smelt new and unfinished. There was no fireplace, and the television held pride of place above the wall-mounted electric heater with, above it, a popular print of waves dashing against a rocky shore. The wall opposite had been papered to match the flowered curtains, but the other three were bare, the plaster already beginning to crack. There was a baby’s metal high chair and, underneath it, a spread of plastic sheeting to protect the carpet. Everything looked new, as if they had brought to their marriage no accumulation of small personal impedimenta, had come spiritually naked into possession of this small, characterless room.

Dalgliesh said: “We’ll take it that your previous account of your movements on Wednesday night wasn’t true, or was incomplete. So what did happen?”

Massingham wondered for a moment why Dalgliesh wasn’t cautioning Bradley; then he thought he knew. Bradley might have had the guts to kill if provoked beyond endurance, but he’d never have had the nerve to drop from that third-floor window. And if he didn’t, how did he get out of the Laboratory? Lorrimer’s killer had either used the keys or he had made that
climb. All their investigations, all their careful and repeated examination of the building had confirmed that hypothesis. There was no other way.

Bradley looked at his wife. She gave him a brief, transforming smile and held out her free hand. He clasped it and they edged closer. He moistened his lips, and then began speaking as if the speech had been long rehearsed.

“On Tuesday Dr. Lorrimer finished writing my annual confidential report. He told me he wanted to talk to me about it next day before he passed it to Dr. Howarth, and he called me into his private room soon after he arrived in the Lab. He’d given me an adverse report and, according to the rules, he had to explain why. I wanted to defend myself, but I couldn’t. And there wasn’t any real privacy. I felt that the whole Laboratory knew what was happening and was listening and waiting. Besides, I was so frightened of him, I don’t know why exactly. I can’t explain it. He had such an effect on me that he’d only have to be working close to me in the Laboratory and I’d start shaking. When he was away at a scene of crime it was like heaven. I could work perfectly well then. The annual confidential report wasn’t unjust. I knew that my work had deteriorated. But he was partly the reason why. He seemed to take my inadequacy as a personal denigration of himself. Poor work was intolerable to him. He was obsessed by mistakes. And because I was so terrified, I made them all the more.”

He paused for a moment. No one spoke. Then he went on: “We weren’t going to the village concert because we couldn’t get a babysitter, and, anyway, Sue’s mother was coming for supper. I got home just before six. After the meal—the curry and rice and peas—I saw her off on the seven-forty-five bus. I came straight back here. But I kept thinking of the adverse
report, what Dr. Howarth would say, what I was going to do if he recommended a move, how we could possibly sell this house. We had to buy when prices were at their peak, and it’s almost impossible to find buyers now, except at a loss. Besides, I didn’t think another lab would want me. After a time I thought I’d go back to the Laboratory and confront him. I think I had some idea that we might be able to communicate, that I could speak to him as another human being and make him understand how I felt. Anyway, I felt that I would go mad if I stayed indoors. I had to walk somewhere, and I walked towards Hoggatt’s. I didn’t tell Sue what I was going to do, and she tried to persuade me not to go out. But I went.”

He looked up at Dalgliesh and said: “Can I have a drink of water?” Without a word, Massingham got up and went to find the kitchen. He couldn’t see the glasses, but there were two washed cups on the draining board. He filled one with cold water and brought it back to Bradley. Bradley drained it. He drew his hand over his moist mouth and went on: “I didn’t see anyone on the way to the Laboratory. People don’t walk out in this village much after dark, and I suppose most of them were at the concert. There was a light on in the hall of the Laboratory. I rang the bell and Lorrimer came. He seemed surprised to see me but I said I wanted to speak to him. He looked at his watch and said he could only spare me five minutes. I followed him up to the Biology Lab.”

He looked across directly at Dalgliesh. He said: “It was a strange sort of interview. I sensed that he was impatient and wanted to get rid of me, and part of the time I thought that he hardly listened to what I was saying, or even knew that I was there. I didn’t make a good job of it. I tried to explain that I wasn’t being careless on purpose, that I really liked the work and wanted to make a success of it and be a credit to the
Department. I tried to explain the effect he had on me. I don’t know whether he was listening. He stood there with his eyes fixed on the floor.

“And then he looked up and began speaking. He didn’t really look at me, he was looking through me, almost as if I wasn’t there. And he was saying things, terrible things, as if they were words in a play, nothing to do with me. I kept hearing the same words over and over again. Failure. Useless. Hopeless. Inadequate. He even said something about marriage, as if I were a sexual failure too. I think he was mad. I can’t explain what it was like, all this hate pouring out, hate, and misery and despair. I stood there shaking with this stream of words pouring over me as if … as if it were filth. And then his eyes focused on me and I knew that he was seeing me, me, Clifford Bradley. His voice sounded quite different. He said: ‘You’re a third-rate biologist and a fourth-rate forensic scientist. That’s what you were when you came into this Department and you’ll never change. I have two alternatives: to check every one of your results or to risk the Service and this Laboratory being discredited in the court. Neither is tolerable. So I suggest that you look for another job. And now I’ve things to do, so please leave.’

“He turned his back on me and I went out. I knew that it was impossible. It would have been better not to have come. He’d never told me before exactly what he thought of me, not in those words, anyway. I felt sick and miserable, and I knew I was crying. That made me despise myself the more. I stumbled upstairs to the men’s cloakroom and was just able to reach the first basin before I vomited. I don’t remember how long I stood there, leaning over the basin, half crying and half vomiting. I suppose it could have been three or four minutes. After a time I put on the cold tap and swilled my face. Then I
tried to pull myself together. But I was still shaking, and I still felt sick. I went and sat on one of the lavatory seats and sank my head in my hands.

“I don’t know how long I was there. Ten minutes perhaps, but it could have been longer. I knew I could never change his opinion of me, never make him understand. He wasn’t like a human being. I realized that he hated me. But now I began to hate him and in a different way. I’d have to leave; I knew he’d see to that. But at least I could tell him what I thought of him. I could behave like a man. So I went down the stairs and into the Biology Laboratory.”

Again he paused. The child stirred in her mother’s arms and gave a little cry in her sleep. Susan Bradley began an automatic jogging and crooning, but kept her eyes on her husband. Then Bradley went on: “He was lying between the two middle examination tables, face downwards. I didn’t wait to see whether he was dead. I know that I ought to feel dreadful about that, about the fact that I left him without getting help. But I don’t. I can’t make myself feel sorry. But at the time I wasn’t glad that he was dead. I wasn’t aware of any feeling except terror. I hurled myself downstairs and out of the Laboratory as if his murderer were after me. The door was still on the Yale and I know that I must have drawn back the bottom bolt, but I can’t remember. I raced down the drive. I think there was a bus passing, but it had started up before I reached the gate. When I got into the road it was disappearing. Then I saw a car approaching and, instinctively, I stood back into the shadows of the walls. The car slowed down and turned into the Laboratory drive. Then I made myself walk slowly and normally. And the next thing I remember was being home.”

Susan Bradley spoke for the first time: “Clifford told me all about it. But, of course, he had to. He looked so terrible that I
knew something awful must have happened. We decided together what we’d better do. We knew that he’d had nothing to do with what had happened to Dr. Lorrimer. But who would believe Cliff? Everyone in the Department knew what Dr. Lorrimer thought of him. He would be bound to be suspected anyway, and if you found out that he was there, in the Laboratory, and at the very moment it happened, then how could he hope to persuade you that he wasn’t guilty? So we decided to say that we’d been together the whole evening. My mother did ring about nine o’clock to say that she’d got safely home, and I told her that Cliff was having a bath. She’d never really liked my marriage and I didn’t want to admit to her that he was out. She’d only start criticizing him for leaving me and the baby. So we knew that she could confirm what I’d said, and that might be some help, even though she hadn’t spoken to him. And then Cliff remembered about the vomit.”

Her husband went on, almost eagerly now, as if willing them to understand and believe: “I knew I’d swilled cold water over my face, but I couldn’t be certain that the bowl was clean. The more I thought about it, the more sure I was that it was stained with vomit. And I knew how much you could learn from that. I’m a secreter, but that didn’t worry me. I knew that the stomach acids would destroy the antibodies and that the Lab wouldn’t be able to determine my blood group. But there was the curry powder, the dye in the peas. They’d be able to say enough about that last meal to identify me. And I couldn’t lie about what we’d had for supper because Sue’s mother had been here sharing it with us.

“So we had this idea of trying to stop Mrs. Bidwell going early to the Laboratory. I always get to work before nine, so I would be first on the scene quite naturally. If I went straight to the washroom as I normally would, and cleaned the bowl,
then the only evidence that I was in the Lab the previous evening would be gone forever. No one would ever know.”

Susan Bradley said: “It was my idea to phone Mrs. Bidwell, and I was the one who spoke to her husband. We knew that she wouldn’t answer the phone. She never did. But Cliff hadn’t realized that old Mr. Lorrimer wasn’t entering hospital the previous day. He was out of the Department when old Mr. Lorrimer rang. So the plan went all wrong. Mr. Lorrimer telephoned Inspector Blakelock, and everyone arrived at the Lab almost as soon as Cliff. After that, there was nothing we could do but wait.”

Dalgliesh could imagine how terrible that time of waiting had been. No wonder that Bradley hadn’t been able to face going in to the Lab. He asked: “When you rang the bell at the Laboratory, how long was it before Dr. Lorrimer answered?”

“Almost immediately. He couldn’t have come down from the Biology Department. He must have been somewhere on the ground floor.”

“Did he say anything at all about expecting a visitor?”

The temptation was obvious. But Bradley said: “No. He talked about having things to do, but I took it that he meant the analysis he was working on.”

“And when you found the body, you saw and heard nothing of the murderer?”

“No. I didn’t wait to look, of course. But I’m sure he was there and very close. I don’t know why.”

“Did you notice the position of the mallet, the fact that there was a page torn from Lorrimer’s notebook?”

“No. Nothing. All I can remember is Lorrimer, the body and the thin stream of blood.”

“When you were in the washroom, did you hear the doorbell?”

“No, but I don’t think I could have heard it, not above the first floor. And I’m sure I wouldn’t have heard it while I was being sick.”

“When Dr. Lorrimer opened the door to you, did anything strike you as unusual, apart from the fact that he had come so promptly?”

“Nothing, except that he was carrying his notebook.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. It was folded back.” So Bradley’s arrival had interrupted whatever it was that Lorrimer had been doing. And he had been on the ground floor, the floor with the Director’s office, the Records Department, the Exhibits Store.

Dalgliesh said: “The car which turned into the drive as you left; what sort of car?”

“I didn’t see. All I can remember are the headlights. We don’t have a car and I’m not clever at recognizing the different models unless I get a clear look.”