Death of an Expert Witness Page 10

  There was a reception committee of three, their figures oddly foreshortened, the necks straining upwards. The thrash of the rotor blades had tugged their hair into grotesque shapes, flurried the legs of their trousers and flattened their jackets against their chests. Now, with the stilling of the engines, the sudden silence was so absolute that he saw the three motionless figures as if they were a tableau of dummies in a silent world. He and Massingham unclasped their seat belts and clambered to earth. For about five seconds the two groups stood regarding each other. Then, with a single gesture, the three waiting figures smoothed back their hair and advanced warily to meet him. Simultaneously his ears unblocked and the world again became audible. He turned to thank and speak briefly to the pilot. Then he and Massingham walked forward.

  Dalgliesh already knew Superintendent Mercer of the local CID; they had met at a number of police conferences. Even at sixty feet his ox-like shoulders, the round comedian’s face with the wide upturned mouth, and the button-bright eyes, had been instantly recognizable. Dalgliesh felt his hand crushed, and then Mercer made the introductions. Dr. Howarth; a tall, fair man, almost as tall as Dalgliesh himself, with widely spaced eyes of a remarkably deep blue and the lashes so long that they might have looked effeminate on any face less arrogantly male. He could, Dalgliesh thought, have been judged an outstandingly handsome man were it not for a certain incongruity of feature, perhaps the contrast being the fineness of the skin stretched over the flat cheekbones and the strong jutting jaw and uncompromising mouth. Dalgliesh would have known that he was rich. The blue eyes regarded the world with the slightly cynical assurance of a man accustomed to getting what he wanted when he wanted it by the simplest of expedients, that of paying for it. Beside him, Dr. Henry Kerrison, although as tall, looked diminished. His creased, anxious face was bleached with weariness and there was a look in the dark, heavily lidded eyes which was uncomfortably close to defeat. He grasped Dalgliesh’s hand with a firm grip, but didn’t speak.

  Howarth said: “There’s no entrance now to the back of the house; we have to go round to the front. This is the easiest way.”

  Carrying their scene-of-crime cases, Dalgliesh and Massingham followed him round the side of the house. The faces at the ground-floor window had disappeared and it was extraordinarily quiet. Trudging through the leaves which had drifted over the path, sniffing the keen autumnal air with its hint of smokiness, and feeling the sun on his face, Massingham felt a surge of animal well-being. It was good to be out of London. This promised to be the kind of job he most liked. The little group turned the corner of the house and Dalgliesh and Massingham had their first clear view of the façade of Hoggatt’s Laboratory.

  5

  The house was an excellent example of late seventeenth-century domestic architecture, a three-storey brick mansion with a hipped roof and four dormer windows, the centre three-bay projection surmounted by a pediment with a richly carved cornice and medallions. A flight of four wide, curved stone steps led to the doorway, imposing on its pilasters but solidly, unostentatiously, right. Dalgliesh paused momentarily to study the façade.

  Howarth said: “Agreeable, isn’t it? But wait till you see what the old man did to some of the interior.”

  The front door, with its elegant but restrained brass door handle and knocker, was fitted with two security locks, a Chubb and an Ingersoll, in addition to the Yale. At a superficial glance there was no sign of forcing. It was opened almost before Howarth had lifted his hand to ring. The man who stood aside, unsmiling, for them to enter, although not in uniform, was immediately recognizable to Dalgliesh as a police officer.

  Howarth introduced him briefly as Inspector Blakelock, Assistant Police Liaison Officer. He added: “All three locks were in order when Blakelock arrived this morning. The Chubb connects the electronic warning system to Guy’s Marsh Police Station. The internal protection system is controlled from a panel in the Police Liaison Officer’s room.”

  Dalgliesh turned to Blakelock.

  “And that was in order?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There is no other exit?”

  It was Howarth who answered. “No. My predecessor had the back door and one side door permanently barred. It was too complicated coping with a system of security locks for three doors. Everyone comes in and goes out by the front.”

  “Except possibly one person last night,” thought Dalgliesh.

  They passed through the entrance hall, which ran almost the whole length of the house, their feet suddenly loud on the marble tessellated floor. Dalgliesh was used to receiving impressions at a glance. The party did not pause on their way to the stairs, but he had a clear impression of the room, the high moulded ceiling, the two elegant pedimented doors to right and left, an oil painting of the Laboratory founder on the right-hand wall, the gleaming wood of the reception counter at the rear. A police officer with a sheaf of papers before him was using the desk telephone, presumably still checking alibis. He went on with his conversation without glancing up.

  The staircase was remarkable. The balustrades were carved oak panels decorated with scrolls of acanthus foliage, each newel surmounted by a heavy oak pineapple. There was no carpet and the unpolished wood was heavily scarred. Dr. Kerrison and Superintendent Mercer mounted behind Dalgliesh in silence.

  Howarth, leading the way, seemed to feel the need to talk: “The ground floor is occupied with reception and the Exhibits Store, my office, my secretary’s room, the general office and the Police Liaison Officer’s room. That’s all, apart from the domestic quarters at the rear. Chief Inspector Martin is the chief PLO but he’s in the USA at the moment and we only have Blakelock on duty. On this floor we have Biology at the back, Criminalistics at the front and the Instrument Section at the end of the corridor. But I’ve put a plan of the Lab in my office for you. I thought you might like to take that over if it’s convenient. But I haven’t moved any of my things until you’ve examined the room. This is the Biology Lab.”

  He glanced at Superintendent Mercer, who took the key from his pocket and unlocked the door. It was a long room obviously converted from two smaller ones, possibly a sitting room or small drawing room. The ceiling carvings had been removed, perhaps because Colonel Hoggatt had thought them inappropriate to a working laboratory, but the scars of the desecration remained. The original windows had been replaced by two long windows occupying almost the whole of the end wall. There was a range of benches and sinks under the windows, and two islands of workbenches in the middle of the room, one fitted with sinks, the other with a number of microscopes. To the left was a small glass-partitioned office, to the right a darkroom. Beside the door was an immense refrigerator.

  But the most bizarre objects in the room were a pair of unclothed window-dressers’ dummies, one male and one female, standing between the windows. They were unclothed and denuded of their wigs. The pose of the bald, egg-shaped heads, the jointed arms stiffly flexed in a parody of benediction, the staring eyes and curved, arrow-like lips gave them the hieratic look of a couple of painted deities. And at their feet, a white-clad sacrificial victim, was the body.

  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 sub
stance. 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 lin
en 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.”