Death of an Expert Witness (16 page)

"No use trying to pin this on me, or Bidwell come to that. We was together at the village concert. Sat five rows back between Joe Machin--he's the sexton--and Willie Barnes--he's the rector's warden, and we stayed there until the end of the show. No sneaking out at half-time like some I could mention."

"Who sneaked out, Mrs. Bidwell?"

"Ask him yourself. Sat at the end of the row in front of us, a gentleman whose office we might or might not be standing in at this very moment. Do you want to talk to him? Shall I ask him to step in?" She spoke hopefully and looked towards the door like an eager gun dog, ears pricked for the command to retrieve.

"We'll see to that, thank you, Mrs. Bidwell. And if we want to talk to you again we'll get in touch. You've been very helpful."

"I thought I might make coffee for them all before I go. No harm in that, I suppose?"

There was no point in warning her not to talk to the Lab staff, or, come to that, the whole village. Dalgliesh had no doubt that his search of the cloakrooms and the missing bloodstained coat would soon be common knowledge. But no great harm would be done. The murderer must know that the police would be immediately alive to the possible significance of that false early morning call to Mrs. Bidwell. He was dealing with intelligent men and women, experienced, even if vicariously, in criminal investigation, knowledgeable about police procedure aware of the rules which governed his every move. He had no doubt that, mentally, most of the group now waiting in the library to be interviewed were following his actions almost to the minute.

And among them, or known to them, was a murderer.

Superintendent Mercer had selected his two sergeants with an eye to contrast or, perhaps, with a view to satisfying any prejudices which Dalgliesh might harbour about the age and experience of his subordinates. Sergeant Reynolds was near the end of his service, a stolid, broad-shouldered, slow speaking officer of the old school and a native of the fens. Sergeant Underbill, recently promoted, looked young enough to be his son. His boyish, open face with its look of disciplined idealism was vaguely familiar to Massingham, who suspected that he might have seen it in a police recruitment pamphlet, but decided in the interest of harmonious co-operation to give Underbill the benefit of the doubt.

The four police officers were sitting at the conference table in the Director's office. Dalgliesh was briefing his team before he started on the preliminary interviews. He was, as always, restlessly aware of time passing. It was already after eleven and he was anxious to finish at the Laboratory and see old Mr. Lorrimer. The physical clues to his son's murder might lie in the Laboratory; the clue to the man himself lay elsewhere. But neither his words nor his tone betrayed impatience.

"We start by assuming that the telephone call to Mrs. Bidwell and Lorrimer's death are connected. That means the call was made by the murderer or an accomplice. We'll keep an open mind about the caller's sex until we get confirmation from Bidwell, but it was probably a woman, probably also someone who knew that old Mr. Lorrimer was expected to be in hospital yesterday, and who didn't know that the appointment had been cancelled. If the old man had been home, the ruse could hardly hope to succeed. As Miss Easterbrook has pointed out, no one could rely on his going early to bed last night and not realizing until after the Lab opened this morning that his son hadn't come home."

Massingham said: "The killer would have made it his business to get here early this morning, assuming that he didn't know that his plan had misfired. And assuming, of course, the call wasn't a double bluff. It would be a neat ploy, wasting our time, confusing the investigation and diverting suspicion from everyone except the early arrivals."

"But for one of the suspects, it could have been an even neater ploy," thought Dalgliesh. It had been Mrs. Bidwell's arrival at Howarth's house in obedience to the call which had given the Director himself the excuse for arriving so early. He wondered what time Howarth usually put in an appearance.

That would be one of the questions to be asked. He said:

"We'll start by assuming that it wasn't a bluff, that the murderer, or his accomplice, made the call to delay Mrs. Bidwell's arrival and the discovery of the body. So what was he hoping to do? Plant evidence or destroy it? Tidy up something which he'd overlooked; wipe the mallet clean; clear up the evidence of whatever it was he was doing here last night; replace the keys on the body? But Blakelock had the best opportunity to do that, and he wouldn't need to have taken them in the first place. The call would have given someone the chance to replace the spare set in the security cupboard here. But that would be perfectly possible without delaying Mrs. Bidwell's arrival. And, of course, it may have been done."

Underbill said: "But is it really likely, sir, that the call was intended to delay the finding of the body and give the killer time to replace the keys? Admittedly Mrs. Bidwell could be expected to be first in the Biology Department this morning when she put out the clean coats. But the murderer couldn't rely on that. Inspector Blakelock or Brenda Pridmore could easily have had occasion to go there."

Dalgliesh thought it a risk that the murderer might well have thought worth taking. In his experience the early-morning routine in an institution seldom varied. Unless Blakelock had the early-morning job of checking on Lab security-and this was yet another of the questions to be asked--he and Brenda Pridmore would probably have got on with their normal work at the reception desk. In the ordinary course of events Mrs. Bidwell would have been the one to find the body. Any member of staff who went into the Biology Lab before her would have needed a good excuse to explain his presence there, unless, of course, he was a member of the Biology Department.

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 daresay 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 daresay. 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 Middle mass'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 P.M. 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."