Death of an Expert Witness

by P. D. James

“Oh, but you are! I’ve never needed Assumption at Cookham to prove it. Why not the Greuze? It would look good with that carved overmantel.”

  “Too pretty.”

  She laughed, and was gone.

  He picked up Clifford Bradley’s report and, in the space provided, wrote: “Mr. Bradley’s performance has been disappointing, but not all the difficulties are of his making. He lacks confidence and would benefit from more active encouragement and support than he has received. I have corrected the final marking to what I consider a more just assessment and have spoken to the Senior Biologist about the personnel management in his department.”

  If he did finally decide, after all, this wasn’t the job for him, that snide comment should go some way to ensure that Lorrimer stood no chance of succeeding him as Director of Hoggatt’s.

  9

  At 1.48 precisely, Paul Middlemass, the Document Examiner, opened his file on the clunch pit murder. The Document Examination Room, which occupied the whole of the front of the building immediately under the roof, smelt like a stationer’s shop, a pungent amalgam of paper and ink, sharpened by the tang of chemicals. Middlemass breathed it as his native air. He was a tall, rangy, large-featured man with a mobile, wide-mouthed face of agreeable ugliness and iron-grey hair which fell in heavy swathes over parchment-coloured skin. Easy-going and seemingly indolent, he was in fact a prodigious worker with an obsession for his job. Paper in all its manifestations was his passion. Few men, in or outside the forensic science service, knew so much about it. He handled it with joy and with a kind of reverence, gloated over it, knew its provenance almost by its smell. Identification of the sizing and loading of a specimen by spectrographic or X-ray crystallography merely confirmed what touch and sight had already pronounced. The satisfaction of watching the emergence of an obscure watermark under soft X-rays never palled, and the final pattern was as fascinating to his unsurprised eyes as the expected potter’s mark to a collector of porcelain.

  His father, long dead, had been a dentist, and his son had taken for his own use the old man’s inordinately large store of self-designed surgical overalls. They were old-fashioned in cut, waisted and full-skirted as the coat of a Regency buck, and with crested metal buttons fastening high to the side of the throat. Although they were too short in the arm so that his lean wrists protruded like those of an overgrown schoolboy, he wore them with a certain panache, as if this unorthodox working garb, so different from the regulation white coats of the rest of the Laboratory staff, symbolized that unique blend of scientific skill, experience and flair which distinguishes the good Document Examiner.

  He had just finished telephoning his wife, having remembered rather belatedly that he was due to help out that evening with the village concert. He liked women, and before his marriage had enjoyed a succession of casual, satisfactory and uncommitted affairs. He had married late, a buxom research scientist from Cambridge twenty years his junior, and drove back to their modern flat on the outskirts of the city each night in his Jaguar—his chief extravagance—frequently late, but seldom too late to bear her off to their local pub. Secure in his job, with a growing international reputation, and uxoriously contented with his comely Sophie, he knew himself to be successful and suspected himself to be happy.

  The Document Examination Room with its cabinets and range of monorail cameras took up what some of his colleagues, notably Edwin Lorrimer, regarded as more than its share of room. But the Laboratory, lit by rows of fluorescent lights and with its low ceiling, was stuffy and ill ventilated, and this afternoon the central heating, unreliable at the best of times, had concentrated all its efforts on the top of the building. Usually he was oblivious of his working conditions, but a sub-tropical temperature was difficult to ignore. He opened the door to the passage. Opposite and a little to the right were the male and female lavatories, and he could hear the occasional feet, light or heavy, hurried or dilatory, of passing members of staff, and hear the swing of the two doors. The sounds didn’t worry him. He applied himself to his task.

  But the specimen he was now poring over held little mystery. If the crime had been other than murder he would have left it to his Assistant Scientific Officer, not yet returned from a belated lunch. But murder invariably meant a court appearance and cross-examination—the defence seldom let the scientific evidence go unchallenged in this, the gravest of charges—and a court appearance put document examination in general, and Hoggatt’s Laboratory in particular, on public trial. He made it a matter of principle always to take the murder cases himself. They were seldom the most interesting. What he most enjoyed were the historical investigations, the satisfaction of demonstrating, as he had only last month, that a document dated 1872 was printed on paper containing chemical wood pulp which was first used in 1874, a discovery which had initiated a fascinating unravelling of complicated documentary fraud. There was nothing complicated and little of interest about the present job. Yet, only a few years ago, a man’s neck could have depended upon his opinion. He seldom thought of the half-dozen men who had been hanged during the twenty years of his forensic experience, primarily because of his evidence, and when he did, it was not the strained but oddly anonymous faces in the dock which he remembered, or their names, but paper and ink, the thickened downward stroke, the peculiar formation of a letter. Now he spread out on his table the note taken from the dead girl’s handbag, placing on each side the two specimens of the husband’s handwriting which the police had been able to obtain. One was a letter to the suspect’s mother written on holiday at Southend—how, he wondered, had they managed to extract that from her? The other was a brief telephoned message about a football match. The note taken from the victim’s purse was even briefer.

  “You’ve got your own chap so lay off Barry Taylor or you’ll be sorry. It would be a pity to spoil a nice face like yours. Acid isn’t pretty. Watch it. A Wellwisher.”

  The style, he decided, was derived from a recent television thriller, the writing was obviously disguised. It was possible that the police would be able to provide him with some more samples of the suspect’s handwriting when they visited the lad’s place of work, but he didn’t really need them. The similarities between the threatening note and the samples were unmistakable. The writer had tried to alter the slant of his hand and had changed the shape of the small r. But the lifts of the pen came regularly at every fourth letter—Middlemass had never found a forger who remembered to vary the interval at which he lifted pen from paper—and the dot above the i, high and slightly to the left, and the over-emphatic apostrophe were almost a trademark. He would analyse the paper sample, photograph and enlarge each individual letter and then mount them on a comparison chart, and the jury would pass it solemnly from hand to hand and wonder why it needed a highly paid expert to come and explain what anyone could see with his own eyes.

  The telephone rang. Middlemass stretched out a long arm and held the instrument to his left ear. Susan Bradley’s voice, at first apologetic then conspiratorial and finally close to tears, squeaked into his ear in a long monologue of complaint and desperation. He listened, made soft encouraging noises, held the receiver an inch or two from his ear, and meanwhile noted that the writer, poor bastard, hadn’t even thought of altering the distinctive cross-bar of his small letter t. Not that it would have done any good. And he couldn’t have known, poor devil, that his effort would feature as an exhibit in his trial for murder.

  “All right,” he said. “Don’t worry. Leave it to me.”

  “And you won’t let him know that I phoned you?”

  “Of course not, Susan. Relax. I’ll settle it.”

  The voice crackled on.

  “Then tell him not to be a fool, for God’s sake. Hasn’t he noticed that we’ve got one and a half million unemployed? Lorrimer can’t sack him. Tell Clifford to hang on to his job and stop being a bloody fool. I’ll deal with Lorrimer.”

  He replaced the receiver. He had liked Susan Moffat who, for two years, had worked for him as his SO. She ha
d both more brains and more guts than her husband, and he had wondered, without greatly caring, why she had married Bradley. Pity probably, and an overdeveloped maternal instinct. There were some women who simply had to take the unfortunate literally to their breast. Or perhaps it was just lack of choice, the need for a home of her own and a child. Well, it was too late to try and stop the marriage now, and it certainly hadn’t occurred to him to try at the time. And at least she had the home and the kid. She had brought the baby to the Lab to see him only a fortnight ago. The visit of the prune-faced yelling bundle had done nothing to change his own resolution not to produce a child, but certainly Susan herself had seemed happy enough. And she would probably be happy again if something could be done about Lorrimer.

  He thought that the time had perhaps come to do something about Lorrimer. And he had, after all, his own private reason for taking on the job. It was a small personal obligation, and to date it hadn’t particularly fretted what he supposed other people called conscience. But Susan Bradley’s call had reminded him. He listened. The footsteps were familiar. Well, it was a coincidence, but better now than later. Moving to the door he called at the retreating back: “Lorrimer. I want a word with you.”

  Lorrimer came and stood inside the door, tall, unsmiling in his carefully buttoned white coat, and regarded Middlemass with his dark, wary eyes. Middlemass made himself look into them, and then turned his glance away. The irises had seemed to dilate into black pools of despair. It was not an emotion he felt competent to deal with, and he felt discomforted. What on earth was eating the poor devil?

  He said, carefully casual: “Look, Lorrimer, lay off Bradley will you? I know he’s not exactly God’s gift to forensic science, but he’s a conscientious plodder and you’re not going to stimulate either his brain or his speed by bullying the poor little beast. So cut it out.”

  “Are you telling me how to manage my staff?” Lorrimer’s voice was perfectly controlled, but the pulse at the side of his temple had begun to beat visibly. Middlemass found it difficult not to fix his eyes on it.

  “That’s right, mate. This member of your staff anyway. I know damn well what you’re up to and I don’t like it. So stow it.”

  “Is this meant to be some kind of a threat?”

  “More friendly warning, reasonably friendly anyway. I don’t pretend to like you, and I wouldn’t have served under you if the Home Office had been daft enough to appoint you Director of this Lab. But I admit that what you do in your own department isn’t normally my business, only this happens to be an exception. I know what’s going on, I don’t like it, and I’m making it my business to see that it stops.”

  “I didn’t realize that you had this tender regard for Bradley. But of course, Susan Bradley must have phoned you. He wouldn’t have the guts to speak for himself. Did she telephone you, Middlemass?”

  Middlemass ignored the question. He said: “I haven’t any particular regard for Bradley. But I did have a certain regard for Peter Ennalls, if you can remember him.”

  “Ennalls drowned himself because his fiancée threw him over and he’d had a mental breakdown. He left a note explaining his action and it was read out at the inquest. Both things happened months after he’d left the Southern Laboratory; neither had anything to do with me.”

  “What happened while he was at the Lab had a hell of a lot to do with you. He was a pleasant, rather ordinary lad with two good ‘A’ levels and an unaccountable wish to become a forensic biologist when he had the bad luck to begin to work under you. As it happens, he was my wife’s cousin. I was the one who recommended him to try for the job. So I have a certain interest, you could say a certain responsibility.”

  Lorrimer said: “He never said that he was related to your wife. But I can’t see what difference it makes. He was totally unsuited for the job. A forensic biologist who can’t work accurately under pressure is no use to me or the Service and he’d better get out. We’ve no room for passengers. That’s what I propose to tell Bradley.”

  “Then you’d better have second thoughts.”

  “And how are you going to make me?”

  It was extraordinary that lips so tight could produce any sound, that Lorrimer’s voice, high and distorted, could have forced itself through the vocal cords without splitting them.

  “I shall make it plain to Howarth that you and I can’t serve in the same Lab. He won’t exactly welcome that. Trouble between senior staff is the last complication he wants just now. So he’ll suggest to Establishment Department that one of us gets a transfer before we have the added complication of moving into a new Lab. I’m banking on Howarth—and Estabs come to that—concluding that it’s easier to find a forensic biologist than a document examiner.”

  Middlemass surprised himself. None of this rigmarole had occurred to him before he spoke. Not that it was unreasonable. There wasn’t another document examiner of his calibre in the Service and Howarth knew it. If he categorically refused to work in the same Laboratory as Lorrimer, one of them would have to go. The quarrel wouldn’t do either of them any good with the Establishment Department, but he thought he knew which one it would harm most.

  Lorrimer said: “You helped stop me getting the directorship, now you want to drive me out of the Lab.”

  “Personally I don’t care a damn whether you’re here or not. But just lay off bullying Bradley.”

  “If I were prepared to take advice about the way I run my department from anyone, it wouldn’t be a third-rate paper fetishist with a second-rate degree, who doesn’t know the difference between scientific proof and intuition.”

  The taunt was too absurd to puncture Middlemass’s secure self-esteem. But at least it warranted a retort. He found that he was getting angry. And suddenly he saw light. He said: “Look, mate, if you can’t make it in bed, if she isn’t finding you quite up to the mark, don’t take your frustration out on the rest of us. Remember Chesterfield’s advice. The expense is exorbitant, the position ridiculous, and the pleasure transitory.”

  The result astounded him. Lorrimer gave a strangled cry and lunged out. Middlemass’s reaction was both instinctive and deeply satisfying. He shot out his right arm and landed a punch on Lorrimer’s nose. There was a second’s astonished silence in which the two men regarded each other. Then the blood spurted and Lorrimer tottered and fell forward. Middlemass caught him by the shoulders and felt the weight of his head against his chest. He thought: “My God, he’s going to faint.” He was aware of a tangle of emotion, surprise at himself, boyish gratification, pity and an impulse to laugh. He said: “Are you all right?”

  Lorrimer tore himself from his grasp and stood upright. He fumbled for his handkerchief and held it to his nose. The red stain grew. Looking down, Middlemass saw Lorrimer’s blood spreading on his white overall, decorative as a rose. He said: “Since we’re engaging in histrionics, I believe your response ought now to be ‘By God, you swine, you’ll pay for this.’ ”

  He was astounded by the sudden blaze of hate in the black eyes.

  Lorrimer’s voice came to him muffled by the handkerchief. “You will pay for it.”

  And then he was gone. Middlemass was suddenly aware of Mrs. Bidwell, the Laboratory cleaner, standing by the door, eyes large and excited behind her ridiculous upswept diamanté spectacles.

  “Nice goings-on, I don’t think. Senior staff fighting each other. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

  “Oh, we are, Mrs. Bidwell. We are.” Slowly Middlemass eased his long arms from his overall. He handed it to her. “Drop this in the soiled linen, will you.”

  “Now you know very well, Mr. Middlemass, that I don’t go into the gents’ cloakroom, not in working hours. You put it in the basket yourself. And if you want a clean one now, you know where to find it. I’m putting out no more clean linen until tomorrow. Fighting, indeed. I might have known that Dr. Lorrimer would be mixed up in it. But he’s not a gentleman you’d expect to find using his fists. Wouldn’t have the guts, that would be my view. B
ut he’s been odd in his manner these last few days, no doubt about that. You heard about that spot of bother in the front hall, I suppose? He practically pushed those kids of Dr. Kerrison’s out of the door. All they were doing was waiting for their dad. No harm in that, I suppose. There’s a very nasty atmosphere in this Lab recently, and if a certain gentleman doesn’t take a hold of himself there’ll be a mischief done, you mark my words.”

  10

  It was nearly five o’clock and dark before Detective Inspector Doyle got back to his home in the village four miles to the north of Cambridge. He had tried to telephone his wife once, but without success: the line was engaged. Another of her interminable, secretive and expensive telephone calls to one of her old nursing friends, he thought, and, duly satisfied, made no further attempt. The wrought-iron gate, as usual, was open and he parked in front of the house. It wasn’t worth garaging the car for a couple of hours, which was all the time he could allow himself.

  Scoope House hardly looked its best in the late afternoon of a dark November evening. No wonder that the agents hadn’t recently sent anyone to view. It was a bad time of the year. The house was, he thought, a monument to miscalculation. He had bought it for less than seventeen thousand and had spent five thousand on it to date, expecting to sell it for at least forty. But that was before the recession had upset the calculations of more expert speculators than he. Now, with the property market sluggish, there was nothing to do but wait. He could afford to hang on to the house until the market quickened. He wasn’t sure that he would be given a chance to hold on to his wife. He wasn’t even sure that he wanted to. The marriage, too, had been a miscalculation, but given the circumstances of the time, an understandable one. He wasted no time on regrets.

  The two tall oblongs of light from the first-floor drawing-room window should have been a welcoming promise of warmth and comfort. Instead they were vaguely menacing; Maureen was at home. But where else, she would have argued, was there for her to go in this dreary East Anglian village on a dull November evening?