Death of an Expert Witness (25 page)

"It's as well one doesn't have to like a poet's work to illustrate him competently. Who was it called Crabbe "Pope in worsted stockings?"

After twenty lines my brain begins to thud in rhymed couplets. But perhaps you're an Augustan. You write verse, don't you?"

She made it sound as if he collected cigarette cards for a hobby.

Dalgliesh said:

"I've respected Crabbe ever since I read as a boy that Jane Austen said she could have fancied being Mrs. Crabbe. When he went to London for the first time he was so poor that he had to pawn all his clothes, and then he spent the money on an edition of Dryden's poems."

"And you approve of that?"

"I find it appealing." He quoted:

"Miseries there were, and woes the world around, But these had not her pleasant dwelling found; She knew that mothers grieved and widows wept And she was sorry, said her prayers and slept:

For she indulged, nor was her heart so small That one strong passion should engross it all."

She gave him a swift elliptical glance. "In this case there is happily no mother to grieve nor widow to weep. And I gave up saying my prayers when I was nine. Or were you only proving that you could quote Crabbe?"

"That, of course," replied Dalgliesh. "Actually I came to talk to you about these."

He took a bundle of the letters out of his coat pocket, opened one of the pages and held it out towards her. He asked:

"This is Lorrimer's handwriting?"

She glanced dismissively at the page. "Of course. It's a pity he didn't send them. I should have liked to have read them, but not now perhaps."

"I don't suppose they're so very different from the ones he did post."

For a moment he thought that she was about to deny receiving any. He thought: "She's remembered that we can easily check with the postman."

He watched the blue eyes grow wary. She said:

"That's how love ends, not with a bang, but a whimper."

"Less a whimper than a cry of pain."

She wasn't working, but stood still, scrutinizing the drawing. She said:

"It's extraordinary how unattractive misery is. He'd have done better to have tried honesty. "It means a lot to me, it doesn't mean very much to you. So why not be generous? It won't cost you anything except an occasional half-hour of your time." I'd have respected him more."

"But he wasn't asking for a commercial arrangement," said Dalgliesh.

"He was asking for love."

"That's something I didn't have to give, and he had no right to expect."

None of us, thought Dalgliesh, has a right to expect it. But we do.

Irrelevantly a phrase of Plutarch fell into his mind. "Boys throw stones at frogs in sport. But the frogs do not die in sport, they die in earnest."

"When did you break it off?" he asked. She looked surprised for a moment.

"I was going to ask you how you knew that I'd done the breaking. But, of course, you've got the letters. I suppose he was whining. I told him that I didn't want to see him again about two months ago. I haven't spoken to him since."

"Did you give him a reason?"

"No. I'm not sure that there was a reason. Does there have to be?

There wasn't another man if that's what you have in mind. What a beautifully simple view you must have of life. I suppose the police work produces a card-index mentality.

Victim--Edwin Lorrimer.

Crime--Murder. Accused--Domenica Schofield.

Motive--Sex.

Verdict--Guilty.

What a pity that you can't any longer finish it off neatly with Sentence--Death. Let's say I was tired of him."

"When you'd exhausted his possibilities, sexual and emotional?"

"Say intellectual, rather, if you'll forgive the arrogance. I find that one exhausts the physical possibilities fairly soon, don't you?

But if a man has wit, intelligence, and his own peculiar enthusiasms, then there's some kind of purpose in the relationship. I knew a man once who was an authority on seventeenth-century church architecture.

We used to drive for miles looking at churches. It was fascinating while it lasted, and I now know quite a lot about the late seventeenth century. That's something on the credit side."

"Whereas Lorrimer's only intellectual enthusiasms were popular philosophy and forensic science."

"Forensic biology. He was curiously inhibited about discussing it. The Official Secrets Act was probably engraved on what he would have described as his soul. Besides, he could be boring even about his job.

Scientists invariably are, I've discovered. My brother is the only scientist I've ever met who doesn't bore me after the first ten minutes of his company."

"Where did you make love?"

"That's impertinent. And is it relevant?"

"It could be--to the number of people who knew that you were lovers."

"No one knew. I don't relish my private affairs being giggled over in the women's loo at Hoggatt's."

"So no one knew except your brother and yourself?" They must have decided in advance that it would be stupid and dangerous to deny that Howarth had known. She said:

"I hope you're not going to ask whether he approved."

"No. I took it for granted that he disapproved."

"Why the hell should you?" The tone was intended to be light, almost bantering, but Dalgliesh could detect the sharp edge of defensive anger. He said mildly:

"I am merely putting myself in his place. If I had just started a new job, and one of some difficulty, my half-sister's affair with a member of my own staff, and one who probably thought he'd been supplanted, would be a complication I'd prefer to do without."

"Perhaps you lack my brother's confidence. He didn't need Edwin Lorrimer's support to run his Lab effectively."

"You brought him here?"

"Seducing one of my brother's staff here in his own house? Had I disliked my brother, it might have given the affair extra piquancy.

Towards the end I admit it could have done with it.

But as I don't, it would merely have been in poor taste. We both have cars, and his is particularly roomy."

"I thought that was the expedient of randy adolescents. It must have been uncomfortable and cold."

"Very cold. Which was another reason for deciding to stop it." She turned to him with sudden vehemence.

"Look, I'm not trying to shock you. I'm trying to be truthful. I hate death and waste and violence. Who doesn't? But I'm not grieving, in case you thought of offering condolences. There's only one man whose death has grieved me, and it isn't Edwin Lorrimer. And I don't feel responsible. Why should I? I'm not responsible. Even if he killed himself I shouldn't feel that it was my fault. As it is, I don't believe his death had anything to do with me. He might, I suppose, have felt like murdering me. I never had the slightest motive for murdering him."

"Have you any idea who did?"

"A stranger, I imagine. Someone who broke into the Lab either to plant or to destroy some forensic evidence. Perhaps a drunken driver hoping to get his hands on his blood sample. Edwin surprised him and the intruder killed him."

"The blood alcohol analysis isn't done in the Biology Department."

"Then it could have been an enemy, someone with a grudge. Someone he'd given evidence against in the past. After all, he's probably well known in the witness box. Death of an expert witness."

Dalgliesh said: "There's the difficulty of how his killer got in and out of the Lab."

"He probably gained entrance during the day and hid after the place was locked up for the night. I leave it to you to discover how he got away. Perhaps he slipped out after the Lab had been opened for the morning during the kerfuffle after that girl--Pridmore, isn't it?--discovered the body. I don't suppose that anyone was keeping an eye on the front door."

"And the false telephone call to Mrs. Bidwell?"

"Probably no connection, I'd say. Just someone trying to be funny.

She's probably too scared to admit what happened. I should question the junior female staff of the Lab if I were you. It's the kind of joke a rather unintelligent adolescent might find amusing."

Dalgliesh went on to ask her about her movements on the previous evening. She said that she hadn't accompanied her brother to the concert, having a dislike of rustic junketing, no wish to hear the Mozart indifferently played, and a couple of drawings to complete.

They'd had an early supper at about six forty-five, and Howarth had left home at seven-twenty. She had continued working uninterrupted either by a telephone call or a visitor until her brother returned shortly after ten, when he had told her about his evening over a shared nightcap of hot whisky. Both of them had then gone early to bed.

She volunteered without being asked that her brother had seemed perfectly normal on his return, although both of them had been tired. He had attended a murder scene the night before and had lost some hours' sleep. She did occasionally make use of Mrs. Bidwell, for example before and after a dinner party she and Howarth had given soon after their arrival, but certainly wouldn't call on her on a day when she was due at the Lab.

Dalgliesh asked: "Did your brother tell you that he left the concert for a time after the interval?"

"He told me that he sat on a tombstone for about half an hour contemplating mortality. I imagine that, at that stage of the proceedings, he found the dead more entertaining than the living."

Dalgliesh looked up at the immense curved wooden ceiling. He said:

"This place must be expensive to keep warm in winter. How is it heated?"

Again there was that swift elliptical flash of blue. "By gas central heating. There isn't an open fire. That's one of the things we miss.

So we couldn't have burnt Paul Middlemass's white coat. Actually, we'd have been fools to try. The most sensible plan would be to weigh it down with stones in the pockets and sling it into learnings' sluice.

You'd probably dredge it up in the end, but I don't see how that would help you to discover who put it there. That's what I would have done."

"No, you wouldn't," said Dalgliesh mildly. "There weren't any pockets."

She didn't offer to see them out, but Howarth was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs. Dalgliesh said:

"You didn't tell me that your sister was Lorrimer's mistress. Did you really convince yourself that it wasn't relevant?"

"To his death? Why should it be? It may have been relevant to his life. I very much doubt whether it was to hers. And I'm not my sister's keeper. She's capable of speaking for herself, as you've probably discovered." He walked with them out to the car, punctilious as a host speeding a couple of unwelcome guests. Dalgliesh said, his hand on the car door:

"Does the number 1840 mean anything to you?"

"In what context?"

"Any you choose." Howarth said calmly."

"Whewell published Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences; Tchaikovsky was born; Berlioz composed the Symphonic Funebre et Triomphale. I think that's the limit of my knowledge of an unremarkable year. Or if you want a different context, the ratio of the mass of the proton to the mass of the electron."

Massingham called from the other side of the Rover: "I thought that was 1836, unless you're not fussy about rounding up. Good-night, sir."

As they turned out of the drive, Dalgliesh asked: "How do you come to remember that remarkably irrelevant piece of information?"

"From school. We may have been disadvantaged when it came to social mix, but the teaching wasn't bad. It's a figure which sticks in the mind."

"Not in mine. What did you think of Mrs. Schofield?"

"I didn't expect her to be like that."

"As attractive, as talented, or as arrogant?"

"All three. Her face reminds me of someone, an actress. French I think."

"Simone Signoret when she was young. I'm surprised that you're old enough to remember."

"I saw a revival last year of Casque d'Or."

Dalgliesh said: "She told us at least one small lie." Apart, thought Massingham, from the one major lie which she may or may not have told.

He was experienced enough to know that it was the central lie. the affirmation of innocence, which was the most difficult to detect, and the small, ingenious fabrications, so often unnecessary, which in the end confused and betrayed.

"Sir?"

"About where she and Lorrimer made love, in the back of his car. I don't believe that. Do you?"

It was rare for Dalgliesh to question a subordinate so directly.

Massingham disconcertingly felt himself under test. He gave careful thought before replying.

"Psychologically it could be wrong. She's a fastidious, comfort-loving woman with a high opinion of her own dignity. And she must have watched the body of her husband being pulled from the wreckage of their car after that accident when she'd been driving.

Somehow I don't think she'd fancy sex in the back of anyone's car.