Trial by Fire (16 page)

Ì do see. Look at exhibit one. This walking stick. Could this have caused the bruising?'

`Certainly, yes, any stick, any blunt thing like this wielded with force.'

`Look at photo six.' Shuffling with usher and one glaring picture passed hands, described as showing two gaping wounds to a brown neck.

`How can you say these were done with a knife, specifically, a single-edged knife?' Harmoner asked.

Àh. I conclude that from the wounds themselves. There is a single-pointed edge at one end of each wound. You can see it particularly clearly on the upper wound. In my experience the wounds have characteristics compatible with the knife used. The skin is lax, due to decomposition, giving them a gaping appearance, but it would have been a close incision, would have looked more like a slit . . . No, I cannot possibly estimate the sharpness of the blade.'

Ì am still confused, Dr Vanguard.'

Àll right, I'll show you. See, the upper edges of the wound have some irregularities; the lower edges do not. The irregularities are similar. Thus a single-edge blade, not a stiletto, was used for both cuts. The sharp side causes a smooth line; the blunt side makes the other lip irregular, see?' Silence. 'A serviceable kind of knife. Single-edge knives are commonly used.

You don't keep daggers, which would cut your fingers. A kitchen knife, if sharp enough, could have made these cuts. More likely a hunting knife, fishing knife, some such thing.'

Silence again.

`My client does not have such a knife, Dr Vanguard. Never did.' A loud statement from Harmoner.

Ì cannot comment on that,' said the doctor, clearly irritated by a question asked only for effect. 'You know I cannot comment. I did not know the man. I am only a witness to a body.'

Redwood protested about the futile and misleading question, his intervention also only a matter of form. Helen sighed. What a charade. If Antony Sumner's stick had inflicted the head abrasion, a fact that was already clearly established, then no one was going to believe he had stopped there. Even she found the rest of the story inevitable; so would the bench. The judge would commit him for trial and the jury would commit him to another prison. And then and then . . . She looked at her pad, found she had sketched the back of his shoulders, all she could see of him. She had caught in the lines the slump of a man quite defeated, beyond utterance of protest, rumpled despite the fine head of wavy hair. As she looked, she heard the sharp intake of breath from the seat to the left of her own, sensed eyes turned sharply away from her notebook.

She had been engrossed in the evidence, watching as she always did the style of its unfolding, admiring the dance involved. So absorbed she had failed to notice the small form that had curled itself neatly into the seat beside hers on the very edge of the public gallery, a latecomer, sitting still until the image on Helen's page had disturbed her composure. At the same time, Amanda Scott, turning in her seat to stretch her legs, took in the spectacle of the two of them at the back, visibly startled, making Helen prickle with guilty resentment until she realized that the surprise might not have been reserved for her.

She turned and looked towards the creature crouched alongside her, conspicuous in her desire to appear otherwise, with her long dark hair curtaining her face, slouched forward, so obviously not raising her head. Visible beneath the hair was one bright earring, paste and mock marquisite, at odds with the clean jeans and dark sweater, worn like a good luck charm.

Assisted by Amanda Scott's look of surprise and by her own memory of a face once pointed out to her, Helen recognized Evelyn Blundell.

There was palpable shock in the recognition, a tactile feeling of horror, no more or less than outrage at the thought of a teenager listening to grim particulars of fatal wounds to her mother's neck, glimpsing the colour of blood on the hideous photographs even from here.

In one swift shaft of thought, Helen doubted if the deceased, let alone a single one of the living, would have approved. She was filled with a tidal wave of disgust. A child it was, a child, listening to this. She grabbed the girl's arm, leaned toward her, and whispered into the brightly decorated ear, injecting authority into a voice that might otherwise have shaken.

'Come on, sweetheart, out of here. We're off.'

`No.' A disembodied whisper, not revealing a mouth.

Òh, yes,' said Helen, intensifying her grip on the arm, rising and pushing simultaneously. 'Move.' With Evelyn in mute protest, the two shuffled out through the door like a pair of conspirators. Amanda Scott had risen, sat down again.

Ìt is Evelyn, isn't it?' Outside, releasing the arm, Helen was confirming what she knew.

`What's it to you if I am? You've no bloody right . . . I'm going back in. I want to hear what he did. All of it, what he did.'

Ì don't care what you want. You're staying outside.'

No, I won't, I won't . . .' The intensity of their voices attracted attention even in a half-full vestibule well used to intense conversations.

`Look,' said Helen evenly, 'you may as well give in. You're staying outside that courtroom whether you like it or not and whether I've got the bloody right to move you or not.

I bet your dad doesn't know you're here, does he?' A slow head shake, uncertain, the suggestion of a slight smile at Helen's use of the word 'bloody', a reversion of the face to a sulk. 'Oh, come on,' said Helen, 'I'll buy you coffee. A drink. Anything you want. How about Bario's in Branston? They serve coffee with too much cream and chocolate.' Instinct told her a bribe might work, especially if the bribe was a visit to a place from which teenagers were usually barred.

Without waiting for a response, Helen touched the girl on the arm, waiting for her to follow. Evelyn shrugged and obeyed.

If the short drive was far from amiable, at least hostilities ceased. All Helen established was Evelyn's age, and the fact she was at school. She was grateful for the fact that Bario's, despite its recent attempts to augment luncheon trade by serving elegant coffee, was almost deserted at eleven-thirty, sensed that the girl was similarly relieved.

`My dad sometimes comes in here,' Evelyn muttered.

`Did you think you would get in and out of court this morning without him knowing?'

Helen asked gently.

`Yes,' said Evelyn through gritted teeth. 'But now you'll tell him, I suppose. Whoever you are.'

`No, I won't, but someone will.'

`Who are you anyway?' The tone was more conversational. Helen looked at this old young face with its fine intelligence and steely eyes, decided against either secrecy or condescension. 'I'm a solicitor,' she replied carefully. 'I know you from living here with Superintendent Bailey. He's investigating your mother's death. You've met him, I think.'

A look of alarm crossed the smooth face and was dusted away with a flick of the head.

`But I don't have anything official to do with the case,' Helen added quickly. 'I just couldn't bear to have you sit and watch it. Here, drink your coffee.'

She was amused to watch how this self-possessed creature responded like a child when faced with a mountain of whipped cream sprinkled with chocolate, spooning it into her mouth with slow and concentrated enjoyment, delicately eking it out to the last, disappointed to find nothing but bitter liquid beneath it, not so sophisticated after all. The process took five almost comfortable minutes. 'You don't have to drink the coffee,' Helen reminded her quietly.

'The cream's the best bit. Want some more?'

ÒK,' and the ice was broken.

Evelyn pushed her hair behind her ears, leaned her elbows on the tablecloth, looked at Helen squarely, and half smiled, not quite inviting questions, but at least resigned.

`Why did you want to listen?'

Ì thought I ought to know. I don't think that was bad. Besides, my mother's dead. It can't make any difference to her what I know or don't, and I like forensic details. Pathology, anatomy, bones, all that stuff. I want to be a doctor. Or a writer, maybe. I've read about these things.'

`Do you read a lot?'

`Yes, of course. All the time. You have to if you want to learn things. Especially if you know more than your teachers.' Her expression added, you also have to reply to a lot of silly questions like these.

Helen was puzzled. Something was out of kilter, not merely the garish earrings, which struck an elusive chord of recognition in her mind. There was something else quite apart, a fact from her reading of the Sumner case, some part of his statement clearly recalled, which now seemed unlikely.

Ì take it you're very good at school? I expect you are.'

`Yes, very good. They keep wanting me to stay down, but I'm far too clever. Teachers make me sick. My father should have paid for a better school. Better for science, I mean. He wouldn't, though. Mummy said it wasn't worth it. He probably couldn't afford it after all Mummy's clothes.' There was an overtone of profound if well-controlled resentment.

Ànd Mr Sumner? Why did he come and teach you out of school?'

The regard was suddenly very wary, then far too nonchalant. 'Oh, I asked if he could. My English isn't as good as the rest, you see, and I wanted to take the exam a year early, to get it out of the way.'

For a child so articulate, Helen found this unconvincing, but refrained from saying so.

She was getting close to the limit of acceptable questions, but refused to resist the temptation to ask more. 'Did you like Mr Sumner?' she asked, but the child was uncomfortable.

`Like him?' she said loudly, voice full of infantile scorn. 'Like him? No, of course not. He's a teacher, isn't he?'

Evelyn bent her head to the cream of the second coffee, leaving Helen to wonder why a girl of fourteen, presumably with better things to do, should ask for extra tuition in a subject where she was highly unlikely to need it. She recalled in her own misspent teenage years avoiding official study like the plague, and remembered with sudden clarity her crush on a history master in the dim days of school. An hour alone with him would have been like an offer of paradise.

Perhaps Evelyn had suffered the same, persuaded her parents into a course that offered contact with the beloved. An idle thought. She turned and looked out of the window. 'You can see the whole world pass by from here,' she remarked cheerfully, sensing she would receive precious little more response from the girl. 'Look at all these familiar faces.' Adding calmly,

'Your father is coming up the street, Evelyn. I should duck unless you want him to see you.'

The child leaned back, pulled Bario's pink curtain in front of her face, smiled at Helen in sudden appreciation. John Blundell passed into his office two doors down.

Àll clear,' said Helen, and Evelyn released the curtain. One dislodged earring landed on the cloth. 'Yours,' Helen uttered as she proffered it back, turning again to face the view outside in order to hide the deliberately blank look on her face, forming one more question she knew would be the last. 'You do like jewellery, don't you?'

Evelyn was clipping the orb back on to her ear. 'Not this stuff, not really. I like the better stuff, but I have to wear this in case .. . Well, never mind. I quite like it, really.'

Fastening it back with fingers made clumsy by her distaste.

`Yes, I think I know what you mean,' Helen ventured. 'We sometimes have to wear things people give us. Just to please them.' In her mind's eye was the drawing of Mrs Blundell's missing jewellery, purloined from Evelyn's father, jewellery so different from Evelyn's own the pieces she had seen yesterday, glittering on the desk, exhibits in the short case against William Featherstone. Evelyn was regarding her with a look of fathomless suspicion. 'Oh, yes,' Helen continued artlessly, 'you can see the whole population from here.'

Evelyn accepted the distraction, looked outside. 'Nobody's got any time. They never stop painting their bloody houses, buying bigger cars, and having breakdowns. I hate it here,'

she said suddenly and vehemently with a force recognizable as something more than childish pique.

`So do I,' said Helen.

There was a full minute's awkward pause.

Evelyn fidgeted, eager to move on. Home, then, to their no doubt empty houses.

Helen paid the bill. 'Where now?' she asked by way of farewell as they stepped into the street.

`Don't know. Lunch, I expect,' Evelyn replied, eyes fixed forward, secretive again, anxious to be gone.

`Not back on the bus to court?'

No.' A brief smile, two retreating steps, a new anxiety as she turned on her heel and marched away.

A definite, hurried walk, hands in hip pockets, lovely lithe figure that would have been the envy of a mature woman in its immature perfection, still childish nevertheless. On impulse, Helen stood in the next shop doorway, watching Evelyn's progress, partly to see if her anxiety would force her to break into a run, partly to make sure she did not board the Waltham-bound bus, which had pulled into the stop a few yards beyond on the green. As Helen watched, William Featherstone jumped from the exit doors of the bus, bounding toward Evelyn, his face, even from Helen's distant view, alight with his best delirious smile, fading as the girl strode past him, a quick cut of her hand forbidding recognition, moving faster and out of sight.

He started towards her, took two steps in her direction, pulled himself up short, and stopped with the guilty embarrassment of one who has remembered some broken code of manners, looking around to see if his infringement was noticed. Then he resumed his grin and crossed the road with studied carelessness, hands in pockets, copying the way Evelyn had walked but with none of her authority. Poacher's pockets, thought Helen: and you know that girl as well as she knows you. William Featherstone, what is your business with Evelyn Blundell and her earrings?

Then the next thought: tell Bailey. Back to the instinct to tell Bailey all the odd details of her day. If he would listen, that was. If he did not choose to listen these days to the neater and far more relevant conclusions of his pretty detective constable. If he didn't say, 'Helen, my dear, just because she has lost her mother does not mean I am entitled to cross-examine all members of the family about all the aspects of their lives.'