Death of an Expert Witness (30 page)

"Policewomen--and policemen--never pretend that they're just paying a social visit. No one would believe us, would they?"

They turned and walked together towards the house. The girl said:

"Are you going to discover who killed Dr. Lorrimer?"

"I hope so. I expect so."

"And then what will happen to him, the murderer, I mean?"

"He'll appear before the magistrates. Then, if they think that me evidence is sufficient, they'll commit him to the Crown Court for trial."

"And then?"

"If he's found guilty of murder, the judge will pass the statutory penalty, imprisonment for life. That means that he'll be in prison for a long time, perhaps ten years or more."

"But that's silly. That won't put things right. It won't bring Dr.

Lorrimer back."

"It won't put anything right, but it isn't silly. Life is precious to nearly all of us. Even people who have little more than life still want to live it to the last natural moment. No one has a right to take it away from them."

"You talk as if life were like William's ball. If that's taken away he knows what he's lost. Dr. Lorrimer doesn't know that he's lost anything."

"He's lost the years he might have had."

"That's like taking away the ball that William might have had. It doesn't mean anything. It's just words. Suppose he was going to die next week anyway. Then he'd only have lost seven days. You don't put someone in prison for ten years to repay seven lost days. They might not even have been happy days."

"Even if he were a very old man with one day left to him, the law says that he has a right to live it. Willful killing would still be murder."

The girl said thoughtfully: "I suppose it was different when people believed in God. Then the murdered person might have died in mortal sin and gone to hell. The seven days could have made a difference then. He might have repented and had time for absolution."

Dalgliesh said: "All these problems are easier for people who believe in God. Those of us who don't or can't have to do the best we can.

That's what the law is, the best we can do. Human justice is imperfect, but it's the only justice we have."

"Are you sure you don't want to question me? I know that Daddy didn't kill him. He isn't a murderer. He was at home with William and me when Dr. Lorrimer died. We put William to bed together at half past seven and then we stayed with him for twenty minutes and Daddy read Paddington Bear to him. Then I went to bed because I'd got a headache and wasn't feeling well, and Daddy brought me up a mug of cocoa which he'd made specially for me. He sat by me reading poetry from my school anthology until he thought I'd gone to sleep. But I hadn't really. I was just pretending. He crept away just before nine, but I was still awake then. Shall I tell you how I know?"

"If you want to."

"Because I heard the church clock strike. Then Daddy left me and I lay there in the dark, just thinking. He came back to look in at me again about half an hour later, but I still pretended to be asleep. So that lets Daddy out, doesn't it?"

"We don't know exactly when Dr. Lorrimer died but, yes, I think it probably does."

"Unless I'm telling you a lie."

"People very often do lie to the police. Are you?"

"No. But I expect I would if I thought it would save Daddy. I don't care about Dr. Lorrimer, you see. I'm glad he's dead. He wasn't a nice man. The day before he died William and I went to the Lab to see Daddy. He was lecturing in the morning to the detective training course and we thought we'd call for him before lunch. Inspector Blakelock let us sit in the hall, and that girl who helps him at the desk, the pretty one, smiled at William and offered him an apple from her lunch box. And then Dr. Lorrimer came down the stairs and saw us.

I know it was he because the Inspector spoke to him by his name and he said: "What are those children doing in here? A lab isn't a place for children." I said: "I'm not a child. I'm Miss Eleanor Kerrison and this is my brother William, and we're waiting for our father." He stared at us as if he hated us, his face white and twitching. He said:

"Well, you can't wait here." Then he spoke very unkindly to Inspector Blakelock. After Dr. Lorrimer had gone, he said we'd better go but he told William not to mind and took a sweet out of his left ear. Did you know that the Inspector was a conjurer?"

"No. I didn't know that."

"Would you like to see round the house before I take you to Miss Willard? Do you like seeing houses?"

"Very much, but I think perhaps not now."

"See the drawing-room anyway. It's much the best room. There now, isn't it lovely?" The drawing-room was in no sense lovely. It was a sombre, oak-panelled, over-furnished room which looked as if little had changed since the days when the bombazine-clad wife and daughters of the Victorian rector sat there piously occupied with their parish sewing. The mullioned windows, framed by dark-red, dirt-encrusted curtains, effectively excluded most of the daylight so that Dalgliesh stepped into a sombre chilliness which the sluggish fire did nothing to dispel. An immense mahogany table, bearing a jam-jar of chrysanthemums, stood against the far wall and the fireplace, an ornate edifice of marble, was almost hidden by two immense, saggy armchairs, and a dilapidated sofa. Eleanor said with unexpected formality, as if the room had recalled her to her duty as a hostess:

"I try to keep at least one room nice in case we have visitors. The flowers are pretty, aren't they? William arranged them. Please sit down. Can I get you some coffee?"

"That would be pleasant, but I don't think we ought to wait. We're really here to see Miss Willard."

Massingham and William appeared in the doorway, flushed with their exercise, William with the ball tucked under his left arm. Eleanor led the way through a brass-studded, green-baize door and down a stone passage to the back of the house. William, deserting Massingham, trotted behind her, his plump hand clutching ineffectively at the skin-tight jeans. Pausing outside the door of unpolished oak, she said:

"She's in here. She doesn't like William and me to go in. Anyway, she smells, so we don't."

And taking William by the hand, she left them.

Dalgliesh knocked. There was a rapid scrabbling noise inside the room, like an animal disturbed in its lair, and then the door was opened slightly and a dark and suspicious eye looked out at them through the narrow aperture. Dalgliesh said:

"Miss Willard? Commander Dalgliesh and Inspector Massingham from the Metropolitan Police. We're investigating Dr. Lorrimer's murder. May we come in?"

The eye softened. She gave a short, embarrassed gasp, rather like a snort, and opened the door wide.

"Of course. Of course. What must you think of me? I'm afraid I'm still in what my dear old nurse used to call my disability. But I wasn't expecting you, and I usually have a quiet moment to myself about this time of the morning."

Eleanor was right, the room did smell. A smell, Massingham diagnosed after a curious sniff, composed of sweet sherry, unfresh body linen and cheap scent. It was very hot. A small blue flame licked the red-hot ovals of coal briquettes banked high in the Victorian grate.

The window, which gave a view of the garage and the wilderness which was the back garden, was open for only an inch at the top despite the mildness of the day, and the air in the room pressed down on them, furred and heavy as a soiled blanket. The room itself had a dreadful and perverse femininity. Everything looked moistly soft, the cretonne-covered seats of the two armchairs, the plump row of cushions along the back of a Victorian chaise-longue, the imitation fur rug before the fire. The mantel shelf was cluttered with photographs in silver frames, mostly of a cassocked clergyman and his wife, whom Dalgliesh took to be Miss Willard's parents, standing side by side but oddly dissociated outside a variety of rather dull churches. Pride of place was held by a studio photograph of Miss Willard herself, young, toothily coy, the thick hair in corrugated waves. On a wall shelf to the right of the door was a small woodcarving of an armless Madonna with the laughing Child perched on her shoulder. A night-light in a saucer was burning at her feet, casting a soft glow over the tender drooping head and the sightless eyes. Dalgliesh thought that it was probably a copy, and a good one, of a medieval museum piece. Its gentle beauty emphasized the tawdriness of the room, yet dignified it, seeming to say that there was more than one kind of human loneliness, human pain, and that the same mercy embraced them all.

Miss Willard waved them to the chaise longue. "My own little den," she said gaily. "I like to be private, you know. I explained to Dr.

Kerrison that I could only consider coming if I had my privacy. It's a rare and beautiful thing, don't you think? The human spirit wilts without it."

Looking at her hands, Dalgliesh thought that she was probably in her middle forties, although her face looked older. The dark hair, dry and coarse and tightly curled, was at odds with her faded complexion.

Two sausages of curls over the brow suggested that she had hurriedly snatched out the rollers when she heard their knock. But her face was already made up. There was a circle of rouge under each eye and the lipstick had seeped into the creases pursing her mouth. Her small, square, bony jaw was loose as a marionette's. She was not yet fully dressed and a padded dressing-gown of flowered nylon, stained with tea and what looked like egg, was corded over a nylon nightdress in bright blue with a grubby frill round the neck. Massingham was fascinated by a bulbous fold of limp cotton just above her shoes, from which he found it difficult to avert his eyes, until he realized that she had put on her stockings back to front.

She said: "You want to talk to me about Dr. Kerrison's alibi, I expect. Of course, it's quite ridiculous that he should have to provide one, a man so gentle, totally incapable of violence. But I can help you, as it happens. He was certainly home until after nine, and I saw him again less than an hour later. But all this is just a waste of time. You bring a great reputation with you, Commander, but this is one crime which science can't solve. Not for nothing are they called the black fens. All through the centuries, evil has come out of this dank soil. We can fight evil, Commander, but not with your weapons."

Massingham said: "Well, suppose we begin by giving our weapons a chance." She looked at him and smiled pityingly.

"But all the doors were locked. All your clever scientific aids were intact. No one broke in, and no one could have got out. And yet he was struck down. That was no human hand, Inspector." Dalgliesh said:

"It was almost certainly a blunt weapon, Miss Willard, and I've no doubt there was a human hand at the end of it. It's our job to find out whose, and I hope that you may be able to help us. You house keep for Dr. Kerrison and his daughter, I believe?" Miss Willard disposed on him a glance in which pity at such ignorance was mixed with gentle reproof.

"I'm not a housekeeper, Commander. Certainly not a housekeeper. Shall we say that I'm a working house-guest. Dr. Kerrison needed someone to live in so that the children weren't left alone when he was called out to a murder scene. They're children of a broken marriage, I'm afraid.

The old, sad story. You are not married, Commander?"

"No."

"How wise." She sighed, conveying in the sibilant release of breath infinite yearning, infinite regret. Dalgliesh persevered:

"So you live completely separately?"

"My own little quarters. This sitting-room and a bedroom next door.

My own small kitchenette through this door here. I won't show it to you now because it's not quite as I should like it to be."

"What precisely are the domestic arrangements, Miss Willard?"

"They get their own breakfast. The Doctor usually lunches at the hospital, of course; Nell and William have something on a tray when she bothers to prepare it, and I look after myself. Then I cook a little something in the evenings, quite simple, we're none of us large eaters.

We eat very early because of William. It's more a high tea really.

Nell and her father do all the cooking during the weekend. It really works out quite well."

Quite well for you, thought Massingham. Certainly William had seemed sturdy and well nourished enough, but the girl looked as if she ought to be at school, not struggling, almost unaided, with this isolated and cheerless monstrosity of a house. He wondered how she got on with Miss Willard. As if reading his thoughts, Miss Willard said:

"William is a sweet little boy. Absolutely no trouble. I hardly see him really. But Nell is difficult, very difficult. Girls of her age usually are. She needs a mother's hand. You know, of course, that Mrs. Kerrison walked out on her husband a year ago? She ran away with one of his colleagues at the hospital. It broke him up completely.

Now she's trying to get the High Court to reverse the custody order and give her the children when the divorce is heard in a month's time, and I'm sure it'll be a good thing if they do. Children ought to be with their mother. Not that Nell's really a child any longer. It's the boy they're fighting over, not Nell. If you ask me, neither of them cares about her. She gives her father a terrible time of it. Nightmares, screaming attacks, asthma.

He's going to London next Monday for a three-day conference on forensic pathology. I'm afraid she'll make him pay for that little jaunt when he gets back. Neurotic, you know. Punishing him for loving her brother more, although, of course, he can't see that."