Death of an Expert Witness (35 page)

As she hesitated, the clouds parted like ponderous hands to unveil the full moon, frail and transparent as a Communion wafer. Gazing at it she could almost taste the remembered transitory dough, melting against the roof of her mouth. Then the clouds formed again and the darkness closed about her. And the wind was rising.

She held the torch more firmly. It was solidly reassuring and heavy in her hand. Resolutely she picked out her way between the tarpaulin shrouded piles of bricks, the great girders laid in rows, the two neat huts on stilts which served as the contractor's office, towards the gap in the brickwork which marked the entrance to the main site. Then once again she hesitated. The gap seemed to narrow before her eyes, to become almost symbolically ominous and frightening, an entrance to darkness and the unknown. The fears of a childhood not so far distant reasserted themselves. She was tempted to turn back.

Then she admonished herself sternly not to be stupid. There was nothing strange or sinister about a half-completed building, an artifact of brick, concrete and steel, holding no memories of the past, concealing no secret miseries between ancient walls. Besides, she knew the site quite well. The Laboratory staff weren't supposed to take a short cut through the new buildings--Dr. Howarth had pinned up a notice on the staff notice-board pointing out the dangers--but everyone knew that it was done. Before the building had been started there had been a footpath across Hoggatt's field. It was natural for people to behave as if it were still there. And she was tired and hungry. It was ridiculous to hesitate now. , Then she remembered her parents. No one at home could know about the punctures and her mother would soon begin worrying. She or her father would probably ring the Laboratory and, getting no reply, would know that everyone had left. They would imagine her dead or injured on the road, being lifted unconscious into an ambulance. Worse, they would see her lying crumpled on the floor of the Laboratory, a second victim.

It had been difficult enough to persuade her parents to let her stay on in the job, and this final anxiety, growing with every minute she was overdue and culminating in the relief and reactive anger of her late appearance, might easily tip them into an unreasoned but obstinate insistence that she should leave. It really was the worst possible time to be late home. She shone her torch steadily on the entrance gap and moved resolutely into the darkness.

She tried to picture the model of the new Laboratory set up in the library. This large vestibule, still unroofed, must be the reception area from which the two main wings diverged. She must bear to the left through what would be the Biology Department for the quickest cut to Guy's Marsh road. She swept the torch beam over the brick walls, then picked her way carefully across the uneven ground towards the left-hand aperture. The pool of light found another doorway, and then another.

The darkness seemed to increase, heavy with the smell of brick dust and pressed earth. And now the pale haze of the night sky was extinguished and she was in the roofed area of the Laboratory. The silence was absolute.

She found herself creeping forward, breath held, eyes fixed in a stare on the small pool of light at her feet. And suddenly there was nothing, no sky above, no doorway, nothing but black blackness. She swept the torch over the walls. They were menacingly close. This room was surely far too small even for an office. She seemed to have stumbled into some kind of cupboard or storeroom. Somewhere, she knew, there must be a gap, the one by which she had entered. But disorientated in the claustrophobic darkness, she could no longer distinguish the ceiling from the walls.

With every sweep of the torch the crude bricks seemed to be closing in on her, the ceiling to descend inexorably like the slowly closing lid of a tomb. Fighting for control, she inched gradually along one wall, telling herself that, soon, she must strike the open doorway.

Suddenly the torch jerked in her hand and the pool of light spilt over the floor. She stopped dead, appalled at her peril. In the middle of the room was a square well protected only by two planks thrown across it. One step in panic and she might have kicked them away, stumbled, and dropped into inky nothingness. In her imagination the well was fathomless, her body would never be found. She would lie there in the mud and darkness, too weak to make herself heard. And all she would hear would be the distant voices of the workmen as, brick on brick, they walled her up alive in her black tomb. And then another and more rational horror struck.

She thought about the punctured tyres. Could that really have been an accident? The tyres had been sound when she had parked the bicycle that morning. Perhaps it hadn't been glass on the road after all.

Perhaps someone had done it purposely, someone who knew that she would be late leaving the Lab, that there would be no one left to give her a lift, that she would be bound to walk through the new building. She pictured him in the darkness of the early evening, slipping soundless into the bicycle shed, knife in hand, crouching down to the tyres, listening for the hiss of escaping air, calculating how big a rent would cause the tyres to collapse before she had cycled too far on her journey. And now he was waiting for her, knife in hand, somewhere in the darkness. He had smiled, fingering the blade, listening for her every step, watching for the light of her torch. He, too, would have a torch, of course. Soon it would blaze into her face, blinding her eyes, so that she couldn't see the cruel triumphant mouth, the flashing knife. Instinctively she switched off the light and listened, her heart pounding with such a thunder of blood that she felt that even the brick walls must shake.

And then she heard the noise, gentle as a single footfall, soft as the brush of a coat-sleeve against wood. He was coming. He was here. And now there was only panic. Sobbing, she threw herself from side to side against the walls, thudding her bruised palms against the gritty, unyielding brick. Suddenly there was a space. She fell through, tripped, and the torch spun out of her hands. Moaning she lay and waited for death. Then terror swooped with a wild screech of exultation and a thrashing of wings which lifted the hair from her scalp. She screamed, a thin wail of sound which was lost in the bird's cry as the owl found the paneless window and soared into the night.

She didn't know how long she lay there, her sore hands clutching the earth, her mouth choked with dust. But after a while she controlled her sobbing and lifted her head. She saw the window plainly, an immense square of luminous light, pricked with stars. And to the right of it gleamed the doorway. She scrambled to her feet. She didn't wait to search for the torch but made straight for that blessed aperture of light. Beyond it was another. And, suddenly, there were no more walls, only the spangled dome of the sky swinging above her.

Still sobbing, but now with relief, she ran unthinkingly in the moonlight, her hair streaming behind her, her feet hardly seeming to touch the earth. And now there was a belt of trees before her and, gleaming through the autumn branches, the Wren chapel, lit from within, beckoning and holy, shining like a picture on a Christmas card. She ran towards it, palms outstretched, as hundreds of her forebears in the dark fens must have rushed to their altars for sanctuary. The door was ajar and a shaft of light lay like an arrow on the path. She threw herself against the oak, and the great door swung inwards into a glory of light.

At first her mind, shocked into stupor, refused to recognize what her dazzled eyes so clearly saw. Uncomprehending, she put up a tentative hand and stroked the soft corduroy of the slacks, the limp moist hand.

Slowly, as if by an act of will, her eyes travelled upwards and she both saw and understood. Stella Mawson's face, dreadful in death, drooped above her, the eyes half open, the palms disposed outward as if in a mute appeal for pity or for help. Circling her neck was a double cord of blue silk, its tasselled end tied to a hook on the wall. Beside it, wound on a second hook, was the single bell-rope. There was a low wooden chair upended close to the dangling feet. Brenda seized it.

Moaning, she grasped at the rope and swung on it three times before it slipped from her loosening hands, and she fainted.

Less than a mile away across the field and the grounds of Hoggatt's, Massingham drove the Rover into the Laboratory drive and backed into the bushes. He switched off the car lights. The street-lamp opposite the entrance cast a soft glow over the path, and the door of the Laboratory was plainly visible in the moonlight. He said:

"I'd forgotten, sir, that tonight is the night of the full moon. He'd have had to wait until it moved behind a cloud. Even so, he could surely get out of the house and down the drive unseen if he chose a lucky moment. After all, Doyle had his mind--and not only his mind-on other things."

"But the murderer wasn't to know that. If he saw the car arriving, I doubt whether he would have risked it. Well, we can at least find out if it's possible even without the co-operation of Mrs. Meakin. This reminds me of a childhood game, Grandmother's Footsteps. Will you try first, or shall I?"

But the experiment was destined never to take place. It was at that moment that they heard, faint but unmistakable, three clear peals of the chapel bell.

Massingham drove the car fast on to the grass verge -and braked within inches of the hedge. Beyond them the road curved gently between a tattered fringe of windswept bushes, past what looked like a dilapidated barn of blackened wood and through the naked fens to Guy's Marsh. To the right was the black bulk of the new Laboratory.

Massingham's torch picked out a stile, and, beyond it, a footpath leading across the field to a distant circle of trees, now no more than a dark smudge against the night sky. He said:

"Odd how remote from the house it is, and how secluded. You wouldn't know it was there. Anyone would think that the original family built it for some secret, necromantic rite."

"More probably as a family mausoleum. They didn't plan for extinction."

Neither of them spoke again. They had instinctively driven the mile and a half to the nearest access to the chapel from Guy's Marsh road.

Although less direct, this was quicker and easier than finding their way by foot through the Laboratory grounds and the new building. Their feet quickened and they found they were almost running, driven by some unacknowledged fear, towards the distant trees.

And now they were in the circle of loosely planted beeches, dipping their heads under the low branches, their feet scuffling noisily through the crackling drifts of fallen leaves, and could see at last the faintly gleaming windows of the chapel. At the half-open door Massingham instinctively turned as if to hurl his shoulder against it, then drew back with a grin.

"Sorry, I'm forgetting. No sense in precipitating myself in. It's probably only Miss Willard polishing the brass or the rector saying an obligatory prayer to keep the place sanctified."

Gently, and with a slight flourish, he pushed open the door and stood aside; and Dalgliesh stepped before him into the lighted ante chapel After that there was no speech, no conscious thought, only instinctive action. They moved as one. Massingham grasped and lifted the dangling legs and Dalgliesh, seizing the chair upturned by Brenda's slumping body, slipped the double loop of cord from Stella Mawson's neck and lowered her to the floor. Massingham tore at the fastenings of her duffle jacket, forced back her head and, flinging himself beside her, closed his mouth over hers. The bundle huddled against the wall stirred and moaned, and Dalgliesh knelt beside her. At the touch of his arms on her shoulders she struggled madly for a moment, squealing like a kitten, then opened her eyes and recognized him. Her body relaxed against his. She said faintly:

"The murderer. In the new Lab. He was waiting for me. Has he gone?"

There was a panel of light switches to the left of the door. Dalgliesh clicked them on with a single gesture, and the inner chapel blazed into light. He stepped through the carved organ-screen into the chancel.

It was empty. The door to the organ loft was ajar. He clattered up the narrow winding stairway into the gallery. It, too, was empty.

Then he stood looking down at the quiet emptiness of the chancel, his eyes moving from the exquisite plaster ceiling, the cheque red marble floor, the double row of elegantly carved stalls with their high-arched backs set against the north and south walls, the oak table, stripped of its altar-cloth, which stood before the reredos under the eastern window. All it now held were two silver candlesticks, the tall white candles burnt half down, the wicks blackened. And to the left of the altar, hanging incongruously, was a wooden hymn-board, showing four numbers:

He recalled old Mr. Lorrimer's voice, "She said something about the can being burned and that she'd got the numbers." The last two numbers had been 18 and 40. And what had been burned was not a can, not cannabis, but two altar candles.

Forty minutes later, Dalgliesh was alone in the chapel. Dr. Greene had been sent for, had briefly pronounced Stella Mawson dead, and had departed. Massingham had left with him to take Brenda Pridmore home and to explain to her parents what had happened, to call at Sprogg's Cottage and to summon Dr. Howarth. Dr. Greene had given Brenda a sedative by injection, but had held out no hope that she would be fit to be questioned before morning. The forensic pathologist had been summoned and was on his way. The voices, the questions, the ringing footsteps, all for the moment were stilled.

Dalgliesh felt extraordinarily alone in the silence of the chapel, more alone because her body lay there, and he had the sense that someone--or something--had recently left, leaving bereft the unencumbered air. This isolation of the spirit was not new to him; he had felt it before in the company of the recently dead. Now he knelt and gazed intently at the dead woman. In life only her eyes had lent distinction to that haggard face. Now they were glazed and gummy as sticky sweetmeats forced under the half-opened lids. It was not a peaceful face. Her features, not yet settled in death, still bore the strain of life's inquietude. He had seen so many dead faces.