Death of an Expert Witness (40 page)

"Daddy's been called to a body. He said he'd take William and me to lunch at Cambridge when he got back. We were going to buy a grownup bed for William. I was washing my hair specially. I left William with Miss Willard. He's all right, isn't he? Are you sure he's all right?

Oughtn't we to take him to the hospital? What happened?"

"We didn't see. I think he was caught and tossed by the front bumper of the Jaguar. Luckily he landed on a heap of straw."

"He could have been killed. I warned her about the road. He isn't supposed to play in the garden on his own. Are you sure we oughtn't to get Dr. Greene?"

Massingham went straight through the house to the drawing-room and laid William on the sofa. He said:

"It might be as well, but I'm sure he's all right. Just listen to him."

William, as if he understood, cut off his bawling instantaneously and struggled upright on the couch. He began hiccuping loudly but, apparently undistressed by the paroxysms which were jerking his body, he regarded the company with interest, then fixed his stare consideringly on his bootless left foot. Looking up at Dalgliesh he asked sternly:

"Where's William's ball?"

"At the edge of the road, presumably," said Massingham. "I'll fetch it. And you'll have to do something about fixing a gate for that drive."

They heard footsteps in the hall, and Miss Willard stood, fluttering uneasily in the doorway. Eleanor had been sitting beside her brother on the sofa. Now she stood up and confronted the woman with a silent contempt so unmistakable that Miss Willard blushed. She glanced round the watching faces and said defensively:

"Quite a little party. I thought I heard voices."

Then the girl spoke. The voice, thought Massingham, was as arrogant and cruel as that of a Victorian matron dismissing a kitchen maid.

The confrontation would have been almost comic if it hadn't been at once pathetic and horrible.

"You can pack up your bags and get out. You're dismissed. I only asked you to watch William while I washed my hair. You couldn't even do that. He might have been killed. You're a useless, ugly, stupid old woman. You drink and you smell and we all hate you. We don't need you anymore. So get out. Pack your beastly, horrible things and go.

I can look after William and Daddy. He doesn't need anyone but me."

The silly, ingratiating smile faded on Miss Willard's face. Two red weals appeared across her cheeks and forehead as if the words had been a physical whiplash. Then she was suddenly pale, her whole body shaking. She reached for the back of a chair for support and said, her voice high and distorted with pain:

"You! Do you think he needs you? I may be middle-aged and past my best but at least I'm not half-mad. And if I'm ugly, look at yourself!

He only puts up with you because of William. You could leave tomorrow and he wouldn't care. He'd be glad. It's William he loves, not you.

I've seen his face, I've heard him and I know. He's thinking of letting you go to your mother. You didn't know that, did you? And there's something else you don't know. What do you think your precious daddy gets up to when he's drugged you into sleep? He sneaks off to the Wren chapel and makes love to her."

Eleanor turned and looked at Domenica Schofield. Then she spun round and spoke directly to Dalgliesh.

"She's lying! Tell me she's lying! It isn't true." There was a silence. It could only have lasted a couple of seconds while Dalgliesh's mind phrased the careful answer. Then, as if impatient to forestall him, not looking at his chief's face, Massingham said clearly:

"Yes, it's true." She looked from Dalgliesh to Domenica Schofield.

Then she swayed as if she were about to faint. Dalgliesh went towards her, but she backed away. She said in a voice of dull calm:

"I thought he did it for me. I didn't drink the cocoa he made for me.

I wasn't asleep when he came back. I went out and watched him in the garden, burning the white coat on the bonfire. I knew that there was blood on it. I thought he'd been to see Dr. Lorrimer because he was unkind to William and me. I thought he did it for me, because he loves me."

Suddenly she gave a high despairing wail like an animal in torment, and yet so human and so adult that Dalgliesh felt his blood run cold.

"Daddy! Daddy! Oh no!" She put her hands to her throat and pulling the leather thong from beneath her sweater, struggled with it, twisting like a creature in a trap. And then the knot broke. Over the dark carpet they scattered and rolled, six newly polished brass buttons, bright as crested jewels.

Massingham stooped and carefully gathered them up into his handkerchief. Still no one spoke. William propelled himself off the sofa, trotted over to his sister and fastened his arms around her leg.

His lip trembled. Domenica Schofield spoke directly to Dalgliesh.

"My God, yours is a filthy trade."

Dalgliesh ignored her. He said to Massingham: "Look after the children. I'll ring for a W.P.C. and we'd better get Mrs. Swaffield.

There's no one else I can think of. Don't leave her until they both arrive. I'll see to things here."

Massingham turned to Domenica Schofield. "Not a trade. Just a job.

And are you saying that it's one you don't want done?"

He went up to the girl. She was trembling violently. Dalgliesh thought that she would cringe away from him. But she stood perfectly still. With three words he had destroyed her. But who else had she to turn to? Massingham took off his tweed coat and wrapped it round her.

He said gently without touching her:

"Come with me. You show me where we can make some tea. And then you'll have a lie down and William and I will stay with you. I'll read to William."

She went with him as meekly as a prisoner with a gaoler, without looking at him, the long coat trailing on the floor. Massingham took William's hand. The door closed after them.

Dalgliesh wished never to see Massingham again. But he would see him again and, in time, without even caring or remembering. He never wanted to work with him again; but he knew that he would. He wasn't the man to destroy a subordinate's career simply because he had outraged susceptibilities to which he, Dalgliesh, had no right. What Massingham had done seemed to him now unforgivable. But life had taught him that the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.

It was possible to do police work honestly; there was, indeed, no other safe way to do it. But it wasn't possible to do it without giving pain.

Miss Willard had groped her way to the sofa. She muttered, as if trying to explain it to herself:

"I didn't mean it. She made me say it. I didn't mean it. I didn't want to hurt him."

Domenica Schofield turned to go. "No, one seldom does."

She said to Dalgliesh: "If you want me, you know where I'll be."

"We shall want a statement."

"Of course. Don't you always? Longing and loneliness, terror and despair, all the human muddle, neatly documented, on one and a half sheets of official paper."

"No, just the facts." He didn't ask her when it had begun. That wasn't really important; and he thought that he didn't need to ask.

Brenda Pridmore had told him that she had sat in the same row as Mrs.

Schofield and Dr. Kerrison and his children at the concert in the chapel. That had been held on Thursday, 2 6th August. And early in September, Domenica had broken with Edwin Lorrimer.

At the door she hesitated and turned. Dalgliesh asked: "Did he telephone you the morning after the murder to let you know that he'd replaced the key on Lorrimer's body?"

He never telephoned me. Neither of them did, ever. That was our arrangement. And I never rang him." She paused and then said gruffly:

"I didn't know. I may have suspected, but I didn't know. We weren't--what's your expression? --in it together. I'm not responsible. It wasn't because of me."

"No," said Dalgliesh. "I didn't suppose it was. A motive for murder is seldom so unimportant."

She fixed on him her unforgettable eyes. She said: "Why do you dislike me?"

The egotism which could ask such a question, and at such a time, astounded him. But it was his own self-knowledge which disgusted him more. He understood only too well what had driven those two men to creep guiltily like randy schoolboys to that rendezvous, to make themselves partners in her erotic, esoteric game. Given the opportunity, he would, he thought bitterly, have done the same.

She was gone. He went over to Miss Willard. "Did you telephone Dr.

Lorrimer to tell him about the burnt candles, the numbers on the hymn-board?"

"I chatted to him when he drove me to Mass the Sunday before last. I had to talk about something on the journey; he never did. And I was worried about the altar candles. I first noticed that someone had lit them when I went to the chapel at the end of September. On my last visit they were burnt even lower. I thought that the chapel might be being used by devil-worshippers. I know it's been de consecrated but it's still a holy place. And it's so secluded. No one goes there.

The fen people don't like to walk out after dark. I wondered if I ought to talk to the Rector or consult Father Gregory. Dr. Lorrimer asked me to go to the chapel again next day and let him know the numbers on the hymn-board. I thought it was an odd thing to ask, but he seemed to think that it was important. I hadn't even noticed that they'd been altered. I could ask for the key, you see. He didn't like to."

But he could have taken it without signing for it, thought Dalgliesh.

So why hadn't he? Because of the risk that he might be seen? Because it was repugnant to his obsessional, conformist personality to break a Laboratory rule? Or, more likely, because he couldn't bear to enter the chapel again, to see with his own eyes the evidence of betrayal?

She hadn't even bothered to change their meeting-place. She had still used the same ingenious code to fix the date of the next assignation.

Even the key she had handed to Kerrison had been Lorrimer's key. And none better than he had known the significance of those four numbers.

The twenty-ninth day of the tenth month at six-forty. He said:

"And you waited together last Friday in the shelter of the trees?"

"That was his idea. He needed a witness, you see. Oh, he was quite right to be worried. A woman like that, quite unsuitable to be a stepmother to William. One man after another, Dr. Lorrimer said.

That's why she had to leave London. She couldn't leave men alone. Any man would do. He knew about her, you see. He said the whole Lab knew.

She'd even made advances to him once. Horrible. He was going to write to Mrs. Kerrison and put a stop to it. I couldn't tell him the address. Dr. Kerrison's so secretive about his letters and I'm not sure that even he knows exactly where his wife is. But we knew that she'd run away with a doctor, and we knew his name. It's quite a common name, but Dr. Lorrimer said he could trace them from the Medical Directory."

The Medical Directory. So that was why he had wanted to consult it, why he had opened the door so quickly when Bradley rang. He had only had to come from the Director's office on the ground floor. And he had been carrying his notebook. What was it that Howarth had said? He hated scraps of paper. He used the book to note down anything of importance. And this had been important. The names and addresses of Mrs. Kerrison's possible lovers.

Miss Willard looked up at him. Dalgliesh saw that she was crying, the tears streaking her face and dropping unimpeded over the twisting hands. She said:

"What will happen to him? What will you do to him?"

The telephone rang. Dalgliesh strode across the hall and into the study and lifted the receiver. It was Clifford Bradley. His voice sounded as high and excited as a young girl's. He said:

"Commander Dalgliesh? They said at the police station you might be there. I have to tell you at once. It's important. I've just remembered how I knew that the murderer was still in the Lab. I heard a sound as I got to the Lab door. I heard the same sound again two minutes ago coming downstairs from the bathroom. Sue had just finished telephoning her mother. What I heard was someone replacing the telephone receiver."

It was no more than confirmation of what he had long ago suspected. He returned to the drawing-room and said to Miss Willard:

"Why did you tell us that you overheard Dr. Kerrison making that nine o'clock telephone call from his study? Did he ask you to lie for him?"

The blotched face, the tear-stained eyes looked up at him. "Oh, no, he'd never do that! All he asked was whether I'd happened to hear him. It was when he came back to the house after he'd been called to the body. I wanted to help him, to make him pleased with me. It was such a little, unimportant lie. And it wasn't really a lie. I thought that perhaps I did hear him. You might have suspected him, and I knew that he couldn't have done it.

He's kind, and good and gentle. It seems such a venial sin to protect the innocent. That woman had got him into her clutches, but I knew he could never kill."

He had probably always intended to telephone the hospital from the Laboratory if he wasn't back home in time. But, with Lorrimer lying dead, it must have taken nerve. He could hardly have put down the receiver before he heard the approaching footsteps. And what then?