by P. D. James
Reynolds said: “We take it that the crucial time is from six-fifteen, when he was last seen alive in his lab, until midnight?”
“For the present. When I’ve seen his father and confirmed that he made that call at eight forty-five we may be able to narrow it down. And we shall get a clearer idea of the time of death when Dr. Blain-Thomson has done the PM. But judging from the state of rigor, Dr. Kerrison wasn’t far out.”
But Kerrison didn’t need to be far out, if he were the murderer. Rigor mortis was notoriously unreliable, and if he wanted an alibi for himself, Kerrison could shift the time of death by up to an hour without suspicion. If the timing were tight he might not need even an hour. It had been prudent of him to call in the police surgeon to confirm his estimate of the time of death. But how likely was Dr. Greene, experienced as he might be in viewing bodies, to disagree with the opinion of a consultant forensic pathologist unless the latter’s judgement was manifestly perverse? If Kerrison were guilty, he had run little risk by calling in Greene.
Dalgliesh got to his feet. “Right,” he said. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”
10
Dalgliesh disliked having more than one other officer present with him at his preliminary and informal interview, so Massingham was taking the notes. They were hardly necessary; Dalgliesh, he knew, had almost total recall. But he still found the practice useful. They were sitting together at the conference table in the Director’s office, but Howarth, perhaps because he objected to sitting in his own room other than at his desk, preferred to stand. He was leaning casually against the fireplace. From time to time Massingham lifted an unobtrusive eyebrow to glance at the clear-cut, dominant profile outlined against the classical frieze. There were three bunches of keys on the table: the bunch taken from Lorrimer’s body, that handed over by Inspector Blakelock, and the set which Dr. Howarth, manipulating the security lock, had taken from its box in the cupboard. Each set of keys was identical, one Yale key and two security keys to the front door, and one smaller key on a plain metal ring. None was named, presumably for security reasons.
Dalgliesh said: “And these are the only three sets in existence?”
“Except for the set at Guy’s Marsh Police Station, yes. Naturally, I checked earlier this morning that the police still have their set. The keys are kept in the safe under the control of the station officer, and they haven’t been touched. They need a set at the police station in case the alarm goes off. There was no alarm last night.”
Dalgliesh already knew from Mercer that the station keys had been checked. He said: “And the smallest key?”
“That’s the one to the Exhibits Store. The system is for all incoming exhibits, after they’ve been registered, to be stored there until they’re issued to the head of the appropriate department. It’s his responsibility to allocate them to a specific officer. In addition, we store the exhibits which have been examined and are awaiting collection by the police, and those which have been presented to the court during the case and are returned to us for destruction. Those are mainly drugs. They’re destroyed here in the incinerator and the destruction witnessed by one of the Laboratory staff and the officer in charge of the case. The Exhibits Store is also protected by the electronic alarm system, but, obviously, we need a key for internal security when the system hasn’t been set.”
“And all the Laboratory internal doors and your office were protected last night once the internal alarm system was set? That means that an intruder could only have got out undetected through the top-floor lavatory windows. All the others are either barred or fitted with the electronic alarm?”
“That’s right. He could have got in that way too, of course, which was what concerned us most. But it wouldn’t have been an easy climb, and the alarm would have gone off as soon as he tried to gain access to any of the main rooms in the Laboratory. We did consider extending the alarm system to the lavatory suite soon after I arrived, but it seemed unnecessary. We haven’t had a break-in in the seventy-odd years of the Lab’s existence.”
“What are the precise arrangements about locking the Laboratory?”
“Only the two Police Liaison Officers and Lorrimer as the Deputy Security Officer were authorized to lock up. He or the Police Liaison Officer on duty was responsible for ensuring that no staff were left on the premises and that all the internal doors were shut before the alarm was set, and the front door finally locked for the night. The alarm system to Guy’s Marsh Police Station is set whether the door is locked on the inside or the out.”
“And these other keys found on the body, the three in this leather pouch and the single key. Do you recognize any of those?”
“Not the three in the pouch. One is obviously his car key. But the single one looks very like the key to the Wren chapel. If it is, I didn’t know that Lorrimer had it. Not that it’s important. But as far as I know, there’s only one key to the chapel in existence and that’s hanging on the board in the Chief Liaison Officer’s room. It isn’t a security lock and we’re not particularly worried about the chapel. There’s nothing left there of real value. But occasionally architects and archaeological societies want to view it, so we let them borrow the key and they sign for it in a book in the office. We don’t allow them through the Laboratory grounds to get at it. They have to use the back entrance in Guy’s Marsh Road. The contract cleaners take it once every two months to clean and check the heating—we have to keep it reasonably warm in winter because the ceiling and carving are rather fine—and Miss Willard goes there from time to time, to do some dusting. When her father was rector of Chevisham, he used occasionally to hold services in the chapel, and I think she has a sentimental regard for the place.”
Massingham went out to Chief Inspector Martin’s office and brought in the chapel key. The two matched. The small notebook which he had found hanging with the key showed that it had last been collected by Miss Willard on Monday, 25th October.
Howarth said: “We’re thinking of transferring the chapel to the Department of the Environment once we occupy the new Laboratory. It’s a constant irritation to the Treasury that our funds are used to heat and maintain it. I’ve set up a string quartet here, and we held a concert on 26th August in the chapel, but otherwise it’s completely unused. I expect you will want to take a look at it, and it’s worth seeing in its own right. It’s a very fine specimen of late seventeenth-century church architecture, although, in fact, it isn’t by Wren but by Alexander Fort, who was strongly influenced by him.”
Dalgliesh asked suddenly: “How well did you get on with Lorrimer?”
Howarth replied calmly: “Not particularly well. I respected him as a biologist, and I certainly had no complaints either about his work or about his co-operation with me as Director. He wasn’t an easy man to know, and I didn’t find him particularly sympathetic. But he was probably one of the most respected serologists in the Service, and we shall miss him. If he had a fault, it was a reluctance to delegate. He had two scientific officer serologists in his department for the grouping of liquid blood and stains, saliva and semen samples, but he invariably took the murder cases himself. Apart from his casework and attendance at trials and at scenes of crime, he did a considerable amount of lecturing to detective-training courses, and police familiarization courses.”
Lorrimer’s rough notebook was on the desk. Dalgliesh pushed it towards Howarth and said: “Have you seen this before?”
“His rough notebook? Yes, I think I’ve noticed it in his department, or when he was carrying it with him. He was obsessively tidy and had a dislike of odd scraps of paper. Anything of importance was noted in that book, and subsequently transferred to the files. Claire Easterbrook tells me that the last page is missing.”
“That’s why we’re particularly anxious to know what he was doing here last night, apart from working on the clunch pit murder. He could have got into any of the other laboratories, of course?”
“If he’d switched off the internal alarm, yes. I believe it was
his usual practice, when he was last on the premises, to rely on the Yale lock and the bolt on the front door and only check the internal doors and set the security alarm before he finally left. Obviously it’s important not to set off the alarm accidentally.”
“Would he have been competent to undertake an examination in another department?”
“It depends on what he was trying to do. Essentially, of course, he was concerned with the identification and grouping of biological material, blood, body stains and the examination of fibres and animal and plant tissues. But he was a competent general scientist and his interests were wide—his scientific interests. Forensic biologists, particularly in the smaller laboratories, which this has been up to now, become pretty versatile. But he wouldn’t attempt to use the more sophisticated instruments in the Instrument Section, the mass spectrometer, for example.”
“And you personally have no idea what he could have been doing?”
“None. I do know that he came into this office. I had to look up the name of a consultant surgeon who was giving evidence for the defence in one of our old cases, and I had the medical directory on my desk when I left last night. This morning, it was back in its place in the library. Few things irritated Lorrimer more than people removing books from the library. But if he was in this office last night, I hardly imagine it was merely to check on my carelessness with the reference books.”
Lastly, Dalgliesh asked him about his movements the previous night.
“I played the fiddle at the village concert. The rector had five minutes or so to fill in and asked me if the string quartet would play something which he described as short and cheerful. The players were myself, a chemist, one of the scientific officers from the document examination department, and a typist from the general office. Miss Easterbrook should have been the first cello, but she had a dinner engagement which she regarded as important, and couldn’t make it. We played the Mozart Divertimento in D major and came third on the programme.”
“And you stayed for the rest of the concert?”
“I intended to. Actually, the hall was incredibly stuffy and just before the interval at eight-thirty I slipped out. I stayed out.”
Dalgliesh asked what precisely he’d done.
“Nothing. I sat on one of those flat tombstones for about twenty minutes, then I left.”
“Did you see anyone, or did anyone see you?”
“I saw a hobby-horse—I know now that it must have been Middlemass deputizing for Chief Inspector Martin—come out of the male dressing room. He pranced around rather happily, I thought, and snapped his jaws at an angel on one of the graves. Then he was joined by the troupe of morris-dancers coming through the graveyard from the Moonraker. It was an extraordinary sight. There was the racing moon and these extraordinary figures with their bells jingling and their hats decked with evergreens moving through the swirl of ground mist out of the darkness towards me. It was like an outré film or a ballet. All it needed was second-rate background music, preferably Stravinsky. I was sitting motionless on the gravestone, some distance away, and I don’t think they saw me. I certainly didn’t make myself known. The hobby-horse joined them, and they went into the hall. Then I heard the fiddle start up. I suppose I stayed sitting there for about another ten minutes, and then I left. I walked for the rest of the evening along Leamings Dike and got home about ten o’clock. My half-sister Domenica will be able to confirm the time.”
They spent a little time discussing the administrative arrangements for the investigation. Dr. Howarth said that he would move into Miss Foley’s room and make his office available to the police. There would be no chance of the Lab opening for the rest of the day, but Dalgliesh said that he hoped it would be possible for work to start again the next morning.
Before Howarth left, Dalgliesh said: “Everyone I’ve spoken to respected Dr. Lorrimer as a forensic biologist. But what was he like as a man? What, for example, did you know about him except that he was a forensic biologist?”
Dr. Howarth said coldly: “Nothing. I wasn’t aware there was anything to know, except that he was a forensic biologist. And now, if you’ve no more immediate questions, I must telephone Establishment Department and make sure that, in the excitement of his somewhat spectacular exit, they’re not forgetting to send me a replacement.”
11
With the resilience of youth, Brenda Pridmore had recovered quickly from the shock of finding Lorrimer’s body. She had resolutely refused to be taken home and by the time Dalgliesh was ready to see her she was perfectly calm and, indeed, anxious to tell her story. With her cloud of rich auburn hair and her freckled, wind-tanned face she looked the picture of bucolic health. But the grey eyes were intelligent, the mouth sensitive and gentle. She gazed across the desk at Dalgliesh as intently as a docile child and totally without fear. He guessed that all her young life she had been used to receiving an avuncular kindness from men and never doubted that she would receive it, too, from these unknown officers of police. In response to Dalgliesh’s questioning, she described exactly what had happened from the moment of her arrival at the Laboratory that morning to the discovery of the body.
Dalgliesh asked: “Did you touch him?”
“Oh no! I knelt down and I think I did put out my hand to feel his cheek. But that was all. I knew that he was dead, you see.”
“And then?”
“I don’t remember. I know I rushed downstairs and Inspector Blakelock was standing at the bottom looking up at me. I couldn’t speak, but I suppose he saw by my face that something was wrong. Then I remember sitting on the chair outside Chief Inspector Martin’s office and looking at Colonel Hoggatt’s portrait. Then I don’t remember anything until Dr. Howarth and Mrs. Bidwell arrived.”
“Do you think anyone could have got out of the building past you while you were sitting there?”
“The murderer, you mean? I don’t see how he could have. I know I wasn’t very alert, but I hadn’t fainted or anything silly like that. I’m sure I would have noticed if anyone had come across the hall. And even if he did manage to slip past me, he would have bumped into Dr. Howarth, wouldn’t he?”
Dalgliesh asked her about her job at Hoggatt’s, how well she had known Dr. Lorrimer. She prattled away with artless confidence about her life, her colleagues, her fascinating job, Inspector Blakelock who was so good to her and who had lost his own only daughter, telling with every sentence more than she knew. It wasn’t that she was stupid, thought Massingham, only honest and ingenuous. For the first time they heard Lorrimer spoken of with affection.
“He was always terribly kind to me, although I didn’t work in the Biology Department. Of course, he was a very serious man. He had so many responsibilities. The Biology Department is terribly overworked and he used to work late nearly every night, checking results, catching up with the backlog. I think he was disappointed at not being chosen to succeed Dr. Mac. Not that he ever said so to me—well he wouldn’t, would he?—I’m far too junior and he was far too loyal.”
Dalgliesh asked: “Do you think anyone could have misunderstood his interest in you, might have been a little jealous?”
“Jealous of Dr. Lorrimer because he stopped sometimes at the desk to talk to me about my work and was kind to me? But he was old! That’s just silly!”
Suppressing a grin as he bent over his notebook and penned a few staccato outlines, Massingham thought that it probably was.
Dalgliesh asked: “It seems there was some trouble the day before he died when Dr. Kerrison’s children called at the Laboratory. Were you in the hall then?
“You mean when he pushed Miss Kerrison out of the front hall? Well, he didn’t actually push her, but he did speak very sharply. She had come with her small brother and they wanted to wait for Dr. Kerrison. Dr. Lorrimer looked at them, well, really as if he hated them. It wasn’t at all like him. I think he’s been under some terrible strain. Perhaps he had a premonition of his death. Do you know what he said to me after the clunch pit exhibits ca
me in? He said that the only death we had to fear is our own. Don’t you think that was an extraordinary remark?”
“Very strange,” agreed Dalgliesh.
“And that reminds me of another thing. You did say that anything might be important. Well, there was a funny kind of letter arrived for Dr. Lorrimer yesterday morning. That’s why he stopped at the desk, so that I could hand over any personal post. There was just this thin brown envelope with the address printed, printed by hand in capital letters, I mean. And it was just his name, no qualifications after it. Odd, wasn’t it?”
“Did he receive many private letters here?”
“Oh, no, none really. The Lab writing paper says that all communications have to be addressed to the Director. We deal at the desk with the exhibits received, but all the correspondence goes to the general office for sorting. We only hand over the personal letters, but there aren’t many of those.”
In the quick preliminary examination which he and Massingham had made of Lorrimer’s meticulously tidy office, Dalgliesh had found no personal correspondence. He asked whether Miss Pridmore knew if Dr. Lorrimer had gone home for lunch. She said that he had. So it was possible that he had taken the letter home. It could mean anything, or nothing. It was just one more small fact which would have to be investigated.
He thanked Brenda Pridmore, and reminded her again to come back to him if she remembered anything which could be of importance, however small. Brenda was not used to dissembling. It was obvious that something had occurred to her. She blushed and dropped her eyes. The metamorphosis from happy confidante to guilty schoolgirl was pathetically comic. Dalgliesh said gently: “Yes?”