Death of an Expert Witness

by P. D. James

  As they buckled their seat belts, Massingham said: “Who’d have thought that Doyle would have bothered with her. I can imagine him picking her up. As Lord Chesterfield said, all cats are grey in the dark. But to spend the best part of an hour telling her his troubles.”

  “They each wanted something from the other. Let’s hope they got it.”

  “Doyle got something: an alibi. And we haven’t done too badly out of their encounter. We know now who killed Lorrimer.”

  Dalgliesh said: “We think we know who and how. We may even think we know why. But we haven’t a scintilla of proof and without evidence we can’t move another step. At present, we haven’t even enough facts to justify applying for a search warrant.”

  “What now, sir?”

  “Back to Guy’s Marsh. When this Doyle affair is settled I want to hear Underhill’s report and speak to the Chief Constable. Then back to Hoggatt’s. We’ll park where Doyle parked. I’d like to check whether it would be possible for someone to sneak down that drive without being seen.”

  9

  By seven o’clock the work was at last up to date, the last court report had been checked, the last completed exhibit packed for the police to collect, the figures of cases and exhibits received had been calculated and checked. Brenda thought how tired Inspector Blakelock seemed. He had hardly spoken an unnecessary word during the last hour. She didn’t feel that he was displeased with her, merely that he hardly knew she was there. She had talked little herself, and then in whispers, afraid to break the silence, eerie and almost palpable, of the empty hall. To her right the great staircase curved upwards into darkness. All day it had echoed to the feet of scientists, policemen, scene-of-crime officers arriving for their lecture. Now it had become as portentous and threatening as the staircase of a haunted house. She tried not to look at it, but it drew her eyes irresistibly. With every fleeting upward glance she half imagined that she could see Lorrimer’s white face forming out of the amorphous shadows to hang imprinted on the still air, Lorrimer’s black eyes gazing down at her in entreaty or despair.

  At seven o’clock Inspector Blakelock said: “Well, that’s about all then. Your mum won’t be best pleased that you’ve been kept late tonight.”

  Brenda said with more confidence than she felt: “Oh, Mum won’t mind. She knew I was late starting. I rang her earlier and said not to expect me until half past.”

  They went their separate ways to collect their coats. Then Brenda waited by the door until Inspector Blakelock had set and checked the internal alarm. All the doors of the separate laboratories had been closed and checked earlier in the evening. Lastly they went out by the front door and he turned the two final keys. Brenda’s bicycle was kept in a shed by the side of the old stables, where the cars were garaged. Still together, they went round to the back. Inspector Blakelock waited to start his car until she had mounted, then followed her very slowly down the drive. At the gate he gave a valedictory hoot and turned to the left. Brenda waved and set off briskly, pedalling in the opposite direction. She thought she knew why the Inspector had waited so carefully until she was safely off the premises, and she felt grateful. Perhaps, she thought, I remind him of his dead daughter and that’s why he’s so kind to me.

  And then, almost immediately, it happened. The sudden bump and the scrape of metal against tarmac were unmistakable. The bicycle lurched, almost throwing her into the ditch. Squeezing on both brakes she dismounted and examined the tyres by the light of the heavy torch which she always kept in her bicycle saddlebag. Both were flat. Her immediate reaction was one of intense irritation. This would happen on a late night! She swept the torchlight over the road behind her, trying to identify the source of the mishap. There must be glass or something sharp on the road somewhere. But she could see nothing, and realized that it wouldn’t help if she did. There was no hope of repairing the punctures. The next bus home was the one due to pass the Laboratory just after nine o’clock, and there was no one left at the Lab to give her a lift. She spent very little time in thinking. The best plan was obviously to return the bicycle to its rack and then make her way home through the new Laboratory. It would cut off nearly a couple of miles and, if she walked fast, she could be home just after seven-thirty.

  Anger, and ineffective railing against bad luck, is a powerful antidote to fear. So is hunger and the healthy tiredness that longs for its own fireside. Brenda had jerked the bicycle, now reduced to a ridiculously antiquated encumbrance, back into its stand and had walked briskly through the grounds of Hoggatt’s and unbolted the wooden gate which led to the new site before she began to feel afraid. But now, alone in the darkness, the half-superstitious dread which it had seemed safe to stimulate in the Laboratory with Inspector Blakelock so reassuringly by her side, began to prick at her nerves. Before her the black bulk of the half-completed Laboratory loomed like some prehistoric monument, its great slabs bloodstained with ancient sacrifices, rearing upwards towards the implacable gods. The night was fitfully dark with a low ceiling of cloud obscuring the faint stars.

  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 artefact 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 noticeboard 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.

  10

  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.

  11

  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 antechapel.

  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 f
loor. Massingham tore at the fastenings of her duffel coat, 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 chequered 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:

  29

  10

  18

  40

  He recalled old Mr. Lorrimer’s voice. “She said something about the can being burnt 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.