Read Online Death of an Expert Witness by P. D. James - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: P. D. James
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Police, Traditional British, Dalgliesh; Adam (Fictitious character)
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Although they were too short in the arm so that his lean wrists protruded like those of an overgrown schoolboy, he wore them with a certain panache, as if this unorthodox working garb, so different from the regulation white coats of the rest of the Laboratory staff, symbolized that unique blend of scientific skill, experience and flair which distinguishes the good Document Examiner.
He had just finished telephoning his wife, having remembered rather belatedly that he was due to help out that evening with the village concert. He liked women, and before his marriage had enjoyed a succession of casual, satisfactory and uncommitted affairs. He had married late, a buxom research scientist from Cambridge twenty years his junior, and drove back to their modern flat on the outskirts of the city each night in his Jaguar--his chief extravagance--frequently late, but seldom too late to bear her off to their local pub. Secure in his job, with a growing international reputation, and uxoriously contented with his comely Sophie, he knew himself to be successful and suspected himself to be happy.
The Document Examination Laboratory with its cabinets and range of monorail cameras took up what some of his colleagues, notably Edwin Lorrimer, regarded as more than its share of room. But the Laboratory, lit by rows of fluorescent lights and with its low ceiling, was stuffy and ill-ventilated, and this afternoon the central heating, unreliable at the best of times, had concentrated all its efforts on the top of the building. Usually he was oblivious of his working conditions, but a sub-tropical temperature was difficult to ignore. He opened the door to the passage. Opposite and a little to the right were the male and female lavatories, and he could hear the occasional feet, light or heavy, hurried or dilatory, of passing members of staff, and hear the swing of the two doors. The sounds didn't worry him. He applied himself to his task.
But the specimen he was now poring over held little mystery. If the crime had been other than murder he would have left it to his Scientific Officer assistant, not yet returned from a belated lunch.
But murder invariably meant a court appearance and cross-examination--the defence seldom let the scientific evidence go unchallenged in this, the gravest of charges--and a court appearance put document examination in general, and Hoggatt's Laboratory in particular, on public trial. He made it a matter of principle always to take the murder cases himself. They were seldom the most interesting. What he most enjoyed were the historical investigations, the satisfaction of demonstrating, as he had only last month, that a document dated 1872 was printed on paper containing chemical wood pulp which was first used in 1874, a discovery which had initiated a fascinating unravelling of complicated documentary fraud. There was nothing complicated and little of interest about the present job. Yet, only a few years ago, a man's neck could have depended upon his opinion. He seldom thought of the half-dozen men who had been hanged during the twenty years of his forensic experience, primarily because of his evidence, and when he did, it was not the strained but oddly anonymous faces in the dock which he remembered, or their names, but paper and ink, the thickened downward stroke, the peculiar formation of a letter. Now he spread out on his table the note taken from the dead girl's handbag, placing on each side the two specimens of the husband's handwriting which the police had been able to obtain. One was a letter to the suspect's mother written on holiday at Southend--how, he wondered, had they managed to extract that from her? The other was a brief telephoned message about a football match. The note taken from the victim's purse was even briefer.
"You've got your own chap so lay off Barry Taylor or you'll be sorry.
It would be a pity to spoil a nice face like yours. Acid isn't pretty.
Watch it. A Wellwisher."
The style, he
He had just finished telephoning his wife, having remembered rather belatedly that he was due to help out that evening with the village concert. He liked women, and before his marriage had enjoyed a succession of casual, satisfactory and uncommitted affairs. He had married late, a buxom research scientist from Cambridge twenty years his junior, and drove back to their modern flat on the outskirts of the city each night in his Jaguar--his chief extravagance--frequently late, but seldom too late to bear her off to their local pub. Secure in his job, with a growing international reputation, and uxoriously contented with his comely Sophie, he knew himself to be successful and suspected himself to be happy.
The Document Examination Laboratory with its cabinets and range of monorail cameras took up what some of his colleagues, notably Edwin Lorrimer, regarded as more than its share of room. But the Laboratory, lit by rows of fluorescent lights and with its low ceiling, was stuffy and ill-ventilated, and this afternoon the central heating, unreliable at the best of times, had concentrated all its efforts on the top of the building. Usually he was oblivious of his working conditions, but a sub-tropical temperature was difficult to ignore. He opened the door to the passage. Opposite and a little to the right were the male and female lavatories, and he could hear the occasional feet, light or heavy, hurried or dilatory, of passing members of staff, and hear the swing of the two doors. The sounds didn't worry him. He applied himself to his task.
But the specimen he was now poring over held little mystery. If the crime had been other than murder he would have left it to his Scientific Officer assistant, not yet returned from a belated lunch.
But murder invariably meant a court appearance and cross-examination--the defence seldom let the scientific evidence go unchallenged in this, the gravest of charges--and a court appearance put document examination in general, and Hoggatt's Laboratory in particular, on public trial. He made it a matter of principle always to take the murder cases himself. They were seldom the most interesting. What he most enjoyed were the historical investigations, the satisfaction of demonstrating, as he had only last month, that a document dated 1872 was printed on paper containing chemical wood pulp which was first used in 1874, a discovery which had initiated a fascinating unravelling of complicated documentary fraud. There was nothing complicated and little of interest about the present job. Yet, only a few years ago, a man's neck could have depended upon his opinion. He seldom thought of the half-dozen men who had been hanged during the twenty years of his forensic experience, primarily because of his evidence, and when he did, it was not the strained but oddly anonymous faces in the dock which he remembered, or their names, but paper and ink, the thickened downward stroke, the peculiar formation of a letter. Now he spread out on his table the note taken from the dead girl's handbag, placing on each side the two specimens of the husband's handwriting which the police had been able to obtain. One was a letter to the suspect's mother written on holiday at Southend--how, he wondered, had they managed to extract that from her? The other was a brief telephoned message about a football match. The note taken from the victim's purse was even briefer.
"You've got your own chap so lay off Barry Taylor or you'll be sorry.
It would be a pity to spoil a nice face like yours. Acid isn't pretty.
Watch it. A Wellwisher."
The style, he
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