Death of an Expert Witness by P. D. James Read Free Book Online Page A

were standing facing each other in an empty attic room, bare walls squared with the pale imprints of discarded pictures, floorboards harsh to the feet, two naked strangers in a void, herself trying to reach out her hands to touch Stella’s fingers, but unable to lift the heavy monstrous bolsters of flesh that had become her arms. She shivered and then was recalled to the reality of the cold autumn morning by the sound of her friend’s voice.
    “How much did your grandmother leave? You did tell me, but I’ve forgotten.”
    “About thirty thousand, I think.”
    “And he can’t have spent any of it, living with his old father in that poky cottage. He hasn’t even renovated the windmill. His salary alone must be more than enough for the two of them, apart from the old man’s pension. Lorrimer’s a senior scientist, isn’t he? What does he get?”
    “He’s a Principal Scientific Officer. The scale goes up to eight thousand.”
    “God! More in a year than I could earn from four novels. I suppose if he jibbed at five hundred he’d hardly part with four thousand, not at a rate of interest we could afford. But it wouldn’t hurt him. I’ve a good mind to ask him for it after all.”
    Stella was only teasing, of course, but she recognized this too late to control the panic in her voice.
    “No, please, Star! No, you mustn’t!”
    “You really hate him, don’t you?”
    “Not hate. Indifference. I just don’t want to be under an obligation to him.”
    “Nor, come to that, do I. And you shan’t be.”
    Angela went out to the hall and came back pulling on her coat. She said: “I’ll be late at the Lab if I don’t hurry. The casserole is in the oven. Try to remember to switch it on at half past five. And don’t touch the regulator. I’ll turn down the heat when I get back.”
    “I think I can just about manage that.”
    “I’m taking sandwiches for lunch, so I shan’t be back. There’s the cold ham and salad in the fridge. Will that be enough, Star?”
    “No doubt I’ll survive.”
    “Yesterday evening’s typing is in the folder, but I haven’t read it through.”
    “How remiss of you.”
    Stella followed her friend out to the hall. At the door she said: “I expect they think at the Lab that I exploit you.”
    “They know nothing about you at the Lab. And I don’t care what they think.”
    “Is that what Edwin Lorrimer thinks, too, that I exploit you? Or what does he think?”
    “I don’t want to talk about him.” She folded her scarf overher blond hair. In the antique mirror with its frame of carved shells she saw both their faces distorted by a defect in the glass; the brown and green of Stella’s huge luminous eyes smeared like wet paint into the deep clefts between nostrils and mouth; her own wide brow bulging like that of a hydrocephalic child. She said: “I wonder what I’d feel if Edwin died this week; a heart attack, a car accident, a brain haemorrhage.”
    “Life isn’t as convenient as that.”
    “Death isn’t. Star, shall you reply today to that solicitor?”
    “He doesn’t expect an answer until Monday. I can ring him at the London office on Monday morning. That’s another five days. Anything can happen in five days.”

7
    “But they’re just like mine! The panties I mean. I’ve got a pair like that! I bought them from Marks and Spencer’s in Cambridge with my first salary cheque.”
    It was 10.35 and Brenda Pridmore, at the reception desk at the rear of the main hall of Hoggatt’s Laboratory, watched wide-eyed while Inspector Blakelock drew towards him the first labelled bag of exhibits from the clunch pit murder. She put out a finger and tentatively slid it over the thin plastic through which the knickers, crumpled and stained round the crotch, were clearly visible. The detective constable who had brought in the exhibits had said that the girl had been to a dance. Funny, thought Brenda, that she hadn’t bothered to put on clean underclothes. Perhaps she wasn’t