Death of an Expert Witness Read Online Free PDF Page B

plastic bags with identifying tags. We have to be ever so particular that all of them are labelled and properly entered in the book. It's a question of continuity of evidence, what Inspector Blakelock calls the integrity of the sample. And we don't get bits of body."
    Remembering suddenly the sealed bottles of stomach contents, the carefully dissected pieces of liver and intestines, looking, when you came to think of it, no more frightening than exhibits in the science laboratory at school, she said quickly:
    "Well, not in the way you mean. Dr. Kerrison does all the cutting up. He's a forensic pathologist attached to the Laboratory. Of course, some of the organs come to us for analysis."
    Inspector Blakelock, she remembered, had told her that the Laboratory refrigerator had once held a whole head. But that wasn't the kind of thing to tell Mum. She rather wished that the Inspector hadn't told her. The refrigerator, squat and gleaming like a surgical sarcophagus, had held a sinister fascination for her ever since. But Mrs. Pridmore had seized gratefully on a familiar name.
    "I know who Dr. Kerrison is, I should hope. Lives at the Old Rectory at Chevisham alongside the church, doesn't he? His wife ran off with one of the doctors at the hospital, left him and the two kids, that odd-looking daughter and the small boy, poor little fellow. You remember all the talk there was at the time, Arthur?"
    Her husband didn't reply, nor did she expect him to. It was an understood convention that Arthur Pridmore left breakfast conversation to his women. Brenda went happily on:
    "Forensic science isn't just helping the police to discover who's guilty. We help clear the innocent too. People sometimes forget that.
    We had a case last month--of course, I can't mention names-when a sixteen-year-old choir girl accused her vicar of rape. Well, he was innocent."
    "So I should hope! Rape indeed!"
    "But it looked very black against him. Only he was lucky. He was a secreter."
    "A what, for goodness' sake?"
    "He secreted his blood group in all his body fluids. Not everyone does. So the biologist was able to examine his saliva and compare his blood group with the stains on the victim's ..."
    "Not at breakfast, Brenda, if you don't mind." Brenda, her eyes suddenly alighting on a round milk stain on the tablecloth, herself thought that breakfast wasn't perhaps the most suitable time for a display of her recently acquired information about the investigation of rape. She went on to a safer subject.
    "Dr. Lorrimer--he's the Principal Scientific Officer in charge of the Biology Department-says that I ought to work for an "A' level subject and try for a job as an Assistant Scientific Officer. He thinks that I could do better than just a clerical job. And once I got my A.S.O. I'd be on a scientific grade and could work myself up. Some of the most famous forensic scientists have started that way, he said. He's offered to give me a reading list, and he says he doesn't see why I shouldn't use some of the Laboratory equipment for my practical work."
    "I didn't know that you worked in the Biology Department."
    "I don't. I'm mainly on Reception with Inspector Blakelock, and sometimes I help out in the general office. But we got talking when I had to spend an afternoon in his Laboratory checking reports for courts with his staff, and he was ever so nice. A lot of people don't like him. They say he's too strict; but I think he's just shy. He might have been Director if the Home Office hadn't passed him over and appointed Dr.
    Howarth."
    "He seems to be taking quite an interest in you, this Mr. Lorrimer."
    "Dr. Lorrimer, Mum."
    "Dr. Lorrimer, then. Though why he wants to call himself a doctor beats me. You don't have any patients at the Lab."
    "He's a Ph.D." Mum. Doctor of Philosophy."
    "Oh, is he? I thought he was supposed to be a scientist. Anyway, you'd better watch your step."
    "Oh, Mum, don't be daft. He's old. He must be forty or more. Mum, did you know that our Lab