Death of an Expert Witness Read Online Free PDF Page A

sleep.”
    He looked round the little nursery with a puzzled frown, as if disconcerted not to find a chair.
    Susan said: “Bring in the stool from the bathroom. And put on your dressing gown. You’ll catch cold.”
    He placed the stool against the wall and crouched there in sullen misery. Susan raised her cheek from resting against the soft furriness of the baby’s head. The small, snub-nosed leech latched on to her breast, fingers splayed in an ecstasy of content. Susan told herself that she must keep calm, mustn’t let nerves and muscles knot themselves into the familiar ache of worry. Everyone said that it was bad for the milk. She said quietly: “What’s wrong, darling?” But she knew what was wrong. She knew what he would say. She felt a new and frightening sense of resentment that she couldn’t even feed Debbie in peace. And she wished he would do up his pyjamas. Sitting like that, slumped and half-naked, he looked almost dissolute. She wondered what was happeningto her. She had never felt like this about Cliff before Debbie was born.
    “I can’t go on. I can’t go into the Lab today.”
    “Are you ill?” But she knew that he wasn’t ill, at least not yet. But he would be ill if something wasn’t done about Edwin Lorrimer. The old misery descended on her. People wrote in books about a black weight of worry, and they were right, that was just how it felt, a perpetual physical burden which dragged at the shoulders and the heart, denying joy, even destroying, she thought bitterly, their pleasure in Debbie. Perhaps in the end it would destroy even love. She didn’t speak but settled her small, warm burden more comfortably against her arm.
    “I’ve got to give up the job. It’s no use, Sue. I can’t go on. He’s got me in such a state that I’m as useless as he says I am.”
    “But Cliff, you know that isn’t true. You’re a good worker. There were never complaints about you at your last lab.”
    “I wasn’t an HSO then. Lorrimer thinks I ought never to have been promoted. He’s right.”
    “He isn’t right. Darling, you mustn’t let him sap your confidence. That’s fatal. You’re a conscientious, reliable forensic biologist. You mustn’t worry if you’re not as quick as the others. That isn’t important. Dr. Mac always said it’s accuracy that counts. What does it matter if you take your time? You get the answer right in the end.”
    “Not any longer. I can’t even do a simple peroxidase test now without fumbling. If he comes within two feet of me my hands start shaking. And he’s begun checking all my results. I’ve just finished examining the stains on the mallet from the suspected Pascoe murder. But he’ll work late tonight doing it again. And he’ll make sure that the whole Biology Department knows why.”
    Cliff couldn’t, she knew, stand up to bullying or sarcasm. Perhaps it was because of his father. The old man was paralysed now after a stroke and she supposed that she ought to feel sorry for him lying there in his hospital bed, useless as a felled tree, mouth slavering, only the angry eyes moving in impotent fury from face to watching face. But from what Cliff had let slip he had been a poor father, an unpopular and unsuccessful schoolmaster yet with unreasonable ambitions for his only son. Cliff had been terrified of him. What Cliff needed was encouragement and affection. Who cared if he never rose any higher than HSO? He was kind and loving. He looked after her and Debbie. He was her husband and she loved him. But he mustn’t resign. What other job could he get? What else was he suited for? Unemployment was as bad in East Anglia as it was elsewhere. There was the mortgage to pay and the electricity bill for the central heating—they couldn’t economize there because of Debbie needing warmth—and the hire-purchase on the bedroom suite to find. Even the nursery furniture wasn’t paid for yet. She had wanted everything nice and new for Debbie, but it had taken all