The Black Seraphim (22 page)

“Tell him that if it hadn’t been for me, he wouldn’t have got the results of the Pawle post-mortem.”

“He’s probably guessed that already.”

“Well, put in a good word. I want him to do me a favour.”

“I thought you were meant to be on holiday.”

“Things haven’t quite panned out that way.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re up to, but I could have a word with Bill. I’ve got his home number somewhere. I’ll give him a ring after he gets home this evening. He’ll be more relaxed then.”

“Bless you,” said James.

The next morning he telephoned Aldermaston. The Registrar had done his stuff. Dr Gadney was genial and co-operative. He said, “I’d be very happy for you to come up here and have a further look at those sections. A second opinion is always useful. But I’ve had a better idea. I believe you know Dan Leigh at New Cross.”

“I worked under him for a year.”

“Did you know that they’d just installed a beautiful new chromatographic analyser? An American model. God knows how they got the money to pay for it. Sheer favouritism.”

“No. I didn’t know.”

“It can be tuned up to analyse very small quantities. If there’s anything we’ve failed to spot, it will pick it up easily enough. What I could do is this. Just let me look at my diary for a moment. Yes. Today’s Tuesday. I’ve got to be up in London anyway on Thursday. I’m giving a talk to the medico-legal people that evening. If I brought up the samples with me, we could run them through the machine at New Cross on Thursday afternoon.”

James had been thinking, too. He said, “There’s only one snag. The inquest opens on Thursday and I’ve been warned that I shall be called.”

“That’s all right. I’ve already had a word with your Coroner, Andrew Rolfe. He’s going to start with the formal evidence on Thursday and take all the doctors together on Friday. Sensible idea, really. If he’s got four or five doctors to deal with, he can take them in sequence and we can all contradict each other to our hearts’ content. Incidentally, I’m planning to have lunch with Bunny on Thursday. Why don’t you join us?”

James gathered that Bunny must be the Registrar, although he had never heard him called that before. He said he would be delighted to join them.

“Splendid. We’ll run those samples through the super box of tricks at New Cross and see what comes out.”

“We have a choice,” said the Chief Constable. “And it’s not an easy one. We could tell the Coroner that the inquiries we have been making have now reached a point where a charge is likely to be made. He’d take evidence of identification and adjourn the inquest. That would be the normal course.”

“But would it help us?” said Superintendent Bracher.

“You don’t think it would?”

“I think it would make things even more difficult.”

“Why?”

“We seem to be up against a conspiracy of silence.”

“Do you mean that people are refusing to answer questions?”

“What they say is: ‘What are you asking all these questions for? What’s it all about? Everyone knows the Archdeacon died of flu. What are you stirring things up for?’”

“Yes. I see. And you think if we show our hand, it will help your inquiries.”

“People will at least know the score.”

“So we put some of our cards on the table. That will mean calling people who were at the lunch party.”

“Adey and Sandeman were both there.”

“Not Sandeman. Everyone knows he dislikes the Dean. The jury would discount anything he said. All right, we call Adey. Then you’ll have to give evidence yourself, of course.”

“To explain how we located Miss Lovelock.”

“Miss Lovelock. Yes. That was a creditable piece of work.”

Laporte consulted the list that he and Bracher were compiling with all the anxiety of a football manager selecting a team for a needle match. “Grant Adey will be an excellent witness. A very convincing man. The trouble is, he wasn’t really near the coffee table.”

“What about Rosa?”

“Rosa,” said Bracher and sighed. “I’ve given a lot of thought to Rosa. On balance, I think it would be better to keep her in reserve.”

“Rosa won’t like that. She doesn’t want to be a reserve. She’s keen. She wants to be centre forward.”

“That’s the trouble,” said Laporte. “She’s too bloody keen.”

“You would have thought,” said Driffield, “that they might have had more consideration than to start the inquest on a Thursday. It’s likely to run for at least two days. That’ll mean that we can only report the first day in our Friday issue and we’ll have to wait for a whole week before we can report the second day. And my guess would be that it’s the second day, when the doctors get going, that’s going to be the interesting one.”

The lady reporter to whom he was talking agreed that it was inconsiderate. With the prospect of the most exciting inquest for years, they might, she thought, have considered the convenience of the local press.

At the time this conversation took place, Edwin Fisher was saying to Bill Williams, “You’d better get there in good time. They’re using the council chamber, which is a reasonable-sized room, but the national press are just beginning to get in on the act. My guess is that it’ll be standing room only for latecomers.”

“I’ll be there at crack of dawn,” said Bill. “I wouldn’t miss a word of it.”

“It really is rather curious,” said Dr Leigh. He was a tall thin man with a giraffe-like neck and a sinister smile.

“Unexpected,” agreed Dr Gadney, who still contrived to look like the formidable rugby player he had once been.

“I wonder what it means,” said young Dr Scotland.

The three doctors were examining a strip of graph paper down the centre of which ran a black line. It was like the crest of a mountain range, roughly level, but with occasional peaks.

“That’s the N-propanol standard,” said Dr Gadney to James, indicating the largest of these peaks. “It’s inserted, as I expect you remember, as a measurement norm when making the routine checks for alcohol. Which in this case were entirely negative. But I must confess that until we had the assistance of your excellent machine—” he smiled at Dr Leigh “—I had not attached importance to
that
one.”

He indicated a deviation in the line, little more than a wrinkle on the surface.

“This machine is particularly good with volatile substances,” agreed Dr Leigh complacently.

“What is it?” said James.

“We’ll soon find out,” said Dr Gadney.

The Coroner ignored the crowded press bench and the even more crowded public benches and addressed himself directly to the five men and four women in the jury box. He said: “Before we begin, I would like to emphasise one point. This is not a trial. It is an inquiry. You have been called here, primarily, to answer one question: How did Raymond Pawle, Archdeacon of this Cathedral, come by his death? Of course, there may be supplementary questions. For instance, if you found that his death was the result of an accident, you might wish to add a rider on the question of negligence. Such verdicts can be useful in preventing further accidents. On the other hand—” the Coroner was speaking more slowly now, as though he was approaching the heart of the matter “—if you think that the evidence indicates the possibility of the unlawful taking of life, it will be your duty to say so. But bear this in mind: you are under no obligation to go any further. It is unnecessary for you to name the person or persons you feel to have been responsible. In almost every case it is preferable, in my view, for you to return an open verdict. This leaves the question of guilt to be decided by the proper tribunal. That is to say, by a court of law. I hope that is understood. Very well, I will now outline the story for you.”

The Coroner rearranged his papers into an orderly pile. Dr McHarg, who was sitting at the back of the court, reflected what a salutary change of the law it had been to insist that coroners should have legal as well as medical qualifications. He remembered old Dr Maxwell, thirty years before, who had bumbled his way into a number of quite implausible situations.

“Archdeacon Pawle died just before a quarter to four on Saturday, September 28, in the vestry of this Cathedral. Two doctors were present at the moment when he died: Dr Hamish McHarg, his own medical man, and a Dr James Scotland, who happened to be in the Cathedral when the Archdeacon was taken ill and went to his assistance. Both of them will be giving evidence to you tomorrow. A post-mortem examination was held at the South Wessex Hospital. It was conducted by Dr Brian Barkworth, the resident pathologist. You will be hearing from him also, but I will tell you now that his first diagnosis, based both on the state of the deceased’s lungs and on the fact that there had already been an outbreak in the docks area, was that the Archdeacon had died of virus influenza, and certain precautions were taken to prevent the spread of what can be a very serious epidemic.”

At this point the Coroner reached the end of one page of his notes. As he turned the page, he seemed to his hearers to be moving to a new chapter.

“At the post-mortem, as a routine precaution, certain organs were removed and sent to the Home Office Research Establishment at Aldermaston. The matter was not considered to be one of great urgency and it was not until the following Monday, October 7, that the Chief Constable received their report. It was written by the director, Dr William Gadney, who considered it to be of such importance that he sent it by hand to the Chief Constable. I have asked Dr Gadney to make himself available to answer questions on his report. He has agreed to do so.”

“If he doesn’t tell us soon what was in that bloody report,” said Amanda to Penny, who was squashed in beside her, “I shall burst.” The expression on the faces around her suggested that she was not alone in this feeling.

“However,” continued the Coroner smoothly, “in order to justify the actions which the police felt obliged to take, and to set the evidence of the other witnesses into a proper context, I will read you the relevant passages. If you find some of the technical expressions confusing, I will gladly leave it to Dr Gadney to explain them to you tomorrow. Very well. He says, ‘Sections of the liver and kidneys were macerated, extracted with chloroform and analysed by thin-layer chromatography. This demonstrated the presence in them of a substantial quantity of nicotine.’”

Nicotine? A communal sigh, like the passage of wind among trees, passed through the crowded room.

“’In order to measure the nicotine, the liver extracts were then subjected to ultraviolet spectrophotometry. This gave an amount, in the liver, of five milligrams. A calculation based on this would suggest a total intake of at least sixty milligrams, which would be consistent with a fatal dose.’”

Nicotine. Chemists’ shops. Gardeners’ shops. It began to add up.

“The police placed an inquiry with the Poisons Unit at New Cross. They wished to find out how long it would take for a dose of this size to cause death. I understand that the head of the unit, Dr Daniel Leigh, may also be available to give evidence tomorrow if required. For the moment, I will summarise his answers. He said that in the case of a non-smoker, like the Archdeacon, the time might be as short as forty-five minutes. In other cases, as long as an hour and a half. If an average time was required, it could safely be taken as an hour, or perhaps an hour and a quarter.”

Died at three forty-five. Subtract seventy-five minutes. Everyone was doing the sums.

“It has, of course, been established that on that particular Saturday the Archdeacon, along with a great number of other people, was partaking of a buffet luncheon prior to the annual service and meeting of the Friends of the Cathedral. This suggested two further lines of inquiry: first, of people who were present at that luncheon; secondly, of persons who might be purveyors of nicotine in one form or another. These are the witnesses who will be called, and I ask you to listen very carefully to what they have to tell you.”

An unnecessary instruction, thought Bill Williams, easing his writing arm and flipping over a page in his notebook. They had started late and it was a quarter to twelve already. He hoped the old boy had civilized ideas about lunch intervals.

The first witness was Grant Adey. In answer to questions from the Coroner, he agreed that he was chairman of the Melchester Borough Council, that he was a member of the committee of the Friends of the Cathedral and that he had been present at the luncheon on the day in question.

“You will understand,” said the Coroner, “that we are concerned to find out what the Archdeacon ate or drank in the period immediately prior to his death. Could you tell us who was at this function and how things were organised?”

“It’s not too easy to say exactly who was there. It was very hot. The side curtains of the marquee were rolled up and a lot of people preferred to stand about outside.”

“You were expected to serve yourselves, then?”

“Right. It was a sort of upmarket bun fight.”

Amanda snorted and this made Penny giggle.

“Could you tell us about the food and drink?”

“It was laid out on tables at one end of the marquee. There was a very nice cold soup. You grabbed a bowl and helped yourself out of one of the tureens. Then there were sandwiches and pies and cold meat and things like that. And trifles and jellies to follow. Most people piled stuff up on a plate, and some of them, as I said, moved out onto the lawn with it. Actually, I managed to find a chair near one of the tables. I’m a bit too old to enjoy eating standing up with a plate in one hand and a glass in the other.”

“It requires considerable dexterity,” agreed the Coroner. “What was there to drink?”

“Wine cup and cider cup and some orange squash too, I think. They were in jugs. You helped yourself.”

“Did you happen to observe what the Archdeacon ate and drank?”

“Not really. He was up at the far end, near the coffee table.”

“When you say the far end—”

“I mean the end near the house. There was a covered way leading, I imagine, to the Deanery kitchen. That was the way fresh supplies came out from time to time.”