Death of an Expert Witness by P. D. James Page A

satisfaction, it was impossible to say. After a moment he spoke. "I started my career at Hoggatt's, you know. That was before the war. All any of us had then was wet chemistry, test tubes, beakers, solutions. And girls weren't employed because it wasn't decent for them to be concerned with sex cases. Hoggatt's was old-fashioned even for the 1930 service. Not scientifically, though. We had a spectrograph when it was still the new wonder toy. The fens threw up some odd crimes. Do you remember the Mulligan case, old man who chopped up his brother and tied the remains to the learnings' sluice-gates? There was some nice forensic evidence there."
    "Some fifty bloodstains on the pig-sty wall, weren't there? And Mulligan swore it was sow's blood."
    Freeborn's voice grew reminiscent. "I liked that old villain. And they still drag out those photographs I took of the splashes and use them to illustrate lectures on bloodstains. Odd, the attraction Hoggatt's had--still has for that matter. An unsuitable Palladian mansion in an unexciting East Anglian village on the edge of the black fens. Ten miles to Ely, and that's hardly a centre of riotous activity for the young. Winters to freeze your marrow and a spring wind--the fen blow they call it-which whips up the peat and chokes your lungs like smog. And yet the staff, if they didn't leave after the first month, stayed for ever. Did you know that Hoggatt's has got a small Wren chapel in the Lab grounds? Architecturally it's much superior to the house because old Hoggatt never messed it about. He was almost entirely without aesthetic taste, I believe. He used it as a chemical store once it had been de consecrated or whatever it is they do to unused churches. Howarth has got a string quartet going at the Lab and they gave a concert there. Apparently he's a noted amateur violinist.
    At the moment he's probably wishing that he'd stuck to music. This isn't a propitious start for him, poor devil. And it was always such a happy Lab. I suppose it was the isolation that gave us such a feeling of camaraderie."
    Dalgliesh said grimly: "I doubt whether that will survive an hour of my arrival."
    "No. You chaps usually bring as much trouble with you as you solve.
    You can't help it. Murder is like that, a contaminating crime. Oh, you'll solve it, I know. You always do. But I'm wondering at what cost."
    Dalgliesh did not answer. He was both too honest and too fond of Freeborn to make comforting and platitudinous promises. Of course, he would be tactful. That didn't need saying. But he would be at Hoggatt's to solve a murder, and all other considerations would go down before that overriding task. Murder was always solved at a cost, sometimes to himself, more often to others. And Freeborn was right.
    It was a crime which contaminated everyone whom it touched, innocent and guilty alike. He didn't grudge the ten minutes he had spent with Freeborn. The old man believed, with simple patriotism, that the Service to which he had given the whole of his working life was the best in the world. He had helped to shape it, and he was probably right. Dalgliesh had learned what he had come to learn. But as he shook hands and said goodbye he knew that he left no comfort behind him.
    The library at Hoggatt's was at the rear of the ground floor. Its three tall windows gave a view of the stone terrace and the double flight of steps going down to what had once been a lawn and formal gardens, but which was now a half-acre of neglected grass, bounded to the west by the brick annexe of the Vehicle Examination Department, and to the east by the old stable block, now converted into garages. The room was one of the few in the house spared its former owner's transforming zeal. The original bookcases of carved oak still lined the walls, although they now housed the Laboratory's not inconsiderable scientific library, while extra shelf-room for bound copies of national and international journals had been provided by two steel movable