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

units which divided the room into three bays. Under each of the three windows was a working table with four chairs; one table was almost completely covered by a model of the new Laboratory.
    It was in this somewhat inadequate space that the staff were congregated. A detective sergeant from the local CID, sat impassively near the door, a reminder of why they were so inconveniently incarcerated. They were allowed out to the ground-floor cloakroom under tactful escort, and had been told they could telephone home from the library. But the rest of the Laboratory was at present out of bounds.
    They had all, on arrival, been asked to write a brief account of where they had been, and with whom, the previous evening and night.
    Patiently, they waited their turn at one of the three tables. The statements had been collected by the sergeant and handed out to his colleague on the reception desk, presumably so that the preliminary checking could begin. Those of the junior staff who could provide a satisfactory alibi were allowed home as soon as it had been checked; one by one and with some reluctance at missing the excitements to come they went their way. The less fortunate, together with those who had arrived first at the Laboratory that morning and all the senior scientists, had been told they must await the arrival of the team from Scotland Yard. The Director had put in only one brief appearance in the library. Earlier he had gone with Angela Foley to break the news of Lorrimer's death to his father. Since his return he had stayed in his own office with Detective Superintendent Mercer of the local CID.
    It was rumoured that Dr. Kerrison was with them.
    The minutes dragged while they listened for the first hum of the approaching helicopter. Inhibited by the presence of the police, by prudence, delicacy or embarrassment from talking about the subject foremost in their minds, they spoke to each other with the wary politeness of uncongenial strangers stranded in an airport lounge. The women were, on the whole, better equipped for the tedium of the wait.
    Mrs. Mallett, the typist from the general office, had brought her knitting to work and, fortified by an unshakeable alibi--she had sat between the post mistress and Mr. Mason from the general store at the village concert--and with something to occupy her hands, sat clicking away with understandable if irritating complacency until given the order of release. Mrs. Bidwell, the Laboratory cleaner, had insisted on visiting her broom cupboard, under escort, and had provided herself with a feather duster and a couple of rags with which she made a vigorous onslaught on the bookshelves. She was unusually silent, but the group of scientists at the tables could hear her muttering to herself as she punished the books at the end of one of the bays.
    Brenda Pridmore had been allowed to collect the exhibits-received book from the counter and, white-faced but outwardly composed, was checking the previous months figures. The book took more than its share of the available table space; but at least she had a legitimate job. Claire Easterbrook, Senior Scientific Officer in the Biology Department and, with Lorrimer's death, the senior biologist, had taken from her briefcase a scientific paper she had prepared on recent advances in blood grouping and settled down to revise it with as little apparent concern as if murder at Hoggatt's were a routine inconvenience for which, prudently, she was always provided.
    The rest of the staff passed the time each in his own way. Those who preferred the pretence of business immersed themselves in a book and, from time to time, made an ostentatious note. The two Vehicle Examiners, who were reputed to have no conversation except about cars, squatted side by side, their backs against the steel bookracks, and talked cars together with desperate eagerness. Middlemass had finished The Times crossword by quarter to ten and had made the rest of the paper last as long as possible. But