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

wait. He could afford to hang on to the house until the market quickened. He wasn't sure that he would be given a chance to hold on to his wife. He wasn't even sure that he wanted to. The marriage, too, had been a miscalculation, but given the circumstances of the time, an understandable one. He wasted no time on regrets.
    The two tall oblongs of light from the first floor drawing-room window should have been a welcoming promise of warmth and comfort. Instead they were vaguely menacing; Maureen was at home. But where else, she would have argued, was there for her to go in this dreary East Anglian village on a dull November evening?
    She had finished tea, and the tray was still at her side. The milk bottle, with its crushed top pressed back, a single mug, sliced bread spilling out of its wrapper, a slab of butter on a greasy dish, a bought fruit cake in its unopened carton. He felt the customary surge of irritation, but said nothing. Once when he had remonstrated at her sluttishness she had shrugged: "Who sees, who cares?" He saw and he cared, but it had been many months since he had counted with her. He said: "I'm taking a couple of hours' kip. Wake me at seven, will you?"
    "You mean we aren't going to the Chevisham concert?"
    "For God's sake, Maureen, you were yelling yesterday that you couldn't be bothered with it. Kids' stuff. Remember?"
    "It's not exactly The Talk of the Town, but at least we were going out.
    Out! Out of this dump. Together for a change. It was something to dress up for. And you said we'd have dinner afterwards at the Chinese restaurant at Ely."
    "Sorry. I couldn't know I'd be on a murder case."
    "When will you be back? If there's any point in asking?"
    "God knows. I'm picking up Sergeant Beale. There are still one or two people we've got to see who were at the Muddington dance, notably a lad called Barry Taylor who has some explaining to do. Depending on what we get out of him, I may want to drop in on the husband again."
    "That'll please you, won't it, keeping him in a muck sweat. Is that why you became a cop-because you like frightening people?"
    "That's about as stupid as saying you became a nurse because you get a kick out of emptying bedpans."
    He flung himself in a chair and closed his eyes, giving way to sleep.
    He saw again the boy's terrified face, smelt again the sweat of fear.
    But he'd stood up well to that first interview, hindered rather than helped by the presence of his solicitor, who had never seen his client before and had made it painfully apparent that he would prefer never to see him again. He had stuck to his story, that they'd quarrelled at the dance and he had left early. That she hadn't arrived home by one o'clock. That he'd gone out to look for her on the road and across the clunch pit field, returning alone half an hour later. That he'd seen no one and hadn't been anywhere near the clunch pit or the derelict car. It was a good story, simple, un elaborated possibly even true except in that one essential. But, with luck, the Lab report on her blood and the stain on his jacket cuff, the minute traces of sandy soil and dust from the car on his shoes, would be ready by Friday. If Lorrimer worked late tonight--and he usually did--the blood analysis might even be available by tomorrow. And then would come the elaborations, the inconsistencies, and finally the truth. She said:
    "Who else was at the scene?" It was something, he thought, that she had bothered to ask. He said sleepily:
    "Lorrimer, of course. He never misses a murder scene. Doesn't trust any of us to know our jobs, I suppose. We had the usual half-hour hanging about for Kerrison. That maddened Lorrimer, of course. He's done all the work at the scene--all anyone can do--and then he has to cool his heels with the rest of us, waiting for God's gift to forensic pathology to come screaming up with a police escort and break the news to us that what we all thought was a corpse is--surprise, surprise-indeed a corpse, and that we