As soon as the court broke up, she waited for him to have a quick word with the defence lawyers until he caught up with her at the door of the court.
‘Let’s go and get something to eat first,’ he said, taking her arm. ‘We’ve got almost an hour and a half before the big guns come on this afternoon!’
He grinned at her, and she suddenly felt that she was in danger of falling in love with him. Ignoring a couple of greasy spoons, he steered her into a hotel in Westgate Street where they were settled at a corner table of the dining room. It was an old-fashioned establishment, which seemed a throwback to the thirties or even the twenties, with dark furniture and a waitress in a cap and apron. However, the menu looked acceptable. Before they started talking about the case, Moira ordered Brown Windsor soup followed by a beef casserole, while Richard chose lamb and mixed veg after his soup.
‘So how do think it went,’ she asked anxiously as he poured glasses of water for them both, studiously avoiding any alcohol.
‘As good as can be expected,’ he replied. ‘But this is the calm before the storm. So far all the prosecution have is the accusations of that poisonous sister-in-law. The rest of the evidence is neutral – doesn’t prove or disprove that she died of either cancer or potassium chloride.’
‘So it all rests on Dr Angus Smythe this afternoon – and, of course, you!’
‘Battle of the giants!’ he said cheerfully, which made her shake her head in wonder.
‘I don’t know how you can be so calm about it, with probably the life of that poor man in your hands!’
Richard shrugged as the waitress approached with their soup.
‘Maybe he did it, maybe he didn’t, but that’s not my concern. All I can do is state the scientific evidence as I see it. It’s up to the jury to decide who they want to believe.’
‘Do you think they’ll understand this chemical business?’ asked Moira, picking up her spoon.
‘I’ll do my best to put it in plain language – and no doubt Nathan Prideaux will rub it in as hard as he can.’
In spite of her apprehensions, Moira enjoyed her meal, and Richard Pryor’s appetite seemed unaffected by the prospect of him taking centre stage in an hour or two. Over the coffee that followed a Pear Helene, they talked about the court and the various personalities, Moira being fascinated by the grim theatre of it all. She seemed particularly taken by the fact that the wives of the High Sheriff and the Lord Lieutenant wanted to attend such events.
‘Never turn down a free lunch, Moira! That’s their motto, part of the perks of public office.’
She wanted to know why Dr Harrap-Johnson and Dr Rogers had not been allowed to sit in court, unlike Dr Stein and Richard himself.
‘Because they were witnesses to fact, being directly involved in the care of Mrs Parker. Theoretically, if they sat in court and heard other evidence from the other witnesses, they might be influenced by it.’
‘So what about you?’ she demanded.
‘The pathologists are classed as expert witnesses, there to offer opinions, as well as fact. You’ll see Angus Smythe sitting there when we get back. We’re supposed to be indifferent to anything other than the scientific facts of the issues. Actually, the distinction is a bit blurred, as you heard the other two doctors being asked about whether Mrs Parker could have died of her cancer, which is really an opinion.’
He grinned at her again. ‘There are higher rates of pay for expert witnesses, but I doubt that young Lochinvar-Johnson or even Dr Rogers will hold out for a rise!’
At half past one they walked back to the Shire Hall, in case the QC wanted a quick conference again, and by the time the court reconvened they were sitting back in their places. This time, as Richard had prophesied, a new face was present on the further end of the second bench. Dr Angus Smythe, a Home Office pathologist from Oxford, was a burly Scotsman with a big red face and short, fair hair showing a hint of ginger. During lunch, Richard had said that he was a competent pathologist, though inclined to resent contradiction, being quite dogmatic in his opinions, sometimes unwilling to accept another view.
‘Fancies himself as another Sir Bernard Spilsbury, that allegedly infallible operator who dominated the business for forty years.’ Moira was not sure if Richard’s criticism was a touch of sour grapes, though she thought this would be foreign to his nature.
The butler appeared and, as the court rose, the now well-fed quartet followed the judge into their places. After the jury and the defendant had been settled, Lewis Gordon rose from his bench to call his last witness.
Angus Smythe stumped to the witness box and took the oath in a loud, gruff voice with a pronounced Scots accent. After it had been established that he was a consultant pathologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and was on the Home Office list of approved forensic pathologists, the prosecuting QC cut straight to the chase.
‘Dr Smythe, you were asked by the coroner for North Gloucestershire to carry out a second post-mortem on the body of Mrs Mary Parker, were you not?’
Smythe agreed and there was a brief confirmation of dates and places connected with the autopsy.
‘Why was this unusual procedure requested?’
‘Because neither the locum GP nor the coroner’s pathologist were willing to offer a cause of death, due to certain allegations that had been made by a relative,’ was the bluff response.
More questions elicited that he had been informed of the nature of these allegations and of the contents of the used syringe and the two containers found in the veterinary surgery.
‘And what was the result of your examination of the body, doctor? Were you able to determine the cause of death?’
The Scotsman gripped the edges of the witness box as if he intended to tear it apart.
‘I reviewed the dissections made by Dr Stein and agreed with all his findings. This did not assist me in arriving at a cause of death, so I took a variety of samples for examination back at my own laboratory.’
‘Did you perform these investigations yourself?’ asked the QC.
‘I did some of the analyses, and the rest were performed by my technicians under my direct supervision. The results led me to an unequivocal opinion as to the cause of death, which was cardiac failure due to the intravenous injection of potassium chloride.’
There was an excited buzz of murmuring from the public gallery, and the pencils of the reporters scurried across their notebooks.
‘In plain language, can you explain what led you to this conclusion?’ asked Lewis Gordon.
‘The samples I took included blood, urine and the fluid extracted from the eyeballs, called “vitreous humour”,’ explained Smythe. ‘I ran analyses for barbiturates, as there was a vial of sodium Pentothal recovered from the premises, but none was discovered. There was a substantial amount of morphine in the blood, consistent with the painkilling use of that drug, but it was not in a lethal range. As to potassium, it was useless to seek it in the blood, as that substance leaches from the cells after death and a high value would be meaningless, even if extraneous potassium had been injected.’
‘So how did you arrive at your conclusion that an excess of potassium had been administered?’ asked Gordon, though he knew the answer full well.
‘I said that the blood is useless because of rapid contamination from potassium in the body cells – but there is a place in the body which is insulated from this effect, where potassium remains at the same level as during life. This closed-off place is the fluid within the eyeball – and I found very high concentrations of that substance in the samples I took from both eyes.’