After spending what remained of the morning establishing Dr. Glendenning’s credentials and responsibilities, Jerome Lawrence finally began his examination-in-chief after lunch.
“Rebecca Charters has already described finding the body and calling the police,” he said. “Could you please describe, Doctor, the condition of the body at the scene?”
“The victim lay on her back. Her blouse was open, her brassiere torn and her breasts exposed. Her skirt had been lifted above her waist, exposing the pubic region, in the manner typical of a sex murder. Her underwear was missing. I understand it was later found nearby. On closer examination of the face, I noticed a reddish-purple color and traces of bleeding from the nose, consistent with death by asphyxia. There was also a small, fresh scratch by her left eye.”
“Could you tell us what you discovered at the post-mortem?”
“The girl was-had been-in good general health, to be expected in a girl of sixteen. There were no signs of toxicity in her organs. On further examination, I concluded as I had earlier, that death was caused by asphyxia due to strangulation.”
“Would you care to elaborate on asphyxia for the members of the jury, Doctor?” Jerome Lawrence went on.
Glendenning nodded briefly. “Some strangulation victims die from vagal inhibition, which means heart stoppage caused by pressure on the carotid arteries in the neck.” He touched the spot beside his jaw. “The victim in this case, however, died because of obstruction to the veins in her neck and the forcing of the tongue against the back of throat, cutting off her air intake. There are certain telltale signs. People who die from vagal inhibition are pale, those who die from asphyxia have reddish-purple coloring. There are also petechial hemorrhages, little pinpricks of blood in the whites of the eyes, eyelids, facial skin. Contrary to popular fiction, the tongue does not protrude.”
Owen glanced over at Sir Geoffrey and Lady Harrison, the victim’s parents, who had attended almost every day. Lady Harrison turned to her husband and let her head touch his shoulder for a moment. Both were pale.
Owen felt he glimpsed, at that moment, the cold-blooded logic of the prosecution’s strategy, like the dramatic structure of a play or a novel, and it sent a chill up his spine.
After hearing Rebecca Charters’s emotional account of finding the body and then Banks’s solid, professional testimony about the police investigation, if things had gone according to plan the jury would next have heard Michelle’s testimony. They would have seen only a sweet, innocent young girl in the witness box and heard how this monster in the dock had attempted to strangle her. (He was certain she would have touched her long, tapered fingers to her throat as she described the attack.) Then they would have heard the gruesome medical details of the effects of strangulation. And what would they have thought of Owen after all that?
“Thank you, Doctor,” Lawrence went on. “Could you tell, in this case, how the victim was strangled?”
“Yes. With a ligature. A satchel strap, in fact.”
“And was this found close to the scene?”
“Yes. It was still attached to the victim’s satchel.”
“In your expert opinion, do you have any reason to doubt it was used as the murder weapon?”
“None at all. We carried out a number of tests. The satchel strap matched the indentations in the victim’s throat perfectly. It was angled slightly upwards, cutting into the skin at the bottom part, indicating that she had been strangled from behind and that her attacker was taller than her. There was also blood around the edge of the strap.”
“How much taller was the killer?” asked Jerome Lawrence.
“The victim was five foot six, so I would put the attacker at least six inches taller, perhaps more.”
“And the accused is six foot two, as has already been established?”
“So I believe, yes.”
“Would it have required a great deal of strength?”
“A certain amount, yes. But nothing superhuman.”
“Would the manner of attack make it difficult for the victim to fight off her attacker?”
“Almost impossible. There wouldn’t be much she could do. She might manage a wild scratch, of course, or a backwards kick to the shins with her heel.”
“You mentioned a ‘wild scratch.’ Would this be possible if she were strangled from behind?”
“Oh, yes. It’s quite conceivable she might reach behind and scratch her assailant.”
“Was it possible to tell whether she had been killed in St. Mary’s churchyard or elsewhere?”
“Yes, by the extent of post-mortem lividity, such as it was. This-” he turned to explain to the jury without Lawrence’s prompting, “means that when the heart stops, the blood simply obeys the force of gravity and sinks to the lowest part of the body. It gathers and stains at points where the flesh is not in contact with the ground. Parts of the body that do remain in contact with the ground will remain white, of course, because the pressure will not allow the blood to settle in the capillaries. In this case, the staining at the back of the neck, small of the back and backs of the legs indicated that the deceased had been lying in the same position since her death. Also, as lividity was in its early stages, she couldn’t have been there for very long. It generally begins about thirty minutes to one hour after death, develops fully between three and four hours and becomes fixed between eight and ten hours. The lividity was still faint, and blanching still occurred.”
“Could you explain blanching for the benefit of the court?”
“Certainly. Before the blood coagulates in the vessels, if you touch an area of lividity it will turn white. When you remove your fingertip, it will resume its lividity. After four or five hours the discoloration hardens, becomes clotted, and pressure will not cause blanching.”
“And what does this tell you?”
“Amongst other things, it helps determine time of death. As I said, lividity had only just started and there was no sign of rigor mortis, which usually begins in the eyelids about two or three hours after death. I also took temperature readings, and based on a mathematical calculation, I came up with time of death somewhere between five o’clock and when she was discovered.”
“No earlier?”
“In my opinion, that would be very unlikely indeed.”
“And as the victim’s friend Megan Preece reports parting with Deborah near the bridge at six o’clock, and the evidence of Daniel Charters places Owen-”
“Objection!”
“Sustained.” Judge Simmonds pointed with a bony finger. “Mr. Lawrence, behave yourself. You ought to know better.”
Lawrence bowed. “Your Honor. Thank you, Dr. Glendenning. I have no further questions.”
Shirley Castle stood up to cross-examine. “I only have a couple of questions, Doctor,” she said briskly. “Minor points, really. I shan’t keep you long.”
Dr. Glendenning inclined his head and smiled at her in a gentlemanly way.
“I assume you supervised the collection of oral, vaginal and anal swabs at the crime scene?” Shirley Castle began.
“I did.”
“And did you find any traces of semen?”
“None.”
“None at all?”
“That is correct.”
“In your post-mortem examination, did you discover any signs of forcible intercourse?”
“I found no signs of any intercourse at all, forcible or otherwise.”
Shirley Castle frowned. “Yet you referred to this as a ‘sex crime’ in your earlier testimony. Does that absence of evidence not strike you as unusual in such a crime?”
“Not really. There are many kinds of sex crimes. The way the clothing was disturbed was reminiscent, in my experience, of a sex-crime scene.”
“And we have already heard your enviable credentials as an expert on such matters, Doctor. How accurate is your estimate of time of death?”