meal was and therefore you’d know that death occurred after the time it was eaten. For instance, if a man ate a curry one evening and was found dead two days later with a stomach full of curry, you’d know he hadn’t lived long enough to have his usual ham and eggs for breakfast next day.’
Angela came back here, as this was partly her province.
‘Even that’s not easy, unless digestion had not proceeded very far. We can often identify certain foods under the microscope, like meat fibres and some vegetables — but we’re not like the sleuths in crime novels, who can discover that the deceased had consumed a salmon sandwich and a cup of Earl Grey tea three hours before death!’
Marchmont held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘I get the point. Now what about temperature, which you said was the best method?’
‘Well, I said the least inaccurate,’ amended Richard. ‘Doctors have been trying since about 1840 to devise a formula to calculate time of death from the obvious drop in temperature after death — unless, of course, you happen to die in some parts of the tropics, where the post-mortem temperature actually increases!’
‘I don’t think Bristol comes into that category,’ said Douglas Bailey wryly.
‘No, but the temperature at the scene is very important, and we know that Shaw was killed during a Bristol heatwave,’ countered the pathologist. ‘The problem is that the investigation was poorly carried out, as no one took the room temperature nor the body temperature when the scene was visited. Doctor Mackintyre didn’t attend the scene and didn’t even see the body until the afternoon, over six hours after it was found, when he eventually put a thermometer in the rectum.’
‘And that matters in calculating the interval?’ asked Marchmont.
‘It’s vital, as for at least six hours, the body was cooling in the mortuary, no doubt much colder than the flat in St Paul’s, which distorts the cooling curve. We should really find out whether the place was air-conditioned, as some big city mortuaries are, which would increase the cooling even more. I’ve actually heard of a case where the body was put in the refrigerator for some hours until the post-mortem and then the pathologist took a temperature!’
‘So you can castigate any attempt at arriving at an accurate result?’ asked Penelope.
‘Certainly, I can! Even when the best procedures have been followed, the accuracy is poor and cannot be narrowed down to less than a couple of hours either side of the calculated time. It’s traditional to use a rule of thumb that a body cools at about one and half degrees Fahrenheit per hour, but all one can say about that is that if the answer turns out to be correct, it must be sheer luck!’
He paused for breath and then carried on.
‘The size of the body, the amount of fat insulation under the skin, amount of clothing, fever, hypothermia, the environmental temperature, draughts, humidity and other factors make this little better than guesswork.’
Paul Marchmont leaned back in his chair. ‘So you can confidently go into the witness box and declare that at the trial, the pathologist had been in error when he claimed that Arthur Shaw must have died between eleven and twelve o’clock that night?’
‘Absolutely. I’m sure he was just agreeing with the prosecution who were maintaining that the man was killed during that short window of opportunity when Millie Wilson was alone with the deceased.’
‘If he had been challenged on that, do you think he would have admitted that death could have been outside those tight limits?’
Richard Pryor shrugged and turned up his hands in a Gallic gesture.
‘It’s not for me to say that, but I would have hoped that Doctor Mackintyre would have done so. However, as I said earlier, some well-entrenched expert witnesses dig their heels in hard, if they are challenged.’
Penelope Forbes pursued this issue. ‘Would he have been aware of these caveats you’ve mentioned, which affect the accuracy of any estimate?’
‘I don’t know about would have known, but he certainly should have known, if he appears as an expert. There have been innumerable research papers in the journals for decades. In fact, only this year, one of the most important papers was published from Sri Lanka, where Doctor de Saram made a careful estimate using forty executed prisoners, where obviously the time of hanging was known to the minute. He found, amongst other things, that there was a “lag period”, a variable delay in initial cooling of up to forty-five minutes. Others have shown an even longer “temperature plateau”, as it’s called, where the normal body temperature persists for a time after death. So already, we have an in-built error almost as long as the hour claimed by Doctor Mackintyre.’
Richard felt that he had browbeaten his listeners long enough with his potted course in forensic medicine, but there were a few more questions from the lawyers, who wanted to make sure that they understood this most important aspect of their campaign to save Millie Wilson from many more years in prison.
When they at last finished and had been given more details of the expected date of the court appearance in London, Richard and Angela bade the lawyers farewell and escaped into the chilly street.
‘Well, I think we’ve more than earned a gin and tonic and a decent lunch somewhere!’ said Richard firmly, taking his partner’s arm as they made their way back to the black Humber.
TWELVE
Markby Road in Winson Green was one in a series of long parallel streets lined with terraced houses, branching off Handsworth New Road like ribs from a spine. They were tidy dwellings, most with small front bay windows and were a cut above many of the streets in less attractive parts of the area.
At ten o’clock that morning, the two detectives drove their grey Standard Vanguard slowly down the street, looking at the numbers on the doors. They found No. 183 almost at the end, a slightly shabbier house, but otherwise indistinguishable from scores of others. Sergeant Rickman had to park outside the house next door, as there was an old green van in front of their destination. It was a large Bedford of pre-war vintage, with ‘Franklin’s Fish and Chips’ painted on the side and a tin chimney poking from the roof.
‘Looks as if he’s swapped inn-keeping to become a chippie,’ grunted DI Hartnell, as they went through a rusted gate into the small concreted area in front of the door. There was no bell or knocker, so Rickman rapped on the glass pane with the edge of a half-crown coin.
After a delay, a large shadow appeared inside and a disgruntled face appeared in the gap when the door was opened a bare six inches. Long experience told the sergeant that a direct approach was best in these circumstances and he thrust his warrant card towards the beefy, red features.
‘Oliver Franklin?’ he said briskly. ‘Police, we’d like a word with you.’
The door opened a little wider, revealing a very large, pot-bellied man dressed in baggy trousers and a zip- fronted corduroy lumberjacket. He had a round, flabby face with sagging pouches under his watery eyes and a bulbous red nose. His coarse cheeks had the scars of old acne and Hartnell thought that he had rarely seen such an unattractive man.
Franklin glared at the officers with undisguised dislike.
‘Bloody rozzers, is it? Look, if it’s about the van out there, I sent for the tax disc last week, but bugger all’s come back yet.’
The sergeant put a large hand on the door and pushed it further open. ‘Nothing to do with your licence — not yet, anyway.’ There was a hint of a threat in his words.
The detective inspector spoke again. ‘We’d better come in, sir, unless you’d like to answer some questions on your doorstep.’
‘Or down at the police station,’ added Rickman, menacingly.
Olly Franklin got the message that these particular coppers were not ones to be messed with and opened the door wider.
‘Come on then,’ he growled grudgingly and shuffled back down the passage, his swollen feet encased in plaid slippers, the backs trodden flat by his heels. They squeezed past an old-fashioned bicycle propped against the stairs and walked down the worn linoleum to the kitchen at the end of the passage. Franklin went to stand with his back to a blackleaded fireplace, in which a small pile of coal was burning with more smoke than heat.
‘What’s all this about, then?’ he demanded, standing with his brawny arms folded defiantly across his chest.
