Brian Freemantle - The Mary Celeste

The Attorney-General jerked up from the desk no longer able to contain his patience.

‘The examination was to prove bloodstaining, doctor,’ he said. ‘What about the blood?’

Dr Patron stared up, aware for the first time that the other man had not properly assimilated what he was saying.

‘There was no blood,’ he said.

The Attorney-General had started to walk around from the desk, towards a window. Now he stopped, frowning back at the analyst:

‘No blood?’

‘Not present in any of the experiments I conducted from the material I took from the vessel. And had any of that spotting from the deck or the stains to the sword been blood, it would have registered during the maceration.’

‘But it must be blood,’ insisted Flood, refusing the other man’s word.

‘Rust,’ Dr Patron corrected him.

‘What other tests did you carry out?’ persisted Flood.

‘I did not consider that any more were necessary. Blood would have registered had it been present during my examination.’

‘What about solvents?’

‘I could have attempted a reaction from solvents,’ conceded the analyst. ‘But as I have said, I did not consider it necessary.’

‘But I consider it necessary,’ said Hood, making an effort to control his temper. ‘I would like you to return to your laboratory and subject those exhibits to further analysis.’

‘That isn’t possible,’ said Patron uncomfortably.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Flood.

‘I have disposed of the samples,’ said Patron. Aware of the colour reaching the Attorney-General’s face, he hurried on: ‘It was a failed experiment, producing nothing. I did not imagine you would want them preserved… there was no point — ’

‘You destroyed them!’

Flood shouted in his outrage.

‘They had no usefulness,’ Patron tried, awkwardly.

‘They were court exhibits, Dr Patron. Made so by their being handed to you by a duly sworn official of the court. You’ve destroyed court evidence. Worse, you’d destroyed it before carrying out properly the task with which you were entrusted.’

‘I believe I fulfilled every function with which I was charged,’ said Patron defiantly. ‘There was no blood.’

Many years before, soon after he had arrived in the colony, Flood had climbed with some other young men to the very tip of the Peak and then they had all stood aloft to stare into Spain to their left and out across the Mediterranean to their right. For the first time he had learned that he suffered from vertigo: ever since, by dosing his eyes, Flood had been able to recall that stomach-emptying sensation of helplessness at the conviction that he was going to topple thousands of feet into the water below. It had taken his companions nearly five hours, at times blindfolding him, to bring him safely down. Flood closed his eyes now, without calling the incident to mind, and the impression of dropping into space was very real. He suddenly realised that there were no further samples for another analysis. Anxious to provide Dr Patron with every available particle, he had ensured that everything suspicious had been scraped from the deck during their visits. And now the confounded man had thrown it all away.

‘Are you aware, Dr Patron, that because of your crass incompetence you have endangered the proving of an undoubted crime?’ he said, his voice jagged in his rage.

‘I do not accept incompetence,’ said Patron, in matching anger. ‘I carried out the accepted tests upon the material with which I was supplied and reached a negative finding.’

‘Didn’t it occur to you that I might seek a second opinion?’

‘There would have been little point. The conclusion would have been that which I reached.’

‘You compound your incompetence by arrogance!’ said Flood, voice loud again. ‘How can you say what someone else might have found using methods different from those which you chose to employ?’

‘I am confident of my report,’ insisted Patron, pointing to the paper which lay as he had put it upon the Attorney-General’s desk.

The complete awareness of how the analyst had damaged the case he was attempting to pursue swept through the Attorney-General. So, too, did the feeling of impotence at his inability to correct it.

‘I could have you arraigned before the enquiry to answer for this,’ he said vehemently. But he wouldn’t take such a course, he accepted, even as he made the threat. Because it would provide an escape route for all those whose guilt he now had to prove by other methods.

‘I will not be threatened,’ said the other man. ‘I carried out the task entrusted to me to the best of my ability. It is not my fault it failed to register positively.’

‘It is precisely your fault, Dr Patron,’ said Flood.

‘This is the very first occasion upon which my professional ability has been challenged,’ said Patron.

And it would be the last, determined Flood. He would never again employ Patron upon any experiment. And he’d make damned sure that few others did, either.

Anxious now to end the encounter, Patron took a diary from his briefcase, opening it officiously.

‘I’d appreciate some indication of when you’d like me to appear,’ he said stiffly.

Flood frowned at him. ‘What?’

‘A date for me to give evidence at the enquiry.’

Flood experienced another surge of rage, this time at the thought of how eagerly the other lawyers would seize and twist the analyst’s evidence.

‘I am undecided if that will be necessary, in view of the negative nature of the results,’ said Flood. Seeing the look of surprise upon the man’s face, he added heavily: ‘I would imagine that questions about the missing exhibits might become a little invidious.’

‘I devoted a great deal of time and attention to the tests, believing them to be important,’ said Patron.

‘A pity that even more time was not invested,’ said Flood. He moved from his desk, as anxious as the doctor to end the interview. The man was an irritating fool.

The pretence of civility was difficult, but Flood personally accompanied the analyst to the door. A fresh thought halted him just inside: the advantage to the other advocates, if they became aware of the inconclusive evidence. He seized Patron’s arm:

‘You appreciate, of course, that even though it has not been officially produced, your report remains a court document, commissioned as it was by me?’

‘I don’t understand,’ said the man doubtfully.

‘It’s contents are sub judice, to be discussed with no one,’ said the Attorney-General.

‘Oh.’

‘In fact, it could be construed as a punishable offence to reveal your findings unless so permitted by the judge.’

‘I see,’ said the doctor.

‘To no one,’ emphasised the Attorney-General.

‘No one,’ agreed Dr Patron.

Flood stood at the door, watching the man enter his carriage, then turned back into the house. Unthinkingly, he walked back to the verandah and sat where he had done before the man’s arrival, gazing out over the bay.

Again he was swept by the nauseous sensation of falling into emptiness. He clenched his hands together, fighting against the feeling. On the Peak all those years ago there had been friends aware of his difficulty. This time he had no one to guide him back to safety.

Benjamin Briggs was not an unemotional man: in the privacy of their bedroom or night cabin, Sarah found him a considerate but still passionate lover. In his public conduct, however, he was a self-contained, very controlled man. It was not an attitude of shyness. Nor did it come from a lack of outspokenness. The very opposite, in fact. He simply regarded the charades in which people frequently indulged to convey their moods to be unnecessary posturing; a sign of immaturity, even. If Briggs had something to say, he said it. But never with rudeness or malice or without good cause, so that people were rarely offended. And if they were, then Briggs, who was not unfeeling either, considered it unfortunate but unavoidable. He had to be accepted as he was, someone without artifice or affectation.