In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(175)

Cedar, someone had printed neatly in the margin. And next to it in parentheses the words Port Orford. St. James was no botanist, so Port Orford illuminated nothing for him. He knew it was unlikely that he'd be able to track down on a Sunday the forensic botanist who'd identified the wood, so he gathered up his paperwork and descended the stairs to his study.

Deborah was within, absorbed in the Sunday Times magazine. She said, “Trouble, love?”

He replied, “Ignorance. Which is trouble enough.”

He found the book he was looking for among the dustier of his volumes. He began leafing through the pages as Deborah joined him by the shelves.

“What is it?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Cedar. And Port Orford. Mean anything to you?”

“Sounds like a place. Port Isaac, Port Orford. Why?”

“A sliver of cedar was found on Terence Cole's body. The boy on the moors.”

“Tommy's case?”

“Hmm.” St. James flipped to the back of the book and ran his finger down the index under cedar. “Atlas, blue, Chilean incense. Did you know there were so many kinds of cedar?”

“Is it important?”

“I'm beginning to think it could be.” He ran his gaze further down the page. And then he saw the two words Port Orford. They were listed as a variety of the tree.

He turned to the indicated page, where first he took note of the picture which featured a sample of the coniferous tree's foliage and then read the entry itself. “This is curious,” he said to his wife.

“What?” she asked, sliding her arm through his.

He told her what the post-mortem had claimed: that a wooden sliver identified by the forensic botanist as Port Orford cedar had been found in one of the wounds on the body of Terence Cole.

Deborah looked thoughtful as she shrugged back a heavy mass of her hair. “Why's that curious? They were killed out of doors, weren't they? Out on the moors?” And then her eyes widened. “Oh yes. I do see.”

“Exactly,” St. James said. “What kind of moor has cedars growing on it? But it's more curious than that, my love. This particular cedar grows in America, in the States. Oregon and northern California, it says.”

“The tree could have been imported, couldn't it?” Deborah asked reasonably. “For someone's garden or for a park? Or even a greenhouse or conservatory. You know what I mean: like palm trees or cactuses.” She smiled, her nose wrinkling. “Or is that cacti?”

St. James walked to his desk and put the book down. He lowered himself slowly into his chair, thinking. “All right. Let's say it was imported for someone's garden or a park.”

“Of course.” She was with him, tagging her own thought onto his. “That still begs the obvious question, doesn't it? How did a cedar tree meant for someone's garden or a park get to the moor?”

“And how did it get to a part of the moor that's nowhere near someone's garden or a park in the first place?”

“Someone planted it there for religious reasons?”

“More likely no one planted it at all.”

“But you said …” Deborah frowned. “Oh yes. I see. I suppose the forensic botanist must have made an error, then.”

“I don't think so.”

“But, Simon, if there was only a sliver to work with—”

“That's all a good forensic botanist would need.” St. James went on to explain. Even a fragment of wood, he told her, bore the pattern of tubes and vessels that transported fluids from the bottom to the top of a tree. Soft-wood trees—and all conifers, he told her, are among the soft woods—are less developed evolutionary and consequently easier to identify. Placed under microscopic analysis, a sliver would reveal a number of key features that distinguish its species from all other species. A forensic botanist would catalogue these features, plug them into a key—or a computer identification system, for that matter—and derive from the information and the key an exact identification of the tree. It was a faultlessly accurate process, or at least as accurate as any other identification made from microscopic, human, and computer analysis.

“All right,” Deborah said slowly and with some apparent doubt. “So it's cedar, yes?”

“Port Orford cedar. I think we can depend on that.”

“And it's a piece of cedar that's not from a tree growing in the area, yes?”

“Yes as well. So we're left with asking where that piece of cedar came from and how it came to be on the boy's body.”

“They were camping, weren't they?”

“The girl was, yes.”

“In a tent? Well, what about a tent peg from the tent? What if the peg was made from cedar?”

“She was hiking. I doubt it was that kind of tent.”

Deborah crossed her arms and leaned against the desk, considering this. “What about a camp stool, then? The legs, for instance.”

“Possibly. If a stool was among the items at the site.”

“Or tools. She would have had camping tools with her. An axe for wood, a trowel, something like that. The sliver could be from one of the handles.”

“Tools would have to be lightweight, though, if she was carrying them in a rucksack.”