The photograph of the award appeared on the screen the following day. I recognised it immediately, although I had last seen it as part of an ordinary room: a brass rising sun on a heavy base, something a committee was proud to display.
Now every part had a reference number.
The scene plan put Martin on the floor near the office doorway. The award lay between him and the table where he and Celia had been looking at the papers. Its shelf was empty.
The entrance passage opened into the room on the opposite side. The small office had no outside door. The rear exit led to the garden and the side path, the route George had shown me on the open day. Celia said she was in the entrance passage when she heard the noise. The defence suggested another person could have attacked Martin while she was there; she had not claimed to see one.
The passage door could interrupt her view; it could not create a separate route through the office. Someone else would have needed to pass her entrance or use the rear exit. The defence pointed out that the rear door could be opened from inside without a key. A closed door when George arrived did not prove it had stayed closed all evening.
The plan remained on the screen while the routes were traced. There was no locked-room trick. There was a claim about a short absence, and two ways another person might have moved.
An examiner described the findings without promising more than they supported. The award had been a shared object. Celia had handled it legitimately before the death. Traces consistent with that earlier contact could not tell the jury that she had wielded it on the night.
The defence returned to the point. Old contact was old contact, not a date stamped inside a fingerprint or a trace of DNA.
The witness agreed with the limit.
Martin’s blood was on the edge and underside of the base. The medical witness described injury features compatible with that edge, while making clear that compatibility did not uniquely identify one object. The blood, the injuries and the place where the award lay were considered together.
The medical witness described more than one forceful impact and explained why the injuries were not adequately accounted for by a simple collapse against furniture. The language was clinical and restrained. I looked down when the court was taken to photographs I did not need to study in order to understand the point.
The question was not whether Martin could have fallen at some stage. The question was whether a fall alone explained what had happened to him. The evidence did not support that as the whole event.
The medical witness also explained why at least one impact was consistent with Martin already being down. Scene findings close to floor level supported that account. Neither witness could put every injury in order. The prosecution’s case was nevertheless of repeated force, including force against a man who was no longer standing, not a stumble or one accidental collision with a shelf.
The timing came from less dramatic objects. Martin was speaking at twenty twenty-four. Celia was at Number Twelve when I looked up after twenty thirty-six. George’s call fixed the later discovery. No witness supplied a minute of death exact enough to fill the interval for us.
The defence questioned whether the findings identified the person who had used the award. The witnesses were careful. Their disciplines could contribute to evaluating accounts; they did not decide guilt by reading a person’s name from an object.
During the break, I saw George at a distance. He had completed his own evidence by then. We exchanged a brief greeting and asked how each other was managing, without treating the corridor as another hearing.
He looked towards the courtroom doors.
“I used to dust that shelf,” he said.
“I remember the open day.”
He rubbed his palms against his trousers. I asked about his daughter instead.
Back in the gallery, I noticed that Celia was no longer looking down. She listened to the questions with an expression of intense concentration. Again, I reminded myself not to use her face to fill a gap in the evidence.
As we left, I heard someone behind me say the DNA must settle it. I did not join the conversation. The witness had spent considerable time explaining why that was not the claim.
At home, I told Tom I needed quiet before supper. He gave me that without asking what new detail had disturbed me.
The award had once stood for good work performed in public.
The next evidence concerned the private act of help Celia said she had performed when nobody else was there.