Bad Quarto IV

Imogen is taken aback by the dumb show and the implication that a lecturer however tiresome Venton Gimps is, could have killed a student. However Mottle tells her and her friends from the drama group that he knew John Tallentire from when he was a child and he went climbing with him for years, and trusted him absolutely as a climber. He further demonstrates to her that if Tallentire had tied a knot that slipped a bit, (which he would not do) it still would not result in his falling right into the street and dying. He would have bounced off the walls in the narrow street and just been a bit injured. Mottle is angry about John's death and feels that there is a conspiracy to hide what happened, and that is because it might have been deliberate murder by one of the academics. Imogen feels she has to agree with him, that young Tallentire's fall was caused by someone else. However she meets Duncan Tallentire, his father, an eminent scientist who has come to Cambridge to take up a part time post. He tells her angrily that Mottle has an obsession about the fall, and that he knows what happened to his son, that he was killed but that no good can come of pursuing an investigation. She is startled. Then Susan disappears from college. Some of the staff think that she is just not up to Cambridge standards, and that she knew she didn't fit in there and wasn't clever enough, and that she just left. Imogen likes the girl, so she agrees to go and search for her - starting with a visit to Mary Ollery, her adoptive mother. Mary tells Imogen that most kids in care are damaged by their experiences, and relatively few of them ever manage to get out of the trap they are in, of being poor, lacking social skills and education. Imogen looks up Inchman, her surname, on the net, and finds that there was a woman Valerie Inchman who was jailed for killing her children some years ago.. and then she finds that Susan is Valerie's daughter. Valerie is now dead. Imogen finds out that Duncan Tallentire is often called as an expert witness for scientific issues in court cases, and that there is controversy about how accurate expert witnesses are. There were some cases of mothers being accused of shaking or battering their babies and it is not at all clear if the expert testimony that more than 2 injured children in a family means that the injury is non accidental.