Where Death Delights (3 page)

Only too anxious to follow up this invitation, Richard arranged to meet Edward Lethbridge in Lydney that afternoon. Sian hurried in to the laboratory to tell Angela and start putting more bottles in place in case they were needed for this new development. The biologist was more restrained in her reaction.

‘He probably wants us to do a paternity blood test in some family dispute,' she said evenly, ‘Still, it's all grist to the mill, and we certainly can do with the money.'

It was not a paternity test, but was hardly a serial-killer case either, as the pathologist discovered later that day. He drove the ten miles to Lydney in his five-year-old Humber Hawk, the Severn estuary visible down on the right of the A48, which took most of the traffic from England into South Wales. It was a busy road, far too narrow, tortuous and built-up for the volume of traffic it had to bear, thought Pryor. With the rapid increase in manufacturing and trade generally since the war had ended, the infrastructure of the country was proving woefully inadequate. Big lorries lumbered past him almost in convoy and those in front held him up, many of the old trucks of pre-war vintage belching fumes from their worn engines. A decade after VE and VJ days, things were improving rapidly, but there was still a long way to go.

Lydney was a small industrial town, with a branch railway going up into the Forest of Dean to the few remaining coal mines that lurked in that strange and historic region. Richard drove into the long main street and eventually found Lethbridge, Moody and Savage above a building society office in the main street.

A middle-aged secretary showed him into a gloomy room where the senior partner of the firm with such a threatening name was waiting for him. Edward Lethbridge looked a typical provincial solicitor. He was a thin, desiccated man in a faded pinstripe suit, steel-rimmed glasses perched on his long nose. After a limp handshake and after a few platitudes about the hot weather, he came straight to the point.

‘We have a client who lives in Newnham, a few miles up the river from here. She's an elderly lady by the name of Agnes Oldfield. We have done some work for her in recent years, as her nephew Anthony vanished three years ago and we have made strenuous efforts to trace him.'

The lawyer sank his chin to his chest so that he could look at Pryor over his glasses.

‘Last week, she read an account in the local paper of an inquest held by Dr Meredith on some human remains found near a reservoir up beyond Abergavenny. She is convinced that they belong to Anthony.'

Richard was rather at a loss. ‘If there was an inquest, then surely that settled it?'

Lethbridge smiled a secret smile, and shook his head.

‘The verdict was that the deceased was an Albert Barnes, but my client wishes to dispute this.'

‘Ah, a matter of identity. What do you want me to do? Review the papers, then examine the remains?'

The solicitor steepled his fingers, elbows on his desk, an old mahogany relic which looked as if it been bought by his great-grandfather.

‘The papers, certainly. However, there is a difficulty,' he added ruefully. ‘The body, or what was left of it, was buried a fortnight ago.'

Richard felt deflated. Once a corpse was in the ground, he knew that it was a devil of a job to get permission to dig it up again.

‘The coroner has been good enough to release the inquest proceedings to me, as I persuaded him that Mrs Oldfield was a sufficiently interested party to allow her solicitor to have access to them.'

He opened a drawer in the cavernous desk and slid a thin folder across to the professor. ‘If you would care to take these away and study them, perhaps you could come up with some suggestions – even if it is only confirmation that Mrs Oldfield is barking up the wrong tree.'

Pryor took the file and opened it briefly to riffle through a few flimsy pages.

‘Is there anything else you can tell me about the matter?' he asked hopefully.

Edward Lethbridge shook his head. ‘Not really, doctor. If you decide to look into the case, then I suggest you talk to the lady herself. I would be happy to make an appointment for you. And there is, of course, Trevor Mitchell.'

‘Who's Trevor Mitchell?' asked the mystified pathologist.

‘A former detective superintendent who has set up as a private enquiry agent. He lives in St Brievals, not far from you. He does some work for me occasionally and I recommended him to Mrs Oldfield some time ago, to look into her nephew's disappearance.'

After a rather diffident conversation about an hourly fee rate, Richard left, clutching the papers. He treated himself to a pot of tea and a Chelsea bun at a nearby café, resisting the temptation to open the file on the stained gingham-patterned oilcloth that covered the table. For a moment, he thought nostalgically of the eating house in River Valley Road in Singapore, where he used to call in for the best
nasi goreng
in the Colony, a savoury fried rice with which no Gloucestershire bun could hope to compete.

He drove slowly back to Chepstow in his comfortable saloon, which he had bought second-hand as soon as he arrived back in Britain. Driving down Castleford Hill, the steep gradient to the famous iron bridge over the swirling Wye, he looked up at the great castle on its crag above the river, one of the first the Normans had built to subdue the local Welsh. Though born in Merthyr Tydfil, he knew this area quite well, having stayed with his aunt many times, both as a schoolboy and later when a medical student in Cardiff. His years in the East had not diminished his love for his native Wales and he found that to be back again among these hills, valleys and castles was immensely satisfying. As the traffic lights on the bridge turned green, he patted the lawyer's file on the seat alongside him, confident that this was the start of a new era in his life.

He drove complacently up through the winding streets of Chepstow and on to the valley road past the racecourse, relishing the breeze that came through the open window, as he looked down on the impressive ruins of Tintern Abbey, a mile or so down the valley from home, as he now termed it.

Back at Garth House, he passed Jimmy hacking away at the hedge, stripped to his waist in the heat. Parking the Humber in the open coach house alongside Angela's smaller car, he walked to the back door and into the kitchen, calling for his partner as he went.

‘We've got a job, Angela! Got a moment?'

They sat at the table in the office and Richard opened the buff folder to display a few sheets of handwritten notes, together with a couple of official forms and several newspaper cuttings. Sian had sidled up to the door, unable to resist eavesdropping on their very first case, anxious to be accepted as part of the team. To her a professor was a very august person and she was determined to give Richard the respect he was due, but not to be intimidated. Anyway, she rather fancied him, this lean, tanned man from the East, a fact which Angela had already noticed.

Pryor explained to Angela the general outline offered by Edward Lethbridge and then began scanning the documents, before passing them to Angela. There was silence for ten minutes, until they had digested the relatively meagre information that was on offer.

‘This Mrs Barnes seems to have it all sewn up,' commented Angela. ‘I wonder why Widow Oldfield is so intent on proving it was her nephew?'

‘The solicitor hinted that she was keen on his money, as it seems she was his only surviving relative,' said Richard. ‘He was forty-five when he disappeared and was apparently very well-heeled from money left him by his parents. Unless she can get a declaration that he's dead, she can never get probate and hopefully inherit.'

Typically, Angela wanted to rehearse the facts methodically. ‘The post-mortem report is a bit sketchy, but it seems that what was recovered was over half a skeleton, but minus the skull.'

‘The most useful part is missing, as far as identity goes,' agreed Pryor. ‘No head, so no teeth to examine.'

‘Why wouldn't it have a head? Animals?'

The pathologist nodded. ‘It must have been lying for several years out in the countryside, by the sound of it. Predators, especially foxes, but also dogs, rats and even badgers, would have made a mess of it in that time. A lot of the other bones were missing, too.'

‘Did they have any idea of how long it had been there?' asked Angela.

‘The report says that the bones still had remnants of ligaments and tendons, which fits in with a couple of years since death – no way of being exact about that, in spite of the claims by writers of detective novels!'

‘Who's this doctor who did the post-mortem?'

‘A pathologist in Hereford County Hospital, a Dr Marek. By the name, he must be Polish. Not a forensic chap, but the police were obviously satisfied that there was nothing suspicious about the death.'

He shuffled the pages about on the table and picked up the single page of the autopsy report. ‘As you say, not very detailed, but seems sound enough given the little there was to work with.'

‘So why did the coroner reckon it was this Albert Barnes?' said Sian.

‘When the local paper announced the finding of the remains, this Mrs Barnes from Ledbury went to the police and said it might be her husband. She had reported him missing four years earlier, but he never turned up. The wife said he often used to go walking and sometimes fishing in that area. The police showed her a ring and a wristwatch that was still with the remains and she was adamant that they were his.'

‘Did the bones fit with what was known of this man Barnes, I wonder?' asked Angela.

Pryor looked again at the post-mortem report, turning it over, but failing to find any more written on the back. ‘It just says “typically male pelvis and limb bones consistent with a man more than twenty five years of age and of average height”.'

Sian looked unimpressed.

‘Most men are older than twenty-five and of average height,' she commented. ‘Doesn't help much.'

‘If you had the bones, especially the femora, you could calculate his height, couldn't you?' asked Angela.

Richard nodded, but made a face expressing caution.

‘To within an inch or so either way, but as there's no record of Albert Barnes's height, apart from his wife saying he was “average”, it doesn't help a lot. And anyway, the bones are six feet down in some cemetery.'

‘The inquest report is short and sweet as well,' observed Angela. ‘The police offered no evidence of foul play, there were no injuries on the skeleton – not that that means much without a head.'

‘It was the wife's definite identification of the wedding ring and the watch that clinched it with the coroner. That was fair enough, he had no reason to disbelieve her.' Pryor threw the paper down on to the table.

‘So your old coroner pal Brian Meredith declared it was Albert Barnes and brought in an open verdict,' concluded Angela.

‘Hardly an “old pal”! Until last month, I hadn't seen him since before the war, when we were students together in Cardiff. I'd heard he'd gone into general practice in Monmouth and become the local coroner as well.'

Richard Pryor and Brian Meredith had qualified in 1936, but their paths had then diverged. Richard had taken up pathology and in 1940 been called up into the Royal Army Medical Corps. He had spent most of the war in Egypt and Ceylon, but when Singapore was liberated in 1945, he had been posted to the laboratory of the British Military Hospital there, ending his service with the rank of major. When ‘demobbed' after the war, he had taken local release and stayed on as a civilian pathologist in the General Hospital, dealing with coroner's and police cases. This post carried an additional appointment in the university medical school to teach forensic medicine.

‘So what happens now?' asked Sian, disappointed that their first case seemed a bit of a damp squib. ‘Sounds as if this Mrs Barnes has got a cast-iron case.'

‘We've not got the remains, so I can't even try for a blood group, even if we knew what group Albert was,' said Angela.

Richard nodded disconsolately. ‘Without the damned bones, we're stumped!'

There was a cough from the doorway behind them and turning, they saw Jimmy James standing there, his sweating body stripped to the waist, an open bottle of beer clutched in one hand.

‘Doc, just tell me where they're buried and I'll dig the buggers up for you tonight!'

TWO

R
ichard declined to take up Jenkins' offer – in fact, his handyman's apparent readiness to break the law so blatantly gave him something else to worry about.

‘That bloody man might turn out to be a liability,' he growled to Angela later that day. Sian had left to catch her bus home at five o'clock and the two principals were sitting in the kitchen, eating a scratch ‘high tea' of Fray Bentos corned beef and a salad, followed by a tin of peaches with Carnation tinned milk. The sausages were being kept for a late supper.

‘I don't think he was serious,' countered Angela. ‘You have to take anything Jimmy says with a large pinch of salt!'

Pryor shrugged as he finished his dessert. He then took the dishes to the big Belfast sink in the corner. ‘I admit he works hard outside, but I wish he'd keep his nose out of our business.'

Angela went across to the gas stove and lit the burner under the aluminium kettle, then used the same match to light a cigarette. ‘I must try to give these things up,' she said, pushing the packet of Kensitas back into the pocket of her white coat. ‘I needed them with all the stress of living and working in London, but down here in this peaceful countryside, I should be able to kick the habit.'

Her tone rather suggested that ‘peaceful countryside' was code for ‘deadly dull rural backwater' and Richard was suddenly aware of how little he really knew about his new business partner. He had heard on the gossip network that flourishes amongst the small world of forensic specialists, that she had never been married but had had a traumatic breakdown of an engagement to a senior police officer in London. He also knew she came from a rather ‘posh' family background in the Home Counties. Her parents ran a stud farm in Berkshire and she had been educated at a well-known boarding school, hence her well-modulated Thames Valley accent.