Where Death Delights (32 page)

‘So it's a non-starter trying to accuse him of forging it?'

‘One of the experts in Cardiff thinks it's a fake, but he reckons that his opinion wouldn't stand up against good cross-examination in court.'

The superintendent had no idea why they were getting a prominent pathologist from London to carry out yet another autopsy, but suspected that the solicitor representing Michael Prentice was covering all bases, with fees commensurate with his enthusiasm.

‘The lawyer is from the same firm that does Prentice's motor company business. He's not a local guy, he comes from Slough. I hear they've briefed a barrister to come to the magistrates' hearing, no expense spared.'

‘What about the father, Leonard Massey?' asked Richard. ‘As a Queen's Counsel, I'll bet he'll want some big guns involved. A wonder he wasn't at that conference we had with Craddock.'

‘If he hadn't been a potential witness, I expect he would have been there!' chortled Evans. ‘I'll bet he's spitting tacks that he can't get involved professionally.'

The next call after Ben had rung off was Trevor Mitchell.

‘As we expected, Agnes Oldfield is jumping up and down at the news of the blood group,' he groaned. ‘Edward Lethbridge has tried to tell her that it takes us no further forward, other that not ruling out the remains could be either her nephew or about nine million other men in Britain!'

‘She doesn't want another meeting, I hope,' said Pryor.

‘No, but she's gone off on some other tack now, that I've got to follow up,' said Trevor. ‘She found an old address book of Anthony's amongst his stuff when she was searching for a transfusion card. She's been phoning umpteen people, making a nuisance of herself, but came across one who knew him in Birmingham University when he was a student umpteen years ago. This chap said that Anthony was in a climbing club there and fell off some cliff in the Peak District and had to go to hospital for a day or two. So now Agnes wants me to find this chap and then scour the hospitals in Derbyshire to see if they have any medical records or X-rays, like we did for Albert Barnes.'

‘The best of luck, Trevor!' said Richard. ‘At least it's good for trade, you should be raking it in with all these fees and expenses.'

The investigator promised to let him know what happened and Richard went back to work, looking at reports and microscope slides in a civil case where the family of a shipyard worker was suing the employers for compensation for fatal asbestosis.

At teatime, he regaled the team with the latest news. Angela murmured that she didn't think she'd come with him to Gloucester, as there was nothing she could contribute. Richard suspected that she was afraid that her former fiancé might turn up again, though that seemed unlikely.

When Wednesday came, he did not carry out his threat to be driven to Gloucester by Jimmy, instead he left him cutting down the undergrowth at the top of the plot with an Allen scythe, a fearsome motorized device with large wheels that took more energy to steer than the operator would have used in cutting the weeds by hand.

It was now well into July and the capricious British weather had turned wet and windy now that the school holiday season was under way. He drove past Lydney and when going through Newnham, was tempted to keep his head down in case he was spotted by Mrs Oldfield. When he got to the Royal Hospital, he found the fabled black Mercedes 170S already outside the mortuary, a driver with a chauffeur's cap busy polishing the chrome of the radiator. Inside the body-store room, Detective Inspector Brian Lane, accompanied by a photographer and the coroner's officer, was talking to Arnold Millichamp and his personal secretary. The latter was exactly as Richard had pictured her when on the telephone. A tall, thin woman with severely cropped grey hair, she had a long, intelligent face devoid of any make-up. A tan twinset and a long brown skirt surmounted sensible shoes and to complete the picture of an English lady, even in a mortuary she wore a single string of pearls. Her employer was also tall and thin, with a completely bald head and a large hooked nose. Dressed in legal garb of black jacket and striped grey trousers, he sported a blue bow tie.

Brian Lane introduced them and Millichamp shook hands and Miss Mortimer nodded gravely and murmured a greeting.

‘Pryor, you were Professor in the University of Singapore, I recall,' said the London man, in a mellow voice that would have suited a bishop. ‘You've given up the ivory towers of
académe
, then?'

Richard grinned. ‘I didn't get much
académe
in Singapore, Professor, but plenty of experience. The local newspaper had a regular column called “Yesterday's Stabbings!”

He handed Millichamp a carbon copy of his post-mortem report, which the pathologist gave to his secretary. She had a leather case under her arm and she slipped the report inside, as she took out a large notebook and a fountain pen, ready to record every pearl of wisdom that fell from her boss's lips.

They all moved into the post-mortem room next door, Prudence now also carrying a large case which she opened up on a table at the side. This was Arnold's tool kit and declining one of the red rubber aprons that the mortuary attendant offered, took a very new-looking yellow oilskin one from his case. Hanging the cords around his neck, he turned and with practised ease, Miss Mortimer tied the waist tapes around him. She then offered him a new pair of rubber gloves, which he snapped on with the flourish of a surgeon about to perform a craniotomy.

Pryor more humbly hung a rather frayed apron around his neck and followed Millichamp to the porcelain slab, where Harry Haines was already laid out. He summarized his findings for the defence pathologist, which was a short speech, as the only real area of interest was the neck wound and the damage inside the head.

‘I excised the bullet entrance hole in case the police wanted to examine trace elements on the surrounding skin,' he explained, as Brian Lane displayed the photographs taken at the first autopsy. ‘I've got the piece of skin intact here, fixed in formalin, if you'd like to see it.'

Millichamp rapidly reopened the stitches of the first post-mortem and made a quick but thorough examination of all the organs and the damaged skull and brain. For all his pomp and showmanship, he was an astute operator and though he worked with extraordinary speed, Richard saw that he missed nothing significant.

After he had finished, he rooted around in the jar that Pryor had brought and studied the small bullet wound, using a lens from his box to look at the edges of the hole.

Then, pulling off his gloves, he went to the table and rapidly read through Richard's report, handed to him by Prudence.

‘Very good, very good!' he muttered, but somehow his tone was devoid of any condescension.

‘A two-two pistol, I understand, Inspector?' he asked Lane.

‘Yes, Professor, a Harrington and Richardson rim-fire job. The lab has already matched the weapon to the remains of the bullet that Doctor Pryor recovered. They're now doing some test-firings on it to check on range characteristics.'

As they washed up at the sink, Millichamp thawed a little and asked Richard about his new private venture. After hearing about their first few weeks, Millichamp nodded pontifically.

‘You need to get yourself on the Home Office list, Pryor. I'll put in a word for you when I get the chance. We need all the experienced people we can get, especially now that universities are starting to close down their departments. Bloody short-sighted, but that's the government for you, can't see further than the end of their nose, if it'll save them a few pounds.'

Declining the offer of a mug of mortuary tea, the great man and his elegant assistant left, saying that they were staying that night near Swansea, at the Caswell Bay Hotel.

‘That's only a few miles from where the lady we're seeing tomorrow was found,' said Richard.

Arnold Millichamp nodded. ‘That's partly why we're going there. The defence solicitor wants us to see the scene, though as I gather that it's unlikely that a murder charge will materialize, I don't quite see the point.'

They went outside, where the chauffeur loaded their cases into the boot of the Mercedes and the two passengers sank into the back seats.

‘I look forward to seeing you again in the morning, Professor,' called Millichamp before he closed the door.

As the car glided away Richard realized that he had been called ‘Professor' by another of the same standing and felt an unreasonable pride in the title, in spite of having decided to abandon its use.

The more cynical Brian Lane watched the car out of sight. ‘I wonder if there's anything going on between those two?' he muttered, with a policeman's suspicious mind.

Next morning, Pryor made an early start, again driving himself, as Jimmy was moonlighting somewhere down the valley, working on a vicar's garden.

He parked at the railway arch in Swansea's Strand before the black Mercedes arrived and had a chance to talk to Lewis Lewis and Dr O'Malley who were already there.

They stood drinking Camp coffee made by the attendant with water from a battered electric kettle, rendered almost palatable by milk powder which Richard suspected was actually from a baby-food tin.

‘So the murder charge is a non-starter?' he asked the detective.

‘Looks like it, the lawyers are not going to run with a charge that doesn't have a cat's chance in hell of succeeding,' said Lewis mournfully.

‘So Arnold Millichamp is wasting his time coming here,' observed Pryor. ‘Just like he did yesterday.' He told Lewis about the Gloucestershire shooting.

‘Well, he's getting well paid for it, I'll bet. No one comes all the way from London for peanuts.'

The man in question arrived with his secretary a few moments later and as the attendant was ushering them in, Richard hoped that he would not offer them a mug of his peculiar brew. The look on Prudence Mortimer's face when she saw they had to work in a blocked-off railway arch was enough, without the offer of chicory extract mixed with Cow and Gate.

When they went into the inner sanctum and were kitted up, Richard could see that poor Linda was deteriorating. After two dissections and a third in the offing, it was high time that she was finally put to rest. He sometimes wondered at his own immunity to the horrors of death, presuming it was part predisposition and part familiarity. Pryor was often asked how he could possibly do such an awful job, but realized that he rarely thought about it. Those who could not handle the macabre job either never started or soon gave up. Not a few of his colleagues had become alcoholics and several had committed suicide, an occupational hazard which was more common amongst all doctors than the general public.

Shrugging off these morbid thoughts, he asked Miss Mortimer if they had had copies of his report.

‘We have all the documents, thank you, Professor,' she said with a charming smile that made him feel that she was not such a cold fish as she was assumed to be. Prudence seemed indifferent to the proximity of a dead body in a poor state of preservation, looking more disconcerted by the strange building in which they had to work.

Once again, Richard went through his findings for Millichamp, several times emphasizing that Patrick O'Malley, who hardly uttered a word, was the primary pathologist.

‘I'm afraid after the previous dissections and the passage of time, you won't have much to look at,' he said to the visitor. ‘But no doubt your instructing solicitor will have given you copies of the photographs and I can give you a spare set of section of the bruises and the major organs.'

As before, Millichamp worked with considerable speed, not that there was much left to examine. The important bruises had been taken by Pryor for microscopic examination, though he had brought them all in their labelled jars of formaldehyde for the other pathologist to see.

‘You are extremely thorough, Professor Pryor,' complimented Millichamp as he washed his hands in the porcelain tank that was the only sink. Patrick O'Malley again tried to make himself look invisible, as the two forensic pathologists launched into a discussion of recent research into new methods of dating injuries, both agreeing that the results were not all that helpful.

The two visitors left after delighting the mortuary attendant with a one pound tip for his help. Richard Pryor was left with something that was much more valuable to him, another assurance from the influential Londoner that he would ‘have a word' with some unspecified authority about getting him onto the Home Office list – and an invitation to visit his department at ‘Barts' any time he was in the big city.

A few weeks' routine work followed, Richard Pryor gradually building up his foundation of coroner's cases which brought in a modest, but steady income. Similarly, Angela Bray's reputation in the field of paternity testing steadily increased the number of blood tests she was called on to perform. Some of these came from far afield and in some instances, she was asked to go and actually obtain the samples from mother, child and putative father. This mean going off in her little Renault, with a consequent increase in the fee. Sometimes she took Sian with her on these jaunts, if the technician had time, though even here, the number of defence alcohol estimations was gradually increasing.

As well as physical work in the laboratory, both he and Angela began getting case papers for expert opinions on a variety of subjects, both criminal and civil. Lawyers were increasingly demanding a second opinion on autopsy reports, biological opinions and road and industrial accident claims. Even insurance companies were coming to the Garth House partnership, as it was coming to be known, when they wanted to confirm or contest some dubious claim for compensation. By the end of August, Richard and Angela felt confident that their bold venture to go private was going to succeed and decided that they could order some more equipment for the laboratory which would extend the range of investigations that they could offer.