Where Death Delights (7 page)

Pryor looked around the rest of the chamber which hopefully was to be his regular place of work. The usual paraphernalia of a morgue was there, mops and buckets standing in a corner, a butcher's scales hanging over the draining board and several pairs of grubby Wellington boots under the table. A few red rubber aprons with chains around the neck and waist, hung from hooks on the wall.

‘There's no mortuary attendant, then?' he asked tentatively.

The officer shook his head. ‘Not enough work to warrant the expense, says the council. We've got one down in Chepstow, though. Here one of the chaps in the depot sees bodies in and out for the undertakers.'

‘So I have to do all the donkey work myself?' hazarded Richard. Maybe this wasn't going to be such a windfall after all, he thought.

The policeman's rugged face cracked into a grin.

‘Don't worry, Doctor, I'll give you a hand. I'll sew up and clean down – and take off the skull when you need it.'

He was as good as his word, too. While the pathologist put on boots and a rubber apron, then took his instruments from his black bag, the coroner's officer had trundled a body in from the fridge, sliding it off the trolley on to the table and placing a wooden block under the head. He wore no apron and his green trilby stayed firmly on his head throughout the whole proceedings.

Before Pryor began his examination, Christie produced some papers from his breast pocket and laid them on the table.

‘This first gent is a sudden death, sir. Collapsed in the pub, probably just heard that the price of beer had gone up,' he added heartily. ‘Seventy-one years old, history of chest pains, but hasn't seen a doctor for a month, so had to be reported to us.'

‘What's the other one?' asked Pryor.

‘Probably an overdose, there'll be an inquest on her. Lady of sixty-five, lives alone. History of depression, not seen for three days. Found dead in bed, empty bottle of Seconal on the floor, but we don't know how many were left in it. I'm chasing the prescription date today.'

‘Have to have an analysis on that one,' said Richard. An extra fee and some work for Sian in the laboratory, he thought.

Both autopsies went off smoothly and he took his samples for analysis into bottles he carried in his capacious case, which had three large drawers stuffed with equipment. He had had it made to his own design in Singapore and the sight and feel of it made him aware again of how much life had changed in a few short months.

Christie was busy with a sacking needle and twine, restoring both bodies to a remarkable degree of normality, given the primitive facilities. Richard was secretly amazed at how the officer did everything so calmly and efficiently in his tweed suit and hat, without getting a single drop of blood on himself. He seemed to be able to work from a distance, bending over and reaching far out with his long arms. His only concession to hygiene was the wearing of a thick pair of household rubber gloves.

Pryor washed his hands under the trickle from the gas heater, using soap kept in a Player's glass ashtray. There was a clean towel on the table, God knows from where, he thought. As he dried his hands, the busy officer asked about his report.

‘How d'you want to do it, Doctor? I used to jot down a few notes for Doctor Saunders and he'd add a conclusion and sign it. The coroner seemed satisfied with that, just in longhand.'

The new broom shook his head. ‘No, I'll just make a few notes myself, then I'll dictate a report back at the office and have it typed up, then post it to you.'

He hoped Sian was up to the task, if they started getting more than a few cases at a time. As he leaned over the table to write some notes on a pad taken from his case, he heard John Christie dragging the second corpse on to a trolley.

‘I'll put them away when you've gone, Doc,' he said.

‘Business to be done now.' He approached the table, pulling a wallet from his jacket and then laying four one-pound notes alongside Richard's notebook.

‘The going rate is two guineas a case, sir. I don't know what happens in Singapore, but here there's been a long tradition that the coroner's officer gets the shillings off the guineas.'

Pryor recalled that in the few coroner's autopsies he had done before going to the Forces, the same regime had operated, though then he hadn't got the pounds, they went to the senior pathologist!

‘The coroner said he'd like you to call in on him, if you've the time, sir,' said the officer, as he saw him to the outer door.

Richard knew where his old college friend had his surgery, as he had called on him soon after he arrived at Garth House, unashamedly touting for any work that was going. Brian Meredith was almost exactly the same age, but had escaped being called up during the war, due to poor sight, which required him to wear spectacles with lenses like the bottom of milk bottles. He was a surgeon's son from Cardiff and had been in general practice since soon after qualifying, most of it in Monmouth. Well connected, with one brother a barrister and the other a solicitor, he had been appointed a couple of years ago as the coroner for East Monmouthshire.

Richard left the council yard and drove around the back of the small town, remembering that it was famous for being the birthplace of King Henry V and home of Charles Rolls of Rolls Royce, the first Briton to die in an aircraft crash.

‘I wonder if he had a post-mortem?' he murmured, as he looked for the cream-painted building that housed Meredith's family practice. Spotting it in the road behind the ancient Monmouth School, he pulled into a paved space in front and went into the waiting room, causing a doorbell to jangle as if it was a shop.

Morning surgery was over and the row of hard chairs around the walls was bereft of patients. An inner door opened and Brian's moon face peered out, his heavy glasses giving him the appearance of a benign owl. When he saw who it was, he advanced with hand outstretched. He was as unlike the lean, tanned man from Singapore as could be imagined. Short, portly and starting to go bald, he looked ten years older than Richard, but there was an air of benign prosperity about him that told of years of a settled lifestyle.

‘Richard, nice to see you again. How did the first day go?' They chatted their way back into his consulting room where the GP sat his old friend down in the patient's chair. After the inevitable reminiscences about their student days, they got down to business.

‘If you're happy with the arrangements, Richard, you are welcome to take on the cases in Monmouth and Chepstow. Since Dr Saunders retired, we've had to send them either to Newport or Hereford, both of which are outside my jurisdiction.'

Pryor was keen to confirm his agreement to this and also thanked Meredith for putting him on to the solicitor in Lydney.

‘I wondered why those remains from the reservoir went up to Hereford?' he remarked.

The coroner nodded. ‘There was no one here to deal with them. Mind you, if there'd been anything even slightly suspicious, I'd have had to send them to Cardiff, as Dr Marek in Hereford makes no claim to having any forensic expertise. It'll be useful having you in the area, I must say.'

Pryor saw a chance to get his feet more firmly under the table.

‘I'd be more than happy to help in that direction, but I've got no official standing with the police or the Home Office.'

Brian Meredith tapped the side of his nose, reminding Richard of Jimmy Jenkins's habit. ‘I may be able to put a word about here and there, Richard. You're too good a prize not to be used around South Wales.'

Emboldened by the extra four pounds in his wallet, Pryor suggested that as it was almost lunchtime, he might treat his friend to a meal somewhere. Meredith lived a couple of miles outside Monmouth – ‘a doctor should never live in his practice premises, if he wants any peace' was his favourite saying. He accepted the offer of lunch and took Richard to one of the best hotels near the town centre. As he looked at the prices on the menu, the pathologist felt his wallet getting lighter by the minute, but he reckoned it was worth it if Brian could pull a few strings for him.

‘How did you get on with old Lethbridge and this bone business?' asked the coroner, over their rather tough steaks.

‘The lady in Newnham is dead set on upsetting your verdict,' answered Richard. ‘She's got a private investigator looking into it, as well.'

‘Trevor Mitchell? He's a good man, I met him a few times when he was still in the CID across the border. Any chance that I'm going to have to eat my words?'

Pryor shrugged. ‘Not so far, but I'm waiting to hear from Mitchell as to what he found when he interviewed Mrs Barnes.'

‘She was a tough little bird, spoke her mind at the inquest!' said Meredith. ‘It seems she wants to get married again and urgently needs a declaration that her husband is dead.'

The conversation veered towards more personal matters until they finished their meal, when Pryor manfully paid up at the till and walked back to the surgery with Meredith.

‘I'll have to call you up to an inquest sometime on that lady with the overdose,' said the coroner as they entered his forecourt.

‘We'll run an analysis to make sure it was that Seconal,' said Richard, as he unlocked his car. ‘You should have the result in a day or two, along with the post-mortem reports on both cases.'

Meredith's pale eyebrows rose on his chubby face.

‘That's a welcome change!' he admitted. ‘The forensic lab in Cardiff usually takes at least a couple of weeks!'

They shook hands and Pryor climbed into his car and shut the door. He was about to start the engine, when the coroner came to the window, which Richard wound down.

‘It completely slipped my mind, I almost forgot to ask you,' said Meredith. ‘My barrister brother, who's in chambers in Swansea, rang me last night to see if I could recommend someone to give a sound pathological opinion. I don't know what it's all about, but I said that there was no need to go looking up in London, as you were on the doorstep, so to speak.'

Suddenly feeling that his outlay on a good lunch seemed to be proving worthwhile, Pryor happily nodded his assent. ‘So what shall I do about it, Brian?'

The other doctor pulled a prescription pad from his side pocket and scribbled a telephone number on the back.

As he handed the sheet through the window, he told Richard to speak directly to his brother Peter to find out more.

‘Best of luck with the new venture,' he said as he waved goodbye. ‘There should be some more work for you at the Chepstow mortuary later this week.'

Feeling buoyant with these harbingers of future work, Richard let in the clutch and drove off, back down the valley that he already thought of as home.

FOUR

I
t had been agreed that Sian need not come in on Saturdays unless there was something urgent going on, so when Richard returned with his samples on Friday afternoon, she busily began setting up her equipment for barbiturate analysis, with the promise to ‘get cracking' first thing on Monday morning. Her enthusiasm was infectious, as she was almost ecstatic at having ‘her first case', as she put it. Even the usually impassive Angela was smiling benignly at Richard's news of more work and both the women were itching to know what the barrister in Swansea would have to say.

However, they had to wait over the weekend for it, as Pryor's attempt to phone the chambers in Swansea where the coroner's brother was based, produced only a message from a clerk that Peter Meredith had left for the weekend, but that he would get him to return the call on Monday.

The weather had cooled down but was still pleasant and with little else to occupy him over the fallow two days, Richard looked forward to ‘striding his own broad acres', as he liked to think of his bit of land, as well as sorting out his office and his room upstairs. He was not by nature a very tidy person, unlike Angela who was almost obsessive about ‘a place for everything and everything in its place', as his grandmother used to say. However, he made an effort, buoyed up by the hope that an increasing workload would make this the last chance he had of getting really organized. His workroom was on a back corner of the house, behind the room used for an office, and he had plans to have a doorway knocked through to save having to walk around the corridor and into the hall to get into the office.

After another scratch meal with Angela in the kitchen – this time more salad and a tin of John West salmon, followed by cheese and biscuits – he percolated some Kardomah coffee and took it into the ‘staff lounge', as they grandly called it. This was the room between Angela's office and the kitchen, entered by a door at the foot of the stairs.

Angela was relaxing in one of the large armchairs, part of the three-piece suite they had retained from his aunt's furniture. The room was much as the old lady had left it, with a good, but faded carpet on the floor, a large sideboard against one wall and a stone Minster fireplace on the other.

‘Should be cosy enough in the winter,' she said, as she poured coffee into two mugs on the small table in the centre. ‘As long as we can afford the coal! Heating this house will cost a fortune.'

‘I should think we could get wood easily enough around here, the whole valley is a forest,' replied Richard, full of optimism today. ‘I'll have to ask Jimmy, he'll probably offer to cut down someone's trees for us!'

They listened to the six o'clock news on the massive Marconi radiogram that had been part of the furnishings, but the details of the national rail strike and the disaster at the Le Mans motor race in which a crashed Mercedes had killed over eighty people, were too depressing and they switched it off.