‘Depends on what the post-mortem showed,’ suggested Sian, displaying her more scientific attitude.
‘Exactly, but there was also a lot of emotional pressure as well. The sister was hysterical, screaming at the husband and calling him a murderer. He immediately called the doctor, but their regular GP was on holiday and a self-important young locum turned up instead, anxious to make a name for himself.’
Richard scowled at the thought of some people he had known in the past, who seemed keen to find suspicion on the flimsiest of evidence.
‘Whereas their usual medical attendant, knowing of the severity of the wife’s terminal illness, would probably have signed a death certificate for natural causes, this locum listened to Sheila Lupin’s accusations and ran off to report the death to the coroner, telling him of the allegations. The coroner had little option but to inform the police, through his coroner’s officer, and next morning a couple of CID men were knocking on the vet’s door.’
Angela finished the rest of her coffee. ‘Reading between the lines, it sounds as if neither the coroner nor the detectives were very enthusiastic about pursuing the matter, but they took some statements and seized the syringes and bottles just in case.’
‘What about “the other woman” angle?’ asked Moira.
‘Unfortunately for Samuel Parker, it turned out to be true,’ said Pryor. ‘The sister gleefully named the lady, an attractive widow living about ten miles away at Lower Slaughter, perhaps an unfortunate name in the circumstances. Then, more reluctantly, others confirmed this, including the lady herself.’
‘Men are rotten swine!’ muttered Angela obscurely and walked out to take her coffee cup to the kitchen.
Their housekeeper and technician were not yet satisfied with the details, and Richard told them of the main plank of the prosecution’s case.
‘There was a post-mortem next day by the usual pathologist at the hospital, and he found nothing except the extensive cancer, which had spread widely to many other organs. He said that normally he would have been satisfied to give the lung cancer as the cause of death, but given the allegations and the lack of any immediate cause of death, such as coronary thrombosis or a pulmonary embolism, he felt someone else should examine the body.’
‘And presumably this second chap did find something?’ concluded Moira.
‘Well, they got Angus Smythe up from Oxford. He’s at the Radcliffe Infirmary and covers that area for the Home Office. Knowing of the potassium allegation, he took a number of samples of blood and even the fluid from the eyeball for analysis.’
‘Vitreous humour? That’s what they call it, don’t they?’ asked Sian, who had obviously been reading widely since taking this forensic job.
‘Yes, that’s it – and his laboratory found a very high concentration of potassium in the fluid. In fact, it’s that which led the Director of Public Prosecutions to charge Parker with murder, as the police were not very impressed with the strength of the circumstantial evidence.’
Moira Davison gave Pryor a look, which though it fell short of adoration was filled with pride. ‘And now they’ve called you in to save him!’ she said.
Richard grinned. ‘I’m not exactly a knight in shining armour, Moira! But I’ll do my best to make sure that there are no loopholes in the prosecution case – that’s what defence experts are for.’
‘They’ve had one opinion already, so Angela said,’ objected Sian. ‘But he couldn’t help, so what can you do?’
‘Perhaps nothing at all; I might agree with him totally. But there may be a different interpretation I can find.’
‘So a lawyer can shop around cherry-picking expert opinions until he finds one that suits him?’ demanded Sian. She was always ready to crusade for the correct approach. Her father was a shop steward in a local foundry and the whole family were staunchly socialist in outlook.
Richard nodded. ‘That happens, and it’s quite legal. Though there has been talk of making the defence admit they’ve done that and to disclose what the unfavourable opinions were. But so far it hasn’t become law.’
Angela had come back into the room and heard the last exchange. ‘It’s even much more common in America,’ she said. ‘But of course there they even spend weeks picking a jury, to get the ones they think might be most sympathetic to their client!’
Sian muttered something about ‘And they call it justice!’ as she went back to her bench to start work again.
‘Do you think you’ll find anything useful in the literature?’ Angela asked her partner.
‘I’ll have a good look in the Bristol university library,’ he replied. Richard had a contract to give twenty lectures a year to medical students there, which gave him access to the library. ‘I’ve got this niggling memory of seeing something about potassium after death. I think it was from Germany.’
‘Do they have all the forensic journals in Bristol?’
‘I’m not sure – if not, I’ll go down to Cardiff and look in the Home Office lab; they should have some. And then try the medical school library there. I’m an old student, so they should let me in.’
As he went back to his room, Angela decided she admired his tenacity and strength of purpose. She hoped he hadn’t read too much into the little peck she gave him on the stairs the previous evening, but he had been such good company at dinner. She found that she was glad she had him as a colleague and friend.
Next day, while Richard Pryor was sitting in his car on the Beachley–Aust ferry, crossing the Severn Estuary on his way to Bristol, Arthur Crippen was in a meeting with his superiors.
The Mid-Wales Constabulary had been formed only a few years earlier by amalgamating three county forces, and now its headquarters were in Newtown, right in the middle of Wales.
He had travelled up from Brecon with his DCI Joe Paget to discuss the Ty Croes case with Detective Chief Superintendent Claude Morris, the head of the CID.
‘We’re getting nowhere at all so far, sir,’ announced Paget. Crippen thought the ‘we’ was a bit rich, as the chief inspector had had virtually nothing to do with the matter and knew only what Arthur had told him about it.
The DCS slumped behind his desk, tapping on his blotter with the end of a pencil. He was a fat man, nearing retirement, like Crippen, and was keen on having a quiet life for the next couple of years.
‘So you think it has to be an inside job?’ he grunted.
Paget deferred to his DI for an answer, and Crippen leaned forward over his cup of tasteless canteen coffee.
‘I can’t see it being anything else, sir. It’s not a casual assault by some chancer trying to steal something. There’s no one else around there apart from those who live or work on the farm.’
The portly DCS considered this for a moment, still tapping his pencil. ‘So we’ve got two farmers, their wives and a father?’
‘And there’s this young chap you told me about, Arthur,’ chipped in Paget, just to show that he was on the ball.
The DI shrugged. ‘Can’t see him involved, though he admitted he hated the dead man’s guts.’
‘I wouldn’t write him off,’ advised Morris. He had been a good detective before he was kicked upstairs to his armchair job, and his opinion was still worth listening to. ‘Is this Shane boy big enough to have done it?’
Arthur nodded, albeit reluctantly. ‘He’s a strong lad, admittedly. And the deceased was a scrawny sort of fellow. It’s just that I can’t see this boy having enough brains to think out a complicated scheme like that.’
Claude Morris ruffled the pages of the report on his desk.
‘It’s a bloody funny way to commit a murder,’ he grumbled. ‘Are we absolutely sure that it’s not some bizarre kind of accident or suicide? We’d look right fools if we start a homicide investigation and then discover there wasn’t one.’
‘The pathologist was quite definite about it – and I saw the injuries he was relying on with my own eyes.’
The DCS still looked dubious. ‘This Dr Pryor – I’d never heard of him. He’s not the regular Home Office fellow, is he?’
Joe Paget, who always read all the bumf that was sent around by headquarters, answered this time. ‘There was a circular from the Home Office some time ago. He was put on their list a few months back, with a sort of roving commission to fill in wherever he was needed. Seems he was a pathologist in the army and in Singapore – had a lot of experience.’
