Tears now appeared in her eyes for the first time. Arthur felt that Littleman’s infidelity troubled her more than her own. She shook her head and wiped her eyes angrily with her fingers.
‘We aren’t that close, not as if we were sisters – or even sisters-in-law,’ she sniffed. ‘Rhian lives over in the cottage, and although we see each other most days there isn’t a lot to talk about, apart from the farm. It’s not even as if either of us has kids.’
Crippen detected an underlying hint of loneliness and longing in her voice. ‘So you wouldn’t know if her husband knew about it? Nothing in a change of his manner or anything like that?’
Again she shook her head and found a crumpled handkerchief in the pocket of her apron, blowing her nose hard. ‘Rhian doesn’t know about me and Tom, does she?’ she asked haltingly.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her since this came to light. You see the different complexion it puts on Littleman’s death, don’t you?’
She shook her head fearfully. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she whispered.
‘Your husband or Rhian’s husband – or even both of them – might have wanted to pay him back, or perhaps get rid of him altogether.’
She stared at him open-mouthed.
‘That can’t be true! Neither of them would do that. It must have been someone from outside.’
John Nichols thought he would add fuel to the fire to see if anything spat out. ‘Or maybe it was you or Mrs Morton who wanted him out of the way. He wasn’t a big chap and you are both strong farmers’ wives.’
‘Or perhaps you also did it together?’ suggested Crippen provocatively. ‘That would have made it easier still.’
Betsan’s eyes were like saucers at this, and she remained speechless. It was only a few months since Ruth Ellis had been hanged for murder. Though public and political opinion probably made her the last woman ever to be executed, the prospect of being accused of murder was shocking.
‘Have you anything else that you want to tell us, Mrs Evans?’ asked Crippen, feeling instinctively that he had had all he was going to get for the moment.
Betsan seemed to pull herself together, sitting up straight and making a last dab at her nose and eyes with the handkerchief. ‘I think I’ve said more than enough. Thank God Aubrey is out of the house, so that I can settle myself before he comes home.’
Crippen stood up and opened the caravan door for her. ‘We’ll need you to come over and sign a statement after it’s finished,’ he said. ‘And we’ll need to speak to your husband and his cousin, as well as his wife later.’
When she had walked slowly back to the farmhouse, the DI sat down again and watched his sergeant finishing the transcript of the interview.
‘Shane was right, then,’ he said reflectively. ‘We’d have been right up the creek if he’d been having us on.’
‘Let’s hope Dr Pryor wasn’t having us on, too,’ replied Nichols. ‘You said the chief super was concerned that maybe the pathologist was wrong about a murder.’
Arthur Crippen sighed. ‘He’s got to be right – and the lab found those fibres. But maybe I should have a word with him over the phone, just to see if he’s still cast iron with his conclusions.’
After finishing their smoke, the constable was sent over to the cottage to fetch Mrs Morton to the caravan for another interview. Their session with her turned out to be broadly similar to that with Betsan Evans.
Confronted with the bald statement that the police knew of her affair with Tom Littleman, she capitulated straight away, but unlike Betsan she shed no tears and remained sullenly obstinate.
‘I don’t see that my private life is anything to do with the police,’ she said coldly. ‘It can’t have anything to do with this business, especially as it was all over months ago.’
‘That’s for us to judge, Mrs Morton,’ snapped Crippen, nettled by her attitude. ‘And I’d point out that you are already guilty of withholding information from us. We asked you about him when we spoke to you first and you more or less said you knew nothing about him!’
‘I didn’t consider it relevant, that’s why,’ she answered.
Crippen decided to see how she reacted to a couple more awkward questions. ‘Did your husband know about your affair with this man?’
Rhian flushed and looked down at the table. ‘Of course not! I know I was a fool, but Tom could be very persuasive and there was something about him that appealed to me, even though I knew he was no good.’
‘So you didn’t know that he was also carrying on with Betsan Evans?’
Her head jerked up as if it was being pulled by a string. ‘What? Are you trying to trick me into something?’
‘Ask her yourself, if you like. She was equally surprised to hear that you had been unfaithful as well.’
She glowered at the detective. ‘Unfaithful! It was that swine Tom who was unfaithful, blast him.’
John Nichols, as he sat busily writing, thought how similar the reactions of the two wives were to Littleman’s deceit.
As if to confirm his thoughts, Rhian snapped out a question. ‘So are you going to tell my Jeff?’
Crippen looked steadily at her, thinking that this was a much harder woman that Betsan Evans. Could she have been a killer, he wondered? But if she genuinely hadn’t known that Littleman had been having it off with Betsan as well as with her, where was a motive?
‘This is a murder investigation, Mrs Morton. Nothing that’s relevant can be concealed. I think you’d better be frank with your husband before we talk to him again – though it’s none of my business what you do.’
They watched her march off across the yard towards her own large cottage, which was a field away in the opposite direction from the distant barn.
‘We’re none the better off after all that, John,’ said Crippen morosely. ‘I could just about accept her screwing that fellow’s neck, but I don’t see a motive.’
In the absence of anyone else to interview for the time being, the two detectives sat in the caravan and had a smoke.
‘We’ll see the two husbands again this afternoon,’ said Crippen. ‘And the old man, I suppose. After all this, if we get no further towards charging someone, I’m afraid the chief will call in the Yard.’
However, the interviews at Ty Croes Farm were not going according to plan that day. Though the DI and his sergeant had managed to interview Betsan and Rhian, by noon there was no sign of the men returning from Llandovery – and half an hour later the radio in the police car recalled them urgently to Brecon to deal with an attempted hold-up at a building society.
Richard returned from Cardiff at the end of that afternoon in time for Moira to give him various messages.
‘A few phone calls, doctor,’ she announced. ‘The lawyers in Stow rang to see if you were able to tell them anything yet. I said you’d been working on it for the last two days and would get back to them.’
She looked at her notepad. ‘And Detective Inspector Crippen rang from Brecon. He’d like to talk to you. The coroner’s officer in Monmouth said there’ll be two post-mortems there tomorrow and one in Chepstow. Hereford County Hospital phoned to ask if you could do a fortnight’s locum for their pathologist next month.’
She kept the juiciest message until last. ‘And I think Dr Bray will want to tell you about a call she had this morning from the War Office.’
Like Sian, for a moment Richard thought that he was being ‘called back to the flag’, as they used to say, but Angela put his mind at rest when he hurried into the laboratory to see her.
‘It was someone from the army legal branch or whatever they call it now,’ she explained. ‘It’s a civil claim for death, though there’s some possibility of a manslaughter charge. Apart from the fact that it’s a shooting, he didn’t give any details, but they want a pathology opinion. I told them they can come down to see you next Tuesday afternoon – that’ll give you time to do any local post-mortems in the morning.’
He grinned at her, pleased at the growth of their venture.
‘It’s all happening, Angela! At this rate, in another year we’ll be able to get some better equipment for you and Sian.’ He waved a hand expansively around the laboratory.
‘I’ll have a UV spectrophotometer!’ called Sian from across the room.
‘In the queue, girl. I need some new golf clubs first,’ chaffed Richard, feeling euphoric with the prospects of expansion of the Garth House partnership.
The phone rang in the office and Moira called out for Pryor. ‘It’s Brecon again, doctor,’ she said, handing the
