signed documents are sent by express airmail, they should arrive in time for production in court.’
‘It all sounds one hell of a rush, but it seems the only chance this vet has of avoiding conviction. Anything else you have to do for him?’
Richard nodded. ‘Find an eminent physiologist to confirm the other branch of our defence. That should be easier and a lot nearer than these foreign parts!’
He sat back contentedly after topping up their glasses. Angela was in her favourite place on the settee, having kicked off her shoes and drawn up her legs elegantly on to the cushions.
‘That was a good meal tonight – beats our usual cold ham and salad. I don’t know what we’d do without Moira to look after us,’ he said.
Angela looked across at him with a slight smile on her face. ‘You seem to be getting quite attached to the peerless Moira, Richard! I’m beginning to think that you have designs on her.’
She spoke lightly, but he thought he detected a touch of irony in her voice.
‘Nonsense, she’s years younger than me,’ he protested. ‘And still grieving for her husband. It’s obvious how fond she was of him.’
‘We all have to move on, Richard. You after your divorce, me after that swine jilted me – and Moira will have to do the same.’
She stopped and waved her glass at him. ‘Though, in fact, I think she already is moving on. She’s got her eye on you, my lad!’
Richard scoffed at her claim but was secretly intrigued by the idea. ‘Go on, Angela! You’ll be saying next that Sian has got designs on me!’
‘No, I wouldn’t go that far. I think she hero-worships you a bit, but you’re old enough to be her father – just about!’
He gave her one of his wry grins, finished his drink and stood up. ‘I think I’d better go before we get any sillier! A busy day again tomorrow, with these army lawyers coming to see us.’
As he went back to his office to write some notes about what he had learned from his expensive transatlantic phone calls, he pondered what Angela had said. This was the first time that she had mentioned her broken engagement to a superintendent in the ‘Met’, since he had unexpectedly turned up a few months ago at a scene of crime near Gloucester. He knew she was still bruised by the experience, but it was a topic that they both avoided. She was right, though, he thought. They had to move on, and living in a house with three women, all attractive in their different ways, constantly reminded him of what he was missing.
With a sigh, he sat at his desk and pulled a writing pad towards him.
FOURTEEN
Next morning Moira had her first failure, for when she got through to the Forensic Institute at the University of Copenhagen she discovered that the doctor to whom Richard wished to speak had gone to Greenland for two weeks.
‘They said that the Danes cover it for forensic cases and he’s had to go back there for a court case in a murder,’ she announced despondently.
‘Never mind. I think we’ve got enough with the German and the two Yanks,’ Richard told her reassuringly. ‘Now I’ll have to get the solicitor in Stow to get his sworn statements from the States. That should keep him busy for a few hours.’
With no post-mortems to do that day, he felt at a loose end until the War Office wallahs came in the afternoon. He recalled that he was having trouble with the Humber’s handbrake, which came to the top of its ratchet before the brakes gripped. Though Jimmy had offered to fix it for him, he preferred to have it looked at by a competent mechanic. Jimmy was adept at farm-style lash-ups, but Richard decided that though a plough might be mended by the use of binder twine and a few blows from a hammer, a brake problem was too serious to be dealt with in that fashion.
He drove down to Tintern and called at a small garage behind one of the pubs, which he had patronized before. It was little more than an oily shed, but the grizzled man who ran it, with the help of a teenager, offered to look at it straight away. As he vanished under the Humber, Richard was strongly reminded of another dungareed mechanic with a young assistant, who so recently had been under a vehicle fixing the brakes. However, this one soon emerged unscathed and, wiping his hands on a rag, announced his diagnosis.
‘Your cable needs tightening, that’s all, doctor. Leave it for half an hour and it’ll be ready.’
There was an hour before Moira would have their lunch ready, so he decided to have a pint at the Royal George, almost opposite the abbey. The majestic ruin set against a backdrop of autumn-tinted woods was a calming sight, as he sat outside with a tankard of best bitter. Though he had enjoyed his years in the Far East, this beat sitting in the stifling heat of the bar in the Singapore Swimming Club, with the condensation running down the outside of a glass of Tiger.
As he sipped, he looked at the tall, roofless edifice opposite and wondered what it had been like in its prime, before King Henry had destroyed it because of his desire to change wives. This triggered another flashback, this time to his conversation with Angela the previous evening. They were both healthy, virile people with no outlet for their emotional or physical appetites, a state of affairs which was unsatisfactory, to put it mildly. True, both of them had been fully occupied for the past six months in setting up their new venture, but now that a regular pattern had been established for their work, it was surely time for some social life. As the level in his glass dropped, he went over the options – joining a golf club, perhaps. He was not an enthusiastic sportsman, apart from yelling for Wales at a few internationals at Cardiff Arms Park, but a club might be somewhere where he could meet people outside the tight medical-police-lawyer circle that now dominated his acquaintances. But the thought of seeking a new wife among the sturdy tweed-clad golfing fraternity was not all that attractive.
Was Angela just teasing him about Moira having a crush on him? He thought he had sensed a slightly caustic undercurrent in her voice, but it would be ridiculous to think that she felt that Moira was in any way a competitor. What nonsense! He chastised himself for even considering it and irritably swallowed the rest of his ale and stalked back to the garage.
‘All done, sir! And I’ve topped up your brake fluid, radiator and engine oil as well.’
Impressed by the man’s speed and efficiency, he happily paid the thirty shillings he was asked for and drove back to Garth House and his ‘monstrous regiment of women’. Over a tasty casserole for Angela and himself, the conversation centred on why the War Office wanted them to look into a case.
‘Don’t they have any pathologists of their own?’ asked Sian between bites at her Cox’s Orange Pippin.
‘Yes, I was one of them!’ retorted Richard. ‘But it sounds as if they want someone who’s now outside the service, to appear independent if there’s some sort of claim against the army.’
He was proved right when the visitors arrived soon after lunch.
They came not in a sleek staff car nor a green Land Rover, but in a private hire taxi which had met them at Newport railway station. The driver hesitantly slowed near the bottom gates, then drove up and stopped on the drive level with the front door.
This was hardly ever used, as everyone else went around to the back yard. Richard hurriedly found the key in his office and went to admit two men in sombre double-breasted suits and a middle-aged woman wearing businesslike spectacles.
He shepherded them into Angela’s sitting room, the most comfortable place, with its superb view from the large bay window. She had suggested it, and, when they had settled, Moira came in to ask if they would all like tea or coffee. The niceties finished, the elder of the two men introduced themselves. He was a large man with a grey walrus moustache and pale, watery eyes. In true Whitehall style, he clutched a bowler hat.
‘I’m Paul Bannerman, from the Army Legal Branch,’ he announced in a deep, resonant voice. ‘This is Gordon Lane, one of our Crown solicitors – and our lady colleague is Mrs Edith Wright, who will take any notes that are required.’
Gordon Lane was about forty, a slightly hunched man of slight physique but with an amiable, round face.
Bannerman hauled up his briefcase from the floor, a black leather one with a crown embossed on the flap. Taking a file from it, he launched into an explanation.
‘I’m the only serving officer here, a half-colonel, though I rarely put on my uniform,’ he said with an unexpected smile. ‘We know that you were one of our pathologists during the war, leaving with the rank of
