‘Moira, you’re a wonder!’ Richard sniffed the aroma appreciatively as he came into the room.
‘You’ve not been waiting here for us all evening, have you?’ asked Angela, pulling off her coat and dropping thankfully into one of the chairs at the table, which was already set with two places.
‘No, but I’ve been back and forth, keeping an eye on the oven,’ said the trim, attractive woman. Slim and petite, she had an oval face framed by jet-black hair cut in a bob, a straight fringe across her forehead. Moira lived a few hundred yards away down the main road to the village. When the partners had started up the forensic consultancy six months earlier, they were virtually camping out in the dusty old house, living out of packets and tins. Also, their laboratory technician, Sian Lloyd, couldn’t keep up with the typing of reports as well as doing her technical work, so it was a godsend when they found an efficient lady almost on their doorstep who could not only do some cooking and cleaning but keep on top of the office work.
Moira put her pie on a cork mat on the big table, another legacy from Richard’s aunt. Together with local carrots and peas, the two scientists tucked in hungrily, washing the food down with cider from a large flagon.
‘Aren’t you joining us, Moira?’ asked Angela, eyeing the apple tart that she was taking from the warming oven.
‘No, I had something at home earlier. But I’ll make some coffee and have one with you, so that you can tell me what you’ve been up to today.
‘By the way,’ she added. ‘There were a couple of messages today, nothing urgent. I’ve left a list on your desk, doctor. The only one that sounded interesting was a call from a firm of solicitors in Stow-on-the-Wold, who wanted to talk to you about giving them a medical opinion in a criminal case.’
‘Did they say what it was about?’ asked Angela.
‘No, but they left their number, and I promised that we would get back to them tomorrow. Perhaps it’s another murder!’
Like their technician Sian, Moira was very enthusiastic and partisan when it came to the work of the Garth House consultancy. They took a pride in being part of it and wanted to be involved as much as possible. The cases were often highly confidential, often being sub judice until cases came to court, but both employees had shown in the past months that they could be trusted to keep their mouths shut. Moira had been a secretary to a local solicitor and Sian had worked in a hospital laboratory, both jobs requiring strict attention to confidentiality.
Between the pie and the apple tart and then over coffee, the partners gave Moira the details of the unusual case in Breconshire that had occupied them for most of the day.
‘How extraordinary! A good start for your first Home Office call-out,’ she exclaimed. ‘Who on earth could have done such a thing?’
‘Our friend Dr Crippen seems set on blaming one of those up at the farm,’ said Richard, making Moira giggle over the poor detective’s name. ‘I suppose he’s right, as there are very few others to suspect in that lonely place.’
By the time they had helped their housekeeper to clear up the kitchen, it was getting late. Richard saw her to the bottom of the steep drive and watched her go down the road with her torch, keeping well into the hedge as there was no verge or pavement.
When he got back inside, Angela declared that she was going up to her room to listen to the wireless and read for a bit, before going to bed.
Accommodation had been something of a dilemma when they had first come to Garth House. Though there were plenty of rooms, there was only one bathroom. At first, Angela had stayed in a bed and breakfast in Tintern, but soon rebelled at the cost when there was a large house available. It belonged equally to both of them – or more accurately to the legal partnership that they had set up. When she left London, Angela had sold her flat and put the money into the firm, Richard contributing Garth House itself, a substantial Victorian dwelling with four acres of land. His aunt had died in a retirement home twelve months ago, her husband having passed away years before. She left her estate to her only nephew Richard, who used to stay with her when a boy and even when a medical student in Cardiff. This legacy coincided with the offer of a ‘golden handshake’ from his university post in Singapore. As he had been divorced not long before, there seemed nothing to keep him in the Far East, so he took the plunge and came home to Wales to set up in private practice with Angela.
The problem with the house was that even in these enlightened 1950s, it was a little daring for two unmarried people to live together in the same house. However, after a few nights in the B&B, Angela had declared that she had had enough and moved in with Richard.
It was a purely platonic relationship – she had a sitting room and a bedroom upstairs and he took another bedroom on the other side of the house. Downstairs was devoted to the business, each having a study, the other rooms being an office, a laboratory and staffroom, as well as the kitchen. The original problem was the single, old- fashioned bathroom, as his aunt had done nothing to improve the house for thirty years. However, in the intervening months a local jobbing builder had divided the cavernous bathroom in half, with two separate doors. This his-and- hers arrangement now worked very well, with a new modern bath in place of the cast-iron monstrosity in Angela’s half. Richard was content with a shower cabinet, so their problem was solved and they were happy to ignore any scandalized gossip in the village.
After seeing Moira off, Richard took the samples of blood and urine he had collected in Brecon and put them in the new refrigerator in the laboratory, for Sian to deal with the next day. Then he went back into his own office on the ground floor, opposite the staffroom. Here he had a desk, a workbench and a microscope, as well as shelves with all his medical textbooks and journals.
Next door was Moira’s office, the main features being a filing cabinet and a typewriter. A new communicating door went into the laboratory, a large front room with a wide bay window looking out on to the valley below. The house had two such windows, one each side of the central front door. The one on the other side was Angela’s study, with the same superb view of the woods and cliffs opposite.
Sitting at his desk, he drew a yellow legal pad towards him and began to write a draft report of his visit to Ty Croes Farm and the subsequent post-mortem in Brecon. In the morning, Moira would type it up for him, with a couple of carbon copies, so that he could send one to the Brecon coroner and the other to DI Crippen.
As he sat writing under his table lamp, Moira was sitting alone in her own house down the road. Her comfortable armchair was pulled up near the hearth, where a small fire was burning, as October evenings were becoming cool. Her Yorkshire terrier was asleep at her feet and a small glass of sherry stood on a table alongside her. An open copy of a Georgette Heyer novel lay on her lap, but she was not reading it, just staring at the flames flickering between the coals in the fire.
The thirty-year-old was thinking once again of the profound changes in her life that had taken place over the past couple of years. Happily married, three years earlier she had suddenly become a widow when her husband, an industrial chemist, had been killed in a factory accident in Lydney. Generous compensation and a modest pension had allowed her to live on comfortably in their house, but she found herself somehow aimless and lacking direction in her life.
Moira had not contemplated marrying again, though she was certainly attractive enough, as no one she knew remotely interested her. Then six months ago, a postcard advertisement in the village post office had spurred her to apply for a job as a part-time housekeeper with the new people who had just moved in to Garth House, virtually next door. It was the best move she could have made, as it jolted her out of her rut and she soon found the position fascinating. She had rapidly become an indispensable part of the ‘forensic family’.
Staring into the flames of her fire, she wondered yet again about the relationship of Richard Pryor and Angela Bray. Though they slept in the big house every night, she had never seen any sign of intimacy or affection between them, just a pleasant friendship. She knew the story of their meeting at a forensic conference eighteen months ago and their eventual decision to set up in partnership. Her main source of information had been Sian Lloyd, who seemed to know every bit of gossip. She and Sian had often discussed the nature of the relationship between their two employers, but they came to no conclusion. Sian, young romantic that she was, was inclined to think that they were secret lovers, but Moira felt that though the situation could one day go that way, at present Richard and Angela appeared to be in a purely professional relationship.
She sighed and took a sip of her sherry. A rather prim woman, it would be brash to suggest that she ‘fancied’ Richard Pryor, but certainly he was often in her thoughts. She had enjoyed marriage and missed all aspects of her former wedded state. Maybe it was time that she began to look around, she thought – taking this stimulating job had started to nudge her out of her previous apathy.
Her book forgotten, she stared into the fire and visualized Richard’s lean face and wiry body. He was quite
