notebook.
Trevor peered over Richard’s shoulder. ‘It says ‘
‘
The pathologist shrugged. ‘Search me, it’s no medical term I’ve ever heard of. The doctor who examined him, whoever he was, has just written it down at the end of his external examination, before he goes on to say that the heart and lungs seem normal.’
‘Could it be of any use to us?’ asked Mitchell.
‘Until we know what it means, there’s no way of telling. It might be worth asking the chap who wrote this, what he meant by it.’
Angela looked at the date on the notes. ‘It’s seven years ago. That doctor might have drained his brain to Canada or Australia by now.’
‘Was his name on the original notes?’ asked Richard.
Trevor shook his head. ‘No, only the name of the consultant who he was admitted under that day.’
Pryor slapped his fingers on the edge of the table. ‘That’s good enough! The hospital staff records will show who worked for that consultant at that time. It would have been a house officer or a senior house officer admitting patients on surgical intake. We could track him down through the
‘A lot of effort for two little words which may mean nothing useful,’ said Angela dubiously.
Trevor drank his tea and got up to leave. ‘Next time I’m near Hereford, I’ll call in and make some enquiries. Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ he added, philosophically. ‘When I was in the CID, we sometimes got a result from snippets just as unlikely as
After their meal that evening, Richard and Angela brought a couple of chairs from the office and sat on the tiled area outside the front porch, between the two bay windows. It was a glorious evening, the setting sun lighting the opposite side of the valley, making the dense woods glow in different shades of green. He had unearthed a bottle of Gordon’s gin from one of the boxes in his room and with some tonic water that Moira had thoughtfully added to the shopping list, they spent a peaceful hour relaxing.
The woman stretched out her legs luxuriously.
‘Quite a change from my flat in New Cross, with the fog coming up from the river and the noise of the traffic outside.’
‘I though you lived in posh Blackheath,’ observed Richard, lazily.
‘The estate agents always called it that, but really it was New Cross,’ she admitted. ‘But this is much nicer!’
The sat and sipped their gin for a time, watched the shadows change beyond the Wye as the sun slipped down.
‘People would take us for an old married couple,’ said Richard grinning at his partner.
Angela glared at him. ‘Don’t get any ideas, my lad!’ she growled. ‘We’re just business partners, remember?’
Her feelings towards him were ambivalent, she realized. Richard was an attractive enough fellow, in a lean and wiry sort of way. He was clever, honest as far as she knew and generous, but was given to swings of mood that were so unlike her steady temperament that she doubted she could put up with him in anything other than an arm’s length relationship. At the same time, she felt herself illogically irritated by the hero-worship attitude of Sian towards him – and even after only a few day’s acquaintance, the respectful and admiring manner of Moira Davison.
‘Right, tell me about today, we’ve not had a chance until now,’ she commanded.
Pryor described the strange mortuary in Swansea and the people he had met there, then summarized what he had found.
‘No doubt at all that she had drowned, it was just as obvious as that chap dragged out of the Wye at Chepstow,’ he said. ‘But I’m a bit concerned about some of the injuries on the body. I realize she was being bashed about on the rocks, but I need to know how old some of those bruises were. They certainly weren’t all fresh.’
‘Because of this story that the dead woman’s friend told to her father?’ asked Angela.
‘Yes, she reckoned that the daughter claimed that her husband was being violent because she wouldn’t agree to a divorce.’
Angela sipped her drink slowly as she pondered.
‘What are you going to tell Massey?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got to be cautious, I don’t want him rushing around yelling “murder” until I’ve had a chance to look at those injuries under the microscope.’
‘The funeral has been postponed once already. Can they hang on to the body even longer?’
‘That’s up to the coroner. If it does turn out to be suspicious, then I don’t see how he can allow it to be buried – certainly not cremated, as was the family’s intention.’
‘But there’s been a second post-mortem. Won’t that do as defence autopsy?’
‘No, because I’m acting for the father, who’s in the position of a complainant. If the husband was ever charged, then his defence lawyers would almost certainly want another opinion of their own, to counter mine.’
‘We’d better get it right then, laddie!’ said his partner, sagely. ‘When are you going to tell the father what’s going on?’
‘I hope Sian can manage some decent histology, but that will take a few days. I’ll have to say something to him before then, I’d better ring him tomorrow.’
They sat for a while longer, then Angela decided it was getting cooler as the sun went down. She stood up and collected the glasses, while Richard took the chairs back inside.
‘I forgot to tell, you, the coroner’s officer in Newport rang, he wanted to know if you could cover there from next week, as their chap is going on holiday. Sounds as if your pal Brian Meredith has been talking on the grapevine again.’
‘Newport? Should be quite a few cases there. Perhaps we’ll be able to afford another bottle of gin after all, partner!’
Next morning, Pryor had one routine post-mortem in Chepstow, but by mid-morning was back at Garth House, where Angela was busy with her paternity tests, checking blood groups of the mother and child against the putative father, who had denied that the child was his and therefore had no obligation to finance its upbringing. Sian was assembling her histology equipment, ready for Monday, when the tissues that Pryor had taken would be sufficiently fixed in formaldehyde for her to process them for examination under his new microscope. Unlike the big hospital laboratories, which were beginning to get the new automated processing machines, she would have to do it by hand, placing the tissues in jars of varying grades of alcohol and then xylene until they could be embedded in paraffin wax, ready for cutting into diaphanous slices, ready for staining.
Richard looked in briefly on this earnest labour, then backed out and went to the telephone, where he placed a trunk call to Leonard Massey’s chambers in London. Fortunately, the barrister was available to talk to him, as he had cancelled many of his commitments, due to this family tragedy. Carefully, Pryor summarized his post-mortem findings at Linda’s autopsy, emphasizing that these were provisional conclusions and would have to be further investigated over the next few days, possibly a week.
‘But you feel that some of these injuries were made before death, not in the sea?’ demanded Massey, well- used to interrogating witnesses.
‘Yes, but I don’t know yet how long before death – and I may never be at all accurate,’ answered Richard, cautiously.
‘This last letter that my daughter wrote to her friend Marjorie, was about ten days before she disappeared. Could they be that old?’
‘It’s possible. They would be unrelated to the events surrounding her death, so perhaps made during an assault. I can’t be more specific at this stage – and as I say, dating injuries is notoriously inaccurate.’
There was a silence over the miles of phone line between them, but Richard could sense the wheels going round in Massey’s head.
‘So where does that leave us, Doctor?’ he asked eventually. ‘What am I to say to the coroner and the police?’
‘I need at least a few days to check on these wounds. I’m afraid that these laboratory investigations inevitably
