Leonard, in intense but measured tones.
‘Don’t you call her a tart, damn you!’ howled Michael, then stopped dead, as he realized he had been tricked by the experienced advocate.
The Queen’s Counsel gave a cynical smile. ‘No use denying it now, Michael? Who is she?’
‘Mind your own damned business. If Linda and I did have a row, what’s that to you?’
‘As I’m her father, a great deal, blast you!’ rasped Massey, losing his temper for a moment. ‘She writes to her friend that you want a divorce and that you assaulted her, then within a couple of weeks, she ends up dead! Do you wonder that I feel that it’s my business?’
Prentice glowered at the barrister. ‘Are you accusing me of murder now, instead of assault? Good God, man, I could sue you for thousands for this!’
Massey looked around the room with exaggerated care.
‘Indeed? Where are the witnesses? I think you’ll be talking to people soon who have no fear of slander. I’m talking about the police, Michael.’
The younger man took a threatening step nearer Massey.
‘You wouldn’t dare, damn you! Your reputation would be ruined when the farce was exposed!’
The barrister did not flinch, but glared at his daughter’s husband with utter contempt. ‘It won’t be my decision, it’s up to the coroner. It’s his duty to report any suspicious circumstances to the CID. You’ll be getting a visit from them soon, I don’t doubt.’
He turned away and went to a table, where he picked up a cheque and handed it to the other man.
‘Meanwhile, we have to do the decent thing and see that my poor daughter is put to rest. The coroner will be calling you on Monday about a disposal order for burial, so this is for whatever funeral director you choose.’
Michael Prentice snatched the cheque and violently ripped it in half, dropping the pieces on the floor.
‘I don’t want your damned money, blast you! I can bury my own wife, thank you very much!’
He swung around, and went out, slamming the door behind him.
Massey stood for a moment looking down at the fragments of paper on the floor, then he took a diary from his breast pocket and looked up a telephone number. He went to the phone and asked for an outside line.
‘Is that Trevor Mitchell?… this is Leonard Massey.’
On Sunday, Richard Pryor spent much of the afternoon in his large plot behind the house. He was increasingly keen on starting a vineyard, in spite of Jimmy’s scathing remarks and with the help of a long tape measure, was pacing off a large patch about the size of two tennis courts.
In the house, Angela was standing in the window of one of the back bedrooms with a mug of coffee in her hand, watching him as he banged lengths of wood into the ground with a brick, making off the margins of his chosen area. She smiled, much as a mother would humour a child who wanted to build a spaceship in the garden.
‘Enjoy yourself, Richard, but it’ll never happen,’ she murmured. Probably by this time next year, he would be full of keeping turkeys or pigs there instead, or some other impulsive and equally impracticable scheme.
As she stood sipping her Nescafe, she idly tried to analyse her feelings towards him. It was a strange situation, she thought, living alone in a house with a man in a totally platonic relationship. Or was it all that platonic, she wondered?
Richard Pryor was an attractive fellow, with that frequent wry grin or a ready smile. He seemed free of any vices, never angry or sarcastic or mean-spirited. Impulsive, yes, and sometimes swinging between exuberance and depression, but his moods were like quicksilver, never lasting long. He sometimes needed pulling back from going down some irrelevant diversion, but on the whole, he was a really nice guy.
But what did she want with another really nice guy? The last one had left her in the lurch after four years’ apparent happiness, with an imminent walk up to the altar in view. No, she would try a bit of celibacy for a time, until something really special came along – and if it didn’t, well, she wasn’t going to risk another shaming debacle.
Looking out at Richard’s antics in the plot, she wondered what had gone wrong with his own love life. They had met at a forensic congress in Edinburgh last year and had hit it off from the first moment. Both recently crossed in love – or in his case, a bitter divorce – and she disgruntled with her employers, they had hatched this plan to set up in business together.
Angela mused over what might have gone wrong with his marriage. He had leaked out bits of information over the months, as he was much less secretive than she. Her private life was always played close to her chest, but he had told her that his wife Miriam had been playing the field with the limitless supply of men available in Singapore – the army officers and expatriate businessmen who abounded in the Singapore Swimming Club, the Golf Club and the famous hotels like Raffles.
Angela wondered if the fault had all been on Miriam’s side, but then decided that it was none of her business and that she should be glad that meeting him had led to her coming to live in this lovely valley in a job where she could be her own boss. Please God, let it succeed, she prayed to herself, as she finished her coffee and took one last look at a sweating Richard wielding his brick.
As she went downstairs to the kitchen with her empty mug, the phone started to ring again. Far from being irritated at a disturbed Sunday, she picked it up, knowing that it must be something to do with their business, as virtually no one else knew they were here.
It was Trevor Mitchell, another man she had taken to at first sight. A typical senior detective, he was impassive and dependable and though they had only met once, she liked him and trusted him, not like another senior detective who had let her down so badly.
‘What can we do for you, Mr Mitchell? Do you want to speak to Richard?’
‘Please call me Trevor, Doctor!’ he said. ‘And you’re in this bones job as much as him, so shall I tell you what I’ve found so far?’
She liked him even more for that, for not assuming that the male half of the partnership was the chief honcho.
‘Sure, Trevor, what’s new?’ she replied.
‘Remember those cryptic words on Albert Barnes’s medical notes? Well, I’ve tracked down the doctor that wrote them.’
‘That’s great!’ she enthused. ‘Who is he?
Mitchell explained that he had got John Christie to persuade the hospital to look up their staff records at the request of the coroner. The consultant mentioned in the notes had an SHO named Andrew Welton at the time of Barnes’s admission. By searching the Medical Register, he had found that he was currently a Senior Registrar in neurosurgery at Frenchay Hospital near Bristol.
‘Maybe Doctor Pryor could arrange to see him and take the notes, hoping that this chap would remember something about it?’
Angela promised to tell Richard and he would get back to him. ‘Anything else happening?’ she asked.
‘Yes, big stuff!’ replied Trevor enthusiastically. ‘A barrister called Massey rang me last night and said that Doctor Pryor had recommended me as an enquiry agent in a case he’s involved in. He’s going back from Swansea to London tomorrow and he’s breaking his journey at Newport to meet me and explain what it’s all about. All I know is that it’s an eternal triangle job.’
Angela gave a quick summary of the problem and their involvement, saying that Massey wanted to know more about this alleged ‘other woman’.
‘Well, it’s all grist to the mill – thank the doctor for mentioning me, I can see we’re going to be a good team!’
Angela told her partner about Trevor’s call, when he came in from his vineyard planning. ‘Would it be best if I went to see this chap in Frenchay or could I just ring him up?’ he asked.
‘I think you’ll have to see him, you could be anyone on the phone,’ she advised. ‘Maybe you ought to get a note from the coroner, as it concerns a patient’s confidential record, even if he is dead.’
‘Especially if he isn’t!’ added Richard, cynically.
Monday took Pryor to the large Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, about fifteen miles away, where he was pleased to have the coroner’s work for the next fortnight while the resident pathologist was on holiday in Spain. It was a change to have a proper hospital mortuary to work in, rather than skulk in council yards or under boarded-up arches. There were three cases there that morning and after he had gone home and enjoyed another of Moira’s
