Royal Gwent.’ Sian was referring to the devices used to cut slices a few thousandths of an inch thick, gadgets like mini bacon slicers, which passed the paraffin-wax blocks containing tissue against the edge of a blade like a cut- throat razor.
‘They’re great, Sian, now I can spend a happy hour looking at your handiwork!’
She took the hint and almost skipped out of his room in satisfaction. Pryor sat for a long while on his stool, eye glued to the eyepiece of the microscope, except when he changed slides and once when he got up to take a thick textbook from a shelf. Then he sat back and stared out of the window for a while, gazing unseeingly at the trees above Moira’s house further down the valley. When he finally moved, he drew a lined pad towards him and began writing a supplementary report.
By that afternoon, two conferences with different coroners had been arranged, each requiring Pryor’s presence. Phone calls between the solicitor in Lydney and Trevor Mitchell had resulted in the first appointment being made with Brian Meredith for the following morning.
‘You’d better come with me, Angela. I may need some biology expertise, as well as your moral support!’ said Richard as they were having their mid-afternoon tea.
She nodded and, with a grimace, stretched her legs out from the chair.
‘It would be nice to get out for a change, after sitting doing all that blood grouping. You get all the fun, Richard, going to all those glamorous mortuaries.’
‘Fun? Abattoirs have more glamour than those awful places I have to work in.’
Moira and Sian had taken to joining them in the staff lounge – in fact, it was Moira who now made all the tea and coffee. ‘I’ll have that extra report typed up for you to sign in an hour, then I can get it in the post tonight,’ she promised.
Sian, itching to know whether her efforts with the tissue sections had proved useful, asked Richard to explain.
‘I saw the report on Moira’s desk,’ she admitted. ‘What’s it actually mean?’
‘The bruises were of different ages,’ he replied. ‘That was obvious to the naked eye from the colour, as fresh ones are blue or purple, but the haemoglobin decays after a time and then they turn green and yellow.’
‘My grandmother could have told you that!’ said Angela, softening the sarcasm with a grin.
‘Sure, but she couldn’t put a date on them,’ he countered. ‘Neither can I for that matter, except in very approximate terms, as different people react differently, as well as there being other factors.’
‘So what use was my histology?’ persisted Sian.
‘In a fresh bruise only red blood cells have leaked out from the damaged blood vessels, but soon white blood cells start accumulating to start the clear-up and healing process and their type changes with time.’
‘Why did you ask me to do a Perl’s stain on them? That’s to show iron, isn’t it?’
Pryor nodded, he liked to teach others the mystique of his profession, which was why he was happy to have been given those medical student lectures in Bristol.
‘The haemoglobin in the red cells gets broken down and the contained iron is set free, so that it shows up in a Perl’s stain as blue specks. That doesn’t happen for a day or two, usually longer. So if it’s Perl’s-positive, then the person must have lived for at least that length of time after the injury.’
Sian nodded her understanding.
‘That means she couldn’t have sustained the bruises knocking around against the rocks, because she was dead too soon afterwards?’
‘That’s it, my girl! Trouble is, I can’t put a definite date on them, apart from some which are undoubtedly fresh. Whether they go back a week or so, to when she was supposed to have had this punch-up with her husband, is hard to tell.’
Moira listened to this with fascination. After years of humdrum life in a local solicitor’s office, typing letters about house conveyancing, divorces and motor claims, this erudite talk of blood, bruises and suspected homicide brought home to her how a week or two had changed her outlook on life. Richard had taken her aside early on and tactfully emphasized that everything she heard in Garth House must be kept strictly confidential, as some might be sub judice, though he softened the warning by saying that he was sure that she already appreciated that, after having worked in a lawyer’s office.
He had given the same homily to Sian, soon after she started with them and he had every confidence that these two sensible women would keep their mouths shut outside working hours.
The other conference was set up after he had telephoned Massey to give him a cautious interpretation of his examination of the bruises, telling him much the same as he had explained to Sian. Within an hour, he had had a call back from the Gowerton coroner’s officer, asking him to attend a conference with the coroner on Friday, to determine exactly what the significance of his findings were.
Richard realized that this coroner was treading very carefully in such a sensitive matter. Leonard Massey must have phoned him straight after speaking to Pryor about the bruises and Richard hoped that he had not painted too strong a picture.
Next morning, a bright but breezy Thursday, he drove up to Monmouth, with Angela sitting in the passenger seat, revelling in the sunlit appearance of the valley as they followed the winding river through meadows and woods. Richard thought she looked very elegant today. Around Garth House, she normally wore a blouse and slacks under her laboratory coat, but for this professional meeting she had on a light grey suit with a narrow waist and long slim skirt. Angela was keen on the fashions of the day, being an avid student of
Brian Meredith’s partner was taking morning surgery for him, as the coroner had put aside the morning for a short inquest, followed by this meeting. They met in the empty magistrates’ court where he had just held his inquest. It was housed in the historic Shire Hall, which bore a statue of locally born King Henry V on its front, but the court itself was a gloomy chamber lined with sombre wood panelling. There were two pews for lawyers and benches at the back for the public, all set below a raised bench for the Justices of the Peace, dominated by a large plaster Royal Coat of Arms.
This morning, the participants sat in the well of the court, around a large oak table normally used by the clerk of the court and a shorthand writer.
The coroner claimed the clerk’s chair in the centre, the others present being the pair from Garth House as well as Edward Lethbridge, Trevor Mitchell and rather to Richard’s surprise, Dr Bogdan Marek, the pathologist from Hereford. Pryor was half-expecting to see the old battleaxe Mrs Oldfield there, but presumably her solicitor had managed to keep her out of the proceedings – neither was there any sign of Molly Barnes.
PC John Christie hovered in the background as Meredith cleared his throat and began by welcoming the gathered participants.
‘This is an informal meeting, not an inquest. In fact I did not actually call this gathering. I am responding to a request by Mr Lethbridge here, so I think he should explain the position.’
The solicitor made a performance of changing his spectacles for a different pair, then produced some papers from his old briefcase and shuffled them about on the table before speaking.
‘Thank you, Coroner. As you say, I have asked for this meeting with you, to put forward some new facts which I hope will persuade you to reopen your inquest on the human remains found on May the twelfth at Glasfryn Reservoir. I was not involved at that time, but it is a matter of record that you returned an open verdict and declared the remains to be that of Albert Barnes, aged forty-five, resident in Ledbury.’
Richard suppressed a sigh, as Lethbridge droned on, making a meal of facts about which everyone present were already well aware.
Dr Meredith nodded his chubby head. ‘I did indeed, the identification was made by Mrs Molly Barnes, who declared that the remains were those of her husband.’
Apologetically, the solicitor hesitantly ventured to disagree with the coroner.
‘In actual fact, sir, she did not identify the remains themselves, which she never saw. She claimed to have identified his watch and his wedding ring.’
Dr Meredith nodded in agreement.
‘That is so, but in view of the strongly positive manner in which she said that those items of property belonged to Albert Barnes and in absence of any other evidence to the contrary, I felt it justified to accept what she claimed
