Where Death Delights

Pryor. There was an X-ray viewing box screwed to the wall and he held the four large films in front of the light.

‘A right femur and tibia, AP and lateral. Is that OK?’ he asked the radiographer.

She nodded and busily set about connecting up her set to a power socket, while he separated the appropriate bones from the collection on the slab. The mortuary attendant brought a small wooden table over, on which the lady put a large metal cassette containing the first blank film, with a clean towel over the top.

Pryor laid the first bone on it in the position he wanted and the radiographer swivelled the X-ray tube directly above it.

‘Right, everybody out!’ she commanded and the room was cleared to avoid stray radiation. She retreated to the doorway with a long wire in her hand and pressed a button. There was a whirring sound and she walked back to retrieve the cassette. Richard repeated this for another three exposures and when they were finished, the radiographer went off to develop the films, promising to return them in about half an hour. The mortuary man promised to trundle her machine back to the X-ray department and Richard, Angela and Christie had to sit in the cramped office, swapping stories of past cases to fill the time.

Eventually, the woman came back, carrying the developed films on metal hangers.

‘They’re still wet, but I thought you might like a quick look,’ she offered. ‘One of the radiologists will see them later and send you a report.’

Richard took one of the hangers and held it in front of the illuminated viewing box, then put up the corresponding film from Barnes’s records. He did this for each of the four views before saying anything.

‘That clinches it! Those bones are quite different.’

‘Show me why you can say that,’ demanded Angela and with Christie looking over her shoulder, Pryor shifted one of the old films across under the clips on the box, so that he could hold the corresponding damp one to the side of it.

‘Look, a different length to the thigh bone, to start with. But the internal structure is different, especially up here towards the hip joint.’

‘You mean that lacy-looking stuff, radiating up to the femoral head?’ asked Angela, her biology expertise extending to quite a bit of anatomy.

‘That’s it, they’re mechanical struts responding to weight bearing. I know they can change with age and injury, but in a man in his forties, there’s no way they could alter this much in a few years.’

He showed similar differences to them in the other views and then told John Christie that he could confirm to the coroner that the remains were not those of Albert Barnes.

‘I’ll send him a written report as soon as we can get the blood groups done. Any joy with finding what Barnes’s blood group was?’

For reply, Christie opened the folder he was carrying and produced a sheet of paper. ‘I copied this from the pathology lab records. For some reason, the report form wasn’t stuck into his ward notes.’

Richard took the sheet and looked at it, then handed it to Angela.

‘“Albert John Barnes – Group A, Rhesus Positive”,’ she quoted. ‘Well, that’s the second most common in Britain. Thank heaven the bones were more unique.’

By later that day, Angela had determined that the remains were Group O Rhesus Positive, the first most common. Though Richard had had little doubt that the bones were not those of Albert, it was nice to have further cast-iron confirmation to give the coroner and Edward Lethbridge.

He phoned Brian Meredith at the end of the afternoon and told him of the findings. The coroner was not very enthusiastic about the news, but accepted the truth stoically.

‘Now I’ve got to tell the wife and reopen the inquest. She’ll make a bloody fuss, no doubt, but I’ll get John Christie to have a word in her ear about giving misleading evidence, as she must have known that the ring and the watch didn’t belong to her husband.’

‘What about Albert’s death certificate?’ asked Pryor, out of curiosity. ‘For all we know, he might be living in Birmingham with a fancy woman. He may not know that he’s supposed to be dead!’

He could hear Meredith’s sigh over the phone. ‘It’ll be a bureaucratic nightmare, getting that annulled. I had a clerical error once before that gave the wrong name and it took weeks for the Registrar and Somerset House in London to sort it out!’

With the coroner’s permission, he next rang the solicitor in Lydney to tell him of the result and again he was not as overjoyed as Richard might have expected.

‘Mrs Oldfield will get straight on the warpath now!’ he forecast. ‘She’ll strain every nerve to prove that those remains are of her precious nephew. I expect she’ll want me to carry on retaining you and Mr Mitchell to pitch in with the investigation.’

Even the prospect of a further fee was not all that attract-ive to Richard, if it meant running around at the behest of that autocratic old woman.

‘I can’t see where we could even begin, given that we don’t have any physical details of this Anthony Oldfield,’ he protested. ‘If anyone can chase it up, it must be Trevor Mitchell. Perhaps he can somehow trace the chap’s movements after he left home.’

‘I’ll see what he has to say, but if she really wants you for some medical advice, can I say you’ll do it, Doctor?’

Rather reluctantly, Richard agreed, though he could see no reason for the offer to be taken up. He went to bring Angela up to date and then went to write a report on the ‘man who never was’, as Albert Barnes came to be known in Garth House!

TWELVE

When Michael Prentice arrived home from his office that evening, he had to squeeze his Jaguar past Daphne’s blue Morris Minor which was parked near the top of the drive. It was normally hidden in the garage, so as not to attract too much attention from nosy neighbours so soon after his wife’s death, so he wondered where his mistress had been. Inside the front door, he found the answer in the shape of two large suitcases left in the hall – Daphne had not been anywhere, she was going!

He marched into the lounge and saw her standing in the window, dressed in a cream shirt-dress with a wide flared skirt, a perky hat on her bottle-blonde hair.

‘Where the hell are you going?’ he demanded, the fuse already lit on his short temper.

‘I’m going back to Porthcawl for the time being,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t want to get mixed up in anything.’

‘Mixed up in what?’ he demanded, angrily stepping towards her. She backed away a little and pointed to the telephone on a side table.

‘Those police again! They rang this afternoon to say that they are coming at nine tomorrow morning to make a forensic examination of the house. What’s going on, Michael?’

He marched over to a drinks cabinet and poured himself a double measure of whiskey.

‘Nothing’s going on! It’s that bloody man Massey, stirring up trouble for me. You know how he hates me, I would never have married his damned daughter if I knew he would be like this.’

He tossed back half the drink, without offering one to the woman.

‘You haven’t done anything silly, have you, Mike?’ she asked accusingly. ‘I’m not hanging about here if your troubles are going to involve me.’

He glared at her angrily. ‘Anything silly? What the hell do you mean? Of course I haven’t, you stupid bitch.’

Her face tightened and she stalked to the door, pushing him aside as he moved towards her.

‘If that’s what you think of me, I’m going. Probably for good!’

He stood aside sullenly and watched her go into the hall and open the front door.

‘Are you going to carry my cases out or do I have to do it myself?’ she demanded.

‘There’s no need for you to go at all,’ he said, but he was making a statement, not pleading. ‘Though if those coppers are coming to nose about, it might be just as well if you’re not here at the time. I’ll give you a ring when things have settled down.’

‘I just hope they do, Michael, for both our sakes,’ she said flatly and went to sit in her car while he put the cases on the back seat. A moment later, she had driven off without a backward glance, leaving him to close the