Where Death Delights

went down to the rocks a couple of hundred feet below.

‘That’s Pwlldu Head further on,’ said the local man, pointing to a blunt promontory beyond the dip.

He led them cautiously down another even more difficult path to a similar ledge above the waves and pointed out the place where the body had been seen in the water.

‘Up against the back end of that narrow crack, it was,’ he told them.

Ben Evans nodded. ‘You reckon it could have washed along from where we were just now?’

The constable had no doubts about it. ‘Twelve years I’ve been here, sir, I’ve seen many accidents in that time. They can end up anywhere from anywhere – as far as Porthcawl or even right up-channel. Sometimes, we never find them, they get pulled back out to sea.’

There was nothing else to look at, so they grunted and puffed their way back to the top. Once on the track again the group stood for a breather and a smoke, the photographer and the two DCs hoping that the search was over and that they could make for home.

The superintendent stood, deep in thought.

With absolutely nothing found, he failed to see that this case was going anywhere. Though he instinctively disliked Michael Prentice for an arrogant womanizer, that was no reason to accuse him of murder – and there was very poor evidence to even consider charging him with assaulting his late wife. He stood rubbing the bristles on his chin and staring at the ground, then realized that his eyes were actually focused on something.

Ben nudged his inspector and pointed to the ground near his feet. ‘Reckon this is recent, Lewis?’

He squatted down and peered more closely at a dark stain on the grey limestone on the edge of the track. Just where the uneven surface gave way to thin grass was a smear of jet black, about six inches long and half as wide. In the middle, a jagged spike of stone poked up through it, the top clean and almost white.

Lewis Lewis crouched down and delicately touched the black stain.

‘It’s obviously engine oil. Somebody’s stopped here and some has dripped from their sump.’

‘Looks as if they’ve run the sump over the top of that rock. That’s a fairly fresh scrape on it.’

Evans motioned to the photographer to unpack his kit again and get a couple of close-ups of the oil patch. Then he told the detective constable who was acting as Exhibits Officer to take a sample from it. The DC took a small screw-top glass pot from his case, the type used in hospital laboratories. With a clean wooden spatula, he carefully scraped off as much of the black smear as possible and put it inside, labelling it and attaching a brown cardboard exhibits ticket, which he signed after the place, date and time.

‘Could be anyone, guv,’ cautioned Lewis.

‘Any port in a storm, lad,’ replied Evans. ‘We’ve got bee-all else. But let’s go back to the house, before our golfer gets home.’

They retraced their steps to Bella Capri and Evans led them to the side of the house, in front of the garage.

‘We left the keys inside,’ pointed out Lewis.

Evans shook his bull-like head. ‘Doesn’t matter, he was leaving his car out here, while his floozie’s was in the garage.’

He looked at the concrete hardstanding outside the garage and saw with satisfaction that a much longer black stain disfigured the ground.

‘We’ll have a bit of that, too,’ he told the exhibits man and the DC repeated his operation, harvesting another sample in a different bottle.

Somewhat mystified, the party broke up, the others going off in the van and Evans driving away with Lewis in the Vauxhall. As they crossed Fairwood Common on the way back to Gowerton, the superintendent gave some instructions to Lewis.

‘I want you to go back to that factory of his while Prentice is not there and speak again to that chap you saw. He seems to know all about the technology that’s going on.’

He gave his inspector some more detailed instructions and when they reached the police station, he turned the car over to Lewis to make the journey into Swansea.

THIRTEEN

As Edward Lethbridge had gloomily anticipated, Agnes Oldfield was cock-a-hoop, as soon as she had the news that Molly Barnes’s claim had been demolished by the exhumation. She insisted on a meeting with both her solicitor and Trevor Mitchell, so the lawyer thought it wise to invite Richard Pryor along as well, partly in order to deflect the inevitable demands concerning her own claim.

They arranged to meet at his office in Lydney on that Wednesday afternoon and the three men were already there when she arrived. As they rose, she swept in through the door opened by a secretary and imperiously took her seat alongside the desk. Richard, a keen cinema-goer, was reminded of Dame Edith Evans’s portrayal of Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of being Earnest, as she wore a long black coat and an ornate hat. As it was raining outside, she also had a thin umbrella, upon which she rested a gloved hand, as she sat ramrod straight on her chair.

‘Well, I told you it was Anthony!’ she began without any preamble. ‘I knew from the start that the Barnes woman was an impostor.’

As she had never laid eyes on the woman, Richard wondered how she knew that, but he kept his peace.

It was Lethbridge’s task to try to put the brakes on Agnes Oldfield’s certitude.

‘Madam, we have only managed to prove that the remains were not those of Albert Barnes,’ he said rather nervously. ‘It does not advance us one inch in establishing that they are those of your nephew.’

She glared at the solicitor. ‘Of course it must be Anthony. Now we must prove it!’

‘That’s what we’ve been trying to do for over a year, Mrs Oldfield,’ said Lethbridge, in gentle exasperation. ‘We have spent a lot of time – and I may add, you have spent a lot of money – in trying to trace your nephew, with no success whatsoever.’

‘But now it’s different,’ she said triumphantly. ‘You have had the actual remains to examine by a specialist.’

She gave Pryor a regal wave and a fleeting smile.

Richard felt he should make some contribution to help out poor old Edward.

‘Yes, Mrs Oldfield, but unless we can discover some unique characteristic in your relative that can be matched to the bones, we are no further forward.’

‘Such as what?’ she demanded.

‘Did he have any old injuries, for example? Had he been in hospital for anything?’

As he said it, he knew he was being false, because there was no sign of any old injuries or disease in the remains that could be matched to anything. In fact, if the missing Anthony had had any such features, it would exclude him from being the body at the reservoir.

The old lady pondered for a moment. ‘I just don’t know, Professor! You see, until the last year or so, my nephew was often abroad. For all I know, he might have broken a leg in the Alps or caught beriberi in Africa!’

She looked across at Trevor Mitchell, who was trying to keep as quiet as possible.

‘Mr Mitchell should be able to help. He can find out from various hospitals and perhaps embassies overseas, if Anthony was ever treated there.’

The ex-detective groaned inwardly, trying to imagine himself touring the clinics of Europe and the consulates of far-flung countries.

‘I’m not sure that’s really feasible, madam,’ he pleaded.

Agnes turned her attention back to Richard Pryor.

‘I was told that one of the ways in which you destroyed that woman’s claim was by means of blood groups? Surely that would give you the answer?’

Richard took a deep breath. ‘I’m afraid it’s a slim hope. The blood group of the remains was the second most common in Britain. Out of interest, do you happen to know your nephew’s blood group?’

Mrs Oldfield looked severely at the pathologist.

‘Indeed I do not concern myself with such matters! But there must be some way of discovering it.’