Where Death Delights

‘Yes, I’m sure you were desperate enough,’ said Ben Evans, cynically. ‘So tell us the next part of this unlikely story.’

‘It’s not unlikely at all!’ cried Michael, with another flash of anger. ‘I brought her into the house and laid her on that settee.’ He pointed dramatically at a velvet-covered sofa against the opposite wall. ‘I fact, you can still see the dried stain where she leaked sea water from her mouth over the cushion.’

Neither officer took him up on his invitation to examine it, though Lewis made a note in his book.

‘I sat shivering and confused, then had a stiff drink and thought about what I should do.’

‘What you should have done was to run to the phone and call a doctor, ambulance and the police,’ said Evans, sardonically.

‘So how did the poor woman get back into the sea?’ added Lewis Lewis.

Prentice took a deep breath and then sighed. ‘I took her there in the car, of course. I must have sat thinking for a couple of hours, too afraid to call anyone.’

‘And why was that?’ demanded the superintendent.

‘She had left a note saying it was all my fault and then gone and killed herself. How would I look when all that came out? She would be just as dead if it was thought to be an accident.’

‘So it was your callous need to protect your good name?’ snapped Evans.

‘And her reputation and the feelings of her family. It avoided the stigma of suicide, and having that note read out at an inquest. It might just as well be called an accident, a swim which went tragically wrong.’

‘From what I’ve heard, the feelings of her family, especially her father, weren’t very high in your list of priorities!’ retorted the detective.

‘It seemed the best solution at the time,’ muttered Prentice, sullenly.

‘So what was the next act in this remarkable drama?’ demanded Ben Evans.

‘It must have been gone midnight before I made up my mind what to do,’ muttered Prentice. ‘I wrapped her in a blanket and put her in the boot of the Jaguar. There was no one about, so I drove down towards Pwlldu and stopped where that bloody oil must have leaked out.’

‘Then you just carted your dead wife down the path and chucked her into the sea,’ said Evans harshly.

‘Why go to all that trouble?’ asked Lewis. ‘She was already in the water back nearer the house. One bit of sea is much the same as another, if you want to drown.’

Michael swung his head from side to side, as if he was a bull being baited by dogs.

‘I don’t know, I just don’t know!’ he groaned. ‘I had brought her up to the house on impulse, it seemed the right thing to bring her home, not leave her almost naked on that lonely beach. Then when I decided to put her back in the water, I thought that deeper water near the headland might take her out to sea.’

‘Oh, charming! You wanted to save yourself the cost of a funeral, did you?’ snapped the superintendent.

‘What difference would it make, if you were fabricating an accident?’ contributed Lewis.

Michael Prentice grabbed at his hair with both hands.

‘I don’t know, I tell you!’ he shouted. ‘I can hardly remember that awful night, I came back here and drank half a bottle of whisky!’

‘So what about your wife’s dressing gown – the one found under a bush?’ asked Evans, remorselessly.

‘I don’t even remember seeing it that evening,’ grated the husband. ‘It was found where it should have been, I suppose. I don’t know where she usually left it while she was in the water.’

Evans looked at his inspector, who closed his notebook.

Then he turned back to Michael, who was still sitting on the edge of the chair, staring at the carpet.

‘Mr Prentice, we’re going to take you back to the police station in Gowerton now, where for a start, you’ll be formally charged with obstructing Her Majesty’s coroner in the pursuance of his duties. Other charges may follow in due course.’

Michael Prentice rose slowly to his feet, his face drained of all colour. ‘I want to telephone my solicitor,’ he said dully.

‘You’d better do that from here, and ask him to arrange representation for you at Gowerton as soon as possible. You won’t be going home tonight, I can assure you, so you’d better collect a few things in a bag now.’

He nodded at Lewis to accompany the man to his bedroom, in case he either tried to make a run for it or even cut his wrists.

As the inspector passed his boss on the way out of the room, he murmured ‘You still owe me twenty Gold Flake.’

SEVENTEEN

A couple of days later, Trevor Mitchell called at Garth House, perhaps not altogether accidentally at the time of their afternoon tea break. He sat with the team in the staff room and brought several items of news.

‘The first thing will probably make you groan,’ he said, as he accepted a McVities Digestive from the biscuit tin.

‘I’ve tracked down Anthony Oldfield’s blood group at last.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Angela, with a sigh. ‘He was A-Positive?’

The private detective nodded. ‘Murphy’s Law, I suppose, though it is very common.’

‘How did you find out?’ asked Moira.

‘The obvious way, I suppose. Mrs Oldfield couldn’t find a donor card in the stuff her nephew left behind in the house, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he had never given blood.’

‘So you went to the BTS records,’ suggested Angela. ‘Would they give you confidential medical information?’

‘I got a letter from Edward Lethbridge explaining the problem and one from Mrs Oldfield giving her consent as next of kin. As some people have it engraved on a bracelet or tattooed on their arm, it’s not all that confidential, anyway. The problem was that there are quite a number of Blood Transfusion Service centres and each keeps it own records, unless the groups are very rare and needed for making antisera.’

‘And you struck lucky – or unlucky, depending on how you look at it!’ said Richard.

‘Yes, after a few false starts, I tried the Bristol centre, who turned up a record of Anthony Cyril Oldfield who was a single-time donor back in 1947.’

There was a thoughtful silence as they digested the implications.

‘There’s nothing more we can do about it,’ said Angela eventually. ‘The coroner isn’t going to get very excited about a marker that exists in about thirty-five per cent of the British population.’

Trevor’s broad face creased into a grin. ‘And who’s going to convince Agnes Oldfield of that?’ he asked.

‘But while you’re worrying about that, I’ve got a bit more news. Have you seen this morning’s Western Mail?’

Moira lifted a folded copy from the chair beside her.

‘I’ve only looked at the headlines so far – why?’

Trevor leaned back on his chair, his bulk making it creak.

‘Inside, you’ll see a short report of a hearing yesterday at Gowerton Magistrates’ Court. “Swansea Industrialist remanded on charges of obstructing the coroner”, but there are no details worth talking about.’

Richard leaned forward, intensely interested.

‘What’s it all about, Trevor? They haven’t charged him with murder, have they?’

The former police officer shook his head. ‘I rang Ben Evans, I’ve known him for years. He gave me the bare bones of it, there’ll be a lot more to come.’

Mitchell passed on what the Gowerton superintendent had told him, that Prentice had claimed that his wife had killed herself and that he had suppressed the suicide note to make it look like an accident.

‘Then he dropped her back in the sea at a different place! Ben doesn’t believe a word he said, but the lawyers are going to have a field day with this.’