Moira and Sian were agog with excitement at this first major case they had become involved with and their housekeeper hurried to open her newspaper and find the report. The headline on the second page was prominent, but the actual content was notable only for its brevity.
‘It says he was released on bail until the next appearance in two weeks’ time,’ announced Moira in a somewhat disappointed voice. ‘I thought he would have been locked up until the trial.’
‘So did Ben Evans,’ agreed Trevor. ‘Prentice must have a pretty persuasive solicitor. The father-in-law will be spitting tacks at the fact that Prentice wasn’t held on remand.’
‘I suppose obstructing the coroner isn’t exactly a capital offence,’ observed Angela. ‘Richard, you’ll be called as a witness for the prosecution in this case, as it was you who confirmed the bruises. They are bound to go into that aspect.’
Trevor nodded his agreement. ‘No doubt about it. I expect Ben Evans will be in touch with you soon, the prosecution will probably have a conference, before the full preliminary proceedings.’
‘I wonder if the defence will want their own autopsy?’ said Pryor. ‘That would be the third, but they’re still entitled to one.’
Later that afternoon in the front laboratory, Sian was still excited about the increase in their workload.
‘We’ve had a mass of stuff from Doctor Pryor’s fortnight in Newport, as well as the Chepstow and Monmouth cases. I’ll have to start a proper filing system for these microscope slides and tissue blocks. And now we’ve had two murders in the same week!’
Angela smiled at her enthusiasm. ‘Hold on, we don’t know what the Swansea case is going to turn out to be. The chap is only charged with a technical offence, not the violence.’
She relented when she saw that her technician looked a little crestfallen. ‘But the Gloucester one is real gangster-style – and with the Gower body, you played an important part in making such nice sections for Richard to base his opinion on concerning those bruises.’
This cheered Sian up and she went off to her microtome humming happily. The mention of the shooting the other night brought back to Angela the image of Paul Vickers marching unexpectedly into the mortuary. Though she had firmly closed the door on that unpleasant episode, she was often depressed about the fact that life was passing her by when it came to romance – and yes, to her sex life, or rather lack of it.
The years were passing all too quickly and she wasn’t getting any younger. Though she had no burning desire to jump into marriage and motherhood, she missed the social life she had with Paul, even though he turned out to be a rat. She determined to get about more, maybe join a golf club or go riding or do something to meet people. Yet she was enjoying this relaxed life in the Wye Valley and it would be an effort to start ‘putting herself about’ more. With a sigh, she rolled her laboratory stool nearer the bench and got down to more paternity tests, her trade having increased as the reputation of Garth House spread ever more widely.
Trevor Mitchell was right when he forecast that Richard would be required at a conference about Linda Prentice’s death. Ben Evans phoned him the next day and more or less repeated what Trevor had revealed.
‘You’ll learn all the details next week, Doc,’ said the superintendent. ‘The prosecuting solicitor wants a meeting in his office in Swansea next Tuesday, as the case is coming before the magistrates again the following week and we want to oppose an extension of bail. I don’t see why the bastard should be walking the streets when I’m sure he killed his wife.’
‘Is he going to be charged with murder?’ asked Richard
‘I don’t know, that’s what’s got to be discussed next week. It will need the consent of the DPP to send this to trial.’
The ‘DPP’ was the Director of Public Prosecutions and as he was in London, it was a cumbersome business dealing with major offences. The lesser cases were handled by local solicitors who acted as agents for the police, but the big stuff had to be considered by the famous offices in St Anne’s Gate, Westminster.
At the urging of the three women in the house, Richard had gone to Cardiff and bought a ready-made suit in Evan Roberts, an outfitters opposite the castle. It was of dark grey flannel, double-breasted and with wide lapels. Though he preferred his ‘big white hunter’ outfits, which had served him well in the Singapore courts, he had to give into Angela’s pleas for him to have more of the Spilsbury look when appearing professionally. He drew the line at the wide-brimmed trilbies favoured by police and newspaper men and instead decided on a smart Homburg with a rolled brim to go to the conference in Swansea.
As the solicitor’s office was in a busy street, he again decided to use Jimmy Jenkins as a chauffeur and at two o’clock, he was dropped outside a large Edwardian house in St Helen’s Road, near Swansea General Hospital. Jimmy promised to pick him up at four o’clock and to cruise around if he was later than that.
He was shown into a spacious upstairs room, where the prosecuting solicitor, Maldwyn Craddock, was presiding from behind a large desk. Craddock was a very fat man, his neck bulging over his collar and his pink face rounded by comfortable living. He had sparse silver hair parted in the middle above a misleadingly jovial face with blue eyes and a small purse-like mouth.
Already ranged before him on hard chairs were Ben Evans, Lewis Lewis, Dr O’Malley and the Gowerton coroner, Donald Moses. Richard took the empty seat next to the other pathologist and after being greeted cordially by Maldwyn Craddock, the lawyer got straight down to the main issues.
‘Right, gentlemen, I need to know what we are charging Michael Prentice with next week. At the first hearing, it was only a charge of obstructing the coroner, but are we going to be able to improve on that, given that the DPP agrees?’
Donald Moses looked a little put out at this.
‘It’s not a trivial offence, Maldwyn, like riding a bike without lights!’ he complained. ‘For a start, it’s made a nonsense of my original inquest verdict of accident. It will all have to be done again and the paperwork chased up to London and back.’
The fat lawyer held up a conciliatory hand. ‘I wasn’t belittling it, Donald. Just wanting to know if we can turn the screw a bit more, so to speak. Mr Evans, what’s the position from where you’re sitting?’
‘I think Prentice is lying through his teeth, sir. Why would he carry the body all the way up one cliff, then drive half a mile and carry it down another? And this suicide note sounds phoney to me.’
‘And why go to the trouble of wire-brushing his oil leak off the track?’ added Lewis Lewis.
Craddock nodded benignly. ‘But our problem is proof! We would need enough to convince the magistrates to send him for trial for murder or manslaughter – and to be frank, we haven’t got there yet. Already he has to be committed to the assizes on the obstructing of the coroner’s charge – and possibly the DPP might crank that up to ‘perverting the course of justice’, but homicide is a different kettle of fish! What about this suicide note, Superintendent?’
Evans shifted his bulk on the uncomfortable seat. ‘Inspector Lewis has already taken it up to Cardiff. The lab there is the acknowledged document examination centre for the whole country. We want to know who typed the letter, the wife or the husband.’
‘Will they be able to tell us?’ asked the solicitor.
‘The problem is that though there’s no doubt that it was typed on the machine in the house, that’s not the issue,’ answered Lewis, who had spoken at length to the expert in Cardiff. ‘I was told that differentiating between two typists is very difficult. It depends on things like the heaviness of keystrokes, the repetition of mistakes and the style of writing, but it’s not an exact science, unlike comparing defects in the machine itself.’
Ben Evans nodded his agreement. ‘We’ve got samples from both of them from typed documents we found in the house and Inspector Lewis has taken those, together with the actual typewriter, up to the laboratory. We now have to wait for their opinion.’
They discussed this for a while, Lewis pointing out that Linda had been a trained secretary before her marriage.
‘It gives us a better chance of proving whether or not she wrote it, as she would have a more professional style, rather than the amateur two-finger bashing that someone like her husband would be likely to use.’
‘What about fingerprints?’ asked Craddock.
‘Of no use, sir,’ replied Ben Evans. ‘Both the letter and the typewriter keys have got plenty of both their prints on them. They both used the machine in the house long before this affair, that’s where we got these sample letters and carbons. And as for the actual suicide note, he admits having the body in the house, so he could just have pressed her fingers all over it.’
The prosecuting solicitor moved on to another aspect.
