Molly Barnes was willing to talk to him that afternoon.
‘She sounded very reluctant,’ the solicitor said. ‘But I pointed out that the coroner had agreed and that as it was an open verdict, the case could be reopened if he was not satisfied.’
Mitchell thought that this smacked of mild blackmail, but he kept his feelings to himself and agreed to meet the lady at her home in Ledbury at two thirty. He parked his Wolseley 6/80 in the High Street, finding a free space near the half-timbered Market Hall and walked up The Homend, a continuation of the main street. A quick enquiry from a passer-by directed him into a side road, where he found Molly Barnes’s small semi-detached house, probably of nineteen-twenty vintage. The brass knocker on the front door was answered by a short, wiry woman with a combative expression already on her face. If he looked like a bulldog, then she resembled a rather irritable Yorkshire terrier. In her forties, she had spiky brown hair that stood out untidily from her head. Mrs Barnes wore a faded floral pinafore and clutched a dust pan and brush in her hands.
‘You’re the enquiry man, I suppose,’ she said ungraciously. ‘You’re early, but you’d better come in, I suppose.’
Putting down the pan, she showed him into a front parlour where three gaudy china ducks were flying in formation above a tiled fireplace and a ‘cherry boy’ ornament stood on a table in the bay window. She waved him to one of the armchairs of a moquette three-piece suite that was made long before the war began and sat opposite, perched on the edge of the settee, tensing herself to defend her rights.
‘Now what’s all this?’ she demanded. ‘The coroner held an inquest and his officer gave me a death certificate.’
Mitchell, with thirty years’ experience of interviewing people, decided to tread softly with Molly Barnes.
‘Another lady has claimed that the remains might be that of her nephew, who disappeared around the same time,’ he said carefully.
‘Has she got a ring and wristwatch to prove it?’ asked Mrs Barnes, pugnaciously.
‘It would help your case a lot if you had some other evidence to confirm the identity of your husband,’ replied Mitchell gently.
‘I don’t have a case!’ she retorted. ‘My case was settled by the coroner, it’s this other woman who’s got to come up with something better!’
The former detective sighed quietly, recognizing a sharp-witted character who was not going to be trodden on.
‘What I mean is, did your husband have any physical characteristics that would help to confirm that it was really him? Had he ever broken an arm or a leg, for example?’
The feisty little woman scowled at him. ‘I thought there had been a post-mortem to look into all that?’ she countered. ‘But no, he had had nothing like that. Came all through the war in the Rifle Brigade without a scratch, he did!’
Trevor felt he was getting nowhere, fast.
‘Tell me about the last day, when he went missing,’ he asked.
‘He just went off one Saturday morning on his bike, going fishing as usual. Mad keen on fishing, he was.’
‘Did he say where he was going?’
‘No, only that it was over Hereford way. I never took much interest in his fishing.’ She sniffed as if that was a pastime beneath her contempt.
‘Obviously, he would have had his rods and things with him?’
‘Of course he would – he had a long canvas bag slung on his back, the rods came to pieces to fit in.’
Mitchell enquired about his health and if Albert Barnes had had any heart trouble that might explain a sudden collapse.
‘He had a terrible cough sometimes – he smoked too much. But I never heard he had a bad heart.’
‘Did he go to his doctor at all? Have any X-rays?’
She shook her head emphatically. ‘Fit as a fiddle, my Albert. He had to be in his job, he worked on the railway, humping heavy tools about.’
Trevor was running out of questions and had one last shot in his locker.
‘Could I see the watch and the ring, please?’ he asked.
Molly Barnes looked at him suspiciously. ‘What would you want to look at them for?’ she demanded. ‘The police and the coroner had them for over a week.’
‘Just to tie up any loose ends,’ he answered humbly. ‘I have to look as if I’m earning my fee,’ he added in an attempt to lighten her mood.
Muttering under her breath, she went out and he heard her going upstairs. A few minutes later she returned with an old Cadbury’s chocolate box with a faded picture on the lid looking very much like his own cottage in St Brievals. Opening it, she sorted through a tangle of bead necklaces, brooches and shiny buttons and retrieved a gold ring and a steel-cased wristwatch without any strap.
‘The coroner’s officer told me the strap had rotted away,’ she volunteered, as she handed them over.
‘This was his wedding ring, I presume?’
‘Yes, my Albert always wore it,’ she said bleakly.
‘Which year were you married?’ he asked idly.
‘Nineteen forty-one, in the war. He was on a week’s embarkation leave, before going to Egypt.’
Mitchell held the narrow band between his finger and thumb, squinting at it briefly. ‘What about the watch? Where did he get that, d’you know?’
The widow shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘I don’t know, he brought it back when he was demobbed at the end of the war. Picked it up in Germany perhaps, he was posted there later on. He said you could buy anything there with a packet of fags.’
The watch had a black dial with the famous logo above the word ‘Omega’. In tiny letters at the bottom, it said ‘Swiss Made’. There was nothing written on the plain metal of the back.
‘So how did you know that this ring and the watch belonged to your husband?’ he asked, handing them back.
‘I just did!’ she snapped. ‘I’ve been looking at them every day for the past nine years, since he came home from the army.’
‘But one gold ring looks much the same as any other,’ pointed out Mitchell. ‘And this watch isn’t particularly unusual.’
The woman slammed the lid down on the chocolate box.
‘I tell you I knew them! I knew every scratch and mark on that watch,’ she spat angrily. ‘You’re just trying to make me out to be a liar, you should be ashamed of yourself.’
She jumped out of her chair and went to hold the door open.
‘I think you’d better go, I’ve got nothing else to say to you. I’m going to complain to my solicitor.’
Trevor had had a similar threat a hundred times in his career in the police, but hauled himself to his feet and meekly left the house, thanking her civilly for her help before she slammed the front door on him.
On the pavement outside, he took out a small notebook and made a very short entry, before walking back to his car.
On Monday morning, the coroner’s officer in Monmouth telephoned to say that there were two cases for post- mortem. Richard happily agreed to come up straight away to begin his new career in one of the local mortuaries. Sian and Angela shared in his satisfaction and even went to the back door to wave him off, as he drove out of the yard and down the steep drive, to turn left up the winding valley.
‘Looks like a schoolboy who’s been promised a new football!’ said the technician, with an apparent wisdom beyond her years. As they went back into the house, Angela had to agree with her.
‘He’s blissfully happy at the prospect of cutting up a couple of corpses! But good luck to him, it was a big step to go solo like this. We need all the work we can get.’
Richard drove up the twists and turns of the famous valley, where British tourism had really begun in the eighteenth century when rich people began taking boat trips down from Ross to Chepstow.
When he arrived at Monmouth, he followed the directions to the mortuary given by the coroner’s officer. Though he was a serving police constable, it was several years since he had worn a uniform, as he was permanently seconded to be the coroner’s right-hand man. His directions sounded ominous, but from the few cases Pryor had done before the war, he was not surprised at the location of public mortuaries. The local authorities had
