Bernard Knight - Where Death Delights

‘You said she went missing on a Tuesday night – at least, that’s when her husband said he returned home to find the house empty. And then her body was found on Thursday morning?’

Massey nodded. ‘He didn’t report her missing until the next evening, because he admits they had some marital problems and he thought she had just up and left him.

‘But when he had no message from her after twenty-four hours, he rang the police – especially as he says that he found that her handbag and almost all her clothes were still there.’

‘Was she in the habit of going off alone to swim?’ asked Pryor.

‘Yes, that was true enough. She loved swimming and she loved that coast, she was very happy to move down there from the Home Counties.’

There was another silence as the three men thought about the possibilities.

‘So what’s the situation at the moment?’ asked Richard.

Leonard Massey moved into his courtroom mode again. ‘I want to be absolutely sure that there’s no sign of any foul play, Doctor Pryor! I’ve spoken to the coroner and in the circumstances, he has no objection to a private post-mortem examination.’

‘How does the husband feel about that?’ enquired Meredith.

‘He has no choice in the matter,’ replied Massey, brusquely. ‘The inquest has not been held, so the coroner still has full jurisdiction. If the possibility of a non-accidental cause exists, then he is entitled – indeed, he should be obliged – to take all measures to confirm or exclude it.’

There seemed no answer to this, so Pryor confined himself to practicalities.

‘Where was the first autopsy carried out – and by whom?’ he enquired.

‘In the public mortuary – a rather primitive place, I’m afraid. It’s in Swansea itself, though the coroner who’s dealing with the matter is in Gowerton, a few miles away. The doctor was a retired pathologist who still does coroner’s work. A Doctor O’Malley, I believe.’

He delved into his black leather case once more and handed Richard another sheet of paper.

‘These are the phone numbers of the coroner’s officer and of the undertaker and my own contact details. You are more used to making these arrangements, so perhaps I could leave it with you. I will naturally be responsible for your usual fee and expenses.’

Pryor stood up and shook hands with the other two men.

‘I will have to offer this Dr O’Malley the courtesy of attending,’ he explained. ‘It will probably be a day or two before I can arrange to come down again, but I’ll let you know what’s happening and will send you a full report as soon as I can.’

Peter Meredith showed him out and he walked back to his car, thinking that this all sounded a bit far-fetched, in that the QC was virtually suspecting his son-in-law of murder. But ‘the usual fee and expenses’ part sounded good, as well as getting his name known around the South Wales legal establishment.

‘Why don’t I drive you down there, Doc?’ offered Jimmy Jenkins. ‘It’s a long ’ole journey and you want to be fresh to do your duty when you gets there, eh?’

It was Wednesday evening and Pryor had arranged to carry out the second post-mortem at noon the next day, having made all the arrangements through the coroner’s officer in Gowerton, appropriately named PC Mort.

Richard wasn’t all that keen on Jimmy’s suggestion, but Angela thought it a good idea.

‘You’re paying him to do odds and ends about the place, but there’s no hurry about the gardening, so he might as well make himself useful driving you,’ she pointed out.

He gave in and at half past eight next morning, they left for the three-hour drive. Richard refused point-blank to sit in the back as if he was a grandee with a chauffeur and sat alongside Jimmy, where he could keep an eye on his driving.

He was soon aware that the man was an excellent driver, for he learned that Jimmy had spent much of the war behind the wheel of a three-ton Bedford, trundling across North Africa and then Italy.

‘How are you getting on with the little widow woman, Doctor?’ he asked. ‘Nice little lady, she is! Do her good to get out and about a bit more, she’s been keeping too much to herself since her husband died.’

He seemed to know everyone’s business from top to bottom of the Wye Valley.

‘She’s doing fine,’ said Richard sincerely. ‘At least we’re eating proper food now, not stuff out of tins! I understand her husband died in an accident.’

‘Blown to bits, he was!’ said Jimmy with ghoulish drama. ‘Some chemical factory up near Lydney. Time she had a bit of cheerful company, after the bad time she’s been through. Mind, that Sian will cheer her up, she’s always on the go, ain’t she?’

As Bridgend was left behind, Richard sat and studied the countryside, seeing things he missed when he was driving. It was more relaxed, he had to admit, though he resolved in future only to let Jimmy drive on long-distance trips. Talking of Moira Davison got him thinking about her – she seemed perfect for the job and he only hoped she stayed. He had known secretaries in the past to give up when they had to type post-mortem reports with descriptions of horrible injuries or decomposed corpses. Moira was very well organized, setting a routine on the first couple of days which first ensured that any office work was done, then the beds made and the lunch prepared, with some cleaning in the afternoon and more typing if it was there.

He sensed that both Angela and Sian were slightly wary of the new employee, though they were unfailingly friendly and pleasant to her. It never occurred to him that he might be the cause of this watchfulness, as they waited to see how his attitude to her developed.

Pryor had been married for nine years until his divorce in Singapore last year – it was one of the factors that persuaded him to take the ‘golden handshake’ and return to Britain. He had met Miriam, five years younger than himself, when he was serving in Ceylon. She was a civilian radiographer attached to the military hospital in Colombo. Later, he found that the old adage ‘marry in haste, repent at leisure’ was all too true and after a honeymoon year, things started to go downhill. She went with him to Singapore when hostilities finished and stayed for several years when he took the civilian post.

But after a series of ‘affairs’, she left him and went back to England, the final break coming with the divorce a year ago.

Though by no means celibate since the divorce, he had no burning desire to marry again. Ruefully, he thought that he now had no lack of feminine company, with three women under the same roof most of the time!

His reverie took them further towards Swansea and soon they were looking for the mortuary, which the coroner’s officer had told him was in The Strand. This turned out to be a dismal street between the lower part of the town and the river, which in former times had been a quayside. The mortuary was housed in one arch of a disused railway viaduct, each end being blocked off with brickwork, that on the street side having large double doors. Jimmy parked outside and declared that he was going off for an hour to find a pub.

Pryor knocked on the door and it creaked open to reveal a small, dark-haired man who announced himself as the coroner’s officer. There were two other men present, who PC Mort introduced as Dr O’Malley and Detective Inspector Lewis. The other pathologist was about seventy, burly and red in the face, dressed in an old-fashioned blue suit with high lapels. He seemed an amiable enough man and had a marked Irish accent when he told Richard, with tongue in his cheek, that he still did a few coroner’s cases to finance his membership of his golf club. Pryor thought that it was very likely that the coroner was also a member of the same club.