Bernard Knight - Where Death Delights

The local detective was another small man, middle-aged and with thick dark hair coming low on his forehead.

‘The coroner had a word with my ‘super’ and he thought it best if I came along, in case anything significant turned up,’ he explained.

The arch was divided into two halves, the outer part containing an old cold cabinet like the one in Monmouth, only larger. It was a ‘walk-in’ type without racks and looked as if it had originally come from a butcher’s shop. Beyond a door in the central partition of the arch lay the post-mortem area, merely a porcelain slab raised on two brick pillars, with a sink and a table against the walls. A dusty fluorescent light hung by chains from the distant roof. Standing by the table was a tall, stooped man with a walrus moustache, already attired in a long red rubber apron and thick rubber gloves that came almost to his elbows.

‘This is Mr Foster, from a local undertaker’s,’ explained Patrick O’Malley. ‘He’s really an embalmer, but he comes down to help here when required.’

Foster bobbed his head and muttered a greeting, then went outside to pull a trolley from the fridge. He slid the sheeted body on to the table whilst Richard opened his case on the table and then put on an apron. There were several pairs of grubby rubber boots under the sink and he chose a pair of short, white ones which looked as if they were rejects from a hospital operating theatre.

Foster removed the sheet from the body and to complete the legal formalities of continuity of evidence, should it ever be required, PC Mort confirmed it was the mortal remains of Linda Prentice.

‘I’ve no doubt it was a drowning,’ volunteered the older pathologist, as Pryor began to examine the body externally. ‘There was no froth at the mouth and nostrils, but plenty down in the air passages.’

He was slightly defensive, which was natural enough when a colleague was being hired to pick any holes in his opinion that could be found.

Richard nodded. ‘As she wasn’t found for a couple of days, that’s not surprising,’ he agreed. ‘Were all these marks like this when you examined her?’

He pointed with a gloved finger at a number of scratches and areas of peeled skin on the forehead, nose, arms and legs. O’Malley came near, bending forwards to keep his suit clear of the table. He peered at the superficial injuries, his glasses on the end of his nose.

‘They’re much more obvious now, of course,’ he observed. ‘But that’s to be expected after all this time. I did my examination a week ago.’

He was correct, thought Richard, as bruises could ‘come out’, as his grandmother used to say, and appear more prominent after a day or two.

Richard got Foster to turn the body on its side, holding the upper arm so that the pathologist could look at the back, where there were more irregular scratches, some in long tracks.

‘Where she was recovered was a very rocky place,’ offered O’Malley, still rather defensively. ‘Deep gullies with the tide surging up and down. The rocks are sharp there and those limpets and barnacles make it even worse.’

‘Some bruises as well,’ Richard pointed out. He recalled that O’Malley had not listed the injuries in any detail in his brief report to the coroner, but that was not unusual in a non-forensic autopsy in which there was no suspicion of foul play. O’Malley peered again at some small areas of discoloration on the arms, neck and face, which varied from blue and purple through to pale green and yellow.

‘Banging about on those damned rocks, no doubt!’ he declared. ‘I’ve seen it too often around this coast, it can be a very dangerous place.’

Richard made no reply, he was keeping all his options open. He produced a few instruments from his capacious bag and began reopening the neat stitching made by Foster at the first post-mortem. Carefully, he went through all the organs again, O’Malley being keen to point out the water-logging of the lungs which was still very apparent. Pryor took some small tissue samples from various organs into pots of formalin which he always carried in his bag, then turned his attention to the head. PC Mort and the CID man watched impassively as he felt all over the scalp with his fingers and parted the damp hair to look at the skin beneath.

‘I didn’t think it worth disturbing the poor lady more than necessary,’ said O’Malley, as the other doctor took a scalpel and began shaving the auburn hair from several small patches near the back point of the head. Again, Pryor recognized that many pathologists – and other doctors who still did coroner’s work – frequently omitted to open the skull and examine the brain in cases where another cause of death seemed glaringly obvious.

‘Some more bruising here,’ he commented, standing back so that O’Malley could lean in and look at a couple of bluish stains under the scalp, each about the size of a two-shilling piece.

The Irishman grunted. ‘They’re rough old places, those rock gullies. Perhaps you ought to have a trip out there to have a look at them.’

Richard remembered them well enough from his student trips to Gower – including one where he and a nurse from Cardiff Royal Infirmary spent a cosy afternoon lying in the grass above one of those gullies.

He stood back for a few minutes while Foster incised the scalp and removed the skullcap with a hand saw, though not making such a neat job of it as Solly Evans at Chepstow.

Richard spent a few minutes in making detailed notes on a clipboard, recording the position and size of each mark on a printed outline of a body, back and front, using a celluloid ruler to measure the exact dimensions of the injuries. Then he looked carefully at the inside of the scalp, taking more tissue samples, and then at the skull itself, before removing the brain and examining that on the draining board of the sink.

Finally, he managed with some difficulty to get a clean blood sample from one of the leg veins and some urine from the bladder, which O’Malley had not opened.

‘That for analysis, Doctor?’ asked Lewis Lewis, the detective inspector, the first time he had spoken since they began.

Pryor nodded. ‘I’d better fill in some exhibits labels and sign them, just in case,’ he murmured and fished in his case for some buff luggage labels. ‘I’ll check for alcohol and anything else relevant,’ he said. ‘Though in drowning, the dilution of the blood by absorbed water spoils any accuracy. Still, the urine should be OK.’

O’Malley grasped at his words thankfully.

‘So you agree with me that she drowned, Doctor Pryor?’

‘I do indeed, no doubt about it,’ he replied, thinking that this was safe ground, whatever else might materialize. After settling the tip with Foster – he reckoned the coroner’s officer had already had his pound of flesh from O’Malley – he said goodbye to them all and went out to where Jimmy was sitting in the car, reading the Daily Mirror .

‘All set, Doctor?’ enquired his driver.

‘I’m starving, did you see a café on your travels?’ Dissecting bodies had never yet put him off his food and they walked around to Wind Street where Jimmy had noticed a ‘Bracchi’ establishment, the South Walian nickname for an Italian café. He had a ham omelette and treated his driver to bacon, beans and egg, all with chips, a plate of bread and butter and a pot of tea.

‘Funny old town, this,’ observed Jimmy. ‘Can’t decide whether it’s ancient or modern!’

From what he’d seen of the place, Richard knew what he meant – the remains of a Norman castle and the oldest pub in Wales just up the street, but with ugly modern buildings springing up amongst the wide acres of bomb damage that had completely destroyed the town centre.