Bernard Knight - Where Death Delights

Typically, Angela wanted to rehearse the facts methodically. ‘The post-mortem report is a bit sketchy, but it seems that what was recovered was over half a skeleton, but minus the skull.’

‘The most useful part is missing, as far as identity goes,’ agreed Pryor. ‘No head, so no teeth to examine.’

‘Why wouldn’t it have a head? Animals?’

The pathologist nodded. ‘It must have been lying for several years out in the countryside, by the sound of it. Predators, especially foxes, but also dogs, rats and even badgers, would have made a mess of it in that time. A lot of the other bones were missing, too.’

‘Did they have any idea of how long it had been there?’ asked Angela.

‘The report says that the bones still had remnants of ligaments and tendons, which fits in with a couple of years since death – no way of being exact about that, in spite of the claims by writers of detective novels!’

‘Who’s this doctor who did the post-mortem?’

‘A pathologist in Hereford County Hospital, a Dr Marek. By the name, he must be Polish. Not a forensic chap, but the police were obviously satisfied that there was nothing suspicious about the death.’

He shuffled the pages about on the table and picked up the single page of the autopsy report. ‘As you say, not very detailed, but seems sound enough given the little there was to work with.’

‘So why did the coroner reckon it was this Albert Barnes?’ said Sian.

‘When the local paper announced the finding of the remains, this Mrs Barnes from Ledbury went to the police and said it might be her husband. She had reported him missing four years earlier, but he never turned up. The wife said he often used to go walking and sometimes fishing in that area. The police showed her a ring and a wristwatch that was still with the remains and she was adamant that they were his.’

‘Did the bones fit with what was known of this man Barnes, I wonder?’ asked Angela.

Pryor looked again at the post-mortem report, turning it over, but failing to find any more written on the back. ‘It just says “typically male pelvis and limb bones consistent with a man more than twenty five years of age and of average height”.’

Sian looked unimpressed.

‘Most men are older than twenty-five and of average height,’ she commented. ‘Doesn’t help much.’

‘If you had the bones, especially the femora, you could calculate his height, couldn’t you?’ asked Angela.

Richard nodded, but made a face expressing caution.

‘To within an inch or so either way, but as there’s no record of Albert Barnes’s height, apart from his wife saying he was “average”, it doesn’t help a lot. And anyway, the bones are six feet down in some cemetery.’

‘The inquest report is short and sweet as well,’ observed Angela. ‘The police offered no evidence of foul play, there were no injuries on the skeleton – not that that means much without a head.’

‘It was the wife’s definite identification of the wedding ring and the watch that clinched it with the coroner. That was fair enough, he had no reason to disbelieve her.’ Pryor threw the paper down on to the table.

‘So your old coroner pal Brian Meredith declared it was Albert Barnes and brought in an open verdict,’ concluded Angela.

‘Hardly an “old pal”! Until last month, I hadn’t seen him since before the war, when we were students together in Cardiff. I’d heard he’d gone into general practice in Monmouth and become the local coroner as well.’

Richard Pryor and Brian Meredith had qualified in 1936, but their paths had then diverged. Richard had taken up pathology and in 1940 been called up into the Royal Army Medical Corps. He had spent most of the war in Egypt and Ceylon, but when Singapore was liberated in 1945, he had been posted to the laboratory of the British Military Hospital there, ending his service with the rank of major. When ‘demobbed’ after the war, he had taken local release and stayed on as a civilian pathologist in the General Hospital, dealing with coroner’s and police cases. This post carried an additional appointment in the university medical school to teach forensic medicine.

‘So what happens now?’ asked Sian, disappointed that their first case seemed a bit of a damp squib. ‘Sounds as if this Mrs Barnes has got a cast-iron case.’

‘We’ve not got the remains, so I can’t even try for a blood group, even if we knew what group Albert was,’ said Angela.

Richard nodded disconsolately. ‘Without the damned bones, we’re stumped!’

There was a cough from the doorway behind them and turning, they saw Jimmy James standing there, his sweating body stripped to the waist, an open bottle of beer clutched in one hand.

‘Doc, just tell me where they’re buried and I’ll dig the buggers up for you tonight!’

Richard declined to take up Jenkins’ offer – in fact, his handyman’s apparent readiness to break the law so blatantly gave him something else to worry about.

‘That bloody man might turn out to be a liability,’ he growled to Angela later that day. Sian had left to catch her bus home at five o’clock and the two principals were sitting in the kitchen, eating a scratch ‘high tea’ of Fray Bentos corned beef and a salad, followed by a tin of peaches with Carnation tinned milk. The sausages were being kept for a late supper.

‘I don’t think he was serious,’ countered Angela. ‘You have to take anything Jimmy says with a large pinch of salt!’

Pryor shrugged as he finished his dessert. He then took the dishes to the big Belfast sink in the corner. ‘I admit he works hard outside, but I wish he’d keep his nose out of our business.’

Angela went across to the gas stove and lit the burner under the aluminium kettle, then used the same match to light a cigarette. ‘I must try to give these things up,’ she said, pushing the packet of Kensitas back into the pocket of her white coat. ‘I needed them with all the stress of living and working in London, but down here in this peaceful countryside, I should be able to kick the habit.’

Her tone rather suggested that ‘peaceful countryside’ was code for ‘deadly dull rural backwater’ and Richard was suddenly aware of how little he really knew about his new business partner. He had heard on the gossip network that flourishes amongst the small world of forensic specialists, that she had never been married but had had a traumatic breakdown of an engagement to a senior police officer in London. He also knew she came from a rather ‘posh’ family background in the Home Counties. Her parents ran a stud farm in Berkshire and she had been educated at a well-known boarding school, hence her well-modulated Thames Valley accent.

Quite different from his own, he thought ruefully. Though years abroad had blunted his Welsh accent, he was a product of a secondary school in a very different ‘valley’, that of the Taff near Merthyr. His parents were still there, his father having retired a few years earlier from an exhausting general practice in Aberfan.

His reverie was broken by Angela sitting down again after filling the brown teapot and bringing it to the table.

‘So what’s the next move over our first and only case?’ she asked, pouring the strong liquid into a couple of cups. Even though they were virtually camping out, her sense of propriety had made her fill a small jug with milk. The pint bottle from the village shop, the cardboard top already pecked by ardent sparrows, remained in the fridge. As Richard added his customary two spoonfuls of sugar, he ruminated about Mrs Barnes’s bones – or should it be Mrs Oldfield’s bones?

‘I’ll have to talk to this lady in Newnham, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Get her story first-hand and see if she can add anything that could help establish identity. Maybe she’ll say he had a wooden leg!’ he added facetiously.