Bernard Knight - Where Death Delights

In early September, the delayed court appearance of Michael Prentice took place in Gowerton. The dreary magistrates’ court was invaded by a clutch of lawyers and local journalists, but as the charges had been reduced to ‘obstructing the coroner in the pursuance of an inquest’, it was not a very newsworthy event. Linda’s father, Leonard Massey and his wife were there, as well as Marjorie Elphington, the friend who set all this in motion. There was no sign of the other woman, Daphne Squires and Ben Evans suspected that she had rapidly distanced herself from her former lover and his troubles.

In the entrance hall of the old building, where witnesses congregated, Ben Evans was holding forth to his inspector.

‘The bugger should be up on a murder charge, not this piddling offence that will only get him a couple of months in the nick and a big fine!’ he growled. ‘If only those forensic people could have come down definitely on that letter and said it’s a fake, we’d have had him, because there’s no other reason for writing it unless he did her in.’

‘Craddock’s not calling either of the doctors,’ said Lewis Lewis. ‘I suppose there’s nothing useful they can say, as nobody denies it was drowning.’

‘It’s not part of the charge, anyway. Doesn’t matter what she died of, as all Prentice is being done for is mucking up the coroner’s inquest procedure.’

This is exactly what was presented in court. Though the defendant had a barrister to represent him, the prosecuting solicitor went at it alone, given the relatively minor nature of the offence, compared with assault or murder.

The committal proceedings were heard before three Justices of the Peace, as there was no stipendiary magistrate in that jurisdiction. One was a dour steelworks manager, another was a fat and florid butcher and the third, who sat in the middle and acted as chairwoman, was an angular female head teacher with a particularly ugly hat. They were guided – or rather harassed – by the Clerk of the Court, a sergeant-major figure who sat below them, but kept bobbing up and down to hiss instructions at them.

Michael Prentice appeared in the dock, his counsel’s application to have him sit in the well of the court rejected. He was soberly dressed in a dark suit and appeared totally composed and in control of himself.

Somewhat to everyone’s surprise, he pleaded guilty to the single charge against him. On his lawyer’s advice, he knew that there was no chance of evading the fact that he had suppressed the existence of the note when called to the inquest.

Maldwyn Craddock had considered Ben Evans’s contention that as Prentice had been on oath in the coroner’s court, this amounted to perjury – but as Prentice had not said that there was no note, because there was no reason to ask him, the omission to mention it was probably not enough to succeed with the more serious charge.

Even though the defendant had pleaded guilty, the magistrates had no power to sentence him, as the offence was one which inevitably had to be committed to the Assizes, in a few months’ time. There a judge would hear the guilty plea and be responsible for deciding on the sentence. No doubt the expensive defence counsel would then earn his fee by an impassioned address in mitigation. But at the Gowerton magistrates, he employed the same skills in seeking an extension of bail, to try to keep Michael Prentice out of prison until his appearance at the Assizes.

The barrister, a rather gaunt figure in the legal uniform of black jacket and striped trousers, waxed lyrical on behalf of his client, in front of the stony-faced trio of justices.

‘Above all else, my client was anxious to avoid the stigma of suicide falling upon his much loved wife and saw no harm in allowing her memory to remain unsullied by the assumption that this was a tragic accident.’

In the public seats at the back of the court, Leonard Massey almost burst with indignation at the ‘much-loved’ reference, but there was nothing he could do about it. By the nature of the narrow charge against his hated son-in-law, none of the peripheral evidence was relevant; it would have been a very different matter if the alleged domestic violence or the death was in issue.

The barrister was an experienced man and played upon the distress, confusion and grief that had beset Michael on finding the note and then her body on the beach.

‘It is evident that he hardly knew what he was doing, such was his mental state,’ he pleaded before the stony-faced JPs. ‘Why else would he have carried his wife’s body in his arms up that difficult track – and why would a temporary dislocation of his behaviour cause him to put her back in the water at a different place?’

There was much more of this, sometimes repetitious. The butcher on the bench was anxious to get back to his shop and as the bloody defendant had pleaded guilty, grumbled under his breath as to why they had to hear ‘all this stuff’.

Eventually, after pleading for an extension of bail, mainly on the grounds that this was a one-off lapse of behaviour which would – indeed, could – not be repeated, Prentice’s barrister felt he had done enough to earn his fee and sat down.

The clerk bobbed up and said something and the three magistrates retired into their room behind for ten minutes. When they returned, the chairwoman put on her most severe face and addressed the defendant.

‘Though what you did was foolish and has caused considerable disruption and unnecessary work for the coroner, his staff and the police, we accept that you were in a highly emotional and confused state after finding your wife’s body. In addition, you tried to spare her family the stigma of suicide – and you have not attempted to evade your responsibility for this crime by pleading not guilty. As you are an otherwise respectable member of the business fraternity, with no previous convictions, we agree to continuation of your bail until you are dealt with at the Assize Court, naturally with the proper restrictions on your movements and the appropriate sureties.’

There were further details of the conditions of his bail, then the magistrates filed out and the court broke up.

If Leonard Massey had not been a well-controlled lawyer, this is where he would have stood up and accused his son-in-law of being a murderer. As it was, he strode tight-lipped from the court with his wife trailing behind him and marched out into the street to find his car.

The two CID men trudged the short distance to the police station, annoyed but not surprised at the outcome of the case.

‘The bastard even got bail!’ muttered Evans. ‘And I expect that barrister will get the trial judge weeping and just rap his knuckles and tell him not to do it again!

‘Something might turn up,’ replied his inspector, though he did not sound too confident about it.

‘In future, every time I put oil in my car, I’ll be reminded of this sod getting away with it!’ growled the superintendent.

Three weeks later, a letter arrived at Garth House which caused a celebration, prompting Angela to fetch the bottle of Yugoslav Lutomer Riesling which she had in her room. The whole staff, including Jimmy Jenkins, gathered in the lounge to drink out of a mixed collection of glasses, toasting Richard’s appointment to the Home Office list.

The letter from an under-secretary in the Home Office was terse and colourless, but the essence of it was that ‘ if he was so minded, they would look favourably upon any application to have his name added to the list circulated to Chief Constables, as being medical practitioners suitable to be recommended to coroners as proficient in dealing with deaths which require forensic expertise .’

A retainer of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum would be offered on condition that the pathologist made himself available at all times or to arrange for another listed pathologist to act in his absence.