Bernard Knight - According To The Evidence

‘I was right, thank God! I was afraid that I might have been making a fool of myself!’

The detectives crowded closer as Richard’s finger pointed at a brownish line on each side of the neck, rising at the back towards the hairline between the ears but vanishing in the centre.

‘Typical hanging mark! Strung up with a rope or some sort of line, with the knot at the back.’

As the photographer got busy again, he explained to Arthur Crippen. ‘The rope cuts into the front of the neck, then the mark comes around the sides and rises because of the down-drag of the body. As the head falls forward the suspension point is moved away from the skin, unless it’s a slip knot, causing a gap in the mark right at the back.’

‘So he died by hanging?’ growled the DI.

‘That’s jumping ahead a bit, but it’s certainly the favourite at the moment,’ replied Richard, moving back to the mortuary slab. Again with the help of the coroner’s officer, he turned the body on to its back again. After more photographs, Angela came with her sticky tape and did her best to cover the wreckage of torn skin that had mangled the whole of the front of the neck and chin.

Then Pryor sponged it down as well as he could, holding the ripped segments of skin one at a time. Then he tried to reassemble them to cover the jagged wound made by the tyre treads. The half-inch brown-red mark was now seen to run across the throat below the jaw, but there were other marks as well, apart from the tyre crushing.

‘Ho ho, the plot thickens!’ He looked across at Arthur Crippen again. ‘Just as well I didn’t plump for a hanging just now. I think this chap had been strangled first!’

As the DI and his sergeant pushed nearer, Richard pointed out a series of blue bruises the size of a fingertip each side of the rope mark and some more up under angles of the jaw on each side. In addition, there were several crescent-shaped scratches among the larger abrasions from the tractor tyre.

‘No doubt that he’s been squeezed around the neck while he’s still alive. But that rope mark and the grazes from the wheel are post-mortem.’ He turned back the flaps of skin and showed that the only blood in the tissue under them was where the tears went across the blue bruises.

His next examination was of the eyes, which were well above the destruction of the neck and lower jaw. In the outer lids he found some fine blood spots in the skin and on opening the eyes with his fingers there were several more small haemorrhages in the whites.

‘They could be either from hanging or strangulation,’ he admitted. ‘But if the hanging was done after death, then they’re down to throttling.’

Arthur Crippen digested these rapid changes in the nature of the case. ‘Why the hell would anyone want to go through all this rigmarole, doc?’

Pryor shrugged. It wasn’t his job to be a detective, but he allowed himself an opinion. ‘Whoever did this started off by strangling the fellow, then thought he’d cover it up by hanging the body. Later he saw that the neck bruises gave the show away, so he devised a way he thought would destroy the evidence on the neck by crushing it.’

‘You say “he”, doctor,’ interposed Sergeant Nichols. ‘So we needn’t be looking for a woman?’

Richard grinned. ‘A good forensic motto is never say never, never say always, but I doubt if you need to cherchez la femme this time. In fact, manual strangulation is uncommon in men; it’s usually inflicted on women and children. But there are plenty of exceptions, of which this seems one.’

Crippen looked at his watch. ‘Four o’clock now. Any idea when you’ll finish up here, doctor? I’d like you and Dr Bray to come back to the scene afterwards, to have a look at a possible hanging site.’ He moved towards the door, sighing deeply.

‘Meanwhile, I’d better go and phone the good news to my chief inspector. It’ll make his day, I don’t think!’

It was almost three hours later before they got back to the barn.

After finishing the post-mortem and closing the body, they were taken into the hospital dining room and given tea and sandwiches. Billy Brown, being coroner’s officer, knew all the staff and had no problem in arranging some refreshment, the ghoulish activities of the past few hours having had no effect on their appetites.

When they returned to Ty Croes Farm, they found the same police team, but reinforced with two more uniformed constables, as the scene was to be guarded all night. It was now early evening and, although there was still full daylight, another van had brought a floodlight powered by a gas cylinder and some large torches, in case they were needed.

Arthur Crippen was waiting for them at the gate, where a PC stood to repel any spectators, not that this was likely in such a remote spot.

‘I’ve spent the time since I left you in questioning all the folks at the farm,’ he said mournfully. ‘But no one admits to hearing a damned thing last night. The farmhouse where Aubrey Evans and his family lives, as well as his cousin’s cottage nearby, are a good quarter of a mile away and no one had any reason to come down here until this morning.’

They walked over to the barn, where the big door was still open. Richard and Angela stood on the threshold and looked at the cavernous space, half filled with vehicles. The blue Fordson was still propped up on the jack, a few spanners scattered under the back end.

‘We didn’t put those blocks back under the axle,’ explained the detective sergeant. ‘They might have to be fingerprinted, though probably a dozen people will have handled them, like everything else in this jumble sale!’

‘I spoke to the liaison officer in the Cardiff lab,’ added Crippen. ‘He’s coming up in the morning with a scientist. We’ll keep the place battened down until then, but I just wanted you to point out any spot where the hanging could have taken place.’

The pair from the Wye Valley stood and looked around them. The barn had a high-pitched roof of galvanized sheets laid on wooden rafters supported by a number of thick metal cross-beams held up by rusty steel pillars. At one place on their right, a chain was slung over a beam, the two free ends holding a large pulley-block. From this dangled a continuous loop of thin chain, the lower end of which was at shoulder height. Hanging below the drum was a sturdy metal hook, and a length of heavier chain dangled down to floor level.

‘That chain hoist looks a likely candidate,’ said Richard, pointing at the device.

Crippen nodded his agreement. ‘I thought that, too. How’s it work?’

The DC with the passion for tractors enlightened him. ‘You keep pulling on that loop of chain, which lowers the hook down. To lift it up, you just reverse the direction of pull. It’s geared so you can lift a hell of a weight, though it’s slow.’

‘What’s it for?’ asked Angela.

‘Lifting anything heavy – here it would be for hoisting an engine out of its chassis, things like that.’

The DI contemplated the device hanging up in the air. ‘It’s the obvious place, but that was a rope mark around the neck, not a chain.’

‘The surface of the hook should be taped for fibres,’ said Angela. ‘If there are any, they might match those I took from the victim’s neck.’

‘Better leave that for the lab chap tomorrow,’ growled Crippen. ‘We’ll get all the fingerprints first, just in case. Not that that rusty chain will be much use for prints.’

‘Where’s this rope, I wonder,’ asked Richard, peering around the barn, which apart from the tractors, a couple of Land Rovers and an old car, had all sorts of junk lying around. There were parts of engines, oil drums, dismantled farm machinery and numerous shapeless pieces of rusty metal. Among all this there were several lengths of rope of various lengths and sizes.