Where Death Delights

by Bernard Knight

  ‘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!’

  TWO

  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.

  Though Angela was not without a sense of humour, she was already learning to ignore her partner’s frequent whimsies.

  ‘What about this private detective fellow?’ she asked. ‘I’m always a bit wary of them, I imagine a chap in a dirty raincoat taking snaps of a co-respondent through bedroom windows.’

  Pryor grinned, his lean face revealing a good set of white teeth.

  ‘Don’t forget the brown trilby pulled down over his eyes!’ He took a sip of the hot tea, before continuing. ‘But seriously, this man Mitchell sounds OK. Lethbridge said he was a detective super in the Gloucestershire force until a year or two ago. He was in the Division that covered the Forest of Dean, so he must know a lot about the area across the river.’

  ‘You’d better have a word with him as well,’ suggested Angela. ‘You never know, perhaps he can pass a bit of work our way, and vice versa,’ she added practically.

  As it turned out, the pathologist met Trevor Mitchell very soon, for next morning Pryor rang the solicitor in Lydney, who after a few phone calls, made arrangements for him to see Mitchell that morning and to go on to interview Mrs Oldfield afterwards.

  Leaving Angela and Sian to continue stocking the laboratory, he took the Humber up the valley for a short distance, past the hamlet of Llandogo, and across the river bridge. A side road took the heavy black car up a steep lane with sharp bends that climbed the English side of the valley, with superb views in all directions. At the top was the ancient village of St Brievals, which had been the medieval capital of the Forest of Dean and still had a castle to prove it. He stopped outside the Norman church to ask a lady for directions and was sent down a nearby lane to a thatched cottage whose picture should have been on a box of chocolates, even down to the roses around the door. A rap on the panels brought an almost immediate response, being opened by a large man wearing bib-and-brace brown overalls, looking like a carpenter or a plumber.

  He held out his hand and pumped Richard’s vigorously.

  ‘Come in, Doctor, come in! Excuse the rig-out, but I’ve just come in from my workshop.’

  As he led the way into a low living room, with blackened beams in the ceiling, Pryor saw that Mitchell was a powerful man just past fifty, with a thickset body and cropped iron-grey hair. His face reminded Richard of a bulldog, the Churchillian features looking as if they had been crushed from above downwards.

  Mitchell piloted the doctor to a deep armchair, covered in flowery chintz like the rest of the three-piece suite. The room was like a film set of an English country cottage, with half-panelled walls, a large stone fireplace and numerous pictures of rural scenes. It even had a glass case containing a stuffed otter sitting on a dresser filled with blue and white china.

  ‘You’ll have some coffee, Doctor?’ asked the investigator, in a tone that seemed to rule out any refusal. He went to a door at the back and in a deep bass voice roared out instructions to someone in the nether regions.

  Then he came back and dropped heavily on to a settee opposite.

  ‘I understand that old Eddie Lethbridge put you on to this,’ he began. ‘A dry old stick, but he’s sound enough, not like some of these slick lawyers in the city.’

  Pryor nodded. ‘So far, there doesn’t seem much to go on. I hope this lady isn’t wasting her money on a wild goose chase.’

  Trevor Mitchell grinned, his stern face lighting up for a moment. ‘She’s not short of a few bob, is Agnes – though she’s
keen to add a lot more to it from her nephew’s money. I’ve benefited from making a couple of similar goose chases for her in the last couple of years.’

  ‘D’you think there’s anything in this one?’

  Mitchell shrugged his wide shoulders, from which his head seemed to rise without any neck.

  ‘No reason why it shouldn’t be. This Anthony fellow did just vanish over three years ago, so he has to be somewhere!’

  ‘But this Mrs Barnes seems to have it sewn up, with this ring and the watch.’

  The former detective pursed his lips. ‘It’s only her word that says they belonged to him. There’s no corroboration from anyone else, she’s got no one to confirm it.’

  They were interrupted by the kitchen door opening and a small lady entered carrying a tray. She was a wisp of a woman, with fair hair coiled in a roll around her head. Wearing a floral pinafore that almost matched the loose covers of the furniture, she gave Richard a smile from her elfin face as she set down the tray of coffee and biscuits on a small table between the two men.

  ‘This is my good wife, Doctor!’ announced Trevor. ‘Mary, this is the professor from Singapore we’ve been hearing about. Come to live in Garth House, down in the valley.’

  ‘I hope you’ll be very happy there, Professor,’ said Mary Mitchell. ‘I knew your aunt slightly, she sometimes used to come up here to church whist drives.’

  With another smile, she went back to her kitchen, leaving her husband to hand a plate of Crawfords Rich Tea biscuits to his visitor.

  ‘So do I call you “Doctor” or “Professor”?’ he demanded.

  ‘“Doctor” will do, thanks,’ answered Pryor. ‘I held a university chair for a short time, but that was a long way from here. It always seems daft for men to hang on to their military rank long after they’ve packed it in. I suppose I could equally call myself “Major”, but it would sound silly.’

  After a biscuit and a few sips, they got down to business.

  ‘I’m going to see Mrs Oldfield after I leave here,’ said Pryor. ‘Anything I should know before I meet her?’

  ‘Bit of an old snob, is Agnes,’ confided Mitchell. ‘She’s not seventy yet, but seems older, a real hangover from Edwardian days. Speaks her mind, and damn the consequences!’

  ‘So why does she think these remains are those of her nephew, this Anthony chap?’

  Mitchell grinned again, which lightened his forbidding features. ‘She thinks every set of bones found within fifty miles of here must be his! This is the third time I’ve gone poking into other deaths – but they had cast-iron identities. At least this one is a bit more open to doubt.’

  He drank down his coffee and replaced the cup in its saucer.

  ‘Anthony had plenty of money, as he and his father ran a factory in Swindon during the war, making some bits for aircraft. His parents died some years ago, but he didn’t need to work again, so he enjoyed himself.’

  ‘How old was he, then?’ asked Richard, taking another biscuit.

  ‘Forty-five when last seen three years ago. He used to do a lot of hill walking in the Black Mountains and the Brecon Beacons – he was keen on fishing as well. He lived in a private hotel in Cheltenham, but latterly came to stay with his aunt, to be nearer the hills, she said. Apparently, he was also dotty about archaeology, and used to visit ancient places both here and abroad.’

  ‘And you didn’t find any trace of him from the time he vanished?’

  Mitchell shook his head. ‘He wasn’t classed as a missing person for a long time after that. He used to just push off whenever he felt like it without telling anyone, as he had no other relatives. It was only when she hadn’t heard a word from him for over a year that she began to wonder if he was dead. That’s when she hired me, but what could I do?’

  ‘So he could be living in Nepal or camping in the Mexican jungle?’ said Richard.

  ‘It’s possible, but Mrs Oldfield won’t have it! She reckons he’s dead, but until it’s proved or he stays missing for seven years, she can’t collect. He intended leaving everything to her, according to Agnes – and the solicitor confirmed it to me.’

  Richard took another biscuit and opened the file that the lawyer had given him the previous day.

  ‘According to this, the remains found near the reservoir were those of a man in middle age, of about average height and build. Not very helpful, as that fits about half the male population of Britain! Was there anything about the two missing men that wouldn’t fit that description?’

  The former detective shook his head.

  ‘Of course, I’ve only been dealing with Anthony Oldfield, the Barnes angle is new to me. But Anthony, from what his aunt says and the photos I’ve seen, was a pretty ordinary-looking bloke, a bit on the lanky side perhaps.’

  ‘Has the solicitor asked you to look into the Barnes side of things on Mrs Oldfield’s behalf?’ asked the pathologist.

  Trevor Mitchell nodded. ‘Yes, he told me that she wanted me to cooperate with you. She’s dead keen on winning this one, her nephew must have a lot of family money tucked away and she wants it.’

  Pryor looked pleased at this. ‘I’m glad we can work together on this. As a doctor, it’s a bit difficult for me to go knocking on doors and asking questions.’

  Mitchell’s face screwed up even more as a quizzical expression spread across his face.

  ‘What sort of questions, Doc?’

  ‘Well, anything noticeable about this Albert Barnes, which would be inconsistent with what’s described in this post-mortem report, little though that is.’

  Mitchell thought for a moment. ‘Like a hunchback or club foot, you mean?’

  ‘That sort of thing – but we wouldn’t get that from his wife, who sounds as keen as our client on proving that the remains were that of her relative.’

  ‘But we might get something from a neighbour, perhaps.’

  The pathologist nodded. ‘At least they wouldn’t be biased witnesses. It’s a long shot, but we’ve got little else to go on.’

  ‘And of course, we haven’t got the bones any more, they’re buried,’ added Mitchell.

  Pryor nodded. ‘Without getting a sight of those, I can’t see we can go much further.’ He finished his coffee and stood up.

  ‘I said I’d be at Newnham by eleven o’clock. Mustn’t keep the lady waiting, especially as she sounds like an old-fashioned stickler for good behaviour. I’ll see if there’s any more medical details I can get from her. A pity we’ve got no head.’

  ‘At the moment, we’ve got nothing at all, Doc,’ said Mitchell, accompanying him to the door. ‘I’ll make arrangements to see Mrs Barnes to get her end of the story. She won’t be thrilled to see me, if she realizes that I’m trying to throw doubt on the coroner’s findings.’

  Asking his host to thank his wife for the coffee, Richard made his way to his car, where he sat and pulled out a dog-eared book of AA road maps that had belonged to his father. Though he knew the area fairly well, from holidays with his aunt before the war, he needed to check on the route to Newnham, which was on the other side of the forest, on the main A48 to Gloucester. His finger traced out the road up to Coleford, then across to Cinderford and down an unclassified road to Newnham, which lay right on the river. Richard recalled it was one of the best places to see the famous Severn Bore, another memory from his student days.

  He set off, window down in the rising heat and drove across the forest, through the most heavily wooded part of the Royal Forest that had provided England with so many ships in centuries gone by. In midsummer, the foliage was still fresh and green, quite different from the deep, lush colours of the jungle and rubber trees with which he had become so familiar during his years in the Far East. However, today the temperature was almost as great, a freak heatwave for June – but it was a dry heat, not the suffocating dampness of the tropics.

  The road took him past the seventeenth-century Speech House in the middle of the forest, where the Verderers still held their Court every forty days,
as they had done since the time of King Canute. Richard had learned these nuggets of local history during his pre-war holiday tours with Uncle Arthur in his old Morris Ten saloon.

  As he came down the last lap of the journey into Newnham, the panorama of the narrowing river estuary lay below him, spread out like a map. The town had one main street which was the A48 trunk road, running downhill, then turning towards the river bank. When his small side road met the main one, he followed Trevor Mitchell’s directions and turned up into a narrow service lane that ran in front of a row of old houses. He remembered the brick clock tower in the middle of the town and the sixteenth-century Victoria Hotel at the top of the main street, but his attention was on the names outside the tall terraced houses on his right.

  Crawling in bottom gear, he soon spotted ‘Meadowlane’ cut into a slate plaque at the side of a heavy front door. There was only one other car parked in this section of the road and he pulled up behind it and went to ring the bell.

  It was answered by a short woman in a long linen apron, with a frilled mob cap on her grey curls. For a moment, Richard thought he had strayed into a stage production of a Regency play, but the woman smiled and pulled the door open wide.

  ‘Doctor Pryor? You are expected, please come in.’

  He went into a rather gloomy hallway, unsure whether or not this was Mrs Oldfield, though she did not tally with Trevor Mitchell’s description. The house smelled of mothballs and furniture polish.

  ‘Mrs Oldfield is in the drawing room,’ said his guide, clarifying matters and indicating an inner door on the left of the hall. The servant, for that was what he decided she must be, tapped on the panels, opened it and stood aside for him to enter, calling out in a strong Gloucester accent, ‘Dr Pryor, ma’am!’

  In the high-ceilinged room, its bay window looking down on the main street, he saw another elderly lady in a high-backed chair, one hand on a silver-headed ebony stick. She sat erect, her plain dark dress closed at the throat by a large cameo brooch. Her face was long and lined, set in a severe expression, under a swept-back mass of white hair, gathered in a bun at the back.