The Thread of Evidence

by Bernard Knight

  After this long speech, he settled back in his chair as if to indicate that his case rested and the others could take it or leave it.

  ‘Mmm. Put like that, I’m inclined to agree with you,’ said the colonel, playing with his inkstand. ‘But are we going to get enough to charge him? Professor Powell, do you think that any further work on your part will get us nearer to proving that this was actually Mavis Hewitt?’

  ‘Not a lot, Colonel. Tying up loose ends may narrow down the range of her age a little. But I can never prove that it’s Mavis. The teeth might have been a way of doing that. But as there’s no dental work on the teeth of the skull, and we’ve no dental record of the real Mavis, that’s a washout.

  ‘And does that hold for your laboratory too, Meadows?’

  The liaison officer looked as doubtful as Powell.

  ‘I’m afraid so. All we can do is narrow down the date of death by investigating the objects found with the body. We can never get a positive identification; there was nothing distinctive enough to be recognized by anyone.’

  Colonel Barton fingered his moustache thoughtfully. ‘Well, Pacey, where do you go from here?’

  The superintendent noticed that the ‘we’ had changed to ‘you’, as the trail appeared to have petered out. He was being passed the buck, now that it was stone dead.

  ‘I think we’re stumped as far as substantive evidence goes,’ he said. ‘The scent has gone cold – thirty years cold! The only hope of getting on now – unless you think it’s worth chancing our arm on this circumstantial stuff – is to get the old boy to confess. Or, at least, to work him over until he gets so harried and flustered that he drops a clanger.’

  The colonel looked pained.

  ‘I think your choice of words is unfortunate, Mr Pacey. We have to be very careful in our methods these days. Relations with the public are not too good, as it is. This proposed Chicago-style third degree sounds most unsavoury to me.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Pacey said meekly. He couldn’t be bothered to argue.

  The chief constable stood up to indicate that the meeting was at an end.

  ‘Well, thank you, gentlemen, we’ll have to wait now for some more developments, either from the laboratory or from Superintendent Pacey’s efforts.’

  The meeting broke up and eventually, Pacey found himself back in his own bare office with Willie Rees. He flung himself into his protesting swivel chair and began stuffing coarse tobacco into a pipe.

  ‘Willie, the chief is a good stick, but sometimes he gets on my wick! All that guff about not interfering and then niggling about me wanting to get stuck into old Hewitt. I’d better get up there again this afternoon, I suppose. A pity, really. I quite like old Hewitt, even if he did try to saw his wife’s arm off!’

  ‘If you’re going to work him over,’ Rees said dryly, ‘I’d better put the bright lights and rubber hosepipe in the back of your car!’

  Chapter Eleven

  Once again, Peter was out when the police called to see his uncle for the second time. Pacey and Rees spent an hour at the cottage on this occasion, the superintendent making Roland go over and over the events of the weeks before Mavis vanished, until the old chap’s head was buzzing.

  Persistently repeating his questions, Pacey harried Hewitt without a pause, trying to catch him out in some fact or to goad him into saying something that could be construed as incriminating.

  Although, by the end of the hour, Roland had reached such a state of confusion that he hardly knew himself what he was saying, the detectives had to go away having made no real progress at all.

  Pacey’s only hope was that his badgering and insinuations, with half-veiled promises of new information just around the corner, would work on the old man’s mind so much that their next session of questioning might be more fruitful.

  ‘That didn’t get us very far, Willie, did it?’ he said ruefully as they bumped down the track away from the cottage.

  ‘He’s got such a simple story to stick to, hasn’t he?’ replied the inspector. ‘He says he doesn’t know what happened to her. She went out one day and never came back – end of story! Nothing to trip him up on at all.’

  Pacey swore under his breath. ‘But, damn it, he must have done it, the old fox! There can’t be any other answer. They have rows and fights – no one disputes that – she vanishes, and a body uncommonly like hers turns up not a mile away from the farm! No one else could or would want to do her in. I’ve got a feeling that unless he cracks and spills the beans next time we see him, we’ve had it. The DPP won’t indict him on the evidence we’ve got so far, even though it is good solid circumstantial stuff.’

  The two disappointed policemen drove away, missing Peter’s car at the entrance to the lane by only a couple of minutes.

  He got back to the cottage to find his uncle in a desperate state of agitation, marching up and down the kitchen floor, mumbling to himself.

  As soon as his nephew appeared, he rushed towards him, hands outstretched. ‘They’ve been here again, boy – the police!’ he almost babbled. ‘Hours and hours, they’ve been at me – questions, questions, questions – I’ve had enough of it! As good as told me they know I killed her, they did.’

  Peter tried to calm him down, but Roland had worked himself into a state of panic.

  ‘They’ll be coming for me any time now, boy,’ he said desperately, his watery eyes rolling behind his glasses. ‘“New evidence”, they said they were waiting for – the fat one told me that. They’ll arrest me as soon as they’ve got it, you wait and see, boy.’

  ‘Look, I’ve told you before, Uncle, this is all part of the police game – to frighten you into saying something that will incriminate you. And, as you’ve got nothing to say, you’ll be all right.’

  ‘I don’t know, boy. I don’t know! I’m frightened, that’s for sure. I should never have come back here. I should have stayed in Canada.’

  Roland calmed down after a few minutes gentle talking-to and a cup of the inevitable tea. Peter sat down with him in the kitchen and began to talk seriously about what should be done.

  ‘I think you were right yesterday, it’s time we had a lawyer in on this – if only to protect you from the police overstepping the mark with their questions.’

  ‘But they can do what they like, boy. They as good as said they knew I was the guilty one when they were here.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it, Uncle, I fancy that Pacey has gone too far already. They depend on people not knowing their rights. There are things called Judges’ Rules that stop the police from questioning people once they expect to arrest them, and then as soon as they do arrest them, they have to caution them that they needn’t say any more if they don’t want to.’

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Peter saw that he had said the wrong thing. Roland became excited and slapped the table with his hand.

  ‘Well there, boy, you’re saying yourself now that they’re expecting to arrest me. They must know that this here skeleton belongs to Mavis, otherwise they wouldn’t be making such a dead set for me.’

  Peter tried vainly to make up the ground he had lost, but Roland became progressively more jumpy and nervous. He started meandering around the room again, rubbing his hands.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better go back to Canada. I’ve got enough money. I could go tomorrow, out of the way,’ he said wildly. ‘They’ll have me if I stay here, I know they will.’

  His nephew began to fear for the old fellow’s sanity for a moment. Roland had always been slightly eccentric, isolated and withdrawn. Peter had assumed that this was a result of living for most of his life alone and away from his home and family. Now that this crisis had burst upon him, Peter was afraid that the combination of his oddness and his age might unhinge him altogether.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Uncle,’ he said firmly,

  ‘I’m going down to Carmel House and ask Doctor John or one of the boys to come up and see you. You need something for your nerves – or
something to give you a good night’s sleep at the very least.’

  Roland subsided into a limp pathetic figure, slumped into his chair. ‘All right, boy, there’s nothing I can do, except wait for those police to come again.’

  ‘And, first thing in the morning, I’m going to see that solicitor of yours in Aberystwyth and get his advice.’

  Peter stayed with his uncle for an hour or so until Roland had settled back into a gloomy but calmer frame of mind. Then he drove down to the doctor’s house and told Mary of the old man’s distress.

  ‘I’ll ask Daddy to go up and see him after supper. You can leave him long enough to stay with us for a meal, can’t you?’ she pleaded.

  Peter thought that his holiday, intended to be a couple of weeks of blissful idleness with his fiancée, was turning out to be a nightmare. He was torn between leaving Roland alone and spending some time with Mary; but, salving his conscience with the thought that one of the doctors would be going up to see the old man, he agreed to stay to supper. Mary’s father and both her brothers were in for the meal, which, as was to be expected, turned into a discussion about Roland’s troubles.

  ‘I suppose Pacey is only doing his job, but he’s pushing Uncle Roland a bit too hard to be legitimate, I think,’ said Peter, as they were having coffee.

  ‘But they can never prove that it is Mavis’s body, surely?’ objected David, his pointed chin jutting out in indignation. ‘However much they think it is, they’ve a devil of a job to prove it. And, until they do, your uncle can’t possibly be charged with murder, or anything else, can he?’

  ‘But perhaps they can prove it,’ said Gerald, his face as worried as if his own father were being accused. His usual banter had deserted him, just as David’s normally serious manner had become almost funereal.

  ‘How can they?’ asked his father.

  ‘We don’t know what’s been going on since Sunday,’ went on the younger brother. ‘The police have had their pathologist and their laboratory on the go. For all we know, they might have discovered something that could clinch the identity of the body. It might even be a blind, all this about Mavis Hewitt; they might have ideas about someone else. Have you heard anything at all, Peter, with your newspaper contacts?’

  Peter shook his head. ‘No, I’ve kept well clear. I’m in a rather embarrassing spot, having a sort of obligation to the Morning News, and to my uncle at the same time. Nothing has appeared in any of the papers. I can’t imagine how Pacey fobbed off our man from Pembroke.’

  John Ellis-Morgan tapped his spoon in the saucer with nervous persistence that jarred on Mary’s ears.

  ‘Gerald is right,’ he said. ‘We’ve no idea how much the police know about the body – though I can hardly imagine any reason for them worrying old Roland if they genuinely don’t believe the skeleton to be that of his wife.’

  ‘If only I could do something to fault their theory,’ burst out Peter in sudden frustration. ‘I know they’ve got all the experts and facilities, but they’re more interested in finding facts to prove that the body is Mavis, rather than eliminating her.’

  The elder doctor flicked his eyes around to Peter.

  ‘Oh, come now, I don’t think they’re biased in any way. They’d accept any genuine facts, whether that helped their case or not.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I know they wouldn’t weigh the issue one way or the other. But, surely, their efforts will be concentrated on finding positive facts about the similarities between the two. I wondered if, with my Press connections, I could dig up anything that would show that the real Mavis had something distinctive about her that would knock a hole in the police case.’

  ‘Darling, I don’t see what you could possibly do. The police have all the advantages, surely?’

  ‘You’re thinking of finding some abnormality like a healed fracture in the real Mavis, is that it?’ David spoke from across the table and Peter was again reminded that he was a younger edition of his father, in both looks and manner.

  ‘I suppose so. But, to tell you the truth, I’m not at all clear myself. I’m just mad keen to do something to help the old boy. If you’d have seen him this afternoon, you’d have sworn that the police were waiting outside with handcuffs, he was that convinced that he was on the point of being arrested.’

  Gerald brought the conversation back to a practical level.

  ‘But there’s nothing to suggest that Mavis did have a fracture, is there?’

  David gestured at him impatiently. ‘I didn’t mean it literally, Gerry. I was just giving that as an example. Anyway, the Home Office chap would have sorted that out long ago.’

  ‘It would have to be in the bones, this fault of yours, Peter. No abnormality in the flesh would be any good,’ said John Ellis-Morgan.

  ‘I remember reading in a book about Spilsbury that an old operation scar was vitally important in the Crippen case,’ offered Mary.

  ‘That’s what Dad has just said, Mary,’ snapped David. ‘Nothing in the skin would be the slightest use.’

  ‘What about the teeth?’ asked Peter.

  ‘I’m sure the police pathologist would have flogged that one already,’ said Gerry. ‘I remember looking at the skull. There was no dental work or any fillings at all. Lots of the teeth were missing, in fact.’

  ‘It’s useless trying to think of things sitting here, Peter,’ the father said gently. ‘I should ask your uncle if he can remember any detail, however small, about his wife that may help. I’m afraid I don’t see much chance of finding anything, but you never know.’

  ‘Daddy, you’re going up to see him this evening. You could ask him. You might have a better idea about fractures and medical things than Peter has.’

  John Ellis-Morgan departed for the old man’s cottage after supper, leaving the four younger people in an uneasy mood. .

  ‘I’ve, heard a lot of rumour in the village these past few days, Peter,’ David said grimly, tapping the end of a cigarette with the same jerky movements as his father. ‘Almost every patient who comes into the surgery has a natter about old Hewitt. The older ones, who remember Mavis, are unanimous in saying that she was a bad lot.’

  ‘I’ve had the same thing,’ confirmed Gerry. ‘No one seems to have any doubt that Roland did it. And they seem to be sorry for him. Apparently, everyone was astounded when he came back from Canada five years ago … they thought he’d hopped it to avoid the scandal and died over there years ago.’

  ‘Yes, I understood that everyone thought he was dead,’ said David. ‘I heard rumours about a missing wife and some dark secret in Roland’s past, long before all this fuss blew up.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything about it before!’ cried Mary, indignant that her brother should have kept some local gossip to himself.

  ‘It didn’t occur to me on Sunday to connect the bones in the old mine with the missing Mavis,’ replied David. ‘I assumed that they were real antiques, as Gerry thought. It’s only the local scandalmongers that have put the idea into our heads – and the heads of the police, too, no doubt.’

  A futile discussion went on for a long time, Mary even suggesting that the corpse was wrapped in a dated newspaper which had given the police a clue as to its origin!

  ‘Talking of newspapers, did you manage to look up that old copy of the Aberystwyth paper, Peter?’ asked David.

  ‘I went up there yesterday, but the assistant manager said that the police had taken the file for the whole of that period.’

  ‘What about an inquest – there will have to be one, will there?’ asked Gerald.

  ‘I looked this up in the library yesterday, while I was up in Aber,’ said Peter. ‘Apparently, if an old or incomplete body is found, the coroner has to ask the Home Secretary’s advice as to whether it’s worth holding an inquest. I’m sure he will in this case. But, if there is any possibility of a criminal charge – poor old Roland in this case – then the inquest is only a formal affair of a few minutes. It has to be adjourned until the findings of the crimin
al court are known.’

  The conversation revolved around Roland Hewitt and his troubles until John Ellis-Morgan came back from the cottage.

  ‘He’s not too bad now,’ said the doctor when he came in. ‘Worried and depressed, but quite sensible about the whole business. I’ve given him a couple of sleeping capsules, so he should have a good night’s rest, if nothing else.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that. He spent half last night walking up and down his bedroom. The creaking boards nearly drove me crazy.’ As Peter spoke, he noticed that the elder doctor seemed even more twittery than usual.

  ‘Peter, I don’t want to raise your hopes for nothing,’ began John Ellis-Morgan. ‘But I asked Roland if he could think of anything special about Mavis’s health. He came up with one little fact that, unlikely though it may be, could be worth following up.’

  Peter, in spite of the caution, sat up eagerly.

  ‘What was that? I don’t care how feeble a chance it is, I’m ready to clutch at any straw.’

  ‘Well, the first thing I asked him was about the teeth. But he said that, in the four years that he was with her, she had nothing done to them. And, as far as he knew, she had no fillings or extractions before that.’

  ‘That doesn’t help much,’ objected Gerry. ‘It makes it worse, in fact.’

  ‘Wait a minute, lad, will you,’ his father said with a grimace. ‘Though there was nothing helpful in the teeth, and she certainly had no deformity of her bones, old Roland remembered that she’d had a small operation about six months after they were married.’

  ‘But everyone shouted me down when I mentioned the Crippen operation,’ objected Mary. ‘So what’s the use?’

  Her father shook his fists in the air. ‘Wait a minute, will you – what a set of children I’ve got! If you’d give me a chance to finish, I’d tell you that this was an operation on the nose, for sinus trouble.’

  In spite of his father’s outburst, David immediately raised more objections. ‘But that’s so trivial that it wouldn’t leave any trace. It might even be only a drainage through the nostril!’