According to the Evidence rpm-2

by Bernard Knight

  ‘May I ask how you came to seek my advice?’ asked Pryor.

  ‘A fellow solicitor in Lydney, with whom I did some business recently, highly recommended you after you had assisted him with one of his cases.’

  That would be old Edward Lethbridge, thought Richard – the legal grapevine was the best form of advertising.

  Lovesey opened a thick file on his desk. ‘The circumstances are unusual, to say the least. The accused is a respected veterinary surgeon, Samuel Parker. He has a practice in the small town of Eastbury, a few miles from here. Mr Parker is forty-eight years of age and was married for fifteen years to Mary, four years his senior.’

  ‘And how did she die?’ asked the pathologist, keen to get to the heart of the problem.

  ‘The prosecution allege that he injected her with potassium chloride,’ replied the lawyer heavily.

  Pryor’s eyebrows rose, and he looked across at Angela with a look of astonishment. ‘That’s very unusual! I’ve read about a few cases, but never encountered one myself. What were the circumstances?’

  ‘His wife was bedridden – dying in fact, from cancer of the pancreas. She had discharged herself from hospital some weeks before and refused to be readmitted. She was being looked after by the District Nurses, as well as by her husband, housekeeper and her sister, who is the local pharmacist and lives nearby.’

  ‘So is your client claiming it was a mercy killing?’ asked Angela.

  George Lovesey shook his head. ‘Indeed no. He robustly claims he had no part in her death whatsoever! Furthermore, he emphatically denies that she could have died of potassium poisoning, as there was no way in which it could have been administered.’

  He slid the file over to the pair sitting opposite.

  ‘I think it better if you took this copy of all the depositions and counsel’s advice and studied it yourselves, rather than have me go through the whole story now.’

  Richard took the big lever-arch file and laid it on his lap.

  ‘Obviously, the first medical opinion you obtained will be in here?’

  Lovesey nodded. ‘Everything’s in there. I fear that asking you to become involved is a last-ditch effort, but our new leading counsel, Nathan Prideaux, insisted on it. There’s not much time, I’m afraid, so if you could let me have even a preliminary opinion in the next few days, it would be much appreciated.’

  A few minutes were taken up with important matters such as an expert medical fee, which was difficult to assess, as the amount of work involved was unknown at this stage, so an hourly rate was agreed.

  The business completed, they left the solicitor’s office and made their way back to the car, the vital file clutched under Pryor’s arm. When they were driving out of Stow, he jerked a thumb towards the back seat, where he had laid the documents that Lovesey had given them.

  ‘We’re not going to look at those until we get back,’ he declared. ‘Let’s enjoy the rest of the day. I told Moira we’d be late and not to leave anything for us for supper.’

  Angela gave him a stern look. ‘So I have to go to bed hungry, do I?’

  Richard grinned. ‘No, let’s anticipate that nice expert fee we’re going to get. We’ll stop at the Victoria Hotel in Newnham on the way back and have dinner – no expense spared!’

  After a leisurely dinner at the old coaching inn, it was indeed fairly late by the time they got back to Tintern, but Angela and Richard could not resist staying up even later to go through the file from Stow.

  They took a couple of gin and tonics to the staffroom, where Richard started on the papers. As he digested them, he handed them over one by one to Angela, curled up on a settee opposite.

  There was silence for over half an hour, then Angela placed the last sheet on the coffee table and looked at her partner.

  ‘Well, what about that? Can you do anything for them?’

  Richard sighed. ‘Doesn’t look good, does it? Finding that high concentration of potassium in the eye fluid seems to be the main plank of the prosecution’s medical evidence.’

  ‘So you feel that he must be guilty?’

  He shrugged. ‘I know virtually nothing about these biochemical markers. Perhaps Siân has heard of them on this degree course she’s doing?’

  Their technician was going every week on day release to Cardiff to do the practical work for her external bachelor’s degree.

  Angela uncoiled herself from the settee and announced that she was making for her bed. ‘You can ask Siân in the morning – I’ll bet she and Moira will be agog to hear the details of this one.’

  Richard was sitting with a frown on his face, staring at the file on the table.

  ‘There’s a niggle in the back of my mind about potassium in the vitreous humour,’ he said. ‘Something I must have heard in one of the forensic meetings. It’ll come to me eventually, but I think I’ll go over to Bristol tomorrow afternoon and have a root through the medical school library. That solicitor needs some quick action, if the case is going to trial very soon.’

  When they left the room, Richard headed for his study at the back to dump the file and look at a couple of textbooks, in case there was something useful in them. At the foot of the stairs, Angela stopped and laid a hand on his arm.

  ‘Thanks for a nice day – and a lovely dinner, Richard!’

  She leaned forward and gave him a swift kiss on the cheek, then mounted the stairs without looking back. He stared after her until she vanished into her bedroom, then continued on his way to his office, touching his cheek almost experimentally.

  ‘Well, well, it has been an interesting day!’ he murmured.

  Just as Angela had predicted, the other two women in the house soon wanted to hear all about the new case. Pryor had to go up to Monmouth by eight thirty, to carry out two routine coroner’s post-mortems at the seedy public mortuary in the council yard. He was back by coffee time and he and Angela had to tell them all about Samuel Parker, the allegedly homicidal vet.

  ‘His wife was dying of cancer, but she was being nursed at home until the end,’ he began. ‘No one is denying that he was totally solicitous towards her, as well as arranging for two District Nurses to come in twice a day – and having help from their housekeeper.’

  ‘Don’t forget the sister, the local pharmacist,’ Angela reminded him.

  ‘Yes, Sheila Lupin, the one who started the allegations in the first place. She was a spinster who owned the village’s chemist’s shop.’

  ‘So is this going to be one of those mercy killings?’ asked Moira.

  Richard explained that the prosecution wanted to establish that a ‘mercy’ motive was a smokescreen for Parker’s deliberate desire to get rid of his wife, but that the accused himself denied there was any killing at all and that Mary had died of her cancer.

  Siân almost intuitively anticipated her boss. ‘Another woman involved, I’ll bet!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘That’s what the sister claimed,’ said Angela. ‘Though she sounds a nasty bit of work. According to the statement of one of the nurses, who has known the family since they were children, this Sheila Lupin always had a down on Samuel since he married her sister.’

  ‘So what exactly happened?’ asked Moira, leaning forward in her chair, eager to hear the details.

  ‘The nurse had just left, having settled the patient and given her the first of her two daily morphine injections,’ continued Pryor. ‘Samuel Parker came back to the house as she was leaving, having been out to a farm on a call. The veterinary clinic is an annexe to the house, so he didn’t have to go near his wife’s downstairs sickroom.’

  Quoting from the depositions in the file, Richard went on to describe how Sheila Lupin had come across from the shop on one of her many daily visits and found her sister dead in bed.

  There was an injection mark on her arm, still oozing blood.

  ‘She dashes around to the surgery to fetch the husband, who races into the house to see his wife. The pharmacist notices a couple of used syringes on the surgery t
able, together with a box of Pentothal ampoules and a bottle labelled “potassium chloride”. Recalling the recent needle puncture on her sister’s arm, she literally starts shouting “murder” and a nasty scene takes place.’

  ‘Sounds a bit fishy, I must admit,’ commented Siân.

  ‘But not so suspicious when Samuel explained what had happened,’ interposed Angela. ‘The call he had just returned from was to put down a badly injured goat that had been kicked by a horse on a farm. Intravenous Pentothal and potassium chloride are used by some vets to destroy animals painlessly.’

  ‘So why didn’t everyone believe him?’ asked Moira.

  ‘Depends on what the post-mortem showed,’ suggested Siân, displaying her more scientific attitude.

  ‘Exactly, but there was also a lot of emotional pressure as well. The sister was hysterical, screaming at the husband and calling him a murderer. He immediately called the doctor, but their regular GP was on holiday and a self-important young locum turned up instead, anxious to make a name for himself.’

  Richard scowled at the thought of some people he had known in the past, who seemed keen to find suspicion on the flimsiest of evidence.

  ‘Whereas their usual medical attendant, knowing of the severity of the wife’s terminal illness, would probably have signed a death certificate for natural causes, this locum listened to Sheila Lupin’s accusations and ran off to report the death to the coroner, telling him of the allegations. The coroner had little option but to inform the police, through his coroner’s officer, and next morning a couple of CID men were knocking on the vet’s door.’

  Angela finished the rest of her coffee. ‘Reading between the lines, it sounds as if neither the coroner nor the detectives were very enthusiastic about pursuing the matter, but they took some statements and seized the syringes and bottles just in case.’

  ‘What about “the other woman” angle?’ asked Moira.

  ‘Unfortunately for Samuel Parker, it turned out to be true,’ said Pryor. ‘The sister gleefully named the lady, an attractive widow living about ten miles away at Lower Slaughter, perhaps an unfortunate name in the circumstances. Then, more reluctantly, others confirmed this, including the lady herself.’

  ‘Men are rotten swine!’ muttered Angela obscurely and walked out to take her coffee cup to the kitchen.

  Their housekeeper and technician were not yet satisfied with the details, and Richard told them of the main plank of the prosecution’s case.

  ‘There was a post-mortem next day by the usual pathologist at the hospital, and he found nothing except the extensive cancer, which had spread widely to many other organs. He said that normally he would have been satisfied to give the lung cancer as the cause of death, but given the allegations and the lack of any immediate cause of death, such as coronary thrombosis or a pulmonary embolism, he felt someone else should examine the body.’

  ‘And presumably this second chap did find something?’ concluded Moira.

  ‘Well, they got Angus Smythe up from Oxford. He’s at the Radcliffe Infirmary and covers that area for the Home Office. Knowing of the potassium allegation, he took a number of samples of blood and even the fluid from the eyeball for analysis.’

  ‘Vitreous humour? That’s what they call it, don’t they?’ asked Siân, who had obviously been reading widely since taking this forensic job.

  ‘Yes, that’s it – and his laboratory found a very high concentration of potassium in the fluid. In fact, it’s that which led the Director of Public Prosecutions to charge Parker with murder, as the police were not very impressed with the strength of the circumstantial evidence.’

  Moira Davison gave Pryor a look, which though it fell short of adoration was filled with pride. ‘And now they’ve called you in to save him!’ she said.

  Richard grinned. ‘I’m not exactly a knight in shining armour, Moira! But I’ll do my best to make sure that there are no loopholes in the prosecution case – that’s what defence experts are for.’

  ‘They’ve had one opinion already, so Angela said,’ objected Siân. ‘But he couldn’t help, so what can you do?’

  ‘Perhaps nothing at all; I might agree with him totally. But there may be a different interpretation I can find.’

  ‘So a lawyer can shop around cherry-picking expert opinions until he finds one that suits him?’ demanded Siân. She was always ready to crusade for the correct approach. Her father was a shop steward in a local foundry and the whole family were staunchly socialist in outlook.

  Richard nodded. ‘That happens, and it’s quite legal. Though there has been talk of making the defence admit they’ve done that and to disclose what the unfavourable opinions were. But so far it hasn’t become law.’

  Angela had come back into the room and heard the last exchange. ‘It’s even much more common in America,’ she said. ‘But of course there they even spend weeks picking a jury, to get the ones they think might be most sympathetic to their client!’

  Siân muttered something about ‘And they call it justice!’ as she went back to her bench to start work again.

  ‘Do you think you’ll find anything useful in the literature?’ Angela asked her partner.

  ‘I’ll have a good look in the Bristol university library,’ he replied. Richard had a contract to give twenty lectures a year to medical students there, which gave him access to the library. ‘I’ve got this niggling memory of seeing something about potassium after death. I think it was from Germany.’

  ‘Do they have all the forensic journals in Bristol?’

  ‘I’m not sure – if not, I’ll go down to Cardiff and look in the Home Office lab; they should have some. And then try the medical school library there. I’m an old student, so they should let me in.’

  As he went back to his room, Angela decided she admired his tenacity and strength of purpose. She hoped he hadn’t read too much into the little peck she gave him on the stairs the previous evening, but he had been such good company at dinner. She found that she was glad she had him as a colleague and friend.

  Next day, while Richard Pryor was sitting in his car on the Beachley–Aust ferry, crossing the Severn Estuary on his way to Bristol, Arthur Crippen was in a meeting with his superiors.

  The Mid-Wales Constabulary had been formed only a few years earlier by amalgamating three county forces, and now its headquarters were in Newtown, right in the middle of Wales.

  He had travelled up from Brecon with his DCI Joe Paget to discuss the Ty Croes case with Detective Chief Superintendent Claude Morris, the head of the CID.

  ‘We’re getting nowhere at all so far, sir,’ announced Paget. Crippen thought the ‘we’ was a bit rich, as the chief inspector had had virtually nothing to do with the matter and knew only what Arthur had told him about it.

  The DCS slumped behind his desk, tapping on his blotter with the end of a pencil. He was a fat man, nearing retirement, like Crippen, and was keen on having a quiet life for the next couple of years.

  ‘So you think it has to be an inside job?’ he grunted.

  Paget deferred to his DI for an answer, and Crippen leaned forward over his cup of tasteless canteen coffee.

  ‘I can’t see it being anything else, sir. It’s not a casual assault by some chancer trying to steal something. There’s no one else around there apart from those who live or work on the farm.’

  The portly DCS considered this for a moment, still tapping his pencil. ‘So we’ve got two farmers, their wives and a father?’

  ‘And there’s this young chap you told me about, Arthur,’ chipped in Paget, just to show that he was on the ball.

  The DI shrugged. ‘Can’t see him involved, though he admitted he hated the dead man’s guts.’

  ‘I wouldn’t write him off,’ advised Morris. He had been a good detective before he was kicked upstairs to his armchair job, and his opinion was still worth listening to. ‘Is this Shane boy big enough to have done it?’

  Arthur nodded, albeit reluctantly. ‘He’s a strong lad, admitte
dly. And the deceased was a scrawny sort of fellow. It’s just that I can’t see this boy having enough brains to think out a complicated scheme like that.’

  Claude Morris ruffled the pages of the report on his desk.

  ‘It’s a bloody funny way to commit a murder,’ he grumbled. ‘Are we absolutely sure that it’s not some bizarre kind of accident or suicide? We’d look right fools if we start a homicide investigation and then discover there wasn’t one.’

  ‘The pathologist was quite definite about it – and I saw the injuries he was relying on with my own eyes.’

  The DCS still looked dubious. ‘This Dr Pryor – I’d never heard of him. He’s not the regular Home Office fellow, is he?’

  Joe Paget, who always read all the bumf that was sent around by headquarters, answered this time. ‘There was a circular from the Home Office some time ago. He was put on their list a few months back, with a sort of roving commission to fill in wherever he was needed. Seems he was a pathologist in the army and in Singapore – had a lot of experience.’

  ‘And the forensic lab did their stuff, I see. What came out of that?’

  Crippen again took up the baton. ‘The doctor found some fibres on his neck which the lab said corresponded with some that were stuck on the hook of an engine hoist – and they matched some rope that was lying around the barn, so the hanging part has to be accepted.’

  ‘But that was a cover-up for a previous throttling?’

  ‘So it has to be a murder, sir,’ confirmed Paget. ‘No other way he could end up under a tractor wheel. The doctor said he must have been hanging for some hours before that, by the settling of blood in his legs.’

  ‘He was a heavy drinker, so you say. Was he pissed when all this happened?’

  ‘Not all that much. He had the equivalent of a few pints in him, though again the doctor says it depends on when he last had a drink and at what time he died,’ said Crippen.