The Altered Case

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘No less,’ Hennessey echoed. ‘can’t do much better than that.’

  ‘No, not much better,’ Farrent continued. ‘That was in 1651, and it was a fair and just reward for my ancestor for being a loyal lieutenant of the leader of the Parliamentary cause. He was a man by the name of William Farrent. The lands have been in this family, owned by this family, from that day to this.’

  ‘Lands?’ Hennessey questioned.

  ‘Well, once an area of land becomes large enough it can be referred to in the plural, and at one point our land or lands stretched from the west of York to the coast, all one huge parcel. Over time some have been lost, sold to pay debts, or compulsorily purchased to build airfields during the Second World War or to allow motorways to be built. But once it was possible for a man to walk from York to the coast and not have to step off land owned by the Farrents . . .’

  ‘But now you can only walk from York to Selby on Farrent-owned land?’ Hennessey said with a smile.

  Thomas Farrent glared at Hennessey and then continued, ‘Now it’s fragmented into a series of small parcels . . . and only about ten thousand acres remain all told, but once . . .’ Farrent sighed at the thought of losing so much land, ‘but once . . . ponder a rectangle of land, prime agricultural land, some fifty miles long from east to west and ten miles wide. That was the extent of the land conferred upon William Farrent in 1651. Say about one hundred and fifty thousand acres. So the present acreage of ten thousand is nothing to crow about. The tenant farmers pay a low rent, so the income is just sufficient to maintain this house and to provide a comfortable level of living, modest but comfortable.’

  ‘Well, as they say,’ Hennessey replied, ‘one man’s floor is another man’s ceiling.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning it’s all relative,’ Hennessey explained. ‘There are folk who could not even dream about living in a lovely house like this.’ He glanced at Farrent’s bungalow which seemed expansive, both wide and deep.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Farrent growled. ‘The original house was a manor house; it was about twenty miles from here, but my father had it demolished . . . it was crumbling. I remember it; I was five years old when it was demolished. We saved what we could . . . old swords, paintings . . . they’re in storage, and moved into this house . . . a bungalow, a bit of a come down from a seventeenth-century manor house. So, skeletons in my field?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hennessey replied. ‘I am afraid so.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘We don’t know yet, hence our calling on you,’ Hennessey explained, ‘to let you, the landowner, know what we are doing. But so far we have observed two skeletons.’

  ‘So far?’ Again Farrent’s voice became menacing.

  ‘Yes, we are still digging. Our ground penetrating radar indicates something beneath the topmost skeletons.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So we’ll keep . . .’ Hennessey stopped speaking as a small red car, a BMW, drove up the drive towards the bungalow crunching the gravel. Both he and Yellich turned to their right and watched it approach.

  ‘Mrs Farrent,’ Thomas Farrent announced in the manner Hennessey and Yellich had often encountered of men referring to their wives. The woman, who appeared to be of the same age group as Thomas Farrent, drove past the door of the bungalow glancing curiously at Hennessey and Yellich as she did so.

  ‘Best burglar deterrent there is,’ Farrent said as the red BMW drove by. ‘A cat can’t even walk on gravel without making a sound. You have to be close to hear it but it’s true – not even a cat.’

  ‘Oh I wholly agree,’ Hennessey replied. ‘I do so wholly agree.’

  The officers watched as Mrs Farrent drove the BMW into the open garage and continued to watch as moments later she reappeared carrying her shopping in two eco-friendly straw bags. She wore a blue cardigan over a blue blouse, and a darker blue three-quarter length skirt, and wore blue sports shoes.

  ‘Mrs Farrent’s colour is blue,’ Thomas Farrent explained with an unexpected tone of apology in his voice. ‘It’s her blue eyes, you see.’

  ‘Ah.’ Hennessey nodded.

  ‘These two gentlemen are from the police,’ Thomas Farrent announced as Mrs Farrent approached. As she drew nearer Hennessey saw how powerfully she was holding on to her youth. She said nothing but both Hennessey and Yellich noticed a look of fear in her eyes and both thought her smile was disingenuous. They both sensed an insecure and timid woman. ‘About something in a field,’ Farrent explained. ‘nothing to fret about.’

  ‘Can you tell us who rents that field?’ Hennessey asked, turning once again to Farrent.

  ‘Bowler rents it. Francis Bowler.’

  ‘Where do we find him?’

  ‘The white-painted farmhouse. A small house. Left out of our gate, then go about a mile and a half. There will most likely be an ancient VW in the drive . . . if he’s not at the pub. It’s all that wretched mendicant can afford, an ancient VW . . . it’s red underneath all the dirt. His farm is called Blue Jay Farm.’

  Mrs Farrent slid past the two police officers and entered the bungalow as Thomas Farrent opened the door a little to allow her to enter. Without saying a word Farrent turned and followed his wife, shutting the door on Hennessey and Yellich.

  ‘Well, thank you anyway,’ Hennessey addressed the solid-looking door of the bungalow. ‘We appreciate your help in this matter.’ He and Yellich turned and walked to where Hennessey had parked their car.

  The police constable looked up at Dr D’Acre and Webster who stood at the edge of the grave. Both thought that he looked weary, and well he might. Removing skeletons from deep holes is a task which will reach even the strongest constitutions, emotionally, as well as physically. ‘This is definitely compact soil now, sir . . . ma’am.’ The constable wiped his brow. ‘I am certain to be the first human being to get down this far.’

  ‘Very good.’ Webster nodded. ‘Thank you. As you say, no point in digging any deeper. If we do need to go deeper for some reason, then we can always return. The hole isn’t going anywhere. Even it it’s filled in, it’s still not going anywhere.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The constable put the spade on the side of the hole, levered himself out and brushed the soil from his overalls.

  Louise D’Acre and Webster walked slowly and solemnly back to where the skeletons had been laid out, one beside the other, in a row, behind the screen.

  ‘It’s a family,’ Dr D’Acre announced, as she and Reginald Webster stood side by side looking at the skeletons, as a grim-faced SOCO took photographs. ‘I think we’ll find that it is a family.’

  ‘A family, ma’am?’ Webster queried.

  ‘I think so,’ Dr D’Acre replied softly. ‘I will be able to determine that for certain once we examine the DNA results . . . but we have five adults, as you see, two with fully knitted skulls, one male and one female, the remaining three are all female with partially knitted skulls. So, father, mother and their three teenage daughters . . . skulls do not fully knit until about the age of twenty-five years. They were a short family in terms of stature, save one who, as you see, was noticeably taller than her sisters and parents.’

  It was Sunday, 15.37 hours.

  TWO

  Monday, 06.05 hours – 15.41 hours

  in which an unpleasant tale unfolds, an identity is confirmed and the gentle reader is introduced to Carmen Pharoah.

  Virginia Farrent lay awake. Her husband snored loudly beside her. Through the window of her bedroom she pondered the dark outline of the tree canopy against the lighter outline of the sky. She heard an owl hoot and then the second hoot from an answering owl. She could only recall the formidable and terrifying Sister Mary, whose bulk towered over her, the black and white of her habit and huge metal crucifix which dangled from around her neck, ‘Your sins, child, will always seek you out’, ‘If you push a rock it will roll back on top of you’, ‘If you dig a hole you will fall into it’ . . . ‘There is no escape, no escape at all.’

  A hole
. . . in the ground.

  A hole . . . in the ground.

  The first sliver of dawn appeared in the sky. She glanced at the clock beside her bed: 06.05. She felt a terrible, very terrible dawn was breaking.

  Louise D’Acre stood thoughtfully in the post-mortem laboratory of the York District Hospital and looked carefully at the five skeletons which lay in a row, each on a stainless steel table. Taking her time she studied each skeleton carefully with her practised eye. A metal bench, also like the tables of stainless steel, ran the full length of one of the walls of the laboratory, beneath which were drawers, also of metal, containing surgical instruments, a plentiful supply of starched towels and other items necessary to the conducting of a post-mortem examination. The room was brightly illuminated by a series of filament bulbs set in the ceiling and concealed from direct view by transparent Perspex sheeting so as to soften the glare and to protect living human eyes from epileptic fit-inducing shimmer. The room had no natural source of light. Also attached to the ceiling were microphones on the end of long anglepoise arms, one above each table. The aluminium and the stainless steel in the room gleamed brightly under the filament bulbs; the scent of formaldehyde was heavy and mingled with the odour of strong disinfectant which had been used to clean the industrial grade linoleum which covered the floor. Eric Filey, of short and rotund appearance, and who, unusual for one of his calling, managed to approach his work with good humour and appropriate joyfulness, was also at that moment in a subdued mood as he stood close to the bench. At the opposite side of the laboratory to the stainless steel bench was Carmen Pharoah, who remained motionless with her eyes downcast as if in reverence to the presence of the forensic pathologist, and also in reverence to the five, as yet, nameless victims.

  ‘I think we all feel the same.’ Louise D’Acre spoke quietly. ‘One victim is bad enough, all come here before their time, but five, all found in the same hole in the corner of a wheat field . . . I think that reaches us all.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, ma’am,’ Carmen Pharoah replied, equally quietly.

  ‘I expected Mr Hennessey.’ Dr D’Acre turned to Carmen Pharoah.

  ‘He did in fact intend to observe for the police, ma’am, but asked me to stand in for him instead. He and Sergeant Yellich have inquiries to make.’

  ‘I see.’ Dr D’Acre turned back to the tables and continued to observe the skeletons. ‘We have,’ she said, ‘two mature adults, one male and one female, plus three young adults, all female.’ She paused. ‘It is a family, I’ll be bound. You know if I was a betting lady I would lay good money that what we have here is a family with one daughter who grew up to be significantly taller than her parents and her sisters. Such is not unknown, and is commonly referred to as a “throwback gene”, but “dormant gene” is the preferred term. Somewhere back along the line of this family an ancestor had congress with a tall person and a height-inducing gene was introduced into their line. We often observe much the same in this part of England, Ms Pharoah.’

  ‘Really, ma’am?’ Carmen Pharoah allowed herself a brief but still reverential eye contact with Dr D’Acre. ‘That is quite interesting.’

  ‘Probably not so much in London,’ Dr D’Acre continued, ‘but up here in the frozen north, the wilderness that extends north of the River Trent, but particularly north of the River Humber, it is not at all unusual for stocky, swarthy, dark-haired people to produce a tall, blue-eyed blonde child. The Viking legacy you see. The Vikings left the beginnings of permanent settlements. They left place names and names for geographical features like “foss” for “waterfall”, and they also left their genes.’

  ‘That is quite interesting, ma’am,’ Carmen Pharoah replied, ‘and, as you say, no Viking influence in London, so that doesn’t happen.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ Dr D’Acre rested her fingers on the lip of the nearest table to which she stood. ‘But I will be very surprised if these five people were not related in life, and were not related in their manner and time of death.’ She snapped on a pair of latex gloves and walked to the table upon which the male skeleton lay. She then reached upwards with a controlled and a confident movement and pulled down the microphone until it was level with her mouth at perhaps, estimated Carmen Pharoah, about two feet distant. ‘Date . . . today’s date, please, Sheila,’ Dr D’Acre said for the benefit of the audio typist who would shortly be typing her words into a word processor, ‘and also the next case number, please.’ She paused and then commenced her commentary. ‘The body is that of a mature adult male. It is completely skeletal. There is no trace of muscle or sinew, which indicates a burial in the damp, clay soil in the Vale of York of at least twenty years.’ She turned to Carmen Pharoah and explained, ‘Plenty of microscopic bugs in the soil to feast on the flesh. If they had been buried in a desert or in very cold areas then some flesh would remain, particularly in the cold areas.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Dr D’Acre forced open the mouth of the skeleton and remarked, ‘British dentistry is noted, and with a gold filling, no less, which indicates late twentieth and early twenty-first century dentistry, unless the victims were especially wealthy, in which case the time of death could equally be much earlier in the twentieth century, even earlier than that, but gold fillings ceased to be a symbol of wealth after the Second World War.’

  ‘I see, ma’am,’ Carmen Pharoah responded.

  ‘Yes, courtesy of the good old envy of the world National Health Service, and were never to my taste.’ Dr D’Acre folded her arms. ‘I understand from Mr Hennessey that there is witness evidence which indicates a burial of about thirty years previous but forensically and pathologically speaking, I cannot find anything which would indicate a time of death so precisely.’

  ‘Understood, ma’am,’ Carmen Pharoah replied.

  Dr D’Acre unfolded her arms. ‘But . . . let’s press on and see what we can find. No injuries seem to have been sustained by the skeleton. There is no evidence of a blunt or sharp force trauma. So, for an explanation of cause of death we are looking at drowning, or suffocation, or asphyxiation or poisoning . . . something of that nature but we also cannot rule out death by thirst or starvation . . . slower and very painful but just as effective.’

  ‘Indeed, ma’am,’ Carmen Pharoah said. ‘Three days, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, the rule of threes; three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without oxygen to cause death and just one minute without air to cause brain death. You know, if you want to murder someone and avoid being charged with murder you simply deprive them of oxygen for sixty seconds. The heart still beats but the victim is left in a permanent vegetative state . . . as good as dead.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘But an awful lot more difficult to carry off than people imagine. You have to get the timing just right. Too long and you are looking at life in prison, and you’ve also got to incapacitate the person in question, which is not at all easy, not without evidence of same. I mean to say that I can’t declare the victims to have had a massive stroke when there are ligature marks on their wrists and ankles.’ Dr D’Acre smiled. ‘It ain’t so easy to get away with.’

  ‘Of course, ma’am.’ Carmen Pharoah returned the smile but did so briefly. ‘Better not to commit the crime in the first place.’

  ‘Which would always be my advice.’ Dr D’Acre returned her attention to the male skeleton. ‘I will send marrow samples to the forensic laboratory. I can obtain that very easily from the long bones. They will retain diatoms if the victim was drowned.’

  ‘Diatoms?’ Carmen Pharoah queried.

  ‘More microscopic beasties,’ Dr D’Acre explained. ‘They live in water; a drowning victim inhales them into their lungs from whence they migrate to the marrow in the long bones, there to remain.’

  ‘I see, ma’am. Diatoms,’ Carmen Pharoah said. ‘Diatoms.’

  ‘The marrow,’ Dr D’Acre continued, ‘will also retain traces of heavy poisons of the likes of arsenic and others of that famil
y, such as strychnine, but frankly murdering someone with arsenic went out with hansom cabs and gas street lighting and it is now practically impossible to obtain.’ Dr D’Acre paused. ‘So let us do what we can because we must come up with goods of some sort. Let us therefore turn to the issue of identification which is always useful for the police investigation.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Carmen Pharoah grinned. ‘Always very useful.’

  ‘Well, the shape of the skull of the male skeleton indicates that he is of North Western European racial extraction, as I think I commented at the scene of the excavation. An Asian male is not impossible, although Asian skulls tend to be more finely made than the European skull which tends to be broader and more thickly set. As I have already noted, the teeth are intact and show dental work having been undertaken, so dental records may help you but don’t hold out too much hope there,’ Dr D’Acre added. ‘Dentists, you see, are obliged by law to keep all the records of their patients for eleven years only. So any dental records in respect of this gentleman and his family might no longer be available. It depends upon the dentist.’

  ‘Eleven years,’ Carmen Pharoah echoed for want of a response, ‘noted, ma’am.’

  Dr D’Acre turned to Eric Filey. ‘Can you hand me the tape measure, please, Eric?’

  Filey turned to the stainless steel bench, opened a drawer and extracted a yellow retractable metal tape measure, walked the short distance to where Dr D’Acre stood and gently handed it to her.

  ‘If we could turn him, please, Eric?’ Dr D’Acre slipped the tape measure into the pocket of her white laboratory coat, moved to the end of the table and took the skull of the skeleton in her hands, whilst Filey silently went to the other end of the stainless steel table and took very careful hold of the ankles. Then with an ease and a sense of care which reached Carmen Pharoah, Dr D’Acre and Eric Filey, with a clearly well-rehearsed manoeuvre, rotated the skeleton through 180 degrees and carefully laid it face down upon the polished metal table. Dr D’Acre took the tape measure from her pocket and extended it, laying it the length of the skeleton from skull to heel. ‘There are,’ she said, smiling at Carmen Pharoah, ‘certain rules which we can observe if we are dealing with bits of a human body to estimate height. The spine, length of, is the same length as hip to ankle, approximately speaking, and if the person was of normal proportion. The femur is one third of the height, also approximately, but here we have the whole skeleton, so no need to estimate.’