Where Death Delights

by Bernard Knight

‘What about Albert’s death certificate?’ asked Pryor, out of curiosity. ‘For all we know, he might be living in Birmingham with a fancy woman. He may not know that he’s supposed to be dead!’

  He could hear Meredith’s sigh over the phone. ‘It’ll be a bureaucratic nightmare, getting that annulled. I had a clerical error once before that gave the wrong name and it took weeks for the Registrar and Somerset House in London to sort it out!’

  With the coroner’s permission, he next rang the solicitor in Lydney to tell him of the result and again he was not as overjoyed as Richard might have expected.

  ‘Mrs Oldfield will get straight on the warpath now!’ he forecast. ‘She’ll strain every nerve to prove that those remains are of her precious nephew. I expect she’ll want me to carry on retaining you and Mr Mitchell to pitch in with the investigation.’

  Even the prospect of a further fee was not all that attract-ive to Richard, if it meant running around at the behest of that autocratic old woman.

  ‘I can’t see where we could even begin, given that we don’t have any physical details of this Anthony Oldfield,’ he protested. ‘If anyone can chase it up, it must be Trevor Mitchell. Perhaps he can somehow trace the chap’s movements after he left home.’

  ‘I’ll see what he has to say, but if she really wants you for some medical advice, can I say you’ll do it, Doctor?’

  Rather reluctantly, Richard agreed, though he could see no reason for the offer to be taken up. He went to bring Angela up to date and then went to write a report on the ‘man who never was’, as Albert Barnes came to be known in Garth House!

  TWELVE

  When Michael Prentice arrived home from his office that evening, he had to squeeze his Jaguar past Daphne’s blue Morris Minor which was parked near the top of the drive. It was normally hidden in the garage, so as not to attract too much attention from nosy neighbours so soon after his wife’s death, so he wondered where his mistress had been. Inside the front door, he found the answer in the shape of two large suitcases left in the hall – Daphne had not been anywhere, she was going!

  He marched into the lounge and saw her standing in the window, dressed in a cream shirt-dress with a wide flared skirt, a perky hat on her bottle-blonde hair.

  ‘Where the hell are you going?’ he demanded, the fuse already lit on his short temper.

  ‘I’m going back to Porthcawl for the time being,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t want to get mixed up in anything.’

  ‘Mixed up in what?’ he demanded, angrily stepping towards her. She backed away a little and pointed to the telephone on a side table.

  ‘Those police again! They rang this afternoon to say that they are coming at nine tomorrow morning to make a forensic examination of the house. What’s going on, Michael?’

  He marched over to a drinks cabinet and poured himself a double measure of whiskey.

  ‘Nothing’s going on! It’s that bloody man Massey, stirring up trouble for me. You know how he hates me, I would never have married his damned daughter if I knew he would be like this.’

  He tossed back half the drink, without offering one to the woman.

  ‘You haven’t done anything silly, have you, Mike?’ she asked accusingly. ‘I’m not hanging about here if your troubles are going to involve me.’

  He glared at her angrily. ‘Anything silly? What the hell do you mean? Of course I haven’t, you stupid bitch.’

  Her face tightened and she stalked to the door, pushing him aside as he moved towards her.

  ‘If that’s what you think of me, I’m going. Probably for good!’

  He stood aside sullenly and watched her go into the hall and open the front door.

  ‘Are you going to carry my cases out or do I have to do it myself?’ she demanded.

  ‘There’s no need for you to go at all,’ he said, but he was making a statement, not pleading. ‘Though if those coppers are coming to nose about, it might be just as well if you’re not here at the time. I’ll give you a ring when things have settled down.’

  ‘I just hope they do, Michael, for both our sakes,’ she said flatly and went to sit in her car while he put the cases on the back seat. A moment later, she had driven off without a backward glance, leaving him to close the gates that he had left open when he had arrived.

  He stalked back to the house and slammed the front door. Going back into the lounge, he poured himself another stiff drink and flopped into an armchair to morosely ponder his situation and wallow in some self-pity.

  In spite of his threat, Michael Prentice did not contact his solicitor to ask him to be present at the search of his house, as he was confident that there was nothing to be found. When the police arrived on Wednesday morning, he assumed an air of bored indifference.

  ‘You won’t want me hanging around while you waste your time, Officer,’ he said nonchalantly, as he opened the door to Ben Evans. He had a bag of golf clubs on his shoulder and as he came out, he handed the officer a bunch of keys.

  ‘I’m off to the club until you’ve finished. Here’s the keys to the garage and the garden shed. Pull the front door to when you leave, there’s a good chap.’

  He walked off to his car and drove away, past the CID Vauxhall, a Standard Eight and a small Austin Ten police van that were parked on the track.

  ‘Cheeky sod!’ muttered Lewis Lewis as he watched him go. ‘I’d like to find something here, just to pull him down a peg or two!’

  ‘Now, now, Inspector, we are upholders of justice!’ grinned Evans. ‘Everyone’s innocent until proved guilty.’

  Lewis glared after the retreating Jaguar for a moment, then turned to the three officers unloading the van. One was a photographer from Bridgend HQ, the other two detective constables from Gowerton, one to act as Exhibits Officer if they found anything. The local uniformed man from the Southgate police station had just arrived on his bicycle and the whole team went into the house. Though it was June, it was overcast and the Home Service on the wireless was forecasting rain by the afternoon.

  The superintendent had no idea what they looking for, but after a phone call to his chief superintendent, who was head of CID at Headquarters, they agreed that they should go through the whole routine. Then, if it turned out to be nasty, they would not be left with egg on their faces for not covering all possibilities.

  ‘You’ve got a woman dead and an accusation that she was being ill-treated by her husband,’ the chief had said. ‘Now this pathologist says she has bruises indicative of gripping on her arms and neck – and not least, a London QC is her father and is raising hell. That’s enough for me to give it the full Monty!’

  Evans watched as the photographer took some establishing shots of the house, both from outside and indoors, while the inspector and two DCs made a methodical search of each room.

  ‘Are we looking for anything in particular, guv’nor?’ asked the older detective constable, an experienced man who had been involved in many searches.

  Ben Evans shrugged. ‘Flying blind, I’m afraid. She had an injury on the back of her head, so look for anything that might have blood and hair on it. Could be a corner of furniture or the fireplace – or it could be the good old blunt instrument.’

  However, every effort to find evidence of a fall or a struggle came to nothing. They searched everywhere, including the garden, the garage and the shed. They even put a head up into the loft, which from the layer of dust, appeared never to have been entered.

  ‘Are we interested in papers and stuff like that?’ asked Lewis, as he pulled open a desk drawer in the right hand front room, which appeared to have been used as an office, as it had a portable typewriter on top and a small filing cabinet alongside.

  Evans came across and began looking through some of the papers, but they seemed to be either household bills or documents relating to the factory in Swansea.

  ‘No sign of a diary she might have kept?’ he asked the searchers, but was answered by shaken heads.

  He shrugged off his disappointment. ‘I t
hought she might have left some record of him knocking her about, as she had written to her friend,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’s clean after all.’

  They gave up after about two hours, having covered every inch of the house, even pulling back carpets and moving beds. The superintendent was last out and slammed the door shut, leaving the keys inside on the hall table. They had a final conference in the front garden, Ben Evans perching his large backside on the low wall of the circular rockery. He looked morosely into the murky water of the small pond that lay in the middle, where two sad-looking goldfish swam around.

  ‘We’ve got nothing, lads, and I’m not sure where we go from here. Any suggestions?’

  Lewis Lewis scratched his head, then pulled out a packet of Players Navy Cut and offered them around. ‘We’ve never actually seen where she went into the sea and where the body was found, have we?’

  Two of his colleagues took a cigarette, Evans and the photographer declining. When they had lit up, the senior detective constable queried what could be gained.

  ‘It’s almost a couple of weeks now, and we’ve had some rain and plenty of wind. What’s going to be left?’

  Ben Evans thought for a moment, then whistled and beckoned to the uniformed man, who had been standing guard at the gate into the road. When he came up the path, Evans asked him if he was the one who had answered the call of the fisherman who had found the body.

  ‘Yes, sir – and I was there when the coastguards hauled her ashore.’

  ‘What about the place where she went swimming? Have you been down there since?’

  The PC, a middle-aged man nearing retirement, nodded.

  ‘I was the one who found her dressing-gown thing, behind a gorse bush above the rocks.’

  ‘Can you show us both those places, Constable? We may as well have a look now we’re here.’

  They trooped off behind the officer, who went a few yards along the track to the right, then turned down between stunted bushes and across to the top of the cliff.

  Here a wide, shallow amphitheatre sloped steeply down to the rocks below, lined with coarse grass and patches of gorse. There was a narrow, ankle-twisting path going down to the sea, marked by muddy earth and outcropping stones.

  The PC set off, followed more cautiously by the others and eventually they reached a band of flatter grass immediately above the rocky gullies, in which grey water surged and sucked with the swell.

  ‘Do people swim in that?’ said Evans, pointing down to the water, ten feet below.

  ‘Yes, plenty of them, especially at the weekends and in better weather than this.’ The constable pointed up at the low clouds from which an intermittent drizzle came down.

  ‘And this is where Mrs Prentice must have gone in?’ asked Lewis.

  The uniformed man pointed to a nearby gorse bush, where a few bright yellow flowers resisted the wind and salt. ‘That’s where I found her clothing, sir. One of these thick white towelling jobs, with a tie-belt, like you get in Turkish baths on the films. There was a blue bath-towel as well.’

  ‘What about shoes?’ asked the photographer. ‘She’d hardly have come down that flaming path we just used in her bare feet?’

  The constable shook his head. ‘No shoes, nothing but that dressing gown and towel.’

  Ben Evans looked at Lewis.

  ‘That’s a bit odd, unless she was one of these “back to nature” folks and despised shoes.’

  ‘She may have some sort of sandals or rubber shoes and kept them on until she got down on the rocks,’ explained the PC. ‘I’ve seen a lot of people with those, it saves the feet until they’re right at the water’s edge.’

  He pointed down at the grey rocks that formed the walls of the gullies. ‘They get right down there, then jump or clamber down into the water. They say it’s more fun than just walking in off a sandy beach, though at low tide, there’s a little stretch of sand exposed here.’

  ‘So where are the shoes now?’ demanded one of the search team.

  ‘Well they weren’t there when I came down to find the clothes,’ retaliated the constable. ‘But that was a day later, they could have been washed off by a big wave or blown off by the wind.’

  The superintendent had a few photos taken of the site, then they clambered back up to the top of the cliffs. Once on the track to the houses, Ben Evans decided to cover all his bases and look at the place where the body was recovered.

  ‘It’s about a quarter of a mile, sir. Do you want to walk or drive?’ asked their guide. Opting to do it the hard way, the posse set off eastwards and passed the last of the houses, when the stony road became even more uneven.

  ‘Really need a Land Rover along here,’ observed Lewis, as they came to another dip in the high cliffs which went down to the rocks a couple of hundred feet below.

  ‘That’s Pwlldu Head further on,’ said the local man, pointing to a blunt promontory beyond the dip.

  He led them cautiously down another even more difficult path to a similar ledge above the waves and pointed out the place where the body had been seen in the water.

  ‘Up against the back end of that narrow crack, it was,’ he told them.

  Ben Evans nodded. ‘You reckon it could have washed along from where we were just now?’

  The constable had no doubts about it. ‘Twelve years I’ve been here, sir, I’ve seen many accidents in that time. They can end up anywhere from anywhere – as far as Porthcawl or even right up-channel. Sometimes, we never find them, they get pulled back out to sea.’

  There was nothing else to look at, so they grunted and puffed their way back to the top. Once on the track again the group stood for a breather and a smoke, the photographer and the two DCs hoping that the search was over and that they could make for home.

  The superintendent stood, deep in thought.

  With absolutely nothing found, he failed to see that this case was going anywhere. Though he instinctively disliked Michael Prentice for an arrogant womanizer, that was no reason to accuse him of murder – and there was very poor evidence to even consider charging him with assaulting his late wife. He stood rubbing the bristles on his chin and staring at the ground, then realized that his eyes were actually focused on something.

  Ben nudged his inspector and pointed to the ground near his feet. ‘Reckon this is recent, Lewis?’

  He squatted down and peered more closely at a dark stain on the grey limestone on the edge of the track. Just where the uneven surface gave way to thin grass was a smear of jet black, about six inches long and half as wide. In the middle, a jagged spike of stone poked up through it, the top clean and almost white.

  Lewis Lewis crouched down and delicately touched the black stain.

  ‘It’s obviously engine oil. Somebody’s stopped here and some has dripped from their sump.’

  ‘Looks as if they’ve run the sump over the top of that rock. That’s a fairly fresh scrape on it.’

  Evans motioned to the photographer to unpack his kit again and get a couple of close-ups of the oil patch. Then he told the detective constable who was acting as Exhibits Officer to take a sample from it. The DC took a small screw-top glass pot from his case, the type used in hospital laboratories. With a clean wooden spatula, he carefully scraped off as much of the black smear as possible and put it inside, labelling it and attaching a brown cardboard exhibits ticket, which he signed after the place, date and time.

  ‘Could be anyone, guv,’ cautioned Lewis.

  ‘Any port in a storm, lad,’ replied Evans. ‘We’ve got bee-all else. But let’s go back to the house, before our golfer gets home.’

  They retraced their steps to Bella Capri and Evans led them to the side of the house, in front of the garage.

  ‘We left the keys inside,’ pointed out Lewis.

  Evans shook his bull-like head. ‘Doesn’t matter, he was leaving his car out here, while his floozie’s was in the garage.’

  He looked at the concrete hardstanding outside the garage and saw with satisfaction that a m
uch longer black stain disfigured the ground.

  ‘We’ll have a bit of that, too,’ he told the exhibits man and the DC repeated his operation, harvesting another sample in a different bottle.

  Somewhat mystified, the party broke up, the others going off in the van and Evans driving away with Lewis in the Vauxhall. As they crossed Fairwood Common on the way back to Gowerton, the superintendent gave some instructions to Lewis.

  ‘I want you to go back to that factory of his while Prentice is not there and speak again to that chap you saw. He seems to know all about the technology that’s going on.’

  He gave his inspector some more detailed instructions and when they reached the police station, he turned the car over to Lewis to make the journey into Swansea.

  THIRTEEN

  As Edward Lethbridge had gloomily anticipated, Agnes Oldfield was cock-a-hoop, as soon as she had the news that Molly Barnes’s claim had been demolished by the exhumation. She insisted on a meeting with both her solicitor and Trevor Mitchell, so the lawyer thought it wise to invite Richard Pryor along as well, partly in order to deflect the inevitable demands concerning her own claim.

  They arranged to meet at his office in Lydney on that Wednesday afternoon and the three men were already there when she arrived. As they rose, she swept in through the door opened by a secretary and imperiously took her seat alongside the desk. Richard, a keen cinema-goer, was reminded of Dame Edith Evans’s portrayal of Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of being Earnest, as she wore a long black coat and an ornate hat. As it was raining outside, she also had a thin umbrella, upon which she rested a gloved hand, as she sat ramrod straight on her chair.

  ‘Well, I told you it was Anthony!’ she began without any preamble. ‘I knew from the start that the Barnes woman was an impostor.’

  As she had never laid eyes on the woman, Richard wondered how she knew that, but he kept his peace.

  It was Lethbridge’s task to try to put the brakes on Agnes Oldfield’s certitude.

  ‘Madam, we have only managed to prove that the remains were not those of Albert Barnes,’ he said rather nervously. ‘It does not advance us one inch in establishing that they are those of your nephew.’