The Thread of Evidence

by Bernard Knight

  The elder physician became almost apoplectic. ‘God give me patience! I was going to point out that X-rays of the skull are always taken before any sinus operation. Does that mean anything to you?’

  There was a second’s silence, then David breathed out noisily.

  ‘Aah, the penny has dropped, Dad.’

  Peter was still completely in the dark over this medical matter. ‘I suppose I’m ignorant, but I don’t see where this is going to help Uncle Roland.’

  John Ellis-Morgan began to explain: ‘If X-rays were taken of Mavis’s head, and we could find them, they could be compared with the X-rays of the skull from up on the cliff. That would provide a hundred per cent sure check on the identity. No two skulls are identical, any more than fingerprints are.’

  It was David’s turn to be sceptical about the chances of success. ‘You haven’t got a hope in hell of finding those films, even if they were taken. I don’t even know if X-rays were used for sinusitis in the twenties.’

  The father wagged his head energetically. ‘Oh, yes they were. I’d thought of that snag. But I distinctly remember seeing skull X-rays with opaque sinuses when I was a student – and that must have been before twenty-five, when I qualified.’

  ‘But it’s fantastic,’ scoffed Gerry. ‘You’d never get films thirty-odd years old. The hospitals normally chuck them out after seven years – or ten, at the most.’

  ‘We don’t even know where the operation was done,’ added David.

  ‘In Liverpool. I asked Roland that,’ replied John, with a grin of triumph. ‘She went up to stay with her sister for a few weeks and visited a private specialist there.’

  Peter stood up, excited at the prospect of being able to do something, however nebulous, to help his uncle.

  ‘It’s worth a try – I’m going straight back to see if Roland can remember any more details. Then I’ll go up to Liverpool in the morning and see this sister. She’ll know something about it – she’s bound to, if Mavis stayed with her at the time.’

  ‘Sister? What sister?’ asked Gerry in surprise.

  ‘The same one that reported her missing all those years ago. The police told my uncle that she was still alive and helping them with their inquiries. If I ring up Pacey in the morning, I’m sure he’ll give me her address. There’s no reason why he should keep it dark.’

  ‘Don’t hope for too much, Peter,’ warned Mary’s father.

  ‘In fact, don’t hope at all, then you won’t be so disappointed. The chances of getting those films – if there ever were any – is almost nil, as Gerry said just now.’

  As he moved with Mary to the door, Gerry had an even more serious warning for him.

  ‘And remember, if you do find them, they might prove exactly the opposite of what you want – that the body definitely does belong to Mavis Hewitt!’

  Chapter Twelve

  Although it had stopped raining when Peter arrived in Liverpool, Glebe Terrace looked no less dismal to him than it had to Willie Rees a day or two earlier.

  He found the address that he had wheedled out of Pacey and hammered on the front door. The same woman in the same drab outfit glowered at him across the doorstep.

  When he explained who he was – the nephew of Roland Hewitt – she almost slammed the door in his face; but curiosity got the better of her and she heard him out while he explained what he wanted.

  Her manner, never very sunny, became positively frigid. He thought for a moment that she was going to tell him nothing, but she must have felt so sure of the old man’s guilt that she became almost arrogant.

  ‘Well, young man, I think you must be mad coming all the way up here on a wild-goose chase. I can’t see why you want to find out something that’s only going to knock a few more nails into your uncle’s coffin. Perhaps you’re in a hurry to get something under his will, eh?’

  Peter managed to control his feelings, and his tongue; for he knew that to antagonize her now would be to make his journey a complete waste of time.

  ‘No, Mrs Randall, we just want to get at the truth, whichever way it lies. All I want to know is the name of the hospital where your sister had her sinus operation.’

  The unattractive widow sniffed and wiped her hands on her apron. She was still standing in her doorway, not having invited Peter in out of the damp foggy air – as if to emphasize that any relation of Roland was unwelcome at her house.

  For a long moment, she seemed undecided whether to tell him or not, and he stood with his pulses thumping in his temples while she made up her mind. At last, she gave in.

  ‘Well, if you really want to know, it was the Chester Road Infirmary. Not that she went in as an ordinary patient, mind you – no National Health in those days. She went to a specialist first, who got her in there to one of his private wards. Only in a day, she was, anyway.’

  Having got all the help he was going to have, Peter snapped a curt ‘Thank you’ and turned on his heel before she had a chance to slam the door in his face.

  Back in the car, he drove to a nearby shop and, over the purchase of some cigarettes, asked the way to the Infirmary. His fears that the place might have been demolished, or blitzed out of existence, during the past thirty years were dispelled by the shopkeeper. A few minutes later he found himself outside a gaunt group of sooty red-brick buildings, fashioned in an atrocious Victorian style which made them look a cross between a workhouse and a public convenience.

  In contrast, the inside was surprisingly bright and well-decorated. He followed the wall signs to the X-ray department and soon found himself in a neat office.

  A white-coated girl behind the counter put out a hand for his form, thinking he was a patient.

  ‘I’m trying to find some X-rays,’ he explained. ‘They’re pretty old, I’m afraid. They belong to a patient who had a sinus operation many years ago.’

  The girl seemed to assume that he was a doctor from another hospital and Peter didn’t disillusion her.

  ‘How long ago was it?’

  ‘About the early part of nineteen twenty-seven. I’ve got her name and address if that would help you.’

  The clerk looked amazed. ‘The twenties! Oh, I’m sorry, we only keep films for ten years. We destroy them then, unless there’s any special reason not to.’

  Peter’s heart sank. Although this was what he had expected, the final realization was bitter. It seemed that he’d fallen at the first fence.

  The girl saw the look of disappointment on his face and decided that he must be writing some important medical article that depended on these X-rays being available.

  ‘Doctor, there might be one faint hope. I remember that someone here wanted some very old films recently and he managed to get them from a private radiologist. Before the National Health Service, there were a lot of private specialists who did most of the X-ray work. Perhaps, if you tried one of them, you might strike lucky.’

  Peter felt that he was really clutching at straws in the wind now, but asked how he could go about it.

  ‘You’ll have to get the case notes from Records Office – it would probably say in those who took the X-rays. They keep the notes much longer than we keep films, so I expect you’d get hold of them quite easily.’

  Peter thanked her and set off on a long ramble through the white corridors to the Records Department.

  He eventually came to another counter, facing another clerk, a middle-aged woman this time. He explained his errand, and the woman began to look worried. She had no illusions about his being a doctor.

  ‘Well, sir, we’ve probably got the notes. But I couldn’t possibly let you have them without the medical superintendent’s permission – they’re confidential and, naturally, only the medical staff are allowed to see them.’

  Peter smiled reassuringly. ‘Well, actually, I don’t want to see them myself. All I want to know is whether they name the doctor who took some X-rays, so that I can try to trace them. Perhaps you would be good enough to do that without handing the notes over at all.
I’m sure there can be no official objection to that.’

  He gave her one of his appealing smiles which he found so useful when he was engaged in his journalistic encounters with the opposite sex, and the woman gave in.

  ‘No, I can’t see any harm in that. It’ll take time to find them. They’ll be down in the basement, if they’re that old. Can you come back in an hour?’

  Promptly at the arranged time, he was back at the counter, fortified with several cups of WVS coffee from the outpatients’ buffet.

  The records clerk handed him a slip of paper.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ she said. ‘At least, some X-rays of skulls were taken. There was a report from a private radiologist to the surgeon there. Your Mavis Hewitt must have attended the consulting rooms herself, as the report isn’t one from the hospital itself.’

  Peter’s hopes soared, although he realized that the chances of the actual X-ray film still being in existence were very remote. He thanked the clerk warmly and rushed back to a public telephone in the outpatient’s hall. He looked at the name on the slip of paper and rifled through the telephone book to try to find it.

  ‘Stanton-Reid, Dr Nicholas, MD, 18 King’s Heath Place.’ He thanked heaven that it was an unusual name and doubled his thanks when he found the same name in the directory.

  Then he saw that the name was ‘Mrs Stanton-Reid.’

  ‘Oh, hell, he must be dead!’ he muttered. ‘That’s torn it. It must be his widow. But I may as well waste fourpence in satisfying myself, now that I’ve got this far.’

  He dialled the number and a gentle female voice answered. Peter explained his mission again, saying that he was after some old X-rays taken by Dr Stanton-Reid.

  ‘My husband has been dead for over ten years,’ said the old lady in mild surprise.

  Peter, in a mood of hopeless determination to see the thing through to the bitter end, explained that he wanted some films, taken in nineteen twenty-seven, for legal purposes.

  ‘Oh, as long ago as that? Well, I wonder … I don’t know for sure, but some of the very old ones may still be up in the attic. You see, my husband gave up his private work in the early thirties to go back to hospital. He brought all his records and files back to the house and dumped them in the attic. He was very particular about not having any of his things interfered with. And, as far as I know, they are still there.’

  Peter’s spirits zoomed up from the region of his boots. He asked excitedly whether he might come and look for the ones he needed.

  Mrs Stanton-Reid gave him rough directions about how to reach King’s Heath; and, twenty minutes later, he was outside the house. This was in one of the older and now slightly run-down upper class districts of Liverpool.

  Like the district, the house had the air of affluent gentility gone to seed. A frail little woman of about seventy opened the door to him. He presented her with the details supplied on the sheet of Chester Road Infirmary notepaper – which seemed to satisfy the doctor’s widow that he was not a ‘conman’ or thief. She led him up several flights of gloomy stairs, which smelt of camphor and old polish, to the attics.

  The first room was filled with broken furniture and heaps of unidentifiable junk. Beyond this was another room with a sharply sloping ceiling, not quite as chaotic, but covered with a similar layer of dust and grime.

  The old lady pointed out several heaps of brown paper parcels lying in the centre of the floor.

  ‘There they are – never touched, as far as I know, since the day my husband left the consulting rooms.’

  Peter rubbed some of the grey dust from the top bundle and found that the dates “1923-25” were pencilled on the paper. The private practice couldn’t have been very prosperous, he reflected, if that represents the total of two years’ work. He lugged the parcel off the ones beneath and looked at the date on the next. This was “1926-27”.

  With mounting excitement, he dragged it to the small window to get it in a better light.

  The doctor’s widow watched him silently as he snapped the rotten cords around the bundle. Peter wondered whether she was thinking of the days when her husband tied up the parcel, all those years before.

  Praying that he wouldn’t be defeated after getting so near to success, he peeled off the double layer of thick paper and exposed a great wad of black celluloid films. They were of all sizes, the biggest being about the area of a half-folded newspaper.

  Peter found that the top ones were stuck firmly together by damp. When he tried to separate them, the black emulsion tore off in jagged sheets, each layer sticking to the next film.

  He quickly checked the slip of paper from the hospital records. It bore the date “March the third, nineteen twenty-seven”. The centre films were not sticking so badly as the outer, and he flicked through them to see the names and dates written in white ink in the corners. With a tight feeling in his stomach, he thumbed through the dates, which seemed to be in strict order.

  ‘August, November, February,’ he chanted to himself as the sheets flicked through his fingers, ‘February the twenty-seventh, March the first, second … third!’ Now he concentrated on the names, written boldly in the corners of the black sheets.

  ‘Roach, Wells, Smart, Hewitt … Hewitt!’

  He shouted the name and pulled out two medium-sized films, waving them in the air.

  The little widow looked almost as pleased as he did himself. She had been watching closely and had shared in the tense last stages of his search.

  ‘This is wonderful, more than I dared hope for!’

  He waved the films again, exultantly. ‘Can I take them with me? I’ll give you a receipt for them, if you wish?’

  The old lady waved this aside. ‘No, if they are the slightest use to you, keep them. They’re of no value at all to anyone else.’

  After more profuse thanks, Peter left the house and laid the X-rays reverently on the back seat of his car. He couldn’t resist having a quick look at them, by holding them up to the light. He saw that they were, in fact, the side and front views of a skull. Just before driving off, he sobered up a little after his burst of high spirits, remembering David Ellis-Morgan’s warning. The films might, within a few hours, confirm that the bones from the cliff were indeed those of his aunt, Mavis Hewitt.

  ‘Oh, how the hell can they be?’ he muttered, and let in the clutch for the long journey back to Tremabon and the moment of truth.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Come on, Uncle, let’s take these down to Carmel House and see what they think of them,’ urged Peter, later that night. Even the long tiring journey back from Liverpool and the ever-present fear of clinching the identity as being that of Mavis, had failed to dampen his excitement at finding the X-rays.

  ‘A bit late, isn’t it, boy – nearly ten o’clock?’ Roland was half-afraid of this new evidence. He wanted to share in his nephew’s elation, but a deep mistrust of everything scientific made him reluctant to rely on these pieces of black celluloid as a means of releasing him from his fear of the police.

  ‘No, it’s not too late. Come on,’ coaxed Peter, propelling Roland towards the cottage door and his waiting car. ‘They’re sure to be wondering what’s happened. I promised to let them know as soon as I could.’

  With the precious X-rays now wrapped up carefully in new paper, they drove the short distance to the house near the beach.

  ‘We’ve got them!’ shouted Peter, waving the films above his head as soon as Mary had opened the door. ‘Two lovely skull pictures. These will fix friend Pacey. Then I’ll be able to write something up for the News – the editor must be wondering what the hell’s wrong with me.’

  Half-carrying Mary by hugging her around the waist with his free arm, Peter made for the lounge where John Ellis-Morgan was watching television.

  Mary broke away from him and ran to Roland. ‘Oh, Mr Hewitt, I’m so glad, you must have had an awful time. Sit down and talk to Daddy, I’ll make some coffee and call Gerry – he’s writing something in the surgery.’<
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  Peter told the senior doctor the story of his treasure hunt in Liverpool and gave him the X-rays to look at.

  ‘I’m so glad you found them, Peter. And I’m sure this should take a weight off your mind, Mr Hewitt, eh?’

  He held the films up close to the standard lamp and studied them closely. ‘Front and side views – quite clear considering how old they are, what? I used to do a bit of radiology myself, before the war. We GPs used to help out in the local hospital in those days; but the war, and the Health Service, ruined all that. These pictures certainly show an opaque sinus on the left – not that that matters a bit, except to confirm that these are Mavis’s X-rays.’

  ‘Her name’s in the corner,’ pointed out Peter. ‘And the date.’

  ‘Ah, well the police can’t argue with that. All that matters now is to make sure that these can be shown to be different from the skull from the south cliff – then all your troubles will be over, Mr Hewitt.’

  Roland, sitting on the extreme edge of one of the doctor’s chairs, blinked with emotion.

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you, Dr John. It was your idea – I hope to God that this will be the end of the business.’

  The door opened and Gerald came in, his dark eyes glittering with anticipation.

  ‘Peter, you’ve got them, then. Let’s see, Dad. Evening, Mr Hewitt. I’ll bet you were pleased to see these.’

  He strode across the room and took the films from his father’s hand, holding them up against the light again.

  ‘Pretty fuzzy, aren’t they?’ he asked critically. ‘Not much definition on them.’

  His father bridled at this. ‘They’re very good, man! You young chaps don’t know how well off you are. Those pictures were taken over thirty-five years ago, with the old “gassy” type tubes. You can’t expect them to be as crystal clear as modern X-rays.’

  ‘As long as they give old Pacey a good kick in the pants, I don’t care how “gassy” they are, whatever that means!’ Peter said happily. ‘Uncle and I are off to beard him in his den in Cardigan, first thing in the morning. Pacey’s not a bad chap, but I think he overdid the third degree business with Uncle. I won’t be sorry to get a bit of my own back.’