When he came in through the back door and dumped his bag in his room, Moira declared a tea break and went off to the kitchen to put the kettle on the Aga. As she passed him in the passage, she reminded him about returning yesterday’s phone call from the lawyer in Stow-on-the-Wold. When they assembled in the staffroom ten minutes later, Richard told them about the brief telephone conversation.
‘It was a chap called Lovesey, a solicitor in Stow. He was a bit guarded about the details, but he wants an expert medical opinion on behalf of the defence of a veterinary surgeon who’s been charged with murdering his wife.’
Siân and Moira leaned forward eagerly, wanting to hear more, though Angela’s interest was mainly concerned with the possible fee that this might bring to the partnership.
‘How did he do it?’ asked Siân, with morbid curiosity. ‘Did he shoot her or strangle her?’
‘The juicy details don’t normally get discussed over the phone. He wants an urgent conference, as the case goes to trial at Gloucester Assizes in a few weeks.’
‘Bit late to think of a defence, isn’t it?’ asked Angela critically.
‘Apparently, they’ve had one already, but it didn’t help them. Now they’ve got a new defence counsel, some hotshot QC from London, and he’s demanding another opinion.’
Moira’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. ‘I don’t understand this defence business. If they get a first post-mortem in a murder, then that doctor’s opinion is accepted, surely?’
Richard Pryor put his mug of tea on the table, ready to lecture.
‘Don’t you believe it! There are almost as many different opinions as there are pathologists. Some of them have very strange ideas and some are just plain inexperienced in forensic work, being basically clinical pathologists in hospitals.’
‘Few forensic pathologists are free from strange ideas,’ commented Angela drily. ‘Present company excepted, of course!’ she added mischievously.
He made a face at her and carried on with his explanation.
‘In most murders, either the defence gets an opinion from another independent pathologist who has read the first chap’s report or who has done another examination of the body himself, as I did a few months ago in that Swansea case.’
‘They had three PMs on that poor woman,’ observed Siân, critically.
Now Moira entered the discussion. ‘In this Stow case, you said the defence already had a second opinion and they didn’t like it. Presumably, they’re hoping you will come up with a different view?’
‘That’s obviously the idea – but I may also agree completely with the first pathologist,’ replied Pryor. ‘It often happens that way, but at least it means that the accused has had a fair crack of the whip. Doesn’t always happen abroad; they have a different system on the Continent.’
‘So what have you arranged?’ asked the ever-practical Angela.
‘I’m going to see the solicitor tomorrow afternoon. Perhaps you’d like to come, Angela? There may be some forensic science angle to it.’
The handsome brunette nodded. ‘I’ve never been to Stow-on-the-Wold. Here’s a chance for me, even if it is a homicidal visit, so to speak!’
FIVE
When Arthur Crippen and Sergeant Nichols drove down to the vehicle barn, they found two men talking to the constable left there on guard duty. They had met both of them before, as one was the liaison officer and the other a forensic scientist from the Cardiff laboratory.
The first was Larry McCoughlin, a detective inspector seconded from the Carmarthenshire Constabulary who acted as a go-between when any police force needed technical help.
The scientific officer was a short, rotund man named Philip Rees. ‘I hear Dr Bray was up here yesterday,’ he said. ‘She’s a well-known name in our business. We were all surprised when she resigned from the Met Lab.’
Crippen explained that she had come up with the pathologist. ‘She was a bit embarrassed at being involved, but we were afraid of losing evidence if we delayed,’ he said.
‘No harm done. Your motorcyclist brought the samples down last night,’ said McCoughlin. He looked across at the barn, where the big door was now closed. ‘We’d better have a look around, I suppose.’
As they went to the small side door, Arthur Crippen explained the circumstances and what the pathologist had found on the body. ‘Dr Bray suggested that the fibres she found on the neck may have come from a hemp or sisal rope. We sent the lengths that were knocking around the barn down to you last evening.’
As the new arrivals surveyed the inside of the building, Dr Rees asked the detectives if they had all they wanted from the place.
‘Yes, we’ve got all the photographs we need, and the fingerprint boys were here earlier,’ said John Nichols. ‘We’ve bagged up all the clothes the four men were wearing that day, ready for you to take.’
‘That’s probably a waste of time, but I suppose you’ll have to look for some bloodstains and try to match those fibres,’ observed Crippen. ‘Though as those ropes have been knocking about here for years, I doubt they’re of much evidential value. Anyway, the place is all yours now.’ He waved a hand at the barn.
The two men from the laboratory unpacked their kit and started on the scene, concentrating on the chain hoist and the area around the Fordson tractor. After watching for a few moments, Arthur Crippen decided that he and his sergeant would be better employed back at the farmhouse and left them to carry on.
Seated once again at the parlour table, they called in Mostyn, the elder of the Evans family. He was a large man, but Crippen felt that he must have lost weight lately, as his wrinkled neck seemed too narrow for the collar of his flannel shirt. A thick thatch of iron-grey hair surmounted a big, craggy face, from which a pair of watery blue eyes looked out with disconcerting directness.
‘You farmed Ty Croes for many years, I understand?’ asked the DI, rather deferentially in the presence of this chief of the clan.
‘I was born in the room above this one and worked on the land here since I was about four years old, feeding fowls and herding sheep,’ he said proudly in a voice that would have earned him a place in the bass section of any choir.
‘And then you handed it on to your son and your brother’s lad?’
Mostyn nodded, folding his large, veined hands placidly in his lap. ‘I lost interest when my wife died five years ago. The boys will get it all when I die, and they can work it until then. I still lend a hand when necessary, but after seventy-six years I reckon I deserve a bit of a rest.’
Crippen gave an almost imperceptible nod to his sergeant, and Nichols took up the questioning. ‘I gather you weren’t all that keen on Tom Littleman becoming a partner in the machinery business?’
Mostyn shook his leonine head. ‘It was alright for him to come here as a mechanic on a wage. I grant you, he knew his stuff where engines were concerned, but he started going downhill as a worker. The boys were daft to cut him into a share of the business. I warned them against him, but they would have their way.’
‘Why were you so against him, Mr Evans?’
The old farmer considered this slowly. He rubbed his hands together and then stroked his bristly chin. ‘There was something about him from the first. He was an outsider, see, from up in England somewhere. Never fitted in here, always seemed to hold himself apart from us.’