Dr Rees looked up from signing exhibit labels on the brown envelopes containing their samples and waved a hand at the interior of the barn, now exposed through the open door. ‘There’s so much junk in here, we can’t possibly cover everything. I suspect you’ll have a similar problem with your fingerprints. Probably everyone for miles around has left their dabs here.’
When the laboratory men had packed up and left, Arthur Crippen sat with his sergeant in the car in the yard outside the barn, each having a quiet smoke.
‘Not much further forward, are we?’ complained John Nichols.
‘It’s got to be one of these on the farm,’ muttered the DI. ‘They’re not telling us everything – yet.’ He emphasized the last word in a menacing way.
‘So what do we do next?’ asked Nichols. ‘I can’t see the lab telling us anything we don’t know already.’
Crippen flicked his cigarette end out through the window to join the others that were already squashed into the mud.
‘You’d better organize a house-to-house, I suppose. More like a farm-to-farm out here. Get a couple of DCs on to it, ask about any strangers knocking about, the usual routine – though I suspect it will be a waste of time.’
The sergeant started the car and they began making their way back to Brecon.
‘I have to go and bring the DCI up to date,’ grunted Crippen. ‘Then have a look at Littleman’s lodgings.’
‘We sent DC Lewis around there last night. The address was in the dead man’s wallet and a key was in his pocket. He rented two rooms above that chip shop near the market.’
The inspector sighed as he looked at the green countryside passing the windows. ‘This is a bugger of a case! It should be so simple, but I bet it’ll be hell to sort out.’
‘We’ve only got the pathologist’s word that it is a murder,’ observed Nichols. ‘I hope we’re barking up the right tree, so to speak!’
‘Pryor seems to know what he’s talking about,’ replied Crippen. ‘What else could it be? The guy couldn’t have strangled himself, then failed with a hanging, so then he laid down under a tractor and kicked the blocks away!’
Grudgingly, the sergeant had to agree.
SIX
Stow-on-the-Wold was an ancient town in the north-east corner of Gloucestershire. Filled with old buildings of Cotswold stone, it was redolent with history. Its churches, hostelries and public buildings owed their existence to its position at the junction of ancient roads and the prosperity brought by the wool trade, the backbone of English commerce through the Middle Ages. It claimed to have the oldest pub in England, going back to the tenth century.
None of this was in Richard Pryor’s mind as he parked his Humber in Market Square. It was about sixty miles from Tintern, taking almost two hours to drive through Gloucester and Cheltenham, and he could kill for a cup of tea.
‘Time for refreshment, Angela,’ he announced, looking at his watch. ‘We’ve got half an hour before we see this chap.’
They walked through the picturesque streets, between the old buildings of yellow-brown stone, and found a cafe of the ‘olde tea shoppe’ variety. He held the door open for his partner, who today was looking even more elegant than usual in a tailored grey suit with a narrow waist and a long pencil skirt. High heels and a small jaunty hat completed the picture, and he wondered if the solicitor would believe that she was a senior scientist of considerable experience.
Angela saw him looking at her and correctly guessed what he was thinking. ‘Too dressy for the occasion, Richard?’ she said sweetly. ‘A girl’s got to put on the style now and then, after sitting for weeks at a bench squirting sera into tubes!’
He grinned and, as they found a table in the window, pulled out a chair for her. ‘You look bloody gorgeous, partner!’
Richard knew she was very keen on fashion and spent a lot of money when she had a shopping spree in Bath or London. He suspected that her well-off parents subsidized this, as certainly the income from Garth House in their first six months wouldn’t run to the outfit she had on today.
‘You don’t look too bad yourself,’ she countered, looking at the double-breasted charcoal suit that he used to attend court. ‘Since we ladies took you in hand and weaned you out of those awful safari suits you’re so fond of!’
A pot of tea and a selection of cream cakes were demolished, and as he paid the waitress Richard asked for directions to Digbeth Street, which was the address given to him over the telephone.
It turned out to be directly off the square, and in a couple of minutes they were being shown into George Lovesey’s room in a house probably built before Cromwell was born. It had long been the offices of Lovesey, Sayers and Greene, the present senior partner being a great-grandson of the founder. He was a portly man with double chins and silver hair circling a wide bald patch. Richard thought his general appearance was Churchillian, though he was not sporting a large cigar.
After the hand-shaking, introductions and seating rituals had been completed – and the offer of tea declined – George Lovesey settled behind his large mahogany desk and got straight to the point.
‘A client of mine is in deep trouble and faces what might be a capital charge,’ he began solemnly. ‘He has been indicted for murdering his wife and has been committed by the magistrates’ court to stand trial at Gloucester Assizes in the coming session. We have already obtained an expert medical opinion, which I am afraid does nothing but concur with the prosecution.’
‘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.’