That evening Siân stayed behind to greet the victor, Moira having been unable to resist ringing Garth House from a phone box near the Shire hall with the news of the collapse of the prosecution case.
When they returned, an impromptu celebratory party was held in the staffroom, with a couple of bottles of Lutomer Riesling and a flagon of Buckley’s Ale for Jimmy, who came in from the garden for the occasion. Moira related the dramatic scenes in Gloucester and extolled the triumphant success of Richard in the witness box.
‘I should have let you go to the Brecon inquest and gone to the Assizes instead,’ said Siân, wistfully.
Richard was as diplomatic as usual. ‘Next time, Siân! There’ll be plenty more opportunities, now that our reputation is spreading!’
He held up his glass in a toast. ‘To our team, folks! I just fired the shots in the witness box, but you all were involved – everyone played a part! Angela is the brains and keeps me from the worst of my wild excesses, Siân is our queen of the laboratory and without Moira we’d not only starve but wouldn’t have any reports to flash around. And Jimmy calms me down, hoeing weeds from my vines, as well as nagging me about bloody strawberries!’
Amid the celebrations and good humour, two pairs of eyes viewed Richard Glanville Pryor speculatively, as both Angela Bray and Moira Davison wondered what the next six months might bring. But fate was not willing to wait that long – indeed, it was the very next morning that the settled routine of Garth House was upset.
‘There’s a personal call on the line for you, Dr Bray,’ said Moira, calling through from the office to where Angela sat at her bench.
As Angela came through to pick up the phone, Moira tactfully moved into the laboratory to be out of earshot and hovered over Siân in the biochemistry section.
‘It must be her father,’ she murmured to the technician. ‘He asked to speak to his daughter.’
Siân looked up in concern. ‘Neither of her parents has ever rung here before. I hope it’s not bad news.’
They waited for Angela to finish her call and come back into the lab, but after a few minutes they heard the phone go down and her heels clicking away down the corridor.
‘She’s gone down to Richard’s room,’ whispered Moira. ‘I wonder what’s going on.’
Ten minutes went by before both Angela and Richard came back to speak to them.
‘Unfortunate news, I’m afraid,’ said Richard gravely. ‘We’re going to have to do without Dr Bray for a while.’
Angela, looking pale and strained, explained the problem. ‘My mother has had a stroke. It’s not life-threatening, thank God, but she’s lost her speech and is partly paralysed down one side. I’ll have to go home to stay with her for a while. My poor father is hopeless at looking after himself, let alone a sick wife. Just to complicate matters, my sister’s just gone to New York on a three-month design course, so I’ve drawn the short straw, I’m afraid.’
The two other women clustered around full of sympathy and commiseration, asking if there was anything they could do to help.
‘You’ll have to go home straight away,’ said Richard. ‘Don’t worry about things here, we’ll cope somehow.’
He offered to drive her to Berkshire, but Angela said she was fine to drive herself.
‘I’ll just finish this batch of bloods,’ she said, waving a hand towards her bench. ‘Then I’ll pack a suitcase and be on my way. With luck, my mother will recover quickly and I’ll soon be able to get back.’
Within two hours she had gone in her little white Renault, leaving the house and its occupants strangely forlorn.
‘How are we going to deal with her cases, Dr Pryor?’ asked Siân over a consoling cup of coffee. ‘There’s no problem with your post-mortems, and I can handle the histology and the chemistry, but I haven’t much idea of these paternity tests and bloodstains that she does.’
‘Depends on how long she’s likely to be up in Berkshire,’ observed Moira. ‘If it’s only a few days or a week, I suppose things can wait until she gets back. But if it’s going to be a lot longer…’ There was a silence as her voice tailed off.
‘Haven’t they got a housekeeper or something?’ asked Siân. ‘They must be pretty well off, all that business with breeding horses and the like.’
‘I’m sure they’ll get in a private nurse,’ said the ever-practical Moira. ‘But it’s not the same as having your own daughter, at least in the early stages. Pity her sister is abroad just when she’s needed.’
Richard was philosophical about the crisis. ‘Nothing we can do or even plan for until we hear how long Angela is likely to be away. She did mention to me, before she left, that she might know of a former colleague of hers who might be available as a locum. But let’s not cross our bridges until we come to them, eh?’
When the phone rang later that evening it sounded ominous to Richard, now alone in the large, empty house. It was Angela, reporting that her mother, though in no danger, was very incapacitated. She had been taken to hospital in Reading the previous night, but later in the day a consultant advised her husband to have her back at home, as there was little they could do for her, except wait for the expected gradual improvement.
Their family doctor had arranged for a nurse to come in twice a day, and their daily woman from the village had agreed to increase the number of hours she put in and to add cooking skills to her duties.
‘But I’m rather saddled with organizing things and keeping Mother company,’ admitted Angela. ‘My father is great with horses but clueless when it comes to anything inside the house.’
Richard took this as a coded message that his partner was going to be stuck a hundred miles away for some time to come. ‘You must stay there for as long as you’re needed,’ he reassured her. ‘We’ll cope somehow. I’ll just have to divert any serological requests to one of the university departments in London or Scotland who’ve got the proper facilities.’
Privately, he was quite anxious, as Angela had built up quite a clientele among solicitors in respect of paternity tests and other biological investigations. It brought in an appreciable part of their income, and to be deprived of it just when the Garth House consultancy was beginning to take off was a serious blow. However, his partner had a glimmer of hope to offer him.
‘There’s no way I can get back within a month or so, Richard, but remember that I mentioned the possibility of finding a good locum for us?’
Angela went on to say that she had already made a phone call to locate the person she had in mind. ‘She wasn’t there, but I’ve left a message and hopefully she’ll call me back very soon.’
‘Who is this Good Samaritan?’ he asked.
Angela explained that several years ago she had had a junior colleague in the Metropolitan Police Laboratory, doing the same work as herself. ‘She’s called Priscilla Chambers. Has a London degree in physical anthropology and worked in the Natural History Museum for a bit, but then took a master’s in serology and came to the Met Lab for a few years.’
Richard pricked up his ears at the mention of anthropology – a useful speciality when it came to identifying skeletal material. ‘Why might she be available as a locum?’ he asked.
‘Priscilla left the Met about three years ago, as prospects of promotion were grounded by budget cuts, as I well know! She took a job in a forensic institute in Australia but came back about six months ago.’
Angela paused. ‘I think she had a bad experience with a man – another broken engagement,’ she added rather bitterly. ‘We forensic biologists seem to be prone to that sort of thing!’