Angela set down her GWR coffee cup and nodded. ‘All I need to take are some syringes, needles and oxalate tubes. A sample each from father, mother and the alleged son.’
‘Just as well you don’t need one from Victor Dumas. He’d probably chuck your syringe over the nearest hedge!’
‘It’s such a shame that this has caused such a rift in the family,’ she said sadly. ‘Madame told me that the presumed son from Canada is adamant that he doesn’t want any part of the inheritance. He says he has a good job and his foster parents in Montreal have told him that he will be their heir.’
Richard sighed at what seemed an intractable problem.
‘Obviously Victor doesn’t believe that. It has to be said that some confidence tricksters are very clever at covering all the angles.’
Angela poured more coffee for them from the pot on the tray, as their conversation drifted to other things.
‘Priscilla looked very happy with her new job,’ she observed. ‘I’ll bet she has half the red-blooded men in the university chasing her by now.’
‘Only half? Everyone from the Vice-Chancellor down will be setting their caps at her.’
Priscilla Chambers had called in at Garth House the previous week, on her way back to Aberystwyth from spending Christmas with her parents in Oxford. Breezing in from her MG roadster, she was her usual lively, flirtatious self as she hugged and kissed everyone and handed out belated Christmas presents. She reported that she was getting on famously with Eva Boross and that they had already started on the excavation of the ancient monastery up in the hills.
‘I’m glad she’s happy there,’ said Richard. ‘I must have a drive up to Aberystwyth one day and see how she’s getting on,’ he added mischievously.
Angela eyed him suspiciously. ‘Down boy!’ she said sternly. ‘Priscilla would eat you alive. Talking of Aberystwyth, have you heard if there’s been any progress on the bog investigation?’
He shook his head. ‘Not since before Christmas. I must give DI Thomas a ring when we get back. That’s the trouble with being a pathologist, you do your bit at the post-mortem, then everything goes quiet until the trial. And if they don’t charge anyone, then often that’s the last you ever hear of it.’
Angela agreed. ‘Same with many of our science cases. I used to learn more from the Daily Telegraph than I did from the police.’
‘Not like it is in detective novels and films! If you believed those, you’d think that it was the doctors who solved all the cases, not the coppers who do all the leg work.’
The train slowed for Swindon and they went back to the compartment to reclaim their seats. Angela turned to her Vogue magazine, anticipating seeing the real thing that afternoon in the famous shops of the West End. Richard knew how keen she was on fashion and wondered again how she managed to dress so elegantly on her salary, especially since she had left the security of the public service for the more uncertain rewards of private enterprise. He strongly suspected that her well-heeled family subsidized the contents of the expensive-looking carrier bags that she carried when she returned from her shopping expeditions.
When the train steamed into Paddington station, Richard carried their overnight cases into the Great Western Hotel through the entrance at the top of the platform and booked them in at the desk.
‘Here were are again, ready for another night of unbridled passion!’ he said facetiously as they went up in the lift.
His partner regarded him coolly, used to his flights of fancy. ‘Sure, Richard! You can have your unbridled passion in Room 321 and I’ll have mine in Room 334.’
Next morning, they caught the Circle Line from Paddington to the Temple and walked up Arundel Street to the Strand. The huge Victorian-Gothic extravaganza of the Royal Courts of Justice loomed in front of them and they plunged under the great entrance arch into the cold magnificence of the main hall, more like a cathedral than a court of law. It was Richard’s first visit, as he had never worked in London, but Angela had been there several times during her years at the Met Lab, though her usual stamping ground had been in the criminal courts of the Old Bailey.
She led him to the row of varnished notice boards in the centre, where the Order Papers for the day were pinned up.
‘Better see which court we’re in,’ she advised. ‘There are over a thousand rooms in this place!’
A search of the Order Papers told them that the Court of Criminal Appeal was hearing the case of Millicent Agnes Wilson in Court Six and after following the signs, they climbed a twisting stone stairway to a gallery that ran around the great hall at first-floor level.
Though the ground floor was milling with people, up here it was quiet, almost sepulchral. Everything seemed to be either gloomy grey stone or dark oak. The entrances to the courts were panelled doors leading into small vestibules, with an inner door opening into the court proper.
‘Here’s Number Six, but no one seems to be about,’ said Richard. ‘It’s ten to ten, so we’re in plenty of time.’
‘Let’s have a look inside,’ suggested Angela, looking very smart and businesslike in a slim charcoal-grey suit over a white blouse. They went into the cramped vestibule and looked through a window in the inner door. The three Appeal judges were not yet on their high bench, but a group of bewigged barristers, dark-suited solicitors and black-gowned ushers were standing around the front of the court.
‘There’s Douglas Bailey and Penelope Forbes,’ observed Richard, pointing at the Bristol solicitor and the junior counsel. They moved into the back of the court and very soon Bailey saw them and came hurrying across to greet them.
‘Good to see you both. We’re going to be running a little late, I’m afraid, a lot of legal wrangling to be endured.’ He looked worried and slightly abstracted as he spoke.
‘Are there problems?’ asked Richard.
‘Some procedural issues about admissibility of evidence. I hope we can get it sorted out, but I suggest you pop down to the refreshment room for half an hour, to save waiting too long in this mausoleum.’
Angela knew the way and they went back down the stairs and out through a passage at the back of the main hall, following signs to a rather spartan cafe in the bowels of the building. Richard brought a couple of cups of indifferent coffee from the counter and they sat at a Formica-covered table to spend thirty minutes in these uninspiring surroundings at the heart of the British judicial system.
‘Bailey didn’t seem all that optimistic, did he?’ said Angela, pushing aside her half-empty cup with a moue of distaste. ‘I wonder what the problem can be?’
Richard was uncharacteristically cynical. ‘Probably the lawyers spinning it out to increase their fees. They get paid piecework, so the longer it lasts, the more “refreshers” they get.’
When the half hour was up, they made their way back up to the court, to find an usher waiting for them.
‘Mr Bailey asks if you would mind waiting outside here, please. Their lordships are sitting now, hearing legal arguments.’
He directed them to a bench outside the court, on the cloistered corridor that looked down at the floor of the great hall below. Like all the woodwork, the seat looked as if it had been there since the place was built eighty years earlier.
They waited patiently for an hour, Richard eventually getting restive, as the hard oak was becoming unkind to his backside. Both of them were free from any stage fright at appearing before Lords of Appeal, as they had been too long in the business of giving expert evidence to be at all nervous, but the delay was proving irksome.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ said Richard, as he stood to walk up and down the corridor, partly to bring back the circulation into his thighs. On the second circuit, his question was answered, as Douglas Bailey and Penelope Forbes came out of the courtroom to speak to them. Both looked despondent, though the woman looked angry as well.