"So I understand, sir."
Gwyn Arthur nodded. "All that remains, it seems to me, is for Mollie to furnish forensic with a few traces of blood of the appropriate group."
"Hang on, Gwyn. I'm not even in the bloody car yet," the pathologist called across, and Gwyn Arthur smiled at her.
"Just a point, Neil. Did anyone see him arrive at the garage?"
"Yes, sir. He was in a blue Land-Rover driven by a young female. Assumed to be his daughter."
Gwyn Arthur nodded. Shortly after the discovery of her mother's body, the back of its head a mess, he'd spent ten minutes talking to Mrs. Claire Freeman. Obviously in shock, but remarkably coherent, Mrs. Freeman had told of picking up her father, as pre-arranged, at eight-fifteen and driving him to Pontmeurig. It had been agreed that Mr. Hardy would return with the car to collect his wife. His manner, as described by his daughter, was in no way suspicious. Indeed, he had several times expressed the hope that the car would be ready to collect so that he could take Mrs. Hardy home.
"If you find a pen, Mollie—"
"I know, I know…"
In a plastic sack at Gwyn Arthur's feet was an AA book, found on the passenger seat, partly under the dead man's head. Across the yellow cover of the book had been scrawled,
I'm so sorry. I do not know why it happened. I loved her really.
That poor girl.
In thirty years of police work, Gwyn Arthur had several times encountered people around whom tragedies grew like black flowers. This was definitely the worst case — compounded by her being stranded in a remote village in a strange country.
He thought fleetingly of the death of Giles Freeman, of the American who had come to the station with his undisclosed suspicions. Undoubtedly, there was more to this than any of them realised, but the details were likely to be deeply private, and what good would come of digging it over now? It was a wrap. He had a result. Murder and suicide, a common-or-garden domestic. Leave it be.
Chief Inspector Gwyn Arthur Jones: firm believer in compassionate policing.
"Oh, and BBC Wales have been on, sir. I think they might be sending a crew across from Carmarthen."
"Get back to Mike from the car, tell him to phone and tell them they'll get more excitement out of the by-election."
Gwyn Arthur jammed his hat over his ears, picked up the plastic bag containing the AA book and followed Probert up the bank.
"Tell him to give them a quote from me," he said. "Say we aren't looking for anyone else in connection with the incident at this time."
Within the hour, reporters and crews from both BBC Wales and its independent counterpart arrived in Y Groes. Neither attempted to interview Claire. They had no luck with any of the villagers either, in that all those approached refused to give an interview through the medium of English. The licensee of Tafarn Y Groes, Aled Gruffydd, sounding very tired and nervous, said a few words to the reporter from Radio Cymru, the BBC's Welsh language radio station.
Translated, it came down to, "This is a terrible tragedy, and we do not want to make things any worse. Just let it go, will you?"
Max Canavan, of the Sun, was the only reporter who attempted to talk to the woman who had lost her husband and her parents in separate tragedies within a week. The door of the judge's house was opened to him by a huge, bearded man who informed the reporter in a conversational tone that if he did not leave the village immediately he would not leave it with his arms unbroken.
Deprived thus of a story which might have opened with "Tragic widow Claire Freeman spoke last night of her grief and horror. " the national newspapers ignored what was, after all, only a domestic incident.
Chapter LV
So overgrown were the walls of the house with some sort of evergreen creeper that its gabled attic windows looked like the eyes of a hairy sheepdog under pointed ears.
Frightfully Gothic. Even when they retired, she thought, some clergymen just had to find a typical vicarage to hole up in.
She parked the Porsche proudly in the driveway. It was only a secondhand one, with two substantial dents on its left haunch which she'd refused to let them repair. But it looked even better for that. Miranda liked her cars — and her men, come to that — to convey an impression of having been around.
This Canon Peters clearly had been around. He wore a crumpled cream suit, and his clerical collar, if indeed he was wearing one, was hidden behind a beard like those supplied with the more superior Father Christmas outfits.
"My dear," he said, flinging back the door. He had to be over eighty and yet he was looking at her, Miranda noticed, with the eyes of a man who thought that if he played his cards right he might be in with a chance here.
"Ex-lover, eh?" Canon Peters said. "What can the boy be thinking of? And a Porsche too! Two visions to break an old man's heart. Come through, my dear."
Phew—! He hadn't been like this on the phone.
Miranda followed the old clergyman along a dim hall and then into a big warmly toned room, its walls painted the creamy colour of his suit.
"Drove Triumph Spitfires for years," he was saying. "Now the sods have taken away my license. Bloody eyesight test."
"Didn't seem to me that your eyes were terribly deficient," Miranda said.
"Fiddled the test, if you ask me. Thought I was too old for a sports car. Bloody bureaucrats. Like a drink?"
"Perhaps not," said Miranda who had once had her own license taken away, as a result of a mere couple of double gins. Well, perhaps three.
"Suppose I'd think twice too, if I had a Porsche. Coppers love a Porsche."
"They do indeed. Now. Canon Peters—"
"Alex, please. Sit down, my dear." He brought himself a whisky and sat next to her on the chintzy sofa, an arm flung across its back behind her. "I didn't really expect you to come."
Miranda was surprised too. When the Canon had phoned, she'd been lying on Morelli's bed watching morning television — some awful ex-MP who thought he was God's gift — and feeling somewhat at a loose end. She'd traded in her Golf for the Porsche the previous day, the result of a particularly gratifying bank statement, and was trying to think of somewhere moderately exciting to exercise it.
But Wales?
Alex was saying, "l can see you're hooked on this thing already." On a coffee table he had a six-speaker ghetto-blaster of the most overt kind.
"Let me play you what I recorded from the radio. I listen to Radio Wales every morning, sentimental old sod."
He pressed the "play" key. "Missed the first bit. I'm afraid. By the time I realised it was significant, damn thing was half over."
… was found brutally beaten to death in a bedroom at the village inn. Mr. and Mrs. Hardy had been forced to spend the night at the inn after their car broke down. The couple, who were from Gloucestershire, were in the area to attend the funeral of their son-in-law, who died suddenly last week. Mr. Hardy, who was sixty-four, was found dead later this morning in his car in a remote area about three miles from the village. Police said they were not looking for a third person in connection with the incident.
"There," said Alex, switching off the ghetto-blaster. "I think we can take it, don't you, that these two people were Giles Freeman's in-laws?"
"It certainly looks that way. Gosh."
"Did you try to contact your friend Morelli?"
"Oh yes," Miranda said. "In fact that's partly why I'm here."
After the Canon's call she'd rung American Newsnet to inquire if they had a number for Berry Morelli in Wales and been told that Berry Morelli, as of this morning, was no longer working for the agency.