The coroner accepted this ‘He never contacted me to ask why, which is a little odd. I suspect that his father-in-law had it out with him. He’s a forceful personality, to say the least!’
Pryor wanted to avoid getting too involved in aspects that were none of his business.
‘I’ll be sending you a copy of my preliminary report today, it’s being typed as we speak. And as soon as I see the tissue sections, I’ll get back to you.’
The coroner seemed relieved by this breathing space.
‘I’ll hang fire until then, Doctor. But if you find nothing definite, I’m going to allow a burial to go ahead whenever the family want it. Mr Massey told me that you said you had all the material that was necessary.’
After he put the phone down, Richard sat on his hard stool for a few moments to think about the situation. It seemed that a lot might hang on his examination of the bruises next week, as the coroner was right in saying that it would be both embarrassing and unjust to start a possible murder investigation, based only on the angry dislike of a father-in-law, fuelled by a letter alleging a domestic dispute.
Well, he thought, there was nothing more he could do until Sian came up with the microscopic sections in a few days’ time, so he might as well enjoy the weekend.
He had seen in the newspaper that the new film Richard the Third, with Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Claire Bloom was playing in Cardiff and decided to go down on Saturday. He wondered if Angela would like to go with him – maybe they could hold hands in the back row, he thought facetiously!
SEVEN
As a Shakespearean performance was being played out in a Cardiff cinema, another drama was taking place in a Swansea hotel.
The Osborne was a small, but exclusive, hotel perched on the edge of a low cliff at Rotherslade. About six miles from the town centre, it was at the eastern end of the Gower peninsula, overlooking the popular Langland Bay.
In one of the best bedrooms, with a perfect sea view, a furious row was going on.
‘You’ve got a bloody nerve, interfering in my affairs like this!’ ranted Michael Prentice, his face suffused an angry red. He was a tall man, though not so heavily built as his father-in-law, who stood facing him in a colder type of fury.
‘Your affairs! That’s what’s led to this, according to Linda’s best friend,’ he responded scathingly.
‘Watch what you say, Leonard, or I’ll have you for slander, barrister or not!’ snarled the younger man, his handsome face contorted with hate. ‘You accuse me of assaulting my wife and I’ll break you!’
The two large men stood just inside the door, squaring up to each other like a pair of boxers before the fight.
‘Do you deny pushing and punching Linda when she discovered you were having it off with some tart?’ said Leonard, in intense but measured tones.
‘Don’t you call her a tart, damn you!’ howled Michael, then stopped dead, as he realized he had been tricked by the experienced advocate.
The Queen’s Counsel gave a cynical smile. ‘No use denying it now, Michael? Who is she?’
‘Mind your own damned business. If Linda and I did have a row, what’s that to you?’
‘As I’m her father, a great deal, blast you!’ rasped Massey, losing his temper for a moment. ‘She writes to her friend that you want a divorce and that you assaulted her, then within a couple of weeks, she ends up dead! Do you wonder that I feel that it’s my business?’
Prentice glowered at the barrister. ‘Are you accusing me of murder now, instead of assault? Good God, man, I could sue you for thousands for this!’
Massey looked around the room with exaggerated care.
‘Indeed? Where are the witnesses? I think you’ll be talking to people soon who have no fear of slander. I’m talking about the police, Michael.’
The younger man took a threatening step nearer Massey.
‘You wouldn’t dare, damn you! Your reputation would be ruined when the farce was exposed!’
The barrister did not flinch, but glared at his daughter’s husband with utter contempt. ‘It won’t be my decision, it’s up to the coroner. It’s his duty to report any suspicious circumstances to the CID. You’ll be getting a visit from them soon, I don’t doubt.’
He turned away and went to a table, where he picked up a cheque and handed it to the other man.
‘Meanwhile, we have to do the decent thing and see that my poor daughter is put to rest. The coroner will be calling you on Monday about a disposal order for burial, so this is for whatever funeral director you choose.’
Michael Prentice snatched the cheque and violently ripped it in half, dropping the pieces on the floor.
‘I don’t want your damned money, blast you! I can bury my own wife, thank you very much!’
He swung around, and went out, slamming the door behind him.
Massey stood for a moment looking down at the fragments of paper on the floor, then he took a diary from his breast pocket and looked up a telephone number. He went to the phone and asked for an outside line.
‘Is that Trevor Mitchell?… this is Leonard Massey.’
On Sunday, Richard Pryor spent much of the afternoon in his large plot behind the house. He was increasingly keen on starting a vineyard, in spite of Jimmy’s scathing remarks and with the help of a long tape measure, was pacing off a large patch about the size of two tennis courts.
In the house, Angela was standing in the window of one of the back bedrooms with a mug of coffee in her hand, watching him as he banged lengths of wood into the ground with a brick, making off the margins of his chosen area. She smiled, much as a mother would humour a child who wanted to build a spaceship in the garden.
‘Enjoy yourself, Richard, but it’ll never happen,’ she murmured. Probably by this time next year, he would be full of keeping turkeys or pigs there instead, or some other impulsive and equally impracticable scheme.
As she stood sipping her Nescafé, she idly tried to analyse her feelings towards him. It was a strange situation, she thought, living alone in a house with a man in a totally platonic relationship. Or was it all that platonic, she wondered?
Richard Pryor was an attractive fellow, with that frequent wry grin or a ready smile. He seemed free of any vices, never angry or sarcastic or mean-spirited. Impulsive, yes, and sometimes swinging between exuberance and depression, but his moods were like quicksilver, never lasting long. He sometimes needed pulling back from going down some irrelevant diversion, but on the whole, he was a really nice guy.
But what did she want with another really nice guy? The last one had left her in the lurch after four years’ apparent happiness, with an imminent walk up to the altar in view. No, she would try a bit of celibacy for a time, until something really special came along – and if it didn’t, well, she wasn’t going to risk another shaming debacle.
Looking out at Richard’s antics in the plot, she wondered what had gone wrong with his own love life. They had met at a forensic congress in Edinburgh last year and had hit it off from the first moment. Both recently crossed in love – or in his case, a bitter divorce – and she disgruntled with her employers, they had hatched this plan to set up in business together.
Angela mused over what might have gone wrong with his marriage. He had leaked out bits of information over the months, as he was much less secretive than she. Her private life was always played close to her chest, but he had told her that his wife Miriam had been playing the field with the limitless supply of men available in Singapore – the army officers and expatriate businessmen who abounded in the Singapore Swimming Club, the Golf Club and the famous hotels like Raffles.
Angela wondered if the fault had all been on Miriam’s side, but then decided that it was none of her business and that she should be glad that meeting him had led to her coming to live in this lovely valley in a job where she could be her own boss. Please God, let it succeed, she prayed to herself, as she finished her coffee and took one last look at a sweating Richard wielding his brick.