‘It was near high tide and there was a fair swell running. She was close in to the rocks, being washed back and forth, rubbing against them sometimes,’ explained George.
‘The gully went in a long way, so she wouldn’t have gone out to sea until the tide ebbed and pulled her back out,’ said his mate.
Lewis wrote away in his notebook, while Ben drank some tea and thought of his next question.
‘How long d’you think she’d been in the water?’
Arthur rubbed his bristly beard. ‘Not all that long, but no way of saying exactly. She was still fresh, no signs of decay. The skin on her hands and feet was wrinkled badly, but that can happen in a couple of hours.’
‘If she had gone swimming the previous day, could you guess where she went in, given where you found the body?’ queried the detective superintendent.
Arthur grimaced. ‘These chaps who claim to tell you that exactly are talking a lot of bullshit!’ he declared.
‘There’s so many factors like tide, wind and coastal streams. With the usual westerly wind and the tidal drift along there, she would have gone eastwards, but I can’t say how far.’
As the police had later found Linda’s robe and towel at the bottom of Broad Slade, Ben knew the point was academic.
‘No doubt in your mind that she drowned?’ he asked.
‘None at all – when we hauled her out on to grass, the movement brought up some froth from her nose and mouth. That goes with her not being in all that long, as when bodies reach a bad state, it’s too late for that.’
‘Do you get many drownings like this along that bit of coast?’ asked Lewis.
The coastguard shook his head. ‘Very few, thank God, only one or two a year. We get more damn fools who fall down the cliffs or get caught by the tide.’
‘She was said to be a strong swimmer – and she went in along there very often. So why d’you think she might have drowned?’ asked Evans.
Again, Arthur gave a shrug. ‘Hard to say! She might have got cramp. The water’s still cold even though it’s June. Or she might have taken a knock on the head against the rocks if the swell caught her at the wrong moment.’
There was very little else they could extract from the men, helpful though they were and after some more chat and a refill of tea, the two detectives left, wondering what decision their senior officers in police headquarters in Bridgend were going to make about Michael Prentice.
ELEVEN
On Friday, Richard Pryor drove down to Newport and caught the train to London, where he had a meeting in St Mary’s Hospital of the organizing committee for the conference in Cardiff in November. It was pouring with rain, but at least he had only a few yards to walk from Paddington Station to the hospital medical school in Praed Street. He got back to Garth House in time for supper, which he ate alone, as Angela had already left for her parents home to help sort out their problems with her sister over the weekend.
On Saturday, he went fishing further up the Wye, at a riverside farm where Jimmy Jenkins had got him permission to put a rod in the river. He had not used his kit for many years, though when he was a junior pathologist in Cardiff before the war, he had been quite keen on both river and sea angling. He had brought his rods from Merthyr, where they had languished since 1940, but he must have lost the knack, as he caught nothing during his six-hour vigil on the riverbank up beyond Llandogo. Still, he consoled himself, it had stopped raining and he enjoyed the solitude, with a Thermos of tea, a box of sandwiches and a couple of bottles of beer.
Once again Sunday seemed empty without any of the three women in his life – he especially missed the quiet company of Angela. If she had not been so damned good-looking and elegant, he thought, he would have liked her for a big sister! Richard Pryor liked women, not necessarily in the lustful sense, for he enjoyed their looks, their femininity and their company. In Singapore, since his wife left him prior to their divorce, he had had a few flings amongst the expatriate community, but after coming back six months ago, he had led a rather monkish life, being too absorbed in setting up his new forensic venture.
When things settled down more, he told himself, he would get himself a social life, join a golf or tennis club and maybe look around for a new wife. Angela’s suggestion that Moira was keen on him seemed ridiculous. Attractive though she was, she was just their housekeeper-cum-secretary and he hardly knew her.
He mooched about all day on Sunday, feeling a little lonely, but occupied himself with cleaning his car and listening to the radio. Television was becoming more popular, now that the new BBC transmitter was broadcasting from near Cardiff, but he had not discussed with Angela whether they could afford to get one, even if they could get a decent signal in the confines of the deep Wye Valley. That evening, Leonard Massey phoned to say that the police had finally decided to investigate the death of his daughter.
‘They have interviewed him and intend following it up,’ said the barrister. ‘Is there anything more you can do on the pathology side?’
‘Not really, those older bruises are the main evidence for some previous form of assault,’ replied Pryor. ‘The cause of death is not in dispute, but I wonder about that rather nasty impact on the back of the head. Are the police going to examine the house?’
Massey followed his reasoning straight away. ‘You mean there could be some physical evidence of what caused the blow?’
‘Not necessarily a blow, a fall would be equally likely. The fact that it was a recent injury, not long before death, means it could have occurred in the sea, but it could have happened hours earlier and caused unconsciousness.’
‘I’m sure that the CID will have a good look at the house and the surroundings,’ replied Massey. ‘They are having him in at their station to make a statement tomorrow. I think they are also going to talk to the friend who wrote the letter to Linda – and to this woman he’s been carrying on with.’
Pryor had no more to contribute and after the lawyer had rung off, he sat wondering if the police had enough to proceed much further with Massey’s claim that his son-in-law had murdered his wife. He also wondered if the father had not been an eminent Queen’s Counsel, but a bus driver or a steel worker, whether the police would have pursued the matter on what was so far, rather scanty evidence. Richard decided that was probably an unfair thought, but still wondered if there was anything more than grounds for a domestic dispute, leaving a few bruises.
Still, more immediate matters took his attention and he went to the kitchen to attack the cold chicken and warm up the cooked vegetables which Moira had left in the refrigerator, amongst the other sustenance for the weekend.
On Monday morning, Michael Prentice grudgingly arrived at Gowerton Police Station to make a statement.
He parked his black Jaguar in the yard of the Victorian-vintage building and was directed to a gloomy interview room on the ground floor, where Ben Evans was waiting for him at the door. The detective had half-expected Prentice to come armed with a solicitor, but he was alone. The businessman looked with distaste at the room, which contained only a plain table and three chairs, on one of which a uniformed police constable was sitting, a notebook at the ready.
‘Where’s your other chap?’ he asked coldly.
‘Inspector Lewis? He’s otherwise engaged,’ replied the superintendent. In fact, Lewis was already in a small industrial estate in the shadow of Kilvey Hill, near Swansea Docks.
Ben Evans waved Prentice to one of the hard chairs and sat down opposite.’ We need a statement from you about the circumstances of your wife’s death, sir.’ He pushed a few sheets of lined paper with a statutory heading across the table.
‘I’ve already given all this to the coroner’s officer for the inquest,’ said Prentice testily.