John Christie nodded wisely. ‘That’s against it being Barnes, too. He was supposed to be only about five-seven.’
The photographer left, after being assured that there were no more pictures needed and Dr Marek went off to more pressing duties in his laboratory.
‘What else can we do, Doc?’ asked the coroner’s officer, anxious to come to a final decision.
‘We need some X-rays, certainly. Can you fix that? Tell the hospital that the coroner will pay!’ Richard turned to Angela, who was finishing off her notes.
‘What do you need for blood grouping? There’s hardly any soft tissue left.’
‘Any chance of some marrow? A vertebra or a small section out of a long bone would be enough.’
‘His clinical X-rays would be from a leg, so I can’t take any from a femur or tibia. A piece of ulna should do.’
Under the statutory Coroner’s Rules, a pathologist was not only allowed, but was obliged, to retain any material which might assist the coroner in his enquiries. Richard used a small saw to cut a sliver from an arm bone that exposed the marrow inside, which was ideal for determining the blood group. Then he collected his instruments, washed his hands and went out to see the solicitor in the office.
He told him what had transpired so far and that it looked very much as if the remains could not be those of Albert Barnes. ‘When I see the X-rays, I’ll be in a position to give a definite answer,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I can phone you later today.’
The elderly lawyer remained impassive, but as he left, he gave a sigh. ‘This means that Mrs Oldfield will be convinced that the remains are those of her nephew! I’ll get no peace now, mark my words!’
While they waited for the radiographers to arrive, which was forecast as being at least an hour, Richard drove down to the town centre and found a parking place.
‘A celebratory coffee is called for, partner,’ he declared and taking Angela’s arm they walked past the old jail and police station into the shopping streets. Finding a café of the ‘Olde Tea Shoppe’ style, they each ordered coffee and a cream cake, exhumation having done nothing to impair their appetite.
‘It’s nice to have things in the shops again,’ said Angela. ‘Ten years since the war finished and at last things are now virtually back to normal.’
They talked about their memories of pre-war days for a while. Both were from well-off families, Angela more so that the doctor’s son Richard, who remembered the South Wales valleys in the depression of the early thirties. He had more sympathy with Sian Lloyd’s pink politics than Angela, a ‘true blue’ who had been brought up in an affluent Home Counties’ environment.
The hour went quickly and he realized again how much he enjoyed talking to his partner, who was highly intelligent, well educated and sensitive to other people’s feelings. He began to wonder if their partnership would eventually take on another meaning.
When they got back to the hospital, a middle-aged woman was pushing a portable X-ray machine into the outer room of the mortuary. The device was like a washing machine with a thick chrome pole sticking out of the top, carrying a cabled tube on a side arm.
‘Sorry about this,’ apologized Richard, helping her push the machine into the post-mortem room ‘Must be a bit different to your usual patients – but these don’t smell or anything.’
The woman smiled and shook her head. ‘Saw a lot worse than this in the war! What exactly do you want done?’
John Christie was there with the X-rays from Barnes’s admission four years previously and he handed them to Pryor. There was an X-ray viewing box screwed to the wall and he held the four large films in front of the light.
‘A right femur and tibia, AP and lateral. Is that OK?’ he asked the radiographer.
She nodded and busily set about connecting up her set to a power socket, while he separated the appropriate bones from the collection on the slab. The mortuary attendant brought a small wooden table over, on which the lady put a large metal cassette containing the first blank film, with a clean towel over the top.
Pryor laid the first bone on it in the position he wanted and the radiographer swivelled the X-ray tube directly above it.
‘Right, everybody out!’ she commanded and the room was cleared to avoid stray radiation. She retreated to the doorway with a long wire in her hand and pressed a button. There was a whirring sound and she walked back to retrieve the cassette. Richard repeated this for another three exposures and when they were finished, the radiographer went off to develop the films, promising to return them in about half an hour. The mortuary man promised to trundle her machine back to the X-ray department and Richard, Angela and Christie had to sit in the cramped office, swapping stories of past cases to fill the time.
Eventually, the woman came back, carrying the developed films on metal hangers.
‘They’re still wet, but I thought you might like a quick look,’ she offered. ‘One of the radiologists will see them later and send you a report.’
Richard took one of the hangers and held it in front of the illuminated viewing box, then put up the corresponding film from Barnes’s records. He did this for each of the four views before saying anything.
‘That clinches it! Those bones are quite different.’
‘Show me why you can say that,’ demanded Angela and with Christie looking over her shoulder, Pryor shifted one of the old films across under the clips on the box, so that he could hold the corresponding damp one to the side of it.
‘Look, a different length to the thigh bone, to start with. But the internal structure is different, especially up here towards the hip joint.’
‘You mean that lacy-looking stuff, radiating up to the femoral head?’ asked Angela, her biology expertise extending to quite a bit of anatomy.
‘That’s it, they’re mechanical struts responding to weight bearing. I know they can change with age and injury, but in a man in his forties, there’s no way they could alter this much in a few years.’
He showed similar differences to them in the other views and then told John Christie that he could confirm to the coroner that the remains were not those of Albert Barnes.
‘I’ll send him a written report as soon as we can get the blood groups done. Any joy with finding what Barnes’s blood group was?’
For reply, Christie opened the folder he was carrying and produced a sheet of paper. ‘I copied this from the pathology lab records. For some reason, the report form wasn’t stuck into his ward notes.’
Richard took the sheet and looked at it, then handed it to Angela.
‘“Albert John Barnes – Group A, Rhesus Positive”,’ she quoted. ‘Well, that’s the second most common in Britain. Thank heaven the bones were more unique.’
By later that day, Angela had determined that the remains were Group O Rhesus Positive, the first most common. Though Richard had had little doubt that the bones were not those of Albert, it was nice to have further cast-iron confirmation to give the coroner and Edward Lethbridge.
He phoned Brian Meredith at the end of the afternoon and told him of the findings. The coroner was not very enthusiastic about the news, but accepted the truth stoically.
‘Now I’ve got to tell the wife and reopen the inquest. She’ll make a bloody fuss, no doubt, but I’ll get John Christie to have a word in her ear about giving misleading evidence, as she must have known that the ring and the watch didn’t belong to her husband.’
‘What about Albert’s death certificate?’ asked Pryor, out of curiosity. ‘For all we know, he might be living in Birmingham with a fancy woman. He may not know that he’s supposed to be dead!’
He could hear Meredith’s sigh over the phone. ‘It’ll be a bureaucratic nightmare, getting that annulled. I had a clerical error once before that gave the wrong name and it took weeks for the Registrar and Somerset House in London to sort it out!’