With the coroner’s permission, he next rang the solicitor in Lydney to tell him of the result and again he was not as overjoyed as Richard might have expected.
‘Mrs Oldfield will get straight on the warpath now!’ he forecast. ‘She’ll strain every nerve to prove that those remains are of her precious nephew. I expect she’ll want me to carry on retaining you and Mr Mitchell to pitch in with the investigation.’
Even the prospect of a further fee was not all that attract-ive to Richard, if it meant running around at the behest of that autocratic old woman.
‘I can’t see where we could even begin, given that we don’t have any physical details of this Anthony Oldfield,’ he protested. ‘If anyone can chase it up, it must be Trevor Mitchell. Perhaps he can somehow trace the chap’s movements after he left home.’
‘I’ll see what he has to say, but if she really wants you for some medical advice, can I say you’ll do it, Doctor?’
Rather reluctantly, Richard agreed, though he could see no reason for the offer to be taken up. He went to bring Angela up to date and then went to write a report on the ‘man who never was’, as Albert Barnes came to be known in Garth House!
TWELVE
When Michael Prentice arrived home from his office that evening, he had to squeeze his Jaguar past Daphne’s blue Morris Minor which was parked near the top of the drive. It was normally hidden in the garage, so as not to attract too much attention from nosy neighbours so soon after his wife’s death, so he wondered where his mistress had been. Inside the front door, he found the answer in the shape of two large suitcases left in the hall – Daphne had not been anywhere, she was going!
He marched into the lounge and saw her standing in the window, dressed in a cream shirt-dress with a wide flared skirt, a perky hat on her bottle-blonde hair.
‘Where the hell are you going?’ he demanded, the fuse already lit on his short temper.
‘I’m going back to Porthcawl for the time being,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t want to get mixed up in anything.’
‘Mixed up in what?’ he demanded, angrily stepping towards her. She backed away a little and pointed to the telephone on a side table.
‘Those police again! They rang this afternoon to say that they are coming at nine tomorrow morning to make a forensic examination of the house. What’s going on, Michael?’
He marched over to a drinks cabinet and poured himself a double measure of whiskey.
‘Nothing’s going on! It’s that bloody man Massey, stirring up trouble for me. You know how he hates me, I would never have married his damned daughter if I knew he would be like this.’
He tossed back half the drink, without offering one to the woman.
‘You haven’t done anything silly, have you, Mike?’ she asked accusingly. ‘I’m not hanging about here if your troubles are going to involve me.’
He glared at her angrily. ‘Anything silly? What the hell do you mean? Of course I haven’t, you stupid bitch.’
Her face tightened and she stalked to the door, pushing him aside as he moved towards her.
‘If that’s what you think of me, I’m going. Probably for good!’
He stood aside sullenly and watched her go into the hall and open the front door.
‘Are you going to carry my cases out or do I have to do it myself?’ she demanded.
‘There’s no need for you to go at all,’ he said, but he was making a statement, not pleading. ‘Though if those coppers are coming to nose about, it might be just as well if you’re not here at the time. I’ll give you a ring when things have settled down.’
‘I just hope they do, Michael, for both our sakes,’ she said flatly and went to sit in her car while he put the cases on the back seat. A moment later, she had driven off without a backward glance, leaving him to close the gates that he had left open when he had arrived.
He stalked back to the house and slammed the front door. Going back into the lounge, he poured himself another stiff drink and flopped into an armchair to morosely ponder his situation and wallow in some self-pity.
In spite of his threat, Michael Prentice did not contact his solicitor to ask him to be present at the search of his house, as he was confident that there was nothing to be found. When the police arrived on Wednesday morning, he assumed an air of bored indifference.
‘You won’t want me hanging around while you waste your time, Officer,’ he said nonchalantly, as he opened the door to Ben Evans. He had a bag of golf clubs on his shoulder and as he came out, he handed the officer a bunch of keys.
‘I’m off to the club until you’ve finished. Here’s the keys to the garage and the garden shed. Pull the front door to when you leave, there’s a good chap.’
He walked off to his car and drove away, past the CID Vauxhall, a Standard Eight and a small Austin Ten police van that were parked on the track.
‘Cheeky sod!’ muttered Lewis Lewis as he watched him go. ‘I’d like to find something here, just to pull him down a peg or two!’
‘Now, now, Inspector, we are upholders of justice!’ grinned Evans. ‘Everyone’s innocent until proved guilty.’
Lewis glared after the retreating Jaguar for a moment, then turned to the three officers unloading the van. One was a photographer from Bridgend HQ, the other two detective constables from Gowerton, one to act as Exhibits Officer if they found anything. The local uniformed man from the Southgate police station had just arrived on his bicycle and the whole team went into the house. Though it was June, it was overcast and the Home Service on the wireless was forecasting rain by the afternoon.
The superintendent had no idea what they looking for, but after a phone call to his chief superintendent, who was head of CID at Headquarters, they agreed that they should go through the whole routine. Then, if it turned out to be nasty, they would not be left with egg on their faces for not covering all possibilities.
‘You’ve got a woman dead and an accusation that she was being ill-treated by her husband,’ the chief had said. ‘Now this pathologist says she has bruises indicative of gripping on her arms and neck – and not least, a London QC is her father and is raising hell. That’s enough for me to give it the full Monty!’
Evans watched as the photographer took some establishing shots of the house, both from outside and indoors, while the inspector and two DCs made a methodical search of each room.
‘Are we looking for anything in particular, guv’nor?’ asked the older detective constable, an experienced man who had been involved in many searches.
Ben Evans shrugged. ‘Flying blind, I’m afraid. She had an injury on the back of her head, so look for anything that might have blood and hair on it. Could be a corner of furniture or the fireplace – or it could be the good old blunt instrument.’
However, every effort to find evidence of a fall or a struggle came to nothing. They searched everywhere, including the garden, the garage and the shed. They even put a head up into the loft, which from the layer of dust, appeared never to have been entered.
‘Are we interested in papers and stuff like that?’ asked Lewis, as he pulled open a desk drawer in the right hand front room, which appeared to have been used as an office, as it had a portable typewriter on top and a small filing cabinet alongside.
Evans came across and began looking through some of the papers, but they seemed to be either household bills or documents relating to the factory in Swansea.
‘No sign of a diary she might have kept?’ he asked the searchers, but was answered by shaken heads.
He shrugged off his disappointment. ‘I thought she might have left some record of him knocking her about, as she had written to her friend,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’s clean after all.’
They gave up after about two hours, having covered every inch of the house, even pulling back carpets and moving beds. The superintendent was last out and slammed the door shut, leaving the keys inside on the hall table. They had a final conference in the front garden, Ben Evans perching his large backside on the low wall of the circular rockery. He looked morosely into the murky water of the small pond that lay in the middle, where two sad-looking goldfish swam around.