According To The Evidence

SEVEN

By the time Richard Pryor returned to Tintern from Bristol, both Moira and Siân had left for the day. He drove his Humber up into the yard at the back of Garth House and parked it in the coach house, alongside Angela’s little white Renault 4CV.

He took his old briefcase from the back of the car and began walking towards the back door, but he was accosted by a figure coming down from the garden behind. It was Jimmy Jenkins, their gardener and odd-job man, who sometimes added being their driver to his accomplishments. Jimmy had been inherited with the house, as he had been employed by Aunt Gladys for years and when Richard took over he seemed to have continued in his job by default.

A well-known character in the area, Jimmy was about fifty, with a weather-beaten face decorated by a broken nose and a set of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. He always seemed to have half a Woodbine stuck to his lower lip, and Richard could never remember seeing him smoking a whole cigarette. His bristly grey hair was surmounted by a greasy cap perched over one eye – Jimmy habitually wore thick flannel shirts, over which were the braces that held up his corduroy trousers.

‘I’ve run the cultivator over your patch again, doctor,’ he announced in an accent from the Forest of Dean, which lay just across the river. ‘Needs doing once more before you puts in them fancy plants. Best do it soon, before the cold weather comes.’

The ‘patch’ that he rather sarcastically referred to was a quarter of an acre of the four acres of land that rose up the hill behind Garth House – and the ‘fancy plants’ were vines that Richard had ordered from a distant nursery. He had ambitions to start a small vineyard on the south-facing slope, as the climate of the sheltered Wye Valley was mild. Jimmy was contemptuous of the idea, trying to persuade his boss to grow strawberries instead, but Richard was adamant, even though he knew virtually nothing about horticulture.

They spoke about his pet project for a few minutes before Richard could escape. ‘I’ve got to go to Cardiff in the morning, so could you give the car a wash tonight?’

He declined Jimmy’s offer to drive him there, and as the man went off to fix up the hosepipe he went into the house.

Angela was still at her bench, finishing off a batch of paternity tests. Richard put his head around the laboratory door to let her know that he was back.

‘Did you find anything useful in Bristol?’ she asked, looking up with a pipette hovering over a rack of small tubes.

He hefted his document case to show her, a battered crocodile-skin bag that he had bought years ago in Ceylon.

‘I think so, but I’d like your opinion on it this evening. I’m going down to the library in Cardiff tomorrow to see if I can dig out anything else.’

She nodded as she pulled another rack towards her.

‘Fine. We’ll talk about it after supper.’

He went off to his room down the passage and spent half an hour reading the mail and checking some reports that Moira had typed that day on post-mortems he had done at Chepstow and Monmouth. Then he pulled down a couple of textbooks from his shelves and began pursuing some of the matters that he had discovered in the medical school library in Bristol.

Eventually, his partner banged on his door and called out ‘Supper!’ to call him into the kitchen. Here Moira had laid out two places on the big table and left a casserole for them in the warming oven of the Aga. Originally, she had been employed to do basic housekeeping, some cooking and a little typing, but as the business had increased, Moira had become overburdened. Now a buxom woman from the village came in for two hours each day to clean and make beds, while Moira made lunch and left them something each evening for supper. It was great improvement on the early days, when Richard and Angela virtually camped out in the old house, eating out of tins.

Only the two partners took meals, as figure-conscious Siân always brought sandwiches, an apple and a bottle of Tizer, while Moira herself went home at midday to feed her dog. As Pryor sat down in anticipation of one of Moira’s casseroles, for she was an excellent cook, Angela opened a tin of Heinz oxtail soup and warmed it for their first course. When she first came to Garth House, she was adamant that she was not going to be involved in any domesticity, but her resolve had slipped a little and now she was prepared to do a few things, but she drew the line at proper cooking and cleaning.

They finished up with a fruit salad and local cream, which Moira had left for them in the old Kelvin refrigerator, then Richard made coffee, his contribution to the domestic scene. He took this into the staffroom next door, and the pair settled down on each side of the low table.

‘So what have you got from your ferreting around in Bristol?’ she asked.

He delved into his briefcase and brought out some loose papers and a foolscap legal pad, several pages of which were covered with his handwriting.

‘I wish they had one of those new copying machines in their library,’ he complained. ‘I had to write everything out longhand.’

He slid the papers across the table and settled back with his coffee to wait for her to digest the contents. When Angela had looked through the first couple of pages, she looked up at him.

‘Can you prove this beyond reasonable doubt?’ she asked soberly, using the standard for evidence that applied in criminal cases. In civil matters, only the ‘balance of probabilities’ was needed, but they both knew that this would not be sufficient in a murder trial.

Richard shrugged. ‘All I can do is offer the conclusions of this chap who did the research. The other stuff you have there is watertight, as it’s been accepted fact for years.’

He watched her intently as she went back to her reading. Angela was a very intelligent woman whose opinion he valued highly. With an honours degree and a doctorate in a biological science, and years of experience in its forensic applications, she would be able to appreciate the significance of the material at least as well as he could with his medical training.

Her coffee neglected, her head was bent over the papers, a swathe of dark brown hair falling over her face. Richard experienced a wave of respect tinged with affection for her. Though there had been no repetition or even reference to the momentary episode on the stairs the other evening, he felt that their relationship had somehow warmed and that they felt more comfortable with each other. When he first met her and, indeed, even when she came to take up residence in Garth House, he found her manner rather cool, showing him a purely professional face. Now she felt more like a sister or an attractive cousin, and he briefly wondered if it would ever go further. His daydreaming was interrupted when she dropped the papers back on to the table and took up her now lukewarm coffee.

‘If you can harden all this up into solid fact, you may well be on to a usable defence,’ she said crisply. ‘This first proposition is very new. You say you found only one published paper?’

‘Yes, it appeared this year, though the research must have been going for some time for him to get all that data.’

‘And the other contention is established fact, accepted by the scientific establishment?’

‘That’s what the books say, so I doubt it can be challenged. There must be plenty of physiologists who could be dragged along to confirm it.’

She finished her coffee and put the cup back on its saucer. ‘So what’s the next move?’

‘Tomorrow I want to go through the medical library in Cardiff and visit the physiology department there, to see if I can find anything else and confirm what I’ve already got.’

He had qualified in the Welsh National School of Medicine in 1938, then did two years’ pathology there before being called up in 1940. He had spent the war years in various military hospitals, mostly in Ceylon, ending up in Singapore as soon as the Japanese were thrown out. Now he trusted that his old Alma Mater in Cardiff would not begrudge him the use of their library.

‘When will you tell the lawyers what you’ve found?’ asked Angela.

‘I’ll ring the solicitor on Friday and arrange to go and see him early next week. I’ll get Moira to type up a draft submission as soon as I’ve satisfied myself that there’s nothing else to find.’

While Richard Pryor was on his way to Cardiff the next morning, Arthur Crippen and his sergeant were arriving at Ty Croes Farm once again. The DI had considered hauling all the residents to the police station in Brecon for more interviews, but he had lived long enough in a rural area to realize the disruption that would cause to the daily routine of a farm. However, he felt that their parlour was not the place to conduct what might turn out to be a more rigorous interrogation, so he had arranged for a police caravan to be towed out from Brecon and parked in the farmyard. It was normally used as a mobile police station at agricultural shows or at scenes of accidents, but with a small table and a few chairs it would serve his purpose as an interview room.

The constable who had dragged it there with a Land Rover was sent down to the barn to fetch Shane Williams. The repair work was back in operation and the irate farmer who had been waiting for his Fordson had been placated, as Jeff Morton had worked with Shane the previous day to get the brakes finished. What the owner felt about his machine having been involved in a murder was unknown, but getting his fields ploughed took precedence over any sentiment.

Shane duly appeared and slumped down in a folding chair on the other side of the table to Crippen. Sergeant Nichols sat at one end with a pile of blank statement forms as the inspector opened the questioning. Crippen had decided to play it tougher from the start, as the only hope of squeezing something useful from these taciturn folk.

‘Now then, Shane, we’ll have a bit of sense from you today! You know more than you told me last time about what goes on in this farm, so let’s have it!’

The lad protested that he’d told Crippen everything, but there was a shiftiness about him that the experienced detective recognized.

‘We’ll start from the beginning again, right!’

Crippen went through every minute of the morning when Shane said he had discovered the body, but nothing new appeared.

‘You say you discovered Tom Littleman lying under the tractor – but how do I know that you didn’t put him there yourself, eh?’

The apprentice squeaked in horrified denial. ‘I never did! Why should I?’

‘You told me the other day that you hated his guts, boy,’ thundered Crippen. ‘No one else has admitted that, so you’re my best suspect.’

‘Suspect? You must be off your head, mister! I left the barn at five the night before and didn’t get back until seven that morning. When could I have done those awful things?’

The DI was implacable in his accusations.

‘You could have come back later that evening. You knew Littleman had to stay on to finish those brakes. You had a key – you could have locked up after you when he was dead.’

Crippen didn’t believe a word of what he was saying, but he wanted to soften the youth up to winkle other matters from him.

He let Shane gabble his protestations of innocence for a while, then abruptly changed the direction of his questions.

‘If you want me to believe that you had nothing to do with it, we’ll have to find the real villain, won’t we? Now tell me something more about Littleman’s relations with the people up here at the farm. Did he come up here much?’

Relieved at the pressure being taken off him, Shane was ready to open up a little more.

‘No, he hardly ever did, not that I know of. Jeff was down here every day, working with us when he’d done his bit with the cows, so there wasn’t much call to go up to the house or the cottage. Jeff used to talk to him about the machinery business, and Aubrey called in every day to see how things were going.’

‘What about their wives, Rhian and Betsan?’ put in John Nichols. Shane’s eyes swivelled between the two policemen.

‘What about them?’ he mumbled.

‘Come on, boy, spit it out!’ snapped Crippen. ‘You know something, don’t you?’

Shane’s head was bent down, staring at the cap that he twirled between his knees. ‘I saw them together a couple of times, that’s all,’ he muttered.

‘Together? Littleman and which one, Betsan or Rhian?’

The lad raised his head and stared at Crippen almost defiantly. ‘Both of them,’ he replied.

The DI looked across at his sergeant with raised eyebrows. ‘Where and when was this?’ snapped the inspector.

‘I saw Betsan going into the cinema in Brecon with him, one Saturday afternoon a couple of months ago. And I saw Rhian with him one evening back in the summer, when I was cycling home after working late.’

‘What d’you mean “saw her with him”? What were they doing?’

‘Lying in a field about three miles from here, snogging under the hedge,’ was the surprising reply.

‘How could you see them from your bike, then?’ demanded Nichols.

‘His motorbike was standing in a gateway. I thought it might have been pinched or something, so I stopped and looked over the gate. As soon as I saw them, I pushed off quick, like.’

Another fifteen minutes of hard questioning could not drag any more from the youth and, after getting him to sign the statement the sergeant had written out, Shane was dismissed with dire warnings not to reveal anything of the interview to anyone else, especially those in the farm.

When he had gone, Crippen and Nichols discussed the significance of what they had heard.

‘Puts a different shine on the situation, doesn’t it?’ said Arthur. ‘We still can’t eliminate the lad, though I don’t fancy him for it.’

John Nichols was puzzled by this. ‘Why should he still be in the frame for it, sir?’

‘What if Littleman saw Shane ogling him when he was with either of the women? He might have gone for him, threatening him if he didn’t keep his mouth shut. If it got physical, maybe Shane croaked him! He’s a strong enough lad, even though he’s as thick as two short planks.’

The sergeant was unimpressed. ‘That’s the point, isn’t it? He might have the muscle, but has he got the brains to think up a complicated scenario like this?’

Crippen made a face, indicating doubtful resignation. ‘Maybe not, but we have to keep all options open for now. So who are we going to grill next?’

The decision was made for them, as they saw Betsan Evans through the caravan window. She was coming across the yard with three mugs of tea on a tray.

‘This is going to get more and more bloody awkward as we go on, John,’ muttered Crippen. ‘I hate these domestic affairs; it’s just embarrassment all round.’

His sergeant thought it odd for an experienced detective to feel embarrassed, but this was certainly an unusual situation. Nichols went to the door to take the tray from the farmer’s wife.

‘Thanks, Mrs Evans. I’m afraid we need to talk to everyone again. Can you come over in a few minutes, please?’

She nodded, albeit reluctantly. ‘If you want to speak to my husband as well, I’m afraid he’s gone over to Llandovery with his father and Jeff. They took the trailer to fetch some calves and won’t be back until dinner time.’

She walked back to the house, and the two police officers handed a mug of tea to the PC outside before settling back to drink their own and discuss the new twist that had cropped up.

‘This Tom Littleman seems quite a ladies’ man, even though he was a boozer,’ observed Nichols.

‘Some women seem to fall for these naughty fellows,’ said Crippen gloomily. ‘Puts a bit of spice in their life, perhaps, after being stuck out here with a couple of husbands who smell of manure and talk only about the price of sheep.’

‘How serious was it, I wonder? Being seen going into the pictures in Brecon is hardly grounds for divorce.’

‘Depends on what their husbands thought about it, if they found out.’

The sergeant looked at Crippen. ‘Do you fancy either of the women for it, then?’

‘They’re big and strong enough, tough country women. But no, not really. I’ve never heard of a woman throttling a man. It’s always the other way around.’

‘So your money’s on one of the men – or even both of them together?’

The DI shrugged. ‘Let’s not jump our fences until we come to them, John. Drink your tea, then we’ll hear what she’s got to say.’