Grounds for Appeal

FIFTEEN

Winson Green Prison was a huge and forbidding Victorian structure stretching along the A4040 in the centre of the suburb of the same name. It had a high stone wall and an entrance which looked as if it should have ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here’ carved above it. With a bad reputation even among English prisons, both for the prisoners’ living conditions and the degree of violence of both inmates and warders, it was often in the news for one scandal or other.

Given the now major status of the death of the bog man — and the possible involvement of one of Birmingham’s most notorious gang leaders — the Assistant Chief Constable had pulled enough strings with the prison authorities to get a rapid approval for his detectives to interview Billy Blair that day.

As DI Hartnell and Sergeant Rickman waited in the cold outside the wicket gate in the massive main doors, the inspector asked Tom if he knew Blair, as the convict had been incarcerated before Hartnell had arrived in this part of the city.

‘Yes, a real toerag is Billy Blair,’ growled the sergeant. ‘One of Doyle’s gang from way back. He’s done a couple of stretches before, mainly for assault and obtaining money by menaces. This time he’s doing six years for robbery with violence. He must be getting near time for release; he lost his chance of parole because of an attack on a warder.’

‘Sounds a nice chap,’ said Hartnell sarcastically, as the door opened and they began the laborious process of being admitted, with much signing of passes and jangling of keys as they were escorted through half a dozen gates and doors.

Eventually they came to an interview room, the bleakness of which made their similar facility in the police station look like a luxury boudoir. The bare concrete chamber was divided in half by a heavy wooden counter, above which was a high barrier of steel mesh.

A few hard stools stood on their side and as they sat down, a door opened in the far wall beyond the screen and a sullen-looking warder led in a man in grey prison overalls, who he pushed towards a single stool opposite the policemen, before moving back to lean against the wall. ‘This is your William Blair,’ he announced in a surly voice.

‘I’m Detective Inspector Hartnell and this is DS Rickman,’ began Trevor.

‘I know that bastard Rickman, he nicked me once… and I got off!’ sneered the convict, setting the tone for the interview. He was a wiry, pugnacious-looking man of about forty, with cropped blond hair and a square, ugly face, which had a scar running down from the left eyebrow, part closing the eyelid in a permanent droop.

‘We just want to ask you a few questions, nothing to do with why you’re in here now,’ continued the DI, trying to avoid antagonizing the man.

Billy Blair looked at him suspiciously through the wire.

‘Why should I bother? What’s in it for me?’

Hartnell shrugged. ‘If you’re helpful, it’ll be noted on your record. I hear you’ve already lost your chance of parole, but a few Brownie points can’t do you any harm.’

The prisoner continued to glower at them. ‘Whadd’yer want to know?’

The sergeant had less patience than his senior, especially as Blair had got off to a bad start by insulting him.

‘We want you to tell us about this head. The one that used to be in the old Barley Mow.’

This must have been about the last question on earth that Blair had expected and his genuine surprise was apparent to the two detectives. But he rapidly covered up and growled his denial of any knowledge of the matter.

‘I don’t know what the ’ell you’re on about!’

‘Come off it, Billy!’ snapped Rickman. ‘We’ve just taken it from Olly Franklin’s shed.’

Blair’s face suffused with anger. ‘That fat, drunken bastard! Was he the one who set you on to me?’

His tone suggested that if he was at liberty, Olly would rapidly suffer for his treachery.

‘Never mind about that! Tell us about this head,’ demanded the inspector.

‘Never heard of it! Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ replied the convict, defiantly.

‘Listen, Billy, we’ve not only got the head, we’ve got the rest of the body too. It’s a murder investigation now and at the moment, you’re the only one in the frame for it.’ Hartnell was not averse to stretching the truth when it seemed useful.

Blair’s red face rapidly paled at this threat.

‘Don’t be bloody silly! What would I know about that?’

Tom Rickman took up the questioning again.

‘Come off it, chum! You were one of Mickey Doyle’s lads before you were locked up. He’s done a runner to the Costa del Crime, so you’re the next best thing.’

Blair’s small eyes flicked from one officer to the other as he sized up his position. ‘Doyle’s mob broke up a coupla years ago, after I came in here.’

‘This bloke’s been dead a damned sight longer than that,’ snapped Hartnell. ‘He copped it when you were still on the loose, so unless you start talking, we might be looking at you for a Murder One — or at the least, an accessory to murder.’

‘You’re trying to stitch me up, ain’t you?’ snarled the other man.

‘Tell us what you know about this head,’ said the DI implacably.

‘Look, I heard about this head years ago, like all the other guys did in this part of Birmingham,’ he said in an attempt to be dismissive. ‘And yeah, it was in the Barley Mow at one time. I’d forgotten all about it; it was no big deal.’

‘No big deal!’ said Rickman in derision. ‘A feller’s head in a bucket of meths?’

Now that they had prised his mouth open, the convict seemed more willing to speak.

‘It was a gag that Mickey Doyle used to pull,’ he said sullenly. ‘When he got the lads together for a few pints, he would get Fred Mansell, the previous landlord, to bring this tub up from somewhere. Then he’d haul it out by the hair and show it to the room, saying that he had plenty more tubs for anyone who crossed him up. Everyone was half-pissed by then, including Doyle. It was a bit of a joke, really, a sort of tradition.’

Even the hardened CID men thought that waving a murdered man’s head about was hardly a ‘bit of a joke’.

‘So why did this charming old tradition come about, Billy?’ asked Hartnell, but Blair seemed to be having second thoughts about being helpful and sat sullenly on his stool beyond the screen.

The detective inspector looked across at his sergeant and gave a slight wink with the eye away from the screen.

‘Tom, he’s admitted knowing about the head, so if he’s not going to tell us any more, I think we’re obliged to charge him with being an accessory, just for starters.’

Rickman nodded gravely. ‘Sure, boss. At least we won’t have to drag him down to the station, as he’s already banged up here.’

Hartnell turned back to the glowering, but now very uneasy man on the other side of the barrier.

‘Last chance, Billy! Two things and I’ll let you off the hook for now. First, why did Doyle hold these frightener sessions? And who was the dead chap, anyway?’

Blair shifted on his stool and, after some thought, came to a decision.

‘Look, I was never at one of these shindigs at the Barley Mow, right? We all heard about them, but it was before my time. I never saw the bloody head, so I don’t know who it belonged to.’

‘But you must have heard the gossip, being one of Doyle’s mob,’ retorted Rickman. ‘What was he trying to prove?’

Blair shrugged. ‘It was a frightener, like I said. I did hear that this bloke had been a collector for Doyle, going around for the takings from his gambling joints and knocking shops, as well doing pick-ups from the protection rackets. There were a few of these guys, but this one was caught ripping Doyle off big time, so he had him creased as a warning to the others.’

They were getting somewhere at last, thought Trevor Hartnell.

‘And hoisting his head out at these booze-ups was a way of reminding everyone, is that it?’

Billy made a face and shrugged again. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, mate! But it seems to fit the bill.’

‘And you’re sure you don’t know who it was?’ rumbled the sergeant. ‘There must have been a whisper going around, some of the gang are bound to have known him.’

‘You’d better ask them then. I told you, it was before my time.’

Blair decided to seize up at this point, having come too close to incriminating himself in these old felonies. He refused to say any more and after another five minutes of fruitless badgering, the two police officers called it a day.

‘You’ll be hearing from us, Billy,’ promised Hartnell as they left their stools. ‘Don’t think you’re walking away clean from this affair.’

With this rather empty threat, they watched as the warder pushed the convict out through the door opposite. When it had closed behind him, Hartnell turned to his sergeant with a scowl.

‘That bastard knows more than he’s letting on! We need to find some of the old Doyle gang to see if we can sweat a bit more out of them.’

They went off to the station, only a few hundred yards away, to report their meagre findings to the top brass at headquarters.

Next day, the forensic routines down in the Wye Valley were going on as usual. Christmas was fast approaching, now little over a week away. Angela was planning to have a full week at home in Berkshire, family gatherings having become more important now that there was always the fear of another stroke hovering above her mother. Richard had promised to spend a couple of days with his parents in Merthyr, though he had also agreed to stand in as Home Office pathologist for the Gloucester police over the holiday period, as their local man wanted to take his wife and three children up to their grandparents in Derby for Christmas.

The autopsy rate was having its usual festive period surge, as unfortunately it was always a bad time for both suicides and road traffic accidents. Richard was busy every day at Monmouth and Chepstow mortuaries and had several forays down to Newport for ‘Section Eight’ cases, the shorthand for road deaths where it was possible that a charge of ‘causing death by dangerous driving’ might be brought by the police. It was usual to ask a Home Office man to deal with these, as the hospital pathologists who did the routine coroner’s cases were never keen to get involved in potential criminal cases, partly because they disliked being called to the Magistrates and Assize courts.

Sian was consequently busy with her alcohol estimations, both with post-mortem bloods and with some defence cases where the accused was seeking to contest the clinical diagnosis over ‘unfit to drive’ by a police surgeon. All in all, the Garth House partnership was thriving, as their reputation spread by word of mouth, cases coming in from a wide area in Wales, the West and the adjacent part of the Midlands. Angela’s paternity testing was flourishing, but there was still not enough income to warrant considering an increase in staff.

On that cold but sunny day, they were all in the kitchen, taking a rest from their labours at the afternoon tea-break, when they heard a car zoom up the steep drive and stop in the yard with an impatient squeal of brakes. Richard, who knew most of the vehicles that called here by the sound of their engines, did not recognize this one and stood up to look through the window.

‘It’s an MG-TC,’ he exclaimed, looking out at a small low-slung sports car. It was bright red, with a black fabric hood hoisted against the blustery weather. ‘Who do we know who has one of those?’

He was soon given the answer, as a shapely leg emerged from the driver’s door, followed by the rest of Priscilla Chambers’ shapely body, swathed in a heavy car coat, her auburn hair half-hidden by a colourful Hermes silk scarf.

By now they had all seen her. ‘It’s Pris, what on earth is she doing here in a car?’ exclaimed Angela, as they all moved towards the back door to greet her.

She hugged them all and gave Richard a full-blown kiss on the lips that made his toes tingle.

‘I’m frozen,’ she cried gaily. ‘That car’s great, but I need a new hood, there’s a gale blowing through it!’

After she had been plied with hot tea and biscuits, she told them her news.

‘Thank God for your dismembered body, Richard,’ she began. ‘I’ve got a job already, thanks to digging in that blasted bog!’

She explained that having hit it off so well with the Hungarian archaeologist, Doctor Boross had phoned her a week ago and asked if she would be interested in a temporary lectureship in her department at the university in Aberystwyth.

‘It’s for a year in the first instance and has cropped up as they’ve got a rescue dig on an old abbey,’ she explained. They all pressed their congratulations on her and wanted more details.

‘Have you got the job actually in the bag?’ asked the more cautious Angela.

‘Eva Boross was quite definite about it, said my experience was just right for the post,’ answered Priscilla happily. ‘I’m on my way down there now for a formal interview tomorrow afternoon.’

‘What’s with the car, then?’ enquired Richard, looking out of the window again at the MG, which was one of the first models manufactured after the end of the war and which was looking its age a little.

‘I decided I couldn’t survive down in the wilds without transport,’ replied the ebullient redhead. ‘It’s a bit of a banger at seven years old, but it was cheap and it goes well.’

‘You can’t drive down to Cardiganshire tonight,’ protested Moira. ‘It’ll be dark in an hour or so. You must stay with me tonight and set off first thing in the morning.’

After some token protestations, Priscilla gladly accepted and then Richard stepped in to trump Moira.

‘We need to celebrate this, folks,’ he said amiably. ‘I’ll treat you all to a meal down in the village.’

Work was abandoned for the rest of the afternoon, as Priscilla was brought up to date on happenings in Garth House, especially the news that the head of her bog body had been found in Birmingham.

Richard went out for a good look at her ‘new’ car, admiring what was under the bonnet and assuring Priscilla that a good garage in Aberystwyth could work wonders on its rather shabby appearance.

That evening, they went again to the hotel in Tintern Parva, though Jimmy was not with them this time as he had gone off on one of his mysterious absences, which Richard suspected was some form of organized poaching.

The meal was excellent and they all talked about the delights of leaving rationing and shortages behind.

‘It only seems yesterday that we were living on dried egg powder and Spam,’ said Angela.

‘And the kids had concentrated orange juice and cod-liver oil and malt shoved down their throats every day,’ laughed Sian.

‘You were all healthier for it, though,’ claimed Richard, until he was shouted down for spending much of the war in Ceylon, where he was accused of living on the fat of the land in an officer’s mess.

Over coffee, they wanted to know more about Priscilla’s new job. ‘What’s this abbey business?’ asked Moira.

‘Apparently, approval has just come through for the flooding of a valley up in the hills, for a new reservoir to supply the Midlands. The ruins of a Cistercian abbey will be submerged, along with a large monastic cemetery, so there’s a rush to exhume the burials and record anything of historical interest.’

‘That won’t be popular with the locals,’ prophesied Richard. ‘You’d better get yourself a steel helmet in case there’s a riot!’

‘It’s a year’s appointment, you said?’ asked Angela.

‘Yes, it also carries a temporary lectureship, and if I’m a good girl and don’t offend too many people, Doctor Boross says it may well be extended.’

Everyone was happy for Priscilla, including Richard. As he looked at her across the table, he saw a beautiful, extrovert woman, warm-natured and, as far as he knew, unattached. It occurred to him that Aberystwyth was only a few hours’ drive away, easily accessible for a weekend trip. Then his eyes moved to Angela, cool, elegant and highly intelligent, with so much in common with him professionally — and living under the same roof. As he picked up his cup to drain the last of the coffee, he saw Moira looking at him and felt that she was well aware of his appraisal of the two other women. He winked at her, wondering what was going through her mind and received a conspiratorial smile in return.

The Birmingham coroner telephoned Richard the following day, to let him know that he had arranged for the head to be X-rayed in one of the hospitals and that the radiologist had confirmed that the skull did indeed show the presence of Albers-Schonberg disease.

‘He says it was not very severe, but definite enough,’ said Doctor Priestly. ‘Sometimes the head can be enlarged or deformed, but the density was markedly increased, so I’m happy to accept that the head came from your body down in Cardiganshire.’

‘But we still have no idea who he was?’ observed Richard.

‘The police here are “pursuing their enquiries”, as they like to call it,’ said the coroner wryly. ‘They’ve promised to keep me informed and I’ll let you know when I have any more news. Meanwhile, I’ve arranged with the coroner in Aberystwyth to take over jurisdiction and have the body sent up here, as it seems obvious that Birmingham must hold the key to his murder.’

Barely ten minutes after Richard had rung off, Moira came into his office to say that Meirion Thomas was on the phone and when he spoke to the detective inspector, he had much the same news as he had had from the coroner, but with a small addition.

‘My contact in the Birmingham CID also told me that they had been interviewing some thug in prison there and it seems apparent that the mystery man was mixed up in the gangs and rackets during and soon after the war. Some arch-villain called Doyle kept the head as a warning to other gangsters not to step out of line and try to rip him off!’

Having lived and worked in Singapore for almost a decade, such a bloodthirsty situation was not all that strange to Richard, as the antics of the underworld Chinese and the Triad wars were more than capable of such excesses. He thanked Meirion for ringing and said that presumably this was pretty much the end of the matter, as far as they were concerned.

‘What’s left of the body is going back to Birmingham, so I suppose you’ll be closing down your end of the investigation?’ he suggested.

‘Nothing more we can do — in fact, there was virtually nothing we could do before, as we’ve not had a whisper of information this end,’ said the DI. ‘At least the Yard isn’t coming back here. I doubt a big force like B’rum will need them, either.’

Richard was glad to hear that, for he didn’t want Angela upset by the unexpected arrival of Paul Vickers, as had happened some months ago.

After he had told Meirion about Doctor Chambers’ good fortune in getting a job in Aberystwyth — perhaps the one good thing to come out of the bog body discovery — he wished him well with his sheep-rustling investigations and rung off. Almost immediately, it rang again, Moira having left it switched through from her office.

This time, rather to Richard’s surprise, it was Louis Dumas, from the Vale of Glamorgan. After a few conventional greetings, the vineyard owner rather diffidently wondered whether he could call to see the doctor.

‘I’d be very interested to see the ground you are using and to look at that new vine stock you said you had recently planted,’ he said. ‘But I must admit that I have another reason for wishing to meet you again.’

He cleared his throat nervously. ‘I have a private, family matter which concerns me and after hearing what kind of investigations you and your associates are involved in, I wondered if I might have your advice. It is possible that I might need your professional services.’

Richard was intrigued and made encouraging noises, hoping to hear the nature of Monsieur Dumas’s problem.

However, the Frenchman was rather reticent. ‘It is difficult to explain over the telephone, doctor. Would it be at all possible for me to come up to see you, perhaps this weekend, if you are not going away?’

Richard, conscious of the kindness and hospitality they had shown him at St Mary Church, readily agreed and they arranged that Louis would call at Garth House on the coming Saturday afternoon, two days away.

Richard reported all this to Angela and she was as intrigued as he about the nature of Dumas’s problem.

‘Either he’s being sued for fathering an illegitimate child and wants a paternity test — or he wants his wine analysed to see how much alcohol is in it,’ she suggested, with a rare show of facetiousness that she might have caught from Richard.

Her partner shook his head solemnly. ‘No, I reckon he’s murdered someone, buried him under his vines and wants to know how he can dispose of the body!’

If they had but known it, something near the truth was in one of those light-hearted suggestions.

The Assistant Commissioner (Crime) of Birmingham City Police had pulled out all the necessary stops when, after discussions with other senior officers, he had considered the news delivered by the CID from Winson Green. He instructed his Detective Chief Superintendent to use whatever resources were needed to follow up this bizarre homicide and a number of Headquarters staff were immediately set to research the background of the wartime gangs and Michael Doyle in particular. Some records from wartime had been destroyed in the blitzes and others seem to have vanished, but there was enough information to put together an overview of the situation ten to twelve years ago, added to by personal recollections of some older officers who had been around at the time. Due to retirements and transfer to other divisions or even other forces, these were not numerous, but overall, when the Head of CID had a meeting with a few divisional detectives later that day, they had a general picture of the villainy that had abounded a decade earlier. Trevor Hartnell was one of those present and though only an inspector, his central position in the case so far caused the others to defer to his more immediate knowledge.

‘Do you reckon that this chap Blair has anything else to tell us?’ asked the chief.

‘Yes, he’s holding out on something, sir,’ said Hartnell.

‘But probably he’s trying to distance himself from having been one of Doyle’s outfit. I don’t think he knows who the dead man was or what happened to him. He says it was before his time and I suspect he’s telling the truth there.’

‘No chance of getting Doyle back, I suppose?’ asked one of the DCIs from an adjacent division.

The chief superintendent shook his large head. ‘Not a hope! We’ve been down that route before and it’s a dead end. No extradition with Spain, that’s why all these damned crooks make a beeline for it.’

‘What was it that sent him scooting down there?’ asked another chief inspector, who was relatively new to the city.

‘It had been building up; we were gunning for him,’ said the chief. ‘The final thing was when one of his men decided to save his own skin by squealing about a series of big house robberies in Worcestershire and the Welsh border. For the first time, we had a chance to hang them on Doyle, but he got wind of it and scarpered to Malaga.’

The DCI scratched his chin thoughtfully.

‘He operated down in Wales as well? Any possible connection with the body being found down there?’

The Chief was dubious. ‘A possibility, I suppose. But the crooks from our fair city have always had long arms and the big houses and sparse population down there have always been a happy hunting ground for them. Burglary was the main occupation, though in the days of food shortages, they fed their black-market rackets with a lot of rustled sheep and even cattle from Mid-Wales.’

The discussion went on for a time, but no definite plan of action was drawn up, apart from the exhortation to find and grill as many former members of Doyle’s nefarious outfit as possible. In the meanwhile, the ACC decided on issuing a press release which would give all the details they had, including the Batman tattoo, with the hope that someone in or around the huge city might turn in some information that would help identify their mysterious corpse.

In expectation of the visit of the Dumas pair on Saturday, Moira had made a jam-and-cream sponge for them, one of her specialities. She was an excellent cook, mainly because she enjoyed the kitchen so much. Richard and Angela had talked about her talents many times, deciding that her late husband must have been a lucky man for the short time he was married to Moira, before the tragic accident.

Their visitors arrived on time, Louis driving an MK VII Jaguar, which confirmed Richard’s conviction that his income was derived from far more than the profit from a small vineyard. Angela entertained Emily Dumas in her pleasant lounge overlooking the valley, while Richard took her husband on a tour of his ‘estate’ to proudly show off his two rows of recently-planted vines. While Louis Dumas politely admired them and commented on the excellent south-east-facing site, the two women chatted quietly, avoiding the mysterious subject which had brought them to Garth House that day. Angela found her companion a gentle and charming woman, but as Richard had sensed, she felt that there was an underlying sadness in the French woman.

When the two men returned from the hillside, Richard’s head full of wise advice on the arcane mysteries of viniculture, Angela went off to make tea and returned with a trolley complete with their best — and only — tea service, of Noritake china brought back from Singapore by Richard. Sandwiches were made with local salmon from the Wye, covertly produced by Jimmy with a meaningful wink, followed by Moira’s classic sponge.

When the ritual hospitality had been completed, with every sign of genuine appreciation on the part of the pair from St Mary Church, Angela stood up to push the tea trolley towards the door.

‘If you have something confidential to discuss with Richard, perhaps I should leave you in peace?’ she offered. Immediately, Louis jumped to his feet and raised his hands in a Gallic gesture.

‘No, please stay, Doctor Bray!’ he pleaded. ‘From what I understand of your expertise here, you may well be able to advise and perhaps assist.’

Quite happy to hear what all this was about, Angela abandoned her trolley and sat down again in one of the armchairs, the two visitors occupying the settee, with Richard in the remaining part of his late aunt’s three-piece suite. Louis sat forward, his hands clasped between his knees as he broached the sensitive reason for his visit.

‘I am afraid we have a family problem. It goes back a long way — in fact, about twenty-five years!’

His story was quite long and Angela found it very sad, certainly explaining the unhappiness that both Richard and she had sensed in the pair opposite.

Louis described how he had been commissioned into the French army in the mid-1920s. Soon afterwards, he married Emily and she accompanied him when in 1928 he was posted to Indo-China, which was part of the then extensive French colonial empire. They were sent to the relatively remote garrison town of Yen Bai in the north of Vietnam where Emily, a teacher by profession, taught part-time in the small garrison school. She soon became pregnant and rather than having her live in the bleak garrison quarters, Louis rented a pleasant bungalow a couple of miles outside the town. There was no lack of servants to look after them and when their son Maurice was born, he had a devoted baby amah, a Siamese woman named Sukhon.

Unfortunately for the Dumas family, they came to Yen Bai when political trouble was brewing, an upsurge of feeling against the French colonialists. On the tenth of February 1930, about fifty soldiers from the locally-recruited regiment revolted and joined an equal number of nationalist party members in a sudden attack on the French officers and troops.

On the day of the uprising, Captain Dumas was already on duty in the town, his wife being in her school. All officers and men were recalled into the garrison, where they had to organize a defence, then a counter-attack. Unfortunately, in spite of desperate concern for their nine-month-old son at home, they were besieged for most of the day and quite unable to leave to bring him into the safety of the garrison. When the short-lived revolt was crushed, apparently with great ferocity, Louis with a troop of his men, rushed back to his home to find it completely destroyed, along with several other nearby residences.

‘It was burnt to the ground, just a heap of smouldering ashes!’ he said, with a bleak resignation still in his voice, a quarter of a century after the awful event. ‘One of our servants was lying dead nearby, beaten to death as he presumably attempted to escape into the trees. There was no trace of the other three servants, including the amah — nor of our baby son, Maurice!’

There was a sob from the settee as Emily Dumas put a handkerchief to her eyes. Angela laid a compassionate hand on her shoulder. ‘What a terrible thing to have happened,’ she said softly.

Louis nodded. ‘We were naturally utterly distraught,’ he continued, in his rather formal English. ‘Emily was so ill that the doctors soon sent her back to France to live with her parents in Paris. I stayed behind in Yen Bai to make all the enquiries I possibly could, before also being repatriated to France on compassionate grounds.’

‘Was there no better information as to what had actually taken place?’ said Richard, choosing his words carefully. What he really meant was whether any bodies had been recovered from the fire and Dumas understood and appreciated his delicacy.

‘You will appreciate that this was a time of political turmoil, with violent anti-colonial unrest and a hostile, uncooperative population. One other body was found in the ashes, but it was an adult male. The regiment scoured the countryside for miles around, sometimes brutalizing the locals in their anger at the revolt and the loss of French lives, but of the amah and our child, there was no sign. I spent two months contacting every organization I could — embassies, military and the Red Cross, all without avail. There was no news nor sighting of either Maurice or Sukhon. Then I was sent home and although I never ceased to seek information, nothing was ever forthcoming.’

Both Richard and Angela were beginning to wonder where this tragic story was leading and how it could possibly involve them, when Monsieur Dumas continued his story.

‘I was posted to a staff position in the War Ministry, probably out of sympathy for our loss in the line of duty. Emily and I lived in Paris and slowly she recovered, though the catastrophe undoubtedly put a strain on our marriage for some time. Eventually in 1934, our second son, Victor, was born and after what had happened, he was cherished perhaps even more than was good for him. Gradually our lives returned to what passed for normality, until the war came and in 1940 we had to flee to London. The rest I think I have mentioned to you before, that I fell ill and was pensioned off on medical grounds. Somehow, when peace came, France had lost its attraction for us, as both my parents had been killed during the war. Eventually I became the beneficiary of their estate and became financially independent.’

Richard thought that this was a considerable understatement, but it was none of his concern.

‘So you came to Wales and went back to your traditional family roots — making wine?’ he said, to lighten the rather sombre atmosphere.

Louis Dumas nodded. ‘Yes, and we have settled into a quiet, peaceful mode of life for the past ten years. Now Victor is twenty-one and, thankfully, is very interested in the vineyard. He is keen to take over the management as I get older and he has ambitious plans for its extension.’

Angela began to wonder what their problems could be, as it sounded as if they were living an idyllic life, being well off, with a pleasant house, a satisfying occupation and what sounded like a devoted son. However, Richard was beginning to guess the direction in which the story was leading, but he made no attempt to anticipate Louis’s narrative.

‘We heard no more for many years, until about four weeks ago, when I had a telephone call from London. It was a man calling himself Pierre Fouret and claiming to be my long-lost son Maurice!’

There was a strained silence for a moment, broken only by a stifled sob from Madame Dumas.

‘You must have been shocked!’ exclaimed Angela, with spontaneous sympathy. ‘What did you say?’

Louis ran a hand slowly over his brushed-back hair. ‘I was not so much shocked as a little angry — and curious as to how he had obtained my address. Though for years I had desperately sought out information about Maurice, this was the first time that anyone had approached me on the matter.’

‘Did he explain himself?’ asked Richard.

‘He was very polite and restrained, apologizing for springing such a momentous matter on me without warning, but said he could explain all the circumstances, if I would be willing to meet him.’

‘Did he not give you at least an idea of his story?’ asked Angela. ‘It sounds very much like some kind of confidence trick.’

Louis shook his head. ‘He said it was too complicated to explain on the telephone, but he was sure that he could satisfy any doubts I may have. He asked if we could meet at any location that I cared to suggest.’

‘What did he sound like?’ asked Angela, fascinated by the strange story. ‘And what language were you using?’

‘He had excellent French, but with a strange accent that had a North American twang, but I was sure it also had an Asian element in it — which was partly why I didn’t dismiss him as an obvious impostor and slam the phone down.’

Monsieur Dumas looked across at his wife, who was sitting bolt upright on the settee, agitatedly twisting a small handkerchief between her fingers.

‘I told the man that I would consider meeting him after discussing the matter with my wife and asked him to call back later that day. I was almost afraid to tell Emily, in case it aroused false hopes which would almost certainly come to nothing.’

The French woman spoke for the first time since the story began unfolding. ‘I’m now sure that he is genuinely my son Maurice, but Louis is still very cautious,’ she said very quietly, before he continued.

‘On that first day, both of us were naturally extremely dubious, suspecting that we were dealing with some form of scam, as I think the Americans call it. But after a long talk, we felt we could not risk rejecting any further contact with the caller in case he had some genuine information, so when he phoned later that day, I arranged to meet him on neutral ground, so to speak.’

Louis Dumas went on to relate the rest of this remarkable story, which Richard felt was highly ingenious and detailed, even if it eventually proved to be a tissue of lies. He arranged to meet the alleged Maurice in the lounge bar of the Angel Hotel in Cardiff, an easy place for both to rendezvous, the stranger coming by train from Paddington and Louis driving the dozen miles from his vineyard.

‘It was obviously going to be a fraught meeting, but the young man handled it impeccably. He did not throw his arms about me and cry “Father”, but offered a polite handshake and an invitation to take lunch after a drink.’

‘Did his physical appearance offer any help?’ asked Angela, now completely hooked by the drama.

‘Not really. He was a pleasant, but ordinary-looking young man, of an apparent age that matched what Maurice would have been now, just twenty-six years old. He was quite well dressed, though not ostentatiously so.’

‘Did you recognize any family resemblance at all?’ asked Richard.

Louis replied that there seemed to be no features that resembled either his wife or himself, but equally nothing to suggest any exclusion. ‘You’ve seen Victor, our other son, Doctor Pryor. He also has no marked resemblance to either Emily or me.’

He continued his account of the strange meeting in the Angel Hotel. The young man said that he was a French-Canadian, living in Montreal under the name Pierre Fouret. He said that he would explain the different name shortly and that actually he had grown up thinking that his name was Annan Thongchai!’

A tortuous story emerged, which Louis said made it almost believable, for how else could such a fantasy be constructed without a basis of truth?

‘Pierre’ was less than a year old when he vanished from Yen Bai and his first memories were of living in a remote village with his ‘mother’, Sukhon Thongchai. Later it emerged that this was in eastern Siam, a region flooded with refugees from the war across the frontier in French Indo-China. Though he had jet-black hair, it was obvious that he was European, but he was accepted by the village community and was brought up in infancy as a Siamese, the only language he knew apart from a smattering of French that Sukhon had picked up in Yen Bai. She eked out a living as a seamstress and with the charity of her extensive family, as this was her home village before she went away to work. Pierre Fouret did not know how his appearance was explained, but later assumed that the village accepted that some virile French soldier had ‘put her in the family way’, in spite of his lack of any Asian features. He accepted Sukhon as his mother and only in later childhood did he become curious as to his different appearance, about which his mother was always evasive. In retrospect, it was apparent that the barren woman had always been yearning for a child of her own and the flight from the rebellion had given her an opportunity to abduct Maurice and make her way home to her village in Siam.

Louis broke off his long explanation to ask for more tea and Angela took the opportunity to fill up all around.

‘But how did this Pierre get to know all this detail?’ asked Richard, as fascinated as his partner with the story.

‘Be patient with me, doctor,’ replied Louis with a wan smile. ‘I will be coming to that very soon.’

When he resumed, he explained how this potentially unstable situation was again thrown into chaos in 1940, when the Japanese occupied Indo-China, now administered by Vichy-France. Sukhon and her family knew that it was only a matter of time before the Japanese invaded Thailand, as Siam was called after the 1934 revolution. Realizing that such an obviously European boy might become a target for the invaders, she reluctantly took her adopted son to a Catholic orphanage near Bangkok, persuading the Thai sisters to shelter him.

‘They were unwilling at first,’ declared Louis, ‘but Sukhon claimed that he was the child of a French soldier and his wife, who were killed in the insurrections of a decade earlier. She was deliberately vague as to how she had saved the child, but said she had found him abandoned during the turmoil, and escaped with him to her village over the border.’

Being French, and hence a Catholic, the sisters were persuaded and they kept him in the convent for several months, until they managed to place him with an expatriate French-Canadian couple who were patrons of the orphanage. Lucas Fouret and his wife, Angelique, had lived in Bangkok for several years, as he was the senior representative of a Canadian farm machinery company. Childless, they agreed to unofficially adopt Annan Thongchai and as this was patently not his birth name, they decided to call him Pierre. But yet again, total disruption descended upon them, as soon after being taken into the Fouret household in a suburb of Bangkok, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and immediately demanded that Thailand allowed their armies to cross the country to invade British Malaya and Burma. The Thai government capitulated after only eight hours’ armed resistance and the Fourets lost no time in catching a train from Bangkok down to Penang and then on to Singapore.

‘Thankfully, they kept ahead of the invading Japanese,’ said Louis Dumas. ‘They were lucky enough to get a ship to Australia and then another onward to the United States, from where they reached their home city of Montreal. From then on, Pierre led the life of a normal French-Canadian youth, soon becoming fluent in French.

‘He now looked on the Fourets as his parents and, when he left school, his adopted father found him a job in the tractor company, where he flourished so that now he is one of the European sales team.’

Monsieur Dumas seemed to come to a turning point in his narrative and, putting his cup and saucer back on the low table, he continued more briskly, as if he was determined to put sadness aside and get to the point of this meeting.

‘You might be wondering how Pierre tracked us down after all these years. He explained that when he became a teenager, the Fourets gradually told him what they knew of his past, having learned all there was from the nuns in Thailand, who in turn had been given a sketchy version by the amah, Sukhon. She had never divulged where she ‘found’ the child nor who the true parents were and Pierre suspected that she had hoped to reclaim him from the orphanage, if no problems had arisen from the Japanese occupation. He happily accepted his new life in Canada and it was only when he began working that the urge to seek his past roots developed. He began making enquiries, hoping to trace Sukhon, but the orphanage had closed down during the war and the nuns were dispersed.

Then he was sent for several months to Paris as a sales representative for his company and took the opportunity to seek information from the relevant newspapers of the time and the archives of the Ministry of Defence. Many of the army records had been lost during the various wars, but eventually he tracked down the siege of Yen Bai, which would have been when he was a small infant.

Then his researches at last came upon the tragedy of the missing child of Captain and Madame Louis Dumas. Convinced that he must be the missing boy, he then had to trace them and further problems arose from the reluctance of the military authorities to divulge personal information. However, with the help of the Red Cross, they were tracked first to London and then, through Louis’s pension payments, to the address in South Wales.

He managed to get a temporary transfer to the British sales office in Slough and made his first contact by telephone.

‘And that is where our bittersweet problems began!’ said Louis Dumas, pensively.