Where Death Delights

NINE

Though the post-mortems on Linda Prentice had been carried out in the mortuary in Swansea, the coroner who covered Gower was not the same official whose jurisdiction was the borough itself. Neither was Pennard in the Swansea police area, but was part of the Glamorgan County Constabulary, the larger force that covered all the county except for the three major towns of Cardiff, Merthyr and Swansea.

So it was not in Swansea itself that the Friday meeting was convened, but in Gowerton, a small industrial town on the northern neck of the peninsula. It was not far from the edge of the Burry Inlet, a vast sandy estuary where the Penclawdd cockle beds lay – totally different from the southern coast of Gower, blessed with miles of cliffs and golden beaches.

Today, the coroner had not commandeered the local magistrates’ courts for the meeting, but held it in his office nearby. Like most coroners outside London and some other big cities, where they tended to be medical doctors with an additional legal qualification, he was a local solicitor. These tended to pass the appointment down through their partners for generations – often the deputy coroner and assistant coroner were also part of the same firm.

Mr Donald Moses carried on his practice from all three floors of a terrace house in Mill Street. As senior partner, he had the best room, the first-floor front, and it was here that the meeting assembled at eleven o’clock. Richard Pryor had again been chauffeured by Jimmy Jenkins, who had gone off to find a cup of tea, promising to be back in an hour.

The coroner was a small man of about sixty, with thin black hair spread carefully over his rounded skull. He had a small toothbrush moustache that caused his junior staff to refer to him secretly as ‘Adolf’. Pryor was intrigued to see that he wore a wing collar with his black jacket and striped trousers – almost a stage caricature of a lawyer. But it was soon apparent that though a small-town solicitor, he was a very sharp character with an ability to cut through any waffle.

He sat behind an old leather-topped desk in the bay window, with his coroner’s officer, PC Mort, standing against a nearby wall. A motley collection of chairs faced him, as he conducted his inquests in this room, except for ones requiring a jury or where there was a need for lawyers and press to be present.

Already seated were Leonard Massey, Doctor O’Malley and two plain-clothes police officers. One was Detective Inspector Lewis Lewis, who Richard had met before at the mortuary, and Detective Superintendent Ben Evans who headed the local Divisional CID. He was a large, red-faced man with bristly fair hair, looking every inch a policeman.

No tea or coffee were on offer and Donald Moses, after naming all those present, cut straight to the chase.

‘I opened my inquest on the lady Mrs Linda Prentice last week,’ he began in a surprisingly deep voice for such a small man. ‘That was for identification purposes only and I issued a burial certificate in the usual way.’

He straightened a buff folder in front of him and placed his fountain pen precisely in its centre.

‘I intended resuming the full inquest into this tragic death in about two weeks’ time, but following representations from the father of the deceased, Mr Leonard Massey, I had the funeral postponed so that a second post-mortem examination could be carried out.’

He made a small nod of recognition towards Richard.

‘I did this with some reluctance, due to the inevitable distress that it would cause the relatives, but given the legal experience of Mr Massey here – and the letter he produced from his daughter’s friend, I felt I had no option but to accede to his request.’

He produced a wire-framed pair of half-moon spectacles from his top pocket and laid them alongside his pen.

‘Now Doctor Pryor has offered a report that takes this matter a stage further and in view of that, I decided to request the presence of the police here today, in case they feel the need to intervene.’

DS Evans cleared his throat at this point, which sounded like the first rumblings of a volcanic eruption.

‘Mr Moses, I am afraid I come into this with very little background knowledge, except what my inspector here has told me about the post-mortem.’

The coroner nodded jerkily. ‘Very well, perhaps Mr Massey would summarize what made him uneasy about the circumstances of this death.’

The Queen’s Counsel opened a folder which was on his lap and took out some sheets of paper. He handed one each to the detectives.

‘These are typed copies of the relevant parts of the letter that my daughter’s close friend received from her, as well as a report which I commissioned by a private investigator, who is a former detective superintendent.’

He looked across at Donald Moses.

‘You already have a copy, sir, as well as the original letter. In essence, that contains allegations that there was a serious marital dispute between my daughter and her husband, Michael Prentice, and that he had shown violence towards her during the weeks before her death. The cause was her discovery of his affair with another woman and her refusal to agree to divorce proceedings.’

There was a short delay while the two policemen read through the transcripts, Lewis Lewis getting the fainter carbon copy. At the same time, the coroner put on his glasses and opened the file before him, refreshing his memory from his own copy.

‘The second part is the report of the investigator I employed,’ continued Massey. ‘You will see that he confirms the identity of the woman suggested by Linda’s friend, as a Daphne Squires who lives in Porthcawl and who I have no doubt was the blonde woman seen by a neighbour in Michael Prentice’s house some days after my daughter’s death.’

Ben Evans looked up from his copy. ‘So the only knowledge we have of the violence upon your daughter, sir, is this hearsay evidence from the friend?’

Massey nodded, rather impatiently. ‘But you will see that at one point, she says that “I was afraid for my life, he was so violent.” That is very significant, I submit. The friend told me – and as her father, I can vouch for it – that Linda was not given to dramatic exaggerations, in fact she usually played things down.’

The superintendent nodded, but did not look all that convinced. ‘There were no other useful witnesses who could corroborate this, I presume? Friends or neighbours?’

Massey shook his leonine head. ‘They live in a rather isolated house in Pennard. There are neighbours, but everyone drives in and out by car without much social contact. The only thing my investigator found was that the nearest neighbour said that Linda looked “out of sorts” for a while before she died.’

Lewis Lewis scribbled something in his notebook at this, but the coroner began to look a little fretful at being out of the loop for a while.

‘I think we should hear from the medical men now,’ he said. ‘Dr O’Malley, you performed the first examination at my request. Was there anything that suggested that death was due to causes other than drowning?’

The retired pathologist shifted rather uneasily on his chair.

‘Absolutely no reason to doubt that the poor lady drowned,’ he declared in accents suggestive of County Cork. ‘Of course, there were numerous marks on her body, as I mentioned in my report – scratches and bruises, but she had been washing around in the surf for at least a day, against a very rocky coastline.’

Donald Moses picked up O’Malley’s very short report from his file. ‘You say there were many abrasions and bruises on the legs, arms, back and face?’

‘Indeed I did, sir. They were too numerous to describe individually.’

The coroner then picked up and perused the several pages of Pryor’s report, in which every injury was described, but he made no comment.

‘Did you do any special tests of any sort – using the microscope, for instance?’ he asked at length.

O’Malley looked a little crestfallen at this.

‘Unfortunately, since I retired from my hospital post three years ago, I have no access to any laboratory facilities. If any of your cases require that, the samples must be sent away, as you know. Or if there is any suspicion about the death, the Home Office chap is called.’

‘And you felt there was no such necessity here?’ asked Moses.

The pathologist shook his head. ‘None at all, sir. I have dealt with dozens of drownings in my time, and this was typical of the condition.’

Moses now turned his head towards Richard.

‘Doctor Pryor, do you agree that she drowned?’

‘Like Doctor O’Malley, I have no doubt about that,’ he said, keen not to embarrass the older doctor. ‘Drowning can often be a difficult diagnosis, especially in sea water, as opposed to fresh – and made more difficult if there is a delay before the recovery and examination of the body. But here there was ample frothy fluid in the air passages and the lungs were waterlogged and showed the typical brownish patchy haemorrhages and alternating areas of emphysema and collapse.’

He spoke rather diffidently, trying not to be too graphic in the presence of the woman’s father, but he seemed to show no emotion.

‘But you recorded some other findings, Doctor,’ persisted the coroner.

‘Yes, as Doctor O’Malley has said, there were many relatively minor injuries scattered over the body, some consistent with being knocked by the waves against sharp rocks and barnacles. But there were other less explicable injuries in rather characteristic situations.’

This statement injected a new tension into the atmosphere, which until then had been a little soporific.

Ben Evans hauled his big body more upright in his chair.

‘And what were they, Doctor?’ he rumbled.

‘The scratches were all very recent, and I have no reason to think that they were not caused when she was in the water. They had no “vital reaction” at all and some or even all of them could have been sustained after death.’

‘What about the bruises?’ asked Evans.

‘Ah, that’s a bit different. You can’t bruise a dead body, as once the heart stops, there’s no pressure to force blood out of damaged vessels into the surrounding tissues – which is what a bruise actually is.’

‘So they were all ante-mortem?’ ventured Lewis Lewis, who had picked up the term from other cases.

‘Yes, but some could have been caused immediately before death or during the drowning process, as the heart needn’t stop instantly, especially in sea water. If, say, she fell off a low cliff, she could hit herself on the way down and get scratches and bruises. Even in the water, before she drowned, she could still sustain some bruises from being battered against rocks by the waves. There were two quite large ones on the back of the head, but again they were very fresh and one could make a case for them knocking her out, so that she drowned. As I understand she was a good swimmer and might well have survived if she was in full possession of her senses.’

‘So what’s the problem, Doctor?’ said the senior detective, almost belligerently.

‘The problem is that some of the bruises were in places where you wouldn’t expect them to be caused by falling or swilling around in a rock gully. But even more significant is that these were not sustained immediately before death. Some were certainly at least a few days’ old.’

This caused a thoughtful silence. The coroner came back first. ‘And you consider the position of these bruises suggestive of violence?’ he asked.

‘Some were on the upper arms, each side of the biceps muscle, a typical position for gripping during shaking – and possibly from a punch on an obvious part of the body. One of these was actually greenish-yellow, so it must have been inflicted a number of days previously. Also, there were two small older bruises on the neck, one on each side under the angles of the jaw.’

‘From gripping the throat?’ said the superintendent, who in his time had seen his fair share of attempted strangulations – and a few successful ones.

Pryor nodded, but O’Malley raised an objection.

‘With a body being tossed about by big waves on that coast, surely bruises could have been inflicted anywhere on the body?’

Richard shrugged. ‘Maybe, though it’s a coincidence that some of them were in just the right place to indicate an assault. But the real proof is that they couldn’t have been inflicted in the water, because some were days old!’

‘Could they have been sustained during a previous swim, a couple of days earlier?’ asked Lewis Lewis.

‘That’s not for me to say, it’s not a medical matter,’ answered Richard. ‘But it wouldn’t explain the position of the injuries, which are classically those of a struggle or assault of some sort.’

The coroner nodded and scribbled something on a notepad with his large pen. ‘Can your microscope date these bruises with any accuracy, Doctor?’

Ruefully Richard had to admit that the science was very approximate in this area. ‘This iron test can pick up injuries more than a day or so old – and then changes in the scavenger and inflammatory cells can suggest a number of days earlier still – but there’s no accuracy in it, unfortunately, though researchers abroad are trying to develop new techniques.’

Donald Moses made a few more notes with his pen, then laid it down and looked at the two police officers.

‘How does this appear to you, gentleman?’ he asked courteously.

As a mere inspector, Lewis kept his mouth closed and his superintendent answered after a pause.

‘If Doctor Pryor is correct – and I’ve no reason to doubt him – then the fact that some of these bruises must have been inflicted at least a day or more before death needs investigating, especially as they are the sort that can be suffered in some sort of domestic violence. Coupled with the allegations in that letter, it makes it all the more obvious that we need to interview a few people.’

Leonard Massey nodded his agreement. ‘I’m glad to hear you say that, Superintendent. I’ve naturally taxed my son-in-law with the matter, but he denied it and became abusive.’

The two detectives murmured together for a moment and then Ben Evans spoke again.

‘I must refer this back to my chief superintendent, at Headquarters in Bridgend, as it may become a sensitive issue, especially when the bloody Press get hold of it, if you’ll pardon my language. Then if he agrees, we’ll set about seeing the people concerned.’

A few moments later, after exchanging addresses and telephone numbers, the two policemen left, along with a rather subdued Dr O’Malley. The coroner had asked Richard to stay, as he discussed with the dead woman’s father the logistics of a funeral.

‘I can’t allow cremation until all this is cleared up, one way or another,’ he said. ‘Dr Pryor, do you see any reason why the body should not be buried, in view of the perhaps remote possibility of another post-mortem being required by any future defence?’

Richard explained again that in view of the agreement about the actual cause of death, he could see nothing that would help a defence pathologist, given that he already had tissue samples preserved from the bruises and that he had taken samples for blood and urine analysis. At the same time, he pointed out that it was not for him to prejudge the issue and perhaps it might be as well to wait until the police decided whether or not they intended to pursue the matter. Donald Moses eventually decided to wait for another week until issuing Leonard Massey with a burial order and Richard left them to discuss the details, leaving to find Jimmy and the Humber.

Now that they were technically in Gower, he decided to go and look at the scene of the death and with Richard’s memories from his motorcycling days, they set off for Pennard. In Bishopston they found a café that catered for passing tourists and he treated Jimmy and himself to cottage pie, chips and peas, followed by apple tart. They washed this down with a glass of beer at a nearby public house, Jimmy bemoaning the recent rise in price of a pint of bitter to nine pence.

‘It’ll soon be a shilling at this rate!’ he complained. ‘I blame this new Tory Government, battening on us working-class folk!’

Though Jimmy was a good enough worker when the mood took him, Richard grinned to himself at the thought of him being one of the downtrodden masses. The Conservatives had trounced Labour again at the recent General Election, with an increased majority of fifty-eight seats, but neither Jimmy nor Sian Lloyd had taken kindly to having Sir Anthony Eden as Prime Minister.

Their break over, they carried on to Pennard, retracing the route that Trevor Mitchell had taken. He had described the location of the house and Jimmy carefully took the Humber along the stony track past Bella Capri.

Richard had no idea what he hoped to gain just by looking at a house, but he always liked to visit crime scenes, if indeed this was one. They stopped outside the gate and looked up the windswept garden, taking in the general appearance of the oddly named house. Then Jimmy noticed a curtain being pulled aside in one of the front rooms and a woman’s face stared out. He let in the clutch and moved on quickly.

‘We’ve been rumbled, Doc,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Some blonde giving us the evil eye.’

‘Just keep going,’ ordered Richard. ‘According to Trevor Mitchell, the place where the body was recovered was about half a mile further on.’

Mitchell had been given the location by Leonard Massey and had marked it on the one-inch Ordnance Survey map which Richard held, so they bumped along the track until they reached the nearest spot on the road.

‘Park here and we’ll go and have a look,’ he commanded. Jimmy pulled off on to the rough grass and locked the car, then they walked a few hundred yards across to the edge of the spectacular limestone cliffs.

A jagged, almost sheer drop went down into the sea below, though there were some ravines here and there, where steep slopes of turf ran down to the rocks a few feet above the heavy swell.

‘I suppose you can stumble down there, but it’s not easy,’ said Richard, looking at the greenish-blue swell that even on a fairly calm day such as this, threw up spray over the rocks.

‘But she didn’t go swimming here, surely?’ asked Jimmy. ‘Too bloody dangerous by half!’

He was a countryman and the Severn Bore was the only wave he was used to seeing.

Pryor consulted his map again. ‘No, this is where the coastguards hauled her body out. Must have been in that gully down there.’ He pointed to a narrow channel cutting into the cliff slightly to their left. It was about twenty feet wide and forty long, lined with jagged grey rocks.

‘So where did she go swimming?’

Richard put a finger on the map, at a spot further west, almost to where Bella Capri sat well back from the cliff top. ‘She did her swimming nearer home, according to her father. This map shows a little patch of sand at low tide.’

They paused there to have a look on the way back, but this time driving past the house without stopping, because of the curtain-twitcher.

‘Think that was the fancy woman?’ asked Richard. ‘If it is, she didn’t waste much time moving in!’

His chauffeur shrugged.

‘Takes all sorts, dunn’it!’ he said.