Where Death Delights

FIVE

As Richard Pryor drove along the A48 towards Swansea the next afternoon, he decided that lunch had definitely been a success. Moira Davison had explained apologetically that she had had little time to be adventurous with the menu, as she had needed to get supplies in from the limited range in the village shop and to get organized in the kitchen, finding out where things were kept. However, gammon, chips and peas had gone down very well, with a milky rice pudding to follow. He also decided that Moira was as efficient as she was attractive and hoped that her typing and office skills were going to be as good as her cooking.

Now he was on his way to meet the London lawyer, Leonard Massey, in the chambers of the coroner’s brother. As he passed through Pyle and reached Margam, he came within sight of the great new steel works at Port Talbot and he began remembering the route quite clearly. In his student days before the war, he used to go down to the Gower Coast on his motorcycle, a modest Excelsior two-stroke, which was a pig to start, but good once it got going. ‘The Gower’, as it was universally known, was a twenty-mile peninsula jutting westwards from Swansea, with one of the most beautiful coastlines in Wales. High cliffs, long beaches of golden sand, and a spine of unspoiled green hills made it one of the most popular targets for trippers and holidaymakers. Yet by the sound of it, that very attraction had caused the death of Massey’s daughter, if she had drowned along what could be a dangerous coast.

The Humber purred along through the heavily built-up industrial areas of Briton Ferry, Neath, Skewen and Morriston. He passed an oil refinery, tinplate and spelter works, forges and foundries until the last few dismal miles of old ribbon settlement took him into the town centre, virtually destroyed during the blitzes and rebuilt in the cheapest style of tasteless architecture of the austere post-war years.

The address he had been given was in Walter Road, which rose from the town centre along the flank of the hills that backed Swansea Bay, likened by some poet to the Bay of Naples, its five-mile curve of sand stretching round to Mumbles Head with its prominent lighthouse.

Walter Road led to the more upmarket suburbs of the town and was a mixture of smart shops, schools and large old houses, many given over to the premises of doctors and lawyers. He drove slowly, scanning the street numbers and found a parking space not far from the tall Edwardian house that was his destination. In the porch, a long board listed the barristers who inhabited the place, one near the top being Peter Meredith.

The front ground-floor room was the clerk’s office and he was conducted from there by a smart young lady to a room on the first floor, where Peter Meredith met him at the door with an effusive greeting and a vigorous handshake.

‘Great to meet you, Doctor – my brother has often spoken of you, especially since you came back from foreign parts!’

He was an older, thinner version of Brian Meredith, in fact he was almost gaunt, but Richard put that down to the restless energy with which he seemed to be imbued, both in speaking and in moving about. He led the way into the large room, which was a typical lawyer’s den, with a large leather-covered desk and walls lined with shelves groaning under the weight of legal texts and law reports. Another man was sitting in front of the desk, who rose to shake hands as Peter introduced them.

‘This is my old friend Leonard Massey, Doctor. We did our pupillage together in London. I’m sorry we have to meet in these sad circumstances.’

Richard sat in the other seat in front of the desk as Meredith went around to his own chair and indicated a tray in front of him. ‘We’ve just had this delivered, I’m sure you could do with a cup after your journey.’

As he fussed with a coffee pot and a milk jug, Leonard Massey addressed himself to the pathologist.

‘It’s very good of you to come down like this, Doctor Pryor. I know some of the London people, of course, especially Keith Simpson, but it would be so much easier to deal with an expert on his home soil, so to speak.’

Massey was in his fifties, a heavily-built man of rather sombre appearance. Faultlessly dressed in a dark suit, he wore a spotted bow tie and had thick black eyebrows that turned up at the ends. Pryor thought that he was like a stage version of a successful QC, grave, ponderous and with a ‘presence’ that tended to dominate any company.

As Peter Meredith passed over a cup of coffee, Richard admitted that so far, he knew virtually nothing of the circumstances or how he might be able to help.

Massey nodded regally and launched into a detailed explanation of the problem.

‘This concerns my only daughter, Linda, who was twenty-eight years old. She was married to Michael Prentice about five years ago and they lived at Pennard, near Bishopston, a few miles west of Swansea.’

Richard knew the village from some of his student jaunts, years before.

‘Michael was originally an industrial engineer, though he had hardly ever become involved in the technical side.’

The barrister said this with a hint of scorn and Richard sensed that Leonard’s son-in-law was not exactly his favourite person.

‘He made his money – quite a lot of it, it seems – from various entrepreneurial ventures, mainly around the motor industry, as he was passionate about high-performance cars.’

Pryor was beginning to wonder how this connected with the need for a forensic pathologist, but the lawyer soon reached the crux of the story.

‘When my daughter first married him, they lived near Slough, where he was a partner in a firm which was making electronic ignition systems, but then he formed a consortium to develop some other revolutionary ideas to do with engines. I don’t exactly know what it was, but they set up a small Research and Development unit and a pilot factory on an industrial estate somewhere near Swansea.’

‘Very generous terms were being offered by the local councils to attract business,’ cut in Peter Meredith. ‘Five years’ holiday from rent and rates.’

‘Anyway, they moved here eighteen months ago and bought a nice house very near the sea. Then two weeks ago, we had a panic message from Michael to say that Linda had vanished from the house while he was at the factory. The next day, her body was recovered from the sea by the coastguards.’

His voice did not break, but it became wooden, as if he was forcing restraint on his feelings.

‘She often went swimming in the sea,’ offered Peter, helpfully covering up his friend’s emotions. ‘The house was virtually on top of the cliffs at Pennard.’

‘Obviously the death was referred to the local coroner and he ordered a post-mortem, which confirmed drowning as the cause of death.’ Massey had recovered his poise now and spoke in a brisk courtroom manner.

‘My wife and I were devastated, of course. We came down and tried to help Michael in making all the necessary arrangements, though he seemed to have it all under control. The funeral was actually set for tomorrow, but it’s had to be postponed.’

Richard waited silently for the punchline.

‘Last Thursday, I had a phone call at home from an old girlfriend of Linda’s, who was in boarding school with her. She lives in Reading and before my daughter left Slough, they saw a lot of each other. They’ve kept in touch and seemed quite close.’

He paused to take a mouthful of coffee.

‘This friend, Marjorie Elphington, had been in France and only arrived home on Thursday, to hear from another schoolfriend that Linda had drowned. She rang me straight away, because she had had several letters from Linda in the past few months, saying how unhappy she was and that Michael wanted a divorce because he had taken up with another woman.’

Pryor began to see where the story was taking them.

‘You knew nothing of this?’ he asked.

The barrister shook his head ponderously. ‘Not an inkling! But since her marriage, Linda had grown more and more distant from us, especially since they moved to Wales. We didn’t see her that often – to tell you the truth, neither my wife nor myself were all that keen on her husband. All he seemed interested in was making a fast buck, as they say!’

Richard began to wonder if he had driven almost eighty miles because of a father’s dislike of the man who had stolen his daughter, but there was more.

‘Marjorie was particularly worried by Linda’s last letter, about a fortnight earlier,’ said Massey in sombre tones. ‘She said that Michael was becoming abusive because she refused to even contemplate a divorce and several times had actually shaken and punched her during flaming rows.’

‘And you think he may have something to do with her death?’ concluded Pryor.

Leonard Massey shrugged. ‘It may sound far-fetched, but I wouldn’t put it past the chap. And I can’t rest without at least making every effort to prove that it didn’t happen that way.’

Richard thought for a moment. ‘You say that the post-mortem confirmed drowning as the cause of death? Nothing else found?’

Massey took a thin briefcase from the floor besides his chair and handed Pryor a sheet of paper. ‘I saw the coroner on Friday and I copied out the relevant parts of the report he had from his pathologist. He seemed quite satisfied that it was drowning.’

Richard quickly scanned the few handwritten paragraphs.

‘There were some abrasions and bruises recorded, scattered over the body,’ he observed.

Massey nodded. ‘He explained those by the body being tossed around in the tide for perhaps more than a day. The body was seen by a fisherman at the foot of the cliffs and it was recovered by the coastguards, who said it was in a deep gully between sharp rocks, which could easily have caused those marks.’

Peter Meredith, who had been listening intently to the others, wanted to clarify the time scale.

‘You said she went missing on a Tuesday night – at least, that’s when her husband said he returned home to find the house empty. And then her body was found on Thursday morning?’

Massey nodded. ‘He didn’t report her missing until the next evening, because he admits they had some marital problems and he thought she had just up and left him.

‘But when he had no message from her after twenty-four hours, he rang the police – especially as he says that he found that her handbag and almost all her clothes were still there.’

‘Was she in the habit of going off alone to swim?’ asked Pryor.

‘Yes, that was true enough. She loved swimming and she loved that coast, she was very happy to move down there from the Home Counties.’

There was another silence as the three men thought about the possibilities.

‘So what’s the situation at the moment?’ asked Richard.

Leonard Massey moved into his courtroom mode again. ‘I want to be absolutely sure that there’s no sign of any foul play, Doctor Pryor! I’ve spoken to the coroner and in the circumstances, he has no objection to a private post-mortem examination.’

‘How does the husband feel about that?’ enquired Meredith.

‘He has no choice in the matter,’ replied Massey, brusquely. ‘The inquest has not been held, so the coroner still has full jurisdiction. If the possibility of a non-accidental cause exists, then he is entitled – indeed, he should be obliged – to take all measures to confirm or exclude it.’

There seemed no answer to this, so Pryor confined himself to practicalities.

‘Where was the first autopsy carried out – and by whom?’ he enquired.

‘In the public mortuary – a rather primitive place, I’m afraid. It’s in Swansea itself, though the coroner who’s dealing with the matter is in Gowerton, a few miles away. The doctor was a retired pathologist who still does coroner’s work. A Doctor O’Malley, I believe.’

He delved into his black leather case once more and handed Richard another sheet of paper.

‘These are the phone numbers of the coroner’s officer and of the undertaker and my own contact details. You are more used to making these arrangements, so perhaps I could leave it with you. I will naturally be responsible for your usual fee and expenses.’

Pryor stood up and shook hands with the other two men.

‘I will have to offer this Dr O’Malley the courtesy of attending,’ he explained. ‘It will probably be a day or two before I can arrange to come down again, but I’ll let you know what’s happening and will send you a full report as soon as I can.’

Peter Meredith showed him out and he walked back to his car, thinking that this all sounded a bit far-fetched, in that the QC was virtually suspecting his son-in-law of murder. But ‘the usual fee and expenses’ part sounded good, as well as getting his name known around the South Wales legal establishment.