The Thread of Evidence (11 page)

‘There might 'a been on his side, but it didn't matter a tinker's cuss to me. It was his wife I was interested in, not 'im. And, if he wasn't man enough to hold her himself, then I didn't see why I shouldn't have the benefit myself.'

Again Pacey's foot itched to come into violent contact with Lloyd's trouser seat.

‘Let's get to some details of the girl. You seem in as good a position as any to give them,' he said shrewishly. ‘What did she actually look like?'

Ceri gazed thoughtfully at the back of his hand.

‘Pretty, she was. Real pretty. Middling size – perhaps five foot three or so. Lovely figure by damn, it was!'

‘What about eyes and hair?'

‘Oh, red hair. Natural red, not dyed like these days. It was a dark, sort of coppery colour.'

‘And eyes?' prompted the detective.

Lloyd looked doubtful. ‘Damn, do you know, I couldn't swear to them. Not brown nor blue, but any colour from grey to green. Difficult to describe, if you know what I mean.'

Pacey, thinking of the brown bones and sickening legs, said gruffly, ‘It doesn't matter. Did she have any physical deformities, or marks? Perhaps you noticed some that
other
people wouldn't see.'

The sarcasm was lost on Ceri who wrinkled his pasty brow in thought.

‘Certainly no deformities,' he said in a slightly shocked voice. ‘She had a lovely body on her. Had a few moles and marks, but nothing I could describe exactly.'

‘No diseases that you know of? Any operations or things like that?'

Ceri shook his head emphatically. ‘No, she was perfect.'

‘Any fractures, or arthritis?' Pacey was scraping the bottom of the barrel now.

Ceri again denied any faults in his mistress's skeleton.

‘Do you remember any jewellery she used to wear?'

‘It's a long time ago, sir, thirty-odd years.'

‘What about rings?'

‘She sometimes had a wedding ring on.'

‘What do you mean “sometimes”?'

Ceri leered revoltingly. ‘She took it off when she was on her way to Liverpool – used to cramp her style, I expect.'

‘What sort was it?'

‘I can't remember. Nothing special about it, I do know. The sort that you wouldn't notice unless it wasn't there, if you get me. Old Roland wouldn't be the one to go spending fancy money on a ring.'

‘Can you remember anything about her clothes?'

‘She was a smart dresser – for these parts, anyway. I don't know where she got the money to do it – or perhaps I can guess, come to think of it. Fancy clothes, they were. The old cats in the village used to call her all the names under the sun for being fast and a hussy. Hated the sight of her, most of them. They were all afraid that their husbands would go after her – and most of them would have, given the chance. She used to give anything in trousers the eye, just for the hell of it. Jealous as blazes, the Tremabon women were. If old Roland hadn't done her in, I wouldn't put it past one of them seeing her off!'

‘She doesn't sound the sort that would marry Hewitt,' observed Pacey.

‘No. Miles apart, they were. He was just a way of getting out of gentleman's service to her. A fair packet of money and a freehold farm he had, see. She regretted it pretty soon, though, for he was a tight-fisted old shark.'

Pacey was getting impatient. ‘What was she wearing when you last saw her?'

Ceri spread his hands out in appeal. ‘Damn it, Superintendent, I wouldn't notice a woman's clothes thirty minutes later, let alone thirty years!' He scratched his head. ‘No, I don't know what she wore. All I know is she always looked smart.'

After a few more minutes, Pacey realized that the gross landlord had nothing more to offer in the way of information, apart from sheer speculation and rumour.

They left him standing on the doorstep, still fumbling with his braces and trouser buttons, and drove off towards Aberystwyth.

‘I'm going to get some information that's not so ruddy biased as that last lot,' said Pacey to Mostyn. ‘Before we come back to tackle any more of these old codgers in the village, I'll try and find someone from the police who remembers the affair – and hope that the file from Records turns up, though I doubt it now.'

Mostyn became more communicative as they drove on.

‘What a monstrous great belly that Lloyd chap had – looked like a wax Buddha that had been left too near to the fire.'

Pacey chuckled at the description. ‘That just about sizes him up, lad. If he and Hewitt were the only attractions in the village for a smart girl like Mavis – well, all the other men must have been cross-eyed dwarves!'

‘Will any of this second-hand evidence be any good in identifying the body?'

‘No, damn all. Not in saying whether the body was Mavis, anyway. But, if the doctor and “lab” people can convince me it was her, it's the village gossip about the quarrels that will nail a charge on Hewitt. If we ever get that far, that is.'

Mostyn thought for a mile or so of the wet, winding road.

‘As I see it, if the body definitely can be shown to be Mavis, then old Hewitt is for it. There can't be any other suspect, can there?'

Pacey shrugged. ‘Unless her spurned lover, or a jealous wife, knocked her off. But how the hell we prove anything at all after thirty-odd years is beyond me. The standard of proof may come up to what the coroner needs, but I can never see an assize jury convicting Hewitt, even if the science boys satisfy everyone that the bones belong to Mavis. And they've got a long way to go to do that yet.'

While the two detectives were driving away from the Lamb and Flag, Peter Adams had arrived back at his uncle's cottage.

This time, he had heard plenty of rumours while he was out. Mary had poured out her version of the gossip as soon as he had arrived, having collected it from her daily help before breakfast. Although she was scornful of the whole affair, Peter could tell that she was worried about Roland. Typically, she was not anxious for herself, because she was engaged to his nephew; but she was disturbed about the old man's own peace of mind and the effect it might have on him. Peter did his best to laugh it off and to reassure her, but she remained anxious and preoccupied all the time he was there.

‘What about the
Morning News
now,' she fretted. ‘You can't possibly send any more copy to them.'

It had already struck Peter that he could hardly report the rumours that the remains might belong to the victim of his own uncle's violence. ‘It's going to be difficult to get out of,' he replied. ‘If I tell the editor that I can't carry on because my family might be involved, he'll have another chap down here like greased lightning. If I stop writing anything myself and the police give a statement to the other papers, I'll probably get fired.'

‘Well, sweet, if the story has to come out, there's no point in blocking your own paper – but it's a difficult position, I'll admit.'

Eventually, he rang his office in Cardiff and spun a rather weak story about the police not wanting him to publish anything more, as he had been personally involved at the original finding of the remains. The sub-editor grudgingly accepted this and promised to send another man from Pembroke to see if the police had any further statements to make.

‘You'd better get back to your uncle, Peter,' worried Mary later in the morning. ‘The police are sure to go there sooner or later, and it would be better if you were there as well when they come pestering old Roland.'

‘A hell of a fine holiday this is going to be,' he said despondently as he kissed her goodbye and left Carmel House. He called in a couple of shops on the way home to buy bread and some cigarettes. In the first, he received some odd looks, but none of the usual small talk. In the little tobacconist's, kept by a cheerful widow, he had a flood of sympathetic chatter, the gist of it being that it was a pity that the old folks hadn't something better to do than make mountains out of a few silly molehills.

Peter returned to the cottage in an uneasy mood, which was justified as soon as he entered the kitchen. The table still carried the breakfast dishes and his uncle sat immobile in his chair by the unlit fire. He gave no greeting as Peter came in, but slowly raised his head as his nephew came across to stand over him.

‘They've been already, boy.'

Peter stared down at Roland. ‘Who have been?'

‘The police, boy – just after you left.'

Peter dropped down into a chair facing the old man. ‘They seem to know a lot about Mavis already – as good as gave me the tip they know this skeleton is hers.'

Roland's voice sounded flat and resigned. Peter tried to reassure him as he had tried with Mary.

‘Look, they're asking questions all around the village about anyone who went missing about that time. Naturally, they'll come to ask you, as you were her husband. It doesn't mean to say that they think you had anything to do with her vanishing.'

Roland ran a hand through his bristly hair.

‘They as good as told me it was her, boy. Same height. Same age. She had red hair, as well.'

Peter was shaken by this, but he tried to cover up his concern. He'd had no idea that the police had discovered that there was that much similarity between Mavis and the remains.

‘Nonsense, they were trying the old gag of trying to make you say something incriminating by pretending that they knew it all already,' he said. ‘That old Pacey is trying on a bit of his detective “gamesmanship”. He wants to confuse and frighten you into saying something to incriminate yourself. But, as you've done nothing, he can't succeed, can he?'

Although unbeknown to Peter, he was fairly near to the truth, he felt none of the confidence that he tried to put into his words for Roland's sake.

‘What's going to happen next, boy? I'm worried sick. All the gossip. And now these questions and the proof they say they've got. What's going to happen to me?'

His voice rose and cracked in a sudden spasm of hysteria. Peter jumped up and laid a comforting hand on the old man's shoulder.

‘Now look, take it easy. I'll put some tea on and we'll talk this over, quietly and sensibly. We both know that you had nothing to do with anybody's death, so nothing at all can happen to you – nothing!'

Roland sat trembling, his bony hands clenching and unclenching.

‘But what if it
is
Mavis? … I don't know where she went that last day. It
might
be her, for all I know.'

Peter raised a hand.

‘All right. All right. Say it is Mavis. I don't think the police could prove it in a month of Sundays. But if it is – all right! It's still nothing to do with you. You didn't kill her, so you've got nothing to be afraid of.' The old man muttered something that his nephew didn't catch. Peter filled a kettle and put it over the flame of a bottled gas stove in a corner of the kitchen.

Roland pulled himself together and shuffled over to get some cups and saucers together.

‘They scared me, boy,' he said in a more normal tone. ‘Coming here like that, frightened me, they have. What had I better do? I've got a solicitor over in Aber, the chap that did the deeds of this house. Should I call and see him?'

Peter shook his head. ‘No need, not yet anyway, until the police start bothering you a lot more seriously. They're not accusing you openly of anything yet, and I don't suppose they ever will. They know no more than all those gossips in the village. By this time tomorrow, I don't mind betting that Pacey and his crowd will have found that the bones couldn't possibly have belonged to Aunt Mavis. It'll all die down and life will go back to being what it was before.'

Roland made the tea and slumped back into his chair, hands clasped around his warm cup.

‘But what happened to her, boy, what happened to Mavis? She was attractive and bold. She could have been attacked and killed around here and hidden in the mine – but who would do a thing like that? Yet if it isn't her body, who else could it be? I've churned it over in my mind so much that I sometimes think that it could have been me that did it and never remembered nothing about it!'

Peter glared sternly at his uncle. ‘For goodness' sake, don't talk that sort of rubbish! That's the kind of thing that will get you into trouble.'

Roland began rocking in his chair again, a sure sign of his agitation.

‘But who else can it be, boy, who else?'

Peter was stumped for an answer and Roland pressed home his point. ‘They must know how long the thing has been there, near enough, or they wouldn't have come bothering me. And no one – no one at all – disappeared from Tremabon in all the time I can remember, except Mavis. And if it is her, did I put her there? …
did
I do it, boy?'

Chapter Eight

While Peter and his uncle sat worrying, Pacey was again turning the archives of Aberystwyth police station upside down and Willie Rees was on his way to Liverpool. Another part of the drama was being played out in the serene buildings of the University at Swansea.

In a large first floor room, overlooking the park and the sweep of the bay, the furniture had been pushed back to the wall. Two senior members of the medical school staff squatted on the floor, like boys with a toy train set.

Instead of miniature rails and trucks, they had a white sheet spread on the parquet floor. This was covered with a bizarre jigsaw of bones.

Leighton Powell watched his companion put a small piece into position. ‘That's the last one, Tom. How does it look from up there, Inspector Meadows?'

The police officer from the Forensic Science laboratory stood against a bench near the window. He was watching the antics of the two on the floor with obvious interest.

‘Pretty good, sir. I'd say it looks as near to complete now as makes no difference. Do you want it photographed now, or are you going to do any more to it?'