The Thread of Evidence (16 page)

‘But perhaps they can prove it,' said Gerald, his face as worried as if his own father were being accused. His usual banter had deserted him, just as David's normally serious manner had become almost funereal.

‘How can they?' asked his father.

‘We don't know what's been going on since Sunday,' went on the younger brother. ‘The police have had their pathologist and their laboratory on the go. For all we know, they might have discovered something that could clinch the identity of the body. It might even be a blind, all this about Mavis Hewitt; they might have ideas about someone else. Have you heard anything at all, Peter, with your newspaper contacts?'

Peter shook his head. ‘No, I've kept well clear. I'm in a rather embarrassing spot, having a sort of obligation to the
Morning News
, and to my uncle at the same time. Nothing has appeared in any of the papers. I can't imagine how Pacey fobbed off our man from Pembroke.'

John Ellis-Morgan tapped his spoon in the saucer with nervous persistence that jarred on Mary's ears.

‘Gerald is right,' he said. ‘We've no idea how much the police know about the body – though I can hardly imagine any reason for them worrying old Roland if they genuinely don't believe the skeleton to be that of his wife.'

‘If only I could do something to fault their theory,' burst out Peter in sudden frustration. ‘I know they've got all the experts and facilities, but they're more interested in finding facts to prove that the body is Mavis, rather than eliminating her.'

The elder doctor flicked his eyes around to Peter.

‘Oh, come now, I don't think they're biased in any way. They'd accept any genuine facts, whether that helped their case or not.'

‘I didn't mean that. I know they wouldn't weigh the issue one way or the other. But, surely, their efforts will be concentrated on finding positive facts about the similarities between the two. I wondered if, with my Press connections, I could dig up anything that would show that the real Mavis had something distinctive about her that would knock a hole in the police case.'

‘Darling, I don't see what you could possibly do. The police have all the advantages, surely?'

‘You're thinking of finding some abnormality like a healed fracture in the real Mavis, is that it?' David spoke from across the table and Peter was again reminded that he was a younger edition of his father, in both looks and manner.

‘I suppose so. But, to tell you the truth, I'm not at all clear myself. I'm just mad keen to do something to help the old boy. If you'd have seen him this afternoon, you'd have sworn that the police were waiting outside with handcuffs, he was that convinced that he was on the point of being arrested.'

Gerald brought the conversation back to a practical level.

‘But there's nothing to suggest that Mavis
did
have a fracture, is there?'

David gestured at him impatiently. ‘I didn't mean it literally, Gerry. I was just giving that as an example. Anyway, the Home Office chap would have sorted that out long ago.'

‘It would have to be in the bones, this fault of yours, Peter. No abnormality in the flesh would be any good,' said John Ellis-Morgan.

‘I remember reading in a book about Spilsbury that an old operation scar was vitally important in the Crippen case,' offered Mary.

‘That's what Dad has just said, Mary,' snapped David. ‘Nothing in the skin would be the slightest use.'

‘What about the teeth?' asked Peter.

‘I'm sure the police pathologist would have flogged that one already,' said Gerry. ‘I remember looking at the skull. There was no dental work or any fillings at all. Lots of the teeth were missing, in fact.'

‘It's useless trying to think of things sitting here, Peter,' the father said gently. ‘I should ask your uncle if he can remember any detail, however small, about his wife that may help. I'm afraid I don't see much chance of finding anything, but you never know.'

‘Daddy, you're going up to see him this evening. You could ask him. You might have a better idea about fractures and medical things than Peter has.'

John Ellis-Morgan departed for the old man's cottage after supper, leaving the four younger people in an uneasy mood. .

‘I've, heard a lot of rumour in the village these past few days, Peter,' David said grimly, tapping the end of a cigarette with the same jerky movements as his father. ‘Almost every patient who comes into the surgery has a natter about old Hewitt. The older ones, who remember Mavis, are unanimous in saying that she was a bad lot.'

‘I've had the same thing,' confirmed Gerry. ‘No one seems to have any doubt that Roland did it. And they seem to be sorry for him. Apparently, everyone was astounded when he came back from Canada five years ago … they thought he'd hopped it to avoid the scandal and died over there years ago.'

‘Yes, I understood that everyone thought he was dead,' said David. ‘I heard rumours about a missing wife and some dark secret in Roland's past, long before all this fuss blew up.'

‘You didn't say anything about it before!' cried Mary, indignant that her brother should have kept some local gossip to himself.

‘It didn't occur to me on Sunday to connect the bones in the old mine with the missing Mavis,' replied David. ‘I assumed that they were real antiques, as Gerry thought. It's only the local scandalmongers that have put the idea into our heads – and the heads of the police, too, no doubt.'

A futile discussion went on for a long time, Mary even suggesting that the corpse was wrapped in a dated newspaper which had given the police a clue as to its origin!

‘Talking of newspapers, did you manage to look up that old copy of the Aberystwyth paper, Peter?' asked David.

‘I went up there yesterday, but the assistant manager said that the police had taken the file for the whole of that period.'

‘What about an inquest – there will have to be one, will there?' asked Gerald.

‘I looked this up in the library yesterday, while I was up in Aber,' said Peter. ‘Apparently, if an old or incomplete body is found, the coroner has to ask the Home Secretary's advice as to whether it's worth holding an inquest. I'm sure he will in this case. But, if there is any possibility of a criminal charge – poor old Roland in this case – then the inquest is only a formal affair of a few minutes. It has to be adjourned until the findings of the criminal court are known.'

The conversation revolved around Roland Hewitt and his troubles until John Ellis-Morgan came back from the cottage.

‘He's not too bad now,' said the doctor when he came in. ‘Worried and depressed, but quite sensible about the whole business. I've given him a couple of sleeping capsules, so he should have a good night's rest, if nothing else.'

‘Thank goodness for that. He spent half last night walking up and down his bedroom. The creaking boards nearly drove me crazy.' As Peter spoke, he noticed that the elder doctor seemed even more twittery than usual.

‘Peter, I don't want to raise your hopes for nothing,' began John Ellis-Morgan. ‘But I asked Roland if he could think of anything special about Mavis's health. He came up with one little fact that, unlikely though it may be, could be worth following up.'

Peter, in spite of the caution, sat up eagerly.

‘What was that? I don't care how feeble a chance it is, I'm ready to clutch at any straw.'

‘Well, the first thing I asked him was about the teeth. But he said that, in the four years that he was with her, she had nothing done to them. And, as far as he knew, she had no fillings or extractions before that.'

‘That doesn't help much,' objected Gerry. ‘It makes it worse, in fact.'

‘Wait a minute, lad, will you,' his father said with a grimace. ‘Though there was nothing helpful in the teeth, and she certainly had no deformity of her bones, old Roland remembered that she'd had a small operation about six months after they were married.'

‘But everyone shouted me down when I mentioned the Crippen operation,' objected Mary. ‘So what's the use?'

Her father shook his fists in the air. ‘Wait a minute, will you – what a set of children I've got! If you'd give me a chance to finish, I'd tell you that this was an operation on the nose, for sinus trouble.'

In spite of his father's outburst, David immediately raised more objections. ‘But that's so trivial that it wouldn't leave any trace. It might even be only a drainage through the nostril!'

The elder physician became almost apoplectic. ‘God give me patience! I was going to point out that X-rays of the skull are always taken before any sinus operation. Does that mean anything to you?'

There was a second's silence, then David breathed out noisily.

‘Aah, the penny has dropped, Dad.'

Peter was still completely in the dark over this medical matter. ‘I suppose I'm ignorant, but I don't see where this is going to help Uncle Roland.'

John Ellis-Morgan began to explain: ‘If X-rays were taken of Mavis's head, and we could find them, they could be compared with the X-rays of the skull from up on the cliff. That would provide a hundred per cent sure check on the identity. No two skulls are identical, any more than fingerprints are.'

It was David's turn to be sceptical about the chances of success. ‘You haven't got a hope in hell of finding those films, even if they were taken. I don't even know if X-rays were used for sinusitis in the twenties.'

The father wagged his head energetically. ‘Oh, yes they were. I'd thought of that snag. But I distinctly remember seeing skull X-rays with opaque sinuses when I was a student – and that must have been before twenty-five, when I qualified.'

‘But it's fantastic,' scoffed Gerry. ‘You'd never get films thirty-odd years old. The hospitals normally chuck them out after seven years – or ten, at the most.'

‘We don't even know where the operation was done,' added David.

‘In Liverpool. I asked Roland that,' replied John, with a grin of triumph. ‘She went up to stay with her sister for a few weeks and visited a private specialist there.'

Peter stood up, excited at the prospect of being able to do something, however nebulous, to help his uncle.

‘It's worth a try – I'm going straight back to see if Roland can remember any more details. Then I'll go up to Liverpool in the morning and see this sister. She'll know something about it – she's bound to, if Mavis stayed with her at the time.'

‘Sister? What sister?' asked Gerry in surprise.

‘The same one that reported her missing all those years ago. The police told my uncle that she was still alive and helping them with their inquiries. If I ring up Pacey in the morning, I'm sure he'll give me her address. There's no reason why he should keep it dark.'

‘Don't hope for too much, Peter,' warned Mary's father.

‘In fact, don't hope at all, then you won't be so disappointed. The chances of getting those films – if there ever were any – is almost nil, as Gerry said just now.'

As he moved with Mary to the door, Gerry had an even more serious warning for him.

‘And remember, if you
do
find them, they might prove exactly the opposite of what you want – that the body definitely
does
belong to Mavis Hewitt!'

Chapter Twelve

Although it had stopped raining when Peter arrived in Liverpool, Glebe Terrace looked no less dismal to him than it had to Willie Rees a day or two earlier.

He found the address that he had wheedled out of Pacey and hammered on the front door. The same woman in the same drab outfit glowered at him across the doorstep.

When he explained who he was – the nephew of Roland Hewitt – she almost slammed the door in his face; but curiosity got the better of her and she heard him out while he explained what he wanted.

Her manner, never very sunny, became positively frigid. He thought for a moment that she was going to tell him nothing, but she must have felt so sure of the old man's guilt that she became almost arrogant.

‘Well, young man, I think you must be mad coming all the way up here on a wild-goose chase. I can't see why you want to find out something that's only going to knock a few more nails into your uncle's coffin. Perhaps you're in a hurry to get something under his will, eh?'

Peter managed to control his feelings, and his tongue; for he knew that to antagonize her now would be to make his journey a complete waste of time.

‘No, Mrs Randall, we just want to get at the truth, whichever way it lies. All I want to know is the name of the hospital where your sister had her sinus operation.'

The unattractive widow sniffed and wiped her hands on her apron. She was still standing in her doorway, not having invited Peter in out of the damp foggy air – as if to emphasize that any relation of Roland was unwelcome at her house.

For a long moment, she seemed undecided whether to tell him or not, and he stood with his pulses thumping in his temples while she made up her mind. At last, she gave in.

‘Well, if you really want to know, it was the Chester Road Infirmary. Not that she went in as an ordinary patient, mind you – no National Health in those days. She went to a specialist first, who got her in there to one of his private wards. Only in a day, she was, anyway.'

Having got all the help he was going to have, Peter snapped a curt ‘Thank you' and turned on his heel before she had a chance to slam the door in his face.

Back in the car, he drove to a nearby shop and, over the purchase of some cigarettes, asked the way to the Infirmary. His fears that the place might have been demolished, or blitzed out of existence, during the past thirty years were dispelled by the shopkeeper. A few minutes later he found himself outside a gaunt group of sooty red-brick buildings, fashioned in an atrocious Victorian style which made them look a cross between a workhouse and a public convenience.