The Thread of Evidence (4 page)

The farmer and the wrinkled old man stuck their ground and stared at Peter as if he had suddenly grown horns. Ceri Lloyd was the only one to act naturally as he pulled a pint of bitter for Peter.

‘Lovely evening, Mr Adams. Been out enjoying it?'

Peter sensed something odd in the atmosphere, but couldn't place what was wrong.

‘Er … yes. As a matter of fact, I have – been walking, anyway.'

Price, the ruddy-faced farmer, glared at him suspiciously. ‘On the cliffs, eh?'

Peter stared at him in surprise. ‘Yes, it was, as it happens.'

The journalist waited for some explanation; but Price buried his face in his glass, drained it and then slammed it down on the bar.

‘'Night, Ceri,' he muttered gruffly and strode out of the room.

Peter turned to the publican. ‘Queer bird, isn't he? What was all that about?'

Ceri leered ingratiatingly over the counter. ‘Don't mind him – he always was a rude one.'

‘How did he know I'd been up on the cliffs?'

Ceri spread his hands out appealingly.

‘We've heard a few rumours down here, you know. About some goings on with Griffith the Police.'

Peter was startled. Once more, he was amazed at the efficiency of the grapevine in these little Welsh villages – a phenomenon he had seen more than once in his travels as a reporter.

Now that the cat was at least partly out of the bag, Ceri took the opportunity of pumping him for more news.

‘A nasty business, so we hear, Mr Adams.'

Peter was cautious. ‘I don't know much myself, I'm afraid – I'm not here on business this time, you know.'

He hedged for as long as he could, while Ceri talked around the subject. He had no idea how much the ‘bush telegraph' had found out.

‘Young woman's bones, they say it is,' persisted Ceri, angling for confirmation.

Peter noticed that the universal ‘they' had appeared already – making hard fact of the sex of the remains out of a passing comment by Mary's father that the bones seemed to be so delicate that they might well have come from a female.

‘Oh, I wouldn't know. Too early to say yet!' he replied evasively, wishing that he'd taken his thirst home to a pot of tea instead of coming into the Lamb and Flag.

All the time he and Ceri were speaking, the little man with the corrugated trilby had been leaning against the bar, staring fixedly at Peter. He suddenly spoke up, aggressively.

‘Does your uncle, Roland Hewitt, know of this yet?'

Peter stared at him – beginning to think that all Ceri's patrons must have gone off their heads.

‘My uncle? I shouldn't think so. It beats me how all of you here know anything about it so soon.'

The other gazed unblinkingly at the journalist. ‘Have a shock, he will, when you tell him.'

Ceri Lloyd leaned his great bulk across the bar and thumped a great fat hand in front of the speaker.

‘Why don't you shut up, Jenkin!' he hissed.

Peter Adams moved along the bar and looked down at Jenkin.

‘What
is
all this? Why the backchat about my uncle?'

His voice was sharp and Ceri turned to him wearing his most apologetic expression.

‘He's had a drop too much, Mr Adams. Silly old fool he is, at the best of times. Don't take no notice of him.'

This was in a silky voice to Peter, but then he turned his head back to little Jenkin and bellowed at him.

‘Go and sit down and stop making a damn nuisance of yourself!'

Peter finished his drink quickly and slid the empty tankard back on to the bar.

‘You've got a queer lot in here tonight, Ceri,' he said curtly and made towards the door.

With a brief ‘Goodnight' to the room generally, he went out and closed the door none too gently behind him.

Ceri rounded on the wrinkled-faced Jenkin, who had not taken his invitation to go and sit down.

‘What are you trying to do – get yourself sued for slander?' demanded the publican.

One of the interested audience at a nearby table spoke.

‘It'll be all around the village by the morning – so Hewitt had better get used to it. And his nephew.'

‘Ay, he'll know soon enough,' said Jenkin, defending himself.

Ceri jabbed a finger almost into the little fellow's eye.

‘Look, there's a devil of a difference in a rumour going around the village and in you saying “Those bones is belonging to your aunt, what your uncle murdered thirty-odd years ago” – straight to young Adam's face! He's the sort to have you in court before you could look round. A nice lad, I know. But he's a newspaperman and a city fellow. He knows all the angles – he'd have a fortune of damages out of you before you knew where you was.'

Jenkin made a disbelieving noise in the back of his throat. ‘All right! All right! But it was you that started it, Ceri Lloyd,' he countered. ‘It was your idea that this might be Mavis's body, don't forget. You seem mighty anxious to get all the blame fair and square on old Hewitt's shoulders. Are you afraid the police are going to nab
you
for it? You were mighty thick with her, weren't you? The bobbies will be glad of a chat with you, I expect.'

While this fine wrangle was building up in the bar parlour of the inn, Peter was driving through the semi-dusk to his uncle's cottage. He'd stayed with Roland Hewitt, his mother's brother, quite often since he had become first friendly, and then engaged, to Mary Ellis-Morgan. He had first come to Tremabon about three years before, to see his uncle for the first time since he came back to Wales from Canada. On that very first visit, he had met Mary; and, ever since, he had travelled the ninety miles from Cardiff almost every couple of weeks for all-too-brief weekend trips. The longer summer holiday, like the present one, was something to look forward to all the year. He suddenly realized, as he drove through the quiet lanes, that this would be the last. Before next autumn, they would be married and living in a Cardiff suburb.

Peter turned his Morris off the main road to Cardigan, about half a mile south of the village, and drove up a lonely track lined by tall hedgerows. His uncle lived in an isolated cottage with a couple of acres of land. He kept poultry and a few pigs there, more for something to occupy his time than for profit.

The macadamized lane soon petered out to become a rough track for the last few hundred yards. In spite of this unpromising approach, the cottage was neat and well-kept.

Backed by a clump of wind-stunted trees, the low building nestled in a slight hollow. The cottage had been a farm in the old days and a barn built up against one side served as a garage for Peter's car.

He drove in through the open doors and stopped the engine. A furious barking inside the house told him that Twm, his uncle's sheepdog, had heard him arrive. By the time he had locked up the barn, his uncle was on the doorstep to meet him, the dog thumping his tail in welcome at Roland's feet.

‘You're late, boy. I thought you were coming home early to take a gun out on the cliffs?'

Peter patted the dog as they went into the cottage.

‘We've had a bit of excitement down at Carmel House, so I forgot all about Twm and his rabbits, I'm afraid. Then I called in the Lamb for a minute, but I think they'd all gone soft in the head there tonight!'

His uncle frowned as they entered the stone-flagged kitchen.

‘I don't know why you go there, boy. I don't say anything about you having a drink – in moderation, of course. But that creature Lloyd, ugh! He's a bad lot, if ever there was.'

Peter had gathered on several occasions that there was no love lost between his uncle and the publican of the Lamb and Flag, but he had never been able to get the old man to talk about it.

‘What was all this excitement you were just talking about?' Roland sat in his big wheel-back chair at the fireside and peered benignly at his nephew through his old-fashioned steel-rimmed spectacles, with their thick pebble lenses. He was a small man, whose frail appearance hid a wiry body. Though sixty-nine years of age, he ran his smallholding without any outside help.

Peter settled himself in a more modern chair on the other side of the huge black-leaded cooking range.

‘Some young kids found a human bone up on the south cliff,' he began to explain. ‘They brought it to Dr John. Later on we went up with Griffith, the policeman, to have a look.'

Roland leant forward with interest, his pale blue eyes flickering behind his glasses.

‘Where was this, then?'

‘In an old mine shaft – one of the levels that they used to work for lead. When we went back, sure enough, there were a lot more bones there – probably from a young woman.'

‘Well, well! Were they very old, these bones?'

Peter shook his head.

‘Mary's father doesn't think so – but we won't know until the experts come up tomorrow. The most interesting thing is that one of the arm bones has a saw cut halfway through it.'

Roland looked blankly at his nephew. ‘What does that mean?'

‘Someone must have been messing about with the body after death. And, of course, the fact that the body was so well hidden is highly suspicious in itself.'

Roland was silent. He stared into the fire for a long moment.

‘The police are coming tomorrow, you say?'

Peter nodded, sensing a change in the old man's mood.
What the devil's wrong in Tremabon
? he wondered, the bar parlour fresh in his mind. As soon as the bones were mentioned, people started to act oddly.

Roland spoke again, still gazing into the embers of the grate.

‘So they must think there's some foul play involved here?'

Peter nodded again. ‘Seems a strong possibility.'

‘That means murder, does it, boy?'

Roland's voice was decidedly strange now, thought Peter.

‘I suppose so. The saw cut is the thing that matters.' He spoke quite cheerfully, but watched his uncle carefully this time. He was certain that something unusual was going on in the old chap's mind.

Roland said nothing and made no movement. He sat rigid, his eyes fixed on the fireplace.

‘Is there anything wrong, Uncle?'

Roland shook his head slowly but made no reply. He was in profile to Peter and the thin face with its prominent cheekbones was thrown into deeply sculptured shadow by the single harsh light in the ceiling.

Peter tried to keep a conversation going.

‘It's odd, but the regulars in the pub were asking whether you knew about the discovery yet. How the dickens they knew themselves, I'll never fathom. They knew as much about it as me – and I was with the doctor and Griffith when they found the stuff.'

This made Roland lift his head from the fire. He turned slowly and stared at his nephew.

‘Oh, so they've started already, have they, boy?' he said in a curious flat voice. ‘I should never have come back – I've felt it was a mistake all along.'

Peter looked at his uncle in alarm. He got up and stood over Roland, putting a hand comfortingly on his shoulder.

The old man patted the hand, then got wearily up from the chair.

‘Don't ask me what's wrong, boy. Not tonight, anyway. There'll be plenty of time to find out – too much time, if I know Tremabon,' he added bitterly.

Something in his tone stopped Peter from asking more questions. He felt sympathy and affection welling up as the old man shuffled slowly across to the door of the stone staircase in the corner of the kitchen. Suddenly he seemed smaller and more bowed. He appeared to have aged ten years in as many minutes.

‘Are you sure you're all right?' Peter asked softly. ‘Shall I make some tea for you?'

Roland shook his head again.

‘No, boy – no. I'd have an early night, if I were you. We may have a lot to face after tomorrow comes.'

With those cryptic words, he went wearily up the winding stairs.

Chapter Three

‘I'll bet it's been a hell of a long time since this spot saw so many people before, Peter!'

The morning breeze ruffled the dark hair of the speaker as he offered a packet of Players around the little group clustered at the mouth of the old lead mine.

‘You missed the first act of the drama last night, David,' replied the journalist. ‘Your father only needed one of those tweed caps to be the complete Sherlock Holmes!'

David Ellis-Morgan grinned at the thought of his father, whom he so much resembled, playing the detective.

‘I can well imagine him, Peter! But he's had his share of the sensation – so Gerry and I left him to do morning surgery while we came up to have a snoop around.'

He turned and tapped his brother on the shoulder. Gerald was peering into the shaft, trying to make out what was happening amongst the flickering lights at the other end. ‘See anything in there, Gerry?'

‘There's only a lot of milling around, and a lot of cursing,' replied Gerald. He straightened up and accepted a cigarette from his brother's packet. Though he was the same build and had dark hair like David, his features were very different. He had the pointed Ellis-Morgan jaw, but there the likeness finished. He lit up and moved across to the bottom of the ramp, where three shirt-sleeved policemen sat resting on the grass.

‘What exactly is going on in there, chaps?' asked Gerry in the hail-fellow-well-met manner that came so easily to him. ‘From the entrance, it looks a real shambles!'

One of the policemen, brought by the CID to help with the manual work, pulled himself up and mopped his forehead, still sweating from his spell of excavating at the bottom of the shaft.

‘Well, Doctor, our shift – that's us three – spent all our time just moving damn great stones from a heap and stacking them back along the passage. I don't know what the other boys are doing in there at the moment.'

Another of the constables spoke up.