The Thread of Evidence (2 page)

‘That will be Griffith now, I expect,' he said unnecessarily over his shoulder.

Peter hesitated, then began to follow. A firm tug on the back of his sports coat brought him up short.

‘Oh, no you don't! You sit down and be nice to me. If I'm no match for a dirty old bone, you'd better have your ring back!'

The determination beneath her flippant words was plain, and Peter flopped back into his chair with a sigh.

‘All right, Ginger, you win.'

‘I'm not
ginger
– it's auburn,' pouted his girlfriend. ‘But seriously, pet, do you think this bone business could be important – I mean, you know, criminal or anything?'

‘Bones only get buried in queer places when the death has been unusual,' replied Peter. ‘If it turns out only to be the one bone there, then there may be some innocent explanation.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I remember a devil of a fuss when I was in college because a medical student left an ear from the dissecting room on the top floor of a bus. And the fellow I shared my digs with always had bits of his skeleton scattered about the house. But, apart from that sort of thing, I can't see how a thigh bone could turn up in a lead mine unless someone had deliberately hidden it there.'

Mary still looked doubtful.

‘But there are some ancient barrows on the cliffs, too. Couldn't this be some sort of old ritual burial?'

Peter shook his head. ‘Not in a lead mine, sweet. I don't know much about them, but I think the oldest only go back to Roman times.'

‘Perhaps it was a mining accident,' Mary said hopefully.

Peter smiled affectionately at her.

‘You're determined to do my paper out of a sensation, aren't you? Your father said that he thought the thing wasn't all that old – so it's no good you trying to push this business back to the dawn of time.'

On the telephone, John Ellis-Morgan was having trouble of the opposite kind, trying to repress the local constable's enthusiasm from getting out of hand.

‘Now, now, Wynne, go easy until we've found out a bit more about it,' he soothed in Welsh. Griffith had already excitedly offered to call in everyone, including Scotland Yard and Interpol.

‘You come over here now and we'll go up to the cliff with these children,' he went on. ‘There may be something else up there, if they're not pulling our leg – though I can't see where they'd get a femur from.'

Griffith hurriedly agreed and the doctor hung up.

Over in the police house on the other side of the village, the constable slammed the telephone down and darted back into the living room, where his wife and small son were having tea.

‘Pass me my jacket, love, quick,' he said with feverish haste. ‘I've got to get over to Dr John's right away!'

His wife looked at him calmly.

‘What's all the rush, Wynne – have the Russians landed on Tremabon beach or something?'

His son gazed at his father as the policeman struggled with his blue coat. Griffith was normally a calm, stolid man; and this sudden activity was unusual enough to make the five-year-old stare at him wide-eyed, a spoonful of jelly poised before his mouth.

‘Well, what's it all about, I said?' repeated his wife sharply.

‘Some boys have found a human bone up on the south cliff and taken it to the doctor. I'm off now to see what it's all about – might be the biggest thing I've ever had!'

He dived into the tiny hall and pushed his large upright bicycle through the front door. His wife watched impassively. Motoring offences, hayrick fires and human bones were all one to her.

Griffith leapt onto his machine and rode off down the hill into Tremabon. The white house with the blue ‘Police' sign over the door was on the outskirts of the village on the road north to Aberystwyth. To reach Carmel House, he had to go down to the crossroads in the centre of the hamlet and turn off into the lane that led down to the beach through the gap in the cliffs.

A man in his middle thirties, he was a good officer, steady and reliable. Like many country policemen, he was professionally frustrated. The most heinous crimes that normally came his way were the absence of lights on pedal cycles and the failure of farmers to dip their sheep at the specified times. Rare events like the theft of the vicar's rose bushes or the fatal collapse of Mrs Hughes at the bus stop were milestones in his career. The present prospect of a human bone on his ground was the greatest event since he'd had his helmet.
At least it means an inquest
, he thought,
and
– dare he hope? –
the possibility of criminal proceedings
.

While the constable was furiously pedalling through the lanes in a turmoil of anticipation, John Ellis-Morgan had telephoned the guest house nearby and asked the fathers to bring their small sons across.

By the time PC Griffith arrived, a little group had formed on the wide gravel drive of Carmel House, ready to meet him.

Griffith managed to suppress his excitement under a gruff official manner. After being introduced to the holidaymakers, he turned back to the garden gates.

‘Right, we'll get on up there, then.'

Peter, in defiance of Mary's threats, was determined not to miss anything. He knew the constable quite well, both from shooting trips and meetings in the local public house.

‘Mind if I come up, Wynne? This sounds interesting.'

Griffith nodded, but there was a cautious look on his face.

‘I suppose it's all right, Mr Adams – but you won't go writing anything in your paper, will you? At least, not until you have a word with my inspector.'

Peter laughed off the other's fears.

‘I'm on holiday, Wynne – so don't worry.'

Given this ambiguous assurance, the constable set off up the cliff path opposite the gates of the house. With Peter bringing up the rear, the little party followed a winding sheep track through the bracken. Climbing higher and higher up the steep slope, they saw the house shrink in size until it looked like a toy below them. The village behind them came into sight, resembling a medieval map spread out at the top of the valley.

The little doctor began to puff with exertion, and even the constable had to remove his helmet to mop the sweat from his brow. The sun was on the horizon, but it was still warm as they finally reached the summit of the cliff and found themselves on the fairly level grass at the top.

They paused for a breather and Peter looked seawards at the great sweep of Cardigan Bay which was now visible.

‘My God, what a view!' exclaimed one of the Coventry visitors, taking in the wall of cliffs marching to the horizon on either side, with the green sea and white rollers at their feet.

The policeman was in no mood for scenery and started off along the ridge to the south. On their right, the smooth grass and ferns swept down to the limestone crags which fell sheer into the breakers.

‘Along here, was it, sonny?' Griffith asked one of the little boys. He was the elder of the two, a carrotty-haired child of about seven.

‘Yes, a bit farther on. I'll show you,' chirped the boy. He pranced ahead, the other one racing after him, afraid to be left out of the limelight.

They stopped at the edge of a little ravine and waited for the grown-ups to come.

The first lad pointed across at the other side of the little valley.

‘There it is, sir. That hole in the ground.'

Peter and Wynne looked blankly at the other side.

‘I can't see anything. Can you?' asked the doctor.

All that was visible on the further bank were some gorse bushes and a few stony outcrops.

‘I'll show you,' yelled the red-haired boy and charged down into the gully, his legs going like pistons to keep up with his headlong flight. A scraggy sheep stampeded blindly from his path and some gulls rose, screaming abuse into the blue sky.

‘Here it is, Dad!' yelled the boy. He appeared to be pointing at an outcrop of grey stone; but, as the adults moved nearer, Peter could see that a patch of ferns and stunted gorse hid the opening of a shaft, which faced out to sea.

A crude ramp, overgrown and crumbling, led to the mouth and the men climbed up to join the two boys.

‘It was in here, Dad,' said the elder.

‘I found it first, honest,' yelled the little one, determined not to be outdone.

John Ellis-Morgan peered into the dark hole.

‘It's a lead mine all right, not a natural cave. I've been in a few of them up here in my younger days; but I never remember seeing this one before.'

‘I'm not surprised,' commented Peter. ‘The opening faces the cliff. So, unless you happen to be a seagull, you would be hardly likely to notice it.'

The PC was pulling a large torch from his pocket.

‘New batteries, this week,' he explained needlessly.

Removing his helmet, he plunged into the entrance. Immediately there was a muffled curse in Welsh and he backed out, rubbing his forehead.

‘Piece of rock hanging down just inside,' he muttered to the doctor. ‘Better stay here until I see what it's like. The roof seems half-collapsed.'

He put his helmet on again and went back inside, bending low to get his six foot two frame into the passage.

The others waited expectantly around the mouth of the mine.

‘This place can't have been used for donkey's years, surely?' asked one of the holidaymakers.

Ellis-Morgan shrugged, his shoulders twitching in his characteristic sparrow fashion. ‘Certainly not in my time, and I've been here thirty years. I think some of them were worked up until the First World War; but not on this part of the cliffs. It may well have been generations since they took ore from this place.'

Peter was standing at the opening, watching the constable's wavering light go deeper into the heart of the cliff.

‘How far in did you find the bone, sonny?' he asked the ginger boy, who was crouched at his feet.

‘About twice the length of a house,' the lad replied graphically. ‘We couldn't go any further – there was a big heap of stones and our candles were getting dim.'

Peter grinned at the boy's father. ‘Boys never change, do they?'

There was an echoing call from the bowels of the earth. ‘Dr John – can you come in now?'

Griffith was shouting from the deepest point he could reach and the words had an eerie sound by the time they got to the shaft entrance.

Ellis-Morgan dragged a torch from his own pocket and shouted a reply:

‘Right, Wynne. I'm coming now.'

Leaving the other men clustered around the entrance, he vanished into the shaft. Being many inches shorter than the policeman, he was able to walk upright once inside the tunnel. The floor was cluttered with pieces of fallen rock but, apart from pools of muddy water, he found the going fairly easy.

Griffith's torch wavered ahead of him, growing larger as he approached.

He came up to the officer at a point which he roughly estimated as being thirty yards from the entrance.

‘The roof's come down here, Doctor.'

The constable spoke in Welsh now that they were away from the holidaymakers.

The doctor shone his torch over the end of the shaft. An avalanche of grey stone had completely blocked the tunnel, leaving a great abyss in the roof over their heads.

‘A fairly recent fall, Wynne. This stone is cleaner and a lighter colour than the walls.'

Griffith waggled the spotlight of his torch on to the ground at their feet.

‘And look here, Dr John – what's this?'

Ellis-Morgan hitched up his trousers and squatted at the edge of the roof fall. An inch of murky water covered the floor, but a muddy brown object could still be seen sticking out from beneath a stone.

‘Give me a hand to move some of this rock,' commanded the doctor. They began pulling away the stones at the bottom of the heap.

Ellis-Morgan uncovered the whole of the brown stick-like thing and held it up to the beam of his torch.

‘This is another bone, boy,' he chirped. ‘No doubt about it being human; it's a forearm bone.'

The PC was almost beside himself with excitement.

‘Duw, Doctor. The whole skeleton may be just under these stones here.'

He began scrabbling furiously at the bottom of the pile, pulling out stones of all sizes and dropping them into the muddy water, oblivious of the damage to his uniform trousers.

‘Here's some more – and a couple there!'

The physician began fishing out more fragments as Griffith uncovered them.

‘There's another big one,' said the excited constable, as he lifted a particularly large rock.

The doctor had barely grabbed it when there was an ominous rumble and an avalanche of stone slid down to fill in their excavation completely.

Ellis-Morgan hastily backed away.

‘Better leave it for now. Otherwise we'll have the whole lot down on top of us.'

He picked up the bundle of remains and turned to the entrance.

‘Let's go and see what we've already found looks like in the open.'

They made their way back to the impatient group at the mouth of the shaft, to emerge, mud-spattered and blinking, into the evening light.

Peter pounced on his father-in-law-to-be. ‘What did you find in there? Are those more bones?'

‘Hold on, lad. Let's put these down somewhere.' The doctor spread his finds on the grassy bank at the side of the old ramp.

‘Now then, let's see how much anatomy I remember after forty-odd years.'

He studied the grubby collection as the others clustered around to look over his shoulders.

‘This is a radius – from the forearm. And these two are ribs,' he said, holding them up.

‘And this is a vertebra – from the spine. And this.'

He laid some more ribs out in a neat row.

‘What's that big one?' asked the ever-impatient Peter.