The Thread of Evidence (3 page)

‘Ah, that's the prize of the collection, Griffith – the one we found last.' He picked it up. It was a bone about a foot long, with knobs at either end.

‘This is the bone from the upper arm – the humerus. And this is a right-sided one,' the doctor proudly explained.

‘They don't look much like the bones my student pal used to have,' objected Peter. ‘They were smooth and white.'

‘And they hadn't been lying in mud and water for umpteen years, either,' countered Ellis-Morgan. ‘These have got half an inch of mud stuck to them.'

He rubbed the arm bone vigorously in the grass to clean it.

‘That's better – what's this, I wonder?'

The doctor jerked his glasses back up his nose with a finger, and peered short-sightedly at the bone.

He picked at something with a fingernail while the others waited expectantly.

After a long moment, he squinted at the constable over the top of his spectacles.

‘Wynne, perhaps you'll get those sergeant's stripes out of this after all!'

He tapped the bone as he spoke.

‘There's a saw cut here. Just below the shoulder!'

Chapter Two

‘I always said that it was him that had done it!'

The speaker gave a final rub to the pint glass and hung it on its hook over the bar.

His audience on the other side of the counter, nodded in unison. Three tankards were lifted to their lips as if to put a seal of approval on the landlord's judgement.

‘How did you come to know of it so soon, Ceri?' asked one of the men, a wizened old fellow in a crumpled felt hat. Ceri Lloyd, the landlord of the Lamb and Flag, Tremabon's only public house, leant his enormous body across the small bar in a gesture of confidence.

‘Lewis John the Post Office came in about an hour ago,' he hissed in a loud stage whisper. ‘His missus was on the switchboard when Wynne Griffith put a call through from the doctor's house to his inspector in Aber – heard it all, she did.'

‘'T isn't right, that,' one of the other men muttered into his beer. ‘That nosy old bitch will cause some trouble one of these days.'

He was recollecting some rather indiscreet telephone calls which he had recently made himself.

‘Well, she did, anyhow,' carried on Lloyd – his cascade of chins wobbling as he strove to impart his confidential news to the whole of the crowded bar parlour. ‘Griffith was reporting some bones that him and Dr John had just found.'

‘You've told us all that once already,' complained the third man, a ruddy-faced old boy with ‘farmer' written all over him. ‘What I want to know is, why you think it's anything to do with Roland Hewitt's missus?'

‘Well, stands to reason, don't it?' said Ceri. He moved away for a moment to draw a pint for another customer. The small low room held a dozen or more regulars, and they sat with their ears almost flapping to catch the scandal that was being dispensed from the bar as freely as the ale.

Ceri rang the price of the pint into his till and draped himself back over the pumps.

‘Stands to reason, I said – how many other women have we ever had vanish from Tremabon, eh, Jenkin?' His piggy eyes challenged the man with the battered hat.

‘How do you know this here body is a woman, anyway?' Jenkin had come in later than the others and was a step behind in the gossip.

‘The doctor told Griffith. That's all he could say about it, according to Lewis John's wife – that and the fact that the body had been cut up into little pieces.'

The constable's mention of one saw cut had already been magnified into utter dismemberment by the villagers. The landlord slapped a podgy hand on the counter.

‘So there, Jenkin – I ask you again, what woman has gone from Tremabon in suspicious circumstances, eh?'

There was dead silence in the bar. All heads were turned to look at the great fat publican.

He savoured the moment, his drooping lips rolling a cigarette butt around, before delivering the denouement.

‘Mavis Hewitt, of course – you know that as well as I do.'

Crumpled-hat nodded grudgingly. ‘Ay, it was a rare old fuss at the time. But, damn it, that was more than thirty year ago – a hell of a long while back!'

‘And these here bones go a long way back, too, by the sound of it,' Ceri hissed triumphantly.

A young man wearing a bus driver's uniform moved up from the end of the bar.

‘What's all the mystery about old Hewitt, Ceri?' he asked. ‘You old jossers seem to know something pretty salty about him.'

Ceri looked down from his six foot frame of gross obesity. ‘You're too much of a kid to remember, boy. But your dad would know about it.'

‘Remember what?'

‘You know Roland Hewitt, you say?'

‘Yes, everybody does. He lives in that blue cottage up off the Cardigan road. Came from Canada a few years back to retire here. It's his nephew that's courting the doctor's daughter.'

The publican nodded condescendingly. ‘You've got it – but did you know that he was born in Tremabon and lived here at Bryn Glas farm until nineteen twenty-nine? Then he skipped out of the country, he did. Just after his wife vanished, it was.'

The young man stared at Lloyd over his glass. ‘What d'you mean – skipped the country?'

Jenkin of the crumpled trilby hat took up the story. ‘Things were getting too hot for him – I remember it like it was yesterday. The papers had a hold of it, and the police were nosing about Bryn Glas. So Hewitt packed up and cleared off to Canada. Mighty quick, he was, too.'

‘Well, what did happen to his wife, anyway?' asked the bus driver, looking back to Ceri Lloyd.

The landlord took up another glass to polish.

‘Nobody knows – or didn't until today,' he leered. ‘She just vanished. Her sister came down from Liverpool and started the ball rolling. Raised a devil of fuss, she did; but nothing came of it. Old Hewitt was too clever for all of them.'

The young man looked scornful.

‘I think you're all a lot of bloody old women making a scandal out of damn all!'

The publican was outraged at the bus driver's impudent challenge to his leadership of the gossip.

‘And what d'you think you know about it, Gareth Hughes? You were still a twinkle in your old man's eye then. Listen, I knew Mavis Hewitt better than most around here. I know what went on up at Bryn Glas all right!'

Jenkin's leathery face wrinkled as he sniggered evilly. ‘You knew her all right, Ceri –
you
were half the cause of the trouble between her and old Roland, I reckon.'

Far from being offended, the fat landlord actually preened himself.

‘Well, I'm not denying that I had a way with the girls when I was a bit younger – before I grew this.' He patted his great stomach affectionately.

The bus driver gulped his beer impatiently and slapped it down for a refill. ‘You still haven't said what the connection is between this bone business and old Hewitt.'

‘Are you daft, man?' demanded Ceri, as he drew another pint. ‘Roland did his wife in, back in twenty-nine – hid the body up on the cliff and hopped it abroad. Plain as the nose on your face, it is!'

Gareth Hughes made a rude noise. ‘Get away, man! What would he want to come back here for, after all those years?'

Ceri gazed at him pityingly. ‘Haven't you ever heard that murderers always come back to the scene of their crime – always?'

The bus driver sneered. ‘You old geezers love making mountains out of molehills, don't you? If I were you, I'd watch what you say. Hewitt could have the law on you for slander. And, if the police knew that that old crow in the post office was listening to their secrets, they'd lock her up.' He poured the rest of his beer straight down his throat and walked out of the bar.

The red-faced farmer glared after him indignantly. ‘Think they know it all, these young chaps. I remember Mavis Hewitt well enough myself – pretty little thing, she was. Red hair and a lovely pair of ankles on her.' Long-forgotten lust shone in his bleary eyes for a brief moment. Ceri licked his fleshy lips at memories of his own.

‘The only lively bit of goods we ever had in this damn village. The women used to hate her, just because she used to turn all their husbands' heads in the road.' He paused and slowly rolled his eternal cigarette butt from one corner of his mouth to the other.

‘Yes, quite a piece, was Mavis – younger than old Hewitt by a good few years. Only been married about eighteen months when she disappeared.'

‘How old do you reckon she'd be then?' asked the farmer.

Ceri scratched the stubble on his vast chin.

‘Let's see. She was two years younger than me – that would make her born in nineteen oh-three, so she'd be twenty-six.'

Leather-face came back into the conversation. ‘In gentleman's service, she was, as far as I remember.'

‘Yes, a parlourmaid until Hewitt got hold of her. English girl originally, from Liverpool.'

The red-cheeked farmer contemplated the froth on his bitter.

‘As far as I recall it, Hewitt said that she had walked out on him after a row. I never did see why there was all that fuss and commotion. Nothing so unusual in a wife leaving her old man, is there?'

Lloyd answered with the assurance of one with inside information.

‘That's not the half of it – and them fights they had, well, the poor girl was left black and blue. She showed me some of the bruises herself,' he added archly.

Battered Hat leered at him over the pumps.

‘I'll bet she did! I know you were pretty thick with her, Ceri – even
after
they were married, eh?'

The landlord winked lewdly at him.

‘Aye, quite a girl was Mavis. Damn, I was upset when she vanished. I missed my little bit of fun of an afternoon. I was that mad, I accused Roland to his face. He's never spoken to me from that day to this. Hates my guts, I reckon.'

Jenkin nodded agreement.

‘Queer chap. Keeps himself to himself. Civil enough to me, I'll admit. But there's something odd about him. Too fond of the chapel, I say. They're always a bit odd, them very religious types.'

‘He's got enough cause to be queer, with
that
on his conscience,' Ceri said stubbornly. ‘Probably goes to chapel to try to wash out his sins.'

‘That nephew of his – the one on the paper in Cardiff – he seems a nice enough young chap,' observed the farmer.

‘Yes, he's a nice bloke – comes in here quite often for a drink. He stays with the old man quite a lot since he's taken up with Mary Ellis-Morgan.'

The wrinkled old man at once became animated.

‘Now
there's
a grand girl for you – that Miss Ellis-Morgan. Always got a smile when you go down to the surgery. Nothing's too much trouble for her. I don't know how those three doctors down at Carmel would get on without her.'

Ceri agreed. ‘Two bachelors and a widower like her father must take a bit of looking after. About time those two boys found themselves a wife.'

‘Some hope of that in Tremabon. All the young people clear off as soon as they can. It's a wonder that David and Gerald haven't moved to some more lively place.'

Ceri frowned at the dialogue between his two customers, which was stealing his thunder over the news of the bones.

‘I wonder what doctor the police will get, to look at these remains,' he said, pointedly bringing the conversation back onto his own tack.

‘What's going to happen next, then?' asked Jenkin. ‘Did your spy in the post office tell you anything else?' Lloyd looked suspiciously at the speaker.

‘She's not
my
spy, Jenkin. I can't help it if people make me their “confidant”. But I did happen to hear Lewis John mention that Aberystwyth rang back to Griffith and told him that County Headquarters in Cardigan will be sending some detectives up first thing in the morning. Until then, Wynne Griffith has to stand guard up on the cliff all night. Rather him than me, especially looking after a corpse.'

‘Serve him right!' the farmer growled vindictively. ‘It'll pay him out for the time he pinched me over that tractor licence.'

Ceri produced another half-smoked cigarette and lit up. No one had ever seen him with a whole one. He seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of butts.

‘I wonder how Roland Hewitt will take this bit of news?' he mused.

‘If he's got a clear conscience, he shouldn't give a twopenny damn,' replied Jenkin.

‘A bit hard on the nephew. All this talk and him being engaged to the doctor's daughter.'

‘I don't see what
that's
got to do with it,' objected the farmer.

‘I don't know this nephew. What's he look like?' asked the third member of the trio at the bar – who, until now, had been an attentive but silent listener to the scandal.

‘Tall chap, bit on the thin side, but with a good pair of shoulders on him,' volunteered Ceri Lloyd. ‘A nice-looking fellow, fair hair.'

The landlord stopped suddenly and stared through the window into the twilight outside.

‘Well, talk of the devil – his car has just pulled up outside. I saw him passing earlier on. He must be having another weekend with his lady-love.'

There was the slam of a car door outside.

‘Now don't go saying anything,' warned Ceri. ‘We're not supposed to know.'

There was an awkward silence as they waited for the journalist to walk from his Morris Minor around to the front door of the Lamb and Flag.

Bending slightly to let his six feet clear the low doorway, Peter Adams came into the bar parlour. He said a cheerful ‘Good evening' to the group leaning against the counter.

There was a ragged mumble in reply, and a couple of the regulars at the other end slipped away to sit at tables away from the bar.