The Thread of Evidence Read online

  Charles Pacey felt that the interview was suddenly going all wrong. The old man’s manner had changed from one of helpless resignation to defiant aggression in a few moments. He decided to turn the heat on a bit more.

  ‘Wait a bit. Wait a bit,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’m asking the questions. Listen now, your wife was twenty-six when she “left” you, wasn’t she?’ He managed to turn the ‘left’ into a sneer of disbelief. Mostyn decided that this must be the start of the grinding-down process.

  ‘Aye, you know that as well as I do – or should,’ muttered the old man.

  ‘Never mind what I know, or don’t know. Just answer the questions. Now then, she had red hair, didn’t she?’

  Hewitt nodded sullenly.

  Pacey swung round to Mostyn. ‘Hear that, Sergeant – twenty-six and red hair!’

  Mostyn had no idea what he was supposed to reply to that, so he kept quiet.

  Pacey’s head whipped back to Roland. ‘And she was five foot four, wasn’t she?’ he snapped.

  These tactics were beginning to strike home at the old man. He looked anxiously from one to the other.

  ‘Well, was she?’

  ‘Yes, I dare say you know she was,’ he said haltingly.

  ‘And she “just walked out” one day and “never came back”?’ Pacey turned the words into the ultimate in sarcasm.

  Roland made no answer. These obtuse references to Mavis’s age, hair and height had frightened him.

  ‘Have you got anything else to tell us, Hewitt?’ Pacey dropped the ‘Mr’ at this point.

  Roland’s voice came in a whisper.

  ‘No, I haven’t. My conscience is clear. Whatever you know, or think you know. I’ve got nothing to be afraid of, nor nothing to hide.’

  ‘Well, where did she go, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why should I know, if her sister didn’t?’

  ‘Why indeed. What date did she disappear?’

  ‘I … I can’t remember. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Did she take any clothes with her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, yes, I’m sure she did. She always took a bag when she went away.’

  ‘A bag, eh? Wouldn’t float long, with a few stones inside, would it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ croaked Roland.

  ‘Did you have a fight the day she left you?’

  ‘No more than usual.’

  ‘No more than usual! Did you fight every day?’

  The old man’s eyes flickered behind the thick glasses. ‘Most times, towards the end.’

  ‘Towards what end, Mr Hewitt.’ The ‘Mr’ came back in a sickly, sinister form.

  ‘When she went, of course.’

  ‘Why did she go, the last time?’

  ‘I’m trying to tell you, I don’t know.’ Roland’s reedy voice was high with panic. ‘You got no right to come badgering an old man like this. I don’t know any more now than when I talked to police all them years ago.’

  ‘Where did she go – did she say?’ Pacey pursued relentlessly.

  ‘For God’s sake, man, if I knew, we wouldn’t be wondering where she was, would we? I don’t know, I tell you – I don’t know!’

  ‘But she didn’t go to Liverpool, did she?’

  ‘She might have gone to China, for all I knew or cared. But her sister came here looking for her, so she couldn’t have gone there.’

  ‘So where do you think she went?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Roland almost screamed this.

  Pacey kept the questions going fast and furious.

  ‘You admit hitting and bruising her?’

  ‘I already have – years ago. She came at me with a knife, not long before.’

  ‘Oh, are you trying to say now, that you did something to her in self-defence?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything – all I did was to hit her about half as much as she hit me. Then she went away and never came back. Can’t you leave me alone?’

  ‘You allege that she tried to kill you?’

  ‘I didn’t say that – it was just her temper – a terrible one she had!’

  ‘It wasn’t you that tried to attack her, and she defended herself, was it?’

  Roland looked shocked. His spiky hair stood up on end and his restless eyes roved like those of a cornered animal.

  Charlie has got him on the run, thought the sergeant, but he’s too short of facts to catch the old boy out yet.

  The same thought must have occurred to Pacey; for, after a few more aggressive lunges at Hewitt, which achieved nothing apart from increasing the old man’s terror, the detective suddenly got up and wagged his head at Mostyn.

  ‘Come on, Sergeant. I think we’ll give Mr Hewitt some time to think. Perhaps he’ll decide to help us more than he has so far. We’ll be back, Mr Hewitt. We’ll see ourselves out.’

  They left the old farmer sitting and shaking with apprehension. As they crossed the yard, followed by a growling sheepdog, Pacey spoke to his colleague.

  ‘I had to give it a try. But either the old fellow is a real cunning bastard, or he really doesn’t know a thing about what happened to his missus.’

  Mostyn showed a streak of compassion that Pacey hadn’t suspected.

  ‘I felt sorry for the old man – he seems harmless enough. You hammering him like that has probably taken years off his life.’

  ‘No, if he’s lily white, it’ll soon be forgotten. And, if he isn’t, he deserves what’s coming. Let’s go and see this chap in the pub, the fat bloke everyone talks about.’

  A few minutes’ drive brought them to the whitewashed porch of the Lamb and Flag. It was well before opening time – though, as Pacey knew only too well, this made little difference to the sales in the average Welsh public house. He got out of the car and hammered on the closed outer door with a fist. When it was opened, Pacey was confronted by the fattest man he had ever seen.

  Ceri Lloyd had evidently just got out of bed. Wearing a crumpled and collarless shirt, he was in the act of hooking his braces over his vast chest as he squinted blearily through the half-open door. His piggy eyes stared out of an unshaven face at his visitors.

  ‘I’m Detective Superintendent Pacey – and this is Sergeant Mostyn. I’d like a few words with you please.’

  Ceri’s morning lethargy left him in an instant. A grin split his great cheeks and he bobbed his head rapidly.

  ‘Ah, yes, I thought you’d be around. Come on in.’

  He stood aside and Pacey, himself a small giant, pushed past him into the stone-flagged public bar.

  Looking around at the chairs piled on the tables, the cloth over the beer pumps, and smelling the sour aroma of stale drink, he thought what a miserable place a public house was, out of licensing hours.

  Lloyd pulled down a couple of chairs and set them near to the counter. He waved at the array of bottles on the bar shelves.

  ‘Can I offer you anything, gentlemen?’ he said anxiously, dry-washing his hands as he spoke.

  Pacey declined abruptly. He had taken an instant dislike to the great waxy-faced landlord and wanted to get his business with him over as quickly as he could.

  ‘How old are you, Lloyd?’ he began.

  This put Ceri right out of his stride. He was all set to launch out on a tidal wave of malicious gossip about Roland Hewitt, and actually had his flabby mouth open ready to go, when Pacey stopped him in his tracks with this strange question. His lips shut again and he groped for another chair for himself.

  ‘How old? Er, let’s see, I’m sixty-one, yes. Born nineteen oh one. Why?’

  ‘And you’ve lived in Tremabon all your life?’

  ‘Er … yes.’

  ‘So you might be in a position to remember a Mrs Mavis Hewitt?’

  Lloyd’s face cracked open again into a leer.

  ‘Ah, Superintendent, you’re playing with me. Of course, I do.’

  Pacey was not amused. ‘You mean you do remember her?’

  The publican wagged a finger rog
uishly. ‘I’ll say I do. You won’t find anyone in the village, alive or dead, who knew her better. And that goes for the old fool she married, as well. He never knew the first thing about her, really.’

  Pacey slouched in his chair, hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his raincoat.

  ‘You were, shall we say, on “intimate terms” with her, then?’

  Ceri actually winked this time.

  ‘You can say that, sir – intimate in more ways than one.’ Little dribbles of saliva appeared at the corners of his drooping lips. Pacey had a strong urge to kick his great fat backside.

  ‘How long did you know her, before she vanished from Tremabon?’

  Lloyd considered this for a moment. ‘I’d say about four years, all told. She came as a maid’ – he leered again as he said the word – ‘as a maid to one of the big houses around here. Then she married Hewitt about eighteen months – no, two years – after that. It was about another two years before he did away with the poor girl – so that makes it about four years all told that I knew her.’

  The superintendent scowled.

  ‘Why are you so definite that her husband had anything to do with her disappearance? You can say what you like to me, but I’d advise you to go easy on your tongue anywhere else.’

  Ceri smiled deprecatingly. ‘Of course not, officer. I’m not one for spreading scandal, you know. But everyone knows that Hewitt had something to do with her going so sudden, like she did.’

  ‘You’d better tell me all you know about the whole business.’

  ‘Well, Mavis used to come down here to see me a lot. I’ve never married, see,’ he added with almost a simper. ‘Towards the end, she was getting more and more desperate. I think she would have left the old swine soon, if he hadn’t done for her first.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘She sometimes asked questions of me about getting a divorce, and about separation and all that. Anyway, they were having real bad fights. They done that most of the time they were married, but they got a sight worse towards the end.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘She showed me her bruises more than once. On the arms and neck, and other places.’

  ‘Did you know that she used to go away a lot – sometimes for weeks at a time?’

  ‘Lord, of course I did! She was quite a girl, was Mavis. Brought up in the town and fond of a bit of life. She used to go home to Liverpool and stay with her sister. I know she had plenty of men friends up there.’

  ‘Why should you think that she was dead? She had been away plenty of times before – and you’ve just said yourself that she was talking about leaving her husband.’

  Lloyd shrugged his shoulders in a gargantuan heave. ‘She would have said something to me about it. She always told me when she was going away, even if she didn’t tell her old man. And, anyway, she didn’t come back, did she? And no one has seen a clip of her since.’

  Pacey couldn’t fault the logic of this, so turned to something else.

  ‘How old would this sister be?’

  ‘About three or four years older than Mavis, I’d say. She must have been about thirty when she came looking for her.’

  Mostyn beat Pacey to the calculation. ‘That’ll make her about sixty-three now.’

  The superintendent glowered at him. ‘All right; I can count. Now, Lloyd, let’s have it straight. Do all your winks and nods mean that Mavis Hewitt was your mistress – both before and after she was married?’

  Ceri seemed to be not in the least embarrassed.

  ‘Yes, that’s about it, officer. I wasn’t so plump in those days, and only being a year or two older than her – not ten more, like Roland Hewitt – well, we seemed to hit it off well together.’

  ‘Did Hewitt know about this at the time?’

  ‘I dunno. He must have been mighty daft if he didn’t, ’cause all the rest of the village did. Still, he never spoke to me, nor even came near me, so I didn’t have much chance to tell.’

  ‘You’re saying, then, that there was never any bad feeling between the two of you?’

  ‘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.