Where Death Delights by Bernard Knight Read Free Book Online Page A

called them.
    Pryor was in too good a mood to argue, so he raised the matter of a domestic help, explaining that they needed someone part-time to do a bit of cleaning and cooking.
    â€˜Do you know anybody around here who might be interested?’ he asked his handyman.
    Jimmy pushed up the back of his long-suffering cap to scratch his head with a dirty forefinger.
    â€˜Mebbe I do, must give it a bit of thought, Doc,’ he said slowly. ‘An’ you could put a card in the post office, they got a board for free adverts there.’
    Having said his piece, he started vigorously attacking the weeds with his hoe, so Richard left Jimmy to his task and went indoors, thinking that he might well take the man’s advice and put a small advertisement in the local post office.

THREE
    A t the time that Sian Lloyd was painstakingly tapping out Richard’s dictation of the advertisement, Trevor Mitchell was parking his car in Ledbury, a small market town between Hereford and Malvern. He had telephoned Edward Lethbridge as soon as the pathologist had left his cottage and by noon, had had a call back to say that Mrs Molly Barnes was willing to talk to him that afternoon.
    â€˜She sounded very reluctant,’ the solicitor said. ‘But I pointed out that the coroner had agreed and that as it was an open verdict, the case could be reopened if he was not satisfied.’
    Mitchell thought that this smacked of mild blackmail, but he kept his feelings to himself and agreed to meet the lady at her home in Ledbury at two thirty. He parked his Wolseley 6/80 in the High Street, finding a free space near the half-timbered Market Hall and walked up The Homend, a continuation of the main street. A quick enquiry from a passer-by directed him into a side road, where he found Molly Barnes’s small semi-detached house, probably of nineteen-twenty vintage. The brass knocker on the front door was answered by a short, wiry woman with a combative expression already on her face. If he looked like a bulldog, then she resembled a rather irritable Yorkshire terrier. In her forties, she had spiky brown hair that stood out untidily from her head. Mrs Barnes wore a faded floral pinafore and clutched a dust pan and brush in her hands.
    â€˜You’re the enquiry man, I suppose,’ she said ungraciously. ‘You’re early, but you’d better come in, I suppose.’
    Putting down the pan, she showed him into a front parlour where three gaudy china ducks were flying in formation above a tiled fireplace and a ‘cherry boy’ ornament stood on a table in the bay window. She waved him to one of the armchairs of a moquette three-piece suite that was made long before the war began and sat opposite, perched on the edge of the settee, tensing herself to defend her rights.
    â€˜Now what’s all this?’ she demanded. ‘The coroner held an inquest and his officer gave me a death certificate.’
    Mitchell, with thirty years’ experience of interviewing people, decided to tread softly with Molly Barnes.
    â€˜Another lady has claimed that the remains might be that of her nephew, who disappeared around the same time,’ he said carefully.
    â€˜Has she got a ring and wristwatch to prove it?’ asked Mrs Barnes, pugnaciously.
    â€˜It would help your case a lot if you had some other evidence to confirm the identity of your husband,’ replied Mitchell gently.
    â€˜I don’t have a case!’ she retorted. ‘My case was settled by the coroner, it’s this other woman who’s got to come up with something better!’
    The former detective sighed quietly, recognizing a sharp-witted character who was not going to be trodden on.
    â€˜What I mean is, did your husband have any physical characteristics that would help to confirm that it was really him? Had he ever broken an arm or a leg, for example?’
    The feisty little woman scowled at him. ‘I thought there had been a post-mortem