Grounds for Appeal by Bernard Knight Page A

you, Richard?’ she teased. ‘I’ve heard you thumping the table before. Next, I suppose, you’ll be blaming Spilsbury and the other old fossils in your profession!’
    Her partner had the grace to look a little sheepish.
    â€˜Sorry, but it riles me to hear these chaps pontificate as if what they are claiming is the gospel truth, when it’s really only speculation. My motto is, if you can’t prove it, don’t claim it, especially when someone’s neck is at risk!’
    â€˜So what have we got as a baseline of fact?’ asked Priscilla, still firmly identifying herself as a member of the team even though she was only with them for a short time. Richard tapped his papers with a forefinger.
    â€˜Millie Wilson had one of her frequent quarrels with Shaw in the early evening of a Saturday in June last year. Then she cleared off to the pictures with a woman friend at about seven o’clock. Plenty of other witnesses, as well as the friend, to prove where she was until ten thirty, when she arrived back home.’
    â€˜Presumably, Arthur Shaw was known to be alive during that time?’ asked Angela.
    â€˜Absolutely! He was gambling in the kitchen all evening with three others who lived in the house. They all saw her come home at half-past ten. She came into the back room where they were playing poker and said something insulting to Shaw, about the bruising he had earlier caused to her face. They had a short slanging match and she went upstairs to their so-called flat.’
    â€˜What happened to the poor woman then?’ demanded Priscilla, who, like Sian, was quick to sympathize with another female who was being ill-treated by some aggressive lout.
    â€˜Shaw, who had been drinking as usual, became angry and left the game to go upstairs, saying that she needed to be taught a lesson. There was a devil of a rumpus for a time, but as usual, the residents took little notice. Then Millicent came down with a swollen eye and a bleeding cut on her lip. She screamed some abuse back up the stairs and shouted that she was going to her sister’s and was never coming back, then ran out of the house. This was at about eleven o’clock, give or take a few minutes, as the other occupants were also probably half-drunk and not too bothered about noticing the exact time.’
    â€˜And he was found dead in the morning?’ concluded Angela.
    â€˜Yes, at seven thirty, by one of the other men in the house, Don O’Leary. He and Arthur both worked in a car-breaker’s yard a few streets away. When Shaw didn’t appear at their usual time to go to work, O’Leary went up to wake him, as he knew that Millie wasn’t there. He got no answer, but found the door unlocked and Arthur Shaw lying dead on the floor, with a knife wound in his chest. So the times are pretty well established to within minutes.’
    â€˜Are there any photographs?’ said Priscilla.
    Richard went to the back of the file and pulled out two police albums, containing half-plate black and white glossy prints stapled between cardboard covers.
    â€˜One is of the scene, the other the post-mortem. Not the greatest pictures, but they give the general idea.’
    The two women took an album each, then swapped when they had looked at each photograph.
    â€˜Stabbed almost in the middle of the chest,’ observed Angela. Richard nodded. ‘Got him straight through the right ventricle of the heart.’
    â€˜Not much blood about,’ said Priscilla, holding up a picture of the victim lying on the floor of an untidy living room.
    â€˜It’s often the case with a single chest wound, especially if the body lies on its back afterwards. He bled internally, filling the bag around the heart so that it couldn’t fill properly.’
    â€˜That’s what you call a cardiac tamponade, isn’t it?’ said Angela, showing off some of the knowledge she’d accumulated from many years’