Where Death Delights by Bernard Knight Page B

her developed.
    Pryor had been married for nine years until his divorce in Singapore last year – it was one of the factors that persuaded him to take the ‘golden handshake’ and return to Britain. He had met Miriam, five years younger than himself, when he was serving in Ceylon. She was a civilian radiographer attached to the military hospital in Colombo. Later, he found that the old adage ‘marry in haste, repent at leisure’ was all too true and after a honeymoon year, things started to go downhill. She went with him to Singapore when hostilities finished and stayed for several years when he took the civilian post.
    But after a series of ‘affairs’, she left him and went back to England, the final break coming with the divorce a year ago.
    Though by no means celibate since the divorce, he had no burning desire to marry again. Ruefully, he thought that he now had no lack of feminine company, with three women under the same roof most of the time!
    His reverie took them further towards Swansea and soon they were looking for the mortuary, which the coroner’s officer had told him was in The Strand. This turned out to be a dismal street between the lower part of the town and the river, which in former times had been a quayside. The mortuary was housed in one arch of a disused railway viaduct, each end being blocked off with brickwork, that on the street side having large double doors. Jimmy parked outside and declared that he was going off for an hour to find a pub.
    Pryor knocked on the door and it creaked open to reveal a small, dark-haired man who announced himself as the coroner’s officer. There were two other men present, who PC Mort introduced as Dr O’Malley and Detective Inspector Lewis. The other pathologist was about seventy, burly and red in the face, dressed in an old-fashioned blue suit with high lapels. He seemed an amiable enough man and had a marked Irish accent when he told Richard, with tongue in his cheek, that he still did a few coroner’s cases to finance his membership of his golf club. Pryor thought that it was very likely that the coroner was also a member of the same club.
    The local detective was another small man, middle-aged and with thick dark hair coming low on his forehead.
    â€˜The coroner had a word with my ‘super’ and he thought it best if I came along, in case anything significant turned up,’ he explained.
    The arch was divided into two halves, the outer part containing an old cold cabinet like the one in Monmouth, only larger. It was a ‘walk-in’ type without racks and looked as if it had originally come from a butcher’s shop. Beyond a door in the central partition of the arch lay the post-mortem area, merely a porcelain slab raised on two brick pillars, with a sink and a table against the walls. A dusty fluorescent light hung by chains from the distant roof. Standing by the table was a tall, stooped man with a walrus moustache, already attired in a long red rubber apron and thick rubber gloves that came almost to his elbows.
    â€˜This is Mr Foster, from a local undertaker’s,’ explained Patrick O’Malley. ‘He’s really an embalmer, but he comes down to help here when required.’
    Foster bobbed his head and muttered a greeting, then went outside to pull a trolley from the fridge. He slid the sheeted body on to the table whilst Richard opened his case on the table and then put on an apron. There were several pairs of grubby rubber boots under the sink and he chose a pair of short, white ones which looked as if they were rejects from a hospital operating theatre.
    Foster removed the sheet from the body and to complete the legal formalities of continuity of evidence, should it ever be required, PC Mort confirmed it was the mortal remains of Linda Prentice.
    â€˜I’ve no doubt it was a drowning,’ volunteered the older pathologist, as Pryor began to examine the body externally.