Free Mistress Murder by Bernard Knight

nineteen-sixty-four,’ he read aloud. ‘OK lads, take it away – up to the hospital.’
    After cleaning as much of the mud off as they could, they carried the box to the van and took it to the mortuary of Oldfield Hospital.
    Sergeant Burrell took the surveyor home and then went back to the station to wait for the Yard men and the pathologist. They arrived at eight o’clock, together with a liaison officer from the Yard Forensic Laboratory and, by half past eight, Dr Eustace Soames was starting his examination.
    The little mortuary of the district hospital was packed out with the detectives, doctor, mortuary assistant, and the police photographers who lurked in the background with their apparatus.
    Again the coffin plaque was checked for continuity of evidence. Then the lid was unscrewed.
    Benbow, from experience of previous exhumations, stepped back as the seal was broken, but in this case there was no semi-explosive escape of foul gas. The body had only been down a couple of days and the weather was cold.
    The body was photographed before being disturbed, then Burrell, who had seen it before burial, formally identified it to the pathologist. Soames, in rubber boots, long gown, and rubber apron, waited impatiently while the shroud was removed and the body placed on the porcelain slab.
    â€˜Come on, come on, I’m playing golf at twelve,’ he fretted.
    The tubby mortuary attendant, on double time for a Saturday morning and with the prospect of a good tip as well, fussed about arranging instruments.
    When Soames was ready to start, the police arranged themselves as close to the white-tiled walls as possible, to be out of range of the splashes for which Soames was notorious.
    The bare remains of the girl from Newman Street lay on the dish-shaped slab. The pathologist stood with his gloved hands on his hips, staring intently at every part of it.
    There was a pregnant silence.
    â€˜Don’t expect any miracles from me, Benbow,’ he warned. ‘She’s been washed, her clothes have gone, and she’s been dead for nearly a week. The undertakers have pulled her about, buried her, and now dug her up! So I hope you’ll appreciate that I’m starting at a disadvantage.’
    Benbow looked at the battered corpse lying so still on the white table. He kept telling himself how lucky he was to have such a strong stomach, but his self-persuasion kept slipping. He forced himself to speak.
    â€˜The main thing is, doctor, can you find anything to confirm our suspicions that she was deliberately crashed in that Sunbeam? If not, we can all go home and forget it.’
    The burly pathologist wagged his florid face.
    â€˜If she was, she must have been drunk, dead or unconscious. She wouldn’t have sat there otherwise, would she?’
    He bent over the body and began examining the outside in minute detail. Bray had been deputed to write down any dictated notes, and this helped to keep the young man’s mind off the feelings of nausea which kept coming in waves from somewhere beneath his belt.
    â€˜Rigor mortis absent from all limbs … lividity well marked on the back.’
    Soames droned on as his fingers probed the pale flesh. The other police officers from the County looked on silently, each busy with their own thoughts or fighting their own particular brand of revulsion.
    Every now and then Soames would ask for a photograph and the policemen from the photographic department would trundle up their tripod and scarify the mortuary with electronic flashes.
    The doctor from London spent a long time probing around the head of the woman. He shaved off a wide area of the black hair and stepped back to let the camera team do their stuff again.
    â€˜Any joy, doctor?’ asked Benbow cautiously. He had a lot of respect for the man’s opinion, but knew from experience that he couldn’t be stampeded into an opinion.
    Eustace Soames rubbed his itching nose on his shoulder, his