The Corpse's Tale (Trevor Joseph Detective series) Read Online Free

eyes again.
    ‘Anna Harris, eighteen years old, had just taken her A levels and was guaranteed a place at Drama College. She had experience as a child actor and model, mainly catalogue work and as an extra in TV productions. She was spending her last summer at home with her parents, helping them out in their antique shop and auction house.’
    ‘Boyfriend?’
    ‘Several, nothing serious,’ Trevor continued to turn the pages of the file. ‘According to her mother she was determined to make a career as an actress and she avoided emotional entanglements.’
    ‘So, she was ambitious. Friends?’
    ‘The entire village, if the reports are to be believed.’
    ‘Male or female?’
    ‘Both.’
    ‘Enemies?’ Peter asked.
    ‘None.’
    ‘That I don’t believe,’ Peter said flatly. ‘Isn’t it considered unlucky for the Welsh to speak ill of the dead?’
    ‘Not that I’ve heard. You into making up myths now, Collins?’
    ‘Just something I heard somewhere,’ Peter replied. ‘What do we know about her movements the night she was killed?’
    ‘She worked in her parents’ antique shop from nine in the morning until six in the evening. Then she went home. From seven until nine o’clock she was at an amateur dramatics society rehearsal in the local community centre. The society was run by the vicar and his wife, Tony and Judy Oliver. They were preparing to put on a show in August. The last one Anna would star in before she left for college. It was The King and I, Anna, unsurprisingly, was to play Anna.’
    ‘How many were at the rehearsal?’
    ‘Sixteen gave witness statements. At nine o’clock twelve of them went to the Angel Inn.
    Anna Harris went with them and drank half a pint of cider.’
    Peter sat up and opened his eyes to see a cow staring at them through the windscreen. ‘Tell me, as a farmer’s son, can you say shoo to a cow?’
    ‘You can say what you like, whether it will shoo or not is an entirely different matter,’ Trevor answered.
    Peter turned the ignition. As the engine purred into life the cow moved slowly away. ‘Did Anna go home by herself that night?’
    ‘Yes. She was the first to leave the pub at around ten o’clock. Her parents were away for the weekend on business and she was going to open their shop for them in the morning. She would have intended to cross the churchyard. It’s a short cut from one side of the village to the other and used by everyone who lives there. It shouldn’t have taken her more than five minutes to walk from the Angel Inn to her parents’ cottage. The local boys don’t believe she reached there. Her body, with David Morgan sitting next to it, was found shortly after seven o’clock the next morning in the churchyard by the vicar.’
    ‘Do we have the post mortem report?’
    ‘Yes and photographs. I’ve already gone through both with Patrick O’Kelly. According to him the man who did the post mortem,’ Trevor flicked through the file again, ‘a Professor Robbins, was thorough, but more than half of the samples he took were never analysed.’
    ‘But they are in the lab now?’ Peter checked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I hope they’ll be enough. I hate exhumations even more than you hate cold cases. She was buried, not cremated?’ he asked.
    ‘In Llan Church,’ Trevor confirmed. ‘Let’s hope we can leave her there in peace.’
    ‘Results of the post-mortem report?’
    ‘She was bludgeoned to death with an axe. Single blow. There’s no doubt that it belonged to David Morgan. He normally kept it, along with other tools, in a shed at the back of the church but he said he forgot to put it away the night before the murder. He even identified the markings he’d made on the handle.  His face, hands and clothes were stained with Anna’s blood. His story was, he saw a girl he didn’t recognize as Anna lying behind his tool shed when he turned up for work that morning. He thought she was still alive and tried to help her. Unfortunately for forensics, by