The Thread of Evidence Read Free Page A

torch from his pocket.
    â€˜New batteries, this week,’ he explained needlessly.
    Removing his helmet, he plunged into the entrance. Immediately there was a muffled curse in Welsh and he backed out, rubbing his forehead.
    â€˜Piece of rock hanging down just inside,’ he muttered to the doctor. ‘Better stay here until I see what it’s like. The roof seems half-collapsed.’
    He put his helmet on again and went back inside, bending low to get his six foot two frame into the passage.
    The others waited expectantly around the mouth of the mine.
    â€˜This place can’t have been used for donkey’s years, surely?’ asked one of the holidaymakers.
    Ellis-Morgan shrugged, his shoulders twitching in his characteristic sparrow fashion. ‘Certainly not in my time, and I’ve been here thirty years. I think some of them were worked up until the First World War; but not on this part of the cliffs. It may well have been generations since they took ore from this place.’
    Peter was standing at the opening, watching the constable’s wavering light go deeper into the heart of the cliff.
    â€˜How far in did you find the bone, sonny?’ he asked the ginger boy, who was crouched at his feet.
    â€˜About twice the length of a house,’ the lad replied graphically. ‘We couldn’t go any further – there was a big heap of stones and our candles were getting dim.’
    Peter grinned at the boy’s father. ‘Boys never change, do they?’
    There was an echoing call from the bowels of the earth. ‘Dr John – can you come in now?’
    Griffith was shouting from the deepest point he could reach and the words had an eerie sound by the time they got to the shaft entrance.
    Ellis-Morgan dragged a torch from his own pocket and shouted a reply:
    â€˜Right, Wynne. I’m coming now.’
    Leaving the other men clustered around the entrance, he vanished into the shaft. Being many inches shorter than the policeman, he was able to walk upright once inside the tunnel. The floor was cluttered with pieces of fallen rock but, apart from pools of muddy water, he found the going fairly easy.
    Griffith’s torch wavered ahead of him, growing larger as he approached.
    He came up to the officer at a point which he roughly estimated as being thirty yards from the entrance.
    â€˜The roof’s come down here, Doctor.’
    The constable spoke in Welsh now that they were away from the holidaymakers.
    The doctor shone his torch over the end of the shaft. An avalanche of grey stone had completely blocked the tunnel, leaving a great abyss in the roof over their heads.
    â€˜A fairly recent fall, Wynne. This stone is cleaner and a lighter colour than the walls.’
    Griffith waggled the spotlight of his torch on to the ground at their feet.
    â€˜And look here, Dr John – what’s this?’
    Ellis-Morgan hitched up his trousers and squatted at the edge of the roof fall. An inch of murky water covered the floor, but a muddy brown object could still be seen sticking out from beneath a stone.
    â€˜Give me a hand to move some of this rock,’ commanded the doctor. They began pulling away the stones at the bottom of the heap.
    Ellis-Morgan uncovered the whole of the brown stick-like thing and held it up to the beam of his torch.
    â€˜This is another bone, boy,’ he chirped. ‘No doubt about it being human; it’s a forearm bone.’
    The PC was almost beside himself with excitement.
    â€˜Duw, Doctor. The whole skeleton may be just under these stones here.’
    He began scrabbling furiously at the bottom of the pile, pulling out stones of all sizes and dropping them into the muddy water, oblivious of the damage to his uniform trousers.
    â€˜Here’s some more – and a couple there!’
    The physician began fishing out more fragments as Griffith uncovered them.
    â€˜There’s another big one,’ said the excited constable, as