An Inconvenient Death by Miles Goslett

Author:Miles Goslett [Goslett, Miles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788543088
Publisher: Head of Zeus

CORNWALL

Exactly one week after the Kellys’ arrival in Cornwall, Dr Kelly would go missing and never be seen alive again, his body eventually being found in the grimmest of circumstances in a lonely Oxfordshire wood a few miles from his front door.

Given the almost instantaneous conclusion among the authorities upon Dr Kelly’s body being found that he had taken his own life, it would have been second nature to a coroner investigating a death like this to hear evidence from those with whom Dr Kelly spent his final days in order to form a full picture of his activities and his mood. No coroner would be prepared to reach a suicide finding unless he or she could convince himself or herself beyond reasonable doubt that Dr Kelly had intended to kill himself, and then did so.

This being the Hutton Inquiry, however, the key period of his final weekend alive was left almost entirely unclarified. Indeed, there is a strong sense that it was kept deliberately vague.

Mrs Kelly’s evidence about what she and her husband did in Cornwall amounted to very little. She told Dingemans that, understandably, she wanted this unexpected trip to be almost like a holiday for her husband in order that he might feel more relaxed and less upset. She said that they visited two local tourist attractions; ate well; relaxed; and tramped around the beaches and bays of south Cornwall. At no stage was she asked where they stayed or whether they saw anybody else while they were there; she was therefore not required to mention any socializing which they did.

I have established that the three nights which the Kellys had together in the Mevagissey area were in fact spent a mile to the south of the village in the tiny cove of Portmellon in a holiday property which some friends told them they could use. They had the place to themselves.

Shortly after arriving on the afternoon of Thursday, 10 July, Mrs Kelly rang John and Pamela Dabbs, a couple who live locally and who Mrs Kelly knew slightly through Mrs Dabbs’s sister. The Dabbses had been rung at 10.30 the previous night and, as the keyholders to the property where the Kellys were to stay, alerted to the Kellys’ imminent arrival. Mr Dabbs had never met Dr Kelly before, but it was agreed that they would all see each other at some point over the weekend.

When we spoke, Mr Dabbs told me: ‘We understood they arrived [in Portmellon] together. Obviously we’ve got no direct proof but we have no reason to doubt that.’ When asked, Mr Dabbs conceded that at no point had either of the Kellys told him they had been together at Weston-Super-Mare.

The Kellys ate lunch together that Thursday afternoon, a meal which Mrs Kelly recalled easily because she told the Hutton Inquiry that her husband was ‘more upset at that stage and very tense’. She added: ‘He seemed to withdraw into himself completely. And I decided that the best I could do, and

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