by Sam Hurcom
‘Do people truly believe in that thing or is that all lies and deceit as well?’
‘Most people are afraid of it,’ Cummings grumbled. ‘They wanted nothing to do with you for fear of what it may do to them.’
‘I imagine you did little to quell the rumours of such a terrible creature, though. It was in your interest that people stayed quiet around me.’
Cummings only glared at me in silence.
I had been pacing before the two men, though the energy, the rage I had felt upon our arrival had dissipated somewhat. I wiped my brow, stood for a time in silence to contemplate what I had heard so far. It was salacious, damning, confessions of conniving crimes and withholding of pertinent evidence. And yet it proved nothing of Cummings’ innocence in the matter of Betsan’s death, in spite of the young Constable’s assertion that the Councilman had nothing to do with her murder. There was clearly more to be told.
I stepped over and stood just before the two men.
‘You, Councilman, have a strong enough motive to put you before a jury for murder, never mind any of your contemptible embezzlement. Up till now you have given me no reason to rule you out as a suspect for Betsan’s death.’
Cummings began to squabble with me, insisting he hadn’t killed Betsan. To my surprise Vaughn cut in, unable to sit silent anymore.
‘T-tell him, Mr Cummings.’ To this Cummings hissed, at which Vaughn turned upon him and shook him by the arm. ‘For God’s s-sake, tell him! We’re both already damned for what we did.’
‘What?’ I exclaimed. ‘What else did you do?’
‘The b-b-body.’
‘Shut up, boy!’ Cummings groaned in agony as he lurched his leg to the side.
I implored them both speak. Vaughn stammered as Cummings tried in vain to silence him, and we all began to shout and yell over each other until at last Cummings raised his hands in surrender.
‘All right. All right, here it is.’ He shook his head, muttered to himself for a moment and fidgeted with his hands as he looked about the room.
‘The night that girl was killed, I couldn’t sleep. It was stifling and clammy and I took to the common for a breath of air.’ He looked at me in the eye for a moment but seemed incapable of holding my gaze. He spoke on hesitantly. ‘We had had a council meeting that had gone on late and I suppose my mind was still mulling things over. There were numerous people in attendance, should you need to corroborate my whereabouts.’
‘When did it finish?’ I asked bluntly.
‘Around half past ten, perhaps later. After spending hours lying awake I intended to circle the cricket field on the common but barely made ground from my house.’ He paused, looking down now towards my feet, his mouth agape as if he were staring at something in amazement. ‘There was a clump, a strange shape, piled on the floor in the darkness.’
He broke off until I ordered he speak on. His words were hushed, shaky.
‘I approached it with no real thought. Even as I stood over it in the gloom, I couldn’t understand what it was. It was only when I knelt down and rolled it over that I screamed in terror and fell backwards from it.’ He pulled his arms close around him, rubbing nervously at his shoulders. ‘It was the girl’s body. Bound in chain, burnt.’
I became motionless, unable to move. Like a burst dam Cummings began to tell me everything as fast as he could. How he had looked about for some minutes, seeking to alert someone. How he had thought of his motive, his potential implication in Betsan’s death. How in a moment of panic he had begun to drag the girl’s body the short distance to his house. How there, realising the hour was approaching four and wary of being seen in daylight, he had run quickly through the village, rousing Vaughn and bringing him back to his residence.
‘He didn’t t-tell me what was happening when he woke me,’ Vaughn moaned. ‘I swear I w-went with him in good faith.’
‘And what did you do then?’ I asked Vaughn quietly. ‘When he showed you Betsan’s body, what was your first thought?’
‘I -I wanted help but, but Mr Cummings … Mr Cummings.’
‘You played your part in this, boy,’ Cummings interjected with a sudden burst of anger. ‘Don’t try to blame all this on me.’
‘You said things to me,’ Vaughn blurted. ‘Y-you said it was in our interest to move the body. You said w-we had to make it look like the last, th-that if we d-did, it would not reflect badly on us. You said another killing down the woods could not be blamed on us, would mean we h-had not failed in our duties with the previous murders.’ He thrust his hands out to me then. ‘You must understand, Mr Cummings has been good to me since my father’s passing and I wanted to do right by him. I knew nothing of the General’s money, I only feared what would happen to him, to ourselves. I panicked – I panicked!’
‘So you helped him move the body,’ I said grimly, for I did not need to ask.
Cummings nodded his head. ‘We took it down by the mill. By then it was nearly dawn and we headed to the woods via the back of my estate. There are many ways to get to the Cwm Sior and we followed a little-used path. We put her by the mill, so she was obvious, so that no one would suspect she had been anywhere else.’
‘And you tried to stage it, no doubt?’ I was pacing again now, feeling I must admit, a little light-headed. What I was hearing was unbelievable; I was struggling to come to terms with it.
‘W-w-well, we barely had time. We put the body there and heard someone coming. We fled before we could do much else.’
‘But the burn marks upon the floor—’ It dawned on me then. The blackened earth at the scene upon my arrival. I’d thought it madness, presumed it some symptom of the fever, a delusion of my own making. The charcoal had felt warm to the touch, as if the earth had only just been scorched.
‘The day I arrived, you burnt the soil where you’d lain the body. You did so I would think she was killed by there.’
‘We thought you’d agree with our story,’ Cummings said in an exhausted manner. ‘There had been some rumours about travellers in the area and we just thought it made such sense. I imagined your being here was merely a formality, that you’d be a day or two at most. And then you said you wanted to see where she was found, and, and … I got scared, we both did. Burning the ground just fitted in with our theory that the travellers did it. I swear to you I – we – had every intention of seeking out the guilty party upon your leaving.’
Both men nodded and began talking on. I turned away, took a few steady breaths before I could take no more and saw only red before my eyes. I don’t regret what I did, for no honest man could hold himself after hearing of such treachery.
I turned, grabbed up Cummings from his seat and struck him hard in the jaw. He crumpled to the floor with a whimper. Vaughn squirmed as I took hold of him, though in that moment I could do nothing but shake him and glower into his eyes. He tried with all his strength to push me off; I stumbled back from them both.
‘You contemptible swine – to hell with the both of you! You moved that girl’s body, staged it for your own measly purpose! You,’ I pointed at Vaughn then, ‘for some misplaced loyalty to this charlatan! For your previous failures as an officer of the law. To hell with you, wretches alike.’ I squared up to Vaughn, who cowering away, collapsed backwards into his seat. I looked down upon them.
‘Mark my words: in my eyes, you are as guilty as the killer.’
‘We had no part in any murder,’ Cummings moaned, his head in his hands, looking down towards the floor. ‘You must know we had no part.’
‘Perhaps not in the deed itself, for you both lack the guts to do such a thing. Believe me I know that, but you have played your part, unknowingly conspired for the guilty man. All this time I assumed Betsan was killed in the woods before being staged by the mill. I’ve given greater consideration to those who work in the woodlands, who would know where to keep her. It means so little now for she could
have been killed anywhere in this rotten village.’ I leant in close to both of them.
‘Were it up to me, you would both hang beside the killer on the gallows.’
I couldn’t tolerate the sight of either of them grovelling anymore. I had no desire to pack away my camera equipment, still standing from my earlier interviews. I took hold of my exposed plates and those developed from the mill, before striding out of the hall.
‘I’m sorry, Inspector,’ Vaughn called out in haunted tones. ‘I’m s-s-so sorry.’
‘Stay where I can find you,’ I replied. ‘If either of you try to leave, I’ll hunt you down and shoot you where you stand.’
24
At the Bottom of a Glass –
June 23rd, 1904
I felt distraught as I walked back onto the Twyn. I was angry, of course, full of wrath, but neither fully describe my feelings then. I felt lost, like I had come to nothing after all my time spent thinking on and enquiring into the murder of Betsan. I was failing her, and for that I felt worthless.
I had not a single solid suspect. Cummings had the greatest motive, Geraint perhaps was the lover scorned. I doubted either man was guilty (of the murders, at least). In truth I knew nothing, for nothing in this place was certain. The murders could have both been random. The children’s deaths could have indeed been carried out by some twisted vagrant, passing by the village. Betsan’s brutal killing could have been motivated by something completely beyond all that I knew and enacted by the most unlikely of people. Until perhaps an hour previous, I assumed that the killings five years ago and now were connected. Now I was adrift, and so too were all my theories.
I had to search for Geraint, though my will was completely shattered. With no idea where he may have gone, I decided first to look at the inn, as foolish as that may seem. Perhaps it may be of surprise then that as I stumbled into the sunken patio and stepped through the inn’s small door, I found the man, slouched in a stool at the bar. He was necking some spirit as I came over to him, waving to Solomon for the whole bottle. Solomon, in turn, gestured at me subtly.
‘Come on, for God’s sake,’ Geraint slurred. ‘You think I’ve had enough? D’you?’
I pulled up the stool beside him. ‘I told you to stay in the hall.’
Geraint snorted. ‘Why? S’you can arrest me for something I didn’t do. The woman I love is dead and you’re happy to put it on me.’ He waggled a finger in my face, his elbow slipping on the bar as he did. ‘I told you everything. I want you to find the real killer but instead you want to place blame on the easiest person you can get. I’m … I’m dull but not an idiot.’ He reached a flimsy hand out for Solomon’s bottle and I, dropping my photographic plates onto the bar, stretched over and took it. Solomon didn’t protest, and quietly moved away.
‘If you cared for her so much,’ I said to Geraint as I refilled his glass, ‘you could have contacted someone. The police from Glamorgan, from Cardiff. No matter what fears you had, you could have reached out for help.’
He sunk another drink. ‘Look what good it would ’ave done me. They send some highbrow chancer like you who hasn’t got a clue who did it and wants to pin it on me. I’m not an idiot.’
I didn’t take great offence, as in that moment I agreed with him. I was moving backwards, the killer becoming ever more elusive. Geraint’s grief felt as much then as my own. Though I wanted to, I struggled to muster any words of hope or encouragement for I was destitute of them. Instead I poured Geraint another drink, reached over the bar and grabbed any glass I could find. I sipped quietly on whisky as my mood only darkened.
It was approaching half past eight, and neither Geraint nor I said anything till the hour hand on the bar’s clock struck nine. I still drank the first glass I had poured myself, pulling out the developed negatives from the mill and looking upon them absentmindedly. Geraint was dangerously close to passing out.
‘On my first enquiry as an investigator,’ I uttered, more to myself than Geraint. ‘I was in South London. The Yard were after some racketeers who were shaking down local businesses. In truth it was not a complex enquiry. A merchant’s office was torched and my photographs along with other evidence from the scene led me to the guilty party. But I remember walking alone, realising that I was relying upon my own wits, my own intellect.’ I was becoming quite melancholic, staring down at the developed pictures as though they were the first I had ever taken. ‘It was such a lonely feeling, daunting really. Of course, after that my confidence only grew, my arrogance as well. Now …’
I fell silent. Solomon was nowhere to be seen, the hatch to his cellar open, though I had not even noticed him go down. Geraint was pulling himself upright though his eyes were half closed.
‘Now I feel like my daunted, lonely self all those years ago. I’ve let an illness get the better of me. I’ve seen things …’
A flash of dreadful flame, a spectre with hollowed eyes.
‘… that I cannot be certain are real or false.’ I meant to speak of Betsan’s ring to Geraint but couldn’t say the words aloud. The negatives had shown me the ring, an ethereal band of light in a picture. I tried not to think of it, for it scared me too much. If the ring had been real, what else from those pictures …
‘She wasn’t perfect,’ Geraint blurted then, his head lolling as he spoke. ‘She had her moments, was fiery with me.’ His hand crashed against my shoulder and he leant his forehead against mine. His breath was near combustible.
‘I never meant to row with her that day. My last words to her were angry.’ Tears began dripping onto my shoulder. ‘If I’d known it would be the last time I saw her, I would’ve just taken hold of her an’ run. Run away from this bloody place.’
The man was broken beyond any comfort. It seemed best to take him home.
‘Tomorrow, should this storm pass, I will do what I can to alert the authorities. I – we – need more help to find the killer.’
Solomon remained out of sight though it didn’t seem to matter; no doubt he would guess I was taking Geraint home.
I stood, finishing the small remainder of my drink. I left my photographic plates on the bar as Geraint fell backwards from his stool. I was able to grab his limp body.
‘I’m … I’m just glad it was my brother who told me. Heart o’ gold, my brother.’
I nodded as I tried to wrestle the man upright.
‘Come to me and told me. Was barely awake. Thought it just a bad dream. But it came from my brother, all he wants is people to be happy.’
I nodded again and set Geraint’s arm around my shoulder. It wasn’t until we reached the inn door that I fully realised what he had said.
‘Your brother told you?’ I stopped, taking Geraint’s arm from around me after which he fell against the door frame. I managed to haul him back towards the bar; he was barely awake.
‘Geraint,’ I shrugged him, before tapping his face. He looked at me with a start. ‘Your brother told you? He told you about Betsan’s body?’
‘He’s a good man, is Lewis. Wants people to be happy. He’s not smart but good in other ways.’ Geraint made some strange motion with his hands. ‘He’s a craftsman.’
‘And he told you of Betsan’s body? What time was this?’
Geraint garbled something inaudible before closing his eyes again. I managed to rouse him a little.
‘I don’ know. Was early, just before dawn maybe. I think he was down the mill when they found her.’ He scratched at his face. ‘He woke me up, told me … about, told me she was dead. Didn’t say where though. He got upset and just won’t talk when he’s like that. I was running ’round. Running ’round trying to find out. I wasn’t even awake properly when he told me – my day off.’
I let Geraint slump onto the bar then and frantically thumbed through my notebook. Excitedly I turned to the page I had marked with Johnathon Miller’s name. I read through the few small notes I
had made; I wanted to be certain.
‘Edward and Will. They were the only ones with Miller that morning. They found her just after dawn.’
I tried rousing Geraint once more but to no avail, reaching then for the bottle and splashing some of the whisky in his face. He grunted as his eyes opened slightly.
‘Lewis works for Miller, correct? What does he do for him?’
Geraint mumbled. ‘He’s a good man. Great with his hands.’ He closed his eyes momentarily. ‘Father. Our father taught him to make things proper, carve and things. That’s why John keeps him.’
He closed his eyes again. I tried to think of any way Lewis could have known about Betsan’s body before it was discovered by Miller. Perhaps Geraint was wrong; perhaps Lewis had told him later in the day, when word had spread throughout the village. If Lewis had told Geraint before dawn, there was only one way he could have known Betsan was dead …
Carvings. By Geraint’s reckoning, Lewis was good at carving things. It struck me then plainly.
‘Geraint. Geraint!’
The man was insensible. I spoke loudly straight in his ear.
‘Soldiers, Geraint. Does Lewis carve wooden soldiers? Would he make them down the mill?’
Geraint roused enough to curse me.
‘I don’ know. He’s his own man.’
The developed plates were laid out before me. I cast an eye over each one quickly, squinting to look at the tools on the work-bench. In the corner of my second image, one I had taken from the centre of the room, I eyed the cans of paint and brushes. Next to it was a chewed-up piece of wood, at least that’s what I had first thought. It took on more of a form as I looked at it, a head perhaps, atop shoulders.
‘Your brother knew of Betsan’s death before her body was found. He made the soldiers that Solomon’s children played with, had with them when they died.’
I grabbed up Geraint roughly and began dragging him to the door. Solomon must have emerged from the cellar then, asking out of sight what I was doing.