by Alis Hawkins
My unexpected arrival caused a silence to fall, and I looked around the dusty uncobbled yard before dismounting as if I was nothing more than a neighbour.
‘Good morning! I’m Harry Probert-Lloyd, the coroner.’
They returned my greeting with restraint, uncomfortable at being addressed in Welsh. John was forever insisting that as an officer of the Crown, I should speak in English, but I could not bring myself to do it. Welsh was my native language as much as it was theirs, and I would not pretend otherwise. Eventually everybody would get used to it.
‘I’m looking for whoever took the message about Lizzie Rees’s death over to her mother at Ffynone yesterday,’ I said, trying to disregard the skin-crawling discomfort caused by the concerted gaze of eyes I could not see. For a moment or two there was no response, then one of the young men took half a step forward.
‘I-it was me, M-Mr Coroner,’ he stuttered.
I nodded. ‘I’d better just have a word with your master, then. Ask his permission to detain to you for a while.’
He led me out of the yard and over to the farmhouse.
‘C-coroner’s h-here for Master,’ he said when a small female figure answered his knock at the door.
Master. Though I had used the word myself, many older farmers still preferred ‘Uncle’, so I assumed that Dolbannon’s tenant was one of the younger generation. And so it proved. The man who came to the door had the bearing and dark hair of a man not much older than me.
‘Mr Probert-Lloyd, is it?’ he asked in fluent but heavily accented English, not waiting for an answer before introducing himself. ‘David Jones. Dai Dolbannon.’ Modern he might be, but he did not attempt to shake my hand, bowing instead as his father and grandfather would have done. But I had become inured to handshakes on the hustings that had elected me, so I thrust my hand out and found it being gripped enthusiastically.
‘I heard you were at the Sergeant’s last night, so I was half expecting you to come and talk to Barti here. A young woman, dying suddenly like that – I thought you’d be bound to want to have a look.’ Courteously he refrained from commenting, even obliquely, on my visiting on such an errand on a Sunday.
I took his lead and chose to offer no excuse for my Sabbath-breaking. Perhaps he already knew that I was a persistent offender. ‘Do you know the family at Rhosdywarch, Mr Jones?’
‘I see Mic Rees at the market, and the farmer he rents his holding from is one of those that makes hay with us. Most years he pays Mic to be an extra scythe. And my wife buys flannel from him.’ He paused, slightly. ‘He’s a good weaver, I’ll grant him that.’
‘And are there respects in which he isn’t so good?’ I asked, in Welsh.
Jones gave a bark of laughter, though whether it was caused by my sudden linguistic switch or by my directness, I could not tell. ‘He’s from away, isn’t he?’ he said, folding his arms. ‘Nobody knows who or what he was before he came here.’
I ignored a stirring from Barti at my side. If David Jones had an opinion about the Rees family, it would be as well to hear it from him now. Barti could wait. ‘I heard he was a drover.’
‘Yes. And we all know about the kind of things they get up to.’
Drovers were a law unto themselves, and some, at least, had no respect for any other kind.
‘But he hasn’t driven cattle for years,’ Jones continued. ‘So why didn’t he go back where he came from to settle down? Makes you wonder.’
I recalled Mic Rees saying that he had not seen his family home since he was sixteen. Perhaps, like John, he was an orphan and had been obliged to make his own way in the world wherever he could.
‘And his wife?’ I asked, suddenly curious. ‘Is Esther Rees from away, too?’
‘No. She’s from around here.’
I detected something in his tone and trained my gaze where I hoped his face was. ‘But?’
Jones shrugged. I wondered whether he cast a glance at the slight, dark figure of Barti, still and silent in my peripheral vision, to see what he was making of this conversation. ‘She didn’t stay where she was put, either. Went away when she was young. She was one of the merched y gerddi.’
I had never heard the term. ‘Garden girls?’
‘Went up to London, didn’t they? To work in the market gardens. Earned a fortune.’
I waited to see if he would offer more, and he obliged.
‘I remember my father saying that when she came home, Esther Rees thought she was too good for the boys here. Airs and graces she had. Speaking English. Too proud to even wear a betgwn! Came back in English clothes.’
‘Was she a farmer’s daughter?’ I wondered whether some of the pride had been there already.
‘No! Not her. Her dada was a labourer.’
‘So,’ I said, ‘when she got back, she was too grand to marry a man like her father, but none of the farmers’ sons would have her?’
‘You know how it is, Mr Probert-Lloyd. Farmers’ sons marry farmers’ daughters. Labourers’ sons marry labourers’ daughters.’
And those caught uneasily in the middle – smallholders like Mic Rees – might marry up or down depending on their fortunes and prospects. Rees had told me that his wife was determined not to have her daughters courting anybody but a farmer’s son. What was it he had said? Not unless they’ve got a hundred acres, money in the bank, and no brothers and sisters to keep.
But Esther Rees’s maternal ambition was unlikely ever to have been realised. Farmers were not apt to consider brides for their sons who would not bring animals or capital to the match, however pretty they were.
David Jones cleared his throat. Had I been so obviously distracted? Or was he reminding me that time was going on and he, like his servants, wanted to be off to chapel?
‘Did you know her?’ I asked. ‘Lizzie Rees?’
‘I’m a married man, Mr Probert-Lloyd. The likes of Lizzie Rees are of no interest to me.’
My gaze still on Jones, I saw something move in the gloom behind him. Peripheral vision may lack precision, but it is sensitive to movement, and I suspected that the maid who had summoned her master had hung back to listen to our conversation. Did she just want to take some juicy gossip back to the kitchen, or had she known Lizzie?
Jones must have seen something in my gaze, because he spun around. ‘Don’t stand there, girl, get back to your work!’
‘Actually, if that’s your maid, can I just have a quick word with her, please?’
‘I thought you were here to see Barti?’
‘Even so.’
Jones jerked his head. ‘Barti, go back to the others while Mr Probert-Lloyd talks to Elen. We’ll come and find you when it’s your turn.’
At my side, Barti hesitated. ‘Look, ngwas i,’ Jones reassured him, ‘if you’re worried about being late for church, you can come with me and Mrs Jones in the trap. You’ll be there in plenty of time.’
As Jones disappeared into the house in search of the little maid who had, evidently, fled back to her work as instructed, I wondered why he had sent Barti away; it seemed unnecessary. But before I could come to any kind of conclusion, he returned in the company of the same diminutive figure who had answered the door to us.
‘Elen, this is Mr Probert-Lloyd,’ he said in Welsh. ‘He’s the coroner. Do you know what that means?’ Evidently something indicated to her master that Elen was either ignorant or unwilling to answer. ‘It means that when people die, if nobody knows what they died of, he has to find out.’
‘I only want to talk to you for a minute, Elen,’ I said, gently.
‘I don’t know anything! I don’t know who killed her!’
It was not a surprise that my visit to Rhosdywarch had led people to believe that Lizzie Rees’s death was suspicious, but I wished that my involvement was not inevitably seen as evidence of foul play; people’s perceptions are influenced by the notion of murder, even if they are unaware of the fact.
I tried for a soothing tone. ‘We don’t know that anybody killed her.
I just wanted to find out a bit about her. Did you know her?’
‘Go on, girl, answer Mr Probert-Lloyd!’
Had Elen looked to Jones for help, or had he just become impatient when she did not answer me immediately?
‘I didn’t know her to talk to,’ she said, so softly it was only just more than a whisper.
‘She was a lot older than you, I expect?’ Elen sounded like a child rather than a young woman.
‘Yes.’
It suddenly struck me how intimidating it must be for her to be standing there between her master and a strange gentleman, looking up at one then the other. I was of no great height – not as tall as Jones – but I doubted that Elen measured more than four and a half feet. ‘Shall we sit down?’ I suggested. ‘Perhaps there’s somewhere in the yard?’
Jones sighed gustily but led us to the side of a byre, where he indicated a horse trough. ‘Will that be all right?’
‘Of course.’ I put my hand on the edge of the trough to gauge its height, then lowered myself gingerly, feeling the sun-warmed topstones through my britches.
Though Jones did not sit down with Elen and me, he showed no inclination to leave. Was his instinct to protect his servants or to know their business?
I turned to the girl. ‘Elen, did you know Lizzie Rees by sight – enough to say good day to if you met her?’
Sitting at my side rather than having to face me, Elen seemed more at ease. ‘No. I go to chapel, and Lizzie Rees was church.’
‘So you only know her name from things you’ve heard?’
I caught her nod. Ordinarily, I would have explained that I could not see well and that she would need to speak rather than just nod or shake her head, but I feared that she would take any such comment as a criticism and become even more reticent. Still, I could stare fixedly ahead and apparently avoid looking at her while actually keeping her in my peripheral vision; perhaps if she did not feel that she was being scrutinised, the nervousness that was making her screw up her apron in her little fists might relent a little.
‘Did you hear about her from the other maids?’
Another minimal nod.
‘Were any of them friends with her?’
I saw a shrug, then Elen turned to look at me. ‘They said she went away.’
‘That’s true. But not for long. Only a month or so.’
‘They said she’d gone to catch a better husband.’
‘A better husband? Did she have an understanding with somebody, then?’
‘I don’t know!’ That wail again. ‘That’s just what they said.’
‘Who said it – the other female servants here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did they say anything else about her?’
The child’s fingers worried at her apron; I did not want to make her cry.
‘Elen – did any of the other girls here say anything when they heard that Lizzie Rees had died?’ I asked gently.
‘Elen.’ Jones’s voice held a note of warning in it. She was to answer my question or face the consequences.
‘They said… serve her right.’
Serve her right?
‘Did they say why it served her right – what she was supposed to have done?’
Elen’s head could not have dipped further towards her chest unless she had dislocated her neck, and I barely heard her response. ‘They said she thought she was better than everybody else.’
‘Better how?’
‘I don’t know! Mistir, can I go back to my work, now? Mrs Jones’ll be waiting for me to go to chapel. I don’t want to get into trouble.’
As it seemed unlikely that I would get any more useful information from her, I nodded in Jones’s direction, and a second later, Elen almost flew off her perch.
‘Right then,’ her master said as she fled. ‘Is it all right if you talk to Barti now, so that we can get off?’
‘Of course. I’m sorry.’
‘No, no. No need to apologise. I just don’t want to feel the edge of the vicar’s tongue if we’re late. He’ll have enough to say about all the gossip that’s going round about Lizzie Rees. I don’t want to give him anything more to put in his sermon.’
John
The hall clock hadn’t even struck nine and I was already sick of drafting and copying. And if I’m honest, a little bit sick from nerves at the thought of going against Mr Ormiston’s instructions with the new contracts when I’d finished this lot. When the messenger from Eglwyswrw arrived a few minutes later with Harry’s note, half of me was delighted – I could get out of the cold office into the sunshine and leave my plans for rebellion until later – but the other half was furious. What gave Harry the right to think he could just call and I’d come like a sheepdog to its master’s whistle? We had an agreement: I wouldn’t go out with him as assistant coroner if I had estate work pressing. And however scared I was of what I was planning, it was pressing. It had to be done.
I ignored the treacherous little voice in the back of my mind that said Harry didn’t know that.
‘Shall I tell him to wait for you?’ Wil-Sam asked, meaning the messenger, who he’d left on the front steps.
No, tell him to go back to Eglwyswrw and tell Harry Probert-Lloyd I’m not coming because I’m busy running his estate!
‘No. Ask him to wait for me to get changed, and I’ll ride back with him.’
As I ran upstairs, I told myself I could always use the journey to think again about how I was going to word the contracts that I’d decided needed changing.
* * *
But of course I didn’t do that. Instead, like a good little assistant coroner, I spent the ride over to Eglwyswrw digging for information.
The man who’d been sent to fetch me introduced himself as David Davies. ‘But they call me Llwyo,’ he said. Davies was the most common surname in the area, so anybody with a name like his and no farm to identify him would need a nickname.
I looked over at him, sitting easily on his grey mare. He was a stringy kind of individual with a long face and a beak of a nose. ‘Llwyo? Why?’
‘Because “Dai Llwyau” isn’t so handy.’
Dai Spoons. ‘You make spoons, then?’
‘Yes. But not for eating. Course, I can do those as well, but—’
‘Oh! Love spoons, is it?’
He looked at me sidelong, to check whether I was mocking him. ‘I make a good bit out of it. Everybody wants one of my spoons.’
I gathered both the reins in one hand and leaned forward to put the other on the mare’s warm neck. My fingers were still stiff with cold from the study. ‘I’ve never really understood why you’d buy a love spoon to give a girl. Isn’t the point supposed to be that you show her how much you love her by how much time you’ve spent carving the thing?’
‘Yes, but some people can’t carve to save their life. They could spend months on it and still end up with something that looks as if a blind man made it left-handed.’
I glanced at him. I could see that as soon as he’d said it he’d remembered who my boss was.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean…’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
He was blushing. Still managing to ride like a gentleman, mind. He’d obviously been taught properly, with a saddle, rather than learning to ride bareback on a farm horse like most of us.
‘But thing is, right,’ he said, falling over himself to make me forget his poor-taste joke, ‘what’s going to impress a girl more – a clumsy spoon somebody’s made himself but that she can’t show off to her friends, or one he’s bought that’ll make the other girls envious enough to curdle milk?’
‘Fair point.’ I turned to look at him properly. ‘You’re that good, are you?’
‘So they say.’
‘Anybody come to you for a spoon to give this girl that’s died?’
He shrugged, but in a way that made me think he knew something. ‘They did, then?’
He looked me in the eye. ‘What’s it worth?’
‘You
want paying for gossip?’ If I sounded scornful enough, maybe he’d tell me for nothing.
He cocked his head at me. ‘Not gossip. Information.’
I tried to think how much money I had on me. I didn’t tend to carry much when I was with Harry, because his word was always enough to get us credit, but I had a few shillings in my pocket.
‘Half a crown,’ I said. Would that be enough? It should be – it was probably a day’s wages for him.
‘Five shillings.’
‘What? Get off! D’you think I’m made of money?’
‘No. I think you work for the coroner. He’ll be on expenses, won’t he?’ He rubbed a thumb and forefinger together. ‘County money, isn’t it?’
Dear God. If only he knew how difficult it was to part the county magistrates from a single penny. But he worked at the Sergeant’s, where the petty assizes were held. He’d see all sorts going on expenses for that and assume it was just the same when it came to inquests.
‘I’m not giving you five shillings. I’m not giving you anything until I know a bit more about this so-called information.’
He reined his mare back to a walk as we started up the hill that’d take us along the top of Cenarth gorge. I shivered a bit. The road was overshadowed here by the stunted oak trees that were all that would grow on the steep slope. ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘I can give you the names of three lads who paid me for spoons to give to Lizzie Rees.’
‘That’s the dead girl?’
‘Obviously.’
‘And would one of your spoons have done the trick?’
‘Who knows? Not easily pleased, Lizzie Rees, by all accounts.’
‘So just making her friends jealous with a spoon wouldn’t’ve been enough for her to start walking out with somebody?’
Llwyo sucked his teeth. ‘Far as I could see, she didn’t have many friends. Only one girl she went about with. Not that I knew her, not really. Just saw her about.’
‘Got sisters, has she?’ I’d noticed that girls with a lot of sisters tended not to be so bothered about having a pack of friends. All their need for gossip and foolishness was already seen to.