Not One of Us

by Alis Hawkins

  John and I dismounted and walked around the end of the house to the patch of ground where the family’s garden was laid out. I could not make out what vegetables occupied the tidy rows, but it was clear from the weed-free earth between them that the garden was meticulously kept.

  Reckitt and Mic Rees stood between house and garden, Lizzie’s body on a table in front of them. Even I could see that the body was naked and the abdomen open.

  ‘There’s no need to cut her any more!’ Mic Rees protested, his voice loud with anguish. ‘You said you wanted to look in her stomach for poison, and you’ve done that. You don’t need to look inside any more of her.’

  ‘Mr Rees, as I explained to your wife—’

  ‘My wife’s not in charge here, I am!’

  ‘Nevertheless, if you’d let me—’

  ‘We’re paying for this so we decide how it’s done.’

  ‘I beg your pardon! Nobody’s paying anything. Did your wife not tell you that I’d agreed to do this without payment? I just wish to fully investigate—’

  ‘No! Just take whatever you got from her stomach and look at it to see if there’s poison there. That’s all we want you to do.’

  Reckitt raised his voice further. ‘Mr Rees do you or do you not want to know what killed your daughter? Because the most likely thing, in my estimation, is—’

  ‘Gentlemen!’ I called, as much to stop the argument as to alert them to our presence.

  ‘Probert-Lloyd!’ Reckitt strode towards us. ‘Have you come to a conclusion yet? Will you be holding an inquest?’

  ‘That rather depends on the talk I need to have with Mr Rees. Meanwhile,’ I lowered my voice slightly, feeling the delicacy of the question, ‘can you analyse the stomach contents here?’

  ‘No. I’ll have to take them back to Cilgerran.’

  Damn it. I had hoped to have a definitive answer as to foul play before leaving Rhosdywarch. Still, it couldn’t be helped.

  I moved in Mic Rees’s direction. ‘Mr Rees, what is your wife’s opinion? Does she too merely wish to know whether or not foul play has taken place?’

  ‘Meaning no disrespect to you, Mr Probert-Lloyd, but I’m the head of this family, not my wife. It’s me that’ll decide how far this cutting of my daughter’s body goes.’

  I found his insistence perplexing; why, when he had he felt unable to stand up to his wife in the matter of who might marry their daughter, did he feel able to oppose her on this?

  ‘I’d like to speak to you in private, Mr Rees, if I may?’ I turned to walk towards the house, only for John to put a hand on my arm and draw me aside.

  ‘Listen,’ his voice was pitched for my ears only, ‘I should speak to Ann and Gwen now.’

  ‘Very well. We’ll see the girls first, then—’

  ‘Not we. Me. I’m sure they were going to tell me something before. Then Reckitt arrived and scared them off.’

  He might be right, but I needed him with me when I questioned Rees; the man had lied to me once and I had to be sure he did not get away with it a second time.

  ‘It needs to be me by myself, Harry,’ he said, seeing my hesitation. ‘They’re little girls, and you’re the coroner. I’m more like the lads they know.’

  I breathed in deeply, the pungent smell of sun-baked straw and cow dung from the byre midden filling my lungs. ‘Then I’ll wait, talk to Rees when you’ve finished.’

  John’s stance shifted, and in the restless movement I read his impatience. ‘No. If you’re standing about waiting for me while I take them off, it’ll look like I think they’ve got something really important to say. They’ll be scared.’

  A bead of sweat ran down between my shoulder blades, but it was frustration, not heat that was making my skin prickle. This refusal to acquiesce to my wishes was new.

  ‘Take Reckitt with you,’ John said. ‘He knows Mic Rees lied to you now. He’ll be wary this time.’

  His reasoning was sound; I only wished I shared his confidence in Reckitt.

  ‘Meanwhile, I’ll find the girls and get them to show me where the mares can have a drink. Then I can talk to them without them thinking anything of it.’

  My mouth was barely open to agree when, without a word, he turned away abruptly. Belatedly I realised that he was trying to give the impression that he had lost the argument we had supposedly been having, just in case the girls were watching. Joining the charade, I fixed a grim look on my face. ‘Dr Reckitt, will you and Mr Rees come into the house with me, please? There are things we need to discuss.’

  * * *

  The kitchen was dim after the bright sunlight outside, and I knew I would see next to nothing until my eyes adjusted. The feeling of physical inadequacy made my skin crawl as if I was louse-ridden, compounding my fear that Mic Rees would once more persuade me with plausible lies.

  I had half expected to find Esther Rees back and presiding over her kitchen, but the place was empty.

  ‘Will you take a drink, gentlemen?’ Mic Rees asked. ‘Some cider?’

  We had drunk tea the last time we visited. Perhaps Rees was in need of Dutch courage.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ I had had nothing to drink since my breakfast at the Sergeant’s that morning.

  Rees took a jug to the barrel in the corner of the room and opened the tap. At the edge of my vision a tabby cat, disturbed from its lazing in a patch of sun, bent a leg around its head and began washing itself.

  ‘Mr Rees,’ I said, seizing a moment while he was off guard, ‘why did you lie to us about where your daughter died?’

  The jug clattered against the side of the barrel as Rees’s grip on it faltered, and I heard a splash of cider on the kitchen floor.

  ‘Dammit,’ he said, thrusting the jug back under the stream.

  The cat, roused from its ablutions, sprang up and trotted over to the spill.

  ‘I didn’t lie to you, Mr Probert-Lloyd. I don’t know why you’d think I did.’

  ‘You told us she died in her bed.’

  ‘It’s the truth. She died in her sleep.’

  ‘You also lied about not having put her in clean clothes, didn’t you?’

  He turned around, and this time he must have closed the tap, for there was no splash. ‘What? You never asked me about her clothes.’

  ‘No, but I asked your wife. And she told me you claimed you hadn’t changed her. But that’s not true, is it?’

  ‘Yes!’ He stood with both hands wrapped around the cider jug in front of him, as if it might ward off my accusation.

  Moving to the chair I had occupied on my previous visit, I signalled to Reckitt to sit. Rees would be at a disadvantage, stranded in the other half of the kitchen while I sat in his place at his fireside. ‘Mr Rees, if you persist in lying to me, I must assume that you’re concealing the true circumstances of your daughter’s death. That being the case, I would have no choice but to hold an inquest and ask you these questions, on oath, before a jury of your peers.’

  My hope was that the thought of giving testimony at an inquest, his neighbours watching while I asked incriminating questions, would persuade Mic Rees to tell me the truth. Because whatever answers he gave in public, it was the questions that would stick in people’s minds.

  You claim to have found your daughter dead in her bed. You further claim that you did not remove her clothes before the doctor saw her to confirm death. But – on your oath – neither of those things is true, is it?

  Hearing those words, an image would appear in the mind of every person present: Mic Rees standing over his dead daughter, looking around furtively while he removed her petticoat. He could lie all he liked, but it would do him no good: that picture would be fixed, and he would never shake it off.

  I waited while he found three wooden mugs and poured cider into them, lip knocking against rim as his hands shook.

  Reckitt and I accepted the mugs without a word, and Rees lowered himself heavily onto the stool.

  ‘She did die in bed,’ he said. ‘But not in her bed.’ />
  John

  If the pile on the grass behind them was anything to go by, Ann and Gwen were supposed to be collecting rushes. What they were actually doing was plaiting crowns and bracelets. I hoped they were keeping a good eye out for their mother – Esther Rees didn’t sound like a woman to tolerate time-wasting.

  ‘My little sister used to love a rush bracelet,’ I said, walking up to them.

  ‘Doesn’t she still?’ Gwen asked, looking up at me with those china-blue eyes.

  ‘No. She died when she was only nine.’ It wouldn’t do any harm for them to know I’d lost a sister too.

  Gwen’s eyes went wide. ‘How old were you when she died?’

  Compared to how the pair of them’d behaved when I first laid eyes on them, Gwen was very chatty now. Maybe it was because I’d already spoken to them once, so they knew me. Or maybe it was because I had both the mares with me, so I looked more like a servant than a gentleman, riding clothes or no riding clothes.

  ‘I was twelve.’

  Ann left off plaiting and looked up at me too. ‘And how old are you now?’

  ‘How old do you think I am?’ I didn’t want them to think I was too grown-up to talk to.

  Gwen tilted her head on one side, and I wondered if she’d got that from her big sister, Lizzie. ‘I think you’re—’

  ‘Eighteen,’ Ann said, getting in first.

  ‘Close enough,’ I said. And if that made them think I might only be seventeen, so much the better. At twenty, I was very nearly of age. Seventeen would demand a lot less respect.

  I unfastened the mares’ reins from one side of their bridles so they were long enough for me to hold on to them while the animals grazed a few feet away, then sat down on the grass next to the sisters.

  ‘How long’s your mam been saving with the friendly society?’ I asked. Best to start off with questions they’d have no reason not to answer.

  Gwen looked at her sister. As the older one, she’d be more likely to know. Ann shrugged. ‘Don’t know. A long time.’

  I picked a rush off their pile and began stripping it till the pith was only supported by one long strip of green, ready to be dipped in bacon fat and dried for a rushlight. They were watching me carefully. A gentleman wouldn’t know how to make rushlights. ‘Where’s she gone for the money?’ I asked, eyes on what I was doing.

  ‘Mrs James y Gof’s house in Eglwyswrw. That’s where they meet. The society.’

  ‘They knit,’ Gwen butted in.

  ‘What, they meet to do knitting together?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ann said. ‘They were knitting together before they started saving.’

  ‘The knitting came first.’ Gwen wasn’t going to be left out.

  That made sense. If a group of women’d been meeting for knitting nights for a while, it would be natural for them to start doing other things together. My mother’d been a great one for a knitting night. Or any gathering, really. Singing, knitting, studying the Bible. Interesting that the society met at y Gof, the Smithy. Twm y Gof, the blacksmith’s boy, had been one of the lads who’d bought a love spoon from Llwyo. Perhaps he’d had some encouragement from Esther Rees about courting Lizzie.

  ‘I’d’ve thought your mam’d go to Brynberian for her knitting and saving, not Eglwyswrw.’ Brynberian was much closer.

  I caught the look Ann gave her sister, but Gwen turned her pretty little face up to me anyway. She wasn’t going to let Ann take Lizzie’s place as the sister who bossed her about. ‘The women in Brynberian don’t have knitting nights.’

  That didn’t seem very likely. Esther Rees probably just wasn’t invited.

  ‘They’re not very friendly,’ Gwen said, as if she’d heard my thought. She tied a knot in the end of her rush plait and slipped it over her hand, turning it this way and that to admire her handiwork.

  ‘Not very friendly to everybody, or just to your mam?’

  Again that look from Ann, and this time Gwen stayed quiet. Which was an answer in itself.

  The afternoon sun was hot. I held the reins out to Ann to hold, shrugged my way out of my jacket and sat there in my shirtsleeves, necktie undone. Now I’d look even more like the boys they knew. Mind, I was careful not to roll my sleeves up. My arms were pale from indoor work, and that’d ruin the notion that I was one of them.

  ‘Go on then,’ I said, taking the reins from Ann and lying back on one elbow. ‘What about people who were friendly with Lizzie? I know there were young men sweet on her – Twm y Gof, Wil Llain, Dai Blaengwndwn and Nattie Stockton – but which one did she like best?’

  I watched them from under my eyebrows while I picked seeds off a stalk of grass. Ann started biting the skin around her thumbnail, but Gwen gave a sly little smile. ‘Guess!’

  I grinned. ‘All right then. But tell me first, who’s got the biggest farm?’

  ‘Hah!’ Gwen said. ‘That shows how much you know. Nothing!’

  ‘Well, Twm y Gof probably isn’t a farm boy,’ I said, ‘unless he’s the blacksmith’s apprentice, not his son.’

  ‘No. He’s the son.’ Ann got there before her sister could.

  ‘But you two obviously know more about the others than I do. I suppose they’re labourers, are they?’

  ‘No!’ Gwen was enjoying herself. ‘Wil works at the quarry in Cilgerran.’

  ‘Not all the time,’ Ann said. ‘Not when the rent work has to be done.’

  Rent work. Hay and harvest work that smallholders did for the tenant farmer they rented their land from. So Wil Llain was a smallholder’s boy who had no choice but to work off the farm. Definitely not a candidate for Lizzie’s hand in Esther Rees’s mind.

  ‘So Dai’s the one with the money, then.’ I made it sound as if I thought I was clever to work it out.

  ‘He’s the eldest Blaengwndwn boy,’ Ann said. ‘But their farm’s not much. Thirty-five acres, maybe.’

  ‘So who was it, then? Strong-arm Twm, Dai with thirty-five acres coming to him,’ I counted them on my fingers, ‘quarryman Wil, or maybe the one from away – Nattie Stockton?’ Dr Gwynne had said it was Stockton she favoured, but it’d be interesting to see if Ann and Gwen thought the same. She’d been their sister and they’d be more likely to know than the doctor.

  ‘Guess!’ Gwen said again, and tossed the daisy chain she’d been making at me, trying to get it to sit like a crown on my head. Instead, it slid down and hung from one ear.

  They laughed like the children they were, then Ann reached out to straighten the crown and went bright pink as she touched my hair.

  ‘I think it’s Dai Blaengwndwn,’ I said.

  ‘Wrong!’ Gwen jutted her little chin at me. She was going to be a handful in a few years’ time.

  ‘Gwen. Husht!’

  ‘Why? Makes no difference now, does it? And anyway, Mam’s not here.’

  Gwen wanted to tell me, I could see that, so I let them fight it out with their eyes while I looked over at the south-facing slope on the other side of the little valley. There were a dozen or so cows standing under a tree, nose to tail so they could keep the flies off each other’s faces. August was a terrible month for flies.

  ‘No!’ I heard Ann hiss at her sister.

  I looked around at them. ‘Go on, you can tell me – who was it?’ I tried to sound like one of the older boys they’d know at chapel, teasing after a secret only they knew about their big sister. Hopefully, with me lying here in the grass with them and the mares grazing a yard away, they’d forgotten who – or rather what – I was. ‘I won’t tell your mam,’ I whispered. ‘Promise.’

  ‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

  I looked into Gwen’s eyes and raised the elbow I was leaning on just slightly so I could draw an X on my chest somewhere over my breastbone. The movement felt awkward, but I didn’t want to sit up properly in case it brought the girls to their senses. Mind, my elbow was sore from the little stones that were digging into it, and the maids at Glanteifi weren’t going to be happy about the dirt I was getting on my
shirt. Still, all in a good cause.

  ‘Nathaniel Stockton,’ she said.

  I raised my eyebrows. So Dr Gwynne had been right. Had Lizzie been to see the doctor, confided in him?

  ‘They call him the Englishman—’ Ann tried to take over.

  ‘Or Nattie Gilfachwen, ’cos that’s where he works,’ her sister interrupted. ‘But he’s really called Nathaniel. And he’s not from here. He’s from down south. A place called St Florence—’

  ‘And he came here because of Lizzie,’ Ann finished. ‘He fell in love with her when she was working down south last year and he came up in the autumn and got himself hired by Mr Preece at Gilfachwen.’

  ‘So did she fall in love with him as well?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t—’ Ann began.

  ‘Yes! She did. And everybody knew because she gave him the coron fedw,’ Gwen finished triumphantly.

  ‘Did she indeed?’ The giving of the coron fedw – the birch crown – was as good as saying that you had an understanding; that you’d get married as soon as you could afford it.

  A shadow went over the sun and the warmth on my skin cooled. I looked up. Clouds coming in from the west. Rain tomorrow, most likely. I sat up.

  ‘So. Were they going to get married?’ I asked. From what Harry’d told me, they’d have had to step over Esther Rees’s dead body first.

  Ann and Gwen exchanged a look. ‘What?’ I said, as if I didn’t understand what was going on. ‘Weren’t your mam and dada willing?’

  More looks. More silence.

  After the conversation we’d had with Cadwgan Gwynne, and the questions we’d failed to ask, I decided to take a risk and lead them a bit. ‘If I’d been Lizzie,’ I said, watching the mares grazing nose to nose, as if I was more interested in them than in what I was saying, ‘I think I might’ve gone to see Dewin Gwynne’ – I gave him the title local people used, Wizard – ‘to see if he could tell me what my future was. Because if he said I was going to marry somebody, then it wouldn’t matter what anybody else thought, would it? That’d be my future.’