by Alis Hawkins
He didn’t offer to fetch the constable, so I just walked past him into Newcastle Emlyn police station’s tiny back room. Even though I was pretty sure he’d have heard me talking to the sergeant, I introduced myself and told him why I was there. ‘Mind if I sit down?’ I asked. If Harry and I were going to have to work with the police in future, it did no harm to be friendly.
He nodded and waved a hand at the only other chair. Fair play, he’d stood up when I came in, too. He wasn’t any older than me from the look of him – younger, even. His face still had spots and I don’t suppose he shaved every day any more than I did.
‘You know the worst thing?’ he said, after he’d told me how Owen Thomas’d turned up in a rage making accusations and demands. ‘The rope. The one he hanged himself with.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘It was all cobbled together. That’s how bad things’d got out there. The poor dab didn’t even have a length of rope long enough to hang himself properly.’
He had more to say, I could tell.
‘He’d cut the handles off the milking buckets – three of them – and knotted them together with another old bit of rope from somewhere. Even then, it was only just long enough to go round the beam and his neck. He’d rubbed the top of his head raw on the beam where he…’
He stopped, didn’t know how to say what he meant. But I knew. I’d never seen a man hanged – people were hardly ever hanged at Cardigan gaol and I wouldn’t’ve gone anyway – but I knew what happened. The hanged man couldn’t stop himself struggling, could he? If Matthew Thomas’s head’d been close enough to the beam to rub on it, then the rope he’d knotted together for himself must’ve been pitifully short.
‘He’d left the buckets outside the cowshed. Tidy, in a row, with a sack over the top of them to keep the birds and the cats off. And every one of them was without a handle because he’d cut them off to hang himself with.’
I swallowed. Matthew Thomas’d obviously been very determined to kill himself. If he hadn’t had enough buckets, he’d probably have taken his trousers off and hanged himself with those. I was glad he hadn’t. The picture of him hanging there in his flannel underwear would have stuck in people’s minds. And he didn’t deserve that.
But then he didn’t deserve to die at all, did he? He might not’ve been a profitable farmer, or one who was keen to try new things, but he didn’t deserve to have his farm taken away either. And I knew it wasn’t only me that thought that. The news’d gone around the parish the way gorse goes up in a fire – all of a red-hot rush – and I’d got some disapproving looks from people as I went about delivering jury notes. One woman stood on her doorstep, her husband’s jury call in her hand, and stared me in the face. ‘Is there such a verdict as “died of a broken heart”? Because whatever was round his neck, that’s what killed Matthew Nantyddwrgi.’
I don’t think I’d ever been as worried about an inquest.
Harry
Yesterday’s still air and river mists had blown away overnight, and the morning of Matthew Thomas’s inquest greeted me with a blustery wind that swirled around the stableyard, sending the cats skittering away to wherever they waited out ill-tempered weather.
John was not at my side as I waited for my horse to be saddled up. He had left the breakfast table early to ride into town, ostensibly to oversee all the necessary arrangements, but he had never felt the need to form a vanguard before.
I knew he blamed me for Matthew Thomas’s death. But I did not know how to penetrate the cold reserve his feelings wrapped around him and would have paid good money to have him shout at me instead. At least then I might have understood how he thought I should atone for my blind pursuit of solvency for Glanteifi. As it was, my current plan – to pay Ormiston off early and promote John to the rank of agent now, rather than in April as we had planned – might only make him despise me more if he, like Lydia, saw it as an attempt to foist my responsibilities onto him. Yet I was well aware that something must be done to reassure Glanteifi’s tenants that things would be different from now on, and I had tried to speak to Ormiston on my return from Cilgerran yesterday.
I recalled now the hesitancy of the maid who had come to the door.
‘Mr Ormiston’s not at home, sir.’
So frustrated had I been at not being able to resolve matters there and then that I had almost challenged her, demanded to know whether her master was genuinely absent or simply not at home to me, but fortunately I had stopped myself in time. It was not fair to drag innocent servants into the mess I had made.
The chilly tension between John and myself on my return home had clearly been visible to Lydia, and after dinner she had done her best to relieve it, suggesting that she might read something amusing to cheer us up. But I had declined the Pickwick Club’s papers in favour of making preparations for today’s inquest.
* * *
I had not been foolish enough to expect a quiet inquest; I was only too well aware that news of Matthew Thomas’s death would have spread in that almost preternatural way that bad news does. However, as John and I returned, with the jury, from the viewing of the body at Nantyddwrgi, we discovered that the taproom of the Lamb Inn was already crowded beyond any reasonable capacity.
‘We’re going to have to move proceedings outside,’ I said, leaning towards John to make myself heard. ‘Can you see about setting things up in the marketplace?’
John stepped up onto a chair. ‘All right!’ he shouted. ‘We can’t conduct an orderly inquest in here. We’ll set up outside. Everybody who’s here for the hearing, out, please.’
The crowd grumbled and grunted its way outside, pint mugs in hand, while Mrs James, the landlady, reminded everybody to come back when it was over. ‘It’s thirsty work watching an inquest, gentlemen!’
As John made arrangements for the jury’s seating and coroner’s table to be taken out into the square, I retreated from the crowds and found a quiet corner in which to wait until eleven, when I would begin the inquest.
I was not left alone, however. Several local gentlemen were kind enough to seek me out and offer their sympathies at my predicament; one even offered to deputise in order to spare me the need to preside at an inquest that could only hear testimony to my disadvantage. But though I was more grateful for his kindness than I could adequately express, I declined the offer. Given that I had no choice but to subject John and Ormiston to the ordeal of giving evidence, I felt that the least I could do was not to flinch from hearing it.
Finally John strode back in. ‘It’s time,’ he announced, and we walked side by side in a parody of unity into the marketplace.
The fully sighted might imagine that in this particular case, my inability to see the inquest crowd was a blessing, but nothing could be further from the truth; the crowd that parted to allow us free passage to the coroner’s table could not feasibly have been as judgemental of me as the mob of my imagination. And whatever blame or reproach those gathered in the market square might wish to fling at me, nothing could have tormented me more than my own conscience.
Mair Thomas being too unwell to appear, the farm labourer who had found her insensible on the ground in front of her husband’s suspended body gave evidence as to the circumstances of his master’s death; followed by the police constable, who testified as to the obvious cause, and the absence of any indication that Matthew Thomas had not been responsible for his own destruction.
Then I called Ormiston to come forward. Throughout a wretchedly wakeful night, I had been unable to prevent myself obsessively rehearsing the questions I would ask, and to begin with, his answers were almost exactly as my conscience-stricken mind had foreseen.
‘Is it usual for tenants to be turned off their land for arrears, Mr Ormiston?’
‘It would depend on the circumstances and the landowner concerned—’
‘But at Glanteifi,’ I interrupted. ‘Is it usual at Glanteifi?’
He hesitated. ‘No, sir.’
‘So Mr and Mrs Thom
as wouldn’t have been expecting this blow?’
‘They had been late in paying for two quarters and in arrears for another two.’
‘But still, they probably wouldn’t have anticipated losing their home?’
Again, he wavered before replying. ‘I don’t believe so, no.’
‘Can you tell the jury why, in that case, they were given notice to quit their tenancy?’
Though Ormiston prevaricated – perhaps to defend his own reputation, perhaps to defend mine – he eventually admitted that he had been acting under instructions to maximise rental income this quarter and next.
Then, having done my best to lift the responsibility from his shoulders and lay it on my own, I called John to give evidence.
Unlike Ormiston, he made no attempt to obfuscate.
‘Mr Davies, did you consider the notice to quit that was issued to Matthew Thomas to be justified?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘And did you try to persuade Mr Ormiston against such a course of action?’
‘Yes. Not just in this case, but in others. And we agreed on three quit notices instead of six.’
I did not ask him why Matthew Thomas was one of the three who had been evicted. ‘There was no prospect of him paying’ was not a judgement I wanted the spectators to associate with John, preferring to leave them with the knowledge that he did not consider the eviction justified. It would be to his advantage when he took over from Ormiston if Glanteifi’s tenants saw him as their advocate rather than their enemy.
‘And, given that an eviction notice was delivered, what do you feel should have been done to prevent such a tragedy?’
‘Mr and Mrs Thomas had been tenants for many years. Mr Thomas had taken over the tenancy from his father. They were getting on in years and didn’t have much prospect of finding work. So, in my opinion, they should have been found alternative accommodation on the estate.’
‘Why was that not done?’ I asked.
‘I had intended to do so yesterday but coroner’s business detained me elsewhere,’ John said, his tone flat. ‘But the time I got home, it was too late.’
There was no justification for a verdict other than suicide, but I took what steps I could to comfort the family and ensure that Matthew Thomas would receive a proper funeral. Criminal suicides might no longer be buried beneath crossroads with a stake through their heart, but a burial at night, without rites, would only stoke resentment and anger against the estate.
In the library after dinner the previous evening, I had asked John to fetch Sewell’s Treatise on the Law of Coroner, and to read out the section on types of insanity.
‘Nostalgia,’ he had read when I told him what I wanted, ‘is a form of melancholy originating in despair, from being separated from one’s native country.’
Welsh has its own word for the phenomenon: hiraeth. But hiraeth is not simply caused by being exiled from a nation, rather by a sundering of a more intimate kind from the terrain, customs and people of one’s birth. Given that my instructions to Ormiston had effectively enforced such a separation in the case of Matthew Thomas, it seemed only right to inform the jury of this particular form of insanity before they withdrew to deliberate. They had received the information gratefully, and their subsequent verdict, swiftly arrived at, was that Matthew Thomas had taken his own life while not of sound mind, memory or understanding as a result of the acute nostalgia occasioned by his eviction from the only home he had ever known.
Having confirmed the jury’s verdict in writing, instead of dismissing the now voluble spectators I rose from my seat, quit the security of the coroner’s table and stood in front of the crowd.
The hubbub that had broken out at the apparent end of proceedings died away, and those who had been in the process of gathering themselves and their families to depart fell still. The buffeting wind stirred the air, laden with dust from streets long deprived of rain.
I swept what remained of my gaze from one side of the crowd to the other, a blur of unidentifiable faces slipping past my peripheral vision.
A hush fell, every eye fixed on me, waiting.
My mouth was as dry as chalk. ‘You’ve heard the verdict of the jury,’ I said, my voice as confident as I could make it. ‘When he was not in his right mind, Matthew Thomas hanged himself. But though he took his own life, it is I who am responsible for his death.’
If they had been quiet before, they were pin-drop silent now, and the air seemed suddenly thick in my throat, as if the words I had to speak would choke me.
‘If his death had happened on another estate, I would have taken the squire who gave Matthew Thomas notice to task for not having sufficient care of his tenants. For not having provided for Matthew and Mair’s welfare when they had been deprived of their home. And I can promise you, I condemn myself every bit as much as I would have condemned another man. Every bit.’
My voice broke on those last words and a small ripple of something I could not name went through the crowd.
I dry-swallowed and forced myself to make the promise I had determined on sometime during the darkest hours of the night. ‘I should have had more care of Glanteifi’s people. And in future, I will.’
Then, my piece said and my humiliation complete, I turned away and retreated behind the table.
But if I had hoped that the spectators would be content to discuss my self-abasement amongst themselves and leave me to lick my wounds in peace, I was to be disappointed.
‘Ah, the gentlemen of the press,’ John said, alerting me to the identity of the approaching figures. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Pritchard, Mr Foster.’
Journalists attended almost every inquest I conducted, and these two were familiar to me. The taller and slimmer of the two was Foster, from the Carmarthen Journal; his shorter, portlier companion wrote for The Welshman. Unlike the Journal, which was a stridently Tory organ, Pritchard’s newspaper represented the Radical view and could generally be relied upon to support my stance as coroner. However, I dreaded his commentary on this particular inquest.
‘Can you confirm the rumour that you’ll be paying for Matthew Thomas’s funeral?’ Foster asked.
I stood up straight and pointed my blind gaze in the direction of his face. ‘I can.’
‘And do you think that’s sufficient reparation?’ Pritchard asked.
‘No. You heard me say how I will make reparation. By ensuring that I do better by Glanteifi’s tenants in future.’
‘Words, words, words,’ Pritchard scoffed. ‘Will you make good on them, that’s the question.’
His tone was goading, and everything in me wanted to pivot on my heel and punch him on the nose, not because he was questioning my integrity, but because his words were a horrible echo of my own fears.
John packed up the writing box and put it in the saddlebag on the table in front of him. ‘Right, we’d better be off,’ he said affably. ‘What’s next for you gentlemen? Lunch in the Emlyn Arms?’
‘No such luck,’ Foster said. ‘We’re off to Llandyfriog now. Got a tip-off this morning that there’s been some damage to this factory that’s being built there.’
‘Jem Harborne’s wool mill?’ There was an odd eagerness in John’s tone that caught my ear.
‘That’s it,’ Pritchard said. ‘D’you know him?’
‘We’re acquainted. I met him in London. At the Great Exhibition.’
‘You should come with us then. He’d probably appreciate a friendly face.’
‘I don’t think so. Not today.’
Not in the aftermath of this humiliating inquest was what he meant. But perhaps he could persuade them to be less condemnatory of me if he went with them, smoothed their path with this Harborne. ‘No – you go, John. It would do you good to be away from Glanteifi for an hour or so. Take your mind off things.’
Riding home alone, I could at least endure my wretchedness in peace.
John
If I’m honest, one of the reasons I’d called the inquest at such short notice
was to get it done before the press could hear about it. It was my bad luck that Foster and Pritchard’d happened to be in the area the day before and heard what had happened at Nantyddwrgi.
Their newspapers were on opposite sides politically speaking, but they weren’t any keener to waste money than the rest of us, so the pair of them’d come to Newcastle Emlyn together. They offered me a ride out to the factory in their carriage, but I wasn’t in the mood for conversation after the inquest, so I said I’d catch them up and went to find the boy who was looking after Seren.
He was letting her graze on the grass behind the church, and as well as her reins, he handed me a letter. ‘The Glanteifi steward gave me this for you.’
I took the folded page. On one side it was addressed to H. Probert-Lloyd Esq., and on the other there was an instruction for me.
John, please be so good as to read this to Mr Probert-Lloyd for me.
I gave the boy his penny and watched him skip away before I unfolded the letter.
Dear Mr Probert-Lloyd,
It is with great sorrow that I must inform you that I no longer feel able to act as steward to the Glanteifi estate. Recent sad events have persuaded me that I must acquiesce to my daughter’s long-held desire that I go and live with her and her family in Aberaeron. Mr Davies has an acute mind and a knowledge of your tenants’ ways that will stand him in excellent stead as my successor.
With every good wish for the future, I remain,
Your humble servant,
Micah Ormiston
My thoughts were all over the place on the way to Llandyfriog. The Teifi flowed very close to the road along one stretch, and usually, if you listened hard enough over the sound of your horse’s hoofbeats, you could hear it rippling and swirling around rocks and tree roots in the bank. That day, I didn’t hear a thing. All I could think about was Mr Ormiston’s letter.
I didn’t know whether I was thrilled to bits or scared stiff. A year ago, I hadn’t even met Harry, and now here I was about to be steward to the Glanteifi estate and, as long as I passed the exam, a qualified solicitor.