Not One of Us

by Alis Hawkins

  His mother’d died not long after he got home, and, the day after her funeral, his father’d thrown Amos out of the house. He’d needed a job to keep body and soul together until Harborne was ready for him in Llandyfriog, which was how he’d ended up working for Dai Dolbannon.

  Then, one day just after Christmas, Dai had sent him to pick up some cloth from Mic Rees, and he’d found Lizzie struggling with the wheel she and her mother used to spin their yarn. The mechanism’d jammed, and Amos had fixed it for her. Not just fixed it but made it work better than before, with some little adjustment or another. And that, believe it or not, had been that. They’d fallen for each other. That week, Amos’d started going to church instead of chapel, so that he could see Lizzie every Sunday.

  ‘And nobody knew you were courting?’

  ‘N-no.’

  Amos had nobody to tell, and Lizzie’d kept it quiet because she knew her mother would throw a fit and forbid her to see him.

  ‘Wh-when the factory’d b-been built, th-things would’ve been different,’ Amos said. ‘M-Mrs Rees would’ve s-seen that I could b-be a good p-provider then.’

  I didn’t doubt it. He’d’ve been rich quick-smart. Because Jem Harborne wasn’t going to stop at one mill. As soon as he had his looms up and running, he’d be building a spinning mill, then one for carding. And each time there’d be more work for Amos. Designing, building, fixing, improving.

  The more of the story that came out, and the more poor Amos stuttered, the louder the heckling got. From the shouts that came from the crowd, the thing that people couldn’t understand – even more than Lizzie choosing Amos in the first place – was why she’d given the coron fedw to Nattie Stockton.

  ‘Sh-she was m-m-making the crown for me,’ Amos said when Harry asked him. ‘At a ch-church outing. She was g-going to g-give it to me later. B-but the others s-started t-teasing her, going on and on about N-Nattie being s-sweet on her, how h-he’d come here f-for her. We-we-we didn’t want anybody to know about us. So in the end, sh-she gave the c-crown to Nattie.’

  God, life was unfair sometimes. I thought of all the lies and secrecy that’d surrounded Lizzie Rees’s death, and wondered how the Stocktons would feel now that they knew their son was dead because he’d been open and honest and just worn his heart on his sleeve.

  Harry

  I found Amos Bowen’s testimony about the night of Lizzie Rees’s death excruciating. Quite apart from the glacial slowness with which his evidence emerged, his description of the dark interior of the box bed where he and Lizzie exchanged whispered confidences while wholly invisible to each other reminded me with painful vividness of my own courting days with Margaret Jones. The hayloft where she slept had wrapped us in a velvety, exclusive darkness that had induced us to say – and do – things we would never have contemplated in daylight.

  I grew increasingly uncomfortable as I remembered the delights of intimate caresses, hands trembling as they stroked and searched, and I tried to focus only on Bowen’s words. Fortunately I soon heard something that demanded my full attention.

  ‘And th-then s-s-suddenly Lizzie s-seemed to g-go limp. And she m-made a noise.’

  ‘What sort of noise?’ I asked.

  ‘L-l-like a l-little cough. Or a ch-choke.’

  He had asked her if she was all right, and when he received no reply, he had put a hand to her face. But there had been no response. Becoming concerned, he had slid open the side of the bed and fetched a candle from the kitchen.

  By its light, he had realised that Lizzie was not breathing, and had tried without success to revive her.

  As he stuttered out this distressing testimony, I asked myself whether it could be true. Had Elizabeth Rees really simply expired during an exchange of mutual tenderness? How could such a thing happen? Even Reckitt could not explain it.

  ‘Mr Bowen, please tell the inquest what happened next. Once you’d realised that you couldn’t revive her.’

  Bowen’s vocal apparatus seemed determined to prevent him speaking of what had happened in the aftermath of Lizzie’s death, so it was with the greatest difficulty, and much striking of thigh with fist, that he eventually outlined events as they had occurred.

  Panic mounting, he had roused Mic Rees, but her father’s attempts to revive Lizzie proved as unsuccessful as Bowen’s own.

  Subsequently, events had proceeded much as we had deduced.

  Once he had managed an account of how he and Mic Rees had replaced Lizzie’s wet nightgown – including, as John had suspected, the necessity of unpicking the row of stitches that divided its lower part – I asked Amos Bowen why Rees had done that before going to fetch Dr Gwynne. ‘Wouldn’t it have been better,’ I suggested, ‘for the doctor to see her as she was?’

  Amos maintained, as Rees had himself, that Lizzie’s father had been determined not to shame her. I nodded and made a note. Shame, I wrote, because of (i) soiled nightgown (ii) birch crown given to NS but courting in bed with another man.

  At my side, John read my words and nodded deliberately so that I would see. Any other reason? I wrote. This time he spoke, his voice for my ears only. ‘No.’

  I looked up at Amos once more. ‘And what about you? Didn’t you think it might be a good idea to tell Dr Gwynne the truth?’

  ‘Yes, what were you hiding?’ shouted one of the spectators, loudly cheered and echoed by voices from all corners of the room.

  ‘N-n-nothing,’ Amos stuttered, audibly distressed. ‘I was j-j-just afraid I’d g-get the blame.’

  ‘A reasonable fear,’ I said, addressing the crowd. ‘If common gossip is to be believed, Mr Bowen was seen. But in the half-light, he was mistaken for Nathaniel Stockton.’ I did not need to add that not much more than twenty-four hours later, Stockton had been dead. Amos’s fear had been entirely justified.

  Bowen turned towards Nattie’s parents. ‘I-I’m s-s-so s-s-sorry! I d-didn’t know anybody’d s-seen me. If I had, I-I-I would’ve c-come forward. But I didn’t.’

  His genuine remorse would, I feared, be no comfort to Mr and Mrs Stockton. I wondered whether Nattie had had any inkling that he was not Lizzie’s only suitor; that his pursuit of her – which must have seemed successful when she gave him the coron fedw – was destined ultimately to end in disappointment.

  I hoped not. I hoped he had died still believing that his love was returned.

  John

  Now that everybody in the room knew what’d really happened to Lizzie Rees, Harry announced a quick break before we moved on to the inquest proper.

  I looked around for Amos Bowen, but couldn’t see him anywhere. ‘Just nipping outside for a minute,’ I told Harry. I needed to talk to Amos because something odd had happened just before the end of his testimony. Harry’d asked him if he had any further information about Lizzie’s death, and instead of starting on his usual fight to get a word out, I saw Amos look across at Mic Rees and Mic give the smallest of head shakes. After that, Amos hadn’t said anything more. Not even when I’d leaned forward to encourage Harry to press him and Harry’d reminded him that he was under oath.

  I wanted to know what that head shake had been about; what Mic Rees didn’t want Amos to say.

  Outside, the sun was bright after the taproom and I squinted up and down the street. No sign of Amos. I trotted down to the livery stables, but they hadn’t seen him there.

  When I walked back up to the Pendre, Harry was standing outside with Lydia, Lleu and Reckitt. Quite a lot of other people’d come out for a spell in the sunshine as well. Some had brought a mug of beer with them; others were just standing about. But they were all so amazed about Amos and Lizzie that they seemed to’ve forgotten that what we were really here for was to find out how Nattie Stockton had died.

  ‘Amos has made himself scarce,’ I said.

  Lydia looked up from her conversation with Lleu. ‘Probably wise, in the circumstances.’

  ‘Do we believe him?’ I asked. ‘About the way Lizzie died?’

  ‘Everything he sa
id was consistent with my findings,’ Reckitt said. ‘The young man’s evidence may sound far-fetched, but I assure you, it is compatible with the physical evidence.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said, ‘but there’s still something we haven’t got to the bottom of.’ I told them about Mic Rees shaking his head at Amos. ‘It was like he was telling him to keep quiet about something.’

  Harry bit the inside of his lip. ‘Rees has been keeping something from us right from the beginning. Each time we found him out in a lie, I thought we’d got to the bottom of it, but obviously there’s something he’s still not telling us.’

  ‘However,’ Lydia said, ‘he’s not obliged to tell you anything unless it has a bearing on his daughter’s death or Nathaniel Stockton’s.’

  Harry sighed. He knew she was right. But in his own way, he was as bad as Reckitt for wanting to know things. ‘Shall we go back in?’ he said.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’d just like a moment of John’s time before you begin again.’

  For a second or two, Harry just stood there with Reckitt and Lleu while they all looked at me and Lydia. Then he seemed to come to his senses and realise that she wanted to speak to me in private, so he ushered the other two back inside with him.

  Lydia didn’t waste time or breath, just lowered her voice so the people around us wouldn’t hear. ‘Your argument with Harry the other night – is it resolved?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I suspected as much. I’m sorry to raise this in the middle of an inquest, but with the two of you at loggerheads, something needs to be done.’

  My heart began to race. What kind of something did she have in mind? ‘Go on.’

  ‘You and I both know that Harry wasn’t ready to be squire when his father died. He’s struggling with it all. His fear of Glanteifi going bankrupt means he isn’t thinking logically and the estate’s suffering.’

  She could have added ‘and people are dying’ given what had happened to Matthew Nantyddwrgi, but that would have been a bit melodramatic for Lydia.

  ‘At least he had the good sense to appoint you under-steward.’

  ‘Yes, to make sure I was always available to go out to sudden deaths with him.’ It came out more bitterly than I’d intended, and I could see that Lydia was taken aback.

  ‘If it was just a matter of convenience, he could have found another assistant coroner, John. He made you under-steward because he could see that you’re extremely capable.’

  Extremely capable. Had Harry said that? I wasn’t going to ask. ‘Maybe,’ I mumbled.

  She took a deep breath. ‘But if you’re going to be Glanteifi’s agent, it won’t be easy for you to simply drop everything at a moment’s notice and go off to look at suspicious deaths with him.’

  My heart rate doubled. ‘Are you telling me you’ve changed your mind? About being Harry’s assistant?’

  ‘No. It’s not Harry who needs a new assistant. It’s you.’

  I stared at her. ‘You want to be under-steward?’

  ‘I’m not looking for another title. But you need to be able to go with him whenever he’s called out as coroner. And that means that there needs to be somebody at Glanteifi who can carry out your instructions while you’re away. Someone you and Harry can both trust.’ She paused, eyes on me. ‘It has to be your decision, obviously. As I say, I’m sorry to bring it up in the middle of an inquest, but at least you’ll have time on the way home to mull it all over. Shall we talk about it tonight?’

  I nodded. It made sense. Of course it did.

  The question was, did I want somebody cleverer than me as my assistant?

  Harry

  I walked back into the Pendre, my mounting trepidation about what I was about to do pushing aside the questions raised by Lydia’s sudden wish to speak confidentially with John. The county magistrates would disapprove if they knew how I was planning to conduct this inquest. They would contend that I was overstepping the bounds of my role.

  And strictly speaking, of course, they would be right. Nowhere in Sewell’s Law of Coroner did he claim that it was the coroner’s duty to establish who was responsible for a homicide. The inquest jury’s role was purely to decide how the deceased had come by their death; it then fell to the magistrates – or their proxies, the police – to investigate. However, in my experience, in the absence of eyewitnesses or compelling motives, such investigations tended to be at best perfunctory, at worst non-existent.

  But my motive in this case was not simply to see justice done. I had a compelling personal reason for wishing to unmask Nathaniel Stockton’s killer, because I could not shake the feeling that my visit to Rhosdywarch with Reckitt had raised suspicions about Lizzie Rees’s death that had ultimately led to Stockton’s murder.

  While John was otherwise occupied, instead of taking my place at the coroner’s table under the scrutiny of spectators whose eyes I could not meet, I made my way upstairs to the small room where the three men from Eglwyswrw were being held.

  The burly superintendent constable who had reported to me earlier answered my knock, and I beckoned him out onto the tiny dark landing.

  ‘Caleb Richards – the plwyfwas for Cilgerran – has been up to see you, I expect?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Says he’ll come up for them.’

  ‘Good. One more thing – can you hear what’s being said downstairs?’

  ‘We can hear people talking, but not the words.’

  I had assumed that would be the case, as the coroner’s table was at the other end of the inn. ‘Very well. We’ll be starting again in a minute or two, so it won’t be long now.’

  The front door of the inn was closed when I came back downstairs. Presumably Lydia had concluded her business with John.

  Apprehension plucked at me. What could be so urgent that she would wish to speak to him now? And why had she excluded me from the conversation? Did she have thoughts about the inquest that she had chosen to share with John rather than with me? Did she think I was mishandling things?

  * * *

  Following the usual inquest pattern, I first called on the coracle men, as the finders of the body, to give their evidence as to time and place. Then I asked Caleb Richards to come forward, and he testified that none of the innkeepers in Cilgerran had seen Nathaniel Stockton on the day he died – or indeed on any previous occasion – and that nobody had come forward to say that they had seen the young man in the village that day.

  Reckitt took the witness chair next in order to present the jury with the facts of Nathaniel Stockton’s death: that he had been beaten, as evidenced by the bruising on his torso and contusions on his face; that he had indeed been drowned, but not in the Teifi, as the river contained no pond weed; that his lifeless body had been hidden somewhere in a cramped seated position for at least ten hours, and subsequently transported to Cilgerran and consigned to the river, where it had been caught by the fishermen.

  Cadi Evans was the second witness to be re-called.

  After we had dispensed with his identification of the body and Nathaniel’s time working with him at Gilfachwen, I broached the reason for the dead man’s having come to the area.

  ‘When I spoke to you a few days ago, you told me that it had been common knowledge that Nathaniel had come here specifically to court Elizabeth Rees, and that her favouring him caused a lot of resentment. That local lads didn’t like it,’ I added, in case Cadi’s English did not stretch as far as ‘resentment’.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And that he was warned off. Took a beating.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he tell you who had beaten him?’

  ‘He didn’t know names. Just said that the lads who usually stood about outside the forge grabbed him as he was walking home one day and gave him a proper hiding.’

  ‘The young men who were usually at the forge?’ I said, suppressing a sudden excitement. ‘You didn’t mention them when you came to identify the body.’

  ‘I didn’t know. When I told Nye, th
e other servant who sleeps in the loft with us, what’d happened to Nattie, he said Nattie’d told him that he saw the same lads every Sunday when he was walking home from church. Said they always looked at him like a farm dog looks at a stranger on the yard.’

  In other words, with their hackles up and teeth bared.

  ‘Can you describe Mr Stockton’s injuries after that beating?’

  ‘He came home black and blue. Don’t know how he got back, to be honest with you, because he couldn’t hardly see out of either eye. Said two of them held him and the other one did the hitting.’

  I turned to the front row of spectators. ‘Dr Reckitt?’ He stood. ‘The recent injuries you described on Mr Stockton’s body – the punches to face and torso – were they consistent with his having been restrained by one or more persons while he was beaten by another?’

  ‘They were. Added to which, Mr Stockton’s knuckles were undamaged, suggesting that though he’d been hit repeatedly, he had not landed any significant blows on his own behalf. In other words, he hadn’t been in a fight, but had been beaten.’

  My words of thanks were lost in the sudden muttering and murmuring of the crowd. Were the names of the three young men currently being held upstairs being whispered by spectators from Eglwyswrw? Whether they were or not, what mattered was that the similarity of the injuries inflicted on Stockton during the forge trio’s assault and the beating he had taken prior to being drowned had been established. It was time to call a witness who could put names to Stockton’s attackers.

  ‘Mr Richards? Our young friend, if you please.’ The previous afternoon, I had sought out Caleb Richards and given him instructions to ride over to Eglwyswrw this morning and bring back the stable boy John had spoken to.

  While we waited for the lad to be brought in, I addressed the spectators.

  ‘I’m going to interview my next witness in Welsh. Rather than translate question by question from the coroner’s table, which would hold up proceedings, I’m going to ask my associate, Miss Lydia Howell, to translate for Mr and Mrs Stockton. If there is anybody else present who does not speak Welsh sufficiently, please come to the front and join them now.’