Those Who Know

by Alis Hawkins

  ‘Do you, by any chance, have copies of Mr Rowland’s previous work?’ Mr Gelyot asked. ‘I’ve not yet had the pleasure of reading any of it.’

  Gordon stared at him for a moment or two then turned back to his stock room. When he came back, he had three slim volumes in his hand.

  ‘These are all I have at present.’ He handed them to Mr Gelyot in return for his card so that he knew where to send the invoice, then turned to me. ‘Please encourage Mr Rowland to send me the next manuscript at his earliest convenience. His work is popular, which is helpful to both our causes.’

  Harry

  As Mr Lewis, the town clerk, made his opening remarks to the crowd, I tried to estimate how many people were standing in Cardigan’s high street, waiting to hear what I had to say. More than in Tregaron, I thought, despite its being a normal working day. Cardigan, as the bigger town, had more voters, of course, and the bright sun had, no doubt, persuaded those who were out and about to linger where they might otherwise have hurried on with their day.

  ‘So now, without further ado,’ Mr Lewis said, ‘I invite Mr Henry Probert-Lloyd to speak to us.’

  I rose to my feet, heart racing and stomach full of frantic butterflies. But, before I could reach the lectern which would protect me, somewhat, from the public gaze, there was a stirring in the crowd. A voice repeated, ‘excuse me, excuse me’, in Welsh as the speaker pushed his way toward the stage and came to a halt at the foot of the steps. I was able to make out a man in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, as if he had been interrupted at his work and sent here. ‘Message, Mr Lewis. For Mr Probert-Lloyd.’

  The note was passed to Minnever who opened it.

  He read in a voice designed not to carry beyond the stage. ‘Regrettably, I must leave it to you, Probert-Lloyd. Sincerely, M. Caldicot.’ The hand holding the note dropped to his side. ‘What the devil does he mean by that?’

  I shook my head. I had no idea. What was Caldicot leaving to me? Today’s meeting? The coronership? Discovering the truth about Rowland’s death?

  Mr Lewis approached me. ‘Are you happy to continue, Mr Probert-Lloyd?’

  I pulled myself together. ‘Perfectly.’

  Minnever took his seat once more and I stepped forward to the lectern, gathering my thoughts and looking for a way to align myself with the mood of the crowd. Caldicot’s absence from the stage was on everybody’s lips, so I began with it.

  ‘I know you’ve come to see a contest today – to see me and Mr Montague Caldicot slugging it out as to who deserves your vote more. But, as you’ll have noticed – because, unlike mine, your sight is probably perfectly good – I’ve just received a message. Unfortunately, Mr Caldicot’s unable to be here.’

  That garnered groans and cries of ‘Shame’ and ‘Aren’t we good enough?’

  I grinned. ‘So, because he’s not here, I’m going to talk about him!’

  As I had hoped, that got a few cheers and some laughter.

  ‘No Dr Reckitt, no Mr Caldicot,’ a wag shouted. ‘Are you making work for yourself and killing off the opposition?’

  I laughed along with the audience but the thought of a dead Caldicot sent a chill through me. Regrettably, I must leave you to it.

  If Montague Caldicot were to kill himself, any scandal in which he had been involved would be likely to die with him, sparing his family any further embarrassment. Was that the path he had chosen? And, if that proved to be the case, how would this crowd remember what I had said to them, in the light of his death? Which of my words would come to their minds as they murmured to friends and family, ‘and all the time he was speaking, poor Mr Caldicot was lying, dead’?

  Without Caldicot, there was no competition. I needed neither to set up an impregnable position before he could speak, nor rush to my own defence following his prior attack.

  So, when the humorous comments had petered out and the crowd was quiet again, I spoke of Montague Caldicot and what I had learned from him. That there was a time for standing in opposition to things and a time to ally oneself. That one had to recognise one’s own shortcomings and not deny them but see them for what they were and try to do better.

  ‘I can’t promise you that I will never make mistakes if I become coroner,’ I said. ‘Only a fool would tell you that. Or a politician.’ I waited for the laughter, which duly came, and persuaded myself that there was affection in it. ‘But I can promise you that I will listen. To medical evidence. To common sense. And to the people who knew the person whose death I am investigating. Because, as much as the relatives of the dead need peace of mind, the dead themselves need the truth of their death to be told if they are to rest in peace.’

  It was not what they had anticipated, not what they had come for, but, from the enthusiasm of the applause, my speech seemed to have found favour with the crowd. There were, of course, many questions, some frivolous and some to the point, all of which I answered as best I could. Then a voice somewhere to the side of the crowd shouted, ‘You and Montague Caldicot are both recently back from London. What’s to stop either of you finding a deputy and going back there? Then we’d have somebody we’ve never voted for, wouldn’t we?’

  I nodded. ‘It happens, doesn’t it?’ I paused. ‘I can’t speak for Mr Caldicot, of course, but I can promise you that I won’t be going anywhere. I have Glanteifi to run and I mean to do it myself, with the help of John Davies who, as well as being coroner’s officer, is also under-steward to the estate. I’m a Cardi,’ I said, switching to Welsh to prove the point. Minnever wouldn’t like it and neither would the Tory worthies but I was willing to bet that the majority of the electors in town were more comfortable in Welsh. ‘I was born in the Teifi Valley, my mother was a solicitor’s daughter from here, in Cardigan. I grew up with Welsh as my first language. I am not an English squire. I’m grateful to the English side of my family for sending my father here as a young man, but I don’t know them very well and I feel no real connection to them or to their lands in Worcestershire. All my loyalty is to you and to Glanteifi. England was a foreign country to me, growing up. I know I lived in London for a time, but that was because I was a bit of a prodigal son – I didn’t want to stay home on the farm, I wanted a more exciting life. But this is where my mother’s family is. This is where my heart is. And I won’t be going anywhere.’

  As I listened to their cheers, I wondered whether it was true. Would I have come back, had blindness not forced my hand? It seemed unlikely. I would, in all probability, have pursued a career at the bar and done exactly as they had suggested – found a proxy to run Glanteifi’s affairs. And yet, since I had returned, something of the feeling for the land that had grown in me from infant to boy to young man had reawakened and, speaking the language of my youth, I had discovered my younger self again.

  But, more than that, as acting coroner, I had discovered a vocation. What had begun as a convenient excuse to cultivate a life away from the estate and from my father’s oversight had become an occupation to which I felt peculiarly suited.

  A calling I was determined to heed.

  John

  Nicholas Rowland hadn’t been writing radical works on education. He’d been writing erotic literature. I didn’t need to open the parcel of books I’d come for to know that. The three that William Gordon had put in Mr Gelyot’s hand were more than enough. One would’ve been plenty.

  They were in my bag now, stuffed in along with the parcel. Having them there, I felt as if I was carrying a burning coal about. As if the books’d burn through my bag any minute and fall out for everybody in Drury Lane to see.

  When Mr Gelyot’d given them to me, I’d flicked the top one open expecting to see a title that had something to do with Chartism, or education. Instead, what I saw was:

  What the Girls Found

  or

  A Tale of a Naughty Teacher and His Two Naughty Pupils

  by

  Nicky Revell

  Nicky Revell, not Nicholas Rowland. Had there been a mistake?

  No. I’d
come for Nicholas Rowland’s books and that’s what William Gordon had given me. I hadn’t told him Rowland was dead so, as far as he was concerned, I was going back to Llanddewi Brefi to congratulate the man on his latest work.

  They must be his.

  But Nicholas Rowland couldn’t hold a pen. If he’d written these books, he’d had help. And if it’d come from his two ‘Naughty Pupils’ perhaps Ruth’d been telling the truth about him asking her to marry him.

  I didn’t want to look at those books. I really didn’t. I knew what effect the photographs in Wych Street’d had on me and I was disgusted at how my body’d responded to pictures of naked strangers. Women who were nothing to do with me and never would be. What would any sweetheart or wife I had in future say if she knew I’d looked at things like that? Not just looked at them but been excited by them.

  That kind of reaction was supposed to be for real live girls, girls you knew, girls you fancied. Girls you wanted to walk out with, kiss, lie with, marry even. Not strangers posing next to potted plants and waving ostrich-feather fans. Strangers making eyes at you over their shoulders.

  But I didn’t have any choice – I’d have to read the books. If I didn’t, Harry’d think I was a know-nothing boy who blushed even to think about what was between those covers. The kind of boy who might be passed over for a woman of the world like Lydia Howell when it came to investigating deaths. Because, if Harry could invite her to Glanteifi to be his private secretary, what was to stop him asking her to stand in as coroner’s officer if he thought I was too busy with the estate? And if she stood in once—

  No. I had to show Harry that I was a man not a boy. When I got back to Glanteifi, I had to be able to tell him exactly what Rowland had been up to.

  Back on Oxford Street we had to dodge through increasing numbers of people and traffic and I tried to keep my mind on where I was putting my feet. Gus Gelyot kept pace with me but said nothing. He hadn’t been surprised when he saw what the books were. I’d watched his face carefully as he took them from Mr Gordon and I could tell. I think he’d known from the beginning what we were going to find waiting for us in Holywell Street.

  That still didn’t mean he understood. ‘Naughty, as the title suggests,’ he’d said, watching me flip the books open before I stuffed them in my bag. ‘But hardly the sort of thing that gets a man murdered.’

  ‘Maybe not here.’

  ‘Really? You think this might be a motive?’

  ‘If the Two Naughty Pupils are those young women I told you about, and either of their fathers found out about this, then yes.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they simply have carried out one of your nocturnal processions? Humiliated him? Warned him off?’

  ‘No. Because everybody knew the girls worked with him. There’d never have been an end to the gossip and rumours.’

  Mr Gelyot had nodded. ‘Still, I suppose this puts paid to your blackmail idea. Whatever Rowland knew about this Caldicot, he couldn’t have been blackmailing him if Caldicot knew about this, surely?’

  I thought about that as I waited on the platform at Paddington Station. If the ‘other gentleman’ was Caldicot then he and Rowland must’ve known each other well. Been friends, even. Which explained the fifty pounds in the school fund. Caldicot had good reason to deny any friendship once Rowland was dead, though, didn’t he? If what was in my bag had become public knowledge, he’d have wanted to make sure he wasn’t associated with it in any way.

  But he was associated with it. So, as far as I could see, his campaign to be coroner was over. All Harry had to do was show Caldicot these books and tell him that Mr Gordon had recognised my description of him. Being a party to this sort of thing – especially as it’d involved Nan and Ruth – wasn’t compatible with holding public office.

  Harry

  Try as he might, Minnever could not persuade the Tory camp that Caldicot’s cryptic note represented a withdrawal from the election; they insisted that, unless and until he formally withdrew his candidacy, Caldicot’s name would go to the nomination meeting.

  Minnever, inevitably, took this as our cue to get down to some serious canvassing and I am certain that he would have displayed me on the streets of Cardigan until nightfall, had Lydia not sought me out.

  ‘Twm’s come from Glanteifi to take us back,’ she said. ‘Phoebe Gwatkyn’s there and she’s keen to see you urgently.’

  The homeward journey was a good deal less awkward than the outward one as Phoebe Gwatkyn’s unexpected arrival at the mansion freed us into speculation, and both Lydia and I arrived at Glanteifi in good spirits.

  We found the lady of Alltybela in the drawing room with my housekeeper, Mrs Griffiths. I scarcely had enough time to wonder how the two women came to be sitting by the fire like boon companions, before Mrs Griffiths rose from her chair.

  ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd, you’re back!’

  I knew that she would not dream of calling me Harry in front of a guest so I bore her formality with the best smile I could muster.

  ‘I’ll go and have some tea and bara brith sent up,’ she said. ‘You must both be hungry after that drive home.’

  As she made for the door, Miss Gwatkyn said, in Welsh, ‘Thank you so much for indulging me, Mrs Griffiths. It’s been delightful talking to you about the history of the house.’

  The door closed behind Isabel Griffiths and apprehension pulled at me: had they been discussing Glanteifi’s history or mine? Mrs Griffiths would have found it far easier to maintain the proprieties had they been speaking in English; in Welsh they could easily have been two middle-aged women talking about a boy they were both fond of.

  Phoebe Gwatkyn and Lydia began talking like old friends and I found myself having to stifle the feeling that my home had been annexed by women. However, once our tea and cake had been put on a small table before the fire, and the quality of both bara brith and butter had been complimented, Phoebe Gwatkyn came to the point and I was the coroner once more.

  ‘As I believe you know, Ruth Eynon has been staying with me since the funeral. She and Nan Walters have begun teaching the children again but I’ve still had ample opportunity to speak to her.’ Miss Gwatkyn’s pause had the quality of a well-directed stare. ‘I’m quite sure that her claim to have been engaged to be married to Nicholas Rowland is a fabrication.’

  I waited for her to elaborate but Lydia, seeing perhaps that Miss Gwatkyn required some prompting, asked, ‘Can you tell us why?’

  Miss Gwatkyn placed her cup and saucer on the occasional table at her elbow. ‘There are several reasons, some of which have nothing to do with Ruth Eynon, but her own account of their supposed courtship has reinforced my suspicions. She described numerous occasions when she and Nicholas were together – alone – during which their fondness developed. What she does not know is that Nicholas was in London – occasionally accompanying me – on many of the occasions she claims for herself.’ There was a brief pause during which something seemed to pass between her and Lydia. ‘High days and holidays and so forth. Added to which, Nicholas and I had agreed that he would never allow himself to be alone with either Nan or Ruth. Both he and I had far too much consideration for their reputation to allow such a thing. They were educated young women; they could expect to make advantageous marriages and I was keen to ensure that nothing stood in the way of that.’

  ‘But, from what they told John and me when we interviewed them, neither girl aspired to marriage. They had their minds set on independence as teachers.’

  ‘They are, as yet, very young.’

  Miss Gwatkyn’s somewhat repressive tone surprised me; I would have expected her to support Nan and Ruth’s ambitions unequivocally.

  ‘But it’s not simply that,’ she said, her voice softening and becoming more hesitant. ‘There is another reason why I felt, from the beginning, that Ruth’s claim was false.’

  She reached for her teacup once more, and, as she took a sip, I saw Lydia put a hand out to her as if to offer reassurance.

  ‘I’m aware of
the rumours that circulated about Nicholas and me,’ Miss Gwatkyn went on. ‘But they demonstrate that, even though people are apt to allow their imaginations to run unchecked, they are, in other ways, almost entirely unimaginative.’

  I said nothing, simply waited for the explanation she was edging towards.

  ‘I knew, from the first time I met him, what kind of man Nicholas Rowland was. In fact, I suspected it before I met him.’ There was a tremor in Phoebe Gwatkyn’s voice. ‘Because he came to Llanddewi Brefi on my husband’s recommendation. And I know what kind of man my husband is.’

  I stared at her. I could not help myself. Though she instantly disappeared into the oblivion of the whirlpool, my eyes instinctively sought out her face because I realised what she meant and, suddenly, many of the things we had learned slipped into place like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle.

  ‘He’s a man who prefers the physical attentions of other men to those of women,’ I said. ‘Isn’t he?’

  John

  On the train, an hour went by before I could bring myself to open my bag and take one of the books out. And I wouldn’t have done it then if any of the other people in the carriage had been close enough to see what I was reading. I felt as if I had a stray cat on my knees. It might lie there quietly before I touched it but, when I did, I feared what it might do to me.