by Alis Hawkins
‘Eynon told me about the fight that got him his reputation for a violent temper,’ I said. ‘He wanted me to believe that, by the time he was pulled away from the man he was beating, he didn’t know what he was doing any more.’ I watched her out of the corner of my eye. ‘If that’s true, d’you think it would excuse him if the man’d died?’
Lydia responded without hesitation and I knew that I had succeeded in moving us from the uncertainties of desire to solid philosophical ground.
‘Always assuming that Eynon was telling truth, I suppose it would depend on whether that was the first time it’d happened. If he’d never experienced such an animal rage before, then he might be less culpable because he couldn’t have predicted his loss of self-control.’
‘Then, using that logic, if he’d confronted Rowland and lost his temper, he’d have had no excuse because he would’ve known exactly what might happen.’
‘Exactly.’
I nodded. ‘So, to turn your question back on you, is that what you think happened? Or are you just struggling to accept that a man who loved another man might kill him?’
As I had hoped, she laughed. ‘Touché, Harry! Touché.’
John
After all the travelling and strange beds, back at Glanteifi I slept like a puppy and I was up and about in the greyish half-light before sunrise to follow Harry and Lydia to Lampeter.
Somebody’d taken the dirty linen out of my bag while I ate dinner the evening before, so I repacked, had as much breakfast as could be got ready for me in ten minutes and went out into the stableyard. I’d asked Twm which horse’d be the best to take me twenty miles in a hurry and the big gelding that’d been old Mr Probert-Lloyd’s favourite was saddled and waiting for me.
If you wanted the perfect day for people to come out and vote, this was it. The sky got bluer and bluer as we cantered up the Teifi Valley and the breeze lost its chilly early-morning edge and warmed up nicely. Voters would be setting their sons and servants to work and trotting off down to Lampeter to cast their vote in droves.
Lampeter was already a hive of greetings and gossip, chatter and excitement by the time I arrived, even though it was only just gone ten o’clock. People were coming from all directions, like bees to a clover field, ribbons and rosettes on almost every breast. The party committees’d obviously been busy. And, in the middle of the town, on the square where the Newcastle Emlyn and Tregaron roads met, the hustings platform was draped in what looked like furlongs of red and blue cloth.
Minnever saw me and darted over. ‘John! Thank God!’
He’d never been that pleased to see me before. Something wasn’t right. He looked tired and I wondered if he’d been up even earlier than me. Gingerly, I dismounted to put me on the same level as him. ‘Where’s Harry?’ I asked, trying to ignore the horrible aching in my legs and backside. ‘Has he gone to the will reading?’
‘Yes, damn it, he has! It seemed harmless enough to let him go because Caldicot still hadn’t turned up, but things’ve changed in the last half an hour. I need you to go and fetch him.’
‘Why?’ As I asked the question, I looked about for a boy to take my horse to the livery stable, only half-listening for Minnever’s answer. But, when it came, it got my attention like a bucket of cold water.
‘The Tories are putting up another candidate.’
I forgot about livery. ‘What? Why?’ Had the Tories got wind of what I’d discovered in London? But no, that wasn’t it at all.
‘Caldicot’s disappeared. Hasn’t appeared at the last two election meetings. The Tories are panicking.’
‘But can they just decide to put someone else up, just like that?’
‘Of course they can! This is the nomination meeting.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the platform. ‘Caldicot may have absented himself but that doesn’t mean the Tories are going to throw the whole contest into Harry’s lap. I need you to—’
‘Hold on a minute, who’s the new candidate?’
Minnever shook his head as if he’d rather be shaking me. ‘He’s some nonentity. Name of Verwick. That’s all I know at the moment.’
I didn’t recognise the name. But then I didn’t exactly mix in those circles. Especially not in Lampeter. ‘Then does it matter?’ I asked. ‘I mean, nobody’s going to vote for somebody they don’t know, are they?’
‘The Tories aren’t stupid!’ Minnever was almost stamping his foot now. ‘They’ll have made sure he’s somebody people do know! Here, at least. They’ve probably promised him that he can name a deputy as soon as he likes and fob all the work off on to him!’ He stopped, pulled himself together. ‘The truth is, they’ve got wind that Harry’s in town for this will and they’ll have written this Verwick’s speech for him so he can go for Harry with all guns blazing. They’ll say he’s looking for a reason to re-open the inquest. That he’s trying to undermine the inquest jury’s decision – just like Caldicot said in Tregaron. And you know what?’ His eyes started sifting through the crowd as if he was hunting for Tories. ‘Men with the vote are the same men as those who get called on to sit on a jury. They’ll be outraged at the thought that their decisions can be disregarded.’
He was right. We’d both seen the crowd’s reaction when Caldicot had criticised Harry’s response to Margaret Jones’s inquest jury. We didn’t want a repetition of that here.
‘We can’t wait till Harry’s finished with this will,’ Minnever said. ‘We need him here now, talking to people, getting them on his side. I was going to go to the solicitor’s office myself but he’ll listen to you more than me.’
So Minnever went off to do whatever he had to do and, after collaring a boy and sending him off to the livery stables with a note for the ostler and a penny for him, I hurried up the street towards Silas Emmanuel’s office. I wasn’t intimidated by the grandness of it this time and I was about to march straight up to the door and get the knocker going when I spotted Billy Walters on the other side of the road.
Something about the way the boy was just standing there pulled me up and I went over to him. ‘Waiting for your sister, are you?’
He nodded and his eyes flicked to me then back to the door across the street.
‘Your father and mother in there with her?’
He gave me another quick glance. ‘Just Dada. Mam’s shopping.’ The look he gave me told me he thought it was none of my business but he kept the words behind his teeth.
‘How long’ve they been in there?’
He shrugged. ‘How long does it take to read a will, anyway?’
‘Longer than you’d think.’ I’d been present at any number of will readings and I knew that there was no end to the questions people asked. Nor to the arguments they were prepared to have in front of a solicitor, come to that.
Plus, Harry’d be wanting to ask some questions of his own. About contracts with publishers and the sums accrued in different bank accounts. Not to mention what guidance might’ve been given about who could be entrusted with the money raised for the collegiate school.
Billy might have to cool his heels a while yet.
I was just on the point of leaving him to his sulk when he spoke up.
‘My sister says she’s getting money out of this will. Is that right?’
I couldn’t tell what was behind his question. Did he think he’d be in line for some of the money himself? What with Nan still living in her father’s house, Morgan Walters’d be the one deciding what happened to any money she got.
‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘Where’d she get that idea from?’
He glanced at me, then away. ‘Says Teacher Rowland promised it to them.’
‘That may be the case’, I said, ‘but I don’t think they’ll get any money to start with. I think it’ll be a case of waiting to see whether anybody takes over Mr Rowland’s idea for the collegiate school.’
‘What if they do? Her and Ruth?’
‘You think they’d try and put themselves in charge of such a big project?’
Billy shrugged. Trying to pretend he didn’t care either way. But he did, I could see right through him. What I wasn’t sure about was whether he really wanted to see it happen or really didn’t.
‘I don’t know what Mr Rowland would’ve thought of that,’ I said, watching him. ‘From what I understand, he’d only thought of them being teachers at his school, not running it.’
Two men walked past us. Gave us a proper look up and down, too, but Billy spoke as if he hadn’t seen them. ‘Think that’d stop my sister and Ruth Eynon?’
I thought of the books I’d brought back from London, hidden under my mattress so the maids didn’t find them. He was right. Not much would stop the Two Naughty Pupils.
As if he could see into my mind, Billy asked, ‘Will it be enough? The money Rowland’s left? Enough to start the school without—’ He pulled himself up. ‘Without raising any more?’
I stared at him. Did he mean what I thought he meant? Without writing any more of those books?
I thought of Billy listening under the window when we were interviewing his sister and Ruth, spying on Nicholas Rowland for Mattie Hughes, following the teacher after dark as he walked up to the Pontllanio road.
Had Billy snooped around the cowshed academy when Rowland was supposed to be tutoring Nan and Ruth? Had he heard what they were really doing?
‘You spied on them, didn’t you?’ I said, trying to get Billy to look me in the eye. ‘On Rowland and the girls.’
‘I didn’t spy—’
‘It’s all right! I understand. I’ve got a sister, too.’ It didn’t matter whether Sali-Ann was dead or alive. I did understand. As only a brother could. Your sister might drive you to taunts and blows but she’s still your flesh and blood and nobody else is allowed to say a word against her or lay a finger on her. ‘You were making sure nothing happened to her, weren’t you? Because she’s not always the wisest, is she, Nan? Bit hot-headed. Bit strong-willed.’
He shrugged, shoved his hands in his pockets.
‘You watch out for her, don’t you – keep an eye on what’s going on?’
He flicked a glance at me.
‘And you never trusted Nicholas Rowland, I suppose?’ I was guessing, but maybe Nan’s bossing him at school hadn’t been the only reason Billy’d stuck with Mattie Hughes.
The boy shrugged again but his eyes told me I was right.
I looked away from him, turned my face up to the sun, as if I was just enjoying the warmth. As if I wasn’t a breath away from the question that’d change everything.
‘Did you know?’ I asked. ‘What Rowland and the girls were up to – writing those stories?’
His head whipped round and I caught the look of horror on his face but, just as I was about to press him, the door of Silas Emmanuel’s office opened and Miss Gwatkyn stepped out.
Billy pushed himself away from the wall and ran across the road. If I didn’t get the truth out of him now, I probably never would, so I jumped up and followed him.
‘Billy!’
He spun round. ‘Doesn’t matter now, does it? He’s dead. It’s finished.’
I grabbed his arm. Everything had suddenly fallen into place in my mind. As if you’d thrown a handful of dice on the ground and they’d arranged themselves in a perfect sequence. One to six. I could see it all. Clear as day.
‘Ruth came to your house that afternoon, didn’t she? In a state about her and Shoni Goch. Did you spy on them? Were they both crying?’
I didn’t need an answer. His face told me I was right.
They were all out in the street, now. The girls’d come out after Miss Gwatkyn, with Lydia, Harry and Morgan Walters following behind. And Montague Caldicot. Not missing after all.
I still had hold of Billy and I shook him to make him pay attention to me, not to the people on the solicitor’s steps. ‘You’d had enough of it, hadn’t you? You went to confront Nicholas Rowland. You argued, got into a fight, pushed him out of the loft.’ Billy’s eyes went huge and his mouth gaped as if he was struggling for air but he didn’t make a sound. ‘But he got up off the ground, didn’t he? Struggled up towards you. One arm hanging loose, maybe he was limping as well. Groggy from where his head’d hit the ground. He came towards you, hooking himself up the ladder—’ I mimed the gesture with my left hand and saw the horrified look on Billy’s face. ‘You must’ve been scared out of your wits! What was he going to do to you? What was he going to say to your father? That you’d tried to kill him?’
Billy tried to pull his arm free and run away but I had him with both hands now.
‘You pushed the ladder backwards, didn’t you? As hard as you could.’
I could see it in my mind’s eye. The boy scrabbling back from the edge of the loft, terrified of what would happen when Rowland got to the top. Terrified of what his own actions’d brought about. I could see him kicking the ladder backwards with all the strength that terror gives you. I’d been a boy like him. A man had come for me with murder in his eyes and I’d used that strength not to fight but to run. But if I’d had nowhere to run to and the presence of mind to push…
‘Over he went,’ I said, ‘back, back. His head hit the ground with a hell of a smash, didn’t it, Billy? Because you’d pushed that ladder as hard as you could. You all but threw him on to those flagstones. No wonder he didn’t get up again. His head was cracked open.’
‘No!’ I could see the terror and rage of a cornered animal in Billy. ‘No, I didn’t!’ He stopped trying to pull away from me and looked wildly around at the small, horrified knot of people standing a dozen feet away. ‘Tell him! Tell him it’s not true. Tell him that’s not what happened!’
I looked at Ruth and Nan, standing slightly to one side of Phoebe Gwatkyn. Both of them looked frozen with shock.
Nan put a hand out to grasp Ruth’s arm, shaking her head at Billy.
‘That’s not what happened!’ Billy yelled. He was panicking. He’d lost all control. Soon I wasn’t going to be able to hold him. Morgan Walters saw the situation and stepped forward.
‘Billy!’
His son stopped struggling and swung around. Walters put a hand on each of Billy’s shoulders. ‘Enough, now, son. We’ll sort this out.’
But, if there was any sorting out to be done, Harry was going to be the one doing it. ‘The street is not the place for this,’ he said. ‘Mr Emmanuel, may we use your office for a few moments?’
Everybody else was watching Harry and Silas Emmanuel, who’d come out when he heard Billy’s screaming. But I had my eyes on Nan Walters and Ruth Eynon. Nan still had hold of Ruth’s arm and the grip looked to be painful. Ruth’s face hinted that, any moment, she might collapse from shock but it wasn’t Billy her horrified eyes were fixed on, it was her friend.
Harry
As we all made our way back into the offices of Emmanuel, Pask and Williams, John took me by the arm and held me back. ‘Did you hear all of that?’
‘Enough to know that you think the boy might’ve killed Rowland. And that he’s terrified.’
‘There’s something I need to tell you. What I found out in London.’
I looked around. Caldicot’s unmistakeable figure was on the steps behind us. ‘I can guess,’ I muttered. ‘Holywell Street is notorious.’
The fact that John said no more was enough to confirm my suspicions: Rowland had been in the pornography business. That explained his nocturnal sorties; as he could not hold a pen, he would have needed to work with somebody and he could not risk a stranger being seen near the schoolroom. But who?
I had thought Silas Emmanuel’s office somewhat small for the number of people involved in the will-reading but the addition of Billy, Morgan Walters and John made it distinctly crowded.
Emmanuel arranged chairs behind his desk for the ladies, as if he felt a physical barrier was required to protect them from Billy, then he and Caldicot positioned themselves at either side of the desk. I placed Billy with his back to the assembled company, facing me, his father no more tha
n an arm’s length away at his side.
John was leaning on the windowsill, a position from which he would be able to see everybody. I did not know what to make of his sudden, unexpected accusation of Billy Walters. Had he discovered some other evidence, in the last three days, that implicated the boy? I did not think so. If it had been crucial, he would have detained me so that we could confer.
He had, however, sounded very sure of himself and, try as I might to keep an open mind, I must take such certainty into account.
‘Right, Billy,’ I said, locating the whirlpool over his midriff so that his face appeared in my peripheral vision. With only six feet or so separating us, I might observe something, however indistinct. ‘I’d like you to tell us what happened the night Mr Rowland died. Did you go to the schoolroom?’
There was no answer from the boy and something about his breathing made me wonder whether he was fighting off tears.
‘Billy,’ Morgan Walters said, ‘tell Mr Probert-Lloyd what he wants to know. Did you go to the school that night?’
‘Yes!’ The boy’s voice was strained, as if his throat was constricted. ‘But it’s not like he said!’
‘He’, I realised, referred to John.
‘Tell us what happened, then, son.’
Billy ran a hand under his nose. Tears might not have been running down his cheeks but they were, it appeared, finding their way out nonetheless. ‘They went over there, Nan and Ruth—’ He half-turned towards where the women were sitting.