by Alis Hawkins
Through the interpreter, Bowen quickly established that Rachel Ellis had worked for Williams and his wife for a total of ten and a half years, from the time she was twelve until she had left to marry her husband, Aaron Ellis.
‘And while you worked there, Margaret Jones was also employed there, as a dairymaid?’ Bowen asked.
‘Yes, that’s right.’
It was odd, this three-way question and answer. Rachel addressed all her responses to the interpreter, whom she obviously knew as she did not address him with the formality she would have used had she been speaking directly to the coroner. Even so, as the questions turned to Margaret, Rachel’s voice had become querulous.
I moved my gaze about the front of the room until I found the spot, between the coroner and his witness, where I was able to form an impression of the movements of both. Though I could not see their expressions, sometimes I was able to infer what people might be feeling from discernible movements or changes in posture.
‘Mrs Ellis, could you examine the things that Mr Evans is going to show you and tell me whether you recognise them?’
The parish officer’s footsteps as he approached Rachel were loud in the silence and I imagined the spectators leaning forward to see the objects he showed her. Again, I felt the relief of knowing that people’s eyes were no longer on me.
‘The material is the same as a shawl she had,’ Rachel said.
‘And the other things?’ Bowen asked.
A long silence followed. It was clear that Rachel Ellis did not want to commit herself.
‘They might be hers.’
‘Did Margaret Jones possess anything else that you might expect to be in a bundle of her things?’ Bowen asked. ‘Anything at all?’
I could have answered that question for him; I had seen her possessions often enough, laid out neatly on the wall in her corner of the loft. If she had been wearing her Sunday shawl then her bundle would have been tied in her work shawl and would have comprised underlinen, a Sunday petticoat and apron, her tin, her rushlight holder and the thick woollen stockings she wore when it was very cold.
‘No, sir,’ Rachel answered. ‘Well, only some clothes.’
‘So,’ Bowen pushed on, ‘there was nothing found with the bones that Margaret Jones did not own and everything that she did, is that right?’
I tried to conjure up Rachel Ellis’s fearful expression as she listened to the interpreter untangling the nothings and everythings of the coroner’s question. I remembered her as having a plain, flat face, as if the bones had been pushed backwards when they were baby-soft.
‘Yes,’ she said eventually, ‘that’s right.’
‘Very well, then, do you know why Margaret would leave Waungilfach with all her belongings?’
‘No.’ It was hardly more than a whisper.
‘Are you sure? She’d been with Mr and Mrs Williams for some time. Didn’t you think it was strange that she should leave so suddenly?’ The room held its breath. ‘Mrs Ellis?’
She raised a hand to pinch her nose. ‘I thought it was a man.’
I swallowed, shifted my position on the hard chair, hoped nobody had been watching my face while she spoke.
‘You thought she had left with a man?’ Bowen asked. I heard nothing but she must have nodded because he prompted, ‘The father of her child?’
There was no reply. Gus leaned towards me. ‘She’s not answering. And she’s not looking at him.’
‘Mrs Ellis,’ I heard Bowen insist, ‘do you know who the father of Margaret Jones’s child was?’
Her ‘No’ was barely audible. But it was not only her reluctance that made me suspect she was lying. Though Margaret and Rachel had not been the best of friends, they had shared a sleeping space and had, of necessity, found a way of rubbing along together. If anybody knew the identity of the baby’s father it would be her.
‘Very well.’ Bowen appeared to be making a note. ‘Now, Mrs Ellis, I’d like to talk about how it was discovered that Margaret Jones had gone missing. Can you tell me what happened?’
‘She just wasn’t there in the morning when I woke up.’
‘Perhaps we might start a little while earlier. Can you tell the hearing what you and Margaret did from the time you finished work the previous day, please?’
The room listened to the interpreter rendering the coroner’s polite request and Gus leaned towards me again. ‘She’s looking happier now we’re off the subject of the child’s father.’
‘It was May,’ Rachel began, ‘so there was light to do more work after milking. I’d just finished bringing the hens in and finding all the eggs when the bell rang for supper.’
‘And where did you eat supper?’
‘In the servants’ kitchen.’
Rachel, thrown from her narrative path by the question, said nothing more until Bowen asked ‘And did Margaret Jones come in for supper?’
‘Yes, she did. But she didn’t eat very much. She said she was tired. It’s hard, working all day when you’re near your time, so she went to bed early.’
I wondered if Bowen mistrusted this sudden loquacity as much as I did; I had seen this tactic on numerous occasions. A witness, wishing to appear helpful without actually telling the barrister what he wanted to know, would prattle on, supplying any amount of superfluous information. I wondered what Rachel was hiding behind this sudden urge to oblige but Bowen seemed to feel that he had finally learned something new. ‘Margaret Jones left the kitchen while everybody else was still eating – is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did you see her after that?’
‘Only lying in bed. Or what I thought was her. When she went out of supper, she told me not to wake her when I came up to the loft because she was tired. So, when I went up, I kept to my place and didn’t go near her.’
‘Can you explain what you mean by “your place”, Mrs Ellis?’
I pictured the loft that Rachel had shared with Margaret. It stood over the larger of the two cowsheds where Williams’s milk cows were tied during the winter. Rachel, having worked at the farm longer, had occupied the corner furthest away from the door and, therefore, from draughts.
‘In the loft – she had her place and I had mine. Because there was no hay there in May, there was only a pile of sacks and things between us so I thought I could see her when I went in, even though it was getting dark. She always curled up with her back to the door, you see, with the blanket pulled up over her head to keep her warm. I thought it was her lying there when I went in. Because she’d said to be quiet, I didn’t speak to her. It wasn’t till the next day I saw it was only a few rolled-up sacks under the blanket, not her.’
‘But didn’t you see that her possessions had gone?’ Bowen asked.
‘No. It was getting dark.’
‘So you believe that Margaret Jones had already left before you went to the loft after supper?’
The question interpreted for her, Rachel hesitated. ‘I don’t know. She might have. All I know is, when I went to wake her in the morning, it was sacks under the blanket, not her.’
Bowen did not respond and, as his silence lengthened, I leaned towards Gus. ‘Is he writing notes?’
‘Apparently. Might be a ploy to make her nervous so that she’ll let something slip.’
I watched Bowen as well as I was able to. His tall frame was largely hidden by his seated posture behind the table but it seemed to me that his economy of movement had something painful in it, as if anything more might cause him to cry out.
‘When you left the kitchen,’ I heard him say a few moments later, ‘and went across the yard to the loft, did you see any strangers, anything out of place?’
‘No. I didn’t see anybody.’
‘Mrs Ellis,’ Bowen asked, apparently still bent over his pen, ‘do you know when Margaret Jones’s baby was due to be born?’
‘No. Not really.’ Even with her nostrils pinched, Rachel Ellis’s answer was difficult to hear, her voice barely audible.
>
But I knew. Margaret’s baby had been due in the middle of June. ‘She was quite near her time, I think you said?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Is it possible, do you think, that Margaret Jones felt the baby coming and didn’t know what to do?’
‘I don’t know. I was asleep.’ It could not have been more obvious that Rachel Ellis was giving her evidence with the greatest reluctance. But was she reluctant to tell the truth or to hide it?
‘Do you think she might have gone in search of help?’ Bowen persevered. ‘Gone to the midwife?’
‘The midwife comes to you, not the other way around.’
‘Mrs Ellis,’ I could hear Bowen’s frustration, ‘I’m going to ask you again – do you know who the father of Margaret Jones’s child was?’
Rachel’s head was bowed; she wished to look neither Bowen nor his translator in the eye. ‘No.’
‘Do you know who might have wanted to harm her?’ the coroner asked.
‘No. No, I don’t.’ It was a whisper. And I could tell, even if Bowen couldn’t, that it was a lie.
As if the crowd had been holding its breath, once Rachel Ellis was dismissed, a great exhalation of comment and speculation broke out. Behind us, I could hear people rising from the benches, pushing them backwards on the ravaged floor. Looking out for late-coming friends, I assumed, or possibly trying to see who else was waiting to give evidence.
Above the rising level of conjecture, I heard Bowen’s voice. ‘Ask Mr Williams to come forward, would you?’
Evidently the bench-sitters had heard, too, because the noise around us suddenly fell away as people looked about for William Williams. His being called as a witness could hardly be a surprise – the remains had been found on his farm, after all – but, nonetheless, his appearance was bound to stimulate gossip.
Gus leaned closer to me. ‘Do I get the impression that there’s no great respect locally for our friend Williams?’
‘He doesn’t really fit.’ I kept my voice low, acutely aware of the listening ears all around. ‘He’s not a tenant, like most farmers, but he’s not a gentleman either.’
In fact, William Williams owned just enough land to make the larger tenants envious but by no means sufficient to qualify as one of the gentry. As a boundary-neighbour, my father treated him with a nicely calculated civility but most of the other local landowners found Williams presumptuous. ‘Jumped up’ was the general opinion and Williams knew it. It was for this reason that my father had advised Bowen to address Williams as if he were a bona fide member of the gentry. ‘I know it goes against the grain,’ I had heard him say, ‘but you’ll get nothing but an irritable standing on his dignity if you don’t treat him as one of us. He is not an astute man. If he thinks you’re giving him the respect he thinks he deserves, you’ll be able to induce him to tell you more than he intends.’
The coroner’s officer called for order, silencing the rumble of voices. After suitably courteous preliminaries, Bowen asked Williams whether he could positively identify the objects found with the bones as belonging to Margaret Jones.
Williams took his time in answering. ‘Well, as far as I can be expected to remember the garments of my servants, the scrap of material does resemble a shawl I seem to recall her possessing. But, as to the other things, I couldn’t say. As private possessions there would be no reason for me to have seen them.’
A few suppressed snorts and murmurs around the room took issue with this but, if Bowen did anything but ignore them, I could not tell. ‘I see. Yes. Thank you.’ The coroner moved on to his next question and I caught a subtle change of tone. ‘Mr Williams, just to be clear and to silence any malicious gossip that might seek an alternative explanation, could you tell this inquest why you asked your labourers not to pull up the roots of the tree they were cutting? I understand that the more common practice would be to remove the whole thing – root and branch, so to speak.’
It was a question I should have asked Williams myself but here, in the context of an official hearing, it seemed less impertinent.
‘That would be the common practice, Mr Bowen,’ Williams agreed, ponderously, ‘but not on such a steep bank. The soil there is very unstable, you see. Apt to slide. I wanted to protect the slope whilst removing the wood for use.’
‘So your instruction was simply a precaution against the bank slipping?’
‘Yes. Exactly so.’
‘Thank you, Mr Williams. Now, if you’d be kind enough, it would be helpful for the jury to hear how Margaret Jones’s disappearance, seven years ago, came to your notice?’
There was a pause, then the farmer cleared his throat. ‘Well, it was some time ago, obviously. I’m not sure that all the details are clear in my mind.’
‘Just as much as you can remember. If you’d be so good.’ Bowen’s tone suggested a forced smile.
‘Very well. I went out that morning to see that the milking was well underway, as I did every morning, only to find that Margaret wasn’t there. Rachel Evans – I beg your pardon, Mrs Ellis – was doing the milking alone.’ He cleared his throat again: a nervous gesture, I realised, rather than a necessary one. ‘I asked her where Margaret was and I was told that she wasn’t there. Mrs Ellis said that she’d woken up to find Margaret and all her things gone.’
‘I see. And what did you think it meant – that she had taken all her possessions with her?’
‘That she wasn’t intending to come back, obviously.’
There was a pause while Bowen waited for a brief burst of laughter occasioned by an inaudible comment to subside. Then he asked, ‘When had you last seen Margaret Jones, Mr Williams, prior to that morning?’
‘It would have been the previous afternoon. I always go out to the dairy to make sure that everything is as it should be before the servants go in for their supper.’
‘And did she seem as usual? Was she agitated in any way?’
‘Mrs Williams and I asked ourselves that when we realised that she’d left us. But we could think of nothing that would have warned us that she was about to do such a thing.’
‘Running away from you,wasn’t she?’ a voice called out from the back corner of the room, followed by laughter from the same quarter.
‘Drunks,’ Gus dismissed them. I nodded without comment. Drunk they might be, but these men knew Williams’s reputation and they were not wary of letting him know it.
Bowen, inured to extempore contributions from the floor, simply waited for the laughter to die away, then continued. ‘Had anybody come to speak to her that day? Anybody at all?’
‘No. I would have been aware of it if they had.’
I did not doubt that. Williams had always kept an alarmingly close eye on his female servants.
‘And nobody who didn’t have business on your farm was there the previous evening?’
Williams hesitated then said, ‘No. No, there wasn’t anybody.’
What was the significance of that hesitation – Bowen’s double negative? Williams just trying to cast his mind back? Or something else? Unable to scrutinise the farmer’s face, it was infuriatingly difficult to tell.
‘And during the night? Did the dogs bark at all?’
‘No. I would have heard them if they had – my wife was up most of the night with our youngest child. He had colic and was crying so much that none of us slept for very long.’
‘So, when you went out the following morning to be told that Margaret Jones had gone, what did you think?’
‘To tell you the truth, Mr Bowen, I was astonished.’
‘Astonished?’ I caught a movement from Bowen which might have been the removal of spectacles. ‘Why is that? Surely, in her condition, it was only to be expected that she would leave before the child was born? That she would go back to her family?’
A silence developed. I could feel every eye in the place on Williams. ‘I don’t believe she had any family. None that would take her in, at any rate.’
‘Did she tell you that?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
In the silence that followed, I wondered whether Bowen raised an eyebrow and fixed Williams with a questioning look. From the muttered hubbub around the room other eyebrows were certainly being raised at Williams’s imprecise answer.
‘One day…’ I could almost see Williams swallowing, sucking his lips to moisten them, ‘one day I asked her what she was going to do.’
‘When the time came for the baby to be born?’
‘Yes.’ Bowen’s failure to ask another question forced more from Williams. ‘She said she hadn’t decided.’
A spasm of guilt gripped me; Margaret had not decided what she should do because she was waiting to see whether someone would rescue her. Whether I would rescue her.
‘And what was your reply?’
Again, Williams produced that uneasy cough. ‘I can’t really remember.’
‘Liar! You’d’ve thrown her out!’ the drunk again. And, again, I knew he spoke nothing but the truth.