None So Blind

by Alis Hawkins

  The room broke out in a hum of rapid translation and muttered agreement.

  Bowen, allowing the crowd to chatter, thanked the midwife, dismissed her and proceeded to address the jury.

  ‘I am going to ask you, now, to go out and decide whether you have heard enough to say whether the remains you viewed this morning at the workhouse do, in fact, belong to Margaret Jones and, if they do, whether you have sufficient evidence to say what caused her death. I have heard no evidence to convince me that the child had been born at the time of its mother’s death, so I am not going to ask you to give a cause in that case.

  ‘As to a verdict in the case of the mother, you know the options open to you. Logic would dictate that some of these are ruled out by the situation in which the body was found but it is up to you, gentlemen, to provide a verdict in this case.’

  Each man, whether he was farmer, butcher, shopkeeper or teacher would be getting the going rate for jury service – a shilling a day. Given the circumstances, most people would have considered it onerous work for a pound.

  I waited for Bowen to conclude his remarks, wondering whether he would make specific reference to Rebecca.

  ‘Thank you gentlemen. If you would be so good as to let Mr Evans know when a decision has been reached, I will return to hear it.’

  And with that, he stood and left the room, as did the jurors, to an immediate upwelling of excitement from the spectators. The sound of benches scraping beneath the rising posteriors of the crowd was barely audible over the babble of voices.

  Gus took my arm. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s leave the populace to its speculation for a while.’

  As the rain had stopped, we walked onto the bridge and stood overlooking the brown and turbid Teifi.

  ‘When I was a boy,’ I said before Gus could start asking questions, ‘the head ostler at the other hotel over there’ – I indicated the Emlyn Arms – ‘used to take the horses out of the traces when a coach arrived and bring them down here. He’d make them jump in the river on a long line and swim to the other bank and back. Then the stable lads would rub them down. Said he never lost a horse to overheating.’

  Gus snorted. ‘No, just to drowning I imagine.’

  I was aware of him looking at me as I kept my face turned to the river. He was not going to be diverted by local anecdotes. ‘You’re convinced it’s her?’ he asked.

  I let out a breath I had been unaware of holding. ‘Unless somebody with an identical gap in their teeth and who was also carrying a child stole all her things and was murdered on the farm from which she went missing, then yes, I’m convinced.’

  ‘What about the jury?’

  I shrugged. ‘I wasn’t allowed to testify as to the physical resemblance so they only have the possessions and the timing to go on. And Rachel Ellis and the Williamses were both a bit lacklustre about whether the rushlight holder and tin were definitely hers.’

  ‘You think nobody wants to be the one who says definitively ‘This was Margaret Jones’?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I think.’

  ‘But if your father hadn’t forbidden it, you’d have stood there and said it – you’d have said that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, this was her?’

  I stared at the river, his face frustratingly indistinct in my peripheral vision. ‘Why are you asking, Gus?’

  ‘Because I think there’s a significant chance that the jury will find that the body can’t be positively identified. And I’m concerned as to what you’ll do then.’

  ‘Is that what you’d find – that there wasn’t enough for a positive identification?’

  ‘No. I’m persuaded. But I’m not intimidated by Rebecca of the Gates.’

  ‘And manner of death?’

  ‘Well, since she didn’t bury herself, it’s hard to come to any conclusion other than murder or manslaughter, isn’t it? And I have to say, I’d be looking pretty hard in the direction of William Williams.’

  I could not help myself, I looked around at him in surprise and he vanished into the central blur that I thought of as The Whirlpool. ‘You think Williams killed her?’

  ‘If that clod in the crowd is to be believed he was free enough with his dairymaids to give him a motive and he certainly had the opportunity – the wailing brat kept his wife busy all night. He could easily have slipped out.’

  ‘He’d have had to be out for at least half an hour, if not more. How would he account for that to his wife?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have to if she was as preoccupied as she said.’

  I heard running footsteps and a figure skidded on the greasy cobbles of the bridge. ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd!’ a boy’s voice cried. ‘The jury’s coming back.’

  The noise in the assembly room was, if anything, more clamorous than when we had left. From the snippets of conversation I heard as we made our way back to our seats, it seemed that the crowd was divided into those who felt, like Gus, that William Williams would be committed for trial at the assizes and those who declared that Beca would not allow a murder verdict.

  ‘What are they all saying?’ Gus asked.

  I was not going to tell him they agreed with him. ‘They’re talking about Rebecca intimidation.’

  We sat down.

  ‘Where are your father and his cronies?’ Gus asked.

  ‘Wherever they are, I expect Bowen’s with them.’

  ‘The jury look as if they can’t get all this over quickly enough.’

  ‘All of them?’

  Gus considered. ‘No. Two of them look as if they want to knock some heads together.’

  ‘Is one of them the foreman?’

  ‘No. One’s a carroty-haired fellow with an Adam’s apple you could slice fruit with and the other’s… oldish, white hair, well-dressed. Wearing spectacles.’

  With regard to the second man, Gus’s description brought nobody particular to mind, but I had a feeling that the red-haired man would turn out to be Dic the saddler. As a child, I had always been slightly afraid of that Adam’s apple of his, fearing that, one day, it would bob right up out of his mouth.

  A wave of silence pushed its way into the room. Bowen was back. After seeing him to his table, my father and the other magistrates took up their seats once more.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Bowen addressed the jury, ‘I apologise for my tardiness. You took me somewhat by surprise with your swift decision. Are you agreed upon a verdict?’

  The foreman rose. ‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘we are not agreed. That is to say, we are agreed about who the bones belong to, but not how she died.’

  A murmur of question and translation rose in the crowd.

  ‘Then why have you returned so soon?’ Bowen asked. ‘Did you not feel you should spend longer in deliberation so as to reach a consensus?’

  The foreman’s head turned and I heard the interpreter say ‘agreement amongst you all’. The foreman had not understood the word ‘consensus’.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but we knew that we would not be coming to an agreement,’ he said.

  Bowen said nothing for a few moments and I could sense the discomfort of the jury under his gaze. From the frenzied murmuring all around the ballroom, the crowd could scarcely contain itself.

  ‘Are twelve of you agreed on the cause of death?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  So, a legal quorum then. At least there would be no question of empanelling another jury.

  ‘Very well. You say that you are unanimous as to identity. Whose remains have you determined these to be?’

  ‘Those of Margaret Jones, formerly employed at Waungilfach farm.’

  The murmuring of the crowd grew louder but Bowen raised his voice above it, apparently unperturbed. ‘And how does the majority find that she died?’

  So keen was the foreman to rid himself of the unwanted words that Bowen had barely articulated his question before he got the answer.

  ‘Accidental death.’

  I felt a surge of anger so powerful I had to press down on my thighs to
keep myself seated. Accidental death?

  ‘How—’

  As close as we were to him, Bowen’s question was lost in the sudden outbreak of anger, disbelief or I-told-you-so from the crowd and one of the magistrates leapt to his feet. ‘Silence! Silence!’ he bellowed. ‘The coroner wishes to speak!’

  Bowen did not wait for absolute quiet but spoke over a residual hum. ‘How on earth did you arrive at that verdict?’

  ‘If he had a pistol to his head,’ Gus said into my ear, ‘the foreman couldn’t look any less happy.’

  ‘We determined, sir, that she had smothered the child and was trying to bury it beneath the tree when it collapsed on her, burying them both.’

  No! That could not be true.

  ‘Silence!’ the magistrate roared again as the crowd threw off all restraint and voiced its various opinions.

  Bowen was forced to raise his voice as he spoke to the jurors. ‘Despite my explicit instructions not to bring in a verdict on the child’s cause of death, you have decided that Margaret Jones gave birth to a live infant, smothered it, and then died in the act of attempting to hide its body. Is that what you are telling this inquest?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Carrot-top and spectacles look as if they’re trying to dissociate themselves from the verdict.’ Gus’s voice was barely audible above the general outcry despite the fact that his face was close to mine.

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘Look mulish, but glad it’s over.’

  But it was not over. I would not let it be over. To allow this travesty of a verdict to stand was unthinkable.

  I would have to act.

  Harry

  The following morning, Moyle came into the dining room while Gus and I were lingering over the remains of breakfast to inform me that Mrs William Williams had asked to see me and that he had shown her into the morning room.

  ‘Bit early for social calls isn’t it?’ Gus asked once the butler had left.

  I stood, filled with a sudden apprehension. ‘I don’t suppose it is a social call.’

  As soon as I opened the morning room door, Mrs Williams moved away from the long, east-facing windows and came towards us.

  I made the introductions without asking whether she objected to Gus being present; if she wanted to speak to me in private she would have to say so. However, far from voicing reservations about speaking in front of a stranger, Mrs Williams came immediately to the point.

  ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd, I know that you and your father must be as unhappy as Mr Williams and me about that ridiculous verdict yesterday.’ Unlike her husband, who had been schooled to speak English with very little trace of an accent, Esme’s somewhat less-than-perfect English had a strongly Welsh flavour, so much so that I wondered what language she and Williams spoke at home. Then again, on the basis of her current forthrightness, perhaps she did not converse with her husband so much as fling pronouncements in his direction.

  I nodded. ‘It was certainly a surprising verdict.’

  ‘Scandalous is what it was, Mr Probert-Lloyd! Scandalous!’

  I motioned at the furniture. ‘Do take a seat.’ The three of us sat within warming range of the newly-lit fire. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘No. Thank you. I mustn’t stay long. Mr Williams doesn’t know I’m here and I must be back before him. There wasn’t time to send a servant to ask you to call on me at Waungilfach so I came myself.’

  Presumably, she had come in her husband’s impractical gig.

  Fashionable, my father had said when he’d first seen her being driven about in it but it’s only a matter of time before it tips over on these roads and she comes to harm.

  ‘So, how may I be of service to you?’ I asked, matching her own directness.

  ‘That inquest was a sham,’ she said, flatly. ‘Everybody knows Beca told the jury to bring in that verdict. There’s not a person from here to Cardigan who actually believes that Margaret Jones died by accident. It’s quite obvious the girl was done away with. And where is suspicion going to fall? On us. On Williams and me. And I thought Bowen’ – I winced inwardly at her familiar use of the coroner’s name – ‘made it plain by his questions that he suspected my husband.’ She stopped, presumably looking to me for some kind of response.

  ‘Are you sure,’ Gus asked, ‘that Mr Bowen wasn’t simply being thorough, Mrs Williams?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Gelyot, I am quite sure, thank you very much.’

  ‘Even so’ – Gus was courteous, conciliatory – ‘people will surely not suppose for a single moment that you and your husband—’

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Gelyot.’ Mrs Williams’s tone was in no way apologetic. ‘But you don’t know people here – they don’t want an excuse to suspect people – it’s enough for them that we were called to answer questions. Nobody will want to be associated with Waungilfach. We’ll be ruined.’

  I heard a note of desperation under the stridency and, to my shame, felt a grim satisfaction. ‘Mrs Williams,’ I forced myself to match Gus’s civility, ‘you can be assured of the continued friendship of Glanteifi—’

  ‘Thank you Mr Probert-Lloyd, but that’s not why I’m here.’ I waited, taken aback.

  ‘I’m here to ask you to clear my husband’s name.’

  Her eyes were on me, now. I could feel the heat of their challenge. And challenge it was; she could not be ignorant of the ill will I owed her husband.

  Gus broke the silence. ‘Surely it’s the job of the magistrates to order any further investigations?’

  She turned to him. ‘But they won’t, you see, Mr Gelyot! They won’t want the expense. And then there’s Beca. The magistrates’ll be hoping she’ll go away again now the jury’s done what she wanted.’

  Much as I did not wish to find myself on the same side of any argument as Mrs Williams, I suspected that she was right. ‘Be that as it may, Mrs Williams,’ I said, ‘I’m not sure what you think I can do.’

  ‘You knowthem. Those Rebeccas.’

  I glanced involuntarily at Gus. ‘Mrs Williams—’

  ‘You know them,’ she insisted. ‘We both know that.’

  An image flashed, unbidden, on my mind’s eye. Myself, seven years ago, holding the infant she now referred to as her youngest child in my arms; arms clad in the long sleeves of a woman’s gown.

  ‘I wouldn’t ask you,’ she said, sidestepping from threat to entreaty, ‘except that I have nobody to turn to. You know we’re not respected as we should be – we’ll be cut off from local society entirely if nobody clears Williams’s name.’

  I said nothing. Unquiet as my conscience was, outraged as I was at the verdict, I had absolutely no wish to undertake an investigation into Margaret’s death as a favour to William Williams and his wife.

  ‘You can find out who did this,’ she insisted. ‘I know you can.’

  ‘Mrs Williams,’ I leaned forwards in my chair, ‘I may once have been… accepted… into certain kinds of company – but that was years ago. I haven’t spent any length of time here to speak of since that summer. I was a boy then—’

  ‘But you’re a lawyer now. A barrister. And you’re Henry Probert-Lloyd of Glanteifi. People respect you.’

  I stared into the blind whirlpool that obscured her face.

  ‘If not for us, won’t you do it for Margaret?’

  My jaw clenched in silent fury. How dare she mention Margaret’s name to me?

  ‘You were fond of the girl,’ she pressed. ‘Don’t you want to know what happened to her?’

  Try as I might to summon the necessary indifference to thwart her, I could not. At that moment, I wanted to find out what had happened to Margaret Jones more than I wanted anything else in the world.

  John

  Were you there? At the inquest?

  Did William Williams really say he kept her on out of charity? Is it true the coroner told the jury they were cowards and liars?

  The day after the verdict. The public houses of Newcastle Emlyn were crammed to the walls.
Rumour and speculation spilled out into the street every time somebody opened the door. And then more walked in.

  ‘Accidental death’ had gone from house to house, farm to farm. The rain hadn’t stopped it, nor the state of the November roads. It went as quickly as a mouth could carry it. Men who hadn’t been off their own land in weeks made the journey into town to see if it was true.

  Is this Beca?

  Is she back? Up to her old tricks?

  Beca’s tricks. Intimidation. Deciding what was right and making the rest of us go along with it.

  I sometimes wondered if Dada had been carried along with things after the gate breakings. Whether he’d found himself dragging English clergymen out of their houses and taking illegal tithes back. Or setting fire to the haystacks of squires and magistrates to stop them speaking out against Beca. I didn’t want to think he had. But then a lot of men had done things they didn’t want to think about.

  ‘Who was there?’ a man shouted, swinging his head from side to side. ‘Who was at the inquest?’ Barely through the door and already shouting. Drunk from another public house more than likely.