by Alis Hawkins
The man clumped along the landing towards the stairs while Roberts moved forward, forcing me to allow him into the room.
‘Mr Probert-Lloyd,’ his tone was not conciliatory, ‘I understand that you’re here in trying circumstances—’ He faltered and my lawyerly instinct was to go on the attack, ask him what trying circumstances he was referring to, in the hope that I might find out what rumour was currently explaining my presence here; but I could not afford to offend him.
He regrouped. ‘I cannot have this kind of thing happening. Some criminal has invaded my hotel after dark. I cannot have the other guests put to fright by such grotesque appearances.’
He was not, I noted, overly concerned that I might be put to fright, despite the fact that – presumably – that had been the purpose of the ceffyl pren.
‘I’m sorry that you’ve been inconvenienced, Mr Roberts—’
‘I’m afraid sorry isn’t good enough, Mr Probert-Lloyd. I need your assurance that this will not happen again.’
Hardly the way to speak to a gentleman, even one who has been reduced to paying for his bed and board. I had to reassert my position before the whole town was looking down on me. ‘I’m afraid I’m unable to give you any such assurance, Mr Roberts, as I,’ a distinct emphasis on the pronoun left him in no doubt as to my meaning, ‘am not the person responsible for ensuring that nobody without lawful business enters these premises. Though I sincerely hope not to have my person threatened in this manner again, you and your staff are the only people able to ensure it. This time it was a ceffyl pren – who knows what an intruder might do if allowed into the premises a second time.’ I paused, fractionally. ‘I would not wish to have to give a less than complimentary report of my stay here to anyone who asked.’ I allowed him to digest this for a moment or two. ‘And, now, if you’d be so good, perhaps you could have some hot water sent up. I have a long and trying day in prospect.’
John was incredulous.
‘A place like this – I’d’ve expected Mr Roberts to have had that sheep’s head ceffyl destroyed before you even thought of getting up. I mean, letting a gentleman be embarrassed like that? You could ruin him.’
I locked the door behind me and we made our way along the gloomy landing.
‘It’s this investigation, isn’t it? It’s not proper.’ I turned at the head of the stairs and grinned at him, hoping that he was grinning back. ‘Leaving that aside,’ I said, ‘I wonder whether this answers your question about whether Matthew Evans was involved?’
‘You think he’s responsible for this?’ John sounded dubious.
‘We’ve only seen Dic Jones, Parry and Edward Pridham. And failed to see Matthew Evans whose father no doubt alerted him to the fact that he’d missed us. One of them has to be involved, surely? Unless we’re going to suspect the magistrates or Bowen.’
John snorted a polite laugh at the thought.
‘I was suspicious when Evans wasn’t at home, yesterday,’ I told him as we made our way down the first flight of stairs. ‘Now, after this, I’m convinced that he’d been warned we were coming. Parry’s the most likely informant. He must have gone straight out and found a boy to take a message when he threw us out of his shop yesterday.’
John made a non-committal noise and I stopped at the window-lit turn of the stairs. ‘You don’t agree?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But if not Parry, then who?’ I kept my voice low, following his lead. ‘We didn’t see anybody else all day.’
‘Well, nobody except the servant at Pridham’s and Nelly James in The Lamb. But I suppose neither of them were in the room when we were talking.’
Something caught at me when he mentioned the servant but it was dislodged by a stab of apprehension at the thought of quick-witted Nelly James overhearing our conversation. ‘Where was Nelly while we were talking?’ I asked.
John came to a halt at the bottom of the stairs and I caught a movement of his head as he looked to and fro; he was nervous about being overheard. ‘Out the back.’
‘Outside, or in the scullery?’
‘Scullery, I think.’
‘With the door open or closed?’
‘Open – she always leaves it open so she can hear if anybody calls for her.’
So she could have heard us. John and I had not been keeping our voices down.
‘Can we go outside?’ he asked. All this talk of being overheard was obviously making him nervous.
Once we had left the hotel, John walked onto the bridge, then turned to me again. ‘You don’t think Nelly James told Matt that we were coming for him?’ he asked, his voice still low. ‘She can’t have been involved with Beca.’
‘Why – because she’s a woman?’
He obviously heard the edge to my question, and made no reply. Deliberately, choosing my words with a care that he could not fail to notice, I said, ‘There were women – women in a certain situation – who had reason to be very grateful to Rebecca.’
I hoped he would know what I was talking about, but he said nothing. We both looked down into the winter-swollen waters of the Teifi beneath us and I felt John shiver beside me; the day was damp and grey with the kind of wind that seems nothing when you are first out in it but which soon seems to be following you around, pummeling at you.
‘Rebecca was against the workhouse,’ I began, ‘I’m sure you know that?’ Even as a small boy, he would have been aware that dragoons had been garrisoned at the Emlyn Union workhouse to protect it from the Rebeccaites.
‘William Williams said something about it at the inquest – that Rebecca was against sending girls in trouble to the workhouse.’
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. ‘Yes. Rebecca – or I should say, one Rebecca band – took it upon themselves to take over where the law had left off. Or, rather, to uphold the spirit of the old law.’
A cart clattered by and we exchanged cheery Good-days with its owner.
‘You mean Rebecca made men marry girls they’d got pregnant?’ John said, once he could make himself heard again.
I nodded, pleased at his quickness of understanding. ‘That, or, at the very least, made them provide for their illegitimate children.’
‘And you think Mrs James might be grateful to Rebecca for that reason?’
I tried to look upriver out of the corner of my eye, towards the walls of the castle mill. Like so much else in the world, now, I knew it was there but I could not see it. ‘It’s possible,’ I said. ‘Not necessarily for herself, of course. A daughter, maybe. A niece or a friend.’
‘Are you going to talk to her?’
‘Not yet.’ I turned and faced the town. ‘But we need to remember to be careful.’
As we began to walk up Bridge Street towards the livery stable, an image appeared in my mind’s eye: Nelly James standing just out of sight behind the open door of her back room. And then I grasped what had eluded me earlier – a grey-clad woman’s figure behind the doorjamb at Parry’s, listening.
John
I was dreading getting back in the saddle. For one thing, my arse was still sore from the previous day’s wasted visit to Tregorlais. And then there was the horse. Sooner or later it was going to realise it could do what it liked and I wouldn’t be able to stop it. I was no horseman – even Harry must’ve been able to see that.
But I’d have to make the best of it. We couldn’t walk everywhere, it’d take too long. And, anyway, Harry was a gentleman, he couldn’t go stomping about the place like an itinerant labourer.
So, out of Newcastle Emlyn we trotted, up Adpar Hill. I was sore, cold and so busy trying to copy what Harry did with his reins and his feet that I had no time to think about what we were going to say to Matt Tregorlais. Or whether he’d be watching for us. My hands were aching, the wind was singing in my ears where it was coming down the road from Rhydlewis and all I could think of was getting off that bloody animal.
So I nearly missed him. Matt. If he’d stayed bent over his spade, I would have. We’d�
�ve plodded on up to the farmyard and he’d have escaped. Just like yesterday. But he straightened up and I saw him. ‘Over to your right,’ I said to Harry. ‘He’s digging potatoes.’
I half expected Matt to run but he behaved as if he hadn’t seen us. He had though. I could tell. He was working too hard at not looking up.
‘Morning, Matt!’ Harry hadn’t asked how I knew the plwyfwas and I hadn’t wanted to tell him it was from the Drovers’. I didn’t want him to think I was always in there.
Matt didn’t stop his digging. ‘Dad said you’d been up here looking for me, John Davies. What d’you want?’
I glanced across at Harry but he said nothing. So on I went. ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd’s been asked to investigate the death of the dairymaid at Waungilfach. Margaret Jones.’
Matt carried on digging. ‘Has he now? Case he didn’t notice, there was an inquest.’ He stooped and shook the earth off a root of potatoes. ‘Jury gave a verdict. That’s an end to it.’
I looked around again. For all the reaction Harry gave, you’d’ve thought he hadn’t understood a word. I just had to follow my nose.
‘You chose the jury, Matthew Evans. And somebody intimidated them into saying it was accidental death.’
Matt still didn’t bother looking at me, just hefted his spade again. ‘Don’t talk nonsense, John Davies.’
‘You know it’s not nonsense as well as I do! There was a letter. Signed “Rebecca”. They all saw it.’
Matt dumped a huge clod of earth and potatoes on the wet ground, then straightened up and glared at me. ‘Who says?’
He had a spade in his hand. If he waved it about, my horse’d go galloping off and there’d be damn all I could do about it. Except fall off. I gathered the reins a bit tighter in my frozen fingers and flicked a look at Harry. Was he just going to sit there? ‘Never mind who says. What we want to know is who told you to pick jurymen who’d be easily threatened.’
He bent over the potato ridge again. ‘Nobody tells me what to do, John Davies. I pick who I like.’
‘So who wrote that letter, then? Was that you as well?’ I was getting fed up with this. Matt needed to show a bit more respect.
‘There wasn’t any letter, boy. Somebody’s lied to you.’
‘Nobody’s lied to us.’ I was trying to sound as if I knew what I was talking about. As if I was one jump ahead of him, waiting for him to put a foot wrong then pounce.
‘No? Seen it then, have you?’
Matt must’ve spoken to Parry. He knew the letter was gone. ‘Never mind what we have or haven’t seen. What we want to know is whether you told the jury what verdict they were supposed to bring in?’
Matt stamped the wooden spade into the ground and upended a whole potato root. ‘Why should I do that?’ He bent over the ridge and pulled the plant towards him by the leaves. ‘What’s it to me whether she pulled the tree down on top of herself?’
She. Not ‘the girl’; not ‘Margaret Jones’. Harry caught it, too. ‘Did you know her?’ he asked, suddenly.
I was watching Matt. He faltered – just for a moment. Hadn’t expected Harry to speak, I don’t think. Especially not in Welsh.
‘What?’ he asked, as if Harry’s question’d been too hard for him. Playing for time, he was. Probably only just realised that Harry’d understood every word he’d said.
‘I’m asking,’ Harry replied, still in Welsh, ‘whether you knew Margaret Jones.’
Matt riddled earth and potatoes through his fingers. ‘Why should I know her?’
I don’t know what shocked me more, the insolence of him or Harry standing for it.
‘You went to Treforgan chapel. So did she.’ Harry’s tone was mild but his message was clear: Jumpy, aren’t you, Matthew Evans? I wonder why.
‘No. Church, I am.’
‘But you weren’t. Not then. You used to go to Treforgan with Davy Thomas.’
Matt stared hard at him when he said that. ‘A lot of people went there.’
‘Yes,’ Harry agreed with him, ‘Nathaniel Howell was a very popular minister.’
The wind was gusting hard. Swept across the side of the hill like a flock of starlings. I shivered.
Matt moved away up the row. Harry nudged his horse after him and mine followed.
‘Did Nathaniel Howell make an impression on you?’ Harry asked. ‘Most people seemed to find his preaching very powerful.’
Matt grunted. ‘People soft in the head, maybe. Didn’t fool me.’
‘Didn’t fool you? You don’t think he was sincere?’
Matt glanced up. Fortunately, Harry’s eyes were turned the right way. ‘Nathaniel Howell was a fraud.’
‘What d’you mean by that?’ Harry’s tone was sharp.
I heard the metal lip of the spade go into a potato. Matt cursed, using the ruined potato as a reason not to answer.
The question’d seemed important so I asked him again. ‘Matt? What d’you mean he was a fraud?’
He dumped a clot of earth and potatoes on the ground and kicked at it to break it up. He wasn’t a big man, Matt, but he was one you wouldn’t want to cross. ‘He’s gone. Leave it at that.’
I flicked a glance at Harry but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to know what you meant.’
‘Well you’ll have to want, then! Ask somebody else your questions.’
‘We’re asking you, Matthew Evans!’ I flinched at Harry’s tone. He might’ve been speaking to a dog. ‘And I would appreciate it if you would do me the courtesy of answering.’ He’d dropped the dialect. It was Bible Welsh now. Formal. Intimidating. ‘I have been asked, by a party concerned with the case, to investigate further in the hope of finding new evidence and reopening the inquest. And, whether or not you tell us what you know, I will get that information and I will see the inquest reopened. And, when I do, I’ll know who to call and to put on oath. Now – I’m going to ask you again, Matthew Evans – did you or did you not know Margaret Jones?’
Matt bent over the potato row. With a grunt, he turned over another spade’s worth. It was a good imitation of contempt. If it was an imitation. Harry waited.
‘If you’re hoping we’ll go away you’re going to be disappointed,’ he said. ‘Did you know her?’
Matt threw a potato in the direction of the basket and missed.
‘Matthew Evans! Did you know Margaret Jones?’
It’s hard to break, the habit of obedience to your betters. But Matt wasn’t going to give Harry any more than he had to. ‘Not as well as you knew her,’ he muttered.
‘How dare you?’ Harry was livid. White with rage.
Matt straightened up from his digging. He looked quite calm. As if he thought Harry couldn’t touch him. ‘Quite handy for you when she disappeared, wasn’t it?’
I half expected Harry to get off his horse and take his whip to him.
‘It was convenient for somebody but that somebody wasn’t me, Matthew Tregorlais.’ He was back to sounding local again. ‘And you can be damn sure I’m going to find out who that somebody was.’
‘You should listen to the jury. It was an accident. She died while she was trying to bury her bastard.’
Harry’s horse was getting restive and he bent forward, stroked its neck. ‘If that’s true, why is Beca so afraid?’
Matt drove his spade into the ground. ‘Take your questions somewhere else. I’ve got nothing more to say. And if you have another inquest and try to make me give evidence, I’ll have nothing to say then, either.’ He bent over a clump of potatoes and earth. But Harry wasn’t finished.
‘You were one of Nathaniel Howell’s Becas, weren’t you? You were part of his crusade?’
Matt wiped the spade’s lip on his boot and looked up at Harry. ‘You should know, shouldn’t you, Harry Gwyn?’
Harry
As our horses picked their way down the stony track away from Tregorlais and towards the road, I could feel all the questions John wasn’t asking; they buffeted me along with the win
d.
How much gossip had he heard about my involvement with Margaret? I knew how rumour bloomed from the smallest seed and I did not imagine for a second that my doings were excluded from people’s speculation; John must have asked himself about my motives for investigating Margaret’s death. And now, added to that, Matthew Evans had all but accused me of having dealings with Rebecca.
I turned my face to one side, offering the back of my head to the wind instead of my left ear which was beginning to ache. Though I could not see it properly, a broad swathe of the Teifi’s wide and fertile lower valley spread out beneath us. A dozen shades of green and brown appeared around the whirlpool, the dunnish colours of leafless late November farmland, but, as to detail I was lost. Only my memory dotted the landscape with the white of limewashed cottages and byres, traced the high silhouettes of kites and buzzards, imagined the horizon as a watercolour wash where clouds hung heavy between earth and sky, blurring the boundary between them. Before my sight had failed, I could have stood in the stirrups and picked out landmarks beneath us; a fold in the landscape made Glanteifi mansion invisible from here but many of the farms which comprised the estate were laid out before us.