by Alis Hawkins
I heard my own words and wondered that I had the nerve to articulate them.
‘I’m sure it would.’ He was not being kind, simply giving an honest response. ‘But it wouldn’t give me any standing.’ I saw him shake his head, just slightly. ‘I want something better than the life of a lawyer’s clerk.’
I nodded. ‘And you deserve it.’ Of course he did; the abilities that I had seen in him were precisely those that were now compelling him to wish for more. I had discovered my ideal assistant and, simultaneously, alerted him to the fact that he could aspire to greater things.
I clucked Sara into motion once more.
‘Harry? Where are we going?’
I did not know. Motion simply seemed better than stasis.
‘We should go and see the inspector in Cardigan,’ John said. ‘He’ll have something to say about all this.’
John
God, I wished I had gloves on that ride down to Cardigan! The wind kept thudding into us, like being hit with a goosedown pillow. And it wasn’t just strong, it was cold – as if it’d picked up the chill of the Atlantic all the way from America. Why the lime burner would want to leave his little cottage and go out on the sea to be at the mercy of that wind was a mystery to me.
My fingers were frozen. I don’t think I could’ve let go of the reins if you’d paid me.
And my insides were the same. Frozen. I’d gambled and lost. I’d been so sure Harry’d give me a job. He didn’t have to offer me articles, just something better than what I had at the moment. But he’d just taken what I’d said. Taken it and said nothing. Perhaps he thought he didn’t have any right to interfere. That would’ve been typical Harry.
Why in the name of sanity had I said I was going to ask Mr Schofield to article me? I hadn’t meant to. I’d just opened my mouth and out it came.
Knowing Harry, now he knew I had a plan he’d just back away and let me get on with it. All respectful. But I didn’t want his respect, I wanted him to give me a job.
Landed myself right in the shit, hadn’t I? I could just see old Schofield’s face if I asked him to give me articles for nothing. I don’t think that would be appropriate, do you, Mr Davies?
I turned to Harry. Didn’t want him to think I was sulking. ‘Have you met the police inspector?’ I asked.
‘No. I know nothing about him. When the force was established my father and I were barely on speaking terms. He wouldn’t have felt the need to tell me magistrates’ business.’
No, I didn’t suppose he would. When the Cardiganshire police came into being, Probert-Lloyd of the bench was still getting over the scandal of his son being involved with a dairymaid.
‘As it happens,’ I said, ‘he’s got something in common with our friend Harris. He’s an old soldier.’
‘Aren’t most policemen?’
‘I wouldn’t know, but Mr Bellis is. That’s his name, William Bellis.’
Harry snorted as if I’d made a weak joke. ‘I bet that’s not what people call him.’
In spite of everything, I grinned. ‘No, they call him Billy Go-About.’
He waited for me to explain. I glanced across at him, sitting there with his stupid soft-brimmed hat and his stiff Mackintosh overcoat. What was Mr Bellis going to make of him?
‘The main reason the magistrates wanted a police force,’ I said ‘was to stop anything like the riots happening again. So, the inspector’s always been keen to put an end to any kind of gathering that looks as if it might have an opinion about somebody or something. Gets his men together and appears on the streets. “Go about your business!” he shouts. “Anybody continuing to gather in unlawful numbers will be arrested immediately.”’
‘It’s only unlawful after dark, surely?’
‘Yes. Well. Billy Go-About takes a broad view of darkness. Late afternoon. Dusk. If he thinks too many people are loitering, out he’ll come. Then it’s Go about your business!’
‘Not a popular man, then?’
‘Popular with the magistrates.’
‘But not generally?’
‘He doesn’t like civilians.’
Harry snorted again, but this time he didn’t find anything funny in what I’d said. ‘He’s obviously failed to remember that the police may be uniformed, but they’re not military. He’s as much a civilian as you and I.’
No. Billy Go-About was definitely not going to take a shine to Harry.
If I’d been the chief constable, I’d’ve chosen somewhere else for Cardigan lock-up. Right next to where the old town stocks used to be wasn’t the best place if he wanted to give the idea that he was in charge of a new, modern police force. To everybody in town, it looked like the same old story – the magistrates are the law. Only now they had men in uniforms to enforce it at the ratepayers’ expense.
Mind you, inside the police station, the ratepayers didn’t have much to complain about. No money whatsoever had gone on making the place look impressive. The walls were whitewashed – clean enough to show they’d been done recently – and the woodwork was polished, but that was all you could say. It wasn’t a place that encouraged you to visit. You don’t come to us, it said, we come to you.
There was a constable sitting behind a desk. His eyes followed us in, but he didn’t bother stirring his fat arse from his chair. Looked Harry up and down, he did, as if he’d never seen a man in a Mackintosh coat before. To be fair, he probably hadn’t.
‘Help you?’ he grunted, in Welsh. Not insolent exactly, but definitely not what your mother would’ve approved of.
Harry stared directly at him. As if he could see every blackhead in the man’s face, every greasy brown hair on his head. As if he was disgusted by the crust of snot hanging from one hairy nostril.
‘I am Henry Probert-Lloyd,’ he said, in his most English voice. ‘Acting coroner for the Teifi Valley. I would like to see Mr Bellis, please.’
That stood Mr Fat Arse up in a hurry.
‘I’m very sorry, sir, but Inspector Bellis isn’t here at the moment. Got a meeting with the magistrates, he has.’
‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’
He didn’t.
‘Very well, I’ll leave him a letter if I may.’
The constable nodded, as if that was the best idea he’d heard all year. ‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’ But he didn’t get the hint. Did he think I had a writing desk with ink and pens in my back pocket?
‘We’ll need a pen and some paper’ I said. ‘If you don’t mind.’
As we went around to the back of the station to fetch the mares, I caught Harry grinning. It was a relief. ‘What’s tickled you, then?’
‘That constable must’ve thought I was too grand to write my own letters – the way I stood there dictating to you.’
I glanced at the barred window of the lock-up room as we went past. Made me shiver. ‘I know you had to leave that letter for form’s sake,’ I said, ‘but the news’ll be all round town before Billy Go-About gets back from his meeting. That constable’ll be telling anybody in earshot that the inquest’s been adjourned. You’ll be lucky if Billy Bellis doesn’t hear it in the street. And then he’ll have a fit about it.’
Harry handed over a ha’penny to the boy who was holding our horses and waited for him to scamper off over the cracked cobbles. ‘Why would Bellis have a fit?’
I let him take Sara’s reins and kept hold of the little grey, Seren. ‘Money,’ I said. ‘Take it from me, if the magistrates wanted you to get the whole thing done and dusted on the quiet this morning, Old Go-About’ll be of the same opinion. Person unknown, not from round here, drowned. Very sad but not one of us. Stick him in the ground as cheaply as possible and that’s the end of him.’
‘Except he didn’t drown.’
I’d never seen Inspector Bellis in the flesh but I had a pretty shrewd idea what an old army officer’d sound like if he thought his judgement was being questioned. ‘Doctor now, are you, sir?’ I barked at Harry. ‘Qualified to say how a man died, are you? Man wh
o comes out of the sea dead is drowned, sir, take my word for it. Drowned.’
Harry laughed. ‘We’ll see.’
He might not know Billy Go-About and his ways yet, but he would, soon enough. And if I’d had money to bet with, I’d’ve staked a good sum on him and Bellis not getting on. At all.
Harry
By the time John arrived the following morning, I had ruminated on his warning about the inspector’s likely attitude, and determined that we must make another attempt to liaise with Bellis. However, there was something else that I wished to put in train first and I raised the subject with John as we walked around the house to the stableyard.
‘As well as seeing Bellis today, I need to find a doctor,’ I told him.
‘Why? Who’s ill?’
‘Nobody. I want to arrange for an autopsy examination on the corpse.’
He pulled up abruptly. ‘Is that really needed? Seemed pretty clear what’d killed him.’
‘You mean the blow to the head?’ I spoke quietly, aware that the grooms in the stableyard would be casting curious glances in our direction.
‘Of course.’
‘In my experience, what seems obvious isn’t always what’s true. And then there’s the matter of his face.’ The jury’s various descriptions of the corpse’s skinless face had stuck in my mind, marking this death as something out of the normal run of things.
‘Having his face skinned didn’t kill him.’ John’s voice was tight but it was not clear to me whether his reaction was due to recollection of the grisly sight or because he felt rebuked by my response.
‘Possibly not,’ I said, mildly, ‘but it might have a bearing on how or why he died and I’d like to have a medical opinion on how he came to be in that condition.’
‘Fair enough. But, I’m warning you, the magistrates’ll complain. It’s two guineas to have a corpse cut open.’
I knew he was probably right – after all, until I could acquaint myself with all the ramifications of my temporary position, he had the advantage over me when it came to both legal practices and local politics in Cardiganshire – but I was not going to allow financial considerations to sway me. ‘Somewhere,’ I said, voice still low, ‘there’s a family waiting for news of him. Where he is. Why he hasn’t come home.’ I paused to allow this putative family to take form in John’s mind. ‘And I’d rather not just take the easy option and tell them that he died from a blow on the head – accidental or otherwise. He may have died of some other cause. An apoplexy or seizure. After which, somebody found him, stripped him of his clothes for what they were worth and threw his body into the sea.’
‘Is that what you think happened?’ John clearly did not.
‘It’s what could have happened.’ I hesitated. ‘You and I both know that it’ll be far easier to persuade somebody to come forward and identify him if an autopsy examination finds he died of natural causes.’ Our investigation into the death of Margaret Jones had taught us that people were apt to be wary of getting involved in a murder, however innocent their knowledge of the victim might be.
John sighed. ‘You’ll never get elected as coroner if you start going into things in this detail. You’d cost the ratepayers twice what Mr Bowen did.’
His words sent a cold shiver over me but I could not simply sign my name to ‘unlawful killing by persons unknown’ and forget about the unclaimed Tresaith corpse. Whoever he was, he deserved better than that. Just as Margaret had.
‘An autopsy examination will give us more information,’ I said. ‘Information we need.’ I waited, but he made no response. ‘So… do you know a doctor who might be persuaded to do the job?’
‘People around here aren’t too keen on dissectors coming to examine them,’ John said, making for the stables once more as if he wanted to put a distance between himself and the topic of conversation. ‘I know things are probably different in London but, here, people don’t think it’s decent.’
I kept pace with him. ‘Are you telling me you don’t know a doctor who’ll do it?’
He stopped and sighed. ‘No. There is one. But he’s not what you’d call entirely respectable.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Reckitt. Benton Reckitt.’
The mares were well rested and skittish as John and I made our way up the hill to Treforgan. With a blue, cloud-skimmed sky above us and the warmth of the winter sun on my back, I felt cheered. Despite John’s misgivings, I knew I was right to insist on an autopsy. We had to be sure.
‘So,’ I asked, ‘who is this Dr Reckitt?’
‘He’s medical attendant to the Cardigan workhouse.’
That knocked my optimism a little. The Poor Law Unions paid their medical attendants a pittance and, as a consequence, workhouse doctors tended to be men who could not inspire confidence in patients who were able to pay for their services.
‘I don’t want an incompetent,’ I said.
‘Reckitt’s not incompetent. He’s a drunk.’
I was taken aback. ‘Observation or hearsay?’
‘Hearsay,’ John admitted. ‘But I’ve heard a lot of people say it.’
I felt Sara peck as she missed her footing. The road was better used than it was maintained.
‘If he’s unreliable, he’s no use to us. We need somebody who knows what he’s looking for when he cuts a man open. We can’t have some drunk destroying evidence by butchering the corpse.’
‘I’ve never heard anybody complain about his work, just his manner. He used to be a surgeon, from what I’ve heard. And they need to be quick, not chatty.’
A surgeon might perform better autopsies than a physician. But if he was a drunk, would this Reckitt retain the dexterity to anatomise our corpse and tell us how he had died?
‘Where does he live?’ I asked.
‘Cilgerran.’
In half a mile or so, therefore, we would reach the point in the road where I would have to make a decision. A consultation with Reckitt would take us inland, delaying any meeting with Inspector Bellis.
‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘if we should visit Dr Reckitt before going on to Cardigan? The days are short and it would be advisable to give him as much daylight as possible to get the examination done. If he agrees to do it, that is.’
‘Don’t you think it’d be more diplomatic,’ – John emphasised the word as if he thought it might be foreign to me – ‘to go and see Billy Go-About first?’
There was no doubt about it. Seeing Bellis first would be the politically expedient thing to do. But John’s own warnings on the subject of an autopsy had put me on my guard and I suspected that it might be wiser to present the inspector with a fait accompli. I knew myself to be a mediocre liar and I wanted to be able to sound, if not contrite, then honest at least.
The autopsy is happening as we speak, Inspector. I couldn’t stop it now if I wanted to.
There was also Reckitt’s alleged intemperance to consider. ‘Diplomacy is one thing,’ I said, ‘but, sometimes, pragmatism is required. Quite apart from the short supply of daylight, the longer we leave it before our visit, the more likely a habitual drunk is to be inebriated. I would far rather speak to Dr Reckitt sober, if I can.’
John made no response, and my inability to guess what he might be thinking aggravated me. ‘If you have an opinion,’ I said, ‘feel free to air it. If we’re not going to be working together in future, you have nothing to lose.’
A sudden jerk of his head in my direction told me I had shocked him.
‘No. If you want to go and see Benton Reckitt,’ he said, stiffly, ‘that’s what we should do.’ And, before I could reply, he kicked Seren into a trot ahead of me.
Urging Sara after her stablemate, I thought with some sourness that my father would be gratified to know how closely John’s opinion resembled his own. Only the previous evening, he had taken me to task, over dinner, in the matter of my relations with the Cardigan police.
‘Henry, I gather you have not yet paid your respects to Inspector Bellis.’
I had tried to swallow my irritation with a mouthful of claret. ‘That’s not entirely true. I have not yet spoken to Mr Bellis but it’s hardly for want of trying.’
‘How so?’
‘I went to the police station in Cardigan after the viewing of the body, as it happens. Expressly in order to confer with him.’
‘But not, I gather, immediately after?’
I ground my teeth and wished I had excused myself from the table as soon as the remnants of our meal had been cleared away. Though I found the presence of a footman during dinner inhibiting, it did at least mean that my father confined himself to uncontroversial topics of conversation until we were alone.
‘Given that the man who found the body lives less than two miles away from Tresaith beach, it seemed a more rational use of my time to speak to him first.’ Rationality: one of my father’s most prized virtues. ‘I fully intended to speak to Bellis later but, when I enquired at the police station, he had already left.’
I saw my father extend a hand towards his glass but, instead of picking it up, he seemed to do no more than move it an inch or two on the starched surface of the tablecloth.