by Alis Hawkins
Touché.
‘My aim – indeed my duty – is to keep an open mind, Inspector. At the moment, it is entirely possible that this death was the result of an accident. However, by the same token, an autopsy may find that the deceased was killed by a deliberate blow to the head.’
I stood, and John followed suit. ‘I shall see that you are informed of the results of the autopsy as soon as I have them myself.’
Bellis rose slowly to his feet. ‘Please do, Acting Coroner. I shall be watching the progress of your investigation with great interest. As, I am sure, will the county magistrates.’
John
On Tresaith beach, Dr Reckitt had drawn spectators. As we rode down the hill, I saw two men standing on the dry sand a little way off, watching him work.
‘Are they jury members?’ Harry asked, when I told him.
‘No, I don’t recognise either of them.’
Reckitt had set up the trestle table from the beer store. Just below the high tide mark, he was far enough away from the sea to give him time to finish his work, but not so far that it wouldn’t scour the sand clean when he’d finished.
The top of the beach was all pebbles thrown up by winter storms, so we dismounted and I found the same stunted sapling that I’d used last time to fasten the mares’ reins to.
I staggered a bit walking over the stones. Still wasn’t used to walking in the riding boots Harry’d given me. They had a built-up heel, and I had to think about how to walk in them instead of just doing it. Made me feel awkward.
Harry called out a good afternoon to the two strangers and they turned and gaped at him. Couldn’t work out what he was in his odd, stiff coat and outlandish hat, could they? The look on their faces when I introduced him was priceless.
The shorter of the two whipped his hat off and said he was Tommy Moelfre. ‘Dr Reckitt asked me to come. With my cart. To take the body down to Cardigan, after.’
I looked in the direction of his pointing finger and there, sure enough, was a cart, horse still between the shafts, standing to one side of the little cottage.
Harry told him to put his hat on again and not get cold which was a relief to mankind in general. Tommy Moelfre’s hair looked as if it’d been cut with sheep-shears by someone with a grudge against him, great patches of scabby scalp on view.
The other man just touched the frayed edge of his knitted cap. ‘Gwyn Puw, Pantmawr. I live over there.’ He nodded at the little thatched cottage which looked as if it had just slumped down against the hillside facing the sea. Pantmawr. It was a name that belonged to a farm, not a cottage on a beach. It must’ve come with him.
‘You’re the lime burner?’ Harry asked in Welsh.
Gwyn Puw’s eyes flicked nervously to me as if he wanted an explanation but I wasn’t responsible for Harry’s ideas about what language he should use.
‘Yes,’ he said when I didn’t help him out, ‘I’m the lime burner.’
‘I’d like a word with you, later on,’ Harry said. ‘After I’ve spoken to Dr Reckitt.’
Tommy Moelfre looked from Harry to me and back again. ‘Beg pardon,’ he said, ‘but it might save you time if you have your word with Gwyn first, Mr Probert-Lloyd. Just a few minutes ago, the doctor said it might be another half an hour before he’d finished.’
The set of Reckitt’s back said Tommy was right – as far as the doctor was concerned, we might as well not be there. So we followed Gwyn Puw into his cottage.
The first thing I noticed, going in from the clean, salty air outside was the smell – Puw was burning cheap coal in his grate. If I got too close to it, breathed in any smoke that blew back into the room, I’d be sneezing inside a minute, having trouble catching my breath. I was fine with anthracite and with culm, which was just anthracite dust mixed with clay, but cheap coal always made my chest tight.
If Gwyn Puw bought his own coal, instead of taking some of the anthracite he used for firing the kiln as a perk of the job, he was a better man than most of us.
Mind you, there are different ways of being good. If cleanliness is next to godliness, Puw wasn’t even a near neighbour. There was no need to ask whether he was married – no woman would’ve tolerated the place. The strip mat looked as if it hadn’t been shaken out since the coronation and just looking at the frame bed in the corner made me itch.
Puw pulled his rocking chair forwards for Harry. The cushion on the seat might’ve been blue and white once – now it was all sorts of dirty shades of grey from decades of backsides in work trousers.
Harry couldn’t see the filth-shine, so he just sat down and waited for me to do the same. I found a stool and Puw rested his arse on the edge of the table under the little sea-facing window.
‘You’ve been out on one of the herring boats?’ Harry asked.
Puw nodded. If he’d noticed Harry not looking him in the eye, he was obviously putting it down to him being a gentleman. And eccentric. ‘Back yesterday, late. Out nearly a fortnight, I was. Wanted company, see, with Mrs Parry away doing business for the American scheme.’
Harry waited to see if Gwyn Puw would explain. He didn’t. ‘Can you tell us what this American scheme is, Mr Puw?’
Stripped of Gwyn Puw’s wandering about the subject, it turned out to be quite simple. In legal terms, Mrs Parry had contracted with an American business partner in a scheme to convey emigrants to a new foundry town that he was a party to establishing in America. Mrs Parry’s part of the bargain was to build and equip a ship which would take the emigrants to New York. The American’s job was to find the right people for his settlement and introduce them to their new home. Emigrants bought bonds which guaranteed a roof over their head and a contract of employment for a period of three years in whatever trade they had. Five if they were being apprenticed. The beauty of the scheme was that the emigrants wouldn’t be strangers in a foreign land. Cardiganshire families’d been emigrating to America for more than thirty years and – according to Puw, anyway – Jackson and Gallia counties, in the state of Ohio, were home to so many of them that the place was known as Little Cardiganshire.
‘And this is Mrs Parry’s scheme?’ Harry asked.
‘Well, hers and Jenkyn Hughes. That’s the American gentleman.’
‘It would be very useful if I could speak to Mrs Parry. D’you know when she’s expected back?’
Puw didn’t, so Harry changed the subject. ‘Have you had a look at the corpse, Mr Puw?’
‘Well, not what you’d call a good look. Only from a distance, type of thing. Dr Reckitt…’ he tailed off. Didn’t do to criticise one gentleman to another.
‘Dr Reckitt hasn’t been keen for you to get too close, is that it?’
‘Well, you know…’
Just then the door opened and Tommy Moelfre came in.
‘The doctor says he can tell you what you want to know now.’
Harry
John and I pulled the mares up at the bottom of Glanteifi’s drive.
‘Put Seren in the livery stables again,’ I told him, ‘and perhaps you should drop in at Mr Schofield’s – offer to do an hour or two’s work?’ I knew he must be as tired and saddle-sore as I was but it seemed only prudent that he should stay in his employer’s good graces if he was intent on asking him for articles without the payment of a fee. ‘We’ll meet for breakfast tomorrow morning.’
‘Here or in town?’
I imagined my father’s displeasure should he come down to discover John at his dining table.
‘At the Salutation?’ I suggested. ‘Say nine o’clock?’
‘Say ten past and I can do an hour for Mr Schofield tomorrow morning as well.’
I kept him in my edge-sight as he rode away and found myself recalling the impression he had made when he first clambered up on to Seren’s back all those weeks ago: a tense, jerking figure, all hands and elbows and ankles, bouncing up and down at the trot like a badly-strapped load.
Not now. As he disappeared down the road, I could detect the even bob of his hea
d as he rose to the trot like a gentleman.
Turning Sara’s head up the dusk-dim drive, his parting words came back to me. Say ten past and I can do an hour for Mr Schofield tomorrow morning as well. I had taken the comment at face value and simply agreed; in retrospect, the words had an obvious edge of sarcasm. Did John think I was punishing him for refusing to be ad hoc coroner’s officer in perpetuity? I hoped he would not think so meanly of me. Perhaps I should have offered to pay for his articles with Mr Schofield – that, surely, would make it clear that I respected his right to choose his own path.
But unselfish though I knew such an offer would be, I had begun to hope that John might come to work for me in another capacity. It was increasingly clear to me that, if I was to have any effective kind of role in the world, I would need a private secretary. I could not read, and my writing – even with the aid of a bespoke apparatus – was inconsistent at best and illegible at worst. Managing the bureaucracy that accrues to any occupation was going to necessitate employing somebody.
Now that I knew of John’s ambitions, could I ask him to lower them in order to come and work for me? Riding towards the glowing windows of my father’s house, the day’s colours muted by the fading light, I feared that I could not.
After a solitary dinner, I went to sit in the library. The fire had been made up for me, and the room was tolerably warm, particularly in the winged chair by the hearth.
Leaning my head against the high back of the chair I allowed my mind to flit amongst fragments of the day, like a bee alighting briefly on each flower in a patch. And, just as a bee will sometimes go back again and again to a particularly fruitful bloom, my mind kept returning to Dr Benton Reckitt.
Of course, he was nothing but an indistinct figure in my mind’s eye – a large, pale man. His voice, however, was anything but indistinct. Slightly higher than his height and bulk would have suggested, its tone was didactic at best, hectoring at worst, and, like most men who are lecturers by predisposition rather than training, the cadences of his speech quickly fell into a favoured pattern. It had begun to grate as he had recounted his findings to me on the beach.
‘You asked me to look specifically at this man’s heart and brain,’ he had said, ‘but I took it upon myself to examine his other organs as well. Though rarer, a sudden crisis in one of them can cause collapse, particularly if there is an associated, generalised infection.’
He motioned me towards the table and, understanding that my presence at the corpse’s side was for his benefit rather than my own, I moved forward to form the necessary audience.
‘Here,’ he said, bending over the rib-splayed chest of the dead man, ‘you can see that I’ve opened the atria and the ventricles.’
‘Actually, Dr Reckitt,’ John spoke from behind me, ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd can’t see that. If you remember, he’s lost his central vision?’
I smiled inwardly. It was typical of John to have remembered the actual term I had used when describing my condition to Reckitt.
‘Oh. Yes. Apologies. You’d better come and see, then, hadn’t you?’
John moved forward a pace.
‘Come on, don’t be shy! This is what we all look like inside, you know!’
From a different man, the words would have been hearty. From Reckitt they sounded slightly perplexed, as if he was at a loss to understand John’s reluctance to look at a butchered corpse.
‘As I say, observe the atria and ventricles. No indication of any over- or under-growth which would suggest pathology and no signs of clots having formed and travelled to the heart. This is the right coronary artery – as you can see, I’ve dissected it out.’
If the doctor was going to deliver an anatomy lecture, we would be there all day. ‘Dr Reckitt, I’m very aware that time is getting on. I’d like us all to be able to get home before dark and, as I’d appreciate your making the corpse decent for viewing, I expect you’ll need some time to…’ I floundered. ‘To do whatever’s necessary. May we have a summary of your findings, please?’
‘Very well. If that’s what you’d prefer.’ He turned back to John. ‘His liver, as you can see, here, is undiseased. He seems to have been a man of temperate habits because there is no evidence of the damage one sometimes sees in those who drink to excess.
‘Then his kidneys, here. They too, are unimpaired. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say they are excellent specimens.’
If this was Reckitt’s idea of summarising, God help us. The sea would be lapping at our boots soon.
‘Doctor, I beg your pardon but have you managed to ascertain what killed him?’
Reckitt’s head turned towards me. ‘Oh yes. That’s quite clear. If you look here, I’ll show you.’
He moved around to the man’s head which, I now realised, was missing half of its skull. I swallowed and shuffled forward, displacing John who moved away smartly.
‘When I removed the brain, it was clear that a significant degree of bleeding had occurred following the head wound. This would have caused a substantial rise in intracranial pressure and a consequent compression of brain tissue leading to the failure of vital functions and subsequent death.’
‘What kind of vital functions?’ I asked.
‘Heartbeat and respiration, crucially.’
‘I see. And how quickly would that have happened? How long after the blow to the head would he have died – can you say?’
‘A small number of minutes. The exact time would depend on the rate of bleeding. The condition of the vessel that was ruptured by the blow would suggest that it happened relatively swiftly, but I can’t be absolutely sure.’
‘What does that tell us about the force of the blow?’ I asked.
‘You’re asking how hard he was hit?’
I nodded.
‘There is no scale of blow force. All I can say is that it was a heavy blow.’
‘And it was a blow, was it? He couldn’t simply have fallen and hit his head?’
‘Not unless he fell from a considerable height. And there are no other injuries to suggest that.’
‘A premeditated attack then? With intent to kill?’
‘That’s beyond my scope.’
I nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘There’s one more thing I should make you aware of. On removing the brain, I saw immediately that its shape was markedly asymmetrical. Here, on this side – can you see?’ He was clearly speaking to John, who moved towards the exposed brain. ‘The frontal cortex bulges out.’
‘Is that significant?’ John asked.
‘It would have been of great significance to the man while he was alive. The bulge was caused by a large tumour.’
I could tell, from his tone, that Reckitt expected us to be impressed by this.
‘Would that have contributed to the pressure inside his cranium?’ I asked. ‘Might it have hastened his death?’
‘An interesting question.’ Reckitt sounded intrigued. ‘It’s possible that it made a very minor contribution to the speed of his demise. But that is not why the tumour is significant.’
A gust of wind flung squall-heralding drops of rain in my face and almost flipped my hat from my head. Clouds were darkening the western horizon, bringing night ever closer. ‘Doctor, if I could ask you to make the body presentable so that it can be transported to Cardigan, I’d be very grateful.’
I knew he was keen to talk about the lump he had found but I wanted to be home before dark or deluge overtook us. ‘If you’re not too busy tomorrow,’ I said, ‘perhaps you wouldn’t mind meeting me in Cardigan to give me your full report. We can discuss the significance of the tumour then.’
Now, opening my eyes to the library fire, I wondered what importance a growth in the dead man’s brain could possibly have and whether I should, after all, have allowed Reckitt to tell me on the beach.
John
Who did Harry Probert-Lloyd think he was, telling me to drop in and do some work for Mr Schofield while he sloped off home to a nice warm fire? I should’ve
told him where he could go. And, if I’d believed all the stuff he’d said to me when we were working together before Christmas – all that stuff about how we were equals, how he didn’t want to have power over me – I would have, I’d have told him to go to hell.
But how could I believe him? Before, he’d as good as offered me a job as his clerk when he became a solicitor. Now, that was all forgotten and he was full of being coroner. In other words, he was just like every other under-occupied squire’s son, full of whims and fancies. Because he could do what he liked, couldn’t he? He didn’t know how it felt to have to be as good as your word every day of your life, to work and work at convincing people you were somebody they could depend on, so they’d carry on employing you and you could carry on having a roof over your head.
So, now I knew. What I had to go by was what Harry Probert-Lloyd did, not what he said.
Been a fool to get my hopes up, hadn’t I? Whatever he said, he was Harry Probert-Lloyd, heir to the Glanteifi estate and I was John Davies, solicitor’s clerk, about a fortnight away, at any given moment, from the workhouse.
The way Mr Schofield spoke to me when I went in to the office didn’t help, either.
‘Oh, Mr Davies, good afternoon to you! Are we to infer that the inestimable Mr Probert-Lloyd has concluded his investigations?’
Hypocritical old fart. He was always nice as pie to Harry’s face.
‘No. Just finished for the day.’ Because a gentleman could decide that his working day finished at four o’clock if he felt like it.