by Alis Hawkins
I watched her unfolding the letter. I had already calculated that it could not have come in response to the news of my appointment as coroner pro tem; the mail took two or sometimes three days to reach Lydia and the same time for a return letter.
‘Writing’s even smaller than usual,’ Mrs Griffiths said, hooking the spectacles she wore for reading around her ears in a way I remembered from childhood. ‘Right then. Dear Harry…’
I smiled. In my last letter, I had asked Miss Howell if I might address her by her Christian name and invited her to do the same. But Mrs Griffiths, knowing nothing of what my letters contained, was clearly surprised at this sudden familiarity. ‘Addressing you like a brother, now, I see.’
I found myself unexpectedly taken aback. Was that how Lydia Howell saw me – as a replacement for the brother she had lost?
‘Dear Harry,’ she began again, ‘I have had a most rewarding few days since, as you suggested, I began trying to engage Reverend Mudge and his wife in conversation. Evidently you were right. Inviting me to sit with them in the evenings was more than a kindness to a servant, the Reverend Mudge seems very glad of a third person to speak to.’
Isabel Griffiths paused and took another sip of her tea. I was being invited to explain the advice I had given.
‘As you know from previous letters,’ I said, ‘Miss Howell felt that, because her employers barely spoke to each other in the evenings, she wasn’t free speak to them either. But I suspected that the Reverend and Mrs Mudge simply had no common interests and I suggested that it might be a relief to them if somebody else spoke.’
It was advice born of endless evenings spent with my father, the silence between us anything but companionable.
‘Yesterday,’ Mrs Griffiths began reading again, ‘the Reverend spoke of his youth at the Newington Green Chapel. I knew he was older than his wife by some years but I had not thought him well past fifty, as he must be, speaking as he did of the influence on his young mind of Richard Price.
‘Not being a Unitarian, you will not know the significance of the Newington Green Chapel but, without Richard Price, I doubt there would be a Unitarian Church worth the name in our country today. Newington Green has been influential in the intellectual life of the capital, playing host, at one time or another, to every notable republican of the last century.’
I felt a sudden shiver of misgiving. Our correspondence had allowed Lydia to give free rein to her thoughts, something that had, previously, been lacking in her employers’ house. But, now that she had discovered this rich seam of intellectualism in Mudge’s parlour, would she still wish to communicate with me, a reluctant squire-in-waiting in Cardiganshire?
‘In his conversation, I find the Reverend cast down by our society’s increasing tendency to believe that theology and scientific thought are now reaching the point where no further investigation is necessary, where all questions are answered and men of sense must submit. I fear that Mrs Mudge encourages this view and I detect in her husband a tendency to wish that he had been born half a century earlier than he was, into the ferment of thought and debate and action that took place in the last century.’
A wish I might easily have shared, myself. The politics of our own century seemed tame in comparison with its predecessor, the small outbreak of insurrection with which Lydia and I had been involved a mere puff of wind when ranged against the hurricanes of Republicanism that had torn through France and America.
Mrs Griffiths stopped and fortified herself with several long sips of tea. The quality of her silence left me with the distinct impression that it was not the quantity of words she had read that had left her in need of sustenance but their content.
She made no comment, however, and continued reading.
‘But, whilst I rejoice that the world of ideas is opened to me once more, I fear that our conversations are not to Mrs Mudge’s taste and I wondered whether Mrs Griffiths might be able to advise me on this?’
The housekeeper broke off her reading abruptly. She had something to say but would not volunteer it without being invited to do so.
‘Do you have any advice for Miss Howell on this matter, Mrs Griffiths?’
She replaced her teacup, with a very deliberate ‘chink’, on the saucer. ‘How long has Miss Howell been governess to the reverend’s children?’
‘More than seven years. But it’s only recently that she’s begun to be invited to sit with them in the evenings. Previously, she was needed to be on hand in the nursery.’
‘How long is “recently”?’
‘During the last few months, I believe.’
‘And for most of that time, she sat quietly and waited to be spoken to?’
I nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘And she was well advised to do so,’ Isabel Griffiths’s voice was sharper than usual, as if she had nerved herself to deliver an unwelcome truth. ‘I know a governess doesn’t like to think of herself as a servant but that’s what she is, in the end. She’s a paid member of the household, same as I am. A servant.’
My mind rebelled against the idea. Maids and footmen were servants. They came and went from households at their whim, as did cooks. But butlers and housekeepers were different. I could not see Mrs Griffiths as a servant. Without her, the household would fail completely. There would be no household.
‘Because of the way you are,’ Isabel Griffiths continued, as if my radical sympathies were some kind of congenital deformity, ‘you think everybody of good sense thinks the same as you. And that they like to share their thoughts with all and sundry. But did you stop to wonder how happy Mrs Mudge would be to have a lively-minded young woman bandying views with her husband?’
She paused. Unsure what to say, I kept quiet.
‘Is Miss Howell pretty?’
I had asked John the same question. His answer had been dismissive. Not pretty but not a fright to look at. Wouldn’t turn heads, either way.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I have it on good authority that she is nothing much to look at.’
But her voice would turn heads; a low contralto that I would know again anywhere.
‘She should be thankful for that,’ Mrs Griffiths said. ‘If she was pretty, she’d probably be out of her place already.’
‘But Mrs Mudge couldn’t mistrust her husband, surely? He’s a man of the cloth.’
‘He might not give in. But no woman likes to see her husband tempted in front of her own eyes, Harry. If you want to be a friend to Miss Howell, you’ll pass on my warning to her. If she values her position, she should go back to waiting to be spoken to. And she should take pains to be dull when she speaks.’
John
Harry’d told Reckitt that he’d be at the Black Lion Hotel the following afternoon. So, after our breakfast, off we went to Cardigan.
With the pace he set, it was difficult to talk but, to be honest, that was a relief. I was feeling awkward after what I’d said in parting the previous day and, if I wasn’t careful, I’d be telling tales about Old Schofield and his views just to make things right between us again. But it wouldn’t do Harry any good to know what people were thinking. Especially about his chances of getting elected as coroner.
I watched him as we cantered along. It was one of those changeable days, threatening rain one minute, the sun lighting everything up like a smile the next, but Harry didn’t seem to notice. Something on his mind? I found out, soon enough.
‘I’ve been giving some thought to how we should organise ourselves,’ he said. ‘I think we should let it be known that anybody with any information about the dead man can leave a message for us at the Black Lion. That might encourage people who’d be wary of going to the police station to come forward.’
He was right about that. Six or seven years on from finding that we suddenly had a police force, a lot of people still didn’t trust the Cardiganshire Constabulary. Older people didn’t like the fact that outsiders were there to keep order. Interfering, they called it. The old parish constables had been their own boys,
known from birth. But the new officers might be from as far away as Aberystwyth or Llanelli. And their uniforms didn’t help. Frock coats and tall hats. People weren’t sure whether to think of them as soldiers or gentlemen.
‘Are you planning to use the Black Lion for the whole of the investigation?’ I asked. We’d be back and forth to Cardigan like the mail coach if he was.
‘Yes. I’m going to see if they can accommodate us for a few days. As long as you’re agreeable?’
No chance of being sent off to Old Schofield for an hour here and there if we were in Cardigan.
I was definitely agreeable.
When Harry put his proposal to Mrs Weston, owner of the Black Lion, I could almost see her working up the profit and loss of accommodating the coroner.
On the credit side: a gentleman and his assistant paying bed and board for a number of days. Not to mention the possible rise in reputation from being associated with the law.
On the debit side: seeing as the gentleman in question was the coroner, dead bodies’d be involved. There might well be talk of murder. And who knew what kind of people’d be coming in and out? Possible loss of reputation.
But Mrs Weston didn’t want Harry to go to any of the other hotels or inns in town. And she knew that ninety-nine out of every hundred people who found themselves in her coachyard didn’t care who else was there. Coach passengers wanted to stretch their legs, visit the privy and have something to eat, before getting back into the rattle-box and going on with their journey. They wouldn’t give a second glance at comings and goings through the tradesmen’s entrance.
So, terms agreed, Harry told Mrs Weston that we’d be back at one o’clock for Reckitt and anybody else who wanted to speak to us. Then we set off down Bridge Street towards the river.
The docks were bewildering. Crowded, busy, full of cranes swinging things on and off ships, men barely able to see where they were pushing their overladen barrows, carts trying to force their way through and constantly in danger of knocking somebody over. You wanted all your wits about you and I made sure I stuck close to Harry. Being half blind’d get him killed if one of us wasn’t careful.
I’d never been down here before so it was news to me that each wharf handled different kinds of goods. The point where all the Pembrokeshire limestone for burning came in wasn’t really a wharf at all – it was a breakwater built out from one of the wharves. Mercantile Breakwater they called it, owned by a company that brought in culm, lime, timber and other building supplies.
We made our way along, looking for somebody to ask about lime boats to Tresaith. Near the breakwater a huddle of pipe-smoking men were standing around one of those huge cast-iron lumps they use to moor ships to. Not a friendly pack of men. Looked as if nails’d bounce off them.
Harry told them what we wanted but all they did was shake their heads, eyes on the sea or the ground as if we weren’t there.
‘Any of you ever work on the limestone boats?’ I asked. Harry couldn’t be guaranteed to have seen the head-shaking.
They turned their eyes on me but not one of them spoke. The wind rattled the rigging of a ship moored a couple of dozen yards away and men called out to each other as they went about their work.
Harry tried again. ‘We just need to know when the boats go in and out, that’s all.’ He was doing his best to look them in the eye but he wasn’t making much of a job of it.
Without looking at his mates, one of the sailors suddenly took his pipe out of his mouth. ‘Burning-stone that comes in here goes to Penyrodyn.’ He jerked his head upriver.
I did my best to stare back at him but, try as I might to look him up and down as if his clothes compared badly with my own, I felt like a child with his arse out of his britches. The way he stood there, feet planted, head up, he made canvas trousers and a salt-stained smock look like the only clothes a man should wear.
Mind, that dead-eyed stare of his couldn’t unnerve Harry. ‘Can you tell us where we should be looking for Tresaith boats, then?’ he asked, pleasantly.
Harry was nobody’s fool. He’d heard the way the sailor’d pronounced Penyrodyn, and switched languages. That way, the man could answer in Welsh if he wanted to keep something from his English-speaking mates.
The sailor shook tobacco-piss out of his pipe and stuck the stem behind his ear. With the bowl nestling at his cheekbone, it looked like a growth.
‘Kilns further up get their stone straight from Carew or Williamston,’ he said, sticking to English. ‘You could go there. Or you could go and wait for another load to come in.’
That’s what he’d’ve done. You could tell. He’d’ve just gone and sat on Tresaith beach with his pipe and waited. Like a rock.
Harry thanked him, we turned and walked back along the breakwater, and I let my breath out for what felt like the first time in minutes. They hadn’t raised so much as a finger against us but I’d still come away with the feeling that they’d’ve thrown us in the sea and let us drown as soon as look at us.
Didn’t take much imagination to see one of them bashing a man’s head in. All they’d’ve needed was a reason. Not a particularly good one, either.
‘What now?’ I asked.
‘Back up the coast. Unless Mrs Parry’s home, I think we need to speak to Teff Banc yr Eithin again. He’ll know when the next boat load is due, and we can be there to meet it.’
When we went back to the Black Lion for the horses, a passing servant with a travelling box under each arm told us that there were two men waiting for us.
‘Who are they?’ Harry asked but the man just shrugged. Didn’t know and didn’t care.
We made our way through the dingy corridors of the inn, the smell of roasting meat making my mouth water. Breakfast had been a long time ago.
I opened the door into the bare little back room to let Harry in and, looking past him, I saw Gwyn Puw the lime burner and Obadaiah Vaughan getting to their feet. Puw dragged his ratty knitted cap off his head, leaving the hair under it sweaty and flattened.
‘Good morning, Mr Puw, Mr Vaughan,’ I said, for Harry’s benefit.
They chorused their greetings back to us and Puw flicked a glance at me as Harry sat in the chair next to the fire. Like all fires in daylight, it looked weak and cold and it wasn’t doing much to get rid of the smell of damp.
‘Gentlemen,’ Harry said. ‘Before we start, can you just tell me, is Mrs Parry back at The Ship, yet?’
Puw shook his head. ‘Haven’t seen her.’ He shifted his weight uncomfortably in his chair, all nerves. His eyes went from me to Harry and back to Dai’r Bardd. The so-called poet sat there, watching us, quite at ease. Still, at least he’d bothered to change out of his work clothes into Sunday best.
‘You’ve got some information for us, I expect, gentlemen?’ I said.
Dai’r Bardd stared at Puw. ‘Gwyn has. Haven’t you, Gwyn?’
The lime burner dug around in a pocket. When his hand came out, he thrust it at us and opened his fist.
‘Coins,’ I said and put my hand out for them. Unfamiliar-looking. I held one up to the light of the window and saw words around the edge. ‘They’re from America,’ I told Harry.
Puw’s eyes started flicking back and forth again. Me, Harry, me, Dai’r Bardd.
‘Where did you find them?’ I asked.
Puw looked at his friend. Dai’r Bardd nodded. Looked like permission more than encouragement.
‘I found them in the draw-hole of my big kiln.’
Getting the details out of Puw was like getting seed out of a haystack but it turned out to be a long story easily cut short. After Harry and I had left the beach the day before, Puw had helped Tommy Moelfre get the sewn-up corpse on to the cart ready for Cardigan workhouse. Then he’d made his way back to his cottage past the bigger of his two limekilns.
‘And I saw the waste had been disturbed,’ he said.
‘The waste?’ Harry asked.
Gwyn Puw gave puppy-dog eyes to Dai’r Bardd, who sighed and started to tell
us how the two wide arches in each kiln were there to suck air in, to keep the kiln burning, and to allow the burnt stone to be raked out. After a kiln had been emptied, he said, there was always a pile of ash and limestone dust left behind – the waste.
‘The waste heap, see, there’s always a certain shape on him,’ Puw said when Harry asked him to explain what he’d seen. ‘Grows up under the riddle, he does, with each load of stone we rake out. The wind and the rain do blow him a bit, after a time, but you get to know the look of that, with the wind always coming in off the water, see.’
‘And the waste heap wasn’t as you’d expect, is that what you’re telling us?’ Harry asked.
‘That’s it. A mess, he was. All over the place.’
We waited. Dai’r Bardd spoke up again. ‘Gwyn showed me. There were footprints and evidence of shoveling in the waste.’
‘Aye – somebody’d had my shovel out from where I left her. I gen’rally leave her laid down at the back of the draw-hole. Don’t come to no harm there, she don’t. But somebody’d used her.’
‘What for?’
This was his big moment, but Puw was no storyteller. He looked pleadingly at his friend.
‘Gwyn thinks – and I think he must be right – that they put the dead man in there and covered him up with the waste.’
‘They?’ I asked.
‘Whoever killed him.’
As if he hadn’t heard us, Harry suddenly asked, ‘Mr Puw, how big is the draw-hole? It’s a long time since I came up to fetch limestone on the carts as a boy.’