by Alis Hawkins
‘Not that he’d told us. But men like Jenkyn always have something up their sleeves.’
I nodded. ‘So can you tell me what he was doing to make this additional money?’
‘He was bringing coal up from Pembrokeshire. Some anthracite and some cheaper coal as well. Mostly for the limekilns at Tresaith. But also to sell up and down the coast.’
‘To other lime burners?’ There’d certainly be little or no market for anthracite amongst the farmers on the coast. If they were lucky, they burned culm. If not, they burned turf and brushwood faggots and any dead wood they could find. There might be the odd one here and there who was doing well enough to afford brown coal but even they’d be pretty few and far between.
‘It was mostly for the kilns, yes. And I bought some of the anthracite off him. For The Ship.’
I could see why she’d want it. Anthracite burns brighter and hotter than any other fuel and, with The Ship standing empty whenever she was away, it’d be no quick job to warm it up again. Walls that thick hold the cold.
Then, something occurred to me. ‘Would the boats that brought the lime up from Pembrokeshire bring Mr Hughes’ coal at the same time?’
‘Only the coal I was buying off him to fire the lime. No more than that.’
‘Does Teff Harris unload coal as well as limestone?’
Jenkyn Hughes wouldn’t have got far playing cards against Mrs Parry. She gave nothing away. ‘Teff Harris’ll do most things for money,’ she said.
‘Just for money?’ I asked. ‘I remember you saying he wanted to take his family to America. Might he have done a deal with Mr Hughes for labour in exchange for a reduction in the price of his ticket?’
Mrs Parry raised one eyebrow about a quarter of an inch. ‘Possibly.’
I made them wait while I wrote another pointless note. ‘Can either of you think of anybody who might have been glad to see Mr Hughes dead? Anybody with a grudge against him? Anybody he’d made an enemy of?’
For the first time, Mrs Parry and Mr Philips looked at each other.
Philips turned to me. ‘He wasn’t well liked. Not what we’re used to here. He was loud. A bit too pleased with himself.’
Hah! I thought. Pot. Kettle.
‘But he was a sound-enough businessman.’ Mrs Parry put her tuppence worth in. ‘When you’re in business with someone, you don’t have to like them. Just trust them.’
‘And you trusted Mr Hughes?’
A flicker of something crossed her face. ‘Yes, I did. I wouldn’t have gone into business with him otherwise.’
Was she lying? At the very least, her choice of tense was interesting. Not I wouldn’t have been in business with him but I wouldn’t have gone into business with him. Had she trusted Jenkyn Hughes in the beginning but come to regret going into business with him later? Dr Reckitt’d be like a dog with two tails if he heard that Hughes’s trustworthiness had slipped. He’d put it all down to the famous lump.
‘We still haven’t formally identified the body,’ I told them. ‘Do either of you know of any identifying marks Mr Hughes might’ve had – scars, birthmarks, anything?’
We’d seen nothing that you could’ve described as distinctive at the view so it was a surprise when Mrs Parry nodded.
‘Yes. You’ll find a scar – quite a recent one – here on his ribs.’ She demonstrated on herself.
I must have looked scandalised because she gave me a twisted smile.
‘He came in to The Ship with blood on his waistcoat. I insisted on looking at the wound and dressing it. He tried to explain it away. But I could see he’d been knifed.’
Harry
The sky in the window clouded and cleared by turns and, every half an hour or so, I rose to shake the stiffness from my limbs and keep the fire fed.
My father had been quiet since the easing of his second attack but it was the quiet of insensibility rather than of calm. Dr Prendergast had sat with me for an hour or so before excusing himself and promising to return in the morning unless he was summoned earlier.
As he left, in spite of his protestations of long friendship with my father, I could not help recalling Reckitt’s claim that doctors were known to leave deathbeds so that they would be owed another fee when they returned to sign the death certificate.
Reckitt. What would he give to be able to see into my father’s brain now, to see what had caused his abrupt descent into inarticulate sound-making, the paralysis of his right side that Prendergast had described to me, the potentially fatal inability to swallow?
Unwilling to contemplate the enthusiasm with which Reckitt would discuss the exact cause of my father’s apoplexy, I distracted myself by recalling his examination of the corpse on Tresaith beach. At the time, his decision to carry out the autopsy on the wet sand had seemed entirely pragmatic. However, seen through the eyes of his detractors, I could not help but acknowledge a certain Canute-like quality to the whole thing; the surgeon cutting, dissecting, examining and probing as the tide drew ever closer to the table on which he was working.
In the event, Reckitt’s thorough dissection of Hughes’s body had added nothing to our understanding of how he had died. Admittedly, the autopsy examination had ruled out other causes, and had raised an odd little footnote in the form of the tumour in Hughes’s brain, but the outcome had been as blunt as the dint to his head. The American’s death had been the result of a sudden violence – a blow of an obvious, physical kind.
My father lay on the bed beside me, felled by an attack less visible, but scarcely more subtle. I gazed, sidelong, at his motionless, effigy-like form beneath the cover.
Would he revive once more, or would his breathing simply become shallower and shallower, each breath separated from the last by longer and longer intervals until he passed from life, almost imperceptibly, to death?
A verse of John Donne’s slipped into my mind.
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
‘The breath goes now’, and some say, ‘No’…
Was my father a virtuous man? I had always thought him conscientious and dutiful but virtue was a different matter. Duty bound him, in my opinion, too uncritically to the role of squire, magistrate, upholder of family status.
But could I do differently?
I pushed the question aside and turned to my father again. Studying him, as best I could, I felt a sudden flicker of panic; how would I know if he had died? Leaning over him, I cocked my head to his face, my ear a bare inch from his mouth. For what felt like a minute I could hear nothing but the obtrusive beating of my own heart, becoming louder and more insistent in proportion to my fear. Then, as if the faculty of hearing had been extruded from my ears and into the air between us, I caught the faintest trace of breath. He was still alive.
Without thinking, I put my hand out to him. At some stage, someone had removed his jacket and he was lying under the covers in his shirt and unbuttoned waistcoat, his arms left free.
His hand was cold but, as I clasped it, his fingers feebly gripped my own.
I was startled. I had been expecting no response to my touch and this answering pressure made me uncomfortable. But, though I flinched, I managed not to let go.
‘It’s me, Father. Harry.’
I knew that, in his right mind, he would laugh at my words, call them fatuous. Who else would address me as Father? But who knew what delirium the apoplexy might have caused? I could not be confident that he knew me, that he did not mistake me for his firstborn, George, dead these thirty years.
I remembered, with the greatest possible clarity, the words he had used when I had finally brought myself to broach the subject of my half-brother during my investigations the previous year.
When you were born, it was my greatest wish that you would not grow up to be like George. Not in any way. I was ashamed to have fathered such a person.
His wish had been granted. I had grown up to be ent
irely unlike George. But had I brought my father greater pride? Now, with his hand in mine, his fingers curled with no more strength than those of a newborn around my own, the question seemed a stark and necessary one.
I had certainly never gone out of my way to give my father a good opinion of me. Indeed, many people, observing my childhood and young manhood, might have said the opposite. I had chosen the company of servants over his. I had spent my school holidays making hay with labourers and rabbiting with stableboys. As John had pointed out so painfully, I had persisted in speaking Welsh when, by custom, I should have begun using English as soon as I started learning Latin. I had been banished from the house when I had fallen in love with a dairymaid and, not two months ago, I had defied my father and investigated the death of that same dairymaid when her bones had been discovered in a nearby wood. I might have been a barrister and well-thought of in London legal circles prior to my sight failing me, but what had I done in Cardiganshire that would make other men envious of the son George Probert had fathered in his later years?
I gazed at him as best I could, a small part of me wishing that I could see his face, the greater part glad that my last clear memory of him would not include the drooping eye and drooling mouth that Prendergast had hinted at.
I could not bring myself to think of my father brought so low, did not know how to respond to a man so toppled from the place he had occupied for my entire life. Always, I had been the underdog, and fought him from that position; I had never exerted myself to imagine what it would be like to find myself the stronger of us. But circumstances may alter our views in unanticipated ways and recent words of Lydia Howell’s came to mind.
‘I know all too well,’ she had written, ‘that, whilst in one situation a particular opinion may be defended with perfect rationality, in another situation that same opinion may come to look unfeasibly utopian.Consider, if you will, my current circumstances as compared with the life I previously lived and tell me, if you can, that I may express the same views now as I did then, and live them out with equal vigour.’
Of course, in reading this, Mrs Griffiths would assume that Lydia was referring to her life before becoming a governess. I, however, knew her to be speaking of a different life entirely.
‘It may be easy to assume that everybody should share one’s philosophy, that if only the whole world would acquiesce to such a shining example of reasonableness, mankind would be a happier race. But what might be is coloured, as I have discovered to my cost, by what is and, when one is constrained where previously one was free, it becomes more difficult to assert that the way in which most people live could be altered for the better if only they would take courage and fling off the shackles of custom. I have been forced to realise that freedom of action encourages freedom of thought whilst having one’s actions constrained brings constraint to one’s thoughts and one’s ideals. It diminishes one.’
Stiff from sitting, I relinquished my father’s hand and stood.
‘I’m not leaving,’ I said, forcing myself to speak as though he could understand perfectly ‘I just need to stand up and walk about for a minute.’
I moved over to the window and gazed, obliquely, at the world outside. My father’s room overlooked the river’s course towards Cenarth and I knew the lie of the meadows on either side, the woods to the west. All those things my residual sight was able to confirm but I could see nothing else, nothing that was particular to this moment. No movement of bird or otter on the river. No men in the bare, dun-coloured winter meadows. The sky – a bright, promising blue when I had entered the house – was washed out now, darker on the eastern horizon than over the woods to the west. The afternoon was wearing away.
I had been here since a little after noon. It seemed a lifetime.
I thought of John, abandoned in Cardigan. What had he done in my absence? I hoped he had gone to Tresaith to speak to Mrs Parry. It was essential that we identify this cousin who had swooped into Hughes’s lodgings and removed all his effects.
Also in Tresaith, of course, was Bets Parry. I was eager to learn the truth behind her suggestion that Jenkyn Hughes had been a womaniser.
The other possibility was that John might have gone to Llandysul to look for Teff Harris’s wife. If she could not be found, things would look bleak for her husband.
I tried not to fret about how John would fare on his own. Though I was aware that most coroners’ officers worked at the coroner’s instruction rather than at his side, John’s situation was different. He was not a policeman, nor even an old-fashioned parish constable, he was a coroner’s assistant specifically because of the limitations imposed upon me by my sight.
I looked, sidelong, out of the window. Would I be able to function as coroner if I had only the kind of officers normally assigned to the role? Possibly, but not with anything like the efficiency I enjoyed with John. If I was going to stand for election, I desperately needed either to persuade him to continue to work with me or to find an alternative assistant.
Again, I wondered whether the way forward was to offer to pay for his articles at Schofield’s office. But that presented problems of its own. Not only might John feel that his services were being bought against his better judgement; if he was to be articled, Mr Schofield could quite reasonably protest that he should not be absent from the office at my whim. Furthermore, if John were to become a solicitor in his own right, it was impossible to imagine him agreeing to ride about the countryside with me investigating deaths. He would have his living to make.
No. I had to think of an alternative solution.
John
I barely noticed anything on my way from the docks to the workhouse. My head was still full of my conversation with Mrs Parry and James Philips.
I could tell that Mrs Parry’d thought I’d be all ‘many thanks and good day to you,’ once she’d told me about Jenkyn Hughes’s knife wound. Corpse identified, knife wielder supplied as candidate for murder, job done. But I’d still had the last part of my plan to put into action.
My heart was sprinting in my chest but I wasn’t going to give up now, however cowardly my innards were. So, as smooth as I could, without so much as introducing the subject, I’d asked, ‘Why did you take out such a large sum in life insurance on Mr Hughes?’
I couldn’t watch both of them at once so I fixed my eyes on James Philips. I was pretty sure he’d give away more than Mrs Parry. And I was right. He frowned and his face flushed. ‘That’s a confidential business matter! How dare you?’
My heart was still trying to run away but I forced myself to keep my eyes on him. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask but it’s a business matter which concerns a man who has died in suspicious circumstances. The acting coroner needs to look into everything that might have a bearing on that.’
Self-protection, that was – using phrases Mr Schofield would’ve been pleased with. I was shaking, now. Well out of my depth. Whatever I said, I had no real idea whether the coroner was allowed to look at confidential business documents. I was just praying these two didn’t know either.
‘I hope you’re not suggesting that Mrs Parry and I had anything to do with Hughes’ death?’ James Philips’s voice had gone up an octave.
‘No. Not at all. But I am interested in why you took out a second life insurance policy on Mr Hughes?’
I watched Mr Philips’s Adam’s apple go up and down. He wasn’t happy about that question. ‘That’s a confidential matter,’ he tried again but Mrs Parry cut him off.
‘Stop looking so guilty, James! It’s not a crime to guard against losses.’
‘No but–’
‘If you’re worried about the scandal, give it up. That horse has bolted. Next time we see it will be at the inquest.’
She turned back to me. ‘I don’t know how you know about this, John Davies, but you’re clearly a capable young man so you probably already know that Jenkyn Hughes was a gambler. And that he was in debt. I don’t doubt that it was one of his gambling cronies who put a knife to
his ribs. Mr Philips and I had to protect our business. As it’s turned out, it’s fortunate we did.’
‘Fortunate for you?’
‘And for the people who’d bought a place on the Cardigan-Ohio scheme. It was their future he was gambling with. Without the life insurance, the scheme would be bankrupt and nobody’d be going to America.’
‘But their investment’s safe now, is it?’ I asked. ‘All money paid to Jenkyn Hughes will be covered?’
‘Bondholders’ money will. We’ll have to see about the rest.’
‘Didn’t everybody who’d paid get a bond?’
‘Jenkyn was allowing people to pay in installments if they needed to.’
‘But he must’ve been keeping a record of who’d paid what?’
Her eyes were steady on mine. They held not a trace of pity. ‘So far, we’ve seen no records. Jenkyn Hughes was responsible for the emigrants and for their money. If he kept no records, we can’t be held liable.’
Anger boiled up inside me. My family could so easily have been one of those paying in installments. ‘You don’t feel morally obliged to honour what people have already paid?’
The question didn’t ruffle a single one of Mrs Parry’s feathers. ‘Not without records, Mr Davies. There are no moral obligations in business. Only contractual ones.’
With my hands shaking even more than before, I made a note. No moral obligations in business. Then I changed the subject.