In Two Minds

by Alis Hawkins

  Finding myself incapable of sitting, I paced my father’s room, my mind flinging itself from one thing to another like a lunatic in a lucid phase.

  Would my father die tonight?

  How could I possibly take responsibility for Glanteifi?

  Who had killed Jenkyn Hughes?

  Why had his body been taken out of the limekiln?

  Where and who was this supposed cousin?

  If my father recovered sufficiently to take nourishment tomorrow, would I be able to resume my investigation?

  The clamorous questions were like the recrudescing heads of the hydra: the more I tried to put them aside, the more insistent they became, until I was almost dementedly restless.

  When Mrs Griffiths brought my supper on a tray, she must have seen my agitation. ‘I think a glass of brandy would do you good, Harry. When you’ve finished your supper, I’ll have a bottle sent up.’

  The door closed behind her and I contemplated the tray of food. Would it be heartless to eat as my father lay there, insensible? But taking nourishment could hardly be less filial than willing him to recover simply so that I could get back to preparing for Hughes’s inquest.

  Though London had taught me to love hard, strong cheese, as I bit into our own dairy’s soft curd, I found myself somewhat calmed by memories of standing at the dairy door, watching the cheese being made. Cream skimmed in wide, slate troughs, curds pressed in cloth, young cheese being salted. I made myself rehearse each stage of production before my mind’s eye. I could not abide the thought of being a useless dilettante who was dependent on the labours of others and, in my somewhat less than rational state, I fastened onto the notion that, if I could make my own cheese, people would not be able to dismiss me.

  I spread and cut and chewed and thought in this rather warped manner for a few minutes, my father’s still form lying in the bed at my side. In the gloom of the lamplit room, he was scarcely visible in my peripheral vision and the fear that he might have died without my knowing seized me again.

  I stretched out my hand, laid it on the blanket over his chest. Nothing. Then, after a second or two of skin-crawling apprehension, the smallest rise and fall.

  Slumping back in the chair I waited for my heart’s suddenly clamourous beating to subside . My appetite had disappeared and I put the tray of food aside.

  The panic I had felt when I thought my father had stopped breathing shocked me, and I examined it like a chemist analysing a suspect powder, weighing its contents. What proportion of that panic came from the knowledge that, if he died, my life would no longer be my own, and what proportion from fondness? The answer did not improve my current opinion of myself.

  I want to be coroner.

  I want to find out who killed Jenkyn Hughes.

  That the Tresaith corpse was Jenkyn Hughes now stood beyond doubt. Mrs Parry’s testimony as to the wound and John’s inspection of the body confirmed it.

  What did we know about Hughes? He was an emigration agent. A gambler. A womaniser? That still needed to be looked into.

  He was an American. Or was he? Everybody we had spoken to had referred to Hughes as an American but, if the man who had appeared at Captain Coleman’s to take possession of Hughes’s effects was indeed a cousin, then Hughes had roots in the Cardigan area. The first emigrants from Cardiganshire had sailed for America no more than thirty years before; therefore, as Captain Coleman’s widow had described Hughes as a man of forty or thereabouts, it was likely that he had been born and spent at least part of his youth here.

  Old enmities die hard in rural areas and, if Jenkyn Hughes had been behaving less than discreetly, those enmities might have been re-awakened.

  We urgently needed to find the man claiming to be Hughes’s cousin.

  John

  If my mother, God rest her, could’ve seen me riding away from Glanteifi, she’d’ve wagged her finger at me for being full of myself. And I was. I was full of what I could do now.

  With Harry stuck at his father’s house, I was in charge. To all intents and purposes, I was the coroner.

  Harry and I had talked through what I might do next but he’d left it to me to decide. ‘You’re the one doing the work, John. It’s up to you how you want to do it.’

  So, I had to make a decision about where I should go now.

  If we wanted to keep Billy Go-About sweet, I knew it’d be wise to let him be the first to hear that we’d identified our corpse. But it was too late for me to go back to Cardigan today. I wasn’t going to disturb him and Mrs Go-About on their own hearth, thank you very much. Even if I knew where he lived, which I didn’t.

  And, to be honest, it wasn’t just that. If I went and told the inspector who the body was, I had a pretty good idea what he’d say. Very well, tell Mr Prober-Lloyd that, in his absence, I shall re-convene the inquest. Because, as far as Billy Go-About was concerned, he had his man in the lock-up. All he needed the inquest to do was confirm identity, say it was murder, and he’d commit Teff Harris for trial at the assizes.

  But Harry didn’t want Teff Harris committed for trial. He’d promised Harris that he’d get him released if Bellis hadn’t found any actual evidence against him by the following day. Trouble was, Harry was stuck at Glanteifi. And I couldn’t go marching up to the police station and start demanding things, not without good evidence against somebody else.

  Some time before he’d been bashed on the head, Hughes’d been stabbed, we knew that much. But had the stabbing happened at the smwglins or somewhere else? All we knew was that he’d turned up in Tresaith with blood on his waistcoat.

  Same with the blow that killed him. We didn’t know whether he’d got it on the beach, or whether somebody’d taken his corpse there later, to put it in the kiln. Far as I could see, the only reason to run the risk of carting the body to the beach was if the killer believed that the lime waste would get rid of it. Burn it away. But, seeing as most people probably believed that old wives’ tale, that wasn’t much help.

  Besides, it seemed more likely that Hughes’d been killed on the beach and his killer’d panicked and hidden his body in the only place they could see.

  So, if he’d been killed at Tresaith, we needed to know what he’d been doing there. And when.

  I was going to have to go back to The Ship and speak to the Parry women.

  And while I was there, I might be able to find out when the next lime boat was due in. We – I – still had to find out whether the lime boatmen had seen anything.

  I took my watch out of my pocket and looked at it. Quarter to four. The sky was clear, nothing to cut the daylight short. Nearly an hour before sunset.

  I turned Seren’s head up the hill towards the road that would take me to the coast.

  * * *

  As I rode up to The Ship’s front door, Mrs Parry came out and stood there, arms folded.

  ‘Twice in one day, John Davies. People will talk.’

  I grinned. Nerves. I wasn’t sure how to deal with Mrs Parry, what tone to take with her. So I said nothing, just swung one leg over the pommel of the saddle and jumped down from Seren’s back.

  ‘Is it me you want, or Bets? I heard what she told you the other day, the little gossip.’

  ‘Always a grain of truth in gossip though, isn’t there?’ I sounded like my mother.

  ‘Grains are small, John Davies. Very small.’ She stared at me for a bit, waiting for that to sink in, then cocked her head to one side to direct me. ‘Put the mare round the back, out of the wind. There’s a ring in the wall for you to tie her up. There’s water there too.’

  Inside, with the shutters open to the setting sun, the main room was lighter than it had been the day before and I could see that The Ship was a well-kept place. The table in the middle of the room was pale with proper scrubbing and the sand on the floor was fresh. Not as absorbent as sawdust but a lot more plentiful. And free.

  Mrs Parry latched the door behind us. ‘Bets is in the kitchen. I’ll get her to make some tea.’

 
I’d been wondering how I was going to speak to Bets without her mother interfering so I jumped in with both feet. ‘No, don’t disturb her – I’ll go and talk to her in there. She can make the tea at the same time.’

  I turned and marched towards the kitchen door. If Mrs Parry followed me, I’d have to be more direct but I didn’t want to get into an argument with her on her own premises.

  Mercifully, she left me to it.

  Being at the back of the building, the kitchen was gloomier than the taproom but it looked well-kept – as if it’d had money spent on it. The main evidence of that was the new cooking range that stood against the back wall. I didn’t have much to do with kitchens but I knew these ranges were the big thing now. No more cooking over the fire, it was all putting things in the oven with a range. My landlady would have pulled out her eye teeth with her own fingers to have one. I knew that because she was always running them down, saying how they were difficult to keep alight and she didn’t know why anybody bothered with them.

  Bets caught the direction of my eye.

  ‘If you’re thinking it’s a modern marvel,’ she said, ‘that’s because you’ve never had to clean and polish one.’ She stepped towards me and held up her hands, palms out. They were covered in little black lines, every fold and crease stained.

  ‘Blacklead’ she said. ‘Can’t get it off. That stove takes more work than everything else in the kitchen put together. And you know the worst thing?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I have to make bread now. We never had a bread oven before. Too much bother to build one. But now we’ve got that,’ she curled her lip at the stove ‘I have to make bread. Every day!’

  ‘You’ll have to make sure that whoever you marry doesn’t mistake you for a houseproud woman and buy you one then,’ I grinned. All right, I know it was a bit forward but she was the sort of girl I always found myself flirting with.

  ‘Marry? Who’d marry me? I’m Mrs Parry’s daughter.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She’s Mrs Parry, The Ship. And I’m not just talking about this place. She has ships built for her, out there on the beach. She’s in business with men. She gives men orders and they do what they’re told.’

  ‘I thought we were talking about you not her.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever heard of Like mother like daughter?’

  Of course I had. It was on the tip of my tongue to say that some men admire a woman with spirit but, thank God, I heard the words in my head before I said them, and kept my mouth shut. Flirting’s one thing but I didn’t want Bets Parry to think I was after her.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry but I’ve got to ask you some things. Can we get on?’

  She looked at me as if I’d just proved her point for her. ‘If you like.’

  ‘Your mother was going to ask you to make some tea,’ I said.

  ‘For you or her?’

  I shrugged. ‘Both, I suppose.’

  Bets reached for the kettle on the stove and topped it up from a tapped barrel in the corner. The kitchen wasn’t quite modern enough to have water piped in yet, then.

  ‘What did you mean yesterday?’ I began. ‘When you said that if the dead man was Jenkyn Hughes, it’d come out that he was killed over a woman?’

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’ I watched her move over to the stove. ‘Come on, Bets. I know your mother’s probably given you a row for gossiping about him but I need to know what you meant. Was Jenkyn Hughes a womaniser?’

  ‘Is it him, then?’

  Her eyes were big as she asked the question. Like a small child at Michaelmas asking where his friend the pig’s gone.

  ‘Yes. Your mother told us about the knife wound. That identified him for us. Were you here when she dressed it for him?’

  Bets looked away, as if she wasn’t sure whether she should answer that.

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘I’m here all the time, aren’t I? Got nowhere else to go.’

  ‘You know what I mean, Bets! Did you see your mother doctoring Hughes?’

  She kept her eyes on the kettle. ‘I did, but she doesn’t know I saw.’

  There was something in her tone. ‘Spying, were you?’

  ‘I wanted to know what was going on.’

  ‘Between your mother and Hughes?’

  ‘Did she tell you how she knew he’d been stabbed?’

  ‘Said she saw blood on his waistcoat.’

  Bets turned to face me. ‘Well, she lied, then.’

  ‘Go on,’ I pushed her when she said no more. ‘How did she find out?’

  ‘She rubbed herself up against him like a bitch on heat and he flinched.’

  Her voice was as cold and sour as three-day old beer. In my mind’s eye, I saw an image of Bets spying through a crack in the door and it told me everything I needed to know. She’d wanted Jenkyn Hughes for herself but her mother’d got there first. No wonder she was bitter about her chances of marriage, if Mrs Parry seduced any man who came within reach.

  ‘Right,’ I said, not sure how far to take this. ‘So … were they … you know…’ Come on, John, you’re here on official business. Spit it out. ‘Were they lovers?’ I asked, hearing myself speaking too loud.

  She looked me straight in the eye, as if she despised me for being awkward about her mother’s behaviour when she had to live with it every day. ‘I don’t know. But it was what she wanted. I could tell.’

  Well, well. I’d never’ve guessed Mrs Parry’d had feelings for Hughes. I tried to remember how I’d come to ask her and James Philips about identifying marks. Had she led me into asking? Had she wanted to know for herself whether it was him in the mortuary at Cardigan workhouse?

  Mind, even if it wasn’t personal, having him publicly identified would suit her. Once his death was announced, she and James Philips would be able to claim their life-insurance money. Was that why she’d given me the information?

  ‘My mother’s used to getting what she wants,’ Bets said. It felt as if she’d read my thoughts but, actually, she was just carrying on from where she’d left off.

  ‘And what does she want? In general?’

  Her answer was bitter. ‘To be in charge.’

  ‘Well, I suppose she’s had to be since your father died.’

  ‘Oh, don’t fool yourself. Dada wasn’t the boss here. He was a strong man – physically strong, I mean – and she admired that. But it was always her who did the thinking. The planning. He let her make all the decisions.’

  Parry was good in a scrap. Knew what to do.

  Just as well he was dead or he’d just have become my main suspect for killing Jenkyn Hughes.

  ‘If your mother was after Hughes, she can’t’ve been very happy about his womanising – if that’s what he was up to.’

  She raised her eyes to me then. I hadn’t noticed before – not enough light the previous time I’d been there – but she had bright blue eyes. Really bright blue.

  ‘I don’t know whether you’d call it womanising exactly but he liked women. And women liked him. At least, at the beginning they did.’

  ‘At the beginning of what?’

  She put her hands in the pockets of her apron and looked at the floor. Deep pockets they were – you could’ve put a bottle in each. Perhaps that’s what they were for. ‘When he first got here,’ she said. ‘That’s what I meant.’ She frowned as if she was remembering something unpleasant. ‘Jenkyn Hughes changed. Or, better to say his behaviour changed. Maybe he was just behaving himself at the beginning but he couldn’t keep it up.’

  She went up in my estimation then. Not many people make the distinction between what you are and what you do. I gave her time to think about what she was going to say next.

  ‘When he first came, he was nice. Charming. But in a nice way – not smarmy. But then he started getting more … I don’t know … He started saying things to you, putting his hands where he shouldn’t be putting them, that type of thing.’

  I
felt myself blush. Couldn’t help it. ‘Was this just with you?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Well – I mean, I was the only woman here, a lot of the time – me and Mam and she wouldn’t’ve let him touch her in public. But when there were other women about, with them, too. It’s just men here, most of the time, with the lime and the ships and everything. But sometimes women’ll come and help with loading the lime or raking out – an extra pair of hands, you know.’

  ‘And Jenkyn Hughes … put his hands where he shouldn’t with them, too?’

  ‘The younger ones.’

  ‘How did the women take it?’

  ‘’Spect most of them were flattered. And because it was in front of everybody it couldn’t go anywhere, you know.’

  ‘But there were some who weren’t flattered?’

  She pulled a face. ‘Some he went after a bit more. You know, not just a bit of messing about.’

  ‘Anybody in particular?’

  Her eyes were troubled. ‘Look, if I tell you this, it’s just because you’re asking and because I have to tell the truth, all right? It’s not because I think anything came of it or because–’ she stopped.

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said, cautious now. ‘So who was it?’