by Alis Hawkins
Was it him who’d written the anonymous note to Billy Bellis?
Harry
As the morning wore on, I brooded impotently about when John would get the letter I had sent to the Black Lion via Twm.
My father was dozing, having exhausted his meagre resources of energy in consuming a few spluttered spoonsful of the broth Isabel Griffiths had carried up for him.
‘Shall I send for Dr Prendergast?’ she had asked, clearly anxious at my attempting to manage without medical advice.
‘No, thank you. I’d prefer that somebody went and asked Dr Reckitt to come from Cilgerran.’
‘Dr Reckitt.’
I was glad I could not see the look she favoured me with; her tone was sufficient to tell me that she disapproved most strongly of this idea.
‘Yes.’ I did my best to sound warm rather than contrary. ‘I’ve had professional dealings with him. I found him to be intelligent and far more modern in his thinking than Dr Prendergast. It doesn’t do to live in the past where the only thing a doctor could think to do was to bleed his patient, Mrs Griffiths.’
Once she had gone, I sat waiting for time to pass and trying not to wish myself elsewhere. I had no idea when John would next come to me for instructions, or whether, without me, he would run into impediments to our investigation.
I thought about the public meeting of those with an interest in the American Scheme that my letter had suggested. Was there any chance that I might be able to attend? How much would my father’s condition have to improve before others would consider it reasonable for me to be anywhere but at his side?
Trying not to allow the chair to creak, I got up. Inactivity was driving me to distraction. Since returning to Glanteifi, I had become used to taking Sara out every day for several hours; in the absence of mental stimulation, achieving physical exhaustion had become my only recourse. On horseback, I was required to do no more than keep to the road or work with the mare to ensure we kept a decent line across the fields, and being outside allowed me a freedom which being cooped up with books I could not read and people I could not see denied me. But it was unthinkable that I should go out riding today.
I sat down once more and tried to think rationally about what must be done for my father. A valet would see to his personal needs but the bureaucracy of managing the estate must now fall to me. Or, at any rate, to myself and the estate steward, Mr Ormiston.
I spent the next half an hour going around the estate in my head, naming farms and tenants and trying to see, in my mind’s eye, the state of each farm’s house and outbuildings.
How soon should I arrange a meeting with Ormiston?
I saw the steward in my mind’s eye and imagined going through all the details of Glanteifi’s finances with him. It would be an uphill task. I knew next to nothing about the estate’s administration. My years of absence had made quite sure of that.
I shied away from the thought of having to submit to Ormiston’s instruction and rose to pace the room once more. But I could bear neither my own company nor the contemplation of my fate. I located the handle that rang a bell in the servants’ hall and pulled again and again. I had to know whether there was any reply from John yet.
Mrs Griffiths herself answered the bell, and the panting haste with which she flung the door open made me realise that my insistent ringing on the bell had made the poor woman fear that something awful had happened.
‘What is it?’
I hung my head. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry anybody.’
‘Is it your father?’
‘No.’
‘What then?’
‘I didn’t know you’d come.’ It was true, I had not expected our housekeeper to respond personally to my fretful summons. But, if I had given it even a second’s thought, I would have realised that Mrs Griffiths had answered every bell from my father’s room since he had been taken ill. She wanted to be the first to know of any change, whether for good or ill.
‘Harry. Why did you ring?’
‘I just wondered – is Twm back from Cardigan yet?’
Mrs Griffiths drew in a slow and audible breath. I knew she meant it as a rebuke and I felt suitably chastened. ‘He is. Now, this minute.’
‘Did he bring any answer from John Davies?’
‘He did not.’
I sighed. ‘I expect he stayed in Newcastle Emlyn last night and then went over to Cardigan this morning. He probably hasn’t even called in at the Black Lion yet.’
I sincerely hoped that he would think to do so before the day was out. Quite apart from my communication, there could be any number of informants waiting to speak to him.
‘There is a letter, though,’ Isabel Griffiths said. ‘From Miss Howell.’
If being forced to ask others to read my correspondence aloud to me was not the most humiliating aspect of my blindness, it came extremely close.
Had I been able to, I would have read Lydia’s letters three or four times, committing her thoughts to memory so that I could mull them over before giving a response. But I could not ask Isabel Griffiths to read her letters more than once. Once was a sufficient imposition on both of us.
How I wished for the impossible – a lector who could read English, but not understand what they were reading. Someone who would read without judgement, who would repeat any word or sentence as often as I asked, without imputing any significance to the request, mouth moving like an automaton, dead eyed and hinge-jawed.
One section of Lydia’s present letter did, however, print itself more vividly on my memory than the rest because it chimed so exactly with my own current American preoccupations and I sat, pondering it, long after Mrs Griffiths had left me alone with my father once more.
‘To re-visit something of our last discussion’ –Lydia had written – ‘my conversation with Mr Mudge yesterday evening touched on whether there is a greater freedom of thought abroad in the new states of America or whether, as we have seen at home, the radical strains of nonconformity that seemed, at first, to offer a greater degree of equality to all are becoming attenuated by time so that they come to look not so different to the old order of Anglicanism. Mr Mudge is pessimistic.
For myself, I cannot help feeling that, perhaps, in the New World, there might be found – or founded – a more enlightened church. Where lives are being forged anew, should it not be possible to think new thoughts?’
With each letter from Lydia, I now detected an increasing dissatisfaction with her position and I wondered whether this reference to America meant that she might be contemplating a new and more independent life for herself there.Recent as our epistolary relationship was, it had become important to me and I was forced to admit that the thought of its coming to an end was disturbing.
John
As I trotted Seren past the hump of Banc y Warren and began the long slope down towards Cardigan common, I started fretting about what I’d say to Billy Go-About if I found him at the police station. I was hoping he wouldn’t be there but, if he was, how much should I tell him? I was pretty sure that, if Harry was here, he’d tell Bellis as little as he thought he could get away with.
Then again, he was the inspector of police. I’d have to tell him something.
Or perhaps not. I might be in luck. It was Sunday so perhaps he’d be at church with Mrs Go-About.
But, as it turned out, luck wasn’t on my side. I’d barely opened my mouth to say good morning to the constable on duty before Bellis was marching out of his office with a face fit to turn milk. Maybe he’d thought Sunday’d be quiet. Should’ve gone to church like a Christian, shouldn’t he?
‘It’s one thing when you’re with your master,’ he said, looking me up and down, ‘but I don’t want you here asking questions by yourself.’
No point arguing about who was or wasn’t my master. Standing on my dignity’d only make things worse
‘I know it’s not a usual situation,’ I said, all apologetic, ‘and I’m not saying I like it – puts me in a diffi
cult position, to tell you the truth – but Mr Probert-Lloyd has asked me to carry on the investigation while he’s at home dealing with a family matter.’
‘What family matter? Can’t it wait? Being coroner isn’t something to be picked up and put down on a whim!’
I gritted my teeth. ‘It’s a delicate matter, Mr Bellis, but I know you’re a man of discretion. Justice Probert-Lloyd has suffered a stroke of apoplexy. Harry rode out to Glanteifi yesterday morning to be with his father. He was still alive yesterday afternoon but I can’t tell you any more than that.’
Was it the slip I’d made in referring to Harry by his given name or the news about Mr Probert-Lloyd that rocked Billy Go-About back on his heels? Either way, he lost his bluster. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ he said.
I nodded. ‘I’m waiting to hear from Mr Probert-Lloyd with further instructions and I’ll be going up to the Black Lion after this to see if there are any messages. But I do know he wanted to speak to Mrs Harris. Is she still here?’
Bellis pulled himself back from whatever calculation was going on inside his head. ‘No. She’s been and gone.’
‘Can I speak to Mr Harris? He may know where I can find her.’
The inspector looked me up and down. ‘Do you understand the term quid pro quo, young man?’
Didn’t he know what I did for a living? Of course he did. He was just putting me in my place.
‘I’m a lawyer’s clerk, Mr Bellis,’ I said, keeping my voice flat. ‘I should hope I know what a quid pro quo is.’
‘Then you’ll understand what I want.’
I nodded. I’d have to tell him at least some of what we knew. Apart from anything else I’d look hopeless otherwise – as if I’d been going about, asking questions, and nobody’d told me a damn thing.
So I informed him that I’d been able to positively identify Jenkyn Hughes. And I gave him Mrs Coleman’s news about the as yet unidentified cousin who’d come and taken away all Hughes’s belongings. Then, when he still didn’t look very impressed, I passed on the information I’d got from David Daniels about Hughes’s gambling habits, and the fact that his business partners had insured his life for an unusually large sum. Which was definitely not something he wanted to hear, believe me.
‘Are you accusing Mr Philips of Philips and Lloyd of being involved with this death?’
I held my hands up. ‘I’m not accusing anybody of anything, Mr Bellis. I’m just telling you what I’ve found out.’
But not everything. For some reason, I was getting as bad as Harry on the subject of Teff, Banc yr Eithin. I left out the fact that the dead man had shown too much interest in Mrs Harris. And the fact that, if Gwyn Puw was right about what would happen to a naked body on the limestone, then Jenkyn Hughes’s corpse had been stripped naked after it came out of the water.
‘It’s not appropriate for somebody like you to go around asking impertinent questions of your betters,’ Bellis told me. ‘I don’t want you to go bothering Mr Philips again.’
All my gwas bach instincts, all Mr Schofield’s careful training in what was appropriate to my station opened my mouth to say, ‘Just as you like, Mr Bellis.’ But then I heard Harry’s voice – as clear in my head as if he was standing next to me – and closed it again before I could say a word.
You know as much about it all as I do. Just use your judgement.
‘Can I see Mr Harris, now, please?’ I asked. ‘In my position as coroner’s officer.’
Old Schofield’s beady eye was like a kitten’s wide-eyed innocence compared to the look Bellis gave me, then. My stomach clenched. I half expected him to hit me.
‘You can be smug if you like. But coroner’s officer’s going to be your only position after I’ve informed Mr Schofield of your insolence.’
I should’ve backed down. I should’ve apologised in the hope that he wouldn’t complain about me.
‘If I could see Mr Harris now, I’d be grateful.’
Icy politeness. I’d learned that from Harry, too.
A finger. Bellis’s. Right in front of my face. ‘Let me give you a piece of advice, Mr Davies. Do not make an enemy of me.’
I managed to squash an insane urge to wave a finger back at him, thank God, and just gave a brief nod. I understand.
Teff Harris surprised me by getting up when I went into his cell, and I took a step backwards before I realised that he was holding his hand out.
‘Mr Davies – thank you again for what you did for my boy.’
I shook his hand. ‘He was very determined to look after that cow of yours.’
Harris grinned and I realised how like him his son was. ‘My wife said he was strutting like a turkey-cock when she got back and saw how he’d got the place defended.’
Time to make the most of his gratitude. ‘I saw Clarkson earlier on today, as a matter of fact, and he said your wife told him that nobody would’ve dared come for the cow again.’ I hesitated. ‘What did you do to make sure they wouldn’t?’
Teff Harris went back to his mattress and sat down. ‘That’s my business.’ He crossed his legs in front of him and sat there, straight backed, as if he was holding court, not sitting in Billy Go-About’s lock-up.
‘I know how you threatened anybody who lifted a finger against your house,’ I told him. ‘Did you take your gun and threaten your neighbours with it again, Mr Harris?’
He stared at me, cheeks sucked in and I was afraid he was pulling back into himself. Then he surprised me for the second time in as many minutes.
‘What sort of coward goes to a man’s house, when they know he won’t be there, and threatens his child?’ I was familiar with questions I wasn’t supposed to answer. ‘Those men deserved to have the fear of God put into them. They’d turned up at my home, faces covered, and tried to take my property from my child. No man does that twice. Not to me.’
Arglwydd annwyl! Teff Harris and Billy Bellis were cut from exactly the same cloth. I’m in charge. You do what I say or it’ll be the worse for you. No wonder Bellis wanted to find Teff guilty of something – he knew exactly what the man was capable of.
I decided that there was no point picking my way about like a cat in a yard full of shit.
‘Mr Harris. We know you stripped Mr Hughes’s body.’
I braced myself but he just stared up at me. ‘You’re taking that anonymous note as gospel?’
‘No. The body wasn’t damaged by the limestone. It should’ve been cut to ribbons but it wasn’t. So it stands to reason that, when you found him, Mr Hughes was clothed.’
‘Not damaged? Where he’d been lying on those rocks his body looked like meat.’
I shook my head. ‘That wasn’t from the rocks. It’s called livor mortis. It’s where blood settles after it’s stopped running around the body.’
He looked at me as if he was going to call me a liar but then changed his mind. ‘You’d think I’d know that. But we always buried them in their uniforms.’
Them. His comrades. Dead in the Afghan War. Briefly, I imagined mountains in a dry and dusty land, Teff Harris standing over the grave of a fallen comrade. He’d seen things I never would.
‘So why did you strip him?’
He looked up at me but said nothing.
‘Mr Harris, Inspector Bellis thinks you murdered Jenkyn Hughes. Mr Probert-Lloyd doesn’t.’
‘Funny way of showing his faith in me. Staying away.’
‘His father’s dying.’ I was hoping to shock him. From the way he blinked, I was pretty sure I’d succeeded. ‘He’s had an apoplexy, and Harry’s gone home. I’m acting for him at the moment.’ I looked Harris in the eye, man to man. ‘I can help you. But I need to know the truth.’
His expression didn’t change but his stare was fit to suck the thoughts out of my head. I waited. Still, he said nothing.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you what I already know. Inspector Bellis believes you’re guilty because of the note. But I think there are a lot of other people who might’ve wanted
to get rid of Jenkyn Hughes.’
‘What? Like the poor sods whose emigration money he was stealing to gamble with? That does me no good. I was one of them.’
‘Were you a bondholder or were you paying in installments?’
He looked at me sharply. ‘I never do work without something to show for it. I told Hughes I’d have my family’s bond up front and work off what I owed him unloading his coal.’
‘So you owed him money?’
‘No. I owed him labour.’
Just the hardness in his voice was enough to make my balls shrivel. If Teff Harris had decided that Jenkyn Hughes’d crossed him, I wouldn’t’ve wanted to be in the emigration agent’s shoes.
‘That coal,’ I started. ‘Was he trying to be too clever with it – selling it twice – once to Mrs Parry, and then again to whoever’d come to the beach for it?’ I got nothing, not so much as the flicker of a change of expression. I carried on. ‘Because he could’ve been away to America before anybody realised that it wasn’t all there, couldn’t he? Gwyn Puw doesn’t burn lime before April and that’s when the emigrant ship was supposed to be leaving.’