In Two Minds

by Alis Hawkins

  Harris sucked his teeth and stared at me. ‘He was enough of a gambler to do what you’ve just suggested for some of the coal but not for all of it. Not enough for me to notice at any rate. He knew I wouldn’t stand for it.’

  I nodded. ‘Maybe somebody took the rest, knowing that Hughes wasn’t going to come after them.’

  ‘Because they’d killed him, you mean?’

  I shrugged. ‘Because they knew he was dead, at any rate.’

  I could almost see Teff Harris weighing things up. He didn’t want to trust me but he knew he didn’t have much choice. ‘The inspector thinks he’s got all the evidence he needs,’ he said. ‘Been very pleased to tell me that all my neighbours are quite prepared to believe I killed Jenkyn Hughes.’

  And then I knew. Beyond any shadow of doubt, whatever Harris said or didn’t say. ‘That’s why you stripped him, isn’t it? To hide his identity. Because when you saw who it was, you knew nobody’d believe that you’d just happened upon his body. Not him – the man who was trying to steal your wife. The man who was trying to swindle a woman you respect.’

  I stared at him. He might’ve been waiting for a cart to give him a lift into town, not listening to evidence that could hang him. ‘Did you threaten him?’ I asked. ‘Tell him he’d better not steal from Mrs Parry or he’d have you to answer to? Did somebody hear you?’

  Harris tilted his head from one side to the other. The bones in his neck made a wet clicking noise. ‘Anybody accused me of threatening him?’

  ‘I don’t know. All I know is that Bellis’s officers’ve been talking to your neighbours.’

  His face didn’t change, but he knew the kind of things his neighbours were likely to say. ‘We’ll see then. But I’ll tell you this. Jenkyn Hughes was a chancer and a fool. Made a fool of himself over Ruth. My wife. Didn’t care who heard him talking nonsense to her.’

  ‘Including you?’

  ‘Including everybody.’

  Harris’s wife must be bewitching beyond belief for a man to be so careless of his own reputation. Not to mention his safety. ‘Was she flattered?’ I asked. ‘Did it turn her head?’

  Teff Harris’s gaze rested on me with all the subtlety of an iron bar. ‘My wife is the truest woman you’ll ever meet. She’d beg with me in the streets before she’d betray me.’

  If another man had said it, I might’ve thought he was trying to convince himself. But not Teff Harris. That was what he believed to the marrow of his bones. ‘So you had no need to get rid of Mr Hughes.’

  He gave a bark of a laugh. ‘If I had to kill every man who made eyes at my wife – or wrote poems for her like that fool Obadaiah Vaughan – the parish’d be stinking to high heaven with the corpses.’

  ‘But you did strip the body, didn’t you? Because you knew what everybody else would think?’ He still wasn’t going to admit to it but even Teff Harris couldn’t make silence look like anything other than guilt. And I knew that’s how a jury would see it, too. ‘But why did you try and cover it up – not go to the coroner with it?’

  He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t covering it up. I told Mr Probert-Lloyd that first day – I didn’t have time to go chasing around the county looking for the police or the coroner. I knew Jaci Rees would know what to do.’

  God help me, I believed him.

  Harry

  Benton Reckitt arrived as I was writing a response to Lydia’s letter. Shown in by the maid, he strode over to where I sat.

  ‘What an extraordinary device,’ he said, by way of greeting. ‘Did you design it yourself?’

  ‘Partly. I outlined my ideas to a cabinet maker and he was able to construct what I needed.’

  ‘It’s ingenious. And I see it works tolerably effectively.’

  He was clearly reading my letter to Lydia but, even as I drew breath to object, it struck me that, as he was about to attend my father, I might do better to keep my censorious words to myself.

  ‘As you will have gathered,’ I began, ‘my father has had an apoplectic stroke.’

  ‘No. He has not.’

  Reckitt sounded quite certain of it and, just for a moment, I felt a surge of hope. Was it possible that this had all been a terrible mistake and Prendergast had misdiagnosed my father’s condition? ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, trying to see what Reckitt was doing at my father’s side.

  ‘Apoplectic strokes result in the obliteration of all mental functions,’ Reckitt said, folding the blankets back from my father’s sleeping form. ‘Followed, not necessarily immediately but swiftly thereafter, by death. Your father is alive and, I believe, has been conscious and speaking.’

  Somewhat thrown by this diagnostic summary, I mumbled, ‘Yes. He has.’

  Reckitt applied what I assumed was an ear trumpet to my father’s chest. He said nothing for the space of half a minute or so. Then he straightened up abruptly. ‘Tell me about his speech.’

  Did that mean that his heart sounded satisfactory? I did not dare ask.

  ‘He can’t produce sentences. Only single words.’

  ‘Impaired, then. There will be a lesion, for certain.’

  A lesion? I racked my brains in vain for any memory of Gray having spoken in this way. ‘What does that mean?’ I asked, vexed at being forced to admit ignorance.

  ‘It means that your father has suffered an interruption in the proper supply of blood to his brain. This may be occasioned by one of two things. An effusion into his brain from a ruptured vessel. Or a thrombotic blockage which has occasioned what the French call ramolissement in surrounding tissue.’

  I mentally translated ramolissement but was none the wiser when I realised that it implied a softening of my father’s brain tissue. ‘Will he recover?’

  ‘Recover his speech, d’you mean?’

  I shook my head uncertainly. ‘Recover completely, survive the stroke.’

  ‘He has survived. Whether he will be alive tomorrow or next week or next month nobody can say. But the immediate danger from this stroke is past, if he has regained his senses and spoken to you.’

  I was having trouble adapting to Reckitt’s absolutism. It was so unlike the vague prognostications of Dr Prendergast that I did not know whether to be reassured or dubious.

  Reckitt turned back to my father. ‘Is he generally in good health?’

  ‘I believe so. It’s not something we discuss.’

  ‘Does he suffer shortness of breath? Pains in his legs?’

  Had he heard evidence that might suggest such things in the beating of my father’s heart? ‘Not as far as I’m aware.’

  ‘And has he experienced anything like this before?’

  I shook my head, as much in sorrow at my own failure to provide a definitive answer as in ignorance. ‘Again, if he has, I’m not aware of it.’ Was it possible that my father had suffered a milder version of this stroke, from which he had entirely recovered, while I had been in London? I thought it unlikely. Whilst he might have been unwilling to admit to bodily frailty himself, I did not imagine for a moment that Isabel Griffiths would have allowed me to remain in ignorance.

  ‘It’s highly likely that he will suffer a further stroke in the days or weeks to come,’ Reckitt said, as if he were discussing something of no more significance than the likelihood of my father’s eating lamb or beef at future dinners.

  ‘I see.’ Reckitt was still standing at my father’s side. What was he observing? ‘Is there anything that can be done?’

  ‘I would recommend bleeding him.’

  I was horribly disappointed. ‘Isn’t that somewhat old-fashioned?’

  ‘That depends on one’s rationale for the procedure. If one is stuck in the dark ages of humours and spirits and their release, then you are quite correct. Generally, blood-letting serves to do nothing but weaken the patient, to his or her detriment. However, if this stroke has been occasioned by an effusion as a result of pressure on vessel walls, then reducing blood volume will bring about a reduction in pressure and a lessening of the chance of a catast
rophic event. D’you see?’

  ‘And if the stroke arose from the other cause – the ramolissement?’ I asked.

  ‘Thrombosis is more likely with an excess of blood,’ Reckitt stated. ‘In either case, bleeding will only be of benefit.’

  Dr Prendergast arrived as Reckitt was bleeding my father. He had not waited to be announced but had come up to the sick-room of his own accord. After a stiff greeting, he gave vent to his annoyance.

  ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd, as your father’s physician for many years, I must object to Dr Reckitt’s presence here.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Dr Prendergast.’ I would be courteous, even if I was the only one in the room who felt the need to bother. ‘Reckitt has been consulting with me in the matter of the death at Tresaith and, as he is an expert in diseases of the brain, I thought he might have something valuable to contribute in this case.’

  ‘An expert?’ Prendergast clearly found this a laughable idea.

  ‘Indeed,’ Reckitt said, keeping his face turned to my father’s arm and the basin he held beneath it. ‘Though I don’t expect you’ve read my monographs on tumours of the brain, they’ve gained me some degree of regard amongst my peers.’

  ‘Then why the blazes aren’t you in London pursuing your macabre interests with them instead of lurking here?’

  Though tellingly ill-mannered in its phrasing, it was a question that had occurred to me, too.

  ‘That is neither any of your business nor relevant to the present case,’ Reckitt snapped. ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd, would you be so good as to take this basin, so that I can bandage the arm?’

  I moved over and, carefully, took the blood-filled basin from him. I put it on the nightstand and turned to Prendergast.

  ‘No offence was intended, Doctor. Nor did I wish to exclude you. I merely felt that Reckitt might have something to contribute.’

  There was a few moments’ tense silence during which I had the impression that Prendergast was glaring at Reckitt. Then he turned to me. ‘Henry, may I speak with you in private, please?’

  I tried not to be offended by his familiarity but it was hard not to feel that he was putting me in my place. I’m your elder, you must listen to me.

  ‘Very well, shall we step out onto the landing?’

  Once we were out of my father’s chamber, Prendergast used the pretext of standing where the light was better to draw me away from the door to the very end of the landing, where a round-topped window looked out over the river.

  ‘Henry, I know you have been away a great deal until recently so you perhaps do not know–’

  I did not let him finish. ‘You think I haven’t heard the gossip about Reckitt? Actually, Prendergast’ – two could play at the familiarity game – ‘I would have to have stuffed my ears pretty thoroughly to avoid hearing how the doctor is a drunk, a fool, a buffoon.’

  ‘And yet you still employ him in your father’s care?’

  ‘Because I prefer to judge on my own observations. And I have found Reckitt to be intelligent, well informed and sober.’ I might have added that he was odd, abrupt and lacking in courtesy to the point of rudeness but did not wish to oblige Prendergast by criticising Reckitt in any way.

  ‘Am I to infer that you find me less than well informed?’ I was given no leave to answer before he swept on. ‘What you may not appreciate, Henry, is that in medicine, experience is as valuable as any monograph. Frequently more so. And I have been your father’s physician for decades.’

  I have always disliked being browbeaten. It is nothing more than a rarified form of bullying. ‘And does experience tell you what the causes of apoplexy are?’ I asked.

  ‘Experience tells me the likely course of the illness, which is more to the point.’

  ‘I disagree. If one understands the cause of a disease then a remedy may suggest itself. Following a brief consultation with Dr Reckitt, I am now able to give two causes for apoplexy and the reasons why, in this case, bleeding is more than a conventional response born of the need to be seen to be doing something.’ I paused fractionally, as if I were challenging a witness and felt a frisson of ruthless excitement. Dear God but I was sick of being nice to people! And of enduring the suffocation of their niceness to me. At that moment, I missed the bar with the intensity of a knife under the ribs. ‘Can you, Dr Prendergast, do the same?’

  Prendergast said nothing for several seconds. ‘Reckitt,’ he spat, eventually, ‘is a theorist–’

  ‘On the contrary, he is an anatomist. A practical investigator. He does not theorise about what causes illness and death, he opens the bodies of the dead and investigates until he finds a cause.’ I should have stopped short of that last sentence, for Prendergast pounced upon it.

  ‘And will you let him open your father’s body? Investigate the cause of his death? No.’ I heard the sneer in the voice he had raised, presumably to carry as far as Reckitt at the other end of the landing. ‘You may applaud Reckitt’s dissection of paupers but you will not allow him to anatomise your own father.’

  Hoist with my own petard. Serve me right. But those reactions came in retrospect. At the time I had only one wish. To thwart Prendergast and prove that, whatever he thought about me, he was mistaken.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘I will allow it.’

  John

  So, the anonymous letter had told the truth, as far as it went. Teff Harris had stripped the body after bringing it up out of the water. And, ironically, he’d done it so as not to be suspected of exactly the crime that Billy Go-About had put him in the lock-up for.

  After leaving Harris in his cell, I walked smartly away, as if I was going somewhere. Just in case old Go-About tried to get me to tell him what Teff had said. Within two minutes, I found myself halfway to the docks, standing at the end of a lane opposite the Custom House.

  What should I do next? Go down to the quayside and try and find the boat that had delivered the limestone to Tresaith?

  No. Go back to Newcastle Emlyn. Go and see Harry and tell him that if he’s not able to continue the case, neither are you.

  That would be the sensible thing to do.

  I took a breath and looked around. I don’t know what I was looking for – an excuse not to go back to Newcastle Emlyn, probably – but something caught my eye. Or, rather, someone. A familiar-looking figure was standing fifty yards away, on the far side of the High Street, leaning against the wall at the entrance to Market Lane.

  I started walking towards him, trying to look like anybody else going up and down to the docks. By the time I’d halved the distance between us, I knew I was right. I recognised him. He wasn’t doing anything, just leaning against the wall, looking up the High Street in the direction of the Black Lion.

  Watching. Waiting. For Harry?

  I’ll be honest, I wasn’t keen to speak to him. Last time we’d met, down on the docks, he’d managed to give the impression that, for sixpence, he’d rip our arms off and beat us to death with them. But we were in a public place, where a man having a limb torn off would be noticed, so I scraped my courage together and marched up to him. ‘Good morning! Are you watching for the coroner?’

  I spoke to him in English. It was the language he’d chosen to use with Harry. His expression didn’t change. He just moved his eyes from the street to me.

  He looked exactly the same as last time we’d met. Same canvas trousers. Same stained smock, same knitted cap on his bald head. And that cold pipe stuck bizarrely behind one ear.

  ‘If you remember, I’m the coroner’s assistant,’ I said when he just carried on looking at me. ‘The coroner’s not here. And he won’t be. Not for a few days. Urgent family matters.’

  He stood there, watching me gabble.

  ‘If you have information, you can speak to me.’

  ‘Not here.’

  I jumped. Hadn’t really expected him to say anything.

  ‘Come to the Black Lion then. We’ve got a room set aside.’

  ‘No.’

  No. On second
thoughts, he was right. If he walked into the Black Lion in those clothes, he’d look like a pig in a cake shop. ‘Where, then?’ I asked.

  He turned and started walking down Market Lane towards Mwldan and the foundry. I followed.

  At the end of the lane, where you could smell the stink that came off the culverted stream, he stopped and turned to me. ‘The lime boats to Tresaith,’ he said in Welsh. ‘I was on them.’

  I hesitated, trying to remember what Harry’d been going to ask the men on the boat. There’d been two loads of lime delivered while Mrs Parry was away, the second on the day before the body was found.

  ‘Did Jenkyn Hughes go in the boat with you on the last trip?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see him at all?’

  ‘Not the last time.’

  That fitted with the theory that Hughes’d been dead and buried in the lime for days before Teff found him.

  ‘What about the other times? The time before last – while Mrs Parry was away?’

  The man’s eyes had about as much life in them as marbles. ‘He was on the beach. Waiting.’