by Alis Hawkins
‘But to cut up children–’
‘Children or adults, it makes no difference! The more we know about disease, about how diseases begin and proceed and how they kill their victims, the more we can help the living!’
I shuddered. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. ‘All that notwithstanding,’ I said, the legal word stiff but right on my tongue, ‘there’s only one question I need answered about the death of Elizabeth Abel.’ I turned my head towards Harry. ‘Is it something I need to look into on your behalf, or not?’
Harry hesitated, head cocked towards Reckitt in case the doctor wanted to say anything. He didn’t.
‘As we seem unable to do much more on the death of Hughes until the meeting on Friday, it might be as well for us to pay the Reverend Williams a visit. See if he can do anything to quash the rumours and save us from having to insist on an inquest. We’ve enough to do at the moment, what with one thing and another.’
Part Three
Harry
Riding to St Dogmaels with John the following day, I felt my liberty most acutely. Though it was a mere two days since we had been in Cardigan together, weeks might have elapsed as far as I was concerned. Each hour I had spent in my father’s sickroom seemed to have taken days to pass and I felt both aged and sobered by my vigil.
Fortunately for my sanity, Arthur Philips had returned and, with Isabel Griffiths suggesting that he and my father be given time alone to mend neglected familial fences, I was able to leave the house with a passably quiet conscience.
‘It doesn’t matter that your father mayn’t be able to say much,’ she maintained. ‘He can listen. He has years and years’ worth of listening to do and he’ll do it willingly, Harry.’
I knew what she meant: he would do it in order to restore relations with my mother’s family and provide me with friends and allies. And I would need them. Hours of enforced contemplation had led me to a decision about my future. Come what might, I would stand for election to the post of coroner. Glanteifi had a steward so, whether my father was alive and capable or not, the estate would not founder while I prepared my campaign.
However, though Ormiston could be relied upon to run the estate, I knew I would need somebody to help me manage my campaign, a secretary or an agent who would be able to attend to all the bureaucratic requirements of standing for election. John was obviously the ideal candidate but his mind was set on becoming a solicitor and I could not stand in his way.
From its position, out in the countryside a mile or so beyond the village of St Dogmaels, I concluded that Blaenywaun chapel must have been built by the Teifi Valley’s early Baptists who had chosen to site their meeting houses well away from the censure of churchgoing people.
Though we had called in at the manse in the village only to be told that Reverend Williams had gone out on pastoral duties, it was clear that they had not brought him here.
‘We should’ve taken up his wife’s offer and waited for him at his house,’ John said. ‘It’s freezing out here.’
But I had had enough of sitting indoors, these last few days. Even the icy wind could not dent my pleasure at being outside and purposeful. ‘Ah well,’ I said. ‘At least we’ve seen the famous Blaenywaun chapel.’
John made a dismissive sound. ‘It’s just a building.’
A big building. And necessarily so; I was given to understand that Williams’s congregation was constantly on the increase.
As we rode away from the chapel, I registered the raw earth of a new grave, its mound – as far as I could tell – unsunk. Lizzie Abel must, surely, lie beneath. Had her precipitate burial had anything to do with the agreement Reckitt had spoken of? Faced with his little daughter’s lifeless body, had her father realised that, whatever agreement they had reached, he could not allow Reckitt to cut her open? If so, then I hoped Lizzie’s parents were able to take some comfort from the fact that her body was safe beneath the soil.
Though the legal provision of cadavers to medical schools had, by and large, put a stop to graverobbing, tales of the Resurrectionists’ trade had still been rife amongst medical students when Gray and I had first met and he had relished them as only somebody untouched by their horrible reality could.
I recalled the grim pictures he had conjured up. The bereaved, guarding the graves of their loved ones, night after night, until sufficient decomposition was judged to have taken place to render the body unfit for dissection. Ingenious bodysnatchers digging tunnels from a distance of six or seven yards down to the head of the coffin, removing the end and pulling the corpse out along the tunnel, leaving sentinel relatives or their paid proxies none the wiser. Bodies spirited through the city at the dead of night and delivered to respectable academies where they were met with surreptitious remuneration and carefully unasked questions. John might still find it distasteful but dissection of the unclaimed bodies of paupers and vagrants was generally regarded as by far the lesser of two evils.
If he had noticed the direction of my gaze, John did not mention it. In fact, he had been somewhat taciturn since we had left Glanteifi, rousing himself to answer any questions I asked but then lapsing back into silence. His reticence made my own near-euphoria at being away from Glanteifi seem inappropriate.
‘Do you think I should have stayed at my father’s side?’ I asked. We were just passing what was obviously a substantial stable for the use of congregation members and, as we left its protective bulk behind, the wind buffeting across the fields hit us like a child running headlong.
His head jerked towards me as if I’d pulled a string. ‘Why d’you ask that?’
‘You’re very quiet. I wondered whether it was the silence of disapproval – at me abandoning my father.’
‘No! Not at all.’ He stopped, then seemed to feel that a corroborative statement was required. ‘In fact, if I was your father, I’d be glad you’d gone out. It must’ve felt as if you were sitting there waiting for him to die.’
I told him about the fear I had had that I might find myself sitting at my father’s bedside, oblivious to the fact that he had breathed his last.
‘D’you think that’s an odd fear to have?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’ He sounded subdued. ‘I’ve never been there when somebody died. By the time I knew about my parents and sister they’d all been dead for weeks.
‘D’you know what I felt,’ he went on, ‘after the first shock? Stupid. Not sad, just stupid. There I’d been, imagining them going about as usual when all the time they’d been dead.’
‘I’m sorry, John.’
I caught a shrug. ‘I never would’ve got an education if my parents’d lived.’
And I wouldn’t have ambitions to be a lawyer. The words might have been unsaid but I was acutely aware of their truth, nonetheless.
‘How long have you been working for Mr Schofield, now?’ I asked.
John took his time replying. Was he looking sidelong at me, trying to decide why I was asking?
‘A bit more than five years. Mr Davies from Adpar school sent me to him when I was a few months off fifteen and I’m twenty next month.’
‘Mr Schofield doesn’t have any articled clerks, does he?’
‘No.’
For somebody like Schofield it would be gratifying to pass on knowledge to an intelligent youth like John. ‘How much law do you know?’
‘A lot.’ He spoke without boastfulness, simply offering it as a fact.
‘Enough to pass the exams?’ I knew, from frequent complaints at the bar, that the solicitors’ examinations mandated by London’s legal establishment were intended to guard against incompetence rather than to produce excellence and I wondered whether John was aware of this, too.
‘I’d hope so.’
‘Does Mr Schofield ever ask you questions on points of law? Test you?’
John hesitated. ‘He does. Trying to catch me out.’
Had Schofield been intending to present John for examination without his being enrolled, formally, as a
n articled clerk? It would be irregular but not unheard of. If this had been his intention all along, he would consider himself very ill-used if I were to persuade John to work for me. Schofield had no sons and he might, conceivably, be preparing John to succeed him in his legal practice. Perhaps it would be as well to ask what his intentions were before I made any suggestions.
Why do you ask?’ John wanted to know.
‘I’m just thinking of your future.’
We rode on in an uneasy silence, both of us aware that I had not really answered his question.
The Reverend John Philipps Williams lived in an unpretentious manse on the hill in St Dogmaels and, this time, answered our knock himself. Doubtless there would be a servant or two about the place – a man of his standing would be expected to provide employment – but he did not flaunt them.
Two small boys having been located to find a patch of grass for the mares to graze, we followed Williams into his warm, street-facing study and I explained our errand.
‘Little Lizzie Abel. Yes, we buried her last week.’ His pleasantly deep voice was softened by what sounded like genuine sorrow.
‘Please correct me if I’m wrong,’ I said, ‘but we’ve been led to believe that the little girl’s death had neither been certified by a doctor nor registered by her parents before she was buried.’
I heard Williams’s small sigh. ‘Your information is quite correct. I know that, strictly speaking, we were in breach of the law, but I felt that it would be allowable to fall in with the mother’s wishes, on this occasion, provided that I saw to it, myself, that the death was registered as soon as possible. Nobody was harmed by our actions – which is, after all, the point of the law – and a great deal of anguish was avoided.’
Though we were speaking Welsh it was not the easy, colloquial tongue I was used to but the high, Bible-cadenced language of a college-educated man. Williams seemed very sure of himself; not at all disconcerted at being found to have acted illegally, however technical the illegality. It irked me.
‘Can I ask why there was such a degree of haste?’
‘The child’s mother – Margaret Abel – was in a state of near-collapse. I feared for her health if I did not bury little Lizzie in accordance with her wishes. She’d already seen to having the grave dug.’
‘Do you know who did the digging, Reverend?’ I turned at the sound of John’s voice; from his tone I knew that he, too, was unimpressed by the minister’s demeanour.
But, if Williams heard any disrespect, he chose to ignore it. ‘Dan Bach,’ he replied. ‘He works as a labourer on a few of the farms near Blaenywaun. His family’s come to depend on the extra he gets for digging graves and looking after things around the chapel.’
‘You know for a fact that it was him who did the digging?’ John persisted. It was clear – to me at least – that he was asking whether the child’s father might have dug the grave himself in order to conceal her death from as many people as possible until she was safely in the ground.
‘I didn’t see him do it.’ Now there was an edge of irritation to Williams’s voice. ‘But I know he’d have come running to me to complain if anybody else had. As I said, he depends on the money.’
John took his notebook out of his pocket and I wondered whether I should rein him in. I decided against.
‘What’s Dan Bach’s proper name?’ John asked.
Williams hesitated. In a congregation of several hundred, many of whom shared half a dozen surnames, he might know some only by their nicknames. ‘Daniel Evans, I think.’
While John wrote in his notebook, I examined the minister’s library. Bookcases filled one wall, floor to ceiling and, though the study was not large, such a collection implied a considerable outlay of funds. Either J.P. Williams was a man unusually showered with gifts or his congregation kept him in some style.
In my peripheral vision, John’s face turned towards me; it was my turn to ask a question.
‘You said, just now, that Mrs Abel was in a state of near-collapse,’ I began. ‘That’s understandable, of course, but why did you fear for her health if her child wasn’t quickly buried?’
There was a pause before Williams answered. ‘You have to understand, Mr Probert-Lloyd, how very greatly a child’s death can affect the mind of a mother.’ The minister’s tone had changed; he was speaking slowly, weighing his words as if they were unusually heavy. ‘My wife and I lost our little daughter, last year, aged only three weeks. For some time afterwards, my wife would not be parted from a doll we had been given for the baby. She carried it everywhere, as if she, herself, had become a child again.’
Was it this willingness to reveal his own personal hurts that had made him so loved, so powerful a speaker, I wondered? And yet, it was not actually self-revelation at all, was it? It was his wife’s private grief he was parading for us.
I waited for him to go on.
‘Unlike my wife, Maggie Abel knew her child was dying. But all through Lizzie’s illness, Maggie was convinced that a miracle would save her daughter. She felt certain that she needed only to have faith and Lizzie would be healed.’
‘You didn’t share her conviction?’ I asked. His tone suggested as much: careful rather than fervent.
‘I believe that God does perform miracles, Mr Probert-Lloyd. Indeed, I have seen more than one with my own eyes. But he does not do them at our behest. Simply to pray is not enough, else who would do anything else if it would grant them their wish?’
‘We’ve been told that Lizzie Abel had a tumour on the brain,’ John said, bringing us back to the point. ‘Is that your understanding, too?’
Again, there was a brief silence but, this time, I had the impression that it was intended as a criticism of John’s brusqueness. ‘I know that’s what the doctor who was treating her diagnosed and I have no reason to contradict him. After a few weeks he told the Abels that they must prepare for the worst. But Maggie would not accept that Lizzie was going to die.
‘As I was saying,’ he continued after a few moments, ‘the death of a child can affect the mind quite profoundly. But, in this case, Maggie Abel’s mind had already been thrown out of balance by Lizzie’s illness before she died. She looked desperately for a meaning in her daughter’s suffering. Eventually, she became convinced that Lizzie’s illness was to be the means of drawing her husband back to God.’
An uncomfortable silence developed before I realised that Williams was looking for reassurance that I would wish to know this information. I had not announced my blindness and, now, I realised the folly of that omission. However sick I was of the need to advertise my limited sight, neglecting to do so made me look less competent, not more. My father’s words of scarcely a week ago came uncomfortably to mind. Why must you insist on behaving as if your faculties are unimpaired?
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Why did Mr Abel need to be drawn back?’
‘Previously, he had been a deacon at Blaenywaun–’
‘He’s not a young man then?’ John interrupted. Evidently, he had been assuming – as I had – that, with a small child, the Abels were a young couple, but the diaconate was almost always filled with men in middle age and older.
‘He’s in his forties. Margaret is his second wife.’
‘Why did he stop being a deacon?’ John asked.
I could see the pale disc that was Williams’s face; it did not turn towards John. ‘David’s first wife died in childbirth, along with their son – and he proved to be one of those people who, when misfortune befalls them, feel that God has abandoned them. A wrong-headed notion, of course, and one I could wish to see less often than I do. But, recently, David had decided to take his family to America and the prospect of a new start seemed to have rekindled his faith.’
‘And his wife? Was she happy to leave home and family?’
‘Initially, I think, yes. She is a very faithful, devout woman and I know it troubled her that David felt so far from God. If America was what it took to bring him back into the fold, then she
was happy to go.’
‘But not when Lizzie became too ill to travel,’ I guessed. ‘Was she their only child?’
‘Yes, she was. But it wasn’t simply a matter of the child being too ill to sail to America. As Lizzie’s illness progressed, it became clear that the money the Abels had saved for an emigration bond would be needed to buy medicines to keep her from suffering constant pain.’
Money: the cause of half the murders in the world. Could it be that the rumours were true? Had David Abel seen his sick child standing between him and a new life?
‘Also,’ Williams went on, ‘Maggie Abel had come to believe that going to America was no longer necessary to rekindle David’s faith. She believed that the miracle of Lizzie’s healing would draw him back to God.’
However, as a miracle failed to materialise and his child’s condition deteriorated before his eyes, I imagined that David Abel had become more desperate to escape, rather than less.
Then I realised that I was making an assumption. ‘Was Lizzie David Abel’s child,’ I asked, ‘or has his wife also been married before?’
Easier, perhaps, to hasten the end of a child not one’s own? But Williams firmly barred this line of thought.
‘No, Maggie was not yet twenty when she married David. Lizzie was his child.’