by Alis Hawkins
Minnever crouched down to look at Rowland’s hands. He might as well not have bothered; Reckitt was constitutionally incapable of misrepresenting anatomical findings. But the need to see with our own eyes is surprisingly strong, as I had discovered to my own immense frustration since my ability to examine things visually had failed me.
‘All of which suggests,’ Reckitt continued, ‘that, after his fall from the loft – presumably as a result of being pushed – his killer took advantage of his injured and groggy state to take hold of his hair and bang his head on the floor until he was insensible.’
‘Then made sure he was dead and smoothed his hair back into place to hide the evidence,’ John finished.
‘Not simply smoothed. As I indicated, a brush or comb was used.’
‘Bravo, Doctor! But surely that’s a great deal to infer from the way his hair was arranged?’ I could hear the smile in Minnever’s voice.
‘The boy’s description of events when he came to summon us has coloured your judgement, sir. He informed us that his teacher had fallen from the loft. That has worked upon your mind and you are looking for evidence to confirm an accidental fall and rejecting other evidence as fanciful.’
Ignoring Minnever’s harrumph of protest, I made a decision. As ‘fanciful’ was the last adjective one might ever apply to Reckitt, a jury would have to be called and an inquest convened.
John
After Benton Reckitt’d said his piece, we left the corpse in the cold schoolroom and went back out into the sunshine. While Harry relieved Enoch of his horse-minding duties and sent him off to fetch Rat-face Jones again, I leaned back against the wall of the schoolroom, closed my eyes and turned my face up to the spring sun. The year was coming to life. I could hear birds singing their feathery little hearts out and, on the way over here, we’d seen blackthorn out everywhere, like spring snow in the hedges. Even the grass was beginning to brighten again after a mud-coloured winter.
‘How long’s this viewing going to take?’ I heard Minnever ask. Keen to get Harry back to the voters in Tregaron, wasn’t he? But he was in for a shock if he thought Harry was going to hurry things up for the sake of electioneering.
The warmth on my face suddenly cooled and I opened my eyes. A fat cloud had covered the sun. April’s a treacherous month. Snow up here in the next few weeks’d be nothing unusual.
It’d been a treacherous time for schoolteacher Rowland as well, if Reckitt was right. And I had no reason to think he wasn’t. Like a university education, it was, watching Benton Reckitt work. Between him and Harry they were giving me such a course in the business of suspicious death that I’d be an expert by the time I came of age.
I heard a sound and looked round. ‘Simi Jones is back,’ I told Harry. ‘And he’s not looking very pleased.’
Harry hadn’t just called Jones back to tell him to get a jury together – he could’ve given Enoch that message. No, he wanted to make sure nobody’d tidied the corpse up.
‘Mr Jones, as far as you know, did anybody comb Mr Rowland’s hair while he was lying there?’
Rat-face looked at him as if he was off his head. ‘No. That’d be for the laying out, wouldn’t it?’
‘You’re quite sure none of the children could have done it?’
Rat-face gave a pinched look at Enoch. ‘Well? You were here, weren’t you?’
The boy shrugged. ‘Nobody touched him. Came straight for you, Mr Jones.’
Simi Jones looked back at Harry with an expression somewhere between told you so and always finding fault, the gentry are. Wasted on Harry, of course. But then, if Rat-face hadn’t known that, he wouldn’t have dared give him the look in the first place. It wasn’t only Harry’s reputation as a stickler with corpses that had gone up and down the Teifi Valley. People’d heard all about how he couldn’t see properly as well. Can’t see your face, Mr Probert-Lloyd can’t. If he looks straight at you, he can’t see you at all. Has to look at you side-on.
‘Thank you, Enoch,’ I said. Then I turned to Rat-face. ‘And you, Mr Jones.’
Narrowed his eyes at me then, Simi Jones did. Didn’t like me speaking for Harry. Thought I was giving myself airs. And I knew there were plenty of others who thought the same thing since Harry’d asked me to be under-steward. Well, they could think what they liked. When I took over the running of Glanteifi with Harry, they’d have to call me Mr Davies and smile to my face, whatever they said behind my back.
‘Very well,’ Harry said. ‘I need you to call a jury, Mr Jones. We’ll do the view this afternoon – as soon as you can find enough men. The bare twelve will do. We don’t want to have to wait any longer than necessary.’
Rat-face opened his mouth, thought better of it, and turned back towards the village with Enoch in tow. I saw Minnever draw breath to speak but, before he could, Harry turned to me. ‘Right, before we have to put the ladder back for the jury, let’s have a look in the loft.’
I didn’t look at Minnever. Didn’t want him to try and get me to change Harry’s mind. Just went back into the schoolroom and up the ladder. It was the first time I’d been in a cowshed’s loft for years and it brought back a lot of memories I’d rather not have had, to be honest. Still couldn’t think of my family without feeling the pain of loss under my ribs. Stupid really, I’d been an orphan almost half my life.
The loft barely covered half the ground floor but, even though it wasn’t partitioned, you couldn’t see into it from the ground. It was set quite high up and didn’t have much headroom. No headroom needed for hay, is there?
Down below, Minnever started on at Harry about going back to Tregaron with him and leaving the viewing of the body to me. I hesitated at the top of the ladder to hear what Harry would say.
‘Go back by all means, Minnever. There’s really no need for you to stay. But this is coroner’s business and I’m not going to shirk it.’
I looked about. Rowland’s living quarters were barely any better furnished than the schoolroom beneath. Rough boards, threadbare rug, narrow iron-framed bed with a battered wicker trunk pushed up against the wall on one side of it, a scratched but clean table on the other. Rowland had used the end of the table directly under the loft’s one small window as a washstand. A bowl and jug stood there, with a small mirror hanging from a nail on the wall. A ladderback chair was pulled out from the table with Rowland’s jacket draped over it.
At the back of the table there was a collection of books on bare plank shelves. I peered at them in the dim light. Didn’t recognise the titles but the spines were scuffed and battered, as if they’d knocked about the place for a good while. Rowland’s bowl and jug were decent and matching, though. And the soap was dry, not sitting in a pool of its own melted fat. The word fastidious came to mind, along with the face of my previous employer, Mr Schofield. That was the sort of word he liked to use.
I half-turned. Rowland’s bed was more or less made and, if the blankets weren’t very neatly tucked in, the man’s hands explained that, didn’t they? I pressed down on the mattress. Feather. No horsehair or straw stuffing for Schoolteacher Rowland.
‘Harry?’ I called, looking over the bed to the trunk on the other side.
‘Yes?’
‘There’s a trunk up here – do you want me to open it?’ Always wise to have the boss’s say-so before you go poking about in a man’s personal possessions.
‘Is it locked?’
I moved round the bed. ‘No.’ It was fastened with two straps. No lock.
‘See what’s in it, then.’
I undid the buckles and flipped the lid up. Clothes. I pulled an overcoat out and laid it on the bed. Then a spare suit – just as well made, and just as worn, as the one he’d died in. Some neckties, much more fancy than the white stock he’d been wearing. A pair of shoes that wouldn’t have survived five minutes on the roads around Llanddewi Brefi, and a second pair of riding boots, stiff from lack of use.
‘Just clothes,’ I shouted down. But when I dropped the boots back in to the em
pty trunk the sound they made was wrong. I took them out again and leaned into the trunk. I got my fingers under the edge of the base in one corner and pulled it up. Underneath was a linen bag. When I lifted it out, there was the unmistakeable clink of coins. I untied the neck and looked in.
Money. A lot of money.
Harry
If the cash hidden in Rowland’s trunk was surprising, I found John’s request that one of us come up and witness his removal of it even more so.
‘That’s not necessary, John,’ I called up to the loft in response.
Jonas Minnever cleared his throat in that way people do when they are about to say something that others might find less than entirely acceptable.
‘Perhaps the boy’s wise to be cautious. Money tends to make people mistrustful.’
The boy: John would not like that. No more than I liked his probity being called into question, however obliquely. I took a breath and composed my face into a bland agreeableness. ‘Very well.’
‘I’ll go up,’ Reckitt offered.
I kept him in the corner of my eye as he moved his bulk up the ladder and, with some grunting and muttered oaths at the ladder’s instability, on to the floor of the loft.
Though lofts pressed into service as living quarters generally merited a fixed ladder, I could see that, here, such a thing would have presented an obstacle to the free movement of children below. Easier by far simply to lean the ladder out of the way during school hours and replace it at need.
Reckitt had scarcely clumped across the floor overhead before our attention was diverted.
‘Good day to you, gentlemen.’
The newcomer hovered between us and the daylight, rendering him nothing more than a silhouette to me. Fortunately, Minnever was not so disadvantaged.
‘Good day, Reverend…?’
The gentleman stepped further in, allowing me to make out the sober black and white clothes that had prompted Minnever’s guess.
‘Hildon. Tobias Hildon. Vicar of St David’s. I gather,’ he said, not waiting for us to introduce ourselves, ‘that there is some suggestion that Rowland’s death was not an accident.’
Simi Jones, the plwyfwas, must have gone straight to the vicarage before beginning jury-recruitment, damn him. I stepped forward before Minnever could speak. ‘Good day, Mr Hildon, I’m Henry Probert-Lloyd, acting coroner for the Teifi Valley. And I’m afraid you’re right. There’s evidence of foul play.’
‘You mean he was murdered?’ Hildon’s tone indicated no shock at the news, only irritation with the way I had expressed it.
‘That’s for an inquest to decide.’ I would not be responsible for ‘murder’ being bandied about the village and the jury’s judgement prejudiced. ‘Meanwhile, we’re trying to understand as much as we can. By good fortune, we have a doctor on hand who is experienced in post-mortem examinations.’
‘No, no, not I,’ Minnever said, in response, presumably, to an enquiring look from Hildon. ‘Doctor Reckitt’s up there, with Mr Probert-Lloyd’s assistant.’
As if his words had brought it into being, a faint chinking came from the loft. The sound of coins being counted and stacked on a hard surface.
Hildon obviously heard it, too, because he whipped around and addressed me. ‘What exactly is taking place here?’
I responded to his abruptness with a considered calm. ‘My officer discovered a certain amount of money amongst Mr Rowland’s possessions. It’s being counted before we remove it from the premises as evidence.’
‘May I ask why?’
Unsure as to whether he was asking for an explanation for the money’s being counted or its removal, my answer did duty for both. ‘The fact that a large amount of money was found in his living quarters argues against a pecuniary motive for Mr Rowland’s death.’
‘I thought I understood you to say that you were undecided as to the manner of his death?’
I disliked his combative tone but was saved from making an unwise rejoinder by the shifting of the loft ladder.
‘It’s all right, I’ll hold it.’ John’s words produced a grunt of relieved thanks from Reckitt; coming down an unsecured ladder is worse than climbing up.
Once at the bottom, Reckitt planted a foot on one of the ladder’s rails to hold it firm while John came down. This he did with considerably more agility than the doctor, despite being encumbered with a decent-sized linen bag.
‘How much?’ I asked, as he turned around.
‘Almost three hundred.’
‘Pounds?’
Had I been able to see properly, John would probably have glanced at me to ask whether I wished to field Hildon’s incredulous question; as it was, he simply took it upon himself to decide.
‘Yes, Mr Hildon. Two hundred and ninety-eight pounds, thirteen shillings and sixpence to be exact.’
‘I heard coins,’ I said. ‘Is it all small takings?’
‘No. Most of it’s in banknotes but there are some sovereigns and smaller stuff – crowns and half crowns. Nothing less than that, though.’
In other words, Mr Rowland’s bag of money did not contain his daily teacher’s pence.
‘Can you write a receipt and have it witnessed by Dr Reckitt, please?’ I asked.
John took out his pocket book and began writing.
‘You’d better leave the money with me.’
I turned, slowly, towards the vicar and his peremptory tone. ‘Do you believe you have a claim on this money, Mr Hildon?’
‘Not at all. But it should be taken in trust for his family, when they can be found.’
‘Mr Rowland had no relatives in the village?’ It was the obvious inference but it was as well to be sure.
‘No.’
‘Do you happen to know where he is from?’
‘I do not.’
‘Might there be somebody who could give us details of his family?’
‘Miss Phoebe Gwatkyn is your most likely informant. They were as thick as thieves.’
In my peripheral vision, John held his pencil over his pocket book, the very picture of a diligent amanuensis.
‘And where would we find Miss Gwatkyn, Mr Hildon?’
The vicar turned and pointed through the door. ‘Over there. Alltybela mansion. If you look hard, you can see it on the edge of the hill above Pentre Rhew. Any of the villagers’ll show you the way.’
A favour which he neglected to offer. Mr Hildon, apparently, was not cut from the servant-of-all clerical cloth.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Doubtless we’ll find somebody who can introduce us to the lady in due course.’
‘When will you hold the inquest?’
Damn the man – did he always bark instead of speaking? ‘Simi Jones, the plwyfwas, is already out gathering a jury. Beyond that, no decisions have been made.’
‘With any luck,’ Minnever said, ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd will be able to conclude this sad business as swiftly as possible. You’ll be aware that we’re in the middle of an election, and he is to speak at a public meeting next Saturday.’
I sighed. Given Reckitt’s opinion on how the teacher had come by his various injuries, it seemed unlikely that an inquest into Rowland’s death would be concluded anything like as swiftly as Minnever would like. Worse, now that electioneering had begun, the press would be more avid than usual.
John and I would have our work cut out to stop the whole thing becoming a fairground attraction.
John
Dr Reckitt might be convinced that the teacher’d been murdered but I was pretty certain the jury’d see it differently. I might not have been coroner’s officer for long but I already knew that juries were apt to explain away signs of foul play. Especially if they thought the dead person was so loved and respected that nobody in their right mind would want to hurt them.
Must’ve been an accident, they’d say. Poor dab, terrible thing to happen, couldn’t be helped though.
But, if anybody could make them look beyond what they wanted to see, it was Harry. I knew that
because I’d watched him do it, again and again. In the ten weeks or so since he’d been asked to stand in as coroner, Harry’d held more inquests than there’d been in the Teifi Valley during the previous year and a half.
As our jury gathered in the schoolhouse that afternoon, I wondered how he was going to conduct the view. ‘Are you going to get Dr Reckitt to tell them what he thinks?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘I’m just going to let them look at the body. Reckitt can speculate at the hearing.’
An inquest jury was required to look at the body and bear witness to any and all injuries to its surface. Post-mortem examinations might come later – and Doctor Reckitt certainly thought they should – but the jury’s job was just to look at the body’s condition as soon after it’d been found as possible. Preferably before it’d been moved or tidied up in any way. Trouble was, juries didn’t always notice things like broken collarbones. Or know what to make of them, if they did.
I watched as the jurymen dribbed and drabbed in. From the look of them, there were more farmers than usual. We were in the back of beyond, out here, and there weren’t many shopkeepers and tradesmen to call on. Mind, that wasn’t the only way this lot were different. Most juries didn’t get anything like as upset.
