by Alis Hawkins
Miss Gwatkyn shook her head. ‘It wasn’t that. Nicholas objected to the ethos of the National Schools. He wanted a more liberal kind of education. One which didn’t just fit people to be useful citizens but which encouraged freedom of thought.’
Ah. Sounded as if Harry and Schoolteacher Rowland would’ve got on like a house on fire. Free thinkers, the pair of them.
‘Had Mr Rowland garnered more than just enthusiasm for his collegiate school?’ Harry asked. ‘We found a significant sum of money in his living quarters.’
Miss Gwatkyn got up to fiddle with the fire again. It obviously wasn’t burning to her satisfaction at all. ‘As I said, Nicholas managed to secure some interest when he first mooted his idea. I understood that there was a not inconsiderable sum of money in the bank. But…’ she hesitated. ‘He’d given me the impression, recently, that he was pursuing other means of raising funds.’
‘Do you know what those means were?’
She turned to me. ‘No, Mr Davies, I’m afraid I don’t. But I do know that Nicholas Rowland wasn’t one to give up easily. He was convinced that he could persuade influential people to his side, once they saw the success of what he liked to call his cowshed academy.’
Harry nodded, as if he was thinking it all through. I watched him, waiting to see what he’d say next. Compared to Miss Gwatkyn’s eccentric dress, he looked relatively normal without his rubberised coat, even if his beard still made him look like a foreigner. But then, he only had it because he couldn’t see to shave himself and wouldn’t employ a valet. Schoolteacher Rowland had had his beard for similar reasons and I wondered if he would’ve refused help, too, if it’d been on offer. Probably. He sounded as pig-headed.
Before Harry had a chance to put whatever thoughts he was having into words, Miss Gwatkyn spoke again, her head cocked as if she’d just heard a suggestion she didn’t like. ‘You don’t imagine that somebody murdered him over the matter of his school?’
‘As yet, I have no idea as to motive. But, when I practised at the bar in London, I certainly saw men killed for less.’
‘Yes, but London’s different.’
‘People are people, Miss Gwatkyn. Wherever they live. And what might not represent a motive for murder to you or me might very well drive another to desperate acts.’
Harry
As we rode back from Alltybela towards Llanddewi Brefi, I was struggling with a small crisis of confidence. Despite the evidence I had presented to Miss Gwatkyn, she had remained unconvinced that Rowland’s death could be anything other than a tragic accident.
‘I’m not discounting what you’ve told me of Doctor Reckitt’s examination, Mr Probert-Lloyd,’ she had said, ‘it’s simply that, when weighed against the evidence of the esteem in which Nicholas was held locally, I find it insufficient.’
Perhaps, I reflected, I had become too ready to accept Benton Reckitt’s opinion without question. Yesterday, his absolute conviction as to the nature of Rowland’s injuries had seemed to leave no room for doubt but, as I recounted his reasoning to Miss Gwatkyn, I had found that it seemed less convincing. Was I really going to look for a murderer because the schoolmaster’s hair had been re-arranged?
Still, she made no objection to furnishing us with the names and addresses of Rowland’s assistant teachers.
‘Morgan Walters, Nan’s father, keeps the Three Horseshoes in the village and Ruth Eynon’s family lives over at Pantglas Farm, a mile or so up the valley.’
Though John sighed when I told him that we were going to the Three Horseshoes, he did not attempt to persuade me to fall in with Minnever’s wishes and return to Tregaron, for which I was grateful. Minnever’s demands would ensure that my life was quite full enough of contention.
My experience of the Teifi Valley’s public houses had grown tenfold since becoming acting coroner so I was able to rate the Three Horseshoes as unusually well furnished and welcoming. Though it had only a room or two available for travellers, it still had the air of somewhere that saw people from hither and yon and was, therefore, far superior to a run-of-the-mill alehouse.
The effusive welcome we received from the landlord’s wife, Mrs Walters, marked her husband as one of Minnever’s endless ‘local men’.
‘Gentlemen! Are you here about the meeting in Tregaron? I know my husband’s got plans to bring the whole village up there for you—’
‘No, actually,’ I interrupted. ‘We’re here on more sombre business.’
Her tone changed immediately. ‘Oh, of course! Poor Mr Rowland. I’m sorry. Listen to me going on about elections when the poor man’s lying dead at Alltybela.’
Her reference to the mansion recalled to mind Miss Gwatkyn’s request that two women come and help lay out Nicholas Rowland’s body.
‘I believe you and your daughter went over there yesterday to help with the laying out?’ I said.
‘That’s right. Such a terrible thing, the accident. Terrible.’
The accident. Given her husband’s trade, it was inconceivable that Mrs Walters would not have heard the mutterings of ‘murder’ that would have run the length and breadth of the parish by now. Evidently, like Phoebe Gwatkyn, she chose not to believe them.
‘Is your daughter here at the moment?’ I asked.
‘Sit down a minute, Mr Probert-Lloyd, Mr Davies. Let me draw you a mug of beer. Keep you going while you’re about your work.’
I pulled out a chair. There are few better ways to ensure people’s co-operation than to enrich them, even by as little as the price of a pint of beer.
But John was not to be put off. ‘Is your Nan here?’
Mrs Walters put the mugs in front of us. ‘Not at the moment, I’m sorry. Her father’s gone to Tregaron for the post and she and Ruth have gone in the trap with him.’
‘Do you know when they’ll be back?’ I asked.
‘Morgan will be back within the hour but Nan and Ruth have only gone with him as far as Efail Fach. They’re going round the parish to tell the pupils to come back to school next week. After we’ve buried poor Mr Rowland.’
I nodded. ‘We understand that your daughter and Miss Eynon were Mr Rowland’s assistants?’
‘Yes. He was training them. Thought the world of Nan and Ruth, he did. Of course, our Nan’d already had an education before Mr Rowland came here. We’ve always sent both our children to school – Nan and Billy, her brother.’
I nodded as I sipped at the beer. ‘You said your husband was going to Tregaron for the mail – does he deliver it, too, or do people come here to collect it?’
‘If they drink here regularly, people generally come and collect their letters. Otherwise, he either delivers if he thinks they’ll have the money or sends Billy out to tell them there’s a letter waiting for them. People haven’t always got a penny to hand, have they?’
A penny a letter. In London, correspondents only paid once, for the stamp. Here, the cost was doubled by the charge made for delivery. But, of course, the sheer volume of correspondence in London made it feasible for the Post Office to employ letter-carriers. In rural areas like this, the cost would bankrupt the entire system, leaving entrepreneurs like Walters to fill the gap.
‘Did Mr Rowland get much mail?’ John asked.
Mrs Walters applied a cloth to the barrel’s tap, then tucked it over the waistband of her apron. ‘Some,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t say a lot.’
‘Difficult to keep up a correspondence, I daresay,’ John suggested, ‘without the proper use of his hands.’
‘Yes, poor dab. Couldn’t write with a pen. Managed with chalk on the board, just about. But Nan and Ruth had to write his letters for him.’
‘Family correspondence?’ I asked. Rowland had, seemingly, been universally loved in Llanddewi Brefi but I was eager to canvass his wider connections if I could.
Mrs Walters sat down on a stool facing us. ‘No. For the new school, mostly. To gentlemen, asking for their support. Mind, Nan never told us who he wrote to. She wouldn’t, those letters were pri
vate. Mr Rowland knew he could trust her. And Ruth. Never had a favourite between them. Always treated them exactly the same.’ She paused briefly. Was she looking at us, waiting for some encouragement to go on? But it seemed that she had simply needed to retrieve her thread for she set off again without intervention.
‘But – and this isn’t gossip, this is fact – he didn’t write to his family. Must’ve been a falling out, mustn’t there, for him not to write to them?’
Indeed. Finally, evidence that not everything in Rowland’s garden had been entirely prelapsarian.
‘Do you know where his family is, Mrs Walters?’
I trained the grey opacity of my blindness on the rim of my beer mug. Above it, I could see the landlady well enough to catch her shake of the head. ‘I don’t, Mr Probert-Lloyd, I’m sorry.’
I had meant to ask Miss Gwatkyn about Rowland’s family but had been distracted by our discussion of his proposed school. Still, there was a remedy at hand. ‘Is your son at home?’ I asked. ‘I have a job for him.’
While she went to find the boy, John took out his pocket book and I dictated a brief note to Phoebe Gwatkyn. He had not yet finished writing when the back door opened and in strode a half-grown lad with bright red hair.
John held out the note. ‘Have you been to Miss Gwatkyn’s house before?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Sir. John would like that.
‘So you know where the servants’ quarters are? Right, ask whoever answers the door to give this to Miss Gwatkyn straight away and say you’ve got to wait for a reply and bring it back to Mr Probert-Lloyd. If you’re lucky, they’ll give you something to eat while you’re waiting. Look hungry is my advice.’
Billy Walters dashed off before his mother could add to his burdens by remembering something he could do for her on the way, and John and I rose to take our leave. We had other people to see in Llanddewi Brefi while we waited for Miss Gwatkyn’s response.
‘Who’ll take on the job of local registrar, now,’ I asked Mrs Walters, ‘with Mr Rowland gone?’
‘My Morgan’ll have the job, if he can,’ she said. ‘Going to see about it this afternoon, he is.’
I nodded. Morgan Walters would be well placed to make sure that all births, marriages and deaths were duly recorded. Evidently, very little happened in the parish without his knowledge.
‘If that’s the case,’ I said, ‘it would be as well if he came to the inquest at the school on Friday.’
Mrs Walters folded her arms. ‘Yes, the inquest. I know he wanted to speak to you about that. Shouldn’t it be here, Mr Probert-Lloyd? We’re the biggest public house in the village. And the cleanest.’
I had anticipated some objection to the break with custom. ‘Even your establishment is still not as big as the school, Mrs Walters.’
Actually, my principal aim in holding the inquest in the school was to remind the jury of the circumstances in which Nicholas Rowland had died but that was a fact I did not wish to share with Mrs Walters.
Keen to remove myself from the Three Horseshoes before her husband could return and berate me on his own account, I moved toward the door but, before I could reach for the latch, the door swung inwards and Minnever’s unmistakeable form appeared with an exclamation of satisfaction.
John
Jonas Minnever wasn’t in the best of moods.
‘It seems that Mahomet won’t come to the mountain, so the mountain has postponed meetings, yet again, in order to come to Mahomet,’ he said.
‘As I told you yesterday, Minnever, I have a job to do.’
‘What you don’t seem to grasp is that you won’t have it for much longer if you pay no attention to the election. You can’t keep avoiding people.’
‘I’m not avoiding people.’ Harry was irritated that Minnever’d followed us. And maybe a little bit embarrassed. But he was going to have to listen to him whether he liked it or not. You can’t have an agent and then ignore him, can you? Not if he’s doing most of the work for you. Minnever had men out everywhere drumming up support for the election meeting at the end of the week. Today was market day in Tregaron and his minions would be buying plenty of drinks in the hope that people’d come back on Saturday in search of more. Minnever wanted his candidate in town where he could be seen.
‘Harry,’ I said, ‘why don’t you wait here for Billy, and have a chat with Mr Minnever, and I’ll go and see Mattie Hughes? That’ll save time.’
Minnever took Harry by the arm. ‘Excellent notion. Mr Davies has a habit of talking sense. You should listen to him.’
Mattie Hughes was sitting in the doorway of his cottage making the most of the light, just like he had been the day before. This time, I could see what he was whittling. A spoon.
‘Back, then?’ he said, when he saw me walking his way.
‘Bad pennies. That’s us.’ The smile I gave him was wasted. He didn’t look up, just carried on pulling the curved blade of the knife back towards his thumb, shaving off curls of pale wood.
I leaned against the wall of his cottage and watched him for a bit. Always nice to watch somebody doing something they’re good at.
‘Wanted something, did you?’ he asked, in the end. ‘Thought you were just passing.’
‘No. Came to see you.’
‘Want to know if I pushed him out of the loft, is it?’
Since you ask… ‘Did you?’
‘No. But you won’t believe me just for saying it, will you?’
Of course I wouldn’t just take his word, but there was something he could show me that might back it up. ‘Can I come in and have a cup of tea?’
For the first time, he looked up. ‘Cheeky pup! Not backward in coming forward, are you?’
I shrugged. ‘I can do without the tea if there’s none on offer, but I’d rather not talk about your business in the street. Never know who’s listening.’
He sighed, pocketed spoon and knife and hopped up on to his one good leg. Then he did an awkward kind of lifting movement with his hip to get the wooden one in place. ‘You’ll have to take me as you find me.’
He picked up his stool and swung himself around and through the door.
The cottage wasn’t big – only one fair-sized room deep – but, despite what he’d said, the place was as neat and clean as a spinster’s parlour. He didn’t have much in the way of possessions but what there was looked workmanlike. A place for everything and everything in its place.
Next to the big, old-fashioned fireplace there was a stack of turfs as tall as me. Good and burnable, they looked, as if they’d been drying somewhere all winter. On the other side of the hearth, pots were hanging from the beam. One looked big enough for washing. Mattie Hughes didn’t boil his own linens, did he? Then again, looked like there was nobody else here to do it. And, if Enoch was right about him not having much work, he wouldn’t be able to pay.
‘Not married?’ I asked.
Mattie shook his head as he swung the kettle over the fire. ‘Left it too long.’
For what? To come back from soldiering? To ask the right woman? To be bothered any more? He didn’t explain and it wasn’t my place to ask. If there wasn’t a Mrs Hughes then she hadn’t pushed Schoolteacher Rowland out of his loft to get her husband back into steady work. That’s all I needed to know.
And it didn’t look as if Hughes would’ve been able to push Rowland out of the loft himself. The reason I’d wanted to see inside his house was standing in the corner. Mattie’s bed. He was the sort of man who’d have it out of the way in the loft if he could, I was sure of it.
He saw me looking but didn’t say anything.
‘Stairs are difficult, I expect?’
Mattie sucked his teeth. He knew what I was asking. And why. ‘I can manage proper stairs but not a ladder. Morgan Walters pays me for use of the loft. For storage.’
‘What’s he storing?’
‘All sorts. Got his finger in any number of pies, Morgan Walters.’
‘You ever do any work for him
?’
‘Now’n again.’
He step-tapped to an old, dark-wood sideboard. There were a few tin pots standing on top, some with lids and some without. He opened one and shook some tea into a stained and battered pan. It looked like what you’d get if you asked somebody who’d only ever seen cooking pots to make you a skillet. Straight-sided, shallow, a kind of handle-frame on a hinge. Mattie took it over to the fire and bent down to put it on the hearth. Because of his leg, I suppose, he bent from the waist in a way you wouldn’t expect a man of his age to be able to manage. He was fit, supple.
Maybe he was lying about his difficulty with ladders. I tried to imagine it in my mind’s eye. He’d have to hop up each rung, wouldn’t he? Impossible. Or would he be able to go up backwards, using his arms and arse? But, again, if he could, I was pretty sure he would’ve done that and kept his bed upstairs.
‘Odd-looking teapot.’
‘It’s a mess tin.’
The kettle must’ve been warm before he put it back over the fire because it was boiling now. He poured the spitting water on to the tea leaves and fitted what I’d taken for a plate snugly over the top of the mess tin, like a lid.
