by Alis Hawkins
‘Clever,’ I said.
‘Don’t want to carry an ounce more’n you need to when you’re marching.’
I could see the sense in that.
‘Sit down.’ Mattie chin-pointed at the stool which he’d left under the street-side window. I dragged it up to the fire opposite a chair which, going by the arse-shaped dent in the folded blanket on its seat, was where he always sat.
‘Think you’ll go back to teaching, now Rowland’s gone?’
He snorted. ‘Not while there’s anything better on offer.’
‘You didn’t like it much, then?’
He swirled the tea in the pan. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’
A sudden thought came to me. ‘Where did you used to have your school?’ If Miss Gwatkyn had given the cowshed to Rowland, presumably Mattie’d had his somewhere else.
‘Here,’ he said, not looking up.
I could see the sense in that. His house was warm and dry and if it didn’t have desks or a teacher’s table then it was no worse than half the schools in the country. Rowland must’ve been a far better teacher for Llanddewi Brefi’s children to’ve chosen his cold, dark shed over this snug little house.
‘Did you teach Nan Walters?’
He glanced at me and I thought he might be about to laugh. ‘No, I never taught Nan. Her father sent her to some ladies’ school down in Lampeter. Wanted her out of the way of the men who drink at his place till she was old enough to’ve learned sense.’
I nodded. Sounded as if Nan Walters might be a bit of a flighty piece. That would explain why she’d been sent away to school while her brother stayed home. Then again, he’d need to be learning the family trade. ‘Did Morgan Walters support this new school idea of Mr Rowland’s?’ I asked. If he had his fingers in various pies, it’d be in Walters’s interests to see Llanddewi Brefi flourish, wouldn’t it?
Mattie nodded. ‘Mustard-keen. Hedging his bets, mind, like always.’
I raised my eyebrows. Tell me more.
‘Giving support to Mr Hildon’s idea of a National School, as well, wasn’t he? Just in case Nicholas Rowland’s ambitions came to nothing.’
‘Is that what you thought would happen?’
He grunted. ‘Mr Hildon’ll have the gentry on his side, won’t he?’
Which was exactly what we’d heard from Miss Gwatkyn. ‘How did you get on with Nicholas Rowland?’ I asked. Llanddewi Brefi was a very small place. They’d have got on one way or another, well or badly.
Mattie Hughes stared at me, watching without giving anything away. ‘Still think I might’ve killed him?’
I shrugged. ‘Not really. Don’t see how. But everybody seems to’ve liked him from what we’ve heard so far. Makes me a bit suspicious, if I’m honest. As if he was too good to be true.’
All right, maybe I egged it a bit to get him to talk but there was a part of me that was a little bit sceptical.
Instead of answering, Mattie went back over to the sideboard for two cups. Seemed pretty nimble on his peg-leg.
‘You don’t use a crutch, then?’
‘Suspect me less if I did, wouldn’t you?’ I gave him his grin back, caught out. ‘Use one for walking any distance. Mostly learned to manage without. Been without that leg longer’n I had it, now.’
I wondered what age he’d been when he’d had it amputated but it didn’t feel like my business to ask. How old was he, anyway? I wasn’t good at guessing people’s age – his hair was grey but thick. He could’ve been anything from fifty to seventy.
He poured the tea carefully. No saucers, I noticed, but the cups were clean. No milk, either. Was that the way soldiers drank it? Maybe he’d just learned to do without to save money.
‘So?’ I pushed. ‘What was he like – Nicholas Rowland?’ I blew on my tea and took a sip. Strong enough to set your teeth on edge so he wasn’t scrimping on leaves.
‘I was a private soldier,’ Hughes said. ‘Rowland was the sort who would’ve been an officer.’
I sipped the teeth-coating tea and waited.
‘Offered me a job. Thought he could make me into the sort of teacher he was.’
He didn’t have to go on. Charitable gesture or not – and Rowland might just’ve been trying to put Mattie Hughes in his place – he wouldn’t have been able to stomach working for Rowland after running his own school.
‘Any idea who might want to push him out of his loft?’ I asked.
Mattie looked me in the eye. ‘That’s for definite, is it? Somebody pushed him?
‘Jury’s yet to say, but…’
He nodded, eyes still on me. ‘I thought your boss must’ve reckoned something wasn’t right for him to’ve done the view there, in the school.’
The light from the front window dimmed for a second or two as a cart went past. It was a reminder that I shouldn’t be there too long. Billy’d be over to Alltybela and back within half an hour if he gave it a clean pair of heels.
‘Might’ve been an argument,’ I said. ‘Maybe a bit of pushing and shoving. Not an accident exactly but not stone-cold murder, either.’
Mattie said nothing but I thought there might be something he wanted to say.
‘Is there anybody he’d be likely to argue with?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Not for me to start pointing fingers. You’ll know the lie of the land soon enough if you speak to those who had business with him.’ He hesitated. ‘You’ll be speaking to those girls and their families, I’m sure.’
In the normal run of things, of course, we’d do exactly that. But, with Minnever wanting Harry in Tregaron, I wasn’t so sure. ‘If there’s something you know, you need to tell me.’
He looked me in the eye like an old dog faced with a bumptious child. ‘I don’t know any more than anybody else in the parish. If your boss does his job right, he’ll find out everything he needs to know.’
I was ten yards away from the Three Horseshoes when the door opened and Mr Minnever came out. He was banging the brim of his hat against his leg as if there was something in there that he was trying to dislodge. Something unpleasant. Then he clapped eyes on me.
‘Mr Davies. Could you please attempt to talk some sense into your employer? At the moment he’s going the right way about losing this election.’
His shiny bald head made him look defenceless, somehow, like a chick coming out of its shell. I was glad when he put his hat on and knocked it down into place.
‘What is it you want him to do?’
‘I want him to come back to Tregaron! It’s market day. The place is heaving. He should be there, talking to people, buying drinks, winning them over.’
‘I know.’ I did. But I knew Harry, too. ‘Trouble is, we’ve got an inquest to prepare for.’
Minnever shook his head. ‘Only in his mind! Other coroners don’t prepare. They rely on their officers to bring the appropriate people to the hearing and then they simply preside over it. He should be relying on you, not doing everything himself.’
He waited for me to say something. But I wasn’t going to get into an argument with him.
‘Harry needs to mend his ways,’ he said. ‘And not just to win the election. He’s going to have a fight on his hands even if he is elected. The magistrates aren’t happy about the way he constantly sees doubt where everybody else just sees death.’
I knew what he meant. The magistrates wanted a coroner who agreed with Minnever’s description of the job. But I knew Harry’d never stand for that. In every case there are too many people with too much to lose, he’d say. That’s why the coroner needs to dig. Find out what people know but won’t volunteer. Then put them on oath so they can’t avoid telling the truth.
Trouble was, he wasn’t going to be doing any more digging if he didn’t get elected.
I nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Harry
Minnever had barely shut the door on our conversation before he was making an all too audible attempt to recruit John to his cause. How dared he? Th
is was exactly the kind of thing I had feared when he first came to see me: that I would find myself no longer the master of my own fate.
Well, I would not have it.
I moved restlessly around the taproom, unable to sit and simply wait for John. In one corner, Mrs Walters was shovelling soiled sawdust into a bucket and, even from a distance of two or three yards, I could smell a pungent mix of odours. Sawdust, stale beer, pig and horse shit, pipe dottles.
How much longer was John going to be? Damn him, he worked for me, he had no business allowing Minnever to bend his ear.
My state of mind was in no way improved by the fact that Mrs Walters had overheard my argument with Minnever and would, without doubt, relay it to anyone who would listen from now until the election.
Finally, John came in. ‘Billy not back yet?’
‘No.’
Ignoring my terseness, he drew me to one side and spoke in an undertone. ‘I don’t think we need to look at Mattie Hughes any more. He can’t climb a ladder. His bed’s downstairs when he’s got a perfectly good loft. He wouldn’t sleep in his kitchen like an old man unless he had no choice.’
Apparently, John was going to ignore Minnever’s appeal for help, at least for now. ‘Did you get anything else interesting out of him?’ I asked.
‘Not much. Bit tight-lipped to be honest. But he did say that not everybody thought Rowland was the white hen’s chick. Didn’t name names, but he was pretty definite that, if we asked the right questions, we’d find someone with a motive.’
So Hughes, at least, thought I should be speaking to witnesses and not courting voters’ favour. ‘D’you think he suspects somebody?’
‘Might do. But he said anything he knew was common knowledge.’
‘And if we call him as a witness, ask him what he knows?’
John tried to perch on the edge of a table which tilted alarmingly, causing him to straighten up with a muttered oath. ‘We’d need to know what to ask him, wouldn’t we? You wouldn’t get far with, “we think you know something, tell us what it is”.’
‘All right. We’ll talk to him again once we know more. What we need to do now is wait and see whether Miss Gwatkyn can tell us where to find Rowland’s family.’
‘Don’t you think we should be speaking to Miss Walters first?’ John asked.
‘You could have a long wait, Mr Davies,’ Mrs Walters’s voice came from behind me. ‘Nan and Ruth could be out most of the day. There’s a lot of farms for them to get round.’
I turned towards her but, before I could say anything, John put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Shall we step outside for a minute, while we wait for Billy? The sun might not make another appearance for weeks.’
I followed him out. And, tactful diversion though his suggestion undoubtedly was, the day did make me glad to be outside. The sunshine was bright and warm, setting the whitewash of Llanddewi’s cottages aglow against the mud of the main street, like snowdrops pushing through dead grass in January.
I looked around, taking in the dwellings on one side of us, the church away to the right. Despite the brightness of the wild daffodils that spring had tossed amongst its grey headstones, the cold stone bulk of St David’s church loomed over the little houses of the village like a dyspeptic uncle. Grey, squat, brooding. No soaring spire to raise the eye to heaven, just a low, square tower which, at least in my edge vision, had something of the fortress about it.
I closed my eyes and let the April sun warm my face. Somewhere nearby, I could hear the rhythmic sound of a blacksmith’s hammer, blows alternating between his anvil and the metal he was working. The sound set off a Welsh proverb in my mind. Dyfal donc a dyr y garreg. Dint after dint will break the rock.
An appropriate proverb for the post of coroner, perhaps. The stone of unexplained death, the dint of question after question, witness after witness. The unyielding stone finally gives way and the truth is uncovered.
But when the goal was not a jury’s verdict but election to the post of coroner, the necessary dints became a matter of contention. I wished simply to do my job and let my record speak for itself. Minnever argued for pressing the flesh, standing in public houses buying beer for all and sundry and spouting party puffery.
But what Minnever could not know was the soul-eroding effect of hours spent in the company of strangers whose reactions could only be guessed at and whose puzzled, appraising or embarrassed looks were a constant, invisible assault. Dyfal donc. Relentless, tiny dints in one’s personal armour.
Beside me, John drew in a deep breath. I tensed, waiting for him to speak but he just let the breath out again, as if he had thought better of it. I could not bear it any more. ‘Aren’t you going to try and persuade me round to Minnever’s way of thinking?’
‘What’s the point? Trying to persuade you to do something you don’t want to is like trying to make water run uphill.’
‘So you think Minnever’s right? You think I should be buying beer for farmers and asking them what they want in a coroner?’
John leaned his head back against the wall. Did he close his eyes, feel the warmth on his eyelids? ‘You don’t want to know what farmers think a coroner should be, Harry. Or what anybody else thinks, for that matter.’
The blacksmith’s hammer, having fallen quiet while the metal was back in the coals, now rang out again, its regular strokes insistent on the still, warm air.
John sighed as if in capitulation. ‘Obviously you should speak to the people who can vote you in,’ he said. ‘But maybe it’d be better after the meeting on Saturday. When people’ve heard your speech. When they’ve got questions.’
Before I could reply, I heard the sound of running feet and looked up to see Billy Walters’s red hair. Had he started running when he saw John and me or had he run all the way?
‘Mr Probert-Lloyd!’ He skidded theatrically to a stop in front of us and doubled over, hands on his knees, panting in a way that seemed too laboured to be real. ‘Got your answer from Miss Gwatkyn!’
John took it and Billy stuck his hand out. I reached into my pocket for a penny and, once the boy had moved out of earshot, John unfolded the note.
‘Dear Mr Probert-Lloyd,’ he read.
‘As regards Mr Rowland’s family connections, I know only of his father, who was, and may still be, a ship’s chandler in Aberaeron. I know, also, that they had not spoken for many years. If you wish to travel to Aberaeron to see him, as I presume you may, I would be more than happy to accompany you. I am a frequent visitor to the town and am accustomed to navigating via a swift route which you might, without guidance, struggle to follow.
In answer to your other question, yes, Nicholas Rowland had indeed made a will. You will find it lodged with Mr Silas Emmanuel, attorney, in Lampeter.’
‘She’s just signed it Gwatkyn, Alltybela,’ John said.
I nodded, thinking rapidly. ‘Right. This is what we’ll do. We’ll write to Miss Gwatkyn, now, and accept her kind offer. Apart from anything else, I wouldn’t mind talking to her again. And then, we’ll go down to Lampeter and talk to the attorney about Rowland’s will.’
‘And Mr Minnever?’
‘Minnever will just have to get on with his job while I do mine.’
John
The sun was shining as we set off for Lampeter. I’d tapped the Talbot’s barometer first thing that morning and the arrow’d shivered but stayed where it was – on Set Fair, somewhere between the numbers thirty and thirty-one.
‘What are these numbers counting?’ I’d asked Harry.
‘Inches of mercury.’
‘I’m none the wiser.’
‘Air pressure. Makes the mercury rise up the tube. The higher the pressure, the nicer the weather. Don’t ask me why. That’s all I know.’
I might’ve reached the limit of Harry’s knowledge but I was pretty sure Dr Reckitt’d know why air pressure affected the weather. What he called physical phenomena were better than meat and drink to him. I’d ask him when he came back for the inquest and the
election meeting.
The thought of Dr Reckitt made me grin to myself. I was looking forward to watching him tell people why he thought he should be coroner. When he started talking about cutting everybody up to find out exactly what they’d died of, he’d be lucky if he didn’t get things thrown at him.
It’s an hour’s ride from Llanddewi Brefi to Lampeter if you don’t dawdle. And, if you’re not dawdling it’s hard to talk, so Harry and I didn’t say much on the way to see Silas Emmanuel.
We cantered along, the hillside sloping up on our left and flattening out towards the river on our right. Cattle were back in the fields after a winter in the byres and I could see them, winter coats still caked with shit around their bellies and legs, standing in the river meadows, pulling at the new spring grass and putting their heads up to the warmth. All they’d have had during the winter would’ve been hay and, if they were lucky, some gorse and oats. The spring grass would give them the proper squits.
But I shouldn’t be thinking about shit, should I? I had to start thinking more like a steward. When I looked at cattle, I should be pricing them up, wondering how many acres it’d take to rear them till they were ready to go for fattening, or how many milking cows the acreage would support. That was the way stewards had to think – in figures. When I started working with Mr Ormiston – Harry’s steward and my boss – he’d been straight with me. We had to make every acre pay, every quarter. If we didn’t, the mortgage Harry’s father’d taken out to improve the estate was going to ruin us.
