by Alis Hawkins
Before Ruth could respond, Nan put out a hand once more, this time clasping Ruth’s in her own. ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd, you can bully Ruth and me if you like. You might even make us cry. But we shall still have nothing to say.’
‘We know all about Nicky Revell,’ John said. ‘The Naughty Teacher and his Two Naughty Pupils.’
If he had hoped to shock them into a reaction, he was disappointed. Nevertheless, he persisted. ‘Was Mr Rowland right? Did you enjoy writing those books with him?’
Acutely uncomfortable to find myself discussing Rowland’s pornography in front of Miss Gwatkyn, who knew nothing of it, I stood up once more and addressed her and Lydia. ‘Ladies, perhaps you might like to go downstairs and take some refreshment while John and I speak to Miss Walters and Miss Eynon?’
‘Don’t send them away on our account,’ Nan said. ‘Only you can embarrass the ladies. We shall be saying nothing to you on that subject, or any other. Nothing at all.’
Despite myself, I felt a rising irritation at her composure, her defiance.
‘You do understand that a failure to offer any explanation in your own defence will be seen as damning when it comes to court?’
It was a risk on my part. In actual fact, I had no small degree of apprehension about taking Billy’s story to the police, but Nan Walters was not to know that.
She stood as, perforce, did Ruth Walters, their hands still joined. ‘I think we would like to go home, now, if you don’t mind.’
‘I can’t allow that.’
‘But I don’t think you can prevent it, Mr Probert-Lloyd. Not unless you’re going to have us arrested?’
She was calling my bluff.
‘Not at this time, no. I need to speak to the inspector in charge of the case first. It is he who will authorise any arrest.’ My stomach clenched at the thought of how keenly Bellis would relish such an opportunity to thwart and humiliate me.
‘Then we shall go home.’ Nan moved towards the door but was stopped by a word from Phoebe Gwatkyn.
‘A moment, if you please, Nan! In the circumstances, perhaps it would be best if you did not – I foresee only strife between you and your brother, and that can be good for nobody. But I would be more than happy if you were to join Ruth in staying at Alltybela with me for a little while. If that would be acceptable to you, Mr Probert-Lloyd?’
It was kind of her to allow me the dignity of approving her suggestion; in truth, I had no jurisdiction in the matter beyond that bestowed by deference. ‘That’s most kind of you, Miss Gwatkyn.’
‘Very well then. I will go and make arrangements.’
I followed Phoebe Gwatkyn from the room and escorted her down the staircase into the coachyard. ‘Thank you, Miss Gwatkyn,’ I said. ‘Your offer has saved me from a great deal of embarrassment.’
‘A happy corollary only, I confess. My intention was to keep her and Ruth under my roof in the hope that I might be able to persuade them to speak more freely.’
I left her to make the necessary arrangements for her return to Alltybela with the two young women and climbed back up the staircase. I found John and Lydia outside on the gallery, waiting for me.
‘I was just asking John who Nicky Revell is?’ Lydia said. ‘But perhaps you’d like to tell me, Harry?’
John
Letting the two of them stay together’d been a mistake, that much was clear. And Harry’d been far too soft with them as well. All right, he’d barked a bit at Ruth Eynon but he hadn’t gone far enough. We needed to separate them. Then Nan wouldn’t be able to keep Ruth quiet.
So, when Harry’d finished explaining to Lydia Howell who Nicky Revell was, I put my two penn’orth in.
‘While Nan’s doing the talking for both of them, we’ll get nothing out of Ruth,’ I said. ‘We need to get her by herself.’
Harry might not like me saying what I thought in front of Lydia Howell but he was just going to have to learn to live with it. I wasn’t going to hold my tongue every time she was about.
As it turned out, she wasn’t holding her tongue, either. ‘I agree. If I take Nan into town to find something to eat, you two can talk to Ruth.’
‘You think they’ll allow themselves to be separated?’ Harry obviously didn’t think so.
Lydia Howell rubbed her chin with the tips of her fingers. A thinking-aid, I supposed, like Harry’s trick of chewing his lip. ‘Ask Nan to come with me,’ she said to Harry. ‘Then, if she doesn’t agree, let me try and persuade her, will you?’
Harry hesitated and I could see he wished he’d come up with a better idea. But he hadn’t, and I had no idea how to part the two of them, either. Not without picking Nan up and carrying her off, which we couldn’t do. Not unless we wanted her screaming the place down. So he just had to agree.
And back in we went.
This time, both the girls stood up. ‘We’d like to leave, now, please,’ Nan said.
‘If you’d just be so good as to wait a few more minutes,’ Harry said. ‘Miss Gwatkyn has arrangements to make. But if you’d go with Miss Howell, Miss Walters—’
‘We can go to the bakers and get something for us all to eat before we leave for home,’ Lydia Howell said, not missing a beat. ‘You must be hungry, I know I am.’
‘Why can’t we both go?’ Nan wanted to know.
‘Because Mr Probert-Lloyd would like to speak to Ruth.’
‘But she doesn’t want to speak to him, do you, Ruth? I’ve said all either of us want to say.’
Her friend shook her head. What’s the matter, I wanted to say, cat got your tongue? But I knew the answer. It wasn’t the cat; it was Nan Walters.
Lydia Howell nodded but her eyes were on Ruth, not Nan. ‘I thought you were equals, Miss Eynon? Mr Probert-Lloyd would like to hear what you have to say rather than taking Miss Walters’s word for it.’
‘She’ll say the same as me,’ Nan insisted. ‘Nothing.’ She turned to Ruth. ‘Won’t you?’
Ruth nodded.
‘Why won’t you let your friend speak?’ Lydia Howell asked. ‘Don’t you trust her?’
‘Of course I trust her! But neither of us has got anything to say about my brother’s foolish story.’
Lydia Howell turned so that her shoulder was facing Nan, getting into the space between the two of them without seeming to move. ‘Is that right, Ruth? Because it sounds to me as if Nan wants to stop you saying anything she doesn’t approve of.’
‘That’s not true!’
Lydia turned right round. Now, her back was to Ruth but the two of them were still separated. ‘Isn’t it, Nan? And yet, here you are, answering a question I was asking Ruth.’
Nan Walters tried to reach out, past Lydia, to Ruth. ‘She’s trying to trick you—’ But Ruth drew back, just enough so that Nan’s fingertips didn’t touch her, and I saw something in her change. It was as if her face became firmer, harder – turned from soft and anxious to something more resolute. More like the Ruth we’d seen in the Walters’s parlour the first time we met them. A girl who modelled herself on Phoebe Gwatkyn, right down to her hair arrangement.
Ruth breathed in, deeply, as if she was stiffening her backbone. Squared her shoulders. ‘It’s all right, Nan,’ she said, in that cultured English that’d also come from Miss Gwatkyn if I was any judge. ‘You go. I’ll be fine with Mr Probert-Lloyd.’
They gazed at each other over Lydia Howell’s shoulder, Nan’s eyes searching Ruth’s face. She wasn’t happy about this but she couldn’t say anything, not without proving Miss Howell right.
In the end, she nodded and turned away. I caught Lydia Howell’s eye as she opened the door, and she inclined her head towards me slightly. And that’s how it’s done.
Once they were gone, Harry turned to Ruth Eynon. ‘Would you like to sit, Miss Eynon?’ He gestured towards the one chair in the room, a dainty affair with scrolled legs and worn velvet upholstery which looked as if it’d started life in a lady’s parlour.
‘Thank you.’ She sat down gracefully, as if she was do
ne up in an evening gown instead of her best betgwn and apron. This wasn’t little Ruth Pantglas, Jeremiah’s skivvy. This was Miss Eynon, prospective collegiate schoolteacher.
I thought Harry’d sit on the windowsill again but, instead, he sat on the bed. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see Ruth Eynon’s face very well so I moved slowly along the wall until I had a better view. She saw me move, glanced at me, then fixed her attention back on Harry. Compared to him, I wasn’t important.
‘Miss Eynon, can you tell us what happened on the night you went to see Mr Rowland at the schoolhouse, please?’
Ruth’s chin went up. ‘There’s nothing to tell, Mr Probert-Lloyd. It’s all Billy Walters’s stories.’
Harry didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. ‘So you didn’t go to the school? Billy didn’t follow you?’
‘Billy Walters may have followed somebody – he’s good at sneaking about after people.’ She sighed, clasped her hands in her lap, her fingers loose, relaxed. ‘I was exhausted, Mr Probert-Lloyd. It had been a trying day. All I wanted to do was sleep so I could put Jonathan Eynon and his presumption out of my mind.’
Presumption! Fair play, she was good. You’d have sworn that every word coming out of her mouth was the gospel truth.
‘So who do you think Billy Walters might have been following?’
Ruth shook her head. ‘You’d have to ask him. You’re the coroner. You must be able to tell when people are lying to you and when they’re telling the truth?’
Harry nodded. ‘Yes. I believe I can. And I think Billy Walters was telling me the truth in Mr Emmanuel’s office.’
Ruth unlaced her fingers and began smoothing her apron out over her knees, aligning the stripes just so. Even though I was watching her carefully I couldn’t see any of the trembling I’d seen when she was giving evidence at the inquest.
‘He’s sly, that boy,’ she said. ‘Knows how to say things to get other people into trouble. He did it all the time when he was coming to Mr Rowland’s school, before he ran off back to Matthew Hughes.’
Harry leaned forward slightly. ‘Just to avoid any misunderstanding, Miss Eynon, can you tell me exactly what lies Billy Walters has told me to get you into trouble?’
She didn’t hesitate for a second, either in her apron-smoothing or her answer. ‘All of it.’
‘Everything he said in Mr Emmanuel’s office?’
‘Yes.’
This wasn’t getting us anywhere. Ruth Eynon might be talking now but she wasn’t saying anything, was she? Nothing to the point, anyway.
‘Oh, come on now, Ruth,’ I said in Welsh. ‘Let’s have the truth, shall we?’ I pushed myself away from the wall and stepped forward, keeping my hands in my pockets and a sneer on my face. ‘I’ve just come back from London. From a visit to William Gordon, the bookseller. And I’ve read the books you wrote with your precious Mr Rowland. Books he was selling in that disgusting shop of his. Books full of filth – behaviour a nice girl would be ashamed to even hear about!’
She stood up so quickly the chair almost fell over. It lay back, balanced on one leg, the opposite one caught up in her skirt. ‘Shut your mouth! You’re just an ignorant boy. You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ She shouted at me in Welsh, which was exactly what I’d been aiming for with my disrespectful provocation. Not so easy to keep up the innocent young lady act in the language we’d both learned crawling around farmhouse kitchens.
I stepped forward and put my face close to hers, like a brother or a cousin.
‘You and I both know exactly what I’m talking about, Ruth Eynon. You and Nan were the Two Naughty Pupils. You wrote smutty books with Nicholas Rowland—’
‘They’re notsmutty,’ she shouted. ‘They’re honest and truthful!’
I ignored her, talked over her. ‘And then, when he wouldn’t do what you wanted and say he’d asked you to be his wife, you pushed him out of the loft and killed him. Never mind naughty, you’re as bad as they come!’
‘No!’ she wailed. ‘No. No. No.’ She started pulling at her hair, moaning. ‘I’m not bad. I’m not! I’m a good girl. You’re telling lies about me!’
The plait-swirls were down now and she didn’t look much like Phoebe Gwatkyn any more.
All at once, she crumpled on to the floor and the chair landed with a crash behind her.
‘Everybody tells lies about me.’ Her voice was high, now, shrill with tears, just like she’d sounded at the inquest when her father had shouted at her. ‘Why?’ she wailed. ‘Why won’t they leave me be? I’m a good girl—’ She covered her face with her apron and started to sob.
I wasn’t having that. I crouched in front of her and pulled her apron down. But, instead of the dry, calculating eyes I’d expected to see, they were already red and overflowing.
‘John—’ Harry said from behind me. But he didn’t seem to know what to say next.
Ruth stared at me through her tears. ‘Why are you shouting at me? I do what I’m told. I keep quiet. I do my work.’
The hairs on the back of my neck went up. If you’d told me Ruth Eynon would start speaking in a little girl’s voice I’d have laughed and said that’d do her about as much good as crying – that it wouldn’t fool me. Well, I’d have been wrong. Except it didn’t feel as if I was being fooled. Evidence of my own eyes or not, it felt as if what was cowering in front of me was a frightened, bewildered child.
I turned around and looked at Harry. He was looking off to one side so he could see Ruth and I could see him chewing his lip. He stood up.
‘Miss Eynon, I’m sorry we’ve upset you. Please, the floor’s no place for a young lady.’ He was back to English. Fair enough, my effort hadn’t got us far.
She looked up at him but, when he stretched out a hand to help her up, she flinched and protected her face with her forearm as if he’d tried to hit her.
‘Miss Eynon, nobody’s going to hurt you. Please, let me help you.’
She stared at him for several seconds as if she hadn’t understood a word he said. Then she lowered her arm and gave him her hand.
Once she was on her feet again, she seemed to notice the state of her hair and, as quick as you like, she’d gathered it up and twisted it together into a knot at the back of her head. She took a handkerchief from the sleeve of her betgwn and wiped her face as she sat down.
She’d got hold of herself again. The frightened child was gone but there was something different about her. Something half-threatening, half-fearful, like a cornered cat, claws ready, eyes wide and black.
‘You’re cleverer than your friend, aren’t you?’ Harry said. ‘She might be the one that went away to school but you’re the one with the brains.’
What did he mean – did he think she’d deliberately broken down in tears like a child to fool us? Maybe he did but then, he couldn’t see her.
Ruth glanced at him, then away. Said nothing.
‘You realised that you’d have to go and see Nicholas Rowland that night, didn’t you? You’d have to get him to back up your story to Shoni Goch or there’d be trouble from your father.’
I jumped a foot in the air when, without any warning, Ruth leaped out of the chair and threw herself at Harry. He couldn’t see what was happening properly so he flinched back, elbows on the bed. Ruth leaned over him until her face was no more than a handspan from his. ‘He is not – my – father!’
If ever three words held a whole bookful of meaning, it was those three.
‘I’m sorry. Of course he’s not.’ Harry sounded genuinely contrite. ‘Please, accept my apologies.’
He waited a few seconds. Ruth stood up straight so she wasn’t spitting in his face any more but she didn’t sit down. ‘Anyway, you’re wrong,’ she said. ‘Nan’s the one with the brains. Always has been.’
Then she turned around, knelt in front of the window and acted as if we weren’t there. Just stared into the street, waiting for her friend to come back.
Harry
The following morning I shoul
d have risen with a song in my heart and a smile on my lips: I was the coroner for the Teifi Valley, no longer a temporarily employed, barely officially-tolerated stop-gap. Nobody could take the post away from me now.
But, when I was woken from what seemed like little more than minutes’ sleep by the arrival of a servant with warm washing-water, I found myself in very low spirits. I might have been duly elected, but nothing else had changed. Jonathan Eynon was still in Cardigan gaol, and I found myself obligated to reconvene the bungled inquest that had put him there.
My mood was only slightly improved when I finally came down in search of coffee – the concept of breakfast was quite beyond me after a celebratory dinner accompanied by altogether too much wine – to find Lydia waiting for me. As she had returned to Alltybela with Phoebe Gwatkyn and the two young women the previous afternoon, I had not anticipated her return much before mid-morning, yet here she was, sitting before the fireplace in the Black Lion’s main room, drinking tea and eating toast.
‘Good morning!’ she enthused.
‘Good morning. You’re here early.’
‘I didn’t want to keep you waiting.’
Her voice was as lively as her manner and it made my head hurt. Was she mocking my fragile state?
‘How did you get here so quickly?’
