Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth an-4

by Malcolm Pryce

  I watched the bath fill. ‘It’s about ready,’ I shouted.

  Llunos led Mrs Jones by the arm up the stairs. We stood crammed into a small bathroom.

  ‘It’s better if you kneel down,’ said Llunos. ‘Head at this end, or you’ll catch it on the taps.’ He placed a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Please don’t do this, Mr Llunos.’

  He pressed gently on her shoulder. ‘If you’re innocent you’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Please don’t duck me in the bath.’

  ‘Tell us what happened and we won’t have to.’

  Mrs Jones burst into tears and through the sobs began to squeak. ‘They weren’t meant to kill the poor chap.’

  ‘Who weren’t?’

  ‘My nephews. I just told them to put a fright into him so he went back from where he came from. But they went too far.’

  ‘You mean the Moth Brothers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you want to frighten him?’

  ‘Because . . . because . . .’ Mrs Jones wrung her hands and looked from Llunos to me and back to Llunos. ‘Oh, dash it all!’

  ‘Just tell us what happened, Mrs Jones. If it’s like you say, if you just meant to frighten him, that’s not so very serious. It’s not your fault if those two goons went too far. I’m sure we could talk to the judge about it, but you need to tell us what happened.’

  Mrs Jones continued to wring her hands. ‘Nothing happened, really. I asked them to frighten him but they shot him . . . a few times. They they went down with my bread knife and did the . . . the . . . you know.’

  Llunos took Mrs Jones back downstairs and we sat again in front of the fire. She slurped from her mug of cocoa with shaking hands.

  ‘Why did you want to frighten him?’

  ‘Because he came to see me. A few weeks ago now. He wanted my help, you see, because of the work I do with the local history society. He asked me, “Have you heard of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?” and I said, “Well, of course I have, I’m not stupid you know.” And he said, “Did you know that Sundance had a girlfriend called Etta Place?” and I said, “Yes, I saw it in the movie – she was a schoolteacher wasn’t she?” So he told me that the disappearance of Etta Place was the great mystery of the Butch Cassidy legend and no one knew what had happened to her. He said she left Patagonia around 1908 and she was carrying Sundance’s child. No one knew where she went, he said; they all assumed she went back to Kansas but he had found out that she caught the boat to Wales. He said she died on the crossing but gave birth to a daughter called Laura and this was Sundance’s daughter, and he wanted to find out what happened to her. So naturally I agreed to help him; wouldn’t that be a feather in my cap, I thought, if I helped find the Sundance Kid’s granddaughter in Aberystwyth? Well, it wasn’t too difficult to find out what happened to the girl – born out of wedlock wasn’t she? I sent him to Jezebel College in Lampeter. They’ve got all sorts of advanced techniques for tracing girls like that.’ She paused and took a breath as if the next bit was particularly difficult. ‘A week later he came back with a photocopy from the workhouse records, and if a marriage register. He also had a photo of a grave. He told me Etta Place died on the voyage and her daughter went to the workhouse. When she left she married a plumber.’ She stood up, went over to a sideboard and opened a drawer. She brought an envelope over and handed it to me.

  ‘I found that chit to the Pier cloakroom in the alley, you see, and redeemed it. There were three photos, the Butch Cassidy one and these.’

  I took two photos from the envelope. One was a picture of the simpleton at Tadpole’s house. The other was a snap of a slate headstone: a plain mauve crooked slab of stone, surrounded by weeds, in a churchyard on a hill. The name was Laura Llantrisant. If it was the grave of Etta Place’s daughter, it meant she must have married and taken the name Llantrisant. Her daughter – the Sundance Kid’s granddaughter – was the woman who’d swabbed my step for twenty years, Mrs Llantrisant.

  ‘I removed them, you see. Just left the Sundance Kid picture and re-deposited it, then put the chit back in the alley.’ Mrs Jones’s voice broke into a flood of tears. ‘I had an arrangement with the girls out at Jezebel College. They were going to say it was . . . it was me. . . . Oh, it’s just not fair! Why couldn’t I be Sundance’s granddaughter?’ She sobbed into her hands. ‘Why not me instead of that silly bitch? That awful, step-swabbing, holier-than-thou, gossiping busybody, Mrs Llantrisant!’

  Chapter 20

  THE MAN IN the fedora hat was sitting at the desk writing a report when I returned. His briefcase was open, papers spilling out. The bottle of Captain Morgan was hardly touched. He looked up and smiled.

  ‘What happened, forget your umbrella?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I made a few calls, I’ve left some money.’

  ‘There’s no need; they’re on the house. Always happy to help an operative of the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency.’

  He pushed the papers away, leaned back and grinned. ‘I knew you’d work it out pretty quickly.’

  ‘It wasn’t hard. As you said, Elijah went to see the world’s leading expert on Butch and Sundance.’

  ‘My name’s Joe Winckelmann.’ He held out his hand and we shook.

  ‘That your real name?’

  He laughed. ‘One of them.’

  ‘Care to finish the story?’

  ‘There’s not much more to tell. I was a junior at the time, just joined the Pinkertons and I started at the bottom – everyone does. It was my job to deal with the cranks who walked in off the street from time to time with some dramatic new lead on the Butch Cassidy case. We used to get one or two a month. So when Elijah turned up, they sent him to see me. But I could see straight away he was different from the usual nuts. For a start, he didn’t give a damn about Butch Cassidy. He wouldn’t have cared if Butch Cassidy had turned up and danced a polka on his head. He had a different bee in his bonnet. He had this Hoffmann thing and his point was simple. He reasoned it out like this. How did Hoffmann know that Caleb Penpegws had the coat? The woman who stole it from Eichmann must have tipped him off. How did she know it was of any great significance? She didn’t, until the spooks tracked her down and asked what she did with it. She said she had sold it to a soldier, which was true. She said she didn’t know who he was. Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn’t. But she clearly wasn’t stupid. After those spooks left she must have thought about it and asked herself, what could be so important about the coat that some spies would track her down for it? So she sent someone to get the coat back. She sent Hoffmann. That means the woman researching her family tree in the library must know Hoffmann. Therefore, if you can find her, the granddaughter of Etta Place, you can solve the Hoffmann mystery. But, equally, if you could find him you could find her – it works both ways. It was a strange sort of symbiosis. Of course, Elijah didn’t deal straight goods with me; he didn’t tell me all this at the time. But I was young and ambitious and keen to progress in the organisation and I knew there was no better way to make a name for myself than by solving the Pinkerton’s most celebrated unsolved case. So I snooped on Elijah a bit.’ He took another long drink of rum.

  ‘I went to the hotel where he stayed and searched his room; listened in to his phone conversations; gradually built up the picture. Over the years we met a number of times. It was one of those strange relationships – I knew if he ever cracked the Hoffmann case it would lead to Etta Place; and he knew if I ever solved the Etta Place mystery it would lead to Hoffmann.

  ‘And so the years passed and we both grew old. I worked on plenty of other cases, and no doubt so did he in his world of smoke and shadows. But it always haunted me, that Hoffmann angle; in my heart it kept on bubbling away. Then earlier this month a clipping bureau sent me the story from the Cambrian News about the dead Father Christmas. I knew instantly what it meant. Hoffmann had come in from the cold. The Pinkertons weren’t going to fund any trips on this case so I pu
t in for an extended Christmas vacation and came over. It’s a personal thing, you see. I’m due to retire in the new year and it would be wonderful to solve the mystery of Etta Place before I leave – my first case and maybe my last. Here, have this.’ He slipped a business card across the desk. It said, ‘Joe Winckelmann, The Pinkerton Detective Agency, Los Angeles’.

  ‘So who was Absalom?’

  ‘I’m not sure. There have been a lot of spooks working the case over the years, so he could be anyone. Elijah says Absalom was his brother. It could be true.’

  ‘Why would he come to Wales now, after all these years?’

  ‘I don’t know. I have a hunch it must be something to do with the movie Bark of the Covenant.’

  ‘I had the impression you’ve been following me for about a week.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘You didn’t come because of the fax Calamity sent you, then?’

  ‘No, no faxes. As I said, I’m not here officially. This is a private matter.’

  I refilled his glass and poured one for myself. ‘How would you like to meet the granddaughter of Etta Place and the Sundance Kid?’

  He grinned.

  ‘She’s very old and frail. I’m not sure if she could take the publicity if this got out.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have to. As I said, this is a personal thing, the end of a lifetime’s quest. No one has to know.’

  ‘Have you got a manual in that briefcase?’

  ‘What sort of manual?’

  ‘You know, the standard-issue Pinkerton agent’s manual. Art and praxis of the hunch, interrogative misdirection, that sort of stuff.’

  He reached into his case and pulled out a book. ‘Sure.’

  ‘A recent edition?’

  ‘The current one.’

  ‘Can I have it? It’s a present for someone.’

  He slid the book across the desk. ‘Be my guest. I can always requisition a new one.’

  ‘If I take you to see Etta’s granddaughter, will you do something in return?’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘I want you to meet my partner Calamity Jane, she’s only seventeen and four-fifths. She sent a fax to your organisation. Can you pretend you came because of the fax?’

  He pondered for a second and a smile spread across his face. ‘Sent a fax to the Pinkertons, huh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She sounds like quite a bushy-tailed sort of kid.’

  ‘She’s a great kid. Sometimes she’s filled with so much enthusiasm I wonder she doesn’t explode.’

  ‘I used to be like that. Of course I’ll pretend. Came here as soon as we got the fax. If she’s looking to set up some sort of associate partnership, that would be just dandy. We Pinkertons have been looking for some representation in Aberystwyth for a while now.’

  I had already begun to like Joe Winckelmann.

  We picked up a video of the Butch Cassidy movie at a hire shop and drove out to Ponterwyd. I parked behind the caravan and left Joe Winckelmann in the car. I found Mrs Llantrisant where I had left her, lying on her bed watching a portable TV. It was a soap and she stared at it glassily as if the mini-dramas that are the staple of such programmes were an opiate for her troubled soul. She cast me a glance and said mechanically, ‘He’s not here, if you’re looking for Herod. He’s gone, for the carol concert.’

  ‘I came to see you. I’ve brought a video for you to watch.’

  She scowled. ‘I never watch the things.’

  ‘You’ll enjoy this one. It features your grandmother, Etta Place.’

  She looked thoughtful, the scowl melting softly at the mention of the name. ‘My mother left me a Bible with a photo inside, a picture of Etta and those two cowboys in New York.’

  ‘I’ve seen it.’

  ‘All through my childhood I wanted to know who those people in the picture were.’ She shuddered as a twinge of pain ran through her. ‘Ooh!’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Just a twinge. I get them from time to time.’ She reached up and touched her forehead. The red spot that had been there last time had opened into a sore. A pale orange excrescence dripped down.

  ‘It’s that woman, Tadpole’s mum. Don’t think I don’t know. And I know who’s put her up to it and all. That Dinorwic-Jones.’

  I stood there helpless, wanting to scoff but rendered helpless by the evidence on Mrs Llantrisant’s brow.

  ‘I know you think it’s all superstitious nonsense, but I’ve been around a while longer than you and I know about these things.’

  ‘Have you had anything to eat today?’

  ‘No, there’s no point. Food won’t help me if there’s a hex on me.’

  ‘What would happen if I found the photo and took the pin out? Would that help?’

  ‘But how would you find it?’

  ‘I know where to look.’

  She made a sour expression, the look of someone who hates to concede ground, even when it’s to her advantage. ‘Well, it might.’

  ‘Then you’ll need food to re-build your strength.’

  I slipped the video into the tape player and switched it on. ‘Take a look at this while I drive to the village and get some hot food.’

  I apologised to Joe Winckelmann, who was still sitting in the car, for taking so long. He waved it away. He had waited all his life for this, he said. What was an extra half an hour? I drove to town and managed to find a fish and chip shop open and returned about forty minutes later.

  Mrs Llantrisant was sitting up, holding the remote-control like a sceptre and replaying the scene with the bicycles over and over again. Tears glistened on her drab white cheeks.

  ‘Oh, Mr Knight! Do you know, I’ve never ridden a bicycle. My, oh my! And Sundance . . . He’s so handsome . . . Who’d have thought it? My grandfather so good-looking he could have been a movie star.’

  We ate our fish and chips and watched the movie to the end. Mrs Llantrisant’s hand moved rhythmically from the chips on her knee to her mouth, accompanied now and again by the other hand dabbing away the tears. Yet at the end when her grandfather runs out into the market place, into a hail of bullets, and stands immortalised in a freeze frame that turns into sepia and then black, the tears washed down unabated. I let her cry. Like sleep, it’s about the only thing that works.

  She turned to me. ‘There was a time I would have been ashamed – born out of wedlock like that. All my life I’ve looked down on such people; but it’s funny, Mr Knight, today I see it differently. You know, I think I’m proud of them.’

  ‘I would be, too.’

  ‘You can tell Sundance loved her, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I’d say he loved her. He just didn’t know how to say it.’

  Mrs Llantrisant nodded. ‘That’s right. She was too hasty, the silly girl. I guess you can’t see it when you’re nineteen or whatever she was. When it comes to love and things, you can’t see the wood for the trees; you get it all wrong. And yet at my age it all looks so obvious. When she tells him she’s thinking of going back home she doesn’t mean it, does she? You can tell she’s just aching with every ounce of strength in her little young heart for him to say, “No, you can’t! You mustn’t!” And what does he say? He says, “Oh, all right, that’s fine if that’s what you want to do.” But he doesn’t mean it, does he?’

  ‘No, I guess he doesn’t.’

  ‘Of course he doesn’t. He’s just another young fool who doesn’t understand what’s going on in his own heart. It’s the disease of youth, and by the time age brings the cure, it’s too late. He says, Go if you must, if that’s what you want to do; I won’t stand in your way. But what he means is, my life is nothing without you and if you go now I will die like a dog in a marketplace in an unknown town and strangers will spit on my corpse and throw rocks on my grave; and that will be my end; but I will never tell you these things because I love you. Even though I could never bring myself to use those words, you know I love you, and because of that I will never tell you what to do or where to
go. If you want to go back to America I will let you, even though it will kill me. And the reason is this: all my life I have never been able to abide bars on a window or the feel of shackles on my flesh. The greatest gift I can give you is what I crave most, freedom. The stupid man. So typical. And so she doesn’t tell him she is carrying his child and she leaves. But instead of going back home like everyone says, she finds herself on a ship to Wales. Oh, Mr Knight, I’m quite overcome. What a beautiful film.’

  There was a bottle of sherry on the side table and I fetched two teacups from the kitchenette and brought them over. I filled them to the brim and handed her one.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Mrs Llantrisant.’

  ‘And a Happy New Year. Don’t forget about the pin.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  She drank the sherry in three greedy gulps and reached for the bottle. I passed my cup over.

  ‘Pity we don’t have any mince pies.’

  ‘There are some in the cupboard.’

  I walked over to fetch them and she continued, ‘This reminds me of Christmas with Eichmann.’

  She saw my expression of surprise and added hurriedly, ‘Of course, I didn’t know who he was then, did I? I’m not one of those Nazi sympathisers, if that’s what you think. I lost a good cousin in North Africa to Rommel. He sent me a picture of him and his mates frying eggs on a tank. How we laughed. They all died, though, those boys.’

  ‘Tell me about Eichmann.’

  ‘I knew him as Ricardo. Ever such a gent, he was. Just goes to show, doesn’t it? I never understood that thing with the Jews. We had one here once, the draper. Very respectable man.’

  ‘And you met him in the library?’

  ‘I was checking my family background. Of course, the names of Cassidy and Sundance didn’t mean anything to me. I suppose you could say he picked me up. We had a tryst. I can remember every detail of it. It was a cheap hotel on the Plaza de la Constitución, across from the railway station. It was a corner room on the top floor with a rickety old bed with broken springs and a picture of the Madonna hanging over the bed. All through the night as he made love to me there were flashes like artillery shells from the trams passing outside the window, and I could hear the shrieking whistles of the engines in the sidings. I remember thinking that night, this is one of those times, one of those rare occasions . . . I don’t know how to put it . . . you know even as you experience them, you sort of know how special they are.’