None So Blind

by Alis Hawkins

  But it was what people’d come into town for – eye-witness testimony. Men stood in their shirt sleeves, coat dripping in one hand, cap in the other, looking around for somebody who could tell them what they wanted to know.

  Is it true the jury didn’t even go out?

  No! So scared of Beca they said accidental death straight away!

  You saying you wouldn’t be scared if you’d been warned?

  But not everybody was willing to see Beca’s hand in the verdict.

  Or, come to that, in Margaret Jones’s death.

  What’s Beca got to do with it? Everybody knows those banks in the Alltddu come down for a sneeze. If the girl dug under that tree to bury her bastard, it’s more likely than not the tree would come down on top of her.

  Don’t talk nonsense! It wouldn’t bury her whole body – you’d still see some of it.

  Not for long. Not after the foxes and badgers and crows had got at it.

  No. That’s not right. The jury saw a whole skeleton – if animals had been at the body there’d be bones missing.

  Then the arguing parties would look about for a juror. Or somebody who knew a juror. Or said he did.

  I sat in a corner, keeping myself to myself.

  Beca. I didn’t want to remember that, once upon a time, that name had excited me beyond anything. I could still feel a prickle of it, that old thrill of half-scared defiance I’d felt in that loft. The thrill of hearing about tollgates going down night after night for weeks after. The thrill of knowing that men were travelling miles to say ‘No more!’ And the thrill of thinking – hoping desperately – that my own father might’ve been one of them.

  But then it had gone. It had died in front of my eyes. With Margaret Jones. And, for the last seven years, Rebecca’d been a name that I’d hidden from. A name that had ordered a killing and brought terror into my life. I’ll find you boy! I’ll kill you.

  So I sat in a corner, quietly. Just listening.

  And, as well as what I did hear, there was something I didn’t. A question even the men who spoke up for murder weren’t asking.

  Who did it?

  That was a question with a dangerous answer.

  Harry

  Gus and I were sitting in the library warming our limbs in front of the fire after an afternoon’s wet riding when my father returned home. ‘I gather that Mrs Williams paid an early call on you today?’

  Damn Moyle. I had planned to discuss the implications of the inquest’s outcome with my father before mentioning the morning’s visit; Mrs Williams’s feeling that she and her husband had been slighted could only muddy the waters.

  And so it proved. I had barely finished outlining the reason for her visit before my father was dismissing her request.

  ‘Out of the question! I shall go to Waungilfach myself, tomorrow, and explain that any further action must be left to the discretion of the magistrates.’

  My father had been swept up by his fellow justices of the peace after the inquest and had not returned home the previous evening; I had hoped that they were giving serious consideration to an appropriate response to the jury’s nonsensical verdict and this seemed to confirm it. ‘The bench intends to order some kind of investigation, then?’

  ‘Nothing has been decided.’

  Hope vanished like a pricked bubble. ‘In other words,’ I said, ‘you can’t agree.’

  ‘On the contrary. We are unanimous in feeling that it would be unwise to make any hasty decisions. These are unusual circumstances, they need careful consideration.’

  ‘Mrs Williams isn’t interested in careful consideration! She simply wants her husband’s name cleared and the blot on Waungilfach’s reputation removed.’

  My father drew in a long breath, as if he were inhaling patience as well as air. ‘If that is the case, we must be unequivocal in our support – have some kind of occasion here to which everybody, including Williams and his wife, is invited. That will make it clear that we have no doubt of his innocence.’

  His willingness to throw his house open to guests in some grand social gesture indicated the extent of my father’s aversion to my becoming involved in any attempt to investigate the circumstances of Margaret’s death, and I found that I did not know how to respond. Whilst I had no desire at all to participate in the clearing of Williams’s name, I could not simply allow Margaret’s murder to be ignored.

  ‘Not my place to comment, of course,’ Gus chipped in when the silence seemed about to become unbroachable. ‘But I’m afraid Harry did attempt to assure the lady that she and her husband would always enjoy your full support, only to be brushed aside. She seemed to feel that only the conviction and hanging of some other fellow would prevent gossip and ostracism.’

  I heard the rueful half-smile in Gus’s voice, saw, in my mind’s eye, the expression that went with it and suddenly realised that I would still be imagining the same expression on his face when he was seventy and no longer bore any resemblance to the young man I remembered. I would never again be able to look into the face of my friend. Never.

  Shaken by the thought, I perched on the edge of the shuffleboard table and forced myself to speak.

  ‘Albeit unintentionally, Bowen has exacerbated the situation. Mrs Williams feels her husband was questioned as if Bowen suspected him of Margaret’s murder.’ I held up a forestalling hand as my father began to protest. ‘She also said – and it’s hard to contradict her – that they were the only people of any standing who were called as witnesses.’

  ‘As I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, the remains were found on their farm.’

  Remains. All that remained of a life.

  I rose and poked the fire into throwing up some grudging flames. ‘I’m well aware of that. But to be so insistent about what they did or didn’t hear on the night she disappeared—’ I pulled myself up, took a breath. ‘Surely if Rachel Ellis heard nothing when she slept in the same loft as Margaret, then the Williamses, in their house, couldn’t possibly be expected to have heard anything?’

  I was well aware that only Gus’s presence was preventing my father from openly disliking my reference to Margaret’s sleeping arrangements.

  ‘A servant might have had reason to conceal what she knew,’ he said, stiffly. ‘Bowen was obliged to ask Williams whether he had heard anything out of the ordinary.’

  ‘And was he not also obliged to quell the suggestive remarks coming from the crowd?’ I asked. ‘That they were allowed to stand made a laughing stock out of Williams and his wife.’

  ‘Bowen claimed not to have heard exactly what was said.’

  ‘Then he’s so deaf that he shouldn’t be presiding at inquests!’

  My father crossed the library to stand at the long windows. ‘What answer did you give Mrs Williams?’ he asked, his face to the afternoon darkness of approaching midwinter.

  ‘I told her I’d consider her request overnight.’

  ‘Very well. Then you will be able to let her down gently.’

  Was he trying to provoke me? ‘I haven’t yet decided what answer I’m going to give her. First, I need to know what action the magistrates are going to take – it’s quite clear that the verdict can’t be allowed to stand—’

  He turned, suddenly. ‘And what, exactly, makes it so clear?’

  ‘The jury didn’t do its duty! An inquest is supposed to find cause of death without fear or favour—’

  ‘You speak very glibly of duties considering you’ve shown no interest whatsoever in coming home and applying yourself to your own!’

  Outraged that he would say such a thing in front of Gus but unable to produce an apt reply, I stood, jaw clenched, as he moved towards the corner cabinet and the brandy.

  ‘Does Williams know his wife was here?’ he demanded. ‘Did he send her here to beg on his behalf?’

  ‘I have no reason to think that Williams asked his wife to beg,’ I said. ‘In fact, she gave me the distinct impression that he mustn’t know she’d been here.’


  ‘Good.’

  He spoke as if something had been decided. I could feel my breath coming quickly. ‘Tell me truthfully, father – what are the magistrates going to do?’

  I watched him as he appeared to stare into his brandy glass. Was he trying to decide whether to tell me the truth?

  ‘For the last seven years,’ he began, ‘Rebecca has been silent. Since the turnpike trusts were brought to heel, people have found nothing to complain of. There have been no carryings of the ceffyl pren. People are satisfied with the law we give them.’ He stopped and raised his head, presumably to try and get me to look him in the eye. ‘So, if you – a gentleman – now choose to dislike a verdict brought in by a legally constituted jury, if you imply that you know better, that you will not be bound by the law, what do you imagine the response will be?’

  I was not going to be turned aside by this spurious argument. ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ I said. ‘What are the magistrates going to do?’

  He drew in a heavy breath and moved to a chair at the fireside. ‘Ask yourself what the world would be like if, every time the bench disliked the verdict of an inquest jury, they pronounced that it was clearly in error and a new inquest must be held.’

  ‘It happens! If it can be proved that the jurors were intimidated there’d be grounds to open a new inquest, surely?’

  ‘Harry, nobody wants a resurgence of Rebeccaism. If you take it upon yourself to go about saying that the jury was incompetent, that it was not fit to stand in judgement but you are, do you imagine that it won’t cause resentment – even a call to arms? That was one of Rebecca’s charges against us, was it not? That the squires and the magistrates were over-mighty, that they used the law for their own purposes?’

  ‘So because the gentry misused their power in the past, are we going to allow the Rebeccas to misuse theirs now? Surely they must be challenged if they think they can dictate that murder is to be called accidental death – or where will it end?’

  I saw my father shake his head. ‘It has ended. I will not discuss this with you any further. And I forbid you to mount any kind of investigation into the jury’s verdict.’

  Incredulity forced me to my feet and I stared down at him, unseeing. ‘You forbid me? I’m of age! I’m not a schoolboy you can order about any more.’

  ‘No. You are heir to Glanteifi and some decisions are, therefore, not yours to make. How on earth do you imagine you will command respect in future if people see you grubbing about in the affairs of the lower orders?’

  ‘May I make a suggestion?’

  Gus’s question startled me. I had almost forgotten that he was there.

  ‘Perhaps all concerned should sleep on it and see how the morning finds us?’

  I did not want to sleep on it. I wanted this argument thrashed out now. But my father spoke before I could marshall a coherent response. ‘Thank you, Mr Gelyot. Let us, by all means, draw this distasteful conversation to a close. But, before we do so, you must hear this, Henry. If you are determined on this course of action, then you must leave this house. I cannot and will not have my authority called into question or my support for my fellow magistrates thrown into doubt. You will not conduct any investigation while you are living under my roof.’

  I was dumbstruck.

  ‘And there is one further consideration,’ he said. ‘How do you imagine your chambers will greet a request for an extended leave of absence?’

  I could feel Gus’s gaze. The moment has arrived, P-L.

  But I could not do it. Not now. ‘You don’t need to concern yourself,’ I said, ‘that will be for me to negotiate once I have found alternative accommodation.’

  Harry

  I lay awake and ill at ease most of the night. I could not reconcile what had taken place in the library with what I knew of my father as a magistrate. That he would allow murder and jury-intimidation to go unpunished, in the hope that the previously dormant forces of Rebecca would fall into quiescence once more, was beyond belief. Surely it was manifestly obvious that, on the heels of this demonstration of her continuing power to intimidate, Rebecca might decide that there were other matters she wished to take an interest in?

  However, lest I seem to be presenting myself as a pure and impartial seeker after justice, I was not proposing to endure banishment from Glanteifi simply in order to prevent a resurgence of Rebecca activity. If the bones discovered at Waungilfach had not belonged to Margaret, I might have been content to let the magistrates make what mistakes they chose. But I knew that I was not guiltless in the matter of Margaret’s death, and I could not allow her to be branded an infanticide who deserved the fate that had befallen her.

  If only it had not been Mrs Williams who had asked me to intervene. The thought of benefiting her and her husband in any way stuck in my throat. Without Williams’s jealous malice I would not have been sent away to Oxford and Margaret would not have been left defenceless. Could Mrs Williams be unaware of that? Or had she simply forgotten that, on the day after the ceffyl pren had visited her husband, he had paid a visit to Glanteifi?

  I had walked into the house that morning, seven years before, all ease and contentment from a walk in the late summer sun, to find myself summoned to my father’s study. When I opened the door, I found him standing there with William Williams.

  The abruptness with which my father came to the point was an indication of how greatly I had embarrassed and disappointed him.

  ‘Williams tells me you have been making a nuisance of yourself with one of his female servants. That you have been leading her on.’

  I turned to Williams. The look on his face suggested that he was not unhappy with my father’s abruptness. ‘Margaret is an impressionable girl,’ he told me. ‘She will think you’re offering more than you can give. I know you’re young, Harry, but it’s not kind.’

  His calling me Harry, as if he were an intimate, infuriated me. His appearance at Glanteifi could mean only one thing – that he had seen me in the yard the night before and blamed me for the humiliating visitation of the ceffyl pren. And, now, he was taking steps to ensure that I was granted none of the privileges I had – apparently – taken pains to deny him.

  If my father had set out to design the most exquisite torture for me, he could not have done better than to censure my involvement with Margaret under Williams’s gaze. In the acute disappointment he expressed, in the coldness of his tone as he told me I must never see ‘this unfortunate girl’ again, in his demanding of my word that I would do as he wished, all the warm, hopeful notions that I had treasured about a future with Margaret had withered and died.

  Just as a grand world of make-believe is dispelled when the nursery door is opened, revealing the table cloth tied about your gallant neck and the schoolroom ruler in your hand, my father’s dismissal of my love for Margaret had left me feeling both bereft and foolish.

  But worse had been yet to come. Once the stiffly triumphant Williams had been shown out, my father had turned to me.

  ‘You will go and pack. Immediately. You will leave for Oxford tomorrow. If rooms cannot be found for you in college you can lodge in the town until term starts. You will not return for Christmas. Find a friend prepared to invite you or stay in your rooms. I will not have you at Glanteifi until you are cured of this infatuation.’

  I had not seen Margaret again until Davy Thomas’s letter had called me home the following spring.

  Was I now going to clear William Williams’s name because his wife requested it? The thought of Williams preening himself at the news that I had agreed to help him made my skin crawl, but I could not let pride stand in my way; it would be foolish to spurn such a ready excuse for conducting an investigation. Following the inquest’s verdict, I have been asked by an interested party to look into the matter of Margaret Jones’s death, I would say to anyone who challenged my right to ask questions. Erroneous conclusions would, no doubt, be drawn as to who had asked me but I could not help that.

  However, if I was to acc
ede to Mrs Williams’s request, I determined that it must be on the strict understanding that she would not tell her husband.

  And, as I consoled myself with the thought of my investigating without Williams’s knowledge or consent, it occurred to me that it was not out of the question that his wife’s recruitment of me would backfire.

  There was always the possibility that Gus’s suspicions were correct and William Williams had murdered Margaret.

  Part 3: Investigation

  John

  Three days after the inquest, Newcastle Emlyn got something else to gossip about. Young Harry Probert-Lloyd had moved into the Salutation Hotel with his London friend and it was all over town that he’d had a falling-out with his father.

  ‘This will be about the inquest,’ Mr Schofield said. ‘The magistrates have failed to call the verdict into question – young Henry was bound to dislike it given his… association with the girl.’

  And he wasn’t the only one to think that. All the gossip had jogged people’s memories. Hadn’t they heard something about Harry Probert-Lloyd being involved with the dead girl?

  Heard something back then.

  Why didn’t he give evidence? they wanted to know. What does he know about her and her baby?

  More to the point, far as I could see, was what he was going to do next. He was still here. There had to be a reason for that.