by Alis Hawkins
I fixed the whirlpool on the workbench between us and, above it, saw his red hair, his pale face turned towards me. Was his Adam’s apple bobbing anxiously?
‘I’ve been asked to look into the verdict. And, more generally, into the death of Margaret Jones.’ I paused for a second, trying to gauge his reaction but I could detect maddeningly little. ‘You and Mr Pridham were the jurors who didn’t agree with the accidental death verdict.’
‘We were, yes.’ His voice was non-committal.
‘Apparently,’ I was feeling my way, acutely aware that I had no professional standing here, that Dic was not obliged to tell me anything, ‘everybody’s been saying that the jury members were given instructions to bring in the accidental death verdict. That threats were made.’
Dic said nothing. Then I heard John speak, behind me. ‘You don’t have to worry about me, Mr Jones. I’m working for Mr Probert-Lloyd so I won’t be blabbing any gossip about.’ He had obviously caught a worried glance in his direction.
‘John is assisting me,’ I said. ‘He will treat everything he hears in the strictest confidence. So… were you threatened?’
Dic hesitated. ‘No. Nobody came near me.’
I heard his subtle implication. ‘But some jury members were intimidated?’ Silence. Was he nodding?
‘How?’ John’s voice again. He had grasped my failure to see Dic’s response. ‘How were people threatened?’
When Dic didn’t answer straight away, I rested a hand on the workbench between us and leaned towards him. ‘Dic, this isn’t just about Margaret Jones’s death. It’s about Beca coming back.’
‘You don’t have to tell me that, Mr Probert-Lloyd,’ the saddler said. ‘The thought of Beca’s what made me sit on the jury.’
During the riots, some businesses in town had received Rebecca’s unwanted attentions and I wondered whether Dic had been on the rioters’ list. He frequently did work for Glanteifi and his loyalties might, therefore, have been regarded as suspect. I tried my best to look at his face. ‘So?’ I asked. ‘Who was threatened?’
‘Stephen Parry,’ he said, at last. ‘The printer. He got a letter.’
‘What did it say?’
‘That he’d better persuade the jury to vote for accidental death,’ Dic said, ‘or his shop’d be burned down.’
With all the supplies Parry kept in his printing and stationer’s shop it would be like living on top of a powder keg. ‘Was it just a letter?’ I asked.
Dic did not reply. In my peripheral vision, John moved forward. ‘Mr Jones?’
‘Parry’s got a yard at the back of his shop,’ Dic said, eventually. ‘The morning after he got the letter, he found a half-burned ceffyl pren out there.’
The implication was clear. If somebody could get into his yard they could fire his shop, with Parry and his family asleep upstairs.
‘So,’ I said, ‘Parry persuaded everybody else for his sake?’
‘Not for his sake. For their own. I gather the letter said that anybody on the jury who didn’t find for accidental death would be in danger of their life. Parry was passing it around when we went out to the workhouse for the viewing.’
‘How did he manage that without the coroner seeing it?’
‘The coroner did see it. But he didn’t ask what it was and we didn’t tell him.’
I could imagine Bowen ignoring any conversation in Welsh. He would see it as beneath his dignity to ask the jurors what they were talking about.
‘When you say “I gather” – does that mean you didn’t see the letter yourself?’ John asked. I was impressed; the question showed close attention to what Dic had said.
‘I told Parry I didn’t want to see it. Told him I wasn’t going to be threatened.’
‘Does Parry have any idea who sent the letter – who put the ceffyl pren in his yard?’ I asked.
‘If he does, he’s not saying.’
I nodded. ‘Do you know who did it, Dic?’
‘No, Mr Probert-Lloyd, I don’t.’
I hesitated, turning the question I was about to ask him over in my mind. ‘Why didn’t you go along with the majority? About the accidental death verdict.’
Dic didn’t reply immediately and, when he did, he spoke deliberately, weighing his words out. ‘The ceffyl pren had its place,’ he said. ‘Years ago, I mean. And Beca had her place – for a while, anyway. Something had to be done about the tollgates, didn’t it? But time’s moved on. This is the modern world. We’ve got families from Newcastle Emlyn living in America, now. We’ve got a police force. The railway’s coming soon and then we’ll be joined to the rest of the empire – we can’t go on behaving like we did a hundred years ago.’
‘You’re not afraid of Beca, then?’ John asked.
‘I am afraid, John Davies. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Any sensible man would be afraid – we all saw what Beca was capable of, didn’t we? It wasn’t wise to cross people who used that name. But, like I said, this is the modern world – I want my sons to understand that we can’t go about doing what we’re told by letters – anonymous letters, mind you – put under people’s doors at night.’
I could feel Dic’s eyes on me and I nodded, fixing my gaze in apparent contemplation on his workbench. But he had not finished.
‘And, just in case you’re wondering, John Davies, I don’t have friends in Beca who are going protect me. I never rode with Beca – not for tollgates and not for anything else. And I didn’t belong to Nathaniel Howell’s chapel either.’
Even after all that time, I felt a frisson of something like alarm at the sound of Howell’s name. If the minister had given testimony at the inquest, as Bowen had wished, my father might have had an apoplexy when he heard what Howell had to say about me.
‘Nathaniel Howell?’
I looked around to answer John’s question. ‘He was the minister at Treforgan – the chapel Margaret Jones attended.’ I pushed myself away from the saddle horse and stood up. ‘I haven’t asked after your family, Dic – how are your boys?’
Dic’s voice softened and the stridency with which he had addressed John’s unspoken challenge was gone. ‘Both doing very well, thank you for asking. Huw’s working with me, now, and Joseph is in Mr Davies’s school. Wants to go for the law. Like your young assistant here.’
If he shared his father’s progressive views then Joseph Jones was probably looking to go further than the life of a lawyer’s clerk. Times were changing.
I could only hope that they were changing enough to allow others to follow Dic’s lead and speak to me about what had happened seven years ago.
John
As I closed the door of Dic’s shop behind us, Harry Probert-Lloyd turned without a word and began to walk up the hill. Was I in trouble already? He’d told me to ask questions but perhaps he’d just meant to ask him, not witnesses.
I followed him quickly up the street towards the middle of town.
Where was he off to – Pridham’s house or Parry’s shop?
The rain’d stopped but the high street was all running water and mud and horseshit. It was quiet and some of the shops had lamps lit to try and tempt people in out of the gloom.
I glanced over to see how Harry was coping – I’d already started to think of him as Harry, even before his little ‘I don’t want us to be master and man’ speech, and I was going to have to make sure I called him Mr Probert-Lloyd to his face. He wasn’t stepping in anything so he knew where to put his feet. It was going to take me a while to work out exactly what he could and couldn’t see.
Every now and then we’d get a greeting from passers-by. Each time, Harry bowed and smiled. Benevolent, Mr Schofield would have called it.
Ladies, he’d say, or, Good morning, or, if the weather’d been mentioned, Yes, terrible, isn’t it, I hope it doesn’t mean we’re going to have a wet winter. But he didn’t stop, just carried on walking. It was a handy enough trick, but it wasn’t the same as being able to look people in the eye.
‘What did
you make of what Dic had to say?’ he asked suddenly, eyes straight ahead. For a second, I was afraid he couldn’t look at me for being cross. Then I remembered – sideways was the only way he could see me.
‘Well, now we know that Beca definitely is involved. It’s not just a rumour.’
‘Yes. A Rebecca note and a ceffyl pren left as a threat doesn’t leave much room for doubt.’ Harry skirted around a trail of what looked like pig shit. We were almost at the top of town now.
‘Are we going to see Stephen Parry?’ I asked.
‘Yes. I want to know more about that threatening letter before we talk to Pridham.’
I didn’t fancy his chances. If Parry’d got a letter from Beca, his best bet was to keep his mouth sewn up. Especially to Probert-Lloyd the magistrate’s son.
I looked up at the sky. It was going to rain again any second, I could tell. ‘If we hurry,’ I said, ‘we can get there before it rains.’
Even if Parry didn’t want to speak to us, at least we’d be out of the wet.
Harry
I was acquainted only slightly with Stephen Parry, but what I knew of him suggested that he was a weak and easily influenced man. Here, I needed to be Mr Henry Probert-Lloyd, London barrister, not little Harry Glanteifi as I had chosen to be at Dic’s.
Parry was a large man and I remembered him as being soft around the edges, as if he might be easy to squeeze into a blancmange mould. His voice, when he returned my greeting, was aquiver with apprehension.
‘We’re here to ask you about the threatening letter you received from Rebecca,’ I told him, without preamble.
Parry reared back as if I had brandished a pistol in his face. ‘What letter? I never had a letter.’
‘Mr Parry, I understand that this is difficult for you but I need to know about the contents of that letter.’
‘There wasn’t a letter!’ His voice had a hand-wringing tone.
‘Other jury members say differently. They say that you were passing a letter around – in full view of the coroner – on the morning of the inquest.’
‘They’re lying!’
‘And,’ I continued, determined to be implacable, ‘that Beca made threats to you and your business. We know that you were told to persuade the rest of the jury to bring in a verdict of accidental death. We also know that somebody burned a ceffyl pren in your yard the night before the inquest.’
‘No. No! I’m telling you – there was no letter! It’s all lies!’ Parry’s hands were waving his desperation.
‘Perhaps we should speak to your wife—’
His tone dulled. ‘I haven’t got a wife. She died five years ago.’
Damn! I had completely wrongfooted myself. ‘I’m sorry.’
Parry made no audible response. Was there reproach in his face? Resentment? Inwardly, I berated myself; I should have checked with John about Parry’s current family circumstances.
I tried to regain momentum. ‘What did you do with the letter, Mr Parry?’
He did not reply. Perhaps he thought that my faux pas gave him licence to defy me. ‘Whatever the verdict was,’ I said, ‘you and I both know – everybody knows – that Margaret Jones was murdered. We can’t just leave it.’
‘You can.’ It was barely more than a whisper. ‘You should.’
Just then, I became aware of something at the very edge of my eyeline; something I might not have noticed in the days when I was able to focus on what was in front of my nose. There was a figure standing in the doorway to the next room. Standing, in fact, just behind the doorjamb; almost, but not quite, out of sight.
‘You can make me go away,’ I told the printer, ‘but I’ll keep coming back until you tell me what I want to know.’ I allowed him to think about that; about my continuing to appear on his doorstep, in full view of those who might have threatened him. Then, more gently, I asked, ‘What did you do with the letter, Mr Parry?’
The answer, when it finally came, was defiant. ‘I burned it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it was like having Beca herself in the house! I didn’t want it here.’
‘You shouldn’t have destroyed it. It was evidence.’ Evidence that Rebecca had roused herself; that there was something about Margaret Jones’s death that those who had ridden under the Lady’s name did not want discovered.
I angled my head just slightly to one side; the figure was still there. A barely-moving shoulder, a grey, apron-covered hip. ‘Do you know who sent the letter, Mr Parry? Who put the ceffyl pren in the yard?’
‘No. And I don’t want to.’
‘Back then,’ I began, treading carefully, ‘did you ride out… with Beca—’
‘No!’ A hand slapped down on the counter. ‘No I did not!’
I ignored his denial. ‘Did the letter threaten more than your shop – did it threaten to inform on you, inform the magistrates?’
‘No! I’m telling you,’ he dropped his voice, obviously afraid that whoever was in the house would overhear us. ‘I never rode with Beca – never!’
The light in the shop had dimmed noticeably since we came in and a sudden downpour began to hiss onto the sodden ground outside. Water, I thought, must be almost as inimical to a shop full of paper as fire. Damp customers and their dripping boots would bring a humidity into the air that could not fail to damage the ledgers whose smell of glue and new cloth was as distinct on the air as their blue covers were on the shelves. How many days’ rain had to fall before the ledgers’ corners began to fox, before the cut-edged post papers and folded writing sheets that Parry kept in the drawers beneath his countertop lost their perfect smoothness and began to bloom and soften?
‘I’m told the letter was written in Welsh’ I said. ‘Was it well-written – as if the person was educated? Did it look as if the person who wrote it was used to writing or as if it was something they did rarely?’ Knowing whether the hand was that of a literate person or someone barely schooled would help. It was unfortunate that Dic had refused to read the letter. ‘Mr Parry?’
‘Can you protect me if I tell you what you want to know, Mr Probert-Lloyd? Can you guarantee that my shop won’t be burned down? That my children will be safe?’
At the edge of my vision, the grey woman had disappeared. I imagined her slipping away, made apprehensive by Parry’s combative tone. ‘No, Mr Parry, I can’t. But I think it’s reasonable to promise you that if we don’t find out who brought that letter, Rebecca won’t let it end here. She’ll get worried about who’ll say what.’ I turned and looked theatrically out of the window, as if I could see witnesses gathering in front of Parry’s shop. ‘Somebody might get a conscience and go to the magistrates. Do you really think threatening letters are going to be the end of it? When there’s a murderer to hide?’
‘There was no murder.’ His voice was low but there was defiance there. ‘It was accidental death. That’s what we said. And that’s what it was.’
I heard John take a breath. ‘I was wondering, Mr Parry, why you agreed to be on the jury in the first place? Plenty of men refused.’
‘And who are you, John Davies, to be questioning me?’ Parry vented on him all the anger he’d had to keep from his tone in speaking to me.
‘Mr Parry, John is acting as my assistant in these investigations. There’s an expectation that we will discover sufficient new information to have the inquest reopened.’
‘And you think that’s a good idea, do you? You, of all people?’
I spun around. ‘I want to see justice done!’
‘Justice?’ He let the word hang in the air. ‘Are you sure?’
I could feel his eyes boring into me, defying me. Was this how it was going to be? Magistrate’s son or not, had my own youthful indiscretions compromised anything I attempted, now, to make amends?
‘You’ll never find out who did this.’ Parry sounded as if he would like to put the matter beyond doubt himself. ‘You should let it go, before they come after you.’ He moved, suddenly disappearing from my sight. ‘I�
��m shutting the shop, now, so you’ll have to leave if you don’t mind.’
He hurried past me towards the door and opened it. The sound of the rain immediately intensified, a hissing counterpoint to the redundant ringing of the shop’s bell.
‘Mr Parry—’
‘Please. I’m not feeling well. You’ll have to go.’
Seconds later, we were out in the downpour, listening to the sound of a bolt being rammed home behind us.
John
I opened the door of The Lamb, and we ducked in out of the rain. The taproom was quiet but I still put a hand on Harry’s arm to stop him marching in.
‘Best if we scrape the mud off our boots first.’ Nelly James had standards. She’d throw you out if you trailed mud and shit through her rooms.
‘John Davies,’ Nelly frowned at me as we walked in. ‘What are you doing here in the middle of the day?’
‘Working, Mrs James. For Mr Probert-Lloyd here.’
That changed her tune. Sweet and English now. ‘Good grief it is too! I beg your pardon, Mr Probert-Lloyd, I didn’t recognise you.’
