None So Blind

by Alis Hawkins

  Left their employment? Got sent packing was what she meant.

  ‘He told me the child would be brought up in the workhouse – or, more likely, would die there from lack of care – so I told him to bring the boy here.’

  ‘Did he threaten you?’ Harry asked.

  Esme Williams’s face coloured up again. Almost matched her purple dress. ‘No he did not! He didn’t have to – I know my responsibilities.’

  ‘I just wondered… Howell was known for taking the ceffyl pren out and I know he’d made your husband ride it.’ Had he indeed? And how did Harry know about it? ‘Do you think Howell might have gone further if it hadn’t been for your generosity in taking Samuel in?’

  Generosity? Hah!

  ‘What do you mean, might have gone further?’ Esme’s voice was sharp with suspicion. ‘And done what, exactly?’

  Harry’s eyes seemed to be on the flowered tiles of the fireplace and the fact that he wasn’t looking at Esme made it look as if he was just saying the first thing that came into his head. ‘I don’t know. Were threats made to your husband after that night? In a letter, perhaps? Threats related to his future conduct with his female servants?’

  Just as well Harry couldn’t see the look Esme Williams gave him, then. It would’ve stopped the blood in his veins. ‘Are you suggesting that my husband killed Margaret Jones and put it about that she’d gone away because he was afraid of what Beca would do to him when it went round that she was pregnant?’

  Old Schofield couldn’t’ve summed it up more succinctly.

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ Harry admitted. Beneath his beard, he was chewing the inside of his lip. ‘Nathaniel Howell left Treforgan very soon after Margaret disappeared. Do you know anything about that?’

  ‘I heard he was offered the minister’s job at a large chapel somewhere else,’ Esme said. ‘Why? Suspect him as well, do you?’

  Harry gave an embarrassed half-smile. ‘I had information that made me think he had plans to be here for some considerable time. He’d mentioned being here for ten years at least.’

  Esme stared at him. ‘Everybody has plans. And they often come to nothing.’

  Our horses plodded back up the drive, past the huge doors of the threshing barn and the lower-roofed byres. I almost wished I was in one of the cowsheds sharing the steamy warmth of the beasts. I was shivering on my horse.

  ‘Why did you want to know whether she knew Howell and his Rebeccas were coming that night?’ I asked.

  Harry’s head turned towards me, away from the orchard’s winter-bare apple trees. ‘I think it’s significant that Nathaniel Howell didn’t just gather his men about him and ride out after dark. That he spoke to the people he was going to visit beforehand.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s possible that he spoke once too often – to the wrong person.’

  He stopped. From his expression, he was thinking hard. ‘Perhaps Margaret Jones was made to disappear because somebody knew Beca was coming for him.’ I waited while he thought some more. We passed through Waungilfach’s open gates and onto the road. I didn’t ask where we were going and the horses just turned towards home. ‘Then there’s Nathaniel Howell himself,’ he said.

  ‘What about him?’ It felt awkward having to ask but there was no point just looking mystified and hoping he’d explain, was there?

  ‘Matthew Evans said Howell was a fraud. That’s the first criticism I’ve ever heard of the man. You’ll be too young to remember but the Reverend Howell was something of a phenomenon – people came from all over to hear his preaching. And he carried a lot of people with him in what they called his Beca crusade.’ Harry stopped. ‘And then he left. Very suddenly. I must confess, I’m troubled by that.’ He stopped, then said, ‘I wonder whether, perhaps, he didn’t leave.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He turned his face towards me. ‘Everybody thought Margaret Jones had left. Run away. But she was here all the time.’

  Harry

  On our way back to Newcastle Emlyn, I pulled my horse up at the entrance to Glanteifi’s drive. I must confess that the leaving of a ceffyl pren outside my room had unnerved me. I would be safer in my father’s house; it was time to tell him the truth.

  ‘I have some business up at the house,’ I told John. ‘Meanwhile I’d like you to do something for me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Firstly, I’d like you to find out the exact location of this chapel that Nathaniel Howell is supposed to have gone to. I think it was East Anglia somewhere. Then I’d like you to find out who the Treforgan chapel elders were while Howell was minister there. Try and establish who’d be the most likely to talk to us about Howell’s involvement with Beca.’

  I heard him take a breath, as if he was about to lift a heavy load. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Oh, and see if you can find out who Stephen Parry’s maid is, will you?’ I needed to put a name to that grey-clad figure in the doorway. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be, so let’s meet at the Salutation tomorrow. You can tell me what you’ve found out over breakfast.’

  Reins slack, I let my horse find its own pace up the curving drive as I rehearsed what I needed to say to my father. I would have to take him into my confidence as to the exact nature and course of my association with Margaret; despite the fact that it might give him further cause to deplore my behaviour and my opinions, I saw no other option. I had let Margaret Jones down once, I would not do so again.

  The Glanteifi drive was short and I had barely ordered my thoughts before I was in the stableyard, enduring the embarrassment of asking my father’s grooms to tend to my by-the-hour hack, knowing that, as soon as I was out of earshot, speculation would rage about why I was back at Glanteifi.

  I tried to leave my awkwardness behind with my horse as I slipped into the house through the servants’ entrance, finger already to my lips lest any of the maids should come scurrying to greet me. I had deliberately chosen not to go in via the front door so as to avoid Moyle but, as luck would have it, he appeared in the hall at a smart clip just as I had made my whispering way through the servants’ quarters and was standing before the door to my father’s study.

  ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd’s not in there, sir. He’s in the library. With a visitor.’

  I turned. ‘Oh. Who’s that?’

  Did I imagine a slight hesitation – a weighing-up of what it would be expedient to tell the temporarily estranged son?

  ‘He’s with Mr Williams of Waungilfach farm, sir.’

  Moyle never failed to mangle Welsh names. Though he had been at Glanteifi almost a decade and could easily have submitted to learning basic pronunciation, he preferred to maintain some spurious kind of linguistic high ground.

  ‘Then I’ll wait for him in the morning room.’

  I went into the faintly damp cool of the morning room and stood at one of the windows, gazing sidelong at the river view and wondering whether William’s visit had anything to do with my investigation. My reverie was interrupted by one of the maids, a shovel full of embers in one hand and a coal scuttle in the other.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Henry, I’ll just…’

  In my mind’s eye I saw her nodding at the grate to finish her sentence. ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘please.’

  Why were servants trained to apologise when they came into a room to do something that was specifically designed for your comfort? It was foolish – as if my need for a fire should have been anticipated before anybody even knew I was going to be here.

  ‘Will there be anything else, sir?’

  I looked around and tried to smile directly at her, wanting to thank her for remembering that I preferred the servants to speak Welsh to me when my father was not present. ‘No, thank you, Betty.’ I was confident, now, in identifying all the servants by a combination of their voice and the impression they made on my peripheral vision.

  She closed the door behind her and I moved over to the fire. The morning room had not changed since my child
hood: the same delicate furniture, chosen by my father’s first wife; the same long, striped curtains; the same pale rugs on dark floorboards.

  So little had altered in this house during my lifetime. It was as if the whole period of my existence had been of little consequence, as if my father had lost interest in the house and everything in it with the death of his firstborn.

  I contemplated this notion, looking at it dispassionately, wondering whether it accounted for my feeling that I had never belonged here, at least not in these rooms, furnished by a woman I had never known, many years before my birth. If I had ever felt at home at Glanteifi it had been in the servants’ quarters, in the stables and out in the fields and farms of the estate.

  My father must constantly have compared me with the son he had lost; the son whose portrait still hung in his dressing room. George Probert. He had my father’s name as well as his heart.

  My dead brother’s face in that portrait was clear before me, my mind’s eye unclouded by the whirlpool. It was a face full of ardour and strong will, an image so full of vitality that it seemed barely contained by its gilt frame, as if he was about to stride out and lay hold of life once more, to take it and drain it to the dregs before smacking his lips and laughing with glee at the sheer exhilaration of being alive.

  As a small boy I had been fascinated by his portrait, sneaking into my father’s dressing room when he was out on estate business to stand and stare at it. My brother. The son my father loved. Brave, fearless, manly George. But I had tried, in my childish way, to be those things, too. I had been brave when I was with Davy. Even though he was bigger and stronger than me, I had always accepted his challenges to wrestle, to race, to swim even though I was afraid, sometimes. Then I had been sent away to school and everything had changed.

  School had been full of boys like George: laughing, swaggering, manly. Apparently admirable, I had soon learned that they were overbearing, headstrong and possessed of an unrestrained, animal sensuality. They had made my life miserable and I had learned to hate and fear them. After a single term, clandestine visits to my father’s dressing room ceased, though George’s image was never far from my mind. Now, however, his face seemed to sneer at me with the same cold contempt as my schoolfellows; his loud, commanding voice echoed their snide remarks about my accent; like them, he mocked my courtesy to the school servants. And when I was stripped and humiliated by older boys, when they laughed at my hairless nakedness and called me little Welsh maid, I saw his face amongst them.

  But George’s resemblance to my tormentors had done more than destroy my admiration for him. His memory, that portrait hanging in cherished privacy, had also hung between my father and me. It caused me to reject my father’s ideas of what a gentleman should be and to take refuge in the radical philosophies espoused by a headmaster who had no notion of the barbarity being practiced by some of his students on their fellows.

  Liberty. Equality. Fraternity. Those were the virtues I had cleaved to as I grew, the virtues I tried to live by. Finally done with school and looking to the future, I had wanted to be free to marry Margaret as an equal. I had wanted Davy to be my friend – my brother – not my servant.

  Willfully choosing to believe that the principles that had brought about revolution in France and America were applicable to bucolic West Wales, I had ignored my father’s remonstrations. But he had been implacable.

  David Thomas cannot be your friend because he is not your equal. The lower orders look to us to provide for them, Harry, and that’s what you are to him, somebody who can provide for him. You forget that at your peril.

  But, to forget something, you must first acknowledge it and I had not. I had simply ignored what my father said. I had ignored it in my friendship with Davy and I had ignored it in my misguided but sincere attachment to Margaret.

  And, now, I was nerving myself to explain that and to ask him to understand why I must find out the truth about her death.

  The fire had barely begun to warm the morning room when the door suddenly swung audibly inwards, causing me to spin around. Some part of me still expected to be able to see whatever had startled me.

  ‘Harry! Moyle said you were here.’

  I wished he had not. ‘I didn’t intend to disturb you when you’re busy, Father.’

  ‘Not at all.’ He moved further into the room. ‘Are you well?’ He sounded ill at ease.

  ‘As well as can be expected when lodging in an hotel.’

  There was a moment’s fraught silence and I wondered whether I had gone too far but, when my father spoke again, there was no reproach in his voice. ‘Your arrival is fortuitous, as it happens. William Williams is here.’ He paused. ‘I gather that his wife has informed him of your investigation.’

  Williams had not been in the house when John and I were there. Had he seen us leaving Waungilfach and quizzed his wife as to the purpose of our visit? He could easily have ridden through the Alltddu and got to Glanteifi before John and I had reached the Newcastle Emlyn road, we had not hurried.

  ‘I see. So he’s come to ask you to bring me to heel?’

  Was my father sufficiently far away not to notice that I was looking in his direction rather than directly at him? I heard him sigh. ‘I would prefer that he explain his position to you himself.’

  I shook my head. Williams would ask me, politely, to desist; I, with equal politeness, would decline. It was hard to see how my father could be a happy spectator at that conversation. I needed to say my piece about Margaret first.

  ‘I’d prefer to ride over and speak to him later. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you first, Father.’

  ‘I would rather you spoke to him now, Harry, please. It would be churlish to send him away without seeing you when you are actually here.’

  ‘Churlishness needn’t come into it, surely? I could say, very politely, that I’ll see him later today—’

  ‘I would prefer it if you were to hear his grievance now. If you don’t mind.’

  I should have stood firm, refused to hear from Williams until I had said what I needed to say to my father. But, whoever made the observation that old habits die hard was right – as soon as my father spoke the words ‘if you don’t mind’ I was a boy again, bending to his will.

  Williams was standing in front of the window furthest from the library’s door, as if he was afraid that I would take fright at the sight of him and flee before he could address me.

  ‘Good day, Mr Williams.’ I sketched a bow and went to stand in front of the fire, leaving him at his post in the far corner.

  ‘And to you, sir.’ His tone was chilly.

  I was not going to help him. If he wanted me to give up my investigations he would have to broach the subject himself.

  He began to make his way towards the chairs around the fire. ‘You’ve been staying in the Salutation Hotel, I understand?’

  ‘I have, yes.’ Did he think that such a bald acknowledgement of my estrangement was going to embarrass me, put me at a disadvantage? I turned and bent to warm my hands. In my peripheral vision, I felt rather than saw Williams look to my father for help. But Justice Probert-Lloyd evidently felt he had done all that was required of him. Williams, still standing behind one of the chairs, cleared his throat.

  ‘I gather that my wife has taken it upon herself to dislike the inquest’s verdict and has asked you to become involved?’

  I continued to cultivate chilblains so as not to have to look up at him. ‘Mrs Williams gave me to understand that she was worried lest the verdict, not to mention the coroner’s manner of questioning, had left an impression in the public mind that you might know more about Margaret’s death than you were prepared to admit.’ I heard myself slipping into barrister’s rhetoric; a species of verbal armour, I daresay.

  ‘She had no right to involve you,’ Williams blustered. ‘I mean to say, people – some people – will always gossip and find fault where there is none.’

  I let him go on. People are surprisingly apt
to tie themselves in knots if you give them a sufficient quantity of rope and no assistance.

  ‘But I pay no heed to gossips,’ he said, stiffly. ‘Therefore, I require no investigation to be made on my behalf, thank you.’

  I counted to five then, without turning around, straightened up. ‘Very well.’

  Again, I felt a look pass between Williams and my father.

  ‘What do you mean, sir, by “very well”?’ Williams was losing patience with me but I could have warned him that he would find no ally in the room if he went further and lost his temper. My father did not approve of shows of emotion as a means of winning an argument.

  ‘I mean that I will not burden you or Mrs Williams any further with details of my investigation. Henceforth,’ I rubbed my warm palms on the cold backs of my hands, ‘I will conduct my investigations for my own sake and mine alone.’

  I heard Williams’s heavy tread as he moved around the chair towards me.

  ‘I fear I have not made myself clear. I meant to ask you to cease your enquiries altogether. They are likely to cause me more embarrassment than any idle gossip could.’

  I turned to face the spot he occupied. In my peripheral vision, he was difficult to make out against the shelves of books behind him. ‘Mr Williams, let me assure you that if there is gossip about you as a result of my enquiries, it is none of my doing. At no point has your name been mentioned to anybody but Mrs Williams. In all other cases, I have merely stated that I have been asked to look in to events surrounding Margaret Jones’s death. No suspicion can accrue to you from that.’