None So Blind

by Alis Hawkins

  ‘Any further investigation simply prolongs people’s interest. If you were to give up your enquiries, it would all blow over in a week and the gossips would find something else to chew over.’

  ‘That may be true. But, though tongues might be stilled, suspicion would remain. My investigations will – ultimately – be to your benefit, Mr Williams.’

  ‘I would appreciate your allowing me to be the judge of what will be to my benefit or detriment.’

  ‘Do you not wish your name to be cleared, Mr Williams?’ I asked, evenly.

  ‘My name has no need of clearing. I do not stand accused of anything!’

  ‘Not formally, perhaps.’ I was quite aware that I was being provocative, now.

  He took a step forward. ‘Are you accusing me, sir?’ The ragged edge to his voice told me that, had I been a man of a different station, Williams would have taken me by the lapels.

  ‘Indeed I am not, Mr Williams.’

  ‘Your failure to look me in the eye says otherwise!’

  A sudden, reckless need to shock and embarrass him took hold of me. ‘I’m afraid, Mr Williams, that I cannot look you in the eye. Neither you nor, regrettably, anyone else. I am going slowly blind, you see.’

  The quality of silence that my words produced was not unlike that around a card table when a gentleman of previously impeccable solvency admits that he is obliged to offer a promissory note. It was, in other words, acutely uncomfortable.

  ‘Blind?’ Williams might never have heard the word before.

  ‘Yes.’ I felt entirely uncompelled to furnish him with specifics. ‘Then how are you managing?’ Again, I sensed a look flung in the direction of my father, seated on my other side.

  ‘I hope you won’t take offence, Mr Williams, if I say that that is my own affair.’

  Williams now seemed at a loss. My father rescued him. ‘Perhaps we should continue this discussion at another time.’

  ‘Yes,’ Williams moved towards him. ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right.’

  As my father rang the bell and moved his guest in the direction of the door, I heard a low murmuring from Williams. He would, of course, be trying to secure my father’s promise to persuade me away from my investigations.

  A footman arrived to show him out and the door closed on our perfunctory farewells, leaving me alone with my father.

  ‘I presume you didn’t say that merely to deflect Williams?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘May I ask why you haven’t seen fit to tell me before this?’

  I sighed. ‘It’s only recently been confirmed. I thought perhaps it was over-work – eye strain – that it would go away eventually. But it just got worse.’ I took a breath. ‘Then I went to the eye hospital in London. An expert there tells me that it’s a familial condition. It usually begins in late childhood though it can manifest in one’s third decade, as in my case.’ I hesitated. ‘Did my mother suffer anything similar?’

  ‘No.’

  His abruptness stung me and I chose to match it. ‘The upshot,’ I continued, ‘is that I have no useful vision for detail. I can’t read or examine things closely or see faces. I can manage not to walk into things if I’m careful because I can see at the edges of my sight. But in the centre of my vision where, my eye doctor tells me, we do all our meaningful seeing, there’s nothing but a blur. In short, I can see but I cannot look.’

  ‘And what, therefore, are your plans?’

  Unsure as to whether he was enquiring about the investigation or how I proposed to conduct the rest of my life, I did not know how to answer him. ‘Plans have become… difficult,’ I said, hearing the tightness in my own voice. ‘In my immediate future, there is a journey to East Anglia in the company of the young man whom I have engaged as my assistant but I would like to ask…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Whether I could move back to Glanteifi when I return.’

  ‘Will you still be investigating this young woman’s death?’

  ‘That depends, somewhat, on what I discover during my visit to East Anglia.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘My position has not changed, Harry. I cannot be seen to be at loggerheads with a legally constituted jury’s decision. We shall have to reconsider the situation when you return.’

  It was no good. His refusal to back down quashed any desire I had to lay my soul bare to him on the subject of Margaret. Or, indeed, any other.

  I left the house, determination stoked by his continuing support of the magistrates’ line. My feelings towards Margaret Jones had led to my exile from Glanteifi before, but this time I would not allow myself to be deterred from the course my heart dictated.

  John

  It wasn’t hard to find out who Nathaniel Howell’s elders at Treforgan chapel’d been. Apart from one who’d died, the eldership hadn’t changed at all. But then, that’s the way of the world, isn’t it? Once a man’s got a bit of power, whether it’s being a magistrate or a plwyfwas or an elder in a chapel, he’s not going to give it up without good reason. Like a cock crowing on a midden – only a stick, a worm or a willing hen’ll bring him down.

  Finding out where Howell’d gone was just as easy. Ipswich they told me. Nathaniel Howell went to the Unitarian Chapel in Ipswich.

  I went back to my lodgings pretty pleased with myself.

  As soon as I closed the front door behind me, my landlady was there in the narrow hallway with me. There wasn’t much room for the two of us and I took a step back towards the door.

  ‘Somebody’s giving you airs,’ she held a letter up with both hands, like a handkerchief she was pegging out. ‘John Davies Esquire.’ It was a point of pride with her, being able to read.

  I put my hand out for it. In the end she had to give it to me and I put it in my pocket.

  ‘Aren’t you going to read it?’

  Not in front of her I wasn’t. Somebody’d sent Harry a warning with that ceffyl pren and this could be my warning. Then again, I was going to want some more lamp oil, later, so that I could get my notes written up for Harry. I needed to keep her sweet.

  I pulled the letter out and tore the sealing patch. As soon as I’d unfolded it, I glanced at the foot of the text, heart going nineteen to the dozen. I was more than half expecting to see it signed ‘Beca’.

  Yours, I read HP-L

  My guts unknotted themselves a fraction. Harry’d been using that apparatus of his. The results weren’t perfect. The words were mostly readable and they sat on an even enough line but the letters were oddly spaced. Some drawn out, some squashed up together.

  Dear John

  I trust you have had a productive afternoon?

  We have a great deal to do tomorrow and I would be pleased if, when you join me for breakfast, you would come with a bag packed and ready to travel. I consider it urgent that we speak to Nathaniel Howell as soon as may be.

  ‘It’s from Mr Henry Probert-Lloyd,’ I told my landlady, folding the letter once more, ‘I’m assisting him with some business at the moment.’

  She didn’t say anything but I could tell from the face she pulled that she was impressed.

  I tramped up the stairs thinking about Harry’s letter.

  Come with a bag packed and ready to travel. So we were going to Ipswich, were we?

  I’d never been further than Carmarthen in my life.

  I’d been carrying Harry’s notebook and pencil around in my pocket but, so far, I’d taken no notes at all. Harry’d decided it would be better for me not to write while we were talking to people. ‘I need you to watch their reactions,’ he’d said.

  So now it was time to put what we’d done into the notebook. Old Schofield had trained me well. I didn’t trust anything until it was written down where I could see it. Behaving itself.

  I opened the book, turned it spine-topside and ruled three vertical columns. One for ‘Name of Witness,’ one for ‘Summary of evidence’ and one for ‘New information’.

  Then I sat and thought about the witnesses
we’d questioned. Dic Jones the saddler. Parry the printer. Stationer as he called himself. Pridham the chemist. Matt Tregorlais – was he a witness? Of sorts, I supposed, but we’d definitely interviewed him. And Esme Williams.

  Esme Williams who’d asked Harry to investigate. Harry. I had as many questions in my mind about him as I did about the murder. More, perhaps.

  I decided to start keeping notes on him as well as our investigation.

  Two columns – Information Gained, Questions still to Answer.

  I flipped the notebook over and turned to the last page. It’d been written on.

  How? I’d seen Harry flipping through it. Then I realised – he’d only flipped through the first few pages. He’d assumed that if they were empty, the rest of the book would be as well. But the book’s cover was unmarked, there was nothing to say which was front and which was back. So when Harry’d checked it, by chance he’d riffled through it from the same end that I’d started writing in. But, sometime previously, he’d written on the pages at the other end of the book.

  I stared at his writing. It straggled along unevenly, didn’t sit neatly on a line.

  I read the first few words – I fear I am going blind – then pulled the lamp closer. Fair play to Mr Schofield, he always made a point of us working in the bright light of sperm oil in the winter but my landlady made do with cheaper stuff. She didn’t have clients to impress and she certainly didn’t care if I ruined my eyes. Still, it gave light enough to see clearly when the book was close.

  I fear I am going blind, I read again. If it is a passing thing, I want to remember the fear and to value my sight as I have never done in the past. But if I am to be blind, I will set down here, for myself if nobody else, the things that trouble my conscience. They say setting things down on paper has the effect of relinquishing a burden. And I am burdened. Burdened by the knowledge that I betrayed Margaret. I betrayed my own love for her and whatever affection she had for me and trust she placed in me.

  Perhaps blindness is a just punishment for I did not see what I was doing. As they say, there’s none so blind as those that will not see.

  And that was it. That was all there was. Had he intended to write more? And if he had, what had stopped him? Failing sight, or an unwillingness to put the burdens on his conscience into words?

  I betrayed Margaret.

  What did that mean? How had he betrayed her?

  I turned over the page and wrote: ‘Harry – Questions’ at the top of the left side of the page. Then I ruled a line down the middle and wrote ‘Information’ on the other side.

  So far I had several questions and no information whatsoever.

  I was going to have to do something about that.

  John

  ‘There are no places on the coach today,’ Harry told me when I sat down to eat breakfast with him the next day.

  I didn’t know whether I was relieved or disappointed but Harry didn’t give me time to think about it. While I was trying my first taste of devilled kidneys, he wanted to know what I’d found out.

  ‘First rate!’ he said when I’d told him. ‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down.’

  Praise like that was enough to make me risk a question. ‘Can I ask what we’re hoping to find out from going to Ipswich?’ I heard my own words. They sounded close to criticism but Harry didn’t even blink.

  ‘First and foremost, I want to know whether Nathaniel Howell actually went there or whether somebody just wanted his congregation to think he had, in order to explain his disappearance. Then, if he is there, I want to ask him why he left in such a hurry.’

  I watched Harry loading his fork. Not being able to see what he was doing properly made him clumsy and half the food fell back onto the plate. ‘Ministers chop and change chapels all the time,’ I said, glancing up at the other people in the Salutation’s dining room. None of them were looking in our direction, thank God.

  ‘I know. But I have it on good authority that when he persuaded Hannah Rees to give up her son to Williams and his wife, Howell told her that he’d be on hand to keep an eye out for the boy. Why would he say that if he was intending to leave soon after?’

  ‘Perhaps this offer from Ipswich was too good to turn down?’

  ‘Perhaps. But I’d like to hear that from his own lips.’

  I started on some thick bacon. There was more meat on the plate in front of me than I usually saw in a week. ‘So are you more concerned for the Reverend Howell or suspicious of him?’ I was bolder now that he’d answered that first question as if I had a right to know.

  Harry sighed. ‘It just seems odd that he should take Hannah off in the middle of the night.’

  A ray of sunshine suddenly broke into the room, making the tired fake-marble wallpaper look even dingier than it had the moment before. Harry didn’t seem to notice the sun. Looked as if his mind had wandered.

  ‘Take her off where?’ I asked.

  He put his cutlery down and gathered his wits. ‘After leaving Samuel at Waungilfach, Howell took Hannah Rees straight to her new position. Right then, at midnight or after. At least, that’s what I was told.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he wait until the next day?’

  Harry nodded. ‘That’s the question, isn’t it? I’d like to speak to Hannah Rees, make sure she actually got to her new position.’

  I waited.

  ‘She had a brother.’ Harry sounded as if he’d just made a decision. ‘Since we can’t start out for Ipswich today, I think we should try and find him.’

  As it turned out, Jac Rees wasn’t hard to find. We just asked at the Treforgan chapel manse and the maid told us where he lived.

  We rode back through town in weather that had cheered up a lot. The sun wasn’t warm – it was the first day of December – but at least it gave a bit of life to the day. Everybody else seemed to think so too: ‘Good days’ came at us like flies in summer.

  Somebody was making use of the good weather at Jac Rees’s farm, too. We heard the thud of wooden mallets before we saw the two men standing in the yard, one on either side of a trough. Closer to, I could see they were beating gorse.

  ‘My father always mixed his gorse with straw,’ I called to them as we rode up. ‘Do you do that or feed it by itself?’ It was what Mr Schofield would’ve called a white flag – I come in good faith. The less they thought of Harry as gentry, the more they’d be likely to say.

  The older of the two men – Rees himself, as it turned out – straightened up and I recognised him. Hannah’s brother was the man who’d shouted out about Williams’s bastards from the back of the ballroom during the inquest.

  ‘Always mix it,’ he said, so pleasant you’d never have believed he could look as angry as he had when Williams was giving his evidence. ‘Makes the gorse last longer, doesn’t it?’

  I introduced us and Harry explained about his investigations, speaking Welsh as usual. ‘We wanted to ask you about your sister,’ he said.

  ‘Which one?’ Rees was tapping the head of his mallet up and down on the ground, wary now. The yard wasn’t cobbled but it’d been made up in a rough way with broken stones so it wasn’t just ankle-deep mud.

  ‘Hannah,’ Harry said. ‘Where did she go after she left Waungilfach, Mr Rees?’

  Rees turned to the younger man, his son from the look of him. ‘You carry on while I talk to Mr Probert-Lloyd. Let’s just go over here,’ he nodded at the corner of the yard, ‘out of the way of the noise.’ He stopped next to a short row of pigsties. Far enough away from the beating-trough to make damn sure we couldn’t be overheard.

  ‘What do you want to know about Hannah for?’ he asked.

  To make sure she’s alive and well. I didn’t say it, just waited for Harry to answer him.

  ‘After she left Waungilfach,’ Harry said, ‘the Reverend Howell found her a new place, didn’t he?’

  Jac Rees nodded. He was looking at Harry, now, but it was a calculating kind of look, as if he’d guessed about his sight.

  ‘Where
was that, Mr Rees?’ I asked. Jac Rees glanced at me. I could see he’d been expecting me to keep my mouth shut now we were on to business.

  ‘Out on a farm up the Lady Road,’ he said. ‘She was an outdoor servant there.’

  She wouldn’t want to risk going indoors at another house. Not after her experience with Williams.

  ‘Is she still there?’ Harry asked.

  Jac Rees shook his head. ‘No. One of the labourers on the farm married her and they’ve got their own little cottage. They do all right. Got two little lads.’ He was nervous, answering questions Harry hadn’t asked. Where were the nerves coming from – the scandal about Hannah and her bastard? Or did Rees know we were here about Beca and Margaret Jones?

  ‘About the Reverend Howell,’ Harry said. ‘Did Hannah say anything to you about him? He went away very soon after she left Waungilfach.’

  Rees shrugged. ‘I know she was upset about him going because of—’ He closed his mouth.

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Rees,’ Harry said, ‘we know about Hannah’s child.’ He gave Jac Rees a moment to take that in. ‘Is that why she was upset?’ For a moment, I thought shame would keep Rees silent. But he couldn’t defy Harry.

  ‘Yes. She didn’t want to leave Samuel with Esme Williams. Afraid she’d be cruel to him. But the Reverend Howell said he wouldn’t let that happen.’