Murder in the Mine

by Roy Lewis

  ‘Hell, within the year of meeting her, I guess. I mean, it was in ‘58 he went over there, he wrote a bit later to say he’d met her, then within a couple of months it was a letter to say they was getting married and he was pulling out of Montreal and the business.’

  ‘You don’t remember her name?’ Crow said. ‘Would it be Donna?’

  Grattan shook his head immediately.

  ‘Surely not. This girl, she had a Welsh name.’

  ‘And Martin Stark married her in 1958 or 1959. The woman he is charged with murdering is a woman he married in 1964.’

  ‘He was married twice? I didn’t know about that. So what happened to the first one? The one he paid the legacy to?’

  ‘That’s precisely what we have to find out,’ Crow said.

  * * *

  A transatlantic call to Inspector Dewi Jones was necessary to get the wheels in motion immediately for the checks to be carried out at registry offices. George Grattan had been unable to help on the question of location, though he thought the first marriage had been celebrated in London. Crow relayed his instructions to Jones and learned in addition that the Chief Superintendent was personally supervising the checks on the stories of the other witnesses.

  ‘And how did you get on with our friend Warlock?’ Crow asked.

  Jones’s voice sounded brittle and unfamiliar over the crackling line but its tone was plain enough.

  ‘He gave me a rough time. And at the end of it all he asked for the magistrates to declare there was no case for Martin Evans to answer.’

  ‘What did they say to that?’

  ‘Predictably, they disagreed with him, but they took their time considering it. And one of them had a word with the Chief Constable later — old boys’ network and all that. He didn’t like the witnesses we’d served up and thought the whole thing a bit fishy.’

  ‘Warlock will make it smell fishier in the Crown Court hearing. When’s it scheduled for?’

  ‘Don’t know yet. But Warlock’s made a plea for a swift hearing in view of his submission that the charges against his client have no foundation in fact. The magistrates were impressed. I think there’s every chance of an early hearing so we’ll have to get our skates on.’

  ‘I’ll be back in two days,’ Crow promised.

  * * *

  Dewi Jones met him at Heathrow on his return and drove with him to Tonypandy after the flight to Cardiff. Crow gave him the documents he had brought back with him.

  ‘Last will and testament of Alan Stark,’ Crow said. ‘There’s the clause mentioning the legacy payable to the girl.’

  Jones read it silently, then nodded.

  ‘Ahuh. Well, I’ve got papers too — marriage certificate of Stark and the girl. Registry office in Paddington, October, 1959.’

  ‘On his “marriage” to Donna, did Martin state he’d been married before, and divorced?’

  ‘He did not. Described himself as a bachelor when he married Donna Stark; there’s no evidence of a divorce from his first wife, so he lied, and was therefore a bigamist when he walked down the aisle with Donna. But there’s another thing I want to show you. Divorce papers.’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘Not Martin Stark’s — divorce papers for Annie and Fred Williams.’

  ‘Who the hell are they !’ Crow asked in exasperation.

  ‘A couple who were friendly with the Starks before the emigration to Canada. Fred Williams was a miner during the war, killed in a roof collapse in 1945. But he divorced Annie in 1942. . .the grounds were her adultery with an American soldier. There was a lot of it about at that time! Anyway, she went back to the States with the soldier in question. The daughter of her marriage to Fred stayed behind though, with Fred. Ceinwen, her name was. She stayed with her father until he was killed in the pit and then she was brought up by her grandmother, on Annie’s side. The grandmother is dead now too, a little while back. She was called Sarah Parry.’

  ‘So the woman called Ceinwen Williams is our mystery girl,’ Crow said. ‘She was the daughter of Alan Stark’s friend; she was the one he mentioned in his will; she was the one Martin Stark met, paid the legacy to, and then married. But never got divorced from, before he married again. But this name, Ceinwen Williams, it’s familiar . . .’

  ‘It’s the woman who works in the office, for Martin Evans. Ceinwen Williams. He’s been employing as an assistant the wife he never got divorced from.’

  * * *

  She sat in her chair in the sitting-room, quietly, hands clasped in her lap, eyes downcast. She was a reserved person, Crow could see that, not a woman who would be likely to send flames of desire leaping in a man, but a woman who would make a good wife. Like his own wife Martha, for instance. Quiet, dependable, aware of his needs. But hardly a femme fatale, and hardly the kind of woman Crow would expect to find in this curious, triangular relationship.

  ‘Did you know Martin was a bigamist?’ Crow asked her, and her eyes flickered sadly up to his, glanced towards the silent Dewi Jones, and then looked down again. She shook her head.

  ‘But you must have suspected it. I mean, did he never talk about the years he spent in Newcastle?’

  Again she shook her head. Crow looked at Jones, frowning. They were getting nowhere with Ceinwen Williams; she was frightened, but she was loyal too. And she was prepared to say nothing that might incriminate Martin. Crow sensed that there was a strong bond of affection, if not love, between her and her employer and he was puzzled by it, and by the situation. He tried again.

  ‘We’ve come here today, Miss Williams, to try to piece together exactly what has happened, and how Donna Stark came to die. You say you did not know Martin had “married” again. But the story we have so far is this. You were brought up by your grandmother after your father died and your mother had gone to the States.’

  Ceinwen Williams nodded.

  ‘Gran Parry,’ she said in a nervous whisper.

  ‘When you were eighteen you went to live in London with a cousin, and you worked there as a typist for a few years. Then, when you were twenty or thereabouts, Martin Stark appeared. He told you a legacy had been left to you by his father; he paid you the money; he courted you, and you got married in October 1959.’

  Again she nodded, without looking up.

  ‘So what went wrong?’ Crow asked.

  She made no reply. Crow persisted.

  ‘I must ask you, Miss Williams. You did not live with Martin long. You came back here to the Rhondda and returned to live with Mrs Parry again. Why did you do that? What happened between you and Martin?’

  She shook her head in quiet desperation. ‘Things just, well . . . they didn’t work out.’

  Her voice was quiet but there was an odd inflection that puzzled Crow. She was afraid, he knew that; afraid of the police, of the questions, of the dredging up of the past, maybe even of Crow’s appearance. But there was another fear; it was the one he wanted to know about.

  ‘All right. Things didn’t work out. You quarrelled?’

  ‘It was . . . yes, all right, something like that.’

  ‘You came to the Rhondda, and Martin left London, went to Newcastle. Why go to the north-east?’

  ‘To escape, I suppose.’

  ‘Escape from what?’

  She made no reply and Crow could only guess that she meant escape from the wreckage of his marriage.

  ‘All right. He left London, you parted, he qualified as an English solicitor in the north-east, he joined a firm, he met a woman called Donna — and he married her. Tell me this, why did he not get a divorce first? Did you oppose it?’

  Ceinwen Williams looked up quickly, a flash of anger illuminating her eyes for the first time and bringing life to her face.

  ‘I never did that. I never knew he married again. And if he had told me, if he had asked for a divorce, I would never have opposed it!’

  ‘He never asked but just went ahead and remarried?’

  The anger still blazed in her face. She opened her
mouth to speak but a shadow touched her eyes, the anger faded, the anxiety and the fear came over her again and she made no reply. Dumbly, she shook her head.

  In a gentle tone, Crow said, ‘You must be reasonable, help me to see how things were. You know the case against Martin. I want to know how everything fits together, for there are some things about his confession that puzzle me. Now tell me: you never heard from Martin after he went to Newcastle?’

  ‘He . . . he wrote a few times. We corresponded.’

  ‘But he never told you he remarried?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor about having to leave his firm?’

  She hesitated, then shook her head.

  ‘No. He just appeared here in Treherbert one day. He told me he had decided to come to live in the Rhondda, had bought up Morgan and Enoch the estate agents, was going to live and work there in Pentre. He . . . he asked me to go to work with him.’

  Crow stared at her, puzzled.

  ‘Just that? To work for him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you and he were still legally married! Why did he not suggest you tried again, tried to make a go of your marriage?’

  Her face was stiff, her hands twisting, one inside the other. She tried to speak, failed, at last found her voice, but her tone was strangled.

  ‘It . . . it wasn’t like that. I was to work for him.’

  Crow glanced at Dewi Jones in something close to despair. He was lost; incapable of understanding these people and not certain whether it was their native Welsh closeness and distrust of outsiders that made it impossible or whether it was simply that Ceinwen Williams had nothing to say or refused to speak out of fear. But fear of what?

  ‘Did you see Donna Stark when she came?’

  ‘No. I never knew about her . . . until you came that day, and arrested Martin. He . . . he said nothing.’

  ‘You mean he never mentioned her visit?’ Crow was incredulous. ‘She must have written to him at his office. Did you not know about that? Or the blackmail letter?’

  Her eyes flashed again.

  ‘I know nothing of a blackmail letter, but she was an evil woman, I am certain of that, plaguing Martin in that way, demanding money from him, threatening to . . .’

  She fell silent. Crow waited. At last he leaned forward, frowning.

  ‘Threatening to do what?’

  She shook her head again, and exasperated, Crow said, ‘It’s all too much to believe. You must have known about her. You were close to Martin, you worked together here all these years, you had been man and wife, and yet he never told you about. . ..’ Crow paused, watching the agony mount in her quiet face.

  ‘He . . . he was protecting you, Ceinwen. Was that it?’

  But protecting her from what?

  * * *

  Crow and Dewi Jones made their way back to the car. They had parked it in a side street because as Jones had explained it never did to drive right up to the door; the neighbours would be out on the street doorsteps waiting for the police to come out again and it could be an uncomfortable experience for a woman like Ceinwen Williams to be the centre of such attention. He had suggested it would be better if they walked a few streets from the car to interview her.

  When they reached the car Crow hesitated, looked about him at the bright blue sky and the hills, and demurred at returning to headquarters in Tonypandy. He suggested walking up on to the hillside, so Dewi Jones led the way into the first bend of the Rhigos, up past the hospital, the big Welshman breathing hard as they climbed, the Englishman less short of breath and longer in the leg. They reached the hairpin bend and crossed it, then found a seat where they could look down into the beginnings of the valley, and up towards Blaencwm and the craggy solid shoulders of the mountain beyond. For perhaps the first time Crow felt the sense of freedom the mountains could bring; till now he had thought of the Rhondda as a narrow, shut-in place with narrow, shut-in people. But up here, above the slag heaps and the pits and away from the dingy streets, a man could breathe and feel good and unfettered.

  Perhaps this was why Martin had come to the valley when his ‘marriage’ with Donna had broken down.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ he murmured.

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  Crow smiled, snapped off a blade of grass and began to chew it. He watched some sheep amble across the road, white dots high against the grey surface of the road, the green-grey surface of the mountain.

  ‘It just doesn’t make sense. Martin marries Ceinwen but within months leaves for Newcastle and she comes here. But later, when his “marriage” to Donna breaks down for reasons we know about, it’s to Ceinwen he returns. But not as man and wife — as employer and employee. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘And then again, he didn’t tell her about Donna even though he wrote to her. Why not? His marriage to Ceinwen had broken down, why didn’t he get a divorce? I just don’t understand it, and when Donna came down here to the valley to screw some money out of him, either with that blackmail letter first which Ceinwen says she knew nothing of, or by a face-to-face meeting, what he does is to kill her. But why? Was it to protect himself? I can’t see that, because he’s doing little to protect himself now with that bloody confession. To protect Ceinwen? She seems to think so even if she’s not saying so. But why the hell did he need to protect her—he was the bigamist, not she. Ceinwen Williams was clear; he was the one in trouble. The gossip would have been about him, she’d been just an innocent victim, she’d just have had the sympathy. What an awful man to marry. . .’

  Crow glanced quickly at Jones, annoyed with himself that he had mimicked a Welsh accent in illustrating the gossip that would have gone on. Jones seemed not to have noticed, but he did not speak, and Crow was sensitive enough to remain quiet for a while, to let the remark and the mimicry fade away into insignificance.

  ‘The answer’s important, I’m sure of it,’ he said at last. ‘What was this Mrs Parry like. . .you know, the grandmother?’

  Dewi Jones shrugged.

  ‘I’ve asked around. A bit of a tartar, I think. She played hell with her daughter Annie when she pushed off with that Yank during the war, but she was quick enough to look after Ceinwen. And give her a home again when she returned from London, after her broken marriage with Martin.’

  ‘Had she ever met Martin?’ Crow asked.

  ‘Why do you wonder about that?’

  Crow chewed at his grass stem thoughtfully. He pulled it out, inspected it, split and broken. Like Ceinwen’s marriage.

  ‘Maybe the grandmother had something to do with breaking it up.’

  ‘If she had, would Ceinwen have returned to live with her?’ Jones countered.

  Crow shrugged.

  ‘It depends. She’d have been pretty old, maybe she needed someone, maybe she wanted Ceinwen back with her from London and didn’t like the idea of the girl marrying . . . But it would take more than that, wouldn’t it, much more? Because Ceinwen still loves Martin, I’m damn sure of that. And Martin, well . . .’

  ‘He’s protected her in the past,’ Jones said.

  ‘Gran Parry, Sarah Parry . . . she’s been dead a while now, of course.’

  ‘Couple of years.’

  ‘So any secrets she might have held would have died with her. We’re left with Ceinwen and Martin, and they know something, I’m sure, something they won’t tell us. Or at least, Martin knows, and somehow . . .’

  ‘Lily Jenkins,’ Dewi Jones said thoughtfully.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘She might be able to help. Lily Jenkins Secrets.’

  Crow threw down the grass stem in a certain exasperation. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s the thing you said about Mrs Parry’s secrets dying with her. They might not have done, you see. There’s Mrs Jenkins.’

  ‘What about her?’

  Dewi Jones wriggled a little uncomfortably.

  ‘You won’t know how things a
re done in the valley, sir. Different from ways outside, over death, I mean. Everyone goes to the church or the chapel, but only the men go in the cars to the cemetery. Stand at the graveside. The women, they all go home, prepare tea for the men when they get back. Then everyone sits around, and drinks tea and eats ham sandwiches — usually paid for out of a whip-around taken in the street — and they talk about the one who’s gone, and what he or she was like and so on—’

  ‘A wake,’ Crow said.

  ‘More or less. But the whole thing starts earlier than that, really. You see, the undertaker arrives to take the corpse to the chapel of rest, or to arrange flowers and coffin in the front room and all that, but nine times out of ten he’ll find half his work done for him. Corpse washed, laid out, clothed, done up nice for viewing.’

  ‘Laid out by whom?’

  ‘By the Lily Jenkinses of this world. Damn, sir, you got to appreciate her kind to understand. They’re always old before their time; ancient when they’re twenty if you know what I mean. And then they seem to go on for ever. They never marry, they always dress the same way, usually grey or black, they make the best mince pies you ever tasted and they draw a chicken in a flash. Mince pies, drawing Christmas turkeys and laying people out. It’s what they live for, their reason for existence.’

  The burst of speech was delivered defensively, but Crow’s attention was caught and he ignored the flush staining Dewi Jones’s features.

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ Jones began, waxing more confident, ‘it kind of struck me when you mention secrets, that’s what she’s called you know, Lily Jenkins Secrets. Thing is, she’s a bit different from most other layers-out in the valley. It was always as though she could sniff out the ones likely to die. And she would sit with them, If an old man was sick and pretty old it’d be Lily who’d sit with him, tend him till he finally went. Gave the family some relief, you know? And young people these days, though they don’t hold with the old ways, they were still happy to have Lily around.’

  ‘Lily Jenkins Secrets . . .’ Crow mused. ‘You’re suggesting dying people talked to her.’

  ‘Dying people do talk. And what do they talk about? I don’t know. Lily Jenkins does. That’s how she got her nickname.’