In Two Minds

by Alis Hawkins

  ‘Do you think he did go back to Tresaith?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Otherwise, when did he take Hughes’s signet ring?’

  ‘You don’t think he’s making up this story of a woman to get himself off the hook?’

  There was a moment’s silence but, when John answered, his tone told me that he had not been hesitating so much as giving my question proper consideration. ‘If the Whaler hadn’t told me about him watching whatever was happening on the beach with his telescope, I might. But, as it is, no. I mean, if you wanted to offload the blame for something like this, would you come up with a woman as the culprit?’

  Possibly not, but somebody who was foresighted enough to plan a whole new career for himself might; and the story Jones had told did more than simply divert suspicion away from him self. He could present himself as a man who had allowed reticence at the thought of ruining a wronged woman’s reputation to prevent him from coming forward to say what he knew. After all, in his version of events, she was innocent of anything but self-defence.

  Furthermore, though this was hardly conclusive, his story fitted what we knew of Hughes’s character.

  ‘What’s your opinion of Jones?’ I asked. ‘Is he clever enough to make all this up?’

  Again, John gave the question consideration. ‘He is. But I don’t think he did.’

  I raised my eyebrows, inviting him to tell me why. Projecting facial expressions into the unresponsive whirlpool felt contrived, but if I did not do it, I feared I would look like one of those blind, expressionless beggars you see on the streets in London.

  ‘I think I know who the woman was,’ John said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. If you take a minute to think about it, you’ll know too.’

  I did not want to play guessing games. ‘Tell me.’

  John shifted position in the chair and I wondered if he was as confident as he sounded. ‘I think the paper she was waving at Hughes was an emigration bond and she wanted him to redeem it.’

  ‘Maggie Abel?’The bent and broken woman we’d found crouching in the manger at Blaenywaun chapel stables? ‘She hasn’t the wit, surely?’

  ‘Not now, possibly. But this was before her child died. She was intent on redeeming the bond money to pay Reckitt off and get more laudanum without being beholden to him.’

  ‘Does Maggie Abel have a limp?’

  ‘I don’t know. But her husband told us she took in sewing. That’s the kind of work a crippled woman’d do, isn’t it?’

  I quickly shuffled through all that we knew and checked it against John’s assumptions. I could not fault his reasoning, yet Maggie Abel seemed such an unlikely killer.

  ‘Would she have the strength to drag his body to the limekiln and hide it?’ I asked. Even before the decline precipitated by her child’s death, she could not have been a robust woman and Jenkyn Hughes had been well built.

  I could almost hear John thinking. ‘No. I think Shoni Jones did that. I think he told her she should go home and he’d deal with it all. It would’ve suited him to have her out of the way so he could hide the body. He had things to do before people realised Hughes was dead.’

  Leaning back in my chair I shut my eyes. ‘How do you suggest we proceed?’ It was his efforts that had brought us to this point, justice dictated that he should be allowed to decide what to do next.

  ‘I think we should go and see David Abel again,’ he said. ‘Ask him if his wife has a longstanding limp. If the answer is yes, then I think we’ve got the truth. At least about how Jenkyn Hughes came to be hit on the head.’

  It was a sensible suggestion. David Abel had told us that his wife had tried to speak to Jenkyn Hughes but had been unable to find him; perhaps he believed this to be the truth, perhaps not. In either case, hearing his response to Shoni Jones’s testimony could only be instructive.

  ‘You’re not thinking of going back today?’ I asked. Though it had been sunny all day, by now the light was nearly gone.

  ‘No. I’ll go back into Newcastle Emlyn this evening.’

  ‘Why don’t you stay here? Have dinner with me and we’ll find a bed for you for tonight.’

  Previously, John had refused such offers; that he did not immediately do so, now, made me hopeful that he was minded to accept my offer of employment. It had, after all, included the prospect of living at Glanteifi.

  ‘Thank you, Harry,’ he said. ‘If you’re sure that wouldn’t be too much trouble, I will.’

  In truth, it was not only this evidence that John was softening towards the thought of becoming under-steward that made me glad he had agreed to stay. With Arthur Philips and Reckitt both occupied elsewhere, I had spent a long and ennervating afternoon with my father trying to decide how to broach the subject of Glanteifi’s mortgage with him.

  Given that his current state made it almost impossible for him to explain, I could hardly ask him why he had not discussed the estate’s precarious finances with me. Besides, no long deliberation was necessary to supply the answer: my father had been afraid that I would see it as some kind of lever to shift me and bring me home.

  Look what a state things have got into here. Glanteifi needs new blood, new energy. Was that not what I would have heard, if he had told me he had mortgaged the estate? I would have felt pressed, forced, my good nature presumed upon.

  In the end, during one particularly inexhaustible silence, I blurted, ‘I’m so sorry you felt you could not tell me before – about the estate, the mortgage.’

  He raised his good hand as if to say ‘what’s done is done.’

  ‘Look at us,’ I said. ‘The blind and the mute. We’re a pair well matched, aren’t we?’

  It was a phrase from my childhood: horses, matched for size and colour, or oxen, matched for strength and their pull at the plough.

  ‘Not – blind,’ my father said.

  I knew what he meant. ‘You’re right. I’m not quite blind. And you’re not quite mute. The imperfectly sighted and the communicatively inconvenienced, then.’

  ‘Again?’

  Realising that I’d spoken too quickly, I repeated my weak quip. I was discovering, to my chagrin, that it is difficult to slow one’s speech without sounding condescending or pedantic.

  My father let out a grunt of amusement, and I smiled. For the first time in my life, I felt myself to be on an equal footing with him. I suppose I might have felt more – that, now, I had the upper hand. But I did not. Not when I felt wholly unable to choose my own fate.

  Had my father died of his apoplexy, would I have felt entitled to change my destiny, to sell the mortgaged estate before bankruptcy ruined me and seek my fortune, Dick Whittington-like, in the capital?

  The question was redundant. My father was still in the land of the living, still, nominally, squire of Glanteifi. Time would tell whether he retained the mental acuity to make decisions but, as things stood, he was in no fit state to run the place. For the foreseeable future, I would have to take up his mantle, all the while knowing that I was being watched and judged.

  I would need an ally.

  ‘I have suggested to John Davies that he become Ormiston’s assistant,’ I said. Then, when my father did not respond, I repeated the information in short phrases. There was always the possibility that I had shocked him so greatly by my presumption that he was speechless but I preferred to imagine that I had spoken too quickly. When I had finished my reiteration, my father produced a single word.

  ‘Local.’

  This was hardly the response I had been anticipating. ‘Yes. A local boy. Somebody who can speak to the tenants on their own terms. In their own language.’

  In response, my father produced some incoherent noises in an attempt, I assumed, to add further thoughts. I tried to elucidate these to ease his struggle.

  ‘You feel that a local man will do better than Ormiston, a foreigner?’

  ‘Yes. No.’

  ‘Yes and no?’ I hazarded.

  ‘Thassright.’

  �
��With the mortgage and so forth,’ I began, trying to keep my sentences short and simple, ‘we’re going to have to work more closely with tenants.’ I waited for a response but there was none. Hoping that he understood what I was saying, I forged on. ‘The estate can’t go on paying for all improvements. We must ask the tenants to take some responsibility for their own farms.’ I paused again. ‘John understands their lives. He can help me win their trust.’

  I hoped devoutly that that was true and that the tenants would not simply see him as a jumped-up solicitor’s clerk. Apprenticeship to Ormiston, if handled wisely, should see to that.

  Some strangled vowel sounds came from my father, as if he was trying to prime the pump of speech.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Coroner,’ he spat after a few seconds.

  It was time to establish myself.

  ‘Yes. I have decided that I will stand as coroner. I don’t know whether I will be successful but I think I am suited to the position.’

  We had both left it at that.

  Now, once I had helped my father upstairs to his bed and left him in the care of the footman who had volunteered for the more than usually onerous post of valet, I joined John in the library.

  ‘I’ve been giving some thought to what you said earlier,’ John began when we had settled ourselves.

  ‘About taking the position of assistant steward?’

  ‘Oh – yes – that as well. But I meant what you said about what we should do next. I’ve been thinking about Teff Harris.’

  Stifling disappointment, I nodded. ‘I see.’

  ‘I think we should go and see Billy Go-About – tell him what we know and get him to let Teff go.’

  ‘You’ve changed your tune. You were all for hanging him at one stage.’

  ‘That was before we’d investigated properly.’

  John sounded mulish. What had changed his mind? The attractive Mrs Harris? The little boy, Clarkson?

  ‘Very well. I’ll write a letter in the morning.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And the other subject?’

  I watched his face as best I could. I thought he might have been moistening his lips but could not say with any certainty.

  ‘I’ve given it a lot of thought.’

  My heart sank. ‘But?’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me – I would like the job. But…’ he gave a sudden, nervous laugh. ‘Thing is, Harry, when I first knew you, you were all for selling the estate to the tenants, not being a squire, just making your living like anybody else. What’d happen to me if you decided to do that?’

  ‘I’d make sure you were all right.’

  ‘But how, Harry, how?If you were a private citizen with no estate, what job could you give me which would make up for losing the stewardship?’

  It was a fair question and not one I had an answer to.

  ‘So,’ he said, his gaze so earnest I could feel it on my skin. ‘I’d want to do the solicitors’ exams while I learned stewarding. Then, if anything stopped me taking over from Mr Ormiston, I’d have another string to my bow.’

  I was glad to agree. Quite apart from his own reservations, with the estate mortgaged as it was, it would have been negligent of me not to offer him some kind of insurance policy.

  John

  Early next morning, I rode out of the stableyard with more in my mind than just the conversations I was going to have with Billy Go-About and David Abel. Staying at Glanteifi’d given me a lot to think about.

  I could see that living in the mansion would be very pleasant – a single night’d been enough to show me that. A feather mattress instead of a lumpy horsehair one. Warm water brought up to shave with instead of a jug of cold on the washstand. A dinner that was plentiful and delicious instead of stodgy grey stinginess.

  The one thing I hadn’t been taken with was the necessary closet next to my bedroom. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that it was dirty to do your business indoors, right next to where you slept. If I moved in to Glanteifi, it was going to take me a while to feel comfortable about not going outside when I needed to.

  But, still, the thought that I might be able to come and go at the big house as of right made my head swim.

  Steward to the Glanteifi estate. The nearest I’d ever come to the position before was standing behind my father on the quarter days, watching him count out his rent and answer questions about our house and byre. What condition were they in? (Good enough for us, thank you, sir. Except we hadn’t even had a privy, the field behind the house had always had to do for us.) Had my father made improvements? (Not this quarter, sir, no. And not any other quarter either, money being barely enough to keep us alive let alone think about making improvements.) Had we been able to pay our tithes on time and in full? (Yes, sir. God knows why the vicar deserved our money. We never darkened the door of his church.) Takings from the market been adequate, had they? (Yes, thank you, sir. No. They’d been barely half what they’d been in my grandfather’s time.)

  I imagined myself asking those questions and Harry’s tenants looking at me, caps in their hands, worrying about giving the wrong answer. One thing I’d realised since working for Mr Schofield was that tenant farmers often didn’t understand the strong position they were in under the law. I’d be able to tell them that they were entitled to ask Harry to make improvements for them, that being a tenant gave them rights as well as duties.

  But what was Mr Ormiston going think about having a solicitor’s clerk foisted on to him for an apprentice? It was all very well Harry saying he’d not had an assistant till now and any help would be better than none but I wasn’t sure Mr Ormiston’d see it in that light.

  ‘He’s not opened up today. Can’t be home.’

  I’d been standing in front of David Abel’s workshop for the last five minutes, wondering whether I should go around the back. There’d been no reply to my knocking. ‘Where is he then?’ I asked the woman who’d spoken from her doorway.

  She hitched her folded arms further up under her bosom, as if she needed the weight taking off it. ‘I don’t suppose that’s your business any more than it is mine.’

  ‘It is my business, as it happens. I’m the coroner’s officer. I need to speak to Mr Abel.’

  ‘Well, if he was going to come to the door he’d’ve come by now.’

  She banged back into her own house with a look that was supposed to cut me down to size. I made a face at her door then looked about in case anybody’d seen me. Wouldn’t do for the future steward of Glanteifi to be seen pulling faces on St Dogmaels high street.

  I got back into the saddle and sat, thinking. Should I go looking for David Abel? As likely as not he’d gone to fetch his wife from the Blaenywaun stables to make her fit to be seen at the meeting tomorrow. He wouldn’t appreciate me chasing about after him. And, to be honest, I wasn’t over keen on another tangle with the madwoman.

  Did Abel know what his wife had done? Always assuming it was Maggie that Shoni Jones’d seen on Tresaith beach. And, if he did know, would he take her away if he thought we’d come for her?

  No. Maggie’d be desperate to get that bond redeemed and Dr Reckitt paid off. And a man who’d let his wife sit in a manger rambling wasn’t going to subdue her by force. The Abels’d be at that meeting the next day. I was sure of it. There’d be time enough, then, to see whether Maggie Abel had a limp.

  I turned Seren’s head towards Cardigan and Billy Go-About.

  Harry and I’d agreed that if we were going to get Teff Harris released we’d have to tell Inspector Bellis everything we knew. It wasn’t as if he was going to press charges against Maggie Abel – if Hughes hadn’t come after her, she’d’ve just left and limped her way back to Cardigan.

  Had the lump in his head made Jenkyn Hughes think that any woman was his for the taking or had he always been like that? Short of going to America and asking, we’d never know.

  Seren trotted down the hill, her shoes striking hard and cold. It was misty today and
the dampness seemed to catch sound and hold it, so that it felt as if the sound of the little mare’s hoofs hung in the air, wrapping itself around us as we went. Perhaps that’s how it was for Maggie Abel – the fog in her head hanging there, keeping the fears for her daughter’s body wrapped close. Reckitt with a spade. A small body on the dissecting table.

  Without meaning to, I recalled the autopsy examination on Tresaith beach. The colours and smells of rotting flesh and bone and guts. The inside of Hughes’s head.

  What mother wouldn’t want to keep her child from that?

  Not Maggie Abel, that was for sure.

  Poor mad Maggie.

  Was it Jenkyn Hughes’s death, as much as Lizzie’s, that had driven her mad? She might not’ve intended to kill him but hitting him on the head with a stone had been the end of the American. And, if Shoni Jones’s story was true, Hughes had lain on top of her while he died.

  What had Reckitt said about how quickly Hughes might’ve died? Possibly in a small number of minutes.

  I forced myself to imagine it. A person bleeding and breathing his last while lying on top of you. It was enough to make anybody mad.

  Would Maggie Abel recover if she got the bond money and paid it back to Benton Reckitt? Would she comb her hair and wash her face and go back to being David Abel’s devoted wife? Or had fear and grief – and guilt – affected her so badly that she’d never get her wits back?