and there was a livid blue tattoo-mark on his weathered-looking forehead.
‘Hugh Llewellyn Johnson, thirty-eight, and my family lives at Merthyr.’
‘You are a tapestry-weaver, Mr Johnson?’
‘Aye, that I am, though I was ten years in the mines.’
‘That’s where you got that birthmark, eh?’ interpolated Sir Daynes, with suspicious casualness.
‘Oh yes, I did — you can always tell a miner. I got that one in Gwrw Pit in 1940.’
‘Hit on the head, eh?’
‘Man, I was bloody well buried — did you never hear of the Gwrw? Two days we were down there, and never heard a sound. The dead men were lying with us. There’s some who lies there yet.’
‘Hmn. Nasty experience, what?’
‘It’s one I won’t forget.’
‘Sort of thing to give you dreams, and that?’
‘Sometimes I dream I’m down there still, and wake up tearing the clothes off my limbs.’
Sir Daynes rubbed his hands with a sort of grisly satisfaction, and leaned back comfortably in his chair.
‘Suppose you never get blackouts — that sort of thing?’
The ex-miner shook his head.
‘Ah well… get on with your statement, man. Tell the inspector what you know about the “deceased”.’
Johnson’s statement followed the now-familiar pattern in its early stages. He had been working at his loom when Earle had been brought into the workshop for the first time. Johnson, who was an artist as well as a weaver, was at work on a tapestry from his own cartoon picturing the Glaslyn and Yr Wyddfa, and Earle, with his customary tactlessness, had taken it upon himself to assure Johnson that the colour-values were incorrect. Johnson had thereupon catechized Earle on his knowledge of colour-values, more especially as applied to tapestry and the uncertain art of dyeing. Earle had been obliged to admit his profound ignorance, at least touching the two latter.
‘Took him down a peg, did you?’ enquired the subtle Sir Daynes.
‘Oh yes, a good peg or two. He knew nothing whateffer of dyeing and sunlight tests.’
‘Sent him off with a flea in his ear, eh?’
‘Well, no, not exactly, he wasn’t a man you could handle like that. But I read him a good sermon, that I’ll warrant you. By the time I had done he knew a good deal more about tapestry than when I had started.’
Nevertheless, Earle had got off on the wrong foot with Johnson. It was easy to see that the Welshman found it difficult to forgive the reckless strictures on his expert art. When he found himself being neglected by Brass, till then his constant admirer and teacher, the grudge, already in being, was fanned into active dislike.
‘I don’t mind admitting I could neffer get on with the man. Americans within reason, I say, but this one was a plain nuisance about the place. He was always upsetting the womenfolk, man; there wasn’t half of the work done when he was around. And he had no respect for his betters at all. You would think he was a Royal Tudor at least, the way he carried on.’
‘Not so big, either, but you could have put him down, eh?’
‘Do you doubt it, man, when I have been in the ring with Tommy Farr himself, down there in Tonypandy?’
‘Boxing man, are you, Johnson?’
‘Good gracious yes — I have my cups to prove it. Five years I was the Area Middleweight Champion, and not far past it now. I have fought the best, I tell you. There are many good men with the mark of Hugh Johnson’s glove on their jaw.’
‘Wonder you didn’t clip this Yank one.’
‘I have wondered myself too, before today. But you could never get him fighting, man, that was the whole trouble. You could say what you liked to him, it would never get him mad. Some men are made that way. They haven’t got the wickedness to play on. I tell you, it would have been like meat and drink to me sometimes to see that young man with my blood in his eye!’
Sir Daynes angled a bit further, but there were no fish to be caught, so he handed the questioning back to Dyson.
Johnson, at all events, hadn’t received the news of Earle’s Christmas visit with enthusiasm. Had he known in time, he would have arranged to spend his Christmas in his home town, along with a married sister. But the uncertainty had prevented that. Christmas leave had been cancelled at Sculton, and was only restored at the last moment. Sullenly, the Welshman had brooded over the prospect of what he considered to be a spoiled Christmas.
‘You will say I was no true Christian to take against the man that way, and after what has happened, now, I may be sorry that I did. But God help us, man, there are some people who just get in our bowels and blood — Christian it may not be, but by St David, it is human!’
Earle had arrived, and Johnson’s worst fears were realized. The young American was in his most bumptious and obnoxious mood. Moreover, he had been granted a sort of general licence by the rest of the household. They were all in a tale to worship Earle, and, as a natural consequence, to condemn the surly Welshman. Johnson had retired into his shell. He had always felt a little alien in this Saesneg establishment, and now circumstances had taken a turn that seemed to cut him off entirely. Dourly he accepted the part forced upon him. He was an outsider — very well. He would play an outsider’s role. Without looking for trouble — was it not the season of goodwill? — he would make them feel the injustice of their attitude towards him, and the folly of abasing themselves to this American clown. Merely Place had deserved its Diogenes, and it should have one.
The Welshman broke off, his dark eyes darting fiercely from one to the other of them.
‘And now I have it in mind to tell you the whole truth about what I saw after the party last night. At first I was not certain. A big thing it is, deciding if it is best to tell the police something which may cause trouble. But a crime has been done, a wicked, evil crime, and the guilt must lie where it lies though the devil himself cries Silence. So now I will tell you.’
Sir Daynes made sounds as though to applaud these upright sentiments, and Johnson, drawing his chair closer to the table, continued:
‘The bile is a bad thing for a man’s stomach, look you, and strong wine is no good fellow for it. When I got to my room after the party last night I could not sleep no more than fly, so, after pacing my room for some time, I had a mind to go to the library and fetch myself a book.’
‘Eh?’ ejaculated Sir Daynes, sitting up very straight. ‘What library, man? What time was this?’
‘As to the time, I do not know precisely, but the library is the one in the state drawing room, which is handy for our wing.’
‘The state drawing room!’ Sir Daynes was making noble efforts to establish a mental picture of the layout of the state apartments. ‘But wait a minute, man — state drawing room. Hasn’t that got a door to the gallery in the great hall?’
‘It has indeed. It gives straight on to it.’
‘And you — you’re admitting you went there, some time after the party last night?’
‘A good hour after — past one o’clock, I’d say.’
Sir Daynes stared at the ex-miner, a curious glint in his eye. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘go on, Johnson.’
‘Well, as I stood there, looking through the bookcase, I thought I heard some voices in the hall. Not loud, you understand, but not soft either. It sounded like two people in an argument, and now and then they’d let their voices rise a little.’
‘Whose voices were they, man?’
‘I could not say. One of them was a woman.’
‘A woman!’ Sir Daynes jerked his head back. ‘Well… go on.’
‘The voices stopped. I slipped out to the gallery. They have a light there in the hall, a single bulb, and I could just make out the gallery stretching back there, like a great horseshoe. At first there was nothing to see, but then I heard a step over by the stairs, and out of the big marble doorway came the figure of a woman — in a hurry she was — and disappeared towards the other side of the house. After that it was all quiet, and I went back to my room. And that is the whole truth, God help me, of what I saw after last night’s party.’
The expressions that passed over Sir Daynes’s face during the latter part of this recital were worth the study of an actor. First his eyes opened wide and his jaw imperceptibly sank. Then a flush spread over his features, and
