Aftermath

40. Helpless Bravery

The next morning, the police came with an ambulance to take Montgomery away. 

I watched from a dusty window as Carter and Agatha spoke with the constable standing on the gravel of the forecourt next to his Tin Lizzie,  its door ajar. It was the same officer who had been sent down the last two times we'd lost one of ours, and I knew what he was required to ask. 

Every suicide had to be investigated to determine if it wasn't murder in disguise. I saw the wisdom in that, especially given who we were. Many of the men had been in the most violent situations, had killed on several occasions, and who was to say that, when provoked, they wouldn't do it again? Rages, perhaps murderous rages, were thinkable. Unlikely, but thinkable. Those who didn't know the men very well always had that in the back of their minds. And the police were just as susceptible to those same wary notions as everyone else, perhaps even more so considering who their business put them into contact with daily. 

Carter led the ambulance men round the side of the house to the chapel, a metal coffin on poles bouncing between them. The constable continued to ask Agatha questions. Intermittently, he would jot something down in his notebook, but he seemed largely to content himself to nodding and listening as Agatha told him far more than he needed to know.   

The men returned with Carter in their wake and loaded Montgomery into the back of the ambulance, slamming the doors shut behind him. With a wave to the constable, they started the motor, and, spewing small clouds of black smoke, slowly circled the court before driving off down the long road towards the gates of Cloud Hill. 

Agatha turned and came back into the house, pulling her woollen shawl closer around her shoulders and Carter escorted the constable in the direction of the forest. I imagined to show him Montgomery's cabin and the tree where we found him.  

The day was bright with a clear sky. Placid clouds in ordered banks drifted by overhead. It would probably be warmer in the afternoon. That would be splendid for the men out in the fields. They were almost finished with the sowing, I'd been told. 

What had happened? Something had set Montgomery off, I was sure of it. The last time I'd spoken to him he was clearly disappointed not to be able to go back to his cabin, but he was coping well. Or was he? Were there problems I knew nothing about?

The constable would certainly want to speak to Link and Rhys-Jones.  And I would have to, as well. 

At some point. 

Agatha had insisted I stay in my room while she and Carter handled the whole affair with the police, arguing that I hadn't been there when it had happened and couldn't be expected to know anything. And besides, the state of my face might cause more raised eyebrows than was good for us. That was fine with me. I had no interest in talking to anyone. Not yet at least.

The letter to Montgomery's family lay on my writing desk awaiting an address. It was a small, white square bursting with helplessness, confusion and sincerest condolences, I can't say had been easy to write. None of us really knew him. The men had tried to befriend him in their usual way, but he'd preferred to steer clear of people if he could. 

Nature had been his healer, that's what I'd written. But it was also been what had caused the rumours and the laying of those idiotic snares that had spooked him and brought him inside. That, I hadn't written.  

The police would contact his family and delivery the tragic news, but a letter from me was the minimum of decency. Out of the eight letters I'd had to write to the families of the men we'd lost, I'd only ever received two replies. One screaming at me with all the pain of bereaved parents for not keeping their damaged son safe from himself, and the other profusely thanking me for taking in their lad when they could not longer manage with him. Both of those replies -- as well as the five who chose not to speak to me -- had torn me apart.