The Path of the Wicked Read online

  I guessed that she’d have come under some pressure. Men who fathered illegitimate children could be made to support them in the workhouse. The neat, kindly man standing beside me would have been one of the people who questioned Joanna.

  ‘How old was she?’ I said.

  ‘Eighteen then. Seventeen when the child was born.’

  ‘So she was taken into the workhouse?’

  ‘Yes. And I’m sorry to say that from the start she proved difficult. The supervisor several times reported her to the board of guardians for laziness and disobedience. She was quarrelsome too and had to be disciplined for fighting with one of the other women in the laundry room. On the credit side, everybody agrees that she cared for the baby. In fact, some of her problems came from trying to get better treatment for him over the other children. Of course, other mothers resented that.’

  He went quiet for so long that I had to prompt him.

  ‘You said she absconded from the workhouse.’

  ‘Yes. It seems she just walked out one evening with the baby, before the doors were locked for the night. Somebody should have noticed she was gone, but nobody did. There’d been another quarrel that day and Joanna had been sulky, but that was nothing out of the way. In the morning she and the baby were missed. The other women said they hadn’t noticed anything. Good riddance was their attitude. In fact, it might have been the general attitude, except for what happened next.’

  ‘The baby died.’

  ‘Yes. The thing to understand was that by then it was November and the weather particularly harsh – rain most days, puddles in the road, water in the ditches, temperatures down to freezing at night. When the guardians heard she’d left, we were sure she wouldn’t stay more than one night outside. She’d be found in some doorway, begging to be taken in again. Only that didn’t happen. For some reason she decided to leave the town entirely and make for Gloucester.’

  A matter of ten miles away.

  ‘Why there?’

  ‘Simply because it’s the next big town. She hoped to find work there. At least, that’s what she told the woman at an inn where she stopped.’

  ‘She had money to stay at an inn?’

  ‘No. It was the morning after she left the workhouse. She’d probably spent the night in a barn somewhere. She came to this inn not far out of Cheltenham and knocked on the door, begging for a cup of milk for the baby. The landlord’s wife says she was shivering, blue with cold. She was a kind-hearted woman – asked her in to get warm by the kitchen fire and gave her some milk for the baby, bread and tea for herself. Joanna wanted to know if they needed a maid, but they didn’t, so after getting warm she moved on with the baby. It must have been slow going, because it was just after daylight the next morning when a carter found her sitting on a bank on the outskirts of Gloucester. Without the baby.’

  ‘What had happened to it?’

  ‘She told the carter she’d lost it. She wanted him to take her back along the road to look for it. She was pretty well paralyzed with cold and exhaustion, couldn’t walk any further. Of course, the carter couldn’t go back because he had his rounds to do, but he gave her a ride into Gloucester and put her in the care of a constable. They took her back to look for the baby. She identified more or less the place where she’d last seen it. She said it was dark, that she’d had to stop and step off the road into some bushes to . . . er . . . adjust her dress . . .’

  A call of nature, I guessed, but he was too delicate to say so.

  ‘So she put the child down on the bank, but she must have come out of the bushes in a different place and couldn’t find him again. She went up and down in the dark looking for him and, by her account, shouting for help. But it was on a lonely stretch with no houses and nobody coming by. Then it occurred to her that she needed somebody with a lantern, so she started running and fell and twisted her ankle, didn’t even know which direction she was heading. In the end, all she could do was sit down and wait to be found.’

  As he told the story, he’d been talking more and more quickly and had to pause for breath.

  ‘And they found the baby dead?’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘In a ditch, in about a foot of icy water. She said it was where she’d left him on the bank. She hadn’t known there was a ditch.’

  ‘So he’d rolled down and drowned?’

  ‘That was the defence case. She had a good young barrister, acting pro bono publico. He did what he could.’

  ‘But the jury didn’t believe him? Or her?’

  ‘No. There was her record and character, you see. The prosecution made the point that if she’d really cared for the child, she’d have stayed where he was safe, in the workhouse. Their case was that she’d wilfully absconded, felt burdened by the child and deliberately drowned him.’

  He hadn’t looked at me while he was telling the story. He didn’t look at me now, bending to pull a groundsel seedling from the border of mignonette. When he had the small weed in his hand, he stood staring down at it, as if puzzled how it had come to be there.

  ‘But you believed her?’ I said. ‘You think it was accidental?’

  ‘It was out of my hands. It wasn’t for me to decide. She was sentenced to death at the Lent assizes.’

  His nervous determination to see fair play for Jack Picton was easier to understand now. He’d failed Joanna and dreaded repeating it with her brother.

  ‘Did you sign the petition to the Queen against hanging her?’

  ‘Yes. Some people thought I shouldn’t, as a magistrate.’

  ‘Where was Jack Picton in all this? Surely he should have kept his sister out of the workhouse, at least,’ I said.

  ‘Where indeed? This happened just after that dreadful business at Newport and he was hiding himself away somewhere.’

  ‘So, what was the first he knew about what was happening to his sister?’

  ‘I don’t know for certain. He only reappeared in public after she’d been sentenced.’

  ‘What did he do then?’

  ‘To be fair to him, moved heaven and earth – letters, the petition. His Chartist friends marched through Cheltenham. The Smithies father and son had a lot to do with that. There was even talk that young Smithies had a tendresse for Joanna, until she turned into such a wilful girl. The wilder sort were even talking about a raid to snatch her away from the gallows if they tried to hang her.’

  ‘Did the wilder sort include one Barty Jones by any chance?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And in all this nobody ever knew who the father of the baby was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why in the world didn’t she say? She was going to be hanged – what worse could anyone do to her?’

  ‘The child died and it was her fault. What difference did it make who the father was?’

  Quite a lot of difference, I thought. In spite of the sunshine and scent of flowers, the cold and dark of that November road had got into my body, and I guessed it wouldn’t easily go away. Mr Godwit looked longingly towards his study window. Perhaps the cold had got to him as well and he wanted to take refuge among his books and papers. I wasn’t quite ready to let him go.

  ‘You said her mother took her in at first, after the child was born. So she’d been living away from home until then?’

  ‘Yes. To be precise, the mother took her in before the birth, once her condition became so obvious that she had to leave her employment.’

  ‘What employment?’

  ‘As a maid.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In a local household.’

  It was like trying to drag out a tooth. His shoulders were hunched, his words directed at the mignonette.

  ‘Which local household?’

  At first I thought the wriggle he gave was a physical sign of reluctance to answer. Then I realized that he’d nodded his head down to his right shoulder.

  ‘Oh dear, not the vicarage,’ I said, trying to follow the direction. At least the misunderstanding made him say it in words.


  ‘No, not the vicarage. The Kembles.’

  I stared. ‘Joanna Picton was working for the Kembles?’

  A nod.

  ‘Have I understood this right? She was working as a maid for the Kembles, she became pregnant, she was dismissed when her pregnancy became obvious and everything else followed from that?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘And the obvious connection never occurred to anybody?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Mr Godwit, did you hire a fool?

  ‘Fool?’

  ‘Because you seem to think I am one. May we please put delicacy aside? When a female servant becomes pregnant in a household where there’s a son, there’s a question that everybody asks himself.’

  ‘I’m quite certain that Rodney Kemble is an entirely moral young man.’

  ‘His father, then?’

  ‘Quite out of the question.’

  ‘What did Jack Picton think? Did he suppose it was quite out of the question?’

  ‘I don’t know or care what Jack Picton thought.’

  ‘Perhaps you should care. He comes home from somewhere and finds out, if he doesn’t know already, that his sister’s in prison and sentenced to death. He already hates the Kembles because of his father’s accident. What conclusion do you think he’d draw?’

  Somehow I must have jolted him into using his brain, or admitting that he possessed one. He looked at me for the first time in the conversation.

  ‘In that case, why kill the governess? Why not kill Rodney Kemble?’ It was a good question and, since I had no answer to it, I let him go.

  When the mind is unquiet – and mine was very unquiet – there’s no better treatment than watching horses graze. I went to the paddock and leaned on the gate. Rancie was disappointed that I wasn’t bringing a carrot as usual but graciously accepted a few handfuls of the longer grass that grew on my side of the gate. The cob stayed in the shade of a tree, recovering from his exertions of the day before. After a while Rancie went to join him. I watched them, lulled by the gentle rasping of their teeth against grass blades.

  ‘That mare’s getting a grass belly on her as big as a pumpkin.’

  I’d been thinking that and was mildly surprised that the observation had expressed itself in Amos Legge’s voice. Then I turned and there he was, standing beside me. He was dressed for the country, in breeches, leggings and yellow waistcoat, but as spry as in Hyde Park and smiling broadly.

  ‘Where did you spring from,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d be in Herefordshire by now.’

  ‘I was, but I came back. Business with a horse.’

  That was nothing new, but I was surprised that he’d spent no more than a couple of days at home.

  ‘Heard there’d been a bit of bother here last night,’ he said. ‘Something to do with you, was it?’

  ‘I didn’t start it, but I was there, yes.’

  He nodded, unsurprised and asking no questions.

  ‘Your business going well?’

  ‘No.’

  We both stood, watching Rancie.

  ‘So, aren’t you going to ask me about my business?’ he said.

  ‘You told me. A horse.’

  ‘Bay gelding I picked up in Ledbury.’

  A market town, about halfway between here and his home. It seemed a lot of journeying for one sale.

  ‘A bargain, was he?’

  ‘I reckon the man who sold him was glad to get rid of him. He was kicking the front of the cart into next week’s firewood.’

  ‘A bad-tempered carthorse? That doesn’t sound up to your usual standards.’

  ‘He had a fair bit to be bad-tempered about. For a start, he wasn’t a carthorse.’

  He waited, the grin broader than ever. I gave in.

  ‘So what was he?’

  ‘A racehorse, I’d say. Not the best but not the worst either.’

  The world is full of racehorses, most of them bay, but his expression and tone of voice suddenly brought a picture to mind – an early morning in July and two farm workers watching a bay and his rider galloping in the distance.

  ‘You don’t mean young Paley’s horse?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘But what was he doing in Ledbury? As far as I can gather, Paley was going in the opposite direction.’

  ‘That’s the point. I reckon whoever got his hands on the horse took him well away from where he found him.’

  ‘Stolen?’

  ‘I reckon.’

  ‘But how do you know? Young Paley might have sold him. We know he had no money.’

  ‘If he’d sold him, he’d have made sure he got something like a proper price for him and he wouldn’t have turned up kicking the daylights out of a market cart. I asked the man I bought him off where he got him, and he was a bit shifty, like. I reckon he bought him at a knock-down price and guessed he wasn’t the other man’s to sell.’

  ‘So it doesn’t mean that young Paley went to Herefordshire?’

  It would have been surprising. London or even a Channel port would be a more likely destination for a fast-living young man down on his luck.

  ‘Just the opposite, I’d say. Suppose some tramp or tinker finds a good horse wandering on its own. He steals it, but has just about enough sense to take it a fair distance before he sells it. The man I bought him off had only had him a week. The horse was thin as a slice of toast, kibbled with botfly bites and missing one shoe. That says to me he was on the road for a week or two with a wandering man who didn’t know much about horses.’

  ‘But why would young Paley abandon a perfectly good horse?’

  ‘Perhaps he had no choice.’

  I looked at him.

  ‘You mean . . .’

  ‘Don’t jump to conclusions. He might have been robbed, or taken a fall and stunned himself. Doesn’t mean he’s dead. Still, his family’s got to be told.’

  I thought of Colum Paley in a hail of pennies. Father and son seemed fated to trouble.

  ‘Are you going to tell him?’

  ‘And take him the horse. If he wants to pay me what I paid for him, and a bit over for my trouble, I won’t refuse. If not, he can have him any road.’

  ‘Where is the horse now?’

  He nodded towards the road. ‘Outside. Want to come and look at him?’

  A boy was holding the horse while it grazed on the verge. One look at the animal confirmed everything Amos had said. He was a thoroughbred, fallen on hard times quite recently. Amos had got him a new set of shoes, but his ribs jutted and parts of his coat were worn bald from rubbing at fly bites.

  ‘Is that his own tack?’

  ‘No. I reckon whoever took him sold that off separately. I had to make do with what I could get.’

  They’d spent the night in Gloucester. Amos intended to let the horse graze for a while longer and then ride him down to Cheltenham. I offered to fetch some refreshment for Amos but he preferred his pipe. While he puffed away at it, I gave him a summary of what I’d done so far. For once he didn’t have much to add. I asked how he intended to get back to Hereford if he left the horse with Colum Paley.

  ‘I’ll stay down in Cheltenham the night, see if I can pick up something to ride back. If not, I know the driver of the Mazeppa coach that goes through tomorrow night. He’ll let me ride up beside him.’

  ‘I’d like to know if it really is Paley’s horse,’ I said. ‘I’ll ride down tomorrow and find out what happened.’

  ‘Come with me today if you like. Your mare could do with the exercise.’

  I was tempted, but today might be my one chance of talking to the Kembles’ maid and that had become more urgent since I heard Joanna’s story. We settled that I’d ride down the following morning and inquire for Amos at the stables of the Star Hotel, where he knew the head ostler.

  ‘I’ll come as early as I can,’ I said. ‘If you’ve found another horse, you’ll be wanting to get home.’

  ‘No hurry, as long as I’m home by Sunday.’

>   I laughed. ‘I didn’t know you were a church-going man, Amos.’

  ‘Not as a matter of course, only they’re reading the banns so I ought to be there.’

  ‘Wedding banns? Whose banns?’

  He took a pull on his pipe. ‘Mine.’

  I staggered. My gasp took in a mouthful of his pipe smoke and made me splutter.

  ‘You’re getting married? That’s sudden. You’ve only just got home.’

  ‘Not so sudden.’ Through my surprise, it struck me that he didn’t look very happy for a man soon to be married. ‘The fact is, there was this girl I was more or less engaged to before I went away. Her father owns land next to my father, so it seemed a good enough arrangement. What with being away so long, and not being much of a hand at writing letters, I thought she’d have forgotten all about it. I always thought she liked my cousin better, any road. But when I get home, it seems I’ve been properly engaged all this time without quite knowing it, so naturally everybody’s thinking I’ve come back to get married. She’s a decent sort of girl and I don’t want to disoblige her after all this time.’

  I managed to smile and congratulate him, horrified to find myself so near tears. I’d known that Amos would return home at some point, and it was only to be expected that such a fine-looking – and now prosperous – man would marry. Only for three very tumultuous years he’d been so central to my life that I couldn’t imagine things without him. Hyde Park itself wouldn’t be the same without Amos in his hat with the gold lace cockade, riding out as the most popular groom in London. As for the morning rides on Rancie that had kept my heart up in some of the worst times, I couldn’t see how they’d happen at all. From when I’d lost my father, Amos had been the man I’d brought my troubles to, and time after time he’d either solved them or made them bearable. Now a great blow had fallen and all I could do was stand there watching a horse crop grass. I think Amos felt something too, because he said no more until it was time to mount and go. When he was in the saddle, he spoke at last, though there seemed something forced about his cheerfulness.