The Path of the Wicked Page 14

  ‘I’m sorry not to have called on you,’ I said. ‘I sent my card in this morning.’

  She showed she’d received it by a gracious inclination of the head, spoiling the effect by biting one side of her lip in her pearly teeth. She wanted to look grown-up, but her mother’s death had left her as the lady of the household before she was ready for it. The seven years between her age and mine would be a great gulf to her.

  ‘I love your dress,’ I said. ‘I saw a print quite like that in Bond Street, only not so pretty.’

  It was hardly proper manners, adopting such an intimate tone so early in our acquaintanceship, but the smile she gave me was real and impulsive.

  ‘You shop in Bond Street? Oh, you’re so fortunate. Everyone’s positively months out of date here and we have to take our fashions from magazines.’

  Several minutes of fashion gossip followed. I did my best, shamelessly dropping in references to receptions and operas I’d attended. She thought Covent Garden must be heaven, sheer heaven. She’d love so much to live in London. The years between us were vanishing and I was fast becoming a dear friend. I was puzzled, though, when she suddenly adopted one of her stagey attitudes, moving a few steps out of the shade and into the sunshine, hand resting on her furled parasol. Then I saw that sunlight made her light brown hair golden and took the hint.

  ‘I’d like to include you in the sketch, if you don’t mind. I might work it up later in watercolour.’

  ‘Like this?’

  ‘If you’d just turn your head sideways a little . . . yes, just so. And bend your neck as if you’re looking at a daisy on the lawn.’

  The fact is I’ve no great skill at drawing faces but can usually manage profiles. It turned, surprisingly, into one of my better efforts and she was delighted when I let her look at it. I promised to work it up and send it to her.

  ‘You positively must stay to tea,’ she said. ‘Wait in the summer house. I’ll go and tell them to bring it out.’

  Tabby had been listening all the time, unobtrusive near the trunk of the cedar. The look she gave me asked why we’d been wasting time on sleeves and sashes.

  ‘Getting the measure of her,’ I said. ‘What did you think?’

  ‘Silly.’

  ‘Yes, but I like her, I think.’

  ‘She threw a scent bottle at Maggie.’

  ‘Wrong, I agree.’

  And yet there’d been a self-satisfied malice about Maggie that might make me want to throw things. I told Tabby she’d better rest in the shade of the cedar while Barbara and I had tea. I knew very well that she’d be listening at a crack in the summer house before we’d taken our first sips, but didn’t want to encourage her. Barbara came back, followed soon afterwards by the tea tray, brought by a maid who looked even younger than Maggie. The maid arranged the tea things on a rustic table and left. Barbara poured with careful concentration, still unpractised in the role of hostess. I guessed that her father and brother didn’t do much entertaining.

  After answering more questions about the glories of London life, I turned the conversation back to sketching. Barbara said she used to sketch quite a lot, but not recently.

  ‘Since your governess died, I suppose.’

  She sighed. ‘Before that. My father said I should learn how to run a household. It’s achingly tedious.’

  ‘I saw a painting of butterflies by Mary Marsh when I was in Cheltenham on Tuesday,’ I said. ‘It was very good.’

  I didn’t add that it was now in my trunk, torn nearly in half. Barbara gave a shrug and a twist of the mouth, indicating boredom.

  ‘Oh, that class . . . all those old women. Mary insisted. She told my father it would be good for me.’

  ‘So it was your governess’s idea?’

  ‘Yes. The last one, I flatly refused to go, but she went anyway. Father would have been angry if he knew she’d taken the pony cart in to Cheltenham just for herself, but I didn’t tell him; otherwise, he’d have wanted to know why I wasn’t with her. If she wanted the butterflies so badly, let her have them.’

  Only she hadn’t gone for the butterflies, I thought. She’d gone to meet Jack Picton.

  ‘Did you get on well with your governess?’ I asked.

  She poured us more tea and considered. ‘Most of the time, yes. She was kind about my engagement and when my mother died. She was so serious, though, making me learn a lot of history and geography I’ll never need. What does it matter where coalmines are or what Oliver Cromwell said? I ask you: were you ever at a ball and had a gentleman talk to you about coalmines?’

  Oddly enough, the answer would have been yes, and very interesting he was, too. But it wasn’t the one Barbara wanted.

  ‘You must have spent a lot of time together,’ I said.

  ‘Not as much as we did. Once I was sixteen, my father agreed I shouldn’t have to do lessons any more, but Mary was to stay as companion and chaperone.’

  ‘Were you glad about that?’

  ‘Quite glad; otherwise, it would have been my mad old aunt.’

  So, in the last year of her life, Mary Marsh would have had time on her hands. According to Maggie, she read and went for walks. I wondered what else.

  ‘It pleased Rodney at any rate,’ Barbara said. She spoke almost under her breath, looking down at the tablecloth. Her cheeks had gone as pink as rose petals.

  ‘Your brother was pleased that Miss Marsh was staying?’

  She gave a nod, still looking down. It was clear what was happening. Barbara, with a rare chance to talk to somebody who seemed to her a woman of the world, was practising adult gossip. I suppose I should have changed the subject, but this was too good to miss.

  ‘There was a tendresse between them?’

  ‘Tendresse.’ She liked the word and lingered on it. ‘Yes, from him at any rate. Perhaps from her, but then they quarrelled. Just as well. Father would never have allowed it.’

  ‘What did they quarrel over?’

  ‘She wanted him to do something and he wouldn’t. I don’t know what it was.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Oh, months ago. Last year.’

  ‘Was Miss Marsh very beautiful?’ I asked.

  She made a face. ‘Some people thought her so. She was tall, though, and quite brown-complexioned, with a lot of dark hair that wouldn’t stay up. Quite old, too. I was teasing her once and she admitted to being nearer thirty than twenty.’

  She smoothed a lock of bright brown hair over her cheek. The pink was fading, now that her experiment in gossip was achieved. We’d finished our second cup of tea. I said I must go and promised to get up the sketch and send it to her. She was reluctant to let me leave.

  ‘You said you were in Cheltenham on Tuesday. Did you see a lot of people?’

  Of course, she assumed assemblies, tea parties and the like. She thirsted for social news, even from a few miles away. No point in telling her about Barty Jones and the Mechanics’ Institute. Then I thought I could give her something, so I told her about the strange attack on Colum Paley at the entrance to the assembly rooms. Since I owed her some gossip, I told the story as vividly as I could and saw that I had her full attention. She listened, biting her lip. When I described the pennies raining down on him, she gasped.

  ‘Eighteen pennies,’ I said. ‘At least, that was what somebody said.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  Her hands flew to her face and almost covered it; only a pair of startled grey eyes peered over them.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to distress you,’ I said.

  She drew her hands down, but the eyes were still startled.

  ‘Did . . . did he say anything to you . . . if he’d heard from Peter.’

  I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to know the details of the broken engagement.

  ‘I didn’t actually speak to Mr Paley,’ I said. ‘It was hardly the moment to be introduced to him. Was . . . is Peter Paley a friend of yours?’

  I spoke as gently as I could. She looked annoyed as we
ll as distressed.

  ‘You really didn’t know? Nobody told you?’

  ‘Told me what?’

  Her eyes brimmed over with tears. ‘That we were engaged, Peter and I. We still are in secret, only you mustn’t tell my brother. He hates him. He said I must break the engagement, only we didn’t, not really. And now I don’t know where he is.’

  The last words were a wail. I went over to her and put my arms round her and she sobbed against my shoulder.

  ‘Everything’s gone wrong . . . gone so terribly wrong. I don’t know what to do.’

  It would have been inhuman, and probably useless, to put more questions to her. It was a relief to see the maid advancing from the house, to clear up our tea things. When I mentioned that, Barbara sat up and dabbed at her eyes with a table napkin. She managed to answer the maid’s ‘Will that be all, ma’am?’ with ‘Yes, thank you, Annie,’ but kept her face turned away from the girl. It was obvious that what Barbara really wanted to do was run up to her room and have a proper cry, so I thanked her and went.

  TWELVE

  Tabby joined me as I walked up the drive.

  ‘What was that thing between them?’

  I had to think about it for a moment. ‘Tendresse. Meaning Rodney Kemble liked the governess. Probably more than liked.’

  I watched her face. She was the one who’d been suspicious of Rodney Kemble from the start.

  ‘And she liked him, too. Then they quarrelled. What about?’ she said.

  ‘I’d like to know.’

  ‘He still wants her, but she won’t have him, so he knocks her on the head?’

  ‘Is that how it happened, do you think?’ I said.

  We were through the gates and back on the road before she answered. ‘Nah.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so either. But why not?’

  ‘She said him and the governess had their row months ago. If he was going to kill her, he’d have done it then.’

  The answer might be simmering resentment and hurt, coming to a head over long months. I remembered Rodney Kemble’s face when we met in the place where Mary Marsh had died. A murderer returning or a man grieving? It could be both, of course. In spite of my instincts, I couldn’t rule out Rodney Kemble.

  ‘The puzzle is, why she wouldn’t have him,’ I said.

  Over the past few days, Mary Marsh had become real to me: a tall, good-looking woman, in her late twenties, well educated, dutiful and serious-minded. Not dull, though. Her painting class friend had credited her with humour and incisive opinions. She was kind, too; at least kind to Barbara when she’d needed it. Rodney Kemble probably lived a secluded life, with the estate to run. It wasn’t surprising, or unprecedented, that the son of the house should fall in love with the governess. If his intentions were honourable – and it sounded as if Rodney Kemble’s had been – what a piece of luck for the governess. From being a servant of the house, she becomes its mistress. For a woman in Mary Marsh’s position, the luck would be even greater. With Barbara almost launched on the world, she wouldn’t be needed any more. With no more than a quarter’s wages in her pocket, she’d soon have to pack up her trunk and move to a new position – perhaps one less pleasant than the Kembles’ home. All she’d have to look forward to for the rest of her life would be a succession of other people’s children, solitary meals and lonely walks. Rodney Kemble was a presentable man, probably reasonably handsome when he wasn’t miserable. His father’s objections might have been overcome in time. After all, the Kembles were simply wealthy landowners, not aristocrats. So why not jump at his offer?

  ‘I wonder what it was that she wanted him to do and he wouldn’t,’ I said.

  ‘Run off with her and never mind his father,’ Tabby suggested.

  ‘Somehow I can’t see her wanting that.’

  Tabby gave me a look, as if to ask how I knew. Simply, it wasn’t how the Mary Marsh in my mind would have behaved. We got no further on the walk back. I found Mr Godwit in the garden and broke to him the news that I was going to Cheltenham again next day. There seemed no harm in telling him why.

  ‘My friend Amos Legge thinks he might have found Peter Paley’s horse. I’m curious to know whether it is or not.’

  ‘The animal he had with him when he called on you this morning? Poor Paley. It can’t be good news, can it, a horse without his rider?’

  He offered to take me in the gig as he had to be in town the next day for a magistrates’ sitting, but I said Rancie needed the exercise. I agreed to meet him for tea at the Queen’s when we’d finished our day’s work.

  ‘Are you anywhere near forming a conclusion about Picton?’ he said.

  It was a fair question. The assizes were only ten days away and so far I’d delivered to him nothing but anxiety. I hesitated before answering.

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I feel yes, I am nearer a conclusion, the way you sense some animal or bird’s near you before you see it. But I haven’t seen it yet.’

  ‘If I were to ask you now, is Picton guilty, what would you say?’

  ‘I should say no,’ I said.

  The answer surprised me, and yet I shouldn’t have wanted to go back on it, even if I could. He nodded, rather sadly it seemed to me.

  ‘But I’m nowhere near proving it,’ I said. ‘I’m following a lot of threads, but they’re so tangled I can’t even see if they’re connected. One thing I’m sure of is that Mary Marsh’s death had something to do with Joanna Picton.’

  A little frown at that. He wouldn’t disagree with me outright, but Joanna worried him.

  After dinner, the boy from the vicarage came over with mail from town. I’d had a word with him the day before and given him a shilling to ask at the post office for any messages for me. There was one, a folded sheet of good-quality white paper with my name written on the outside in clerk’s copperplate. Inside, it had no address or salutation at the top, only the day’s date.

  If Miss Lane would inquire for the undersigned at the Mechanics’ Institute at her earliest convenience, he would be obliged. B. Jones. I laughed at the contrast between Barty Jones’s appearance and manner and his formality on paper.

  ‘A friend?’ Mr Godwit inquired, busy with his own mail.

  ‘After a fashion.’

  It was a pleasant ride to town next morning, with some good long canters on grass verges. When we got there, I made straight to the stable yard of the Star, and there was Amos, smoking his pipe and rubbing neats foot oil into a stirrup leather. As always, I felt warm and reassured when I saw him. Problems always seemed simple in the presence of Amos. Then I remembered that there wouldn’t be many chances to see him in future and the warmth ebbed away. He seemed the same as always. He corked up the oil bottle, wiped his hands and arranged with his ostler friend to have Rancie stabled for the day, taking his time and making me wait for his news as usual.

  ‘Well, was it the horse?’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Head groom recognized him as soon as we got into their yard, called Mr Paley down and no doubt about it.’

  ‘How did Mr Paley take it?’

  ‘He tried not to show it, but I think he was a touch shaken.’

  ‘Not surprising. As far as I can gather, he’s not been very concerned until now, or has pretended not to be. Now he knows something’s badly wrong.’

  ‘Any road, he thanked me, gave me what I’d paid for the horse and a bit over beside. I did wonder if, up to the time I’d brought the horse in, he thought he knew what the boy was doing and now he doesn’t.’

  That chimed with my impression that young Paley’s disappearance hadn’t been as impulsive as it looked.

  ‘Had Mr Paley any explanation for the horse being found where it was?’

  ‘No. He agreed with me: someone had stolen him or found him and taken him as far off as he could to sell him. He says the son would never leave a valuable horse wandering around on its own like that, not in his right mind.’

  ‘So is he suggesting Peter wasn’t in his right mind?’
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br />   ‘He’s not suggesting anything. But he’s a worried man. That’s why he made me the offer he did,’

  ‘Offer?’

  ‘He started by asking me what I knew about the man who was using the horse to pull his cart, or trying to. Not much, I said. So he says, Go back to him, find out all you can about the man he bought it off, then find that man and so on until we get back to where young Paley and the horse parted company.’

  ‘A reasonable idea, if you could do it.’

  ‘Very reasonable. The man’s not a fool. Far from it.’

  ‘So are you going to do what he wants?’

  ‘I thought I might as well have a try at it. After all, I’ll be going back in that direction anyway. I told him I’d do what I could and come back and give him a report sometime next week, one way or the other.’

  ‘And you’d tell me as well?’

  ‘Course I would.’

  He looked at me as if I must be crazy to think otherwise. From Amos’s point of view, nothing between us had changed. Not yet, at any rate.

  I said goodbye to him and walked to the Mechanics’ Institute. A man in the hallway said yes, Mr Jones was expecting me, and showed me into what looked like a lecture room, with rows of chairs and a low platform with a blackboard. Barty Jones was sitting with his legs stretched out. He stood up when I came in, but his greeting had the same note of sarcasm as at our first meeting.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Lane. You got my note, then. Kind of you to call.’

  I said I hoped he and his friends got home safely on Wednesday night, returning the sarcasm in kind. I wanted to remind him of the debt he owed me. I might as well have saved my breath.

  ‘We did. Are you comfortable, lodging out there with the magistrate?’

  Goodness knows how he’d found out where I was staying. Perhaps somebody had spotted me with Mr Godwit in town.

  ‘Is that what they do with government spies, then? Billet them with the magistracy to save public money?’ he said.