The Path of the Wicked Page 15

I was suddenly blazingly angry. After all, it had been my refusal to be a government spy that had tipped me into this tangled affair.

  ‘If you think I’m a spy, why did we take so much trouble to warn you?’ I said. ‘If it hadn’t been for Tabby and me, you’d have led your men straight into an ambush of shotguns.’

  I was glaring at him. He glared back.

  ‘So how did they know we were coming in the back way?’ he said.

  ‘Because a boy of ten with a box of toy soldiers would have done the same. Leave a warning on the front gate and come in at the back. If that’s your idea of tactics, I’m surprised you’ve stayed out of prison so long.’

  He stared at me for what seemed like a long time and then began laughing, a deep laugh from his bootsoles.

  ‘Are you trying to teach me tactics, miss?’

  ‘Somebody should. If you must know, the chairman of the magistrates left a map on the table showing where he was going to put his men. I saw it and came to warn you. I’m not a government spy and I expect you to take that back or I’m leaving.’

  He stopped laughing. ‘What makes you think I have stayed out of prison, in any case? I’ve picked oakum in my time.’ He spread out his square, calloused hands. ‘All right, for the present we’ll assume you’re not a government spy.’

  It wasn’t the retraction I’d demanded, but it would have to do. I sat down at the end of the front row of chairs. ‘So, what have you got to tell me about Joanna Picton?’ I said.

  It took him a moment to register that I’d said her name, not Jack’s. He blinked.

  ‘Joanna?’

  ‘You helped Jack with the campaign to stop her being hanged – the petition, the march. You know a lot about Joanna.’

  He sat, four chairs away from mine. His eyes were wary.

  ‘Jack came home to find her in prison on a capital murder charge,’ I said. ‘He might not have been a very good brother until then, but he did what he could.’

  ‘It was criminal what they did to her,’ Barty Jones said, a sincerity in his voice I hadn’t heard before. ‘She’d have no more intended to kill that baby than the kindest mother in the land. They drove her to it – the magistrates and the board of guardians and the rest of them. What will she do in Australia? She’d hardly been out of the parish before all this happened to her. It’s just killing her another way.’

  ‘She never named the father,’ I said. ‘Not to the magistrates, the assize judge or anyone. Did she tell her brother?’

  He shook his head, staring down at his big hands.

  ‘Did he ask her?’

  ‘They never let him see her. Jack’s no favourite of the law, not the kind they let go prison visiting.’

  ‘But he wanted to know?’

  ‘Oh yes, he wanted to know.’

  ‘And was he trying to find out?’

  ‘Of course he was. He said whoever had fathered the baby should be standing in the dock alongside Joanna, no matter if he were the highest in the land.’

  ‘So he suspected it was somebody of high position? Did he know more than that?’

  ‘I don’t know what he knew. Jack was always a close one, but he was even closer after he found out what had happened to his sister.’

  ‘I think there was somebody trying to help him,’ I said.

  ‘We were all trying.’

  ‘Somebody else. Mary Marsh.’

  He looked at me, saying nothing.

  ‘There was something between him and Mary Marsh,’ I said.

  He scowled. ‘That’s what they say when they’re trying to make out Jack killed her.’

  ‘I don’t believe it was a love affair, but I know for certain that they met secretly at least once,’ I said. ‘Joanna worked in the house where Mary Marsh was governess. She was still working there at the time the child was fathered. Mary might have offered some information to Jack when Joanna was sentenced to death.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘Humanity? A sense of justice?’

  He considered and then nodded. ‘You’re right. Jack did meet Mary Marsh, and more than once. They met at my house a couple of times, when Mary had to bring the girl in for a ball or a party or somesuch.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘After Joanna was sentenced, when the appeal was going on.’

  ‘But he didn’t tell you what it was about?’

  ‘I guessed it was something to do with the sister.’

  ‘I think she told him a name,’ I said. ‘I think he’s determined to bring that name out at the assizes, whatever happens to him.’

  ‘He thinks he’s a dead man in any case. He’s always said the judges and the politicians won’t rest until they’ve hanged him on some trumped-up charge or other. He’ll go down fighting.’

  ‘By naming the man?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And do you know the name?’

  ‘I’ll leave that to Jack. If he wants to name him at the assizes, I’m not stealing his thunder. But if you’re as sharp as you think you are, you’ll have worked it out by now.’

  I didn’t rise to the bait because something that had been at the back of my mind had grown to a near certainty.

  ‘I’m surprised you’re going to let him be hanged without even telling a lie for him,’ I said.

  I’d caught him by surprise, but he tried not to let it show. ‘What lie?’

  ‘It would have been the easiest thing in the world to say he was with you all that evening and night. With the reputation you and he have, people might even have believed that you were out together looking for ricks to burn down.’

  ‘You think a judge would take my word for anything?’

  ‘Probably not, but it might have been worth trying. A man might risk perjuring himself for a friend.’ He said nothing, but I could see his pride was hurt. ‘But it wouldn’t have been any use, would it?’ I said. ‘Because you’re pretty sure you know where he was that evening.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘At the Kembles’ house. He was seen not far away from it.’

  ‘His mother lives near there.’

  ‘A good mile away, and he wasn’t very dutiful about visiting his mother. He was hoping to see Miss Marsh.’

  It was a toss of a coin whether he said anything or not. While he was making his mind up, he stared at me like a craftsman judging the grain in a piece of wood. Then he gave one quick nod of the head, decision made.

  ‘It was the other way about. She’d sent him a note asking him to meet her.’

  ‘That evening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You saw the note?’

  ‘Jack showed me. Two lines, asking him to meet her at ten o’clock, in the usual place.’

  ‘What was the usual place?’

  ‘Somewhere in the woods behind the house.’

  ‘And he intended to go?’

  ‘Yes. I warned him it might be a trap, but he said he’d have to take the chance.’

  ‘Why a trap? She’d been helping him.’

  ‘She had been, until they got at her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I only know what Jack told me. Right up to the time the poor girl was transported, the Marsh woman was helping Jack find out who was responsible for what happened to her. As soon as she’s gone, Miss Marsh changes her tune, doesn’t want to meet Jack any more. She tells him she’s been wrong all along, that the father wasn’t who they thought it was. She’s been told another name, so she says, but she won’t let him know this time till she’s certain.’

  ‘How did Jack Picton take that?’

  ‘How do you reckon? He thought she’d been bribed or threatened into turning against him. I agreed. I was surprised all along that she’d done as much as she did, and now she’d gone back to her own side.’

  He meant what he was saying, I could see that.

  ‘But why a trap?’ I said. ‘And what sort of trap?’

  ‘Can’t you guess? He goes to meet her in the woods in the
dark, she screams out as if he’s laying hands on her and Master Kemble and half a dozen keepers rush out of the bushes and accuse him of rape. Ten years in prison and who’s going to believe a word he says about anything?’

  I looked at him, wondering if he realized that he had just produced a convincing motive for his friend to kill Mary Marsh. He must have seen that in my face.

  ‘He didn’t kill her,’ he said. ‘He’d never have killed her, even if she had turned against him.’

  ‘Then why did he run away and hide?’

  ‘He’ll have his reasons. Maybe they’ll come out in court, if they’ll let him speak.’

  I said nothing to that, convinced that the more Picton said, the more he’d turn judge and jury against him.

  I thanked Barty Jones and walked with him to the door. I’d liked to have asked him if he still believed I might be a government spy but guessed he didn’t give up anything easily, suspicions included. I was lucky to have got as much as I had from him. He’d confirmed my guess that Jack Picton and Mary Marsh were working together and then added the twist that she’d turned against him. I found that hard to accept. As for the idea that she’d let herself be the bait in a cruel trap, it was close to unthinkable. The likes of Jack Picton and Barty Jones saw traps and plots everywhere. Stick to what seemed likely: Mary had been helping Picton in trying to find the father of Joanna’s child. Soon after Joanna was deported, Mary decided that they’d suspected the wrong man. Did that mean that she’d found out for certain who had fathered the boy who’d drowned in a ditch?

  I strolled along the Promenade, sorry that I’d agreed to meet Mr Godwit for tea, still two hours away. If it hadn’t been for that, I could have collected Rancie and ridden back. As it was, I was in riding habit on a hot August afternoon with no very clear idea what to do next. Worse, I was getting looks. Riding habit and top hat were not normal wear for afternoons in a place where other women were in muslins or cotton prints and ribboned bonnets. As it happened, my riding habit was a smart one with tight waist, tapering sleeves and an overskirt caught up with a button on the left side. It looked well on horseback in Hyde Park, but the glances I was getting from some of the women showed all too clearly that it was considered racy for Cheltenham. That, along with the heat and the confusion in my head, put the devil in me. I started to feel angry with the perfectly inoffensive invalids in their bath chairs, the ladies with their little crystal bottles for collecting spa water, the leisurely citizens sitting in the shade of trees, listening to the band. Where had they been the night Joanna Picton walked between freezing puddles carrying her baby? If she’d knocked on any of their doors, would they have let her in? Unfair, of course. Most of us aren’t heroes of generosity, or any other kind of hero. Mary Marsh, it seemed, had been a hero. I was convinced now that she’d gone a long way outside social boundaries and risked her own reputation in trying to help Joanna, even associating with her outlaw brother. In the end, it had cost her not only reputation but life. Until then I’d been doing my duty by trying to help Jack Picton, whether he deserved it or not. It was more than duty in the case of Mary Marsh. She deserved justice.

  I was walking along, not looking right or left, when I heard somebody calling my name.

  ‘Miss Lane, I say, Miss Lane.’

  The voice rang out like a huntsman calling hounds to order. I turned, and there was my acquaintance from the racecourse, Henry Littlecombe, lounging against the trunk of a tree near the bandstand. Like me, he was dressed for the saddle, in his case breeches, soft-topped boots and a checked waistcoat. It had been a mistake to turn. He took it for encouragement, straightened up and came striding towards me.

  ‘I say, what a piece of luck to meet you again. I’ve been looking out for you every morning, but you never came.’

  His high-pitched voice would have been audible across several fields, let alone the Promenade. People weren’t just glancing now; they were openly staring at me. I should have given him a cold nod and walked on, but the devilish part of me decided that if I was being judged as a fast woman, or worse, I might as well live up to it. So I wished him good afternoon and raised no objection when he came up and walked beside me.

  ‘Are you in town on your own, Miss Lane? Beastly hot, isn’t it? May I offer you a lemonade or an ice or some such?’

  A lemonade would be very welcome, I said. A tea garden was in sight, with tables under trees around a small fountain. We headed towards it. Since the fates had thrown Henry Littlecombe in my path, I thought I might use the occasion to confirm some things I thought I knew.

  We took our seats under a tree. The lemonade arrived. Mr Littlecombe uncorked his hip flask under the table and poured from it into his lemonade so deftly that I almost missed the action. When he saw I hadn’t, he gave the grin of a naughty schoolboy and waggled the hip flask at me with an inquiring lift of the eyebrow.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  He chattered on, about a horse he intended to buy, an atrocious bill for which his saddle-maker was threatening to dun him. Then, at last, something nearer the purpose.

  ‘Did you hear Paley’s horse was brought home yesterday? Some horse dealer just walked into his old man’s yard with it, cool as you please. Wouldn’t say where he got it.’

  I decided not to say that I knew the last part of the story was untrue.

  ‘And no news of Mr Paley himself?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Dead, everyone thinks. Perhaps somebody shot him and took the horse off him. Dashed shame. A thorough sportsman, Paley was. Everybody liked him.’

  ‘Except Rodney Kemble,’ I said.

  For a moment he looked ill at ease. ‘Bit of a misunderstanding between them. I’m sure they’d have made it up if—’

  ‘Hey, there you are, Littlecombe. Thought you’d gone to ground. What are you doing, inflicting your clod-hopping presence on this lovely lady?’

  Just when my companion might have been on the point of saying something useful, he was interrupted by another loud-voiced young man in riding clothes. I recognized him as one of the group I’d seen up on the racecourse. Two more young men of the same stamp were standing behind him, grinning. Their red faces suggested they too had been at their hip flasks, probably without benefit of lemonade.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t our belle amazon,’ the newcomer said, lifting his hat to me. ‘Are you arranging a return match with her, Littlecombe? If so, my money’s on the lady.’

  The three of them ordered Henry to introduce us properly and then asked my permission to sit down with us at the table. I gave it. As far as the Promenade was concerned, my respectability was already past saving and I was determined to salvage some scrap of information from the situation. Their four heads combined might be more useful than Henry’s alone, though there probably wasn’t much sense in any of them. The new arrival, referred to by his friends as Postboy (because, they explained, he’d once raced a Royal Mail coach for a bet and won), seemed determined to lead the conversation. He asked me why they hadn’t seen me at last month’s races.

  ‘Because I wasn’t there,’ I said. ‘Did I miss a lot?’

  They shook their heads sadly. ‘Dashed tame,’ Postboy said. ‘Dullest they’ve been for years. If the killjoys have their way, it will be all temperance banners and Sunday school picnics.’

  ‘I gather it was livelier two years ago,’ I said.

  ‘I should say so. We had to hide young Henry here under a circus wagon because a leg he owed was out for his blood. Then there was a fist-fight between two Gypsies over the lurcher racing and . . .’

  And so on, all of them contributing to the catalogue, voices growing louder, sidelong glances to see who was impressing me most.

  ‘Then the police and magistrates arrived,’ I said.

  Sudden silence. They looked at each other. In the end, the one who’d been slightly less noisy than the rest answered.

  ‘Truth to tell, things did get a little bit out of hand that year.’

  Henry Littlecombe made a
sound midway between gulping and chortling.

  ‘It was Holy Fanny’s fault.’

  The others shushed him and looked at me.

  ‘He means the Reverend Francis Close,’ the less noisy one explained. ‘He took it on himself to lead a crusade against the infidels.’

  ‘Beadles, magistrates, the lot of them,’ Littlecombe said, only slightly subdued. ‘Knocked over the booths, arrested people right, left and centre.’

  ‘While the races were going on?’

  ‘Afterwards. There was a certain amount of drinking and gambling and so on, but no harm done.’

  ‘Were any of you arrested?’

  ‘No. It was mostly the commoner sort, the legs from out of town, the gambling booth keepers and so on.’ Another gulping chortle. ‘I’ll tell you who did . . . I mean, very nearly got arrested, and that was Paley and Kemble.’

  ‘What for?’ I asked.

  ‘Public brawling.’

  ‘Brawling?’ It seemed a long way from the Kemble I’d met.

  ‘They had their jackets off and were squaring up to each other; then Penbrake comes running up, wanting the constables to arrest both of them. Paley senior appears and gives the constables a piece of his mind, so Penbrake went off to find some easier game.’

  ‘Luckily for Kemble,’ Postboy said. ‘Peter would have floored him.’

  ‘If he could see him,’ Littlecombe said. ‘Paley was pretty drunk and Kemble was as sober as a judge. Angry, though.’

  I’d known the two disliked each other, but had no idea it had gone this far.

  ‘What was he angry about?’ I said.

  Littlecombe and Postboy looked at each other. Male secrets.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Postboy said. ‘Whatever it was, they’ve been on bad terms since.’

  ‘I heard it was over a girl,’ the less noisy one said.

  They didn’t actually shush him, but he was given a couple of warning looks.

  ‘Was that before the engagement between his sister and Peter Paley had been broken off, or after?’ I said.

  ‘Just before.’ Littlecombe said it quietly.

  He seemed more subdued now. I stood up, thanked Littlecombe for the lemonade and said I had another appointment. Postboy and his friends pressed me to stay, or come back at least. Their clamour attracted attention and I felt eyes turning to me again as I walked away. But one pair of eyes, at least, wasn’t curious or hostile. The eyes belonged to a tall man in yellow waistcoat and gaiters, standing in the shade of one of the trees. It looked as if he’d been there for some time. Goodness knows how Amos Legge had found out where I was, but he’d been watching in case one of the sportsmen overstepped the mark. He took off his hat to me.