The Path of the Wicked Read online

  ‘Do you think your brother killed Miss Marsh?’

  She looked me in the face.

  ‘He couldn’t kill a chicken. When we kept chickens, it was me had to wring their necks.’

  I said goodbye. She turned back towards the cottage and we started walking along the road. Then there were footsteps running behind us.

  ‘Miss.’

  The girl, Sal. We waited until she came up to us, breathless.

  ‘Miss, can you tell me something?’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘When are they going to hang him?’

  I’d expected some question about food or money. This staggered me.

  ‘He’s not even been found guilty yet. He won’t be tried till the assizes.’

  ‘So when after that?’

  There was a world of sorrow in her voice, all the worse for being so trodden-down that she hadn’t let it show till now. The settled hopelessness of it was worse than fear or anger.

  ‘He may not be hanged,’ I said.

  But she only shook her head, not believing me. It would have been cruelty to raise her hopes by talking about inquiries and evidence.

  ‘I’d like to see him before they do,’ she said. ‘Will they let me see him?’

  I think I said yes, I thought they would, accepting her hopelessness. Whatever I said, it seemed to give her some bleak comfort because she thanked me and went back towards the cottage. Tabby and I walked on.

  ‘I want you to go there every day,’ I said. ‘Walk past slowly and make sure Sal sees you. Get her to talk to you if you can – not about the murder, just anything.’

  ‘All right. I’m getting used to the way they talk here.’

  To a born and bred Londoner like Tabby, a Gloucestershire accent was practically a foreign language, but she had a quick ear and even quicker understanding.

  ‘You think she knows more about her brother’s friends than she lets on?’

  ‘Sure of it,’ I said. ‘You saw how she looked. I think he’d have impressed on her that she wasn’t to talk to anybody about them.’

  ‘Except Will Smithies.’

  ‘Yes. I think she gave us that name because Smithies is nothing to do with the Raddlebush Brotherhood. Still, it will be useful to speak to him.’

  Above all, I wanted to build up a picture of Jack Picton. All I knew so far was that he was probably a rioter, almost certainly a rick burner, not especially kind to his old mother and . . .

  ‘It’s the way they look at you,’ Tabby said.

  ‘What look at you?’

  ‘Chickens, when you’re killing them. They turn their heads round and there’s those little round eyes staring straight at you.’

  I tried to put the picture out of my head.

  ‘Sal thinks if he couldn’t kill a chicken, he couldn’t kill a woman,’ I said. ‘Do you think that follows?’

  ‘Nah. Course not.’

  The way she said it put the matter beyond argument, but I agreed with her in any case. We walked most of the rest of the way in silence. One of the things that puzzled me was how the mother and daughter had come to be so close to starvation. In country areas, when people fell on hard times, there was usually enough kindness among neighbours to send round a few pounds of potatoes or the remains of a pie. It looked as if the village had deliberately turned its back on the Pictons, long before the murder. Was that entirely because of the son’s activities? A smaller puzzle was that Mr Godwit, in his first consultation with me, had said the widow had been left with three children, yet there was only Sal at home. Presumably, the third child had either moved away or died and Sal was having to cope on her own.

  ‘So, are we going to help her?’ Tabby said, as we went in at the orchard gate.

  ‘I’m sure I can get Mr Godwit to send more food. It will be a good excuse for you to see her again,’ I said.

  That hadn’t been what she meant and she knew I was avoiding the real question, but had the sense not to press it. Not for now, at any rate.

  FOUR

  Mr Godwit agreed that Tabby should carry food to the Pictons every other day, but his attitude seemed guarded, as if it embarrassed him to be their benefactor. He’d seen the magistrates’ clerk and asked him to try to arrange an order for me to visit Jack Picton in prison, though he still disliked the idea. He thought the order might come through the next day or the day after that. By then it was dinner time, as Mr Godwit dined at an unfashionably early country hour, and he was adamant that what he called ‘this unhappy business’ should not be discussed at table. Once that was decided, he was an agreeable host. We dined, just the two of us, at a pearwood table overlooking the garden, with late roses twining round the open window. The food was all from his own modest estate or from local farms and streams, and his housekeeper was a talented cook. She gave us trout fillets in watercress sauce, lamb chops with beans, carrots and glazed potatoes, raspberries and cream, accompanied by good claret from Mr Godwit’s wine merchant in Cheltenham. He turned out to be a devoted amateur naturalist, with observations on the comings and goings of swifts and swallows, wild orchids, badger setts, as if he knew every flower and creature on his acres. He was the third generation of his family to live there, so he knew the history of everybody in the village back to their grandfathers and was happy to talk about them, as long as we didn’t venture on to the big subject.

  Once I’d established, with a discreet question or two, that he wasn’t conscientiously opposed to horse racing, I told him Amos’s story of the two gamblers.

  ‘Did it really happen like that, or was it grooms’ gossip?’ I asked.

  ‘Much as you heard the story. As far as I can gather, at any rate. The whole of Cheltenham has been talking about it since it happened.’

  ‘Do you know the two men?’

  ‘I know something of Peter Paley, the one who disappeared. His father, Colum Paley, is very well known round here. The winning man is the younger son of Lord Ivebury. I’ve met the father – a decent enough man – but not the son.’

  ‘And young Paley hasn’t reappeared?’

  ‘No. That sighting by the reapers seems to have been the last anybody saw of him.’

  ‘Or written to let his family know he’s still alive?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘His father must be dreadfully worried.’

  Mr Godwit sipped thoughtfully at his claret. ‘They’re a strange family. New money. The word is that the grandfather was a butcher who made his fortune supplying meat to the army in the wars against Napoleon. Bad meat, some people said, though that’s probably malicious gossip. Some of the young bloods at assemblies in Cheltenham used to call Colum ‘Stinker Paley’ and hold their noses, behind his back. That was until he caught one of them at it and thrashed him senseless on the pavement under the canopy of the assembly room. They’re pretty well accepted in the neighbourhood now.’

  ‘Well enough accepted for his son to run up tens of thousands in debts.’

  ‘Certainly. Nobody doubts that Paley has sackfuls of money and he’s always been generous to young Peter, perhaps too much so. There have been signs that his patience has been wearing thin. He put a notice in the paper quite recently, saying he wouldn’t be responsible for his son’s debts. When Peter was engaged to Kemble’s daughter, I think his father hoped it might make him behave better. It probably did for a while, but then the engagement was broken off and the boy went back to his old gambling ways.’

  ‘The man who disappeared was engaged to Miss Kemble?’

  I was surprised to see the story coming so near home. Mr Godwit looked uneasy at being close to the forbidden subject.

  ‘The engagement was broken off two years ago. It had nothing to do with young Paley’s disappearance.’

  ‘Did she break it, or did he?’

  ‘I gather that the young lady did. Or at least her father and brother did it for her. She was only sixteen at the time.’

  ‘Was it broken because of his reputation?’

  ‘Ther
e’d been a quarrel between Peter Paley and Rodney Kemble. I don’t know the cause, but it was clearly a serious one. In the circumstances, the engagement could hardly stand.’

  I wondered if that had been young Miss Kemble’s opinion, too. Since she was too young to consent to marriage on her own account, she’d have been given no choice in the matter. Mr Godwit was probably right that the broken engagement had nothing to do with young Paley’s spectacular disappearance. He didn’t sound like the kind of man who’d nurse a broken heart for two years.

  ‘Has Colum Paley been trying to find his son?’ I said.

  ‘If so, there’s not much sign of it. When somebody asked if he’d heard from him, he said the young hound would come home when he was hungry.’

  ‘You’d have thought he’d be hungry by now.’

  ‘Yes. It will be three weeks this Saturday.’

  He suggested that we should drink our coffee in the summer house on the lawn. As we watched the swallows looping low over the grass to catch flies, I was doing sums in my head.

  ‘You said it will be three weeks this Saturday since Peter Paley disappeared. Isn’t that about the same time that Mary Marsh was killed?’

  ‘The day after she was found.’

  I stared at him. He was still watching the swallows.

  ‘What? Didn’t anybody make a connection?’

  He looked at me, seeming genuinely puzzled.

  ‘A young woman dies and the day afterwards a young man gallops off and hasn’t been seen since,’ I said. ‘Hasn’t anybody suggested the two might be linked?’

  ‘Why should they have been? Young Paley took up that ridiculous gamble out of the blue. Besides, I don’t think there’s any real harm in him. He’s like a lot of young men these days – not enough brains for the law or morals for the church, so they have to find something to do with themselves.’

  ‘Did he know Miss Marsh?’

  ‘I suppose he must have seen her sometimes when he was engaged to Miss Kemble. No more than that.’

  We finished our coffee. The swallows went to roost. Mr Godwit asked what I’d like to do tomorrow, as if I really were that remote relative on a pleasure visit.

  ‘I think I might take a ride on my mare in the morning.’ His smile of approval disappeared when I added, ‘And make a call on the wheelwright. You know him?’

  ‘I know the Smithies, father and son. Decent craftsman; nobody denies it.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Chartists. They make no secret of it, attend meetings and so on.’

  ‘Is Will Smithies the father or the son?’

  ‘Son.’

  ‘Picton’s sister says Smithies and her brother are friends.’

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me. Birds of a feather. What are you hoping to find out from him?’

  ‘At present I’m trying to build up a picture of Jack Picton. It’s just possible that a friend might know why Picton won’t give an alibi.’

  Although not likely that he’d talk about it to a complete stranger.

  Dusk was coming down, so we went inside and, at Mr Godwit’s request, I played the piano for him. He listened with the closed eyes and gentle wafting of the hand that denote the entirely unmusical, but he seemed soothed. That was something I could do for him at least.

  It was a slow start next morning. Mr Godwit’s gardener acted as driver for their placid cob but, in his own words, came over all of a dothering when faced with an equine aristocrat like Rancie. She picked up his unease and I had to calm the pair of them as best I could, doing most of the grooming and tacking up myself. For an hour or so I behaved like any visitor, riding Rancie round the lanes, enjoying the late-summer sunshine. The village was near the top of the hill, looking down on the roofs of Cheltenham. The land was a mixture of stubble fields, pasture and coppices. I glimpsed what looked like a large manor house in a dip in the land about half a mile away and guessed it belonged to the Kembles. Mr Godwit had given me directions to the wheelwright’s yard, about a mile north of the village. It looked a moderately prosperous place as I rode up to it: a solid house of the local limestone, facing on to a yard with open barns on two sides of it. The gate to the road was open, so I rode straight in. A man with a square greying beard and thatch of grey hair, a cap perched on top, was working with a lad who looked young enough to be an apprentice, fitting a curved section of outer rim on to the spokes of a wheel. The lad looked up as I rode in, but the older man told him to keep his mind on his work. I slid off Rancie and stood watching. If you want something from a person, it’s not a tactful start to ask it from horseback. The curved section slid sweetly on to the two spokes and the man tapped it home with a few hammer blows. Only then did he turn.

  ‘Good day, miss.’

  There was no surliness in making me wait, or the lack of apology for it. Mr Smithies was a man on his own land, master of a craft that wouldn’t be hurried. The way he was looking at me was neither hostile nor especially welcoming, just an invitation to state my business. I’d not worked out my approach in advance, but decided to be straightforward. I introduced myself and told him that I was staying with Mr Godwit.

  ‘If possible, I’d like to speak to William Smithies,’ I said. ‘Sal Picton says he’s her brother’s friend.’

  Behind us, in the open barn, a young man was working at a treadle-operated lathe.

  ‘What’s your business with the Picton family?’ Mr Smithies said.

  ‘If Jack Picton isn’t a murderer, I’d like to prove it.’

  ‘Does Godwit think he isn’t?’

  ‘He’s a magistrate. He can’t have an opinion either way.’

  The wheelwright considered that and me and came to an unhurried decision.

  ‘William, a lady to talk to you.’

  He led the way towards the shed. I looped Rancie’s rein over a hurdle and followed. The young man who’d been working at the lathe was on his feet, holding out his hand. The father introduced us and went back to the work he’d been doing, without any further explanation.

  The son was less solidly built than his father, with a pale complexion and light brown hair, but he had the same level-eyed look. I repeated what I’d said to the older man.

  ‘You think you can help Jack, then?’ He spoke with the Gloucestershire accent.

  ‘I’d like to, if I can.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was hoping you might be able to tell me.’

  ‘I’ll say to you what I’ve said to everybody: if Jack Picton says he didn’t kill the young lady, then he didn’t.’

  ‘Did you know that he was seeing Miss Marsh?’

  ‘I don’t know that he was.’

  ‘Did he ever mention her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you know there was gossip about them?’

  ‘I’ve got no time to listen to gossip.’

  ‘If Jack Picton didn’t kill her, why won’t he say where he was that night?’

  ‘He’ll have his reasons.’

  ‘He was seen near the Kembles’ house.’

  ‘It’s a free country for walking in – or so they say.’

  ‘Do you know what he was doing that evening and night?’

  ‘No.’

  I thought I believed him. There was a shade of regret in the way he said it.

  ‘Is there anyone who might know?’

  Before he shook his head, there was the slightest of hesitations. Then he said something in a lower voice, as if worried his father might overhear.

  ‘I might have tried telling the magistrates we were together, only I’m a poor liar and I’d have been found out.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything at all that might help?’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘What kind of man he was. Who his other friends were. Anything.’

  ‘For a start, he’s the stubbornest man on God’s earth. Once he’s made up his mind to something, he’s as hard to shift as that block there. Always was.’

  He pointed t
o a squared-off oak block that must have come from a giant of a tree.

  ‘You knew him from a long way back, then?’

  ‘Nearly as long as I can remember. We were at school together.’ He glanced at me, then at the lathe. It had a thick piece of elm wood, pale as cream, clamped into it. Judging by the shape, it was being rounded into a hub for the centre of a wheel. ‘I’ll talk about him as much as you like if it’s any use to you, only it’ll have to be while I’m shaping it. We’ve got as much work on as we can handle.’

  He brushed wood chips and bird droppings off the oak block for me to sit down and took his place at the lathe. It whirred quietly nearly all the time he was talking and he kept the blade of his chisel against the turning hub, so delicately that the wood seemed to change shape of its own accord.

  ‘He was always in trouble at school for being impudent; ruler across his knuckles more times than you could count. He didn’t mean to be impudent, just he was always asking questions about things – the Bible, history, anything. Tell him two times two made four and he’d ask why. But then he could never show respect. I reckon that’s what most schools are for, as far as working men are concerned – teaching them respect for their betters. He wouldn’t “sir” or “madam” anybody. Jack’s as good as his master; that was what he lived by.’

  ‘Don’t you think so too?’

  ‘I do. “When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?” My dad brought me up on that one, but he taught me a bit of sense, too. You can’t go fighting everybody all your life. You have to be patient and choose your time.’

  ‘You’re Chartists, you and your father?’

  He looked up briefly from the lathe. ‘We are. A vote for all men, a confidential ballot and wages for Members of Parliament so that workers can have a voice.’ His eyes met mine, looking for disapproval but not finding it.

  ‘And Jack’s a Chartist, too?’

  ‘Oh, he signed the Charter, all right. But he thought we were being too cautious, relying on petitioning Parliament. All for action, Jack was.’

  ‘Like joining in the riot at Newport?’

  He glanced up at me again, then away, not confirming or denying it.

  ‘A fat lot of good that did them. If Jack had his way, he’d have had all the farmworkers marching out to join them with their pikels and ploughshares. Only farmworkers aren’t easy to organize; that was part of Jack’s trouble. It’s all very well getting a crowd together in towns, but when you’ve got men scattered all round the countryside, depending on the farmer for the roof over their heads and every mouthful they eat, it’s slow going getting politics into their heads.’