The Path of the Wicked (22 page)

I
took the picture with me to church on Sunday, hoping that nobody would think it irreverent. The service was much the same as the one the week before, with the Kembles in the front pew and Rodney looking no better, but the sermon was shorter. By chance, the banns were read for a local couple. I thought of Amos in his home village away to the west, sitting in a pew in his Sunday best, with the woman he was going to marry alongside him, listening to those same words. Afterwards, while the father and son were talking to the vicar, I found Barbara under a big yew tree in the churchyard, alone and bored. She cheered up when presented with the watercolour and declared it a perfect likeness, only too, too flattering, of course. I was a genius like Reynolds and Gainsborough, simply divinely talented. She ran out of compliments at last and asked if she might request a favour. She said it so solemnly that I thought it must be something dark and secret. My hopes of some new development in the case rose, but sank again when it turned out that all she wanted was a chaperone for a shopping trip to Cheltenham.

‘Mary used to come with me, but now I have nobody. I simply have nothing to wear for autumn, and with you knowing all about the London fashions, it would be so divine if you could come.'

‘When were you planning to go?'

‘As soon as we can, or all the latest things will be sold. What about tomorrow?'

‘Well . . .'

‘Oh, you are such a darling. I'm sure Father will let us have the carriage. I'll go and ask him now.'

She practically dragged me back to the church porch and prized her father away from the vicar. Colonel Kemble seemed only mildly surprised to be told that she positively must have the carriage for the whole of the next day, because the perfectly angelic Miss Lane was taking her to Cheltenham on an essential shopping mission. He put up little resistance, beyond telling me that I mustn't let his daughter make a nuisance of herself. It was arranged that the carriage would call for me around ten o'clock next morning.

‘Am I coming, too?' Tabby asked, when we got home. Naturally, she'd been listening.

‘You'll be bored, in and out of shops.'

‘I'm bored here.'

I took pity on her. It was likely that Barbara would be bringing her maid, Maggie, so there seemed no harm in having Tabby along.

But when the carriage arrived on Monday morning, half an hour late, it turned out to be a brougham with only two seats inside, so no Maggie and no room for Tabby.

‘I'll ride on the back,' she said.

‘It's raining,' I said.

The weather had broken, the sky grey and drizzle falling.

‘Doesn't matter.'

So I borrowed a waterproof for her and we set off with the Kembles' coachman on the box and Tabby on the back, firm as a barnacle.

‘Do maids always ride on the back in London?' Barbara said.

I resisted the temptation to say it was the latest fashion. ‘Tabby usually does.'

The rain was heavy by the time we reached town, but it didn't quench Barbara's enthusiasm. She was like a colt let out to pasture, explosive with energy, wanting to gallop in all directions at once. It reminded me how gloomy life must have been for her over the past couple of years, cooped up in the big house with a mourning father and love-sick brother. I resolved not to press her, even tactfully, for details to support my case and simply try to give her a day's pleasure. We spent the first hour in the finest draper's in town, poring over fabrics and fashion plates. The shopkeeper and his assistants unrolled bolt after bolt of material for her, cut off samples for her to try against her cheek in the mirror. All the time she was appealing for my opinion. If I said something suited her, she'd be firmly decided on that for all of two minutes, but then something else would catch her eye. Wouldn't this do better? Did they have it with a red stripe instead of a brown? What did I think? Altogether, it was weary work and I could see Tabby fidgeting by the door. We finally managed to order three dress lengths of fine woollen fabrics and various trims, to be delivered to her dressmaker and charged to her father's account. Then it was on to the milliner with a swathe of samples and a folder of fashion plates. While Barbara was in serious consultation about feathers, I caught Tabby wearing a flowered bonnet and making faces at herself in the mirror. I told her she'd better go off and amuse herself and meet us at four by the church, and I gave her a handful of small change for a pie. She was out of the door like a squirrel up a tree.

After the milliner, Barbara agreed that it was time for refreshment. I suggested cups of tea at the assembly rooms, confident that there'd be no chance there of an embarrassing meeting with my sporting acquaintances. But, as luck would have it, we were on our way there when I caught sight of the gentleman they called Postboy on the other side of the street. Barbara gasped and clutched my arm.

‘That man – don't acknowledge him.' He'd raised a hand and looked like crossing over to us. ‘Don't look at him,' Barbara hissed. ‘Just keep walking.'

That was exactly what I'd intended, though not at Barbara's panicky speed. She waited until we'd turned a corner and then walked more slowly, hand to her ribs.

‘He's not coming after us, is he?'

Of course he wasn't. Even a sporting gentleman can't run after ladies intent on ignoring him.

‘You know him?' I said.

‘He used to be one of Peter's friends. I don't want to meet him.'

Perhaps she'd managed to convince herself that the rumours about her fiancé and Joanna weren't true by pushing any blame there might be on to his friends. I wondered if she'd had any communication with Peter Paley since their engagement was broken, but I decided to keep to my resolution for the day and not ask questions.

We drank our tea without incident, but her mood seemed to have changed. She spread the fashion-plate pictures out on the table and made some attempt at discussing them, but her heart didn't seem to be in it any more. She kept glancing at the clock.

‘So, it's your dressmaker next?' I said.

It was how she'd planned the day. With the fabrics chosen, the next step was a session with her dressmaker and a final decision on styles. From the morning's evidence, it was likely to take a long time. She nodded and stood up heavily. She looked pale and tired.

‘Have you a headache?' I said. ‘We could leave the dressmaker for another day.'

She shook her head impatiently. The dressmaker lived at the Montpellier end of the Promenade. We walked there mostly in silence. She seemed to have something on her mind. On the dressmaker's doorstep, it came out.

‘The chestnut velvet reverse isn't right with the brown stripe. It should be the moss green.'

Since that point had been discussed at length in the draper's, I had to fight to keep the impatience out of my voice.

‘The chestnut will look very well.'

‘No, it will be terribly drab. It must be the green. They won't have delivered it yet. Will you be an absolute angel and go and tell them to send the green instead?'

I felt some irritation at being converted into a messenger, even an angelic one, but at least it would spare me from more clothes discussion. I left Barbara on the dressmaker's doorstep and walked back towards the centre of town. The rain had stopped and I took my time, enjoying being in the open air. Somewhere along the way I realized that Tabby was walking beside me.

‘We going back yet?'

‘Soon, I hope.'

We delivered the message at the draper's and stopped on the way back to watch the convalescents drinking spa water.

‘Tastes horrible,' Tabby said.

‘I think that's the point. You bought a glass?'

‘Nah. Somebody had left half theirs so I tried it.'

I rang the dressmaker's bell and told Tabby to wait outside. It was nearly four o'clock by then and at half past we were due to meet the driver with the brougham. I'd been away nearly an hour and hoped Barbara would be ready to go. When the maid came down, I asked her to let Miss Kemble know that I was waiting. She stared.

‘Miss Kemble?'

‘Yes, she came for an appointment. I suppose she's still with you.'

The maid closed the door and bolted back upstairs.

‘What's biting her?' Tabby said.

After a while the door opened again. The woman standing there was clearly the dressmaker herself, a tape measure round her neck and a pin cushion strapped to her wrist. I explained that I'd come to call for Miss Kemble.

‘Miss Barbara Kemble?' She seemed slow of understanding.

‘That's right. She arrived for an appointment with you about an hour ago.'

‘There must be a mistake. I've made clothes for Miss Kemble, but I haven't seen her since spring. She had no appointment with me today.'

At first I was simply irritated. I thought Barbara had mixed up the day of the appointment. She must have remembered her mistake even before she rang the doorbell and either rushed off to look for me or gone to the place where we were supposed to meet the carriage, outside the Queen's Hotel. If so, I only hoped she hadn't driven straight home and stranded us. I sent Tabby to the hotel to check and hurried back to the draper's. No sign of her there. They hadn't seen her since our visit that morning. The same story at the milliner's. I tried a few other shops without result and then went back to the assembly rooms, hoping to find her sitting down with a cup of tea. Nobody there but a couple of elderly women. A maid clearing tables had seen nobody of Barbara's description in the past hour. I still wasn't really worried, expecting to find her waiting at the carriage, but a doubt was forming in my mind. When I got to the Queen's and found Tabby and the driver sitting up on the box, but no Barbara, the doubt flared into something like panic. Even then, I couldn't believe that she'd simply vanished, so Tabby and I wasted another hour scouring the town in likely and unlikely places, even looking inside the church and the public rooms of the main hotels. No Barbara. We went back to the coach.

‘You'd better wait here in case she arrives,' I said to Tabby. ‘I'll come back when we've told her father.'

The entire journey, I was looking out of the window in the unlikely hope that she'd decided to walk home, though I guessed that she would have no enthusiasm for long walks. The journey seemed all too short, considering the task waiting at the end of it. As we came down the drive, Colonel Kemble was standing on the steps outside his front door. He looked annoyed. It was past seven by then and his daughter's lateness was keeping him from his dinner. He was alongside the brougham before the wheels stopped turning. Then he opened the door and saw only me inside. I got out.

‘Barbara's gone,' I said. Then, realizing the ambiguity of it: ‘She's disappeared.' I told the story as coherently as I could, not that there was much to tell. The staff inside must have sensed that something had happened – perhaps someone was watching from the window – because the butler, housekeeper and several others came out. The colonel had aged ten years in a few minutes, but he gave orders like the military man he was. The butler was sent to find Rodney, the housekeeper to fetch the maid, Maggie.

‘Miss Lane, you'd better take the brougham and report to Godwit,' he said to me. ‘It's a matter for the constabulary. Send the brougham back as soon as you get there.'

He was holding in his anger. I couldn't have resented it if he'd raged at me for being such a spectacular failure as a chaperone.

Mr Godwit took longer than the colonel to size up the situation. At first he seemed so bewildered that I had to fetch the gardener from his cottage and help harness the cob to the gig. For the sake of speed, I drove us back to town. When we got to the Queen's, the Kembles' brougham was already standing outside, with Tabby beside it. As soon as she saw me, she shook her head. Barbara wasn't back. Inside the hotel, a kind of council of war had convened in one of the downstairs rooms. Mr Penbrake was in conference with a man who turned out to be the head of the county constabulary. The parish beadle was there and several other official-looking men. Mr Crow was on the outskirts of the group with his ear trumpet, trying to follow what was going on. Mr Godwit drew him aside and asked where the colonel and Rodney Kemble were.

‘Gone to have it out with Colum Paley,' Mr Crow yelled happily. ‘Accusing him and the son of kidnapping his daughter.'

The other conversation stopped and everybody turned towards us. Mr Penbrake recognized me and I had to repeat the story of Barbara's disappearance again. He stared at me all the while as if I was an unreliable witness.

‘Did Miss Kemble say anything to you to indicate where she was going?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Did she speak to anybody while you were in her company or did anybody speak to her?'

‘The draper, the milliner – only what you'd expect. But a more important question is who she didn't speak to.'

I'd been thinking about it on the way there and was almost sure of my ground. At any rate, it had to be said. Penbrake looked annoyed, as if I was deliberately speaking in riddles.

‘There's a sporting gentleman called Postboy by his friends,' I said. ‘I don't know his proper name, but I'm sure any of the racing fraternity could tell you. He looked as if he intended to come over and speak to us. Barbara was quite disturbed and determined to avoid him. She said he used to be a friend of her former fiancé, Peter Paley.'

‘That was perfectly proper of the young lady,' Mr Godwit said. ‘It was wrong of the man to even think of forcing his company on you both.'

I could have left it there, with Barbara's reputation intact, except some things mattered more than reputation.

‘I'm not convinced that was the reason,' I said. ‘I wonder if she had an arrangement to meet the man Postboy, only later when she'd managed to get away from me. Her confusion might have been that she'd almost run into him by accident and was afraid I'd suspect something.'