The Path of the Wicked (26 page)

‘A shock from what Joanna Picton had said?'

‘It must have been. Perhaps it was the girl's lack of repentance that shocked her.'

I didn't believe that for a moment. I don't think he did.

‘And she didn't explain what she meant?'

‘No. After a while she recovered and apologized for being sharp with me. She said hastiness was a great fault. I said it was indeed, but it was often a fault of generous natures. Like hers, I meant, wanting her to feel better. She said she'd wronged somebody by being hasty. I asked her what she meant, thinking she might want to confide in me, but she shook her head and said it was up to her to put it right. I said I'd pray for her. Then she thanked me and left. I often think of her. I hope she's well.'

That came as a cold blast to me. Mary Marsh had seemed so alive when he talked about her that I'd forgotten he didn't know.

‘I'm very sorry to tell you she's dead,' I said.

He rocked back in his chair.

‘When?'

‘Just over a month ago.'

‘Was it sudden?'

‘Very sudden.'

He looked so shocked that I couldn't bring myself to tell him she'd been murdered. He might find out for himself in time.

‘And you . . . why . . .?'

‘I suppose when somebody dies suddenly, you think of all the things she might have told you and didn't,' I said. ‘Finding out things you didn't know is a way of coming closer to the person.'

It was true enough, but I was still deceiving him, letting him think she'd been my friend. I wished she had been. I wished too that I could tell him more, but I didn't know where that would end. Mary Marsh had made a deep impression on him. Perhaps he'd hoped to meet her again in happier circumstances. I thanked him and said I must go, uncomfortable at receiving his condolences. The couple of half-crowns I dropped into one of the many collecting boxes on his window sill did nothing to ease my conscience. He showed me out and said I'd be welcome to call again. I knew I wouldn't call again.

Tabby was waiting outside. As we walked back to the hotel together, I gave her a pretty full account of what the vicar had told me.

‘What's hypocrisy?' she said.

‘Wanting people to think you're good when you aren't.'

‘Nearly everyone, then.'

‘The question is: what can Joanna have said to her to shock her so much? Mary knew the whole story already – the fair, the workhouse, the baby dying. How could there be anything worse for Joanna to tell her?'

Just a few sharp words, almost certainly the last Joanna would speak in her native county, before the coach took her southwards at the start of a journey that would convey her like cargo to the other side of the world. Somehow they'd turned Mary's whole view of the case upside down. She'd been hasty. She'd wronged somebody and must put it right.

‘There's one thing Joanna hadn't told anyone,' Tabby said.

‘Who the father was? Yes, that's what I'm thinking, too. Everything's lost, so she tells Mary the name at last. But why not before?'

‘Because she was hoping he'd do something to help her, right up to the last. So when she finds he isn't going to, she might as well say it.'

It was always a good test of my ideas, trying them against Tabby's commonsense. Again, she and I had come to the same conclusion.

‘So Joanna says a name, and Mary's angry and shocked by it,' I said. ‘We at least know what the name
wasn't
, don't we?'

‘Paley.'

‘Yes. Everybody suspected Peter Paley was the father, including Mary and Jack Picton. So if Joanna had simply confirmed it, Mary wouldn't have been so shocked. Then there's this hypocrisy word. Even people who don't like Peter Paley or his father admit they're not hypocrites. So neither of them was the father.'

‘Who was, then?'

I didn't answer at first. A name was in my mind and I didn't want to say it. Tabby started scuffing her feet as she walked, which meant she was puzzled.

‘It has to be somebody with a good reputation,' I prompted. ‘Somebody Mary respected.'

‘Colonel Kemble?'

We were about to cross a road at the time and I nearly stepped in front of an oncoming donkey cart in sheer surprise.

‘
Colonel
Kemble?'

‘Why not? He's rich, he was in the army and goes to church and so on. Is that what you call a good reputation?'

‘It was the son I was thinking of, not the father.'

‘Rodney again?'

‘Yes. Imagine how angry she'd be. When she first finds out about Joanna, she wants him to help her, but he won't. If he were the father, naturally he wouldn't want to do anything in case it started tongues wagging. But Mary doesn't know that and thinks he's just being cowardly. Then, at the very last minute, she finds out the truth.'

‘So she tells him what she's found out and he kills her – is that it?'

‘What do you think?'

‘Yes,' Tabby said. ‘But it would work the same with his father.'

‘I don't think so. She really cared for Rodney, in spite of the quarrel. That would make it worse.'

Tabby didn't look entirely convinced.

‘There's a problem of time, though,' I said. ‘She finds out the day Joanna's sent away, in late May. But she's not killed until July, six weeks later.'

‘Perhaps he was trying to screw himself up to do it.'

‘But if he intended to kill her, he'd have to do it before she had a chance to tell anybody else. In six weeks she could have told the whole world if she'd wanted.'

‘Perhaps she didn't go and tell him straight away. She wanted to find out if Joanna was telling the truth.'

‘But she believed Joanna; otherwise, she wouldn't have been so angry and shocked,' I said.

‘She believed her at first; then she started wondering if it was true.'

That made some sense. In talking to the vicar, Mary had accused herself of being hasty. Perhaps she'd gone to the other extreme and looked for more proof before speaking out. But where would she have gone for proof? In any case, could she have lived under the same roof as Rodney for six weeks, knowing what she knew, and not speak out? We discussed those two questions for the rest of the way back to the hotel but came up with no answers.

I
paid our bill and collected Rancie from the stables. As I intended to get all the way back to Mr Godwit's house that day, we gave her an easy time on the return from Gloucester to Cheltenham. By early afternoon we were on the outskirts of the town. We found a trough for Rancie to drink and I burrowed in the saddlebag for a comb and a clothes brush to tidy myself up. We had no mirror, so I asked Tabby if I looked fairly presentable.

‘You've got a smudge on your cheek.' I dipped my handkerchief in the trough and gave it to her to wipe it off. ‘But I don't know why you're bothering,' she said. ‘We'll only get all dusty again on the way back.'

‘I'm paying a call first.'

‘Who on?'

‘Can't you guess? The same gentleman Mary Marsh would have called on.'

‘Mr Paley?'

‘That's right. The old one, not the young one.'

‘Am I coming with you?'

‘No. Go and find something to eat and drink. I'll meet you back here at three o'clock.'

She held Rancie while I used the edge of the trough to remount. I knew the Paleys' house – an imposing one behind a high wall on this side of town – and could easily have walked there, but both Paleys had an eye for a good horse. I'd need any advantage I could get to persuade Colum Paley to talk to me. The gates at the top of the drive were open. I rode straight through and round the side of the house to a stable yard large enough for an important coaching inn, but more orderly and restful. A dozen or more thoroughbred heads looked out from the boxes that surrounded it. A lad was sweeping up the few straw wisps that spoiled the perfection of the flagstones. When I asked him where I might find Mr Paley, he propped the broom against the wall and bolted into a room at the end of a row of loose boxes. I stayed in the saddle as Colum Paley strolled out, taking his time, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. From the way he was dressed, he might have been mistaken for one of his own grooms, in gaiters, moleskin waistcoat and jacket, although clean and tidy like the rest of his yard. He was saying something to the lad behind him and didn't look pleased to be interrupted, but his face changed when he saw Rancie.

‘Oh, so you're the one, are you?' he said.

I wasn't sure if he was speaking to my mare or to me, so I thought I'd better introduce her. I gave him her full name, Esperance, and a summary of her pedigree. He listened, giving a few quick little nods, approving her.

‘She's the one that was giving a race to the lads up on the course?' he said.

‘Only a pipe-opener,' I said. ‘She's not in training for racing.'

‘How old is she?'

‘Eight.'

‘You should be breeding from her. I've got a stallion might suit, Whalebone line, not great lookers but the speed's there.'

This talk of breeding, from a gentleman to a lady when we hadn't even been introduced, was hardly delicate, but his manner was direct and unembarrassed. Even at a disadvantage, on foot when I was on horseback, there was a presence about him. My only sight of him so far had been outside the assembly rooms. Seen close to, he was as broad-shouldered as Amos, though not quite as tall, with a good, squarish head and dark hair worn long enough to show the slight wave in it, giving him the air of a person who followed his own tastes. He was probably in his fifties, but with the energy of a man twenty years younger. I said that I hadn't thought of breeding from Esperance yet, making a mental note that if and when I did, I'd find something more amiable and better-looking than Whalebone's bloodline.

‘Shouldn't leave it till too late,' he said. ‘So, have they found the girl?'

He must have recognized me and heard of my connection with Barbara Kemble's disappearance. It was a reminder not to underestimate Colum Paley.

‘Not as far as I know, but I've only just got back from Gloucester. I want to talk to you about Mary Marsh.'

From his face, it took him a moment or two to remember who she was.

‘The governess?'

‘Yes.'

He'd been relaxed when we'd been talking about horses; now his voice and face were hard.

‘You'd better get down, then.'

He helped me down without fuss, called to the stable boy to look after Rancie and led the way to the room at the end of the row. He opened the door to let me in first. It was a plain room with whitewashed walls and looked like a combination of a gentleman's study and a head groom's quarters. A reproduction of Stubbs's painting of Eclipse was the only picture, with various bits and bridles hanging from pegs on either side. Under it, a pine table crowded with feed bills and race schedules and an inkwell made from a horse's hoof. A sagging armchair containing a dozing spaniel stood by the fireplace. The smell was masculine: leather and brandy. A smaller table with two plain wooden chairs drawn up to it supported a decanter of brandy and several glasses, one of them half full.

‘You'd better sit down, I suppose,' he said in that same hard voice.

Not wanting to disturb the spaniel, I took one of the wooden chairs. Colum Paley sat down in the other and glanced from the decanter to me.

‘Like a drink?'

The tone seemed deliberately coarse now – a gentleman jockey's drawl. After the ride I'd have been grateful for a cup of tea or even a glass of hock, but brandy was the only thing on offer. I shook my head.

‘Mary Marsh came to see you,' I said. ‘It was earlier this year, sometime between May and when she died in July. She came to apologize.'

He took a slow mouthful of brandy, looking at me all the while, and didn't speak until he'd swallowed it.

‘And what business is it of yours, Miss Lane?'

In every interview a time comes when you must decide whether to lie and, if so, how much. I looked into his brown, unblinking eyes and decided that lying was unjustifiable, not necessary and probably wouldn't work in any case.

‘I became interested in the case of Miss Marsh, through an acquaintance. I'm almost certain that the man who'll appear at the assizes next week accused of murdering her is innocent. I think her death had something to do with the case of Joanna Picton. She was trying to discover the father of Joanna's child.'

‘And she and the girl's brother were hell-bent on pinning that on my son. You saw a sample of it for yourself, outside the assembly rooms. The Lord knows what you were doing there with Barty Jones's ruffians.'

And I thought he hadn't noticed me in the hail of pennies. ‘If Mary Marsh had lived, she'd have told Jack Picton's friends that they were wrong,' I said. ‘Just minutes before Joanna Picton was deported, she told Mary who the father was. Sometime after that, Mary Marsh came to apologize to you and, through you, to your son.'

‘And I told her she needn't have bothered.'

I had to hide my feeling of triumph at making a right guess. ‘When was that?'

‘If you think I'd write it down in a diary, I didn't. But I can tell you it was the week after the Derby.'

Late May, then. Soon after she'd seen Joanna.

‘Did she just call and see you out of the blue?'

‘No. She sent me a governessy little note, introducing herself and saying she'd take the liberty of calling on me on a date she named to discuss a matter of importance to both of us. I guessed it would be some church business, like closing down beer houses or sending missionaries to pester poor heathens, so I didn't reply and forgot about it until she arrived early one morning when we'd just got in from the gallops.'