The Path of the Wicked

by Caro Peacock

  Table of Contents

  The Liberty Lane Series from Caro Peacock

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Liberty Lane Series from Caro Peacock

  DEATH AT DAWN

  (USA: A FOREIGN AFFAIR)

  DEATH OF A DANCER

  (USA: A DANGEROUS AFFAIR)

  A CORPSE IN SHINING ARMOUR

  (USA: A FAMILY AFFAIR)

  WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES *

  KEEPING BAD COMPANY *

  THE PATH OF THE WICKED *

  *available from Severn House

  THE PATH OF THE WICKED

  A Liberty Lane Mystery

  Gillian Linscott

  writing as

  Caro Peacock

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9 – 15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited.

  Copyright © 2013 by Caro Peacock.

  The right of Caro Peacock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Peacock, Caro.

  The path of the wicked.

  1. Lane, Liberty (Fictitious character)–Fiction. 2. Women

  private investigators–Fiction. 3. Gloucestershire

  (England)–Social conditions–19th century–Fiction.

  4. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9'2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-041-6 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-396-9 (epub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  ONE

  ‘The problem is, I’m a coward.’

  The gentleman sitting in my clients’ chair made the confession as simply as a person might admit to short sight or a dislike of marmalade. No drama about it and a tone that came closer to mild regret than self-reproach. Mildness seemed to be his chief characteristic. His height was moderate, his figure rounded but not corpulent, his face clean-shaven with the lightly sunburnt complexion of a man who spent most of his time in the country. A pate that was almost completely bald, apart from a trim fringe of brown hair round the circumference, and arched brows over mild grey eyes gave him the face that a child might draw on a hard-boiled egg. A pleasant-natured child, though, who’d made a likeable face. His eyes stared across the table into mine, as if I’d understand everything from that one admission. I waited.

  ‘I’m a magistrate. It’s expected of one, living in a small community. I can’t say I enjoy it, but it’s my duty and it doesn’t usually involve much unpleasantness. Fines for being drunk, a few months for poaching or stealing a chicken and so on – everybody knowing everybody else and not much resentment on the whole. We sit as a bench of three, and usually I agree with the other two. Now and again, if I think they’re being too severe, I might tell them so. Sometimes it makes a difference and sometimes it doesn’t. I think Penbrake thinks I’m by way of being a nuisance now and then, but—’

  ‘Penbrake?’

  ‘Chairman of the bench. A very just gentleman, very able. I fear I annoy him, but he doesn’t usually show it. Which is why all this is so very disagreeable. It was a man’s life, I told him. It was our duty to give him a chance to produce evidence. He thought I was making some reflection on his character, which was not what I had in mind at all.’

  Again, that grey-eyed stare, begging me to understand. I felt tired. It was late July, the tail-end of the social season, when the air in London feels as if too many people have been breathing it, the grass in the park is trodden and yellowish, thin layers of dried horse dung coat the streets. I was sleeping badly, aware of the workhouse clock across the way striking the hours through the night, the smell of the cesspit, which the landlord would never empty when he was supposed to, wafting through the open window on the first breeze of morning. I could smell it now, in the small upstairs room I use as an office, and I assumed my potential client could, too. The first I’d known about him was when a note was delivered to my quarters in Abel Yard, Mayfair, the day before.

  Dear Miss Lane,

  I hope you will excuse this note from a person who has not had the pleasure of being introduced to you. I live in a village near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire and am in London on family business. While talking with my solicitor about it, I took the opportunity to raise another matter which was causing deep concern to me. He suggested that I should consult you. If, therefore, you find it possible to favour me with an appointment tomorrow, before I return home, you would be doing a great service to the man who respectfully subscribes himself Stephen Godwit.

  The address for reply was a Piccadilly hotel. The note was enclosed in a covering letter from the solicitor in question, an honest man who had been involved in several of my cases. I’d suggested an appointment at eleven next morning, and Mr Godwit had arrived at the bottom of my staircase on the first stroke of the hour.

  I was inclined from first acquaintance to like him, because he did not seem disconcerted by either Abel Yard or me. Respectable visitors tended to raise eyebrows at a place so at odds with a Mayfair address, surprised at chickens in the yard, the smell of cows from the byre at the end, sounds of hammering from the carriage repair shop by the gate. When I’d gone down to open the door to him, he was bending and gently ruffling a hen’s neck feathers just the way she liked it. The bird was already swaying on its legs in a pleasant trance. It nearly fell over when he straightened up and gave a little bow.

  ‘Miss Lane. So very kind of you to see me.’

  Just a hint of surprise in his eyes. Perhaps he’d expected somebody older. But he’d made no comment, as some people annoyingly did, on the oddness of finding a woman in my profession. He had stepped up the stairs in his neatly shod feet, sat in the chair I offered him and come out with his story. It was simple enough in its way. A young man was likely to be sentenced to death by hanging in a few weeks’ time and Mr Godwit could not rid himself of the idea that it would be partly his fault.

  ‘I should have persisted, I can see that now. But Penbrake is a chop-chop kind of chairma
n – have done with it, then on to the next thing. And he was right in many ways. The evidence against young Picton is pretty strong and he didn’t help himself with the attitude he took. He denied the charge, but refused to answer most of the questions that were put to him. He claimed the landowners were determined to see him hanged no matter what he said and as good as accused Penbrake of being in their pockets. He said he’d been elsewhere on the night in question, but not very convincingly, and wouldn’t give names of anybody who might support him. I tried to argue for an adjournment to give Picton time to produce a witness to his whereabouts, if he had one, but Penbrake wouldn’t have it. He said that could wait till the assizes, that all we had to do was decide whether there was a prima facie case against Picton, and there was, so we had no choice.’

  ‘What about the third magistrate?’ I said.

  ‘He’s seventy years old and more than half deaf, poor man. He just goes along with Penbrake.’

  ‘Wasn’t it a fair point that Mr Penbrake made?’ I said. ‘It will be the jury at the assizes who decide whether the man is guilty or not.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘That’s the worst of it. The jury will have made their mind up before young Picton even steps into the dock.’

  ‘He has a bad reputation?’

  ‘I fear so.’

  I waited, imagining some rural thug with a record of violence. Mr Godwit’s enlargement of the point, given with some regret, came as a surprise.

  ‘The fact is, I’m afraid young Picton is by way of being a revolutionary.’

  He looked at me, waiting to see disapproval on my face.

  ‘What kind of revolutionary?’ I said.

  It was a nervous time, with dark warnings from some political quarters of an English revolution brewing.

  ‘A trade unionist,’ Mr Godwit said sadly. It was, after all, only a few years since six Dorset farm workers had been transported to Australia for trying to form a trade union. Then, seeing that I hadn’t immediately reacted with horror, he added: ‘A Chartist, too.’

  ‘Quite a lot of people are,’ I said.

  More than a million people had signed the petition calling for votes for working men. From Mr Godwit’s face, there was worse to come.

  ‘The fact is, Picton was almost certainly involved in that unpleasantness at Newport last November.’

  This was more serious. The night of rioting, when thousands of men marched on Newport prison to try to free one of the Chartist leaders, had ended in soldiers opening fire and men dying. The rising had failed and the Welsh Bastille hadn’t fallen, but it left the comfortable classes badly shaken, fearing rocks through their windows and peasants with pikes in their drawing rooms. Mr Godwit was probably right about the opinion of the jury. Jurors are property-owning men.

  ‘Was Picton convicted of taking part in the riot?’ I said.

  ‘No. But nobody saw him for quite a long time afterwards. A lot of them went into hiding.’

  ‘So whom is he accused of murdering?’ I said.

  ‘A young woman named Mary Marsh. She was governess to the Kemble family. That’s all part of it. There was bad blood between young Picton and the Kembles.’

  ‘The Kembles being local landowners?’

  ‘Yes. Colonel Kemble owns about eight hundred acres. He’s retired from the army. His wife died last year. His son, Rodney, runs the estate farm and they keep a few racehorses. Young Picton’s father used to work for them, until he had an accident. He was killed falling off a ladder in a barn, leaving the wife with three young children to bring up. They say he was drunk at the time. I believe Colonel Kemble behaved decently enough, paid a pension to the widow and so on, but young Picton harboured a grudge.’

  ‘Was that common knowledge?’

  ‘Very much so. Last year Kemble cut off the pension, because of all the talk about young Picton and so on. Picton threatened Rodney Kemble in pretty violent terms – said in front of a dozen witnesses that the Kembles’ time was coming and they shouldn’t expect to be landowners for ever.’

  ‘And yet it was the governess who was murdered. Is Picton supposed to have hated the Kembles so much that he’d kill anybody from the household?’

  Mr Godwit looked ill at ease. ‘Rather the reverse. There seems to be some evidence that Picton and Miss Marsh were on . . . conversational terms, so to speak.’

  ‘More than conversational, you mean?’

  A reluctant nod. ‘So it’s said.’

  ‘Is it likely – the governess in a landowner’s family and the local revolutionary?’

  ‘Surprising, I grant you. But Picton was a good-looking fellow, and quite the orator.’

  I noted the use of the past tense, but mainly I was wondering how such an unlikely pair could have met. But then there were sometimes hidden depths in governesses. I knew. I’d once been one myself.

  ‘So why did he kill her?’

  He wriggled in the chair. ‘It’s supposed that he . . . made advances to her and she resisted.’

  ‘Where was the body found?’

  ‘In a copse, on the Kembles’ land. Young Kemble was walking with the keeper early one morning and they found her lying in a clearing. She was quite cold and her clothes were soaked with dew. It seems certain she’d been there since the night before.’

  ‘How had she been killed?’

  ‘With a blow to the head from an iron bar. It was found in the nettles not far from the body, with traces of blood and some of her hairs on it.’

  ‘How long ago did this happen?’

  ‘Eleven days ago.’

  ‘Was Picton arrested immediately?’

  ‘No. He disappeared again. He was found hiding in a barn some miles away, five days later.’

  ‘And charged with the murder?’

  ‘Yes. They arrested him on the Wednesday and he was brought before the bench last Friday.’

  ‘Did he deny knowing Miss Marsh?’

  ‘No. He admitted meeting her from time to time, in that very copse where the body was discovered.’

  ‘Wasn’t that foolish of him?’

  ‘There’s evidence that a housemaid had spotted them there once. He must have known that would come out at the assizes. But it was all part of the man’s attitude. He was treating the magistrates with contempt, as if we didn’t matter.’

  ‘And where was he on the night Miss Marsh was killed?’

  ‘He was seen by a reliable witness earlier in the evening on a road not far from the Kembles’ estate. He says he was on his way somewhere else, but wouldn’t say where. It was put to him repeatedly that it would damage his position.’

  ‘Was he asked why he’d disappeared after the murder?’

  ‘Yes. He said that since he hadn’t committed a crime, he didn’t have to account for his movements.’

  I’d been taking notes as we were talking, but now I put down my pencil, feeling oppressed by his story. Unless young Picton had amazing luck or a much better lawyer than anyone likely to be available to a farm labourer’s widow, yes, he would hang and there was probably precious little I could do about it.

  ‘So Picton denies killing Miss Marsh, but admits to meetings with her. He was seen not far away near the time she was killed and won’t say where he went after that. Then he went into hiding. In spite of all this, you think he’s innocent?’

  ‘No.’ Mr Godwit said it forcefully. Then, seeing the surprise on my face: ‘I’m not a fool. In the face of all this, I can’t claim he’s innocent. And yet, I’m not totally convinced he’s guilty. As a private gentleman, that wouldn’t matter one way or the other. But I’m a magistrate, with a sworn duty to justice, and rather than annoy my friends and neighbours I’ve sent that young man on the road to the gallows when there’s a doubt in my mind whether he’s guilty or not. Should I really be shrugging off the responsibility?’

  You could tell he wasn’t a man accustomed to making speeches. His eyes were distressed, his face red.

  ‘I wish I could help,’ I sa
id.

  ‘Meaning that you can’t?’

  ‘It would take some time, getting to know the place and the people. I suppose it’s not long to the next assizes.’

  ‘Three and a half weeks. They open on the fifteenth of August.’

  ‘I can’t simply leave my cases here.’

  ‘Of course, I see that.’

  He dropped his eyes, apologetic. That made me feel shabby. The fact was, I had only one minor case on hand, which I could probably have seen to its end in a day or so, leaving me free to travel to Cheltenham. There were two other reasons, which I could not give to Mr Godwit.

  ‘Even if I were free, it’s not certain that I could help you,’ I said. ‘Suppose whatever I found only confirmed Picton’s guilt?’

  ‘I’d accept that. At least I’d feel that I’d done whatever was possible.’

  His humility made me feel worse. I sighed.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do it. But if you’d care to leave your country address with me, I’ll write to you if things change.’

  He took the pencil I offered him and wrote the address in a neat round hand. I went downstairs and to the gateway with him.

  ‘Perhaps the best you could do is to see that he has a lawyer,’ I said.

  ‘Would that be proper, for a magistrate?’

  I was on the point of saying that people needn’t know, but guessed Mr Godwit would be as innocent as the egg he resembled when it came to subterfuge. Which meant young Picton was as good as hanged. Cravenly, I hoped he were guilty.

  Back upstairs, I put his address away in a drawer and picked up the rectangle of card that was the real reason for my reluctance to go out of town: an invitation to an evening of Italian operatic arias in the garden of a house in Kensington, inside if wet. I enjoy Italian arias, but that did not account for the spark of excitement in my mind when the invitation had been delivered the day before. Since I was unknown to the aristocratic person hosting the event, the only reason for it was that Mr Disraeli had a case for me and – according to the custom of the unusual relationship between us – this was where he’d tell me about it. Over the few years since I’d adopted my profession, some high affairs of diplomacy and government had come my way. At first it hadn’t been of my seeking, but the truth was I’d come to enjoy my privileged and occasionally dangerous glimpses behind the scenes. The very things that had seemed to my disadvantage as an inquiry agent – my gender and comparative youth – sometimes gave me access to places where heavy boots could not tread. That ambitious young MP, Mr Benjamin Disraeli, was not a government minister, much to his disappointment, but he had a finger in many pies. The authorities knew of our friendship – if it could be called that – and had several times used him as the means of sounding me out for commissions. Since care for my reputation and his meant we could not meet in private, the first indications I’d have were invitations like this one.