The Path of the Wicked

by Caro Peacock

  ‘Not to speak to. I’ve seen her once or twice at lectures or concerts in Cheltenham, with Colonel Kemble’s daughter. The daughter’s eighteen now and out in society, too old to need a governess, but I suppose they kept Miss Marsh on as a chaperone.’

  ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘Respectable-looking, dark hair, quite tall as far as I remember and carried herself well. She was twenty-nine years old, but looked younger. Pleasant face.’

  The face of a young woman who’d risk position and reputation for love of a rebel? No use asking that. ‘What was the gossip, after she was killed?’

  ‘People were shocked, of course.’

  ‘But not too shocked to talk about it, I’m sure. Were there any theories on who killed her?’

  ‘I think they all assumed it was Picton.’

  ‘Why? Was it common knowledge that she and Picton had been meeting?’

  ‘No. That only came out after she was dead.’

  ‘From that one housemaid who’s supposed to have seen them together?’

  ‘I suppose so. I heard it from Penbrake. I don’t know who he heard it from.’

  So the chairman of the magistrates had been picking up gossip about the accused. Probably only to be expected in a community where everybody knew each other.

  ‘When was Miss Marsh last seen alive?’

  ‘The evening before she died, by the daughter, Barbara. She spoke to her in the garden after dinner.’

  ‘And I suppose Miss Marsh said nothing to her about intending to meet somebody in the copse?’

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t, would she?’

  ‘So there’s no evidence she’d gone there to meet Picton?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And no evidence whether she went there of her own accord or was taken against her will. Was she killed where they found her?’

  ‘I assume so. Nobody said otherwise.’

  ‘What about the piece of iron they think was used to kill her? Did anybody identify it?’

  ‘No. It was a piece of rusty iron such as you might pick up in any farmyard. It looked as if it might have been part of a cart or plough.’

  ‘Was it produced in the magistrates’ court?’

  ‘Yes. Young Picton was asked if he recognized it.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That he wouldn’t know it from any other bit of old iron. That was all of a piece with his regrettably arrogant attitude. He seemed to regard the whole proceedings with contempt.’

  ‘Unwise, with an accusation of murder.’

  Mr Godwit looked even more ill at ease. ‘The fact is, he claimed he didn’t know he’d been arrested on a murder charge until the clerk read him the accusation in court.’

  I stared. ‘Surely they’d have told him when he was arrested.’

  ‘They should have told him, I’m quite aware of that. In fact, that was one of the points I put to Penbrake. It surely didn’t accord with justice to have a man brought before us thinking he was facing an accusation of rick burning and then have a capital charge sprung on him.’

  ‘Rick burning?’

  I think he noticed the change in my face. ‘Ah, you’ve heard about it?’

  ‘As we came down from Northleach, we saw a fire. They said at the inn that the farmer had been given the thorn bush warning.’

  ‘Raddlebush.’ He said the word almost under his breath. ‘That’s what they call it. A dead thorn bush dipped in the red raddle dye they use on sheep, with strips of black fabric dangling from it. The Raddlebush Brotherhood.’

  ‘And Picton was suspected of being one of the brotherhood?’

  ‘Everybody is well-nigh certain he’s the leader of it. Only they couldn’t prove it. They say those brotherhood fellows swear a secret oath in blood not to betray each other. I think that’s why Picton took such a high hand with us. He walked into the dock seeing himself as the hero who wouldn’t name his friends. When he found out that the charge was murder, he practically sneered at us. He claimed he didn’t know Miss Marsh was dead, and yet he didn’t react as if it surprised him.’

  ‘Was it possible he really didn’t know?’

  ‘Possible, I suppose. It depends where he was and what he was doing in the five days between the body being discovered and his arrest.’

  ‘Does an innocent man go into hiding for five days?’ I said.

  ‘Hiding’s pretty well a way of life with Picton. He’s guilty of something.’

  ‘Where’s his home?’

  ‘On the outskirts of the village, half a mile down the road towards Cheltenham.’

  ‘I’ll have to speak to somebody in the family. Are his mother and sisters in the village?’

  He looked unhappy at that. ‘The mother and one sister. I don’t think you’ll get much sense out of the mother. I hear she’s been driven half mad by it all. A respectable person she was, too.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘Well, it reflects on her, the son being an agitator and all the other business. It’s all such an unnecessary tragedy, all of it. Why is there so much discontent around these days?’

  If I’d even tried to answer his question, he’d have thought he’d taken a dangerous radical under his roof and my small chances of doing anything for Picton would be non-existent. I tried to concentrate on practicalities.

  ‘Still, I must try to speak to the mother and sister. And I shall need to see Picton himself. As a magistrate, I suppose you can arrange a visiting order.’

  His grey eyes went round as marbles. ‘You surely can’t propose going into prison to talk to him?’

  ‘I can’t see how I’m going to talk to him any other way.’

  ‘But it would be entirely inappropriate. What possible reason could I give?’

  I made myself take long, deep breaths, trying to keep my temper. He’d warned me, after all, that he was a coward. Letting me into his well-ordered life was probably the bravest thing he’d ever done.

  ‘Well, since you’ve been kind enough to recruit me as a member of your family, you’d better give me some virtues to deserve it. Suppose I’m a pious lady, concerned for his spiritual welfare.’

  The panic on his face faded a little.

  ‘I suppose it might be possible, but . . .’

  ‘Please try, and as soon as you can. I’ll go and see Picton’s mother this afternoon and spend tomorrow talking to people, trying to get my bearings.’

  ‘What people?’

  ‘Anybody who’ll talk to me.’

  ‘But you can’t just go up to people and ask them about a . . . a murder.’ The panic was back in full force.

  ‘Not at first, no. Remember, I know nothing about people here. It’s a matter of seeing a background to fit things into.’

  ‘But how will you know who to talk to?’

  ‘I won’t, but people will talk to me. I have a magic power.’

  ‘Magic?’

  ‘You buy it from a stationer’s shop for a shilling. It’s called a sketchpad.’

  To calm him, I explained what a resource that is for a woman. If she wanders around the country on her own, she attracts attention and even disapproval. Equipped with pencil, sketchbook and small folding stool – all of them in my trunk – she becomes a familiar feature of the countryside. Better still, any idler, from child to oldest inhabitant, will come sidling up to see what she’s drawing. By the end of it, he was even smiling. Sad that I had to spoil it.

  ‘And I need to speak to Colonel Kemble and his son,’ I said.

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The colonel’s quite convinced Picton killed Miss Marsh. He’d be annoyed if he thought I was questioning it.’

  ‘Would that matter?’

  ‘One doesn’t want to be on bad terms with a close neighbour.’

  ‘How close?’

  ‘His house is in the village, about half a mile away.’

  It was no use pressing the point. I’d already given him enough to worry about. After a while he
went back into the house and I wandered through the orchard to the paddock to see Rancie. Amos had left the previous evening on Senator, intending to spend the night in Cheltenham before riding on towards Herefordshire. Before he left he’d instructed Mr Godwit’s groom-cum-gardener on how to care for Rancie. She looked at ease, munching grass that seemed surprisingly good for this late in the summer. Mr Godwit’s cob was grazing in another corner of the paddock and it seemed the two of them had decided to tolerate each other. She raised her head when she saw me and came walking over, not hurrying. When I ran my hand along her neck, her coat was fine and glossy, no sign of distress at her new surroundings. It would do her good to have a country holiday and I decided not to ride her that day, to give her time to recover from the journey. After that, we’d explore the area and find out where the good canters were.

  Mr Godwit must have been giving some thought to my need to meet Jack Picton’s mother, because after lunch the housekeeper, Mrs Wood, appeared in the dining room with a round wicker basket and an expression that said this wasn’t her idea, so not to blame her. She was a tall, craggy-faced woman with a clump of hairs growing from a large mole beside her nose. I had the impression that Mr Godwit was a little scared of her.

  ‘I asked Mrs Wood to put up a few things for you to take to Mrs Picton,’ he said.

  So this was to be dressed up as a charitable errand. At this rate, I’d be a candidate for sainthood before the case was over.

  ‘We’ll want the basket back,’ Mrs Wood said.

  It had been clear from the start that my status as a remote relative by marriage had failed to impress her or, probably, even convince her. Still, she’d made a good job of the basket: half a dozen eggs nesting in straw, the remains of a ham, a wedge of cheese, potatoes and a cabbage from the garden.

  ‘I suppose your girl will be carrying it,’ she said, as I went to take it.

  Definite disapproval in her voice. I’d last seen Tabby apparently usefully employed picking things in the vegetable garden along with the household’s plump little maid. Had she managed to cause trouble already?

  ‘She won’t lower herself to sleep in our good bed,’ Mrs Wood said.

  ‘Won’t lower herself?’ Tabby had slept in gutters.

  ‘I put her in to share with Suzie. A good big bed with a goose feather eiderdown, big enough for four girls, let alone two. Suzie says your girl spent the night on the floor, rolled up in her coat.’

  I took the matter up with Tabby as she and I were walking along the road with the basket.

  ‘I won’t be in the same bed with anyone,’ Tabby said.

  ‘But it’s quite usual for maids to be asked to share a bed.’ No answer. If she kept on swinging the basket like that, the eggs would fly out. ‘Did the maid annoy you in some way?’

  ‘Nah. She’s all right, once you can understand what she’s talking about. I just don’t do it, that’s all.’

  I sighed. ‘I’ll tell Mrs Wood that you get nightmares. Perhaps she can find you a pallet and a blanket.’

  Goodness knows, there’d been enough in Tabby’s fifteen years or so of life to give her nightmares. Still, that was another untruth I’d be forced to commit. It was time Tabby made herself useful for something besides carrying groceries.

  ‘I’m glad you haven’t made an enemy of Suzie. Get her to talk to you as much as you can about the people in the village, especially what they’re saying about the murder.’

  Tabby nodded. This was familiar territory.

  The Pictons’ cottage stood on its own some two hundred yards from its nearest neighbour, where a narrow lane joined the road. The patch of unkempt garden that surrounded it had neither hedge nor walls. An ash tree, leaves already yellowing, stood at the junction of the road and the lane. It was leaning sideways, as if the next winter gale would bring it crashing down on the cottage. By the look of the stone-tiled roof, it had already suffered damage from some of the branches. Tiles had slid off and broken on the ground, long enough ago for weeds to grow round them. They’d been replaced by thin planks of wood, roughly nailed to the roof timbers. The front door had once been painted green, but only faded streaks of colour were left, alternating with sun-bleached wood. Brambles grew across the step. The two front windows were curtainless and most of their small panes cracked.

  ‘Nobody there,’ Tabby said.

  A face appeared at one of the windows. The panes were so dirty that it looked no more than a pale blob and then it went away. I walked up the overgrown path and rapped with my knuckles on the door. The face appeared again, and a hand pointing round to the back.

  Tabby and I picked our way over the weeds and broken tiles. At the back, things were slightly more orderly: a half row of onions in an otherwise bare vegetable patch, a spade and a small pair of boots by the porch, a window with a rag of curtain across it on a wire. A girl came out of the open door. She looked not much older than Tabby, maybe seventeen or eighteen at most, and was as thin and pale as a peeled willow twig.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  Her stare wasn’t quite hostile, but not welcoming either.

  ‘We’ve come to bring some things for Mrs Picton,’ I said, indicating the basket. ‘They’re from Mr Godwit.’

  ‘Ma’s not well.’

  ‘Does she need a doctor?’

  ‘Doctor.’ It wasn’t scorn in the girl’s voice, just a statement that she and her mother weren’t in a world where doctors called. She looked at the basket. ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Food.’

  ‘You’d better come in.’

  We followed her into a room that seemed almost dark after the sunlight outside. It was quite large, probably taking up most of the ground floor of the cottage, but the ceiling beams sagged so low that you could only just stand upright. Bluebottles buzzed against the window pane. The place smelled of cabbage water, old bacon fat and defeat. A stone fireplace with a bake oven alongside took up one wall, the ashes in it cold and unraked. Beside the fireplace a woman huddled in shawls creaked backwards and forwards in a rocking chair. All you could see of her under the shawls were a pair of boots with holes cut out of them for her bunions and a twist of lank grey hair.

  ‘Visitors, Ma.’

  The only response was a creak. I moved so that I was facing the woman in the chair.

  ‘Mrs Picton? Mr Godwit has sent some provisions.’

  One bleary grey eye opened and then the other one as she tried to get me into focus.

  ‘Are you ill? Can we help at all?’

  ‘She won’t be helped,’ the girl said. ‘She just sits there, morning and night.’

  ‘Since your brother Jack was arrested?’ I said.

  It felt brutal to launch into it like that, but I could see no way of breaking through to them.

  ‘Before that.’

  The mother went on rocking, but her eyes stayed open and on me. Impossible to guess if she knew what was being said. The girl put the basket on the table and started unpacking it, handling the eggs like precious things. When she lifted out the wedge of cheese, a large crumb of it fell off. It was fine-looking cheese, orange as marigold petals. Instinctively, the girl picked up the crumb and put it in her mouth. For just a moment her eyes flashed with pure childish pleasure; then a guilty look came on her face and she glanced at me as if expecting criticism.

  ‘Why don’t you cut yourself a proper slice?’ I said.

  She wouldn’t. Moving carefully round us, she fetched dishes from the dresser, arranged the food on them and shut it away behind the zinc screen of a meat safe in the corner. The old woman stopped rocking. Her eyes were following the girl and the plates.

  ‘You’re both hungry,’ I said.

  Starving, more like. The meat safe had been as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.

  ‘We do all right,’ the girl said. I thought the obvious untruth came from pride, until she added, ‘Better than being taken off to the workhouse at any rate.’

  She went back to the basket and began sifting thro
ugh the straw that had protected the eggs. Nothing else there, I thought, until she found a screw of blue paper. She unwrapped it. Two ounces or so of tea, with something gold gleaming in it. A sovereign. Typical of Mr Godwit’s cautious kindness. The girl froze with surprise and then looked at me.

  ‘He must mean you to have it,’ I said.

  Slowly, her hand went to it. She picked it up and slid it in her pocket.

  ‘What’s that, Sal?’

  The old woman, speaking for the first time, her voice grating like flint on slate. She’d sensed something.

  ‘Tea, Ma. He’s sent tea.’

  A grunt that might have been satisfaction; then the rocking resumed. The girl gave me the empty basket. I handed it to Tabby.

  ‘Thank him,’ she said. ‘Thank him from Ma.’

  She came with us, round the side of the cottage and back to the road.

  ‘I heard your father’s dead,’ I said.

  ‘Long time ago.’

  ‘And Colonel Kemble had been paying a pension to your mother?’

  An intrusive question, the sort the workhouse board of guardians would ask people. She answered reluctantly, eyes lowered.

  ‘Shilling a week, it was. Only he stopped it, with all the trouble.’

  ‘Trouble? Because your brother had been in the riots or because of the rick burning?’

  A long silence, then: ‘Everything.’

  ‘When did Colonel Kemble stop the pension?’

  ‘Last back-end.’

  ‘So you’ve had nothing to live on since last autumn? Have you seen your brother in all that time?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Recently? I mean, near the time when he was arrested.’

  ‘No.’

  She had her arms crossed on her chest and was looking down. I thought she might be lying, but I couldn’t bully her.

  ‘Does your brother have any particular friends?’

  ‘Friends?’

  Her head came up, alarmed.

  ‘Just somebody who liked him, somebody I could talk to about him?’

  She thought about it. ‘There was Will Smithies.’

  ‘Is he in the village?’

  ‘He works at the wheelwright’s.’

  A small enough scrap, but all we were likely to get. I tried a last question.