by Caro Peacock
‘Was Mary Marsh’s room on this floor?’ I said.
Maggie was so relieved to face a question on something else that she didn’t hesitate.
‘Yes. At the end, facing the other way on.’
I told her I might be back later, to keep her anxious, and walked to the end of a corridor and a door at a right angle to the others. It opened on to a small but comfortable room, looking towards the stable block. The rug, desk and two armchairs were rather worn, as if they’d migrated there from more important rooms, but, by the standards of many governesses, Mary Marsh had been comfortably housed. The bed had been stripped of its linen and pillows, with just a coverlet over it, but apart from that it looked as if nothing much would have changed since Mary last walked out of the room. It only needed a second glance to see that the books in the bookcase were her own. This wasn’t the usual tidy and unread assembly that you find in the guest rooms of country houses, but rather the mixed, sometimes tattered collection of a woman who loved reading. Some were novels, both in French and English, others poetry, history, geography, geology, natural history, showing a lively and wide-ranging mind, well beyond the demands of her work. The fact that they were still there, a month after Mary’s death, showed how alone she’d been, with no family or friends to come and claim her possessions.
If her books were still there, perhaps her other things were as well. I looked into the corridor to make sure that nobody was near, closed the door and started searching. The chest of drawers was empty, but a small leather-covered trunk beside it, marked M.M. in faint white paint, was unlocked and full of her clothes, neatly folded. The housekeeper had probably done that after her death. I sorted through it layer by layer, looking for anything that might link her to Joanna Picton or her brother. Nothing – no old newspapers, not a scrap of writing. I replaced the clothes and went across to her desk, still unlocked. When I opened the flap, the reality of her was so intense that I half expected her to walk into the room and ask what I was doing. It had a cheerful untidiness, showing it had been much used, but with an underlying sense of order. The large central compartment held her watercolour box, with most of the paints worn down, several pencils and charcoal sticks and a small sketch pad of good-quality paper. I sat at the desk and looked through it – more butterflies; various flowers, carefully labelled with English and Latin names; a few attempts at birds, spirited but less successful. No people at all, with just one exception and that was only a back view of a man on a horse.
That was one of the last sketches, near the few blank pages at the end of the book. It was done in quick charcoal strokes, less neat and careful than most of the sketches, but with force and feeling. He looked like a young man, tall and firm in the saddle, but there was somehow a loneliness about the way he and his horse were standing there against a background of trees, his shoulders down, head slumped forward. The horseman was sad and the artist was sorry for him. I got up and took the sketch over to the window. As I’d thought, there were those very same trees to the left of the arch into the stable yard. She’d caught the twists of the oak trunk in a few clever strokes, sketching the scene from her window. I was sure the man on the horse was Rodney Kemble. He’d loved her and the sketch proved that she, once at least, had had feelings for him. Whatever had driven them apart must have mattered very much to her.
I went back to the desk and replaced the sketchbook. The left-hand compartment contained her professional work, plans of lessons for Barbara going back several years. Mary had been conscientious, marking up calendars with each day divided into periods of study: French, divinity, drawing, use of globes, Shakespeare, fractions and long division, piano practice. I only hoped Barbara had benefited from it all. There was no work calendar for the present year, Barbara having graduated from the schoolroom. The right-hand compartment, the most disorderly, contained her correspondence. Like many people who enjoyed writing, Mary had kept letter books, with letters she’d received pasted inside and copies of her replies so that she could look back on a complete correspondence. There were three of them, in plump exercise books with varnished cloth covers. I riffled through them. Many of the letters were exchanges with a woman who was also a governess. She seemed to be younger than Mary, or newly entered on her profession, because Mary was giving her sound practical advice, with good humour and occasional gentle mockery of their charges. Not a word to the purpose, though. Not a hint about the young man of the house being in love with her, or a handsome outlaw, or a scullery-maid who might hang.
Only one letter had something that might touch on it. Her correspondent had complained about how spoiled her pupils were, not charitable or grateful for their luck in being rich. Mary had replied:
Oh, how well I understand you. Thank goodness I do not have your trials, my girl being kind enough at heart, but there are times when I sit by the fire, playing whist with the colonel, and think of the poor wretches on the road outside who could be called from death back to life by even five minutes of the comforts I take for granted, and it’s all I can do not to overturn the table and run out and look for them. Or so I flatter myself, as I suppose we all do, being creatures so very tenacious of our comforts.
I checked the date, the December of the previous year, soon after the arrest of Joanna Picton. It was surely the baby’s death that Mary had been picturing, and wondering how much of her own precarious comfort she might risk to help Joanna.
Apart from the letter books, what remained were mostly small, sociable things – an invitation to tea from her friend Mrs Dell, politely declined because of the difficulty of getting home afterwards, a thank you for a book she’d sent somebody. One note, ornamented by cut-out pictures of hearts and roses, wished her happy birthday from Barbara, but had no date.
A few scraps of paper carried memoranda to herself, mostly facts to be checked when she next visited the library in town. Only one was of interest. It looked like a copy, in her handwriting, of a page from a road book giving times of stagecoaches between Cheltenham and Gloucester. Then just two words: St Luke’s. She’d written it thriftily on the back of a receipt from a bookshop, with a date in early May of the present year. So, sometime after that date, Mary had either made or contemplated a visit to Gloucester to go to a church. If she’d needed a church, there were many closer than Gloucester and there’d been nothing in her letters to suggest particular piety. Could the distance even be the point of it, wanting to talk about her dilemma to somebody outside the circle of Cheltenham gossip? If so, why that particular church? I read the note again, memorized it and then put it back, closed the desk and made sure everything in her room was as I had found it. On my way back along the corridor, I looked into Barbara’s room, but Maggie had gone and the clothes were tidied away. I went downstairs, found the butler and asked him to give my compliments to the colonel when he returned. Nobody was watching me from the windows, so after I’d gone a little way up the drive, I turned off it and walked round a shrubbery towards the side of the house.
A whistle too shrill to be a blackbird’s sounded from a big cedar. Tabby was sitting comfortably on a wide branch, legs stretched along it and back against the trunk. When I signalled to her, she slid down, landed neatly on her feet and reported.
‘Nothing’s come out except the pig bins earlier on, and you wouldn’t hide anything in those because of the stink.’
‘We missed it,’ I said. ‘I’m nearly certain Barbara arranged for Maggie to send it somewhere while we were away yesterday in Cheltenham, only I don’t know how.’
Tabby and I walked in silence. She was frowning, clearly thinking hard, and when we were nearly back at Mr Godwit’s, she announced the result.
‘I think I know.’
‘How she sent it?’
‘With you.’ I supposed my jaw dropped, because she laughed. ‘You know when you sent me away – well, I walked around for a bit, looking at things. Then I saw the carriage we came into town on, the same driver. He was on a road going out of the town. There was nobody inside
, just him.’
‘Odd, yes.’
‘So I thought I’d follow him for a bit,’ Tabby said. ‘He didn’t go far. Just outside the town, there’s a public house with three stars on the board. He drove into the yard. I thought that was just a place he liked to drink at, so I came back and didn’t think any more of it till now.’
‘You didn’t see him unloading anything?’
‘We weren’t looking for anything then, were we? If it was only a little trunk, he might have kept it up at the front, under his driving box, and we wouldn’t have known it was there.’
The more I thought of it, the more convincing it sounded. The driver wouldn’t even have to be conscious of Barbara’s plot. It would be quite a normal thing to deliver something to a staging post to be picked up by somebody else, although the usual place would be one of the big coaching inns, not some out-of-town establishment.
‘You could take us there?’ I said.
‘Course I could.’
We were both ravenous so we stayed for lunch, I with Mr Godwit, Tabby with Suzie in the kitchen. Afterwards we groomed and tacked up Rancie. When I’d told Mr Godwit that we might be away for the night, he’d hardly raised any objection, dazed by all that was happening. Once I was in the saddle and we’d buckled on the saddlebag, Tabby hopped on to the mounting block and up behind me. Having your maid riding pillion was country manners and would raise a few eyebrows in the streets of Cheltenham, but I was used to that. I shouldn’t have inflicted it on Rancie with anybody else, but Tabby was so light and well balanced that a horse would hardly feel the extra weight. We enjoyed a few long canters and were in town by mid-afternoon.
‘Straight on, past the statue thing,’ said Tabby, directing from the back.
As it happened, it was the main road towards Gloucester, so quite busy. After less than a mile, we came to the public house, three faded gold stars on a flaking blue background, a couple of out-of-work farm labourers drinking slow pints on a bench outside. A girl like Barbara shouldn’t even have known such a place existed, but a sporting gentleman might pause there for a quick glass on horseback to break a long hack home. Paley’s suggestion to her, probably. How long had they been planning this?
We slipped off and I left Tabby holding Rancie while I went to the door and waited. One of the labourers stood up and called ‘Lady to see you’ into the dim, beer-smelling depths of the room. A tall, very thin man in a green apron came out.
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ I said. ‘My friend’s coachman left a trunk here yesterday. I wonder if it’s been collected yet.’
‘Yes, ma’am. First thing this morning. He was here before I got the doors unlocked.’
‘Did he give a name?’
‘Why should he? He’d come to collect a trunk, he collected it and off he went in a hurry. Didn’t even stop to wet his whistle.’
‘A young man?’
‘Pretty young.’
‘What sort of vehicle was he driving?’
‘Two-horse curricle, nice one.’
A sporting man’s vehicle. That fitted.
‘Was he a tall red-faced gentleman with dark hair and side whiskers?’
I was describing Postboy, sure that he was in the plot somewhere. The landlord shook his head.
‘Tall, very tall. Not dark or red-faced, though, and no side whiskers. Light-coloured hair and blue eyes, I noticed. Didn’t come from round here, judging by his voice.’
‘Where from, did you think?’
He jerked his thumb westwards. ‘Somewhere that way, I’d say.’
‘Which way did he go?’
‘Towards Gloucester. Handled the horses like he knew what he was doing.’
It was unbelievable, and yet it fitted too well. I tried another question.
‘What was he wearing?’
‘Jacket, boots and gaiters, ordinary wear but neat.’
‘And his waistcoat?’
‘Yellow as a canary bird. So you know the gentleman?’
He looked relieved when I nodded. I suppose he’d feared trouble about the trunk. I thanked him and went back to Tabby and Rancie.
‘It was collected first thing this morning,’ I said. Then added, still not quite believing it: ‘By Amos Legge.’
SIXTEEN
We walked westwards along the road, leading Rancie and trying to make sense of it. The idea that Amos had simply been recruited as a bag-carrier in an elopement was ridiculous. Why and wherever he’d taken the trunk must have been to do with his search for Paley. How he’d got to it before we did was a puzzle. When I’d parted from him, he’d been on his way home to Herefordshire, pausing at Ledbury to follow the trail of Paley’s horse. On Sunday morning he’d have been sitting in church next to his fiancée, hearing their banns read. In two days he’d somehow picked up the trail and ridden back here. Given Amos’s ability to lay his hands on a fast horse or a pair of them at need, it was possible but still surprising.
‘Why in the world didn’t he tell us what he was doing?’ I said.
‘Because we weren’t there,’ Tabby said, defending him.
A fair point, I supposed. Amos might have been looking for us while we were looking for Barbara.
‘The trunk must have had a delivery address on it, or what would be the point in taking it?’ I said, trying to think it through. ‘Or perhaps he hoped there’d be something inside it that would tell us where Barbara’s gone.’
‘How would he have known she’s gone?’
‘You know Amos. He only has to spend five minutes in any stable yard to catch the latest gossip. The whole county’s been buzzing with people looking for her.’
We walked on another half-mile.
‘Where are we going?’ Tabby said.
‘Gloucester. It’s only another nine miles or so.’
The decision seemed to have made itself. Perhaps it had been made as soon as I looked at that scrap of paper in Mary Marsh’s desk.
‘Because that’s where he’s going?’
‘I’ve no notion where he’s going,’ I said. ‘He might have turned off anywhere between here and Gloucester. We’ll probably have to wait for him to find us.’
‘So, why are we going there?’
‘To find a church.’
‘Another one?’
She sounded far from impressed, but I was working on a guess so wild that I didn’t want to talk about it until I’d tested it, not even to Tabby. She saw that and walked on without resentment. In theory, we were on foot for a while to give Rancie’s back a rest, but she was still as fresh as paint and could have carried us both cheerfully. The real reason was another notion too eccentric for me to explain. We were following Joanna Picton. Soon after we’d left the Three Stars, I’d realized that this must have been the road she’d walked, with the baby in her arms, on that icy November night nine months ago. The Three Stars might even be the public house where a kind landlady had let her warm herself at the fire, or another one like it along the way.
It was true that the circumstances could hardly be more different. Joanna was walking in the dark, scared and hungry, with nothing but sodden ploughland and flooded ditches round her. We were going between golden stubble fields with fat pheasants clacking, pastures full of grazing sheep, pink mallow and creamy meadowsweet growing along the roadside verges. She had the weight of the baby in her arms, probably crying by now, and walked on workhouse shoes that would let in water. It would have been surprising if she’d possessed gloves, so her hands would be blue with cold, probably chapped and chilblained. She and the baby were alone until, too late, the carter came along. In our case, carriages and riders were passing every few minutes, people raising hands and wishing us good afternoon. If we’d needed help at all, either kindness or the sovereigns in my saddle bag would have guaranteed it. She might as well have been a lost traveller in Arctic wasteland for all the help she could expect. And yet she’d walked on, hoping for something better that never happened. When we came to a milestone, I suggested that T
abby should get up on Rancie.
‘Don’t you want to as well?’
I shook my head. She settled, holding on to the pommel of the saddle as I told her, while I led Rancie along, the sun dipping to the west in front of us, shining in our eyes and throwing long shadows back along the road. When the tower of Gloucester cathedral came in sight, we were passing a grove of withies, with a deep ditch between trees and road. Irrationally, I was sure this was where the baby had drowned and I shuddered.
‘What’s up?’ Tabby asked, missing nothing.
‘Just a horsefly. We’ll stop at the next milestone and I’ll get up with you.’
Gloucester was busy. The broad river Severn takes quite large ships down from there to Bristol, so timber and coal carts were going backwards and forwards from the docks. We found a small but respectable hotel – of the temperance persuasion as it happened – and I negotiated stabling and a feed for Rancie and a room each for Tabby and me. After two weeks of sleeping on Suzie’s floor, I thought she deserved a little comfort. The hotel keeper promised chops, potatoes and tea in an hour and cans of hot water in our rooms for washing. I said I had an errand to do first and left Tabby to carry up our saddlebag while I took a short walk to the cathedral. A verger was checking candles, ready for evensong. When I asked him where I might find St Luke’s, he seemed surprised that anybody should want it rather than his fine cathedral.
‘A little new place, down by the docks.’
‘So near the prison, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would it take an interest in prison charities?’
‘I think it might.’
I walked back to the hotel, knowing that my guess had been right. All the guests ate dinner at a common table. There were twelve of them, including three clergymen. Over teacups after the meal, I managed to get into conversation with the most amiable of them. He wasn’t surprised by my interest.
