The Path of the Wicked (11 page)

Because Mr Godwit dined so early, there was plenty of daylight left. I walked to the road and found the village sunk in summer-evening peace, not even a dog moving. I strolled with no clear sense of direction, thinking that there was a great gap in my investigations. The name of that gap was Mary Marsh. Usually, if you're investigating a murder, the victim is where you start. What were her habits? Who were her friends or enemies? Did she meet her killer at home? Go willingly or unwillingly to the place where she was killed? I'd started from the opposite side, with the presumed killer, so had asked none of these questions. Asking them now, I found no answers. Nobody had said anything about the dead woman's family or friends. That went with her occupation. Usually an educated woman would go into service as a governess because she had no relatives or close friends to help her. It was the loneliest of positions – above the other servants but below the family. When not with her pupils, she'd be left very much on her own, closed in by the respectability of being a lady, without any of the advantages. It would have been even worse in Miss Marsh's case because she'd had only one pupil, and Barbara Kemble was now almost too old to need her. After a mile or so of this, I realized that I had a direction, after all. My feet were taking me towards the Kembles' house, the red-tiled roof in the woods I'd seen from the hill. Without thinking much about it, I'd decided I needed to find the place where Mary Marsh died.

Pasture stretched downhill on my right, golden in the light from the setting sun. On the left hand, woods of ash and oak crowded close to the path and were already smudged by dusk. They were well-kept woods, the trees straight and even. I guessed I was already at the boundaries of the Kembles' estate. After another half mile or so, a narrow gate led into the woods. Its latch and hinges were so well balanced that it opened at a touch. I took that for an invitation and walked through it into a woodland ride, at right angles to the road. It seemed darker under the trees, the ground deeply rutted, probably from where timber had been dragged out. Rabbits scuttered across and a tawny owl scooped the air with a whisper of wings just above my head. When the track came to a crossroads, I took a right turn, judging that was in the direction of the house. I was guessing that if Mary Marsh had gone to meet somebody by appointment, it wouldn't have involved a long walk. After a few hundred yards, the track broadened out into a clearing. Trees must have been thinned there quite recently, because the only ones left standing were tall young ashes as straight as pencils. The trunks were silver columns, the tops feathery silhouettes shifting in the after-sunset breeze against a white sky. I stopped suddenly, sure beyond all doubt that this was the place where Mary Marsh had died.

There was no logical reason for it. After twenty-five days there'd be no lingering smell of blood. If the tramplings of people who'd taken the body away were still there on the hard earth, they wouldn't show in the dusk. The nettles beside the track might have been crushed down for a while when a piece of iron matted with blood and hair was thrown into them, but nettles grow quickly at this time of year and they showed no sign of it. So I couldn't explain it logically, beyond the thought that if somebody wanted a secluded meeting place not too far from the house, this would do very well. I stood in the clearing, feeling cold enough to wish I'd brought a shawl, and imagined Mary Marsh waiting there, hearing footsteps that surely weren't coming for the reason she expected. She'd have heard, as I heard, the leaves shifting in the breeze, the low of a cow from a distant field, a fox rustling through the undergrowth. Then footsteps on the hard earth, just as I was hearing them now. I was so absorbed in Mary Marsh that it took me a few seconds to realize that these weren't in my thoughts of her; they were happening here and now, coming not towards her but towards me. My heart started racing and for a few moments of confusion I couldn't move. Male steps, certainly. Not hurrying, but not slow either; confident, as if the man planting his bootsoles down knew the ground and had a right to be there. I turned, intending to go back along the track. I managed maybe twenty yards before I knew it was useless. The male steps had stopped. Instead, there was a presence in the clearing and the feeling of eyes watching my back. It was all I could do to turn round and look at him. A young man, quite tall, in jacket and breeches. A shotgun, broken, in the crook of his arm. A face that was no more than a pale mask in the dusk, with dark ovals for eyes. I knew from my sight of them in the churchyard the day before that the eyes were the colour of buried hazelnuts. I was looking at Rodney Kemble and he was looking at me.

I spoke first. I had nothing to lose.

‘It was here, wasn't it?' I said.

I thought he wasn't going to say anything. I waited, alert for the movement of lifting the shotgun and snapping its two halves together. I'd run into the woods and dodge, not a great hope but the best. The shotgun stayed where it was, angled over his arm.

‘Who are you? What do you want?'

He sounded as alarmed as I was. Obviously, any memory of meeting me the day before had gone.

‘It was here?' I asked again.

The mask-like face dipped briefly and rose again.

‘What do you want?'

This time there was something close to panic in his voice. I wondered if he'd taken me for the ghost of Miss Marsh.

‘To know who killed her,' I said.

‘Do you know?' There was something like appeal in his voice.

‘I don't know. I'd like to know,' I said.

A fox or something moved to the side of us. His hand went to the shotgun, then away again. If I stayed any longer with that pale face looking at me, I'd scream or babble.

‘I'm going now,' I said.

I turned and started walking back along the track, which looked much darker than a few minutes ago, trying not to hurry or stumble. I expected shotgun pellets to come at any moment, exploding through the leaves into my back. Then, when the explosion didn't come, I listened for footsteps running behind me, even imagined I heard them. But they didn't come either. More by luck than anything, I found the track back to the gate. When it closed behind me and I was standing on the road, with no footsteps following me out of the wood, I leaned on the top bar, gasping and sobbing as if I'd been running a mile. Eventually, I got myself back to the house. The lamps were lit and Mr Godwit mildly concerned. I'd gone for a stroll and got lost, I said. I was sorry he'd been worried.

In the morning we went to town and Mr Godwit made a great production of seeing me comfortably settled at the Queen's. We drank coffee together; then he went off to do various errands, promising to come and collect me around noon the next day. I unpacked my travelling bag in my room and then strolled out to take a measure of the town. Like spas everywhere, it moved to the quiet rhythms of people not quite ill but not exactly well. A stream of elderly people in bath chairs pushed by maids or valets rolled along the wide Promenade. The people in the chairs were swathed in rugs, although the day was hot enough for ladies to need sunshades. Among pedestrians, white-haired men with a military look still managed something like a marching step by precise placing of their walking canes. Many of them had sunburned faces that suggested long service in the Indian army, or yellowish complexions from troubled livers. Somebody told me later that people from the Indian service liked Cheltenham for retirement because it reminded them of their summer hill stations in the Himalayan foothills. The public buildings were grand and mostly quite new, designed for people with cultivated tastes and time on their hands. There were the assembly rooms, a Literary and Philosophical Institution, a bandstand for concerts. One great advantage of the place was the large number of women out walking on their own or in pairs. Most of them were middle-aged and I assumed that they were invalids there to take the waters or comfortably-off widows living in the terraces and hotels. Their presence meant I wasn't conspicuous on my own.

At this time of day at least, it wasn't a town for young men. I saw nobody resembling the gentlemen jockeys I'd seen up on Cleeve Hill, or anybody at all who looked like a racing man. In one way this was a relief, because I was in no hurry to encounter Henry Littlecombe. In other ways, it was disappointing because I was hoping to pick up some gossip about the missing Peter Paley. That was one of my reasons for coming to town; the other a need to find somebody who knew about Jack Picton's radical and probably revolutionary activities. I hadn't been specific about either of them to Mr Godwit, because I knew he'd disapprove of both. After a while I went back to the hotel, ate a good lunch at a table of my own in the dining room, and asked a rather surprised porter for directions to the Mechanics' Institute. In Albion Street, he said, not far from the hotel. I walked there in the afternoon sunshine and found the doors closed, hardly surprising because the mechanics of the town were likely to be at work. A noticeboard beside the doors gave an idea of the serious-mindedness and politics of the place: a lecture by a Chartist who'd been in prison for his views, an appeal for everybody to sign the petition demanding reprieves for the Newport rioters and, more surprisingly, a meeting of the women's branch of the local working men's association. I pushed one of the doors and it opened. A woman was sweeping the hall floor inside. I apologized for troubling her and said I was hoping to find Mr Barty Jones. She looked me in the eye, sizing me up.

‘Who wants him?'

‘My name is Liberty Lane, but that won't mean anything to him. I'm a friend of a man he knows in London, a printer named Tom Huckerby.'

It was hard to tell from her expression if the name meant anything to her. Tom had friends and allies in most parts of the country.

‘Mr Jones isn't here.'

‘Do you know when he might be? I could call back later.'

‘You could try this evening, if you like. There's a meeting on at seven.'

I thanked her and walked back to the Promenade, wondering how best to burrow into local gossip. It would probably come my way naturally if I stayed in town a week, but I couldn't wait that long. Still wondering, I came back to the Literary and Philosophical Institution. Quite a different atmosphere here from the Mechanics' Institute, more leisurely and less political. The notices outside advertised concerts and lectures, including one happening this afternoon on the habits and habitats of British butterflies. Ladies and gentlemen strolled in and out. I went inside and found the reading room. Elderly men were taking an after-lunch doze in leather armchairs; a clergyman and a grey-haired woman sitting side by side at a table were reading newspapers. With nothing much in mind, I settled myself at a small table with a pile of local newspapers. For a small town, Cheltenham seemed to generate quite a few. At the top of the pile were copies of the
Cheltenham Looker-On
. It turned out to be a cheerful and gossipy publication, mostly chronicling recent arrivals in the town. A name in an edition of a few weeks ago caught my eye:
Mr D'Israeli, the veteran author of
Curiosities of Literature
and other well-known works, is at present sojourning amongst us.
My laugh woke up one of the sleepers and brought a look of reproach. This veteran author was the father of my now ex-friend, Benjamin Disraeli MP. It seemed I couldn't get away from the family. I read through the next edition, wondering whether the senior Mr D'Israeli was still in town. Then, quite unexpectedly, I came across another name I knew. The paragraph was curt and not at all sociable.

Mr Colum Paley wishes it to be known by all concerned that from the present date onward he will not be responsible for any debts or obligations incurred by his son, Peter Paley, however and whenever they were entered into.

Somebody had taken the trouble to circle the paragraph in thick black pencil. I checked the date. It was the week before Mary Marsh was killed and Peter Paley had disappeared. Mr Godwit had mentioned that Paley senior had grown impatient with his son's debts, and here was the proof of it.

Wondering who might have been interested enough to circle the announcement, I looked up and found the clergyman had stopped reading his paper and was looking at me. He was holding a pencil. It looked very much like the sort of pencil that would make thick black marks. I met his eye and gave a questioning look towards my paper. Sure enough, it brought him over to stand beside me.

‘Allow me to introduce myself. Reverend Francis Close, vicar of this parish. Do I take it that you're a visitor here?'

His voice was low but sonorous, as if he created the acoustics of the pulpit round himself wherever he went. He was a good-looking man and, I guessed, conscious of it. The woman he'd been sitting beside was watching him with devotion. I gave him my name and admitted to being a visitor.

‘I see you're observing our depravities,' he said, nodding towards the paper. ‘I'm afraid we have many of them.'

‘More than other places?'

He frowned, aware I wasn't taking him quite seriously. ‘I believe so. Card playing, dancing, racing and gambling among the wealthy and idle; ingratitude, Chartism and socialism among the working men. Now we are being told we must submit to the arrival and departure of railway trains on the Lord's Day. We shan't allow it.'

‘Cheltenham didn't strike me as particularly sinful,' I said.

‘That's because you don't know it yet.'

‘Did you know this young man in the paper?'

‘Only by reputation, as a typical young gambler, wasting his substance and his life.'

‘That seems to be his father's opinion, certainly.'

He frowned. ‘Like father, like son. I wouldn't want you to take away the impression that because Colum Paley is at last acknowledging his son's sins – for the preservation of his own purse – he has none of his own. If anything, the father is worse than the son.'