The Path of the Wicked (21 page)

I glanced at the pressed ferns spread over his desk, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. He looked at me and then sat on the chair behind his desk, on his dignity and as businesslike as he could manage.

‘Then give your report.'

‘We'll go back two years – the day of the races the year before last. Joanna Picton goes to the fair without her employer's consent and falls into the hands of some men, or gentlemen, who give her too much to drink. One of them, possibly more than one, takes advantage of her.'

When I thought of that quick, probably brutal, coupling behind a tent or under a wagon, it was as much as I could do to keep my voice level, but I didn't want Mr Godwit to see how it affected me.

‘The poor girl's already in a state of panic when something else happens. Reverend Close and your magistrate friend Penbrake choose that day to make a stand against gambling and drunkenness at the races. A lot of people are arrested and Joanna probably thinks herself lucky not to be one of them. She runs back to her workplace and again is lucky not to lose her job. Months later she finds that she isn't lucky at all. You know the next part of the story. It's public knowledge. Only there's one aspect of it that almost nobody knew.'

I had his attention now. I took a deep breath and embarked on what was still speculation.

‘Joanna seemed as alone as a girl could be. The child's father would be no use to her, even if she knew who he was. She was on bad terms with her mother, and her brother was away somewhere stirring up riots, more or less an outlaw. But as it turned out, she did have one friend in a most unlikely place.'

I waited to see if he'd say anything. He didn't.

‘The governess,' I said. ‘Mary Marsh. Normally, a governess wouldn't condescend to notice a kitchen-maid. But Mary Marsh was different. It's odd about governesses, isn't it? They have to be so conventional and respectable and yet they're educated women, with opinions of their own. Mostly, they can't show them. But Mary had courage and a warm heart. She knew from the servants' gossip that Joanna was expecting a child and wanted to help if she could. She talked to her, and the whole story came out, including the likely identity of the father.'

I imagined the girl crying on the back staircase, the governess stopping to comfort her. Joanna had probably not experienced many kind words in her life. Naturally, she'd have told Mary Marsh everything.

Something like alarm showed in Mr Godwit's eyes now, but he said nothing.

‘It's quite possible that Joanna herself didn't know a name,' I said. ‘But she told Mary Marsh enough to put her on the right track. As it happened, Mary had another source of information. Rodney Kemble had fallen in love with her.'

It looked as if Mr Godwit was going to protest.

‘Why not?' I said. ‘She deserved to be loved. She went to him to ask him to help the girl, perhaps to persuade his father to have her back when the baby was born. Perhaps she'd already guessed who the father of the child might be. If not, she could have found out from Rodney.'

‘I simply won't believe it of him. I've known Rodney since boyhood. He's an entirely moral and admirable young man.'

It wasn't the time to talk about sins committed by moral and admirable young men, so I reassured him.

‘I'm not saying it was Rodney himself, only that he had a very shrewd idea of who the likely father was. In fact, he'd almost come to blows with him at the fair where it happened.'

I guessed that Rodney Kemble had probably wanted to avoid his sportsmen acquaintances at the fair. When he'd seen one of them trying to calm a distressed girl, or perhaps even mocking her, he might even have passed by, except that he recognized that girl as his father's kitchen-maid. Was it concern for her or a sense of ownership that had made him stand up to the other man? No way of telling, so give him the benefit of the doubt.

‘You knew Rodney Kemble and Peter Paley had quarrelled,' I said. ‘Didn't you wonder what it was about?'

‘We all assumed it was to do with the breaking-off of the sister's engagement.'

‘I think you'll find the breaking of the engagement followed what happened at the fair. Rodney told his father, so of course letting Barbara marry young Paley was out of the question. Only they wouldn't tell her why. All this male delicacy again. It's possible that Mary knew all this before she went to Rodney Kemble to ask for help, and didn't get it.'

I imagined that she'd have to choose a time when Rodney was on his own, probably out walking the estate. The young man would have seen that as a god-sent chance to confess his warm feelings for her. Even if he weren't especially vain, he might have expected that she'd welcome his confession with a blush, bright eyes and beating heart. Perhaps she'd done exactly that. Why not? But then . . .

‘As I said, she asked him to help Joanna. I guessed it was help to keep her job, but perhaps it was more than that. Perhaps she wanted him to stand up in public and say that Peter Paley was the father of Joanna's child.'

The look of shock on Mr Godwit's face showed what an unthinkable demand that would have been. A man in love might swim oceans and fight monsters at his beloved's request. To outrage his social circle with accusations about the parentage of a kitchen-maid's brat was asking too much.

‘Whichever it was, he wouldn't do it,' I said. ‘So there wasn't much she could do for Joanna. I don't suppose Mary had more than a few pounds she could call her own and she was in no position to offer Joanna a roof over her head. So Joanna and the baby went into the workhouse. Even then, I don't think Mary gave up trying. If you made inquiries among the workhouse staff, you might even find that she'd managed to visit her.'

I suspected more than visit, but I didn't want to go into any more detail to Mr Godwit. Mary might have planned some way of getting mother and baby out of the workhouse. If so, something must have gone wrong with the plan and Joanna was left wandering alone with her baby. Then what a burden of guilt Mary would be carrying, with Joanna in prison and condemned to death.

‘So, Joanna's in prison and that's when Jack Picton comes on the scene,' I said. ‘How he and Mary Marsh found each other, I don't know. His Chartist friend, William Smithies, might have met her, or possibly an agitator named Barty Jones was involved.' Mr Godwit shuddered at the name. ‘In any case, they met and agreed to do what they could to help Joanna. The first thing was the petition. They succeeded in getting the death sentence commuted to transportation, but it didn't end there. Jack Picton was determined to do something about the injustice of the whole thing, and Mary helped him, doing great harm to her reputation when people found out that she was meeting him.'

More than meeting, I wondered? Certainly, that was not a road I intended to go down with Mr Godwit, but I couldn't help being curious. On the one hand, the handsome, self-assured outlaw; on the other, the warm-hearted governess with radical opinions that she'd had to suppress for most of her working life. Would it be so surprising if their alliance led to something more? But Mary had suffered enough from speculation and gossip in her life, and if I could help it, I didn't want to add to it after her death.

‘Then Mary Marsh was killed,' I said. ‘And – the day after – Peter Paley disappeared.'

I expected some protest from Mr Godwit, but it didn't come. He looked older, weary. I thought that until then he'd somehow managed to convince himself that the whole business would blow over like a summer cloud. He'd hired me to quiet his conscience so that he could go back to his ducks and bees thinking he'd done his best. In that way, I'd failed him.

‘It must have occurred to you,' I said, more gently.

‘You think young Paley killed her?'

‘Yes.'

‘And that's why he went?'

‘That sudden departure of his was nowhere near as impulsive as it looked. He practically forced that bet he lost on the other man. When it seemed as if he might win it, he made his horse stumble. His father might even have helped him plan it when he put that advertisement in the paper repudiating Peter's debts. The rumours that young Paley was the father of Joanna's baby were already circulating and Paley senior might have told his son to vanish for some time until the scandal died down. But they had to concoct a reason that had nothing to do with Joanna.'

‘But why kill the governess?'

‘Because she'd talked to Joanna. She was the one who knew who the father was. I think that, almost until the last, young Paley was reluctant to do his disappearing act. If he could persuade or frighten Mary Marsh into saying somebody else was the father, there'd be no need for it. But it went wrong, so disappearing was even more necessary.'

Mr Godwit leaned back and closed his eyes.

‘You can't prove any of this?'

‘Not yet.'

‘There does seem to be a flaw.' He spoke slowly. You could almost sense the reluctant movement of his brain. ‘Your whole case turns on the parentage of the child, and the belief that Peter Paley was the father?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then – forgive me – I must say something that might offend you, but things have already been said that I should not have dreamed of discussing with you in normal circumstances. So I'll ask you this question: was fathering the bastard child of a kitchen-maid something so serious that the Paleys would go to such lengths to hide it?'

He opened his eyes before I could hide the surprise on my face. I waited.

‘As you've gathered, I'm no great friend of Colum Paley,' he said. ‘I consider him arrogant, purse-proud and something of a bully. I know little about the son, and what I do know is not to his credit. But there's one thing I will say for Colum Paley – and anyone will tell you the same: the man's honest, sometimes brutally so.'

‘Even an honest man may be tempted when his family's threatened,' I said.

‘But how was it threatened? I have to tell you this. To my certain knowledge, Colum Paley has fathered at least two bastards and provided for them liberally. It's said there are others, but I don't know about that. If the son had come to him and admitted that he'd got a servant-girl pregnant, Paley might have been annoyed but he'd have paid her off and that would be an end of it. Twenty pounds in hand would be a fortune to a girl like that. End of the matter.'

‘Suppose Colum Paley didn't know until Joanna was in prison and there was already a scandal.'

‘It was her scandal by then, not young Paley's. She was the one responsible for the child's death.'

I wanted to argue about that, but now that he'd decided to talk candidly at last, there was no stopping him.

‘Another thing – you say it's the gossip in the streets that Peter Paley was the baby's father. It's true there's gossip. Those pennies you saw thrown weren't the first, at father or son. But that gossip only started after Jack Picton came back and began stirring up trouble. As far as I know, until the day she was transported, Joanna herself never named the father. When she came into the workhouse, the guardians questioned her repeatedly on that point and she wouldn't say. Why not? She had no reason to protect Peter Paley. Even if she didn't know his name, she could have described him and his friends at the races. Not a word out of her.'

He looked at me with the nearest thing to a glare I'd seen on his face. It wasn't his expression that worried me as much as the fact that what he said was sense. If Colum Paley was shameless on his own behalf and his son's, my theory had lost one of its supporting columns. I was inclined to believe Mr Godwit, mainly because it had cost him such an effort to say what he did.

‘So if Jack Picton intends to stand up in the dock and say that Peter Paley was the father of Joanna's child . . .' I said, trying to adjust my mind to this new state of affairs.

‘Then he'll be wasting his breath,' Mr Godwit said promptly. ‘It will be stale news to most people and simply set judge and jury against him.'

‘I don't believe he killed Mary Marsh.'

‘But you haven't a shred of evidence to prove it.'

There was no arguing with that.

‘Very well,' I said. ‘Tabby and I will move out tomorrow morning. I'm sorry to have let you down and thank you for your hospitality. In the circumstances, I shan't be sending in an account.'

He blinked and was all mildness and apology again.

‘My dear, that wasn't what I meant. And tomorrow's Sunday. You can't start such a long journey at the weekend.'

‘We shall only be going as far as Cheltenham.'

‘And onward on Monday? In that case, you really might as well stay . . .'

‘Just Cheltenham. We'll stay until next week when the case comes up at Gloucester assizes.'

I thought we'd have to find a cheaper hotel than the Queen's. This case would turn out to be an expensive one for me.

‘So you still think you can help Jack Picton?'

I was tempted to tell him the truth: that Jack Picton was not the main reason. Yes, I thought there was at least a reasonable chance that he was innocent. Yes, it was anybody's duty to save an innocent man from being hanged. But something stronger than keeping Jack Picton alive was tying me to the case, and that was a duty to two women, one of whom had been transported to the other side of the world and one of whom was dead. To a rebellious kitchen-maid who'd wanted one day at the fair. To a brave governess who'd cared about her when nobody else did. I didn't think Mr Godwit would understand if I tried to explain, so I didn't try.

‘I don't know,' I said.

He urged me again to stay and I said I would, until the assizes. Before we parted, I borrowed his box of watercolours and spent the morning working up my sketch of Barbara Kemble. Better, perhaps, than doing nothing while recovering from the damage to my precious theory, but not so very much better.