The Path of the Wicked

by Caro Peacock

  Now they were all staring at me.

  ‘Why should Miss Kemble have an arrangement to meet him?’ Mr Penbrake said.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Isn’t it possible that she’d decided to elope with Peter Paley, and Postboy was to take her to wherever he is?’

  Everything went very quiet.

  ‘Have you any reason for such an accusation?’ Penbrake said.

  That was difficult. My main reasons were feelings, Barbara’s hectic excitement in the morning, then her growing nervousness as the time to take her decisive step came close.

  ‘Consider the alternative,’ I said. ‘Miss Kemble’s disappeared – there’s no doubt about that. Either she went away of her own free will or she was abducted against her will. I left her in the middle of the afternoon, in broad daylight, in a place where she only had to scream to attract the attention of several dozen people. Shouldn’t we at least consider the possibility that wherever she went, she went willingly?’

  I could sense them wrestling with the notion that it would be ungentlemanly to consider any such thing. When the head of the constabulary made the suggestion that hired ruffians might have thrown a cloak over her head and carried her into a waiting carriage, it was greeted with a relief. When I asked sarcastically if that kind of thing often happened in Cheltenham, he said it could happen anywhere and they all nodded. Then the Kembles came back. Rodney Kemble’s face gave nothing away, but the colonel was tight-lipped and furious. Penbrake asked him what Colum Paley had said.

  ‘Nothing to the purpose. Still claims he doesn’t know where his son is or what he’s doing.’

  ‘He offered us his servants and horses to help look for her,’ Rodney said, more quietly. ‘He said if there’d been an elopement, it was without his knowledge and consent.’

  I noticed that he’d used the word ‘elopement’, not ‘kidnapping’, and his father hadn’t contradicted him. The two men who knew Barbara best weren’t denying that she might have gone voluntarily.

  Well into the night, men were coming and going with reports. The management and the ostlers at all the inns and hotels had been questioned, but none of them had seen Miss Kemble. Nobody had rented carriages that day to customers apart from their usual ones, for routine journeys. Two stagecoaches had departed since Barbara was last seen, but she hadn’t been on either of them. At some point I went out to Tabby and suggested she might use her skills in talking to some of the street urchins and the sharp-eyed boys who hold horses. When she returned with nothing much to add, I arranged for her to eat and drink in the servants’ room. Quite late in the proceedings, somebody remembered the new railway line to Birmingham and a constable was sent running to find the ticket clerk. Again, he drew a blank. By then the constables and volunteers were spreading their net more widely, riding to inns and toll houses on all the roads from town, asking if anybody had seen a young lady and one, or possibly two, gentlemen in a cart or carriage. My suggestion that they should look for two or more riders on horseback was dismissed by both Rodney and the colonel. Barbara was a reluctant horsewoman and would never have consented to ride any distance, especially at night. At least Mr Penbrake took my information about Postboy seriously enough to send somebody to inquire at his lodgings, which I gathered were a room over one of the town’s less respectable inns. He was away, but his landlord seemed to think that wasn’t an unusual state of affairs. Sometimes he was away for days without leaving a forwarding address.

  By midnight the room was cluttered with empty cups and the remains of sandwiches. Most of the men were drinking brandy and some were smoking cigars. None of them asked my permission because all but one of them had forgotten I was there, which suited me. I lay back in one of the big armchairs, tired but too strung-up to sleep. The one who hadn’t forgotten was Colonel Kemble. He stood by a window, not eating or drinking, still wearing his greatcoat to be ready to dash outside the moment there was news. Now and again he’d glance towards me, then quickly away as if he couldn’t trust himself to control his anger. Rodney Kemble wasn’t there. He’d gone out with the riders along the country roads.

  It was a relief when Mr Godwit came up and suggested we should go home. We were doing no good there and his housekeeper would be worried. I sent a waiter to the servants’ room to collect Tabby and the three of us squashed together in the gig, with Mr Godwit insisting on doing the driving. This meant we crept along at a snail’s pace in the dark and it wasn’t far off dawn by the time we got back and unharnessed the cob. We said our goodnights and went upstairs. Tabby should have continued up another flight to the room she shared with Suzie, but we needed to talk. At a nod from me, she followed me into my room. I lit the candle, threw my cloak and bonnet off and settled into a chair. Tabby perched on the bed.

  ‘You see what I did wrong?’ I said.

  ‘Sent me away.’

  ‘Oh, if you’d been with me, you’d have seen what she was doing, would you?’

  ‘You’d have sent me back with the message, so she couldn’t have got away from you like she did.’

  It wasn’t the answer I’d expected, but she was right. Barbara had not brought her own maid into town with her and might have been disconcerted when Tabby was added to the party. Then, unknowingly, I’d solved the problem for her myself.

  ‘Barbara’s been lucky as well as clever,’ I said.

  ‘Her, clever!’

  Still sitting on the bed, Tabby performed a lightning mime of a girl fluffing out her hair and adjusting her ribbons, all simper and flutter.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I did wrong: I underestimated her. Almost as soon as she met me, she saw a way to use me.’

  ‘So she wasn’t run off with?’

  ‘No. I’m almost certain she’s gone to join Paley, wherever he is. Though how they communicated, I don’t understand.’

  Gone to join a man who was a rapist and, quite possibly, a murderer, through my fault.

  ‘Do you think it’s possible that she knew all along he’d killed Mary Marsh?’ I said.

  ‘She might have helped him do it,’ Tabby said.

  ‘Can you see her doing that?’

  ‘You’ve just said you couldn’t see her running off like that, until she did it.’

  True. If I stopped seeing Barbara as a silly girl, a lot of things fitted together. She seems, obediently, to accept the breaking of her engagement when rumours about young Paley and Joanna circulate. But somehow they still communicate. Paley convinces her of his innocence. She is furious when she finds out from him that her own governess is the source of some of the rumours. Even if she didn’t help him kill Mary Marsh directly – and I still could not imagine that – she might have contrived things so that the governess was waiting in the woods when Paley came for her.

  ‘The important question at the moment is how we find her,’ I said.

  Arrogant, perhaps, to assume that it was work for us. Even now, one of the scores of men who were out looking for her might have discovered her, along with Peter Paley, in some country inn. Or perhaps a clergyman in a quiet parish would be interrupted at his breakfast by a gentleman with a special licence and an urgent need for a wedding ceremony.

  ‘Pity Mr Legge’s not here,’ Tabby said.

  I agreed with her but wished she hadn’t said it. Amos was hunting for Peter Paley too, but from a different direction, following the trail of Paley’s horse. He wouldn’t know yet about Barbara’s flight.

  ‘You remember what he says: if a person goes somewhere, it must be on four feet or two,’ I said. ‘The magistrates and all those other gentlemen are looking for horses and carriages, just what Mr Legge would do. That leaves the two feet.’

  ‘I don’t see that one walking far,’ Tabby said.

  I thought back to the shoes Barbara had been wearing the day before – fine brown leather with small heels and buckram rosettes on the toes. Definitely not what a girl would choose for serious walking.

  ‘No, she didn’t walk far. And a well-dressed young woman walking anyw
here out of town would stand out, whether she was with a man or not. And none of the boys you spoke to had seen anybody of her description?’

  Tabby shook her head. I put more trust in her informal efforts than all the questioning by police officers.

  ‘I suppose whoever met her might have brought overshoes and a cloak to put over her clothes,’ I said. Yet somehow the image of a cloaked and shuffle-footed Barbara wouldn’t stay in my mind. ‘But she’d hate not looking her best, wouldn’t she, especially if she was going to meet her fiancé? Tabby, I think we’re missing something, or somebody.’

  She should have been as mazed as I was by a long day and lack of sleep, but it didn’t take her long to work it out.

  ‘Maggie.’

  ‘Yes, her maid. Wherever she’s gone, Barbara will want clothes. She’d have been unhappy about leaving all her nice things and not having fresh linen. She might have made arrangements to have her clothes sent on to her.’

  ‘Her father would be looking out for that, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, so whoever did it would have to be secret and clever. She’ll have paid Maggie well. Perhaps the idea is that Maggie will go and join her wherever she is, taking a trunk of Barbara’s best clothes along.’

  I remembered that when we’d talked to Maggie, she’d been discontented with country life, sharing her employer’s longing for the city. Ambition and a hefty tip would recruit her to whatever Barbara was plotting.

  ‘So we watch Maggie,’ Tabby said. ‘If she’s not gone off already.’

  That was possible. If Barbara had been really clever, she’d have told Maggie to go ahead of her, while she was shopping in Cheltenham and before the hue and cry started. But surely Colonel Kemble or his son would have mentioned the maid’s absence at the hotel last night. It would have made it almost certain that Barbara had planned her own disappearance. Since it hadn’t been mentioned, Maggie had still been under the Kembles’ roof when they’d left yesterday evening. Tabby was on her feet, making for the door.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ I said.

  ‘To keep a lookout for her.’

  We were nearer daylight than dark by now, but only just.

  ‘She won’t go at this hour. Too conspicuous,’ I said. ‘Either she’s gone already, in the turmoil last night, or Barbara has worked out a way for her to go later without being followed. She’ll have a trunk with her, remember. That means a cart of some kind.’

  Reluctantly, Tabby agreed to catch a few hours’ sleep, curled like a puppy in a nest made from my coverlet and pillows on the floor. Both of us woke up a couple of hours later to the sound of Suzie’s footsteps going down the back stairs. Tabby laced up her boots.

  ‘Eat something at least,’ I said.

  ‘Suzie does herself tea and toast before she rakes out the ashes. A bit smoky, but all right.’

  She went. I knew better than to give her advice on how and where to keep watch on the Kembles’ house. Nobody knew more about watching back doors, grand or humble, than Tabby did. My task was to find out what I could through the front door, and after the way Colonel Kemble had regarded me last night I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  FIFTEEN

  Mr Godwit was up early too, face pale and dark rings round his eyes.

  ‘Do you suppose they’ve found the poor girl? We shall go and inquire straight after breakfast.’

  The question was whether we went to the heart of the search down in Cheltenham or the half-mile to the Kembles’ house. It was resolved when we visited the paddock and Mr Godwit decided that the cob was too worn out from his exertions the day before to be harnessed. I doubted that. Some horses have an instinct for avoiding work and the cob was one of them. Still, that suited me. I turned down a tentative suggestion from Mr Godwit that we should try Rancie in the gig by saying she’d assuredly bolt. In fact, she was too polite to do any such thing, but I wouldn’t hurt her dignity by putting her between shafts. So Mr Godwit and I walked in the fine summer morning, between fields refreshed with the rain of the day before, along the road and down the drive to the house. Even the look on the butler’s face as he opened the front door to us showed that there was no good news of the young lady. He told us that the colonel was at home, and if we’d kindly wait in the small sitting room off the hall, he’d have our names sent up.

  The colonel came down almost at once. He’d shaved and put on clean linen since the night before but obviously hadn’t slept. He glanced at Mr Godwit’s face, found no good news there and then shifted his eyes to me. No hostility in them today, only puzzlement. I guessed that he’d done a lot of thinking through the night and shared my belief that his daughter had deceived both of us. He offered coffee. We accepted, more for something to do than any need for it.

  ‘Rodney’s still down in the town,’ he said. ‘He promised to send a message up at any hour if there was news. I came back here in case of . . . developments.’

  He meant, I suppose, the faint hope that Barbara would return home. He said he was about to ride back down to Cheltenham and hoped we’d excuse him. We should wait and finish our coffee. I took the plunge.

  ‘I wonder if you’d allow me to speak to Miss Kemble’s maid.’

  He frowned. ‘The girl’s no help, I’m afraid. Maggie’s as puzzled as any of us.’

  ‘All the same, she may have noticed some small detail that would be significant to a woman rather than a man.’

  An expression of embarrassment and alarm came over his face at the idea of female mysteries. ‘By all means, talk to Maggie if you think it would help. Talk to any of them. She’s tidying up my daughter’s room, I think. I’ll get the housekeeper to send her down.’

  ‘Would you allow me to go up and find her?’

  By now all he wanted was to be on his way. He nodded, opened the door for me and said Barbara’s room was the second door on the left, from the first landing. I told Mr Godwit not to wait for me and went upstairs.

  The second door on the left was ajar. I gave a single knock and walked straight in. Maggie might have been sitting on the pink brocade chair by the window because when I walked in she was standing beside it, looking startled.

  ‘Have they found her?’ Then she added quickly: ‘Ma’am.’

  Hard to tell from her voice and expression if the thought that Barbara might have been found alarmed her. Certainly, there was no particular sign on her face of grief or even a sleepless night. Clothes were strewn round the room – a couple of cotton and muslin dresses and an embroidered nightdress on the bed, a bonnet and a straw sunhat on the stool in front of the dressing table, a velvet cloak over a chair. Maggie’s own white frilled cap was sitting on the dressing table among scent bottles and various pots. Had she taken it off to try on her employer’s hats? Hardly appropriate in the circumstances. When she saw my eyes on it, she blushed, grabbed it and pinned it deftly back in place.

  ‘So, you’ve been asked to see if any of Miss Kemble’s clothes are missing,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  She grabbed the excuse promptly, but I doubted it was true. Even if the colonel was facing the possibility of elopement in his own mind, he wouldn’t risk having it discussed among the servants.

  ‘Colonel Kemble has asked me to help you,’ I said.

  Only a slight stretching of the truth, I thought. Maggie looked far from overjoyed at the idea, but couldn’t object.

  ‘Have you found anything missing so far?’

  ‘No, ma’am, apart from what she was wearing when she went.’

  The door of a big wardrobe was standing open. I walked over and looked at the dozen or more costumes hanging neatly from hooks, the shelves piled with silk and linen undergarments, the tidy row of shoes and pumps.

  ‘It must be hard to tell what’s gone and what hasn’t, Miss Kemble having so many clothes.’

  ‘Nearly impossible, ma’am.’

  Another hasty snatch at an excuse, and a mistake by Maggie. A lady may lose count of her own clothes, but a lady’s maid
doesn’t. It’s her pride and skill to know every stitch, hook and seam. Nobody had suggested that Maggie was a bad maid in that respect; she wouldn’t have lasted long with Barbara if she had been. All the time I was looking for evidence of a small trunk or large bag that Maggie might be packing. I picked up a green satin pump and dropped it, as an excuse to bend and look under the bed. Nothing. Maggie was making a great business of folding up one of the dresses.

  I went over to the chest of drawers and pulled out one drawer after another. Stockings and garters, spare lengths of lace and ribbons, linen handkerchiefs worked with Barbara’s initials. All the drawers seemed pretty full. The dressing table had two small drawers at the sides. One of them was empty; the other held a small pot of lip rouge, half used. Her father wouldn’t have approved, which was probably why it wasn’t with the other pots and bottles on top of the dressing table. They were pretty thickly clustered, but where Maggie’s cap had rested was a white circle, about the diameter of a coffee cup, standing out against the dark varnish of the dressing-table surface.

  ‘What a pity,’ I said. Maggie came over to see what I was talking about. ‘It can easily happen if you’re not careful,’ I said. ‘You have a favourite flask for your toilet water; then, when you’re refilling it, some of the toilet water runs down the outside and makes a mark.’

  She stared as if seeing for the first time. She must know very well that none of the bottles on the dressing table was the right size and shape to have made that mark. Therefore, Barbara’s favourite flask of toilet water was somewhere else, along with the manicure set and chamois buffing pad that she would surely have kept in the now empty dressing-table drawer. Either mistress or maid had packed carefully, but the trunk or bag had already gone. Any hope of knowing where would rely on Tabby’s efforts.

  I suppose I could have bullied Maggie into saying something, perhaps with a threat of telling the colonel. But he’d have gone by now and it might be best to leave Maggie unsettled and see what she did next. I was about to go and give Tabby fresh instructions when I realized I was missing an opportunity. Here I was, on the bedroom floor of the house where Mary Marsh had lived, with freedom to go pretty well where I pleased.