The Path of the Wicked (13 page)

‘So, where are you going now, my lady?'

If I'd said back to the hotel, he might make inquiries and find out that a local magistrate was paying my bill there. After his stratagem of following me so that he could meet me on his own terms, I knew I shouldn't underestimate Mr Jones.

‘I think I'll stroll round the town for a while,' I said.

‘We can't have a lady walking round all on her own. There are some socialist ruffians at large, as you know. Will you permit me to escort you?'

Back to sarcasm. He expected that I wouldn't want to be seen with a working man who was quite probably one of the local rabble-rousers. I looked him in the eye.

‘I should be very grateful, Mr Jones, if you have the time.'

When we started walking side by side, I realized that his wide-legged stance must come from some weakness or injury because he walked with a limp, swaying from side to side. We probably looked a strange couple and when – as if in a deliberate challenge – he made for the Promenade, we received curious looks. People who'd eaten early dinners were now soothing their digestions with an evening stroll and the pavement was quite crowded. Some of the looks were hostile as well as curious, confirming my impression that Barty Jones was a known political agitator. He rolled along as slowly as any of the respectable invalids, demonstrating that he had as much right to the evening air as any of them, but when a clock struck the half-hour he started walking faster, his swaying limp suddenly purposeful.

I thought we might be on our way back to the Mechanics' Institute, but instead he took us towards the assembly rooms. Lamps were already lit outside its wrought-iron entrance canopy and two gentlemen in evening dress were getting out of a carriage. Clearly, some function was about to start. I wondered if Barty Jones intended to invade it and steeled myself for more hostile looks, or worse. Instead, he came to a halt a few dozen yards away and looked round. A man in a workman's cap and jacket came unobtrusively up beside us. Barty Jones spoke without turning to look at him.

‘Where is he?'

‘On his way,' the man said, and then went away and leaned against a wall. When I looked round, there were a surprising number of working men who seemed to have nothing better to do than watch prosperous citizens arriving for a dinner, or whatever the function was. There were at least a dozen, as far as I could see, mostly gathered in twos and threes, apparently casual but with their eyes fixed on the entrance to the assembly rooms. A gentleman in evening dress and top hat turned the corner and came walking towards us. The man who was leaning against a wall came suddenly upright. The others, still unobtrusively, started moving towards the entrance. Barty Jones's hand slid into his jacket pocket. For a heart-stopping moment, I thought I was about to see an assassination, but he had no pistol, only something small enough to be clasped in his palm. Seeming unaware of what was happening, the gentleman walked on. He was only a few steps from the entrance canopy when Barty Jones raised his right hand and the air was suddenly full of missiles.

Small and regularly shaped missiles, they were, just dots against the pale evening sky. Some hit the gentleman's top hat, knocking it sideways; others clanged against the canopy or fell with metallic clicks on to the paving stones. At first there was no sound apart from that. Then people started shouting. Most were shouts of alarm and anger from men running from the assembly rooms, but the loudest came from Barty Jones.

‘Eighteen of them, Mr Paley. That should see your lad all right for a week.'

The man he was shouting at gave one glance in his direction. He was an imposing-looking man, in his fifties, with an angular face, as if a sculptor had chiselled the planes but not had time for smoothing touches. Then he turned away, removed his hat calmly just before it fell off of its own accord and walked into the assembly rooms. He must have said something to quieten the gentlemen who had rushed out to see what was happening because they all disappeared inside. The men who'd thrown the missiles were disappearing too, quietly but without wasting time. No sign at present of a constable or anybody else in authority, but there'd been enough noise to attract attention. Barty Jones turned to me, smiling.

‘If you'll excuse me, I'll leave you here, Miss Lane. I'm sure you'll find some gentleman to take you wherever you're going.'

He started rolling away. I walked after him.

‘Was that Colum Paley?'

‘That's right.' He said it over his shoulder.

‘But what was it all about?'

‘I'm sure you'll find out, you being an investigator.'

That was clearly all I was going to get from him, so I let him go and went back to the entrance of the assembly rooms. Still no constable, but a gang of small boys had arrived and were scrabbling on the pavement and in the gutter for the things that had been thrown. Something glinted in the lamplight, caught in a crack between paving stones. I got to it just before one of the boys and straightened up with the thing in my hand, the boy pulling at my skirts and wailing in disappointment. It lay there in my glove, only adding to the bewilderment.

‘Miss, it's not fair, miss. Please, it's mine. I saw it first.'

So I gave it to the boy. After all, it was only a penny. One of eighteen of them according to Barty Jones; totalling one shilling and sixpence. About what an unskilled working man might earn in a day, thrown at a rich man to see his son all right for a week. Far from helping me solve a puzzle, Mr Jones had handed me another one.

M
r Godwit arrived an hour late to meet me next day at the hotel, red-faced, flurried and apologetic.

‘I only just managed to get away. I've spent most of the morning with Penbrake. There's been another of these raddle bush atrocities.'

‘A rick burning?'

‘Just the bush, so far, tied to the farm gate. Penbrake thinks they'll come back tonight. He's all for calling out the militia.'

He told me the rest as we hurried to where he'd left the gig, a boy coming behind with my bag. The red thorn bush with black rags for ribbons had been found on the gate of a prosperous farmer who lived a little way out of the village, on the far side of the Kembles' estate. The farmer had galloped straight to the chairman of magistrates, Mr Penbrake, and Penbrake had convened an emergency meeting of the bench at Mr Godwit's house, since it was closer to the scene of the crime than his own. In fact, as far as I could make out, no crime had yet been committed, but Mr Godwit was being carried along on Penbrake's urgency. I asked what the farmer had done to annoy the brotherhood.

‘Nothing especial. He turned away one of his men last week for insolence, and now this has happened. He doesn't want trouble. He asked if we thought he should take the man back, but Penbrake told him it was his duty to stand out against them.'

By his standards, Mr Godwit drove fast on the way back, the cob hammering along the roads. It needed all his attention, so I couldn't have reported on what I'd been doing in Cheltenham, even if I'd wanted to. I didn't want to, because I could make no sense of any of it. Months earlier, Mary Marsh had neglected a painting class to meet Jack Picton outside the workhouse. The vicar considered her to be a woman so impure that her butterflies were an offence to a respectable wall. Colum Paley might have been richer by one shilling and sixpence if he'd stooped to pick up pennies.

While we were waiting for a farm wagon to get out of the way, I tried Mr Godwit on one thing.

‘I met Reverend Close.'

He turned, looking alarmed. ‘Oh. What did you make of him?'

‘The most uncharitable clergyman I've ever encountered.'

He looked so solemn at first that I thought he admired the man. If so, I'd probably have given up his case there and then, but he smiled suddenly. ‘Do you know, I quite agree with you . . . only one mustn't say so.'

‘Why not?'

‘Quite a lot of people think he's the salvation of the town. Penbrake's all for him.'

The cart got itself out of the way and we went on at a fast trot.

Mr Penbrake was waiting on the drive as the gig drew up. He was one of those men who seem to take up a lot of space – no more than averagely tall, but solidly built, standing chest out as if breasting an invisible sea. He'd obviously shaved that morning, but dark stubble was already appearing on his cheeks, as impatient as the rest of him to get on with things. His face was handsome enough, with a broad forehead and well-shaped lips, but his chin was too small and rounded, adding a petulant air.

He started talking at Mr Godwit before he could get down from the driving seat, a cannonade of names of people he'd been in contact with through the morning. Mr Godwit insisted on helping me down and introducing him to me. He gave me a barely civil touch of the hand and a few words, and then he was off again. To his annoyance, the authorities hadn't given in to his demand to call out the militia, but he was doing his best with the county constabulary and as many farmers and landowners who could be recruited from the estates round. The Duke of Wellington before Waterloo couldn't have been busier. He tried to resist Mr Godwit's suggestion that we should eat a late luncheon: beef between slices of bread was enough for a campaigning man. But when it came to regular meals, Mr Godwit was determined, so the three of us sat down to a luncheon of cold cuts and salad, brought in by Mrs Wood herself. It was usually Suzie who served at table. I hoped she and Tabby weren't up to some devilment together.

As soon as I could escape, I went to find Tabby. She was up a tree in the orchard, looking down at Rancie and the cob.

‘Where's Suzie?' I said.

‘Mrs Wood sent her on an errand somewhere. Who's the man making all the confloption?'

‘Chairman of the bench. Did you manage to find out any of the things I wanted?'

‘The Kemble girl's maid's coming to see her mother in the village tomorrow morning, if she can get away. Suzie thinks she might talk to us then.'

‘Good. What about Sal Picton?'

Until then Tabby had been talking down to me from her perch in the tree. Now she came sliding lightly down the trunk, getting leaves in her hair and bits of lichen on her dress.

‘I went to see her this morning. She was feeling low-spirited because her mother kept her awake all night. The mother's stomach had got upset from all the food. Sal had to wash the sheet and I helped her peg it out. That was when we got talking and she told me about her sister.'

‘I thought there was a sister somewhere. What about her?'

‘She got transported.'

‘What!'

‘Earlier this year, it was – to Van Diemen's Land. They were going to hang her, but a lot of people signed one of those things to the Queen . . .'

‘Petition.'

‘Whatever it was. Anyway, the Queen said they shouldn't hang her, so she was transported for life instead.'

‘What had she done?'

Tabby scuffed her toe in the grass. ‘She killed her baby.'

‘Why? How did it happen?'

‘Dunno. Sal said she wasn't supposed to talk about it and that was what had made her mother like she is. She wouldn't say any more. I think she was sorry she'd said that much.'

The thought in my mind was that Mr Godwit must have known, so why hadn't he told me? If it hadn't been for the presence of Mr Penbrake, I'd have gone to have it out with him there and then. The same applied to William Smithies, though it was more defensible in his case because he wouldn't have wanted to gossip about his friend's family affairs to a stranger. At least I understood now the message he'd asked me to pass on to Jack Picton. They were campaigning to have the girl brought back from Australia, although it seemed the faintest of hopes. She was lucky to be alive – always assuming she'd survived the voyage out in a convict ship. I wasted most of the afternoon waiting for a chance to confront Mr Godwit, but the two magistrates stayed closeted in the study. Now and again farm boys arrived with messages and lingered by the back door drinking beer before leaving with replies, sometimes at a run. Later an official-looking man who turned out to be an officer in the county constabulary rode up to join the planning session. By then I had given up hope of getting any sense from anybody and gone back to the paddock. The two horses belonging to the visitors had been turned out there and Rancie wasn't pleased with competition for the grazing. Tabby joined me.

‘I tried to listen at the door, like I knew you'd want, only Mrs Wood caught me. She's in a bad mood, with Suzie away and that one staying for dinner. She said to tell you it will be half an hour early and not to change because it's campaigning order and not formal.'

‘Campaigning order! Heaven help us! What did you hear?'

‘Not much. They were away from the door, standing round something on a table. A map, I think it was, but I could only see a bit through the keyhole. The stubble-faced man was saying something about cutting them off if they came down from the top road and not shooting till he gave the order.'

Worse and worse. Penbrake might have been denied use of the militia, but angry farmers with shotguns might do nearly as much damage. After a while the gardener arrived to catch the constabulary cob. The old man looked harassed and, without much persuasion, revealed that he'd spent most of the afternoon searching stables and outhouses for pitchforks, shovels and anything else that might be used as weapons and loading them into the gig. More time had been spent finding and cleaning Mr Godwit's old shotgun.

‘Doesn't know one end of it from the other,' he grumbled. ‘Be more danger to himself than the rebels.'

So protesting farm labourers had been elevated to rebels now, the way that birds are promoted to game when men go out to take their lives. I was growing more and more worried. When the man from the constabulary had mounted his cob, the two magistrates came out to see him off and Mr Penbrake couldn't resist giving him more instructions. At least I guessed that was the case because the man on the cob was looking grave and nodding. I dodged into the house and made for the study.