The Path of the Wicked (4 page)

‘Odd business they were talking about.'

‘Oh?'

‘Gentleman and his horse disappeared clean off the face of the earth.'

‘Snatched up to heaven?'

He laughed. ‘Not unless Saint Peter likes long odds.'

I waited while he persuaded Senator to walk quietly past a rattling harvest cart. Then he told the story.

‘Two local sporting gentlemen dropped more than they could afford on the Derby this year – that and a few other races. They'd pretty well got to the end of their credit and the legs were pressing them to pay up.'

‘Legs?'

‘Short for blacklegs. The bookmakers.'

‘How much did they owe these legs?'

‘Depends who you ask, but not much less than ten thousand apiece.'

‘Ye gods! Ten thousand?' A family might live very comfortably for ten years on that sum.

‘From what I was told, they could hardly drum up enough credit between them for a bottle to drown their sorrows in,' Amos said. ‘But they manage it somehow, and they're sitting in their club, drinking and complaining about their bad luck. One of the gentlemen takes his last sovereign out of his pocket and says to his friend, “Double or quits.” Meaning they should toss the coin and the one who wins'll take on the debts of the other as well as his own.'

‘I'd guess they'd drunk more than the bottle of wine by then.'

‘You might be right. Well, their cronies are egging them on and telling the other man he's got to accept. Then somebody comes up with a better idea. You see, both of the men had been nattering on about how good their horses were, and what a loss it would be if they had to sell them. So somebody says that first thing next morning they should all go up on the racecourse and the two men should race their horses one against the other – the gentlemen themselves up, no jockeys – and the one that loses takes on both lots of debts. So it's decided, the two men shake hands on it, and first thing next morning they're up on the racecourse, ready for the off.'

We rode on for a while without saying anything. I'd seen a lot of the casual attitude of the upper classes to debt, but something about the brutality of this affair sickened me.

‘Whoever won, they could hardly remain friends with that between them,' I said.

Amos had been watching me sidelong, waiting for me to plead for the rest of the story.

‘You might be right. Any road, looks as if we'll never know.'

I gave in. ‘So what happened?'

‘It's just after sun-up, still mist down in the valley and dew on the grass. So the course is hard-going but a touch slippery – not ideal but good enough. This time of the morning there's nobody there but the gentlemen themselves, their friends and the grooms – not above three dozen people and their horses all told. The two gentlemen strip down to their shirts and breeches and shake hands as if they were going to fight a duel, and I daresay it didn't seem much different. The two of them look a bit green about the gills and they'd probably have backed out of it if they could have done, but with the bet taken before witnesses, there was no way out.'

‘Of course there was, if they'd had a tenth of the brain of their horses.'

‘That'd be asking a lot. Funny thing, if a man drinks too much. Come morning, you wake up with a sick and guilty feeling, as if you've done something wrong and the consequences of it are going to catch up with you any moment. I reckon that's how those two gentlemen must have felt. Any road, they get up on their horses and come under starter's orders. I should have mentioned before that it was a fair race as it went, horses pretty well matched and both of them useful enough riders. So the friend who's acting as starter gives the word and off they go.'

By then we'd come to a good level stretch, so off we went ourselves into a mile of easy canter. When we reined in at the end of it, Amos didn't need any urging to go on with the story. I guessed that one of the grooms at the inn last night must have been among the spectators.

‘The bet was for two circuits of the course. First circuit, they were pretty well up together, neither of them wanting to draw ahead too soon. Halfway round the second circuit, one of them pulls ahead; then the other one comes up beside him, spurring and whipping for all he's worth, and overtakes. By this time most of the other gentlemen are at the finishing post, cheering them on. The other one makes up ground, so a furlong out they're pretty well neck and neck and it looks as if it's going to be a dead heat. No more than three strides out, one of them stumbles. Might have been tiredness, sheer bad luck or maybe the whip once too often. He recovers but not quickly enough, so the other one wins clear enough by a length. Of course, there's a lot of cheering and to-do, and the gentlemen crowd round, congratulating the one who's won. For a while, nobody gives much thought to the other gentleman. Then somebody spots him on the far side of the course, still going. They all start laughing and hallooing, pretending he's got it wrong and thinks its three circuits, not two, only they know he hasn't. After all, in a couple of strides he's just doubled the debts he can't pay anyway, so naturally he has to work off his bad temper on himself and his horse before he comes back and takes it like a sportsman.'

‘Only he doesn't?'

‘Only he doesn't. A shout goes up. Out in the country he suddenly veers off the course and jumps a hedge into a field, all the world as if he was out hunting. And that's the last any of them sees of him.'

‘Didn't they try to follow him?'

‘No. They decide he was in an even worse temper than they supposed and couldn't face them, and he'd be back in his own good time with his tail between his legs. So they spend the day drinking and celebrating with the one who won, and it's not until the next morning, when the man's groom comes to one of the other gentlemen, looking for his master, that they realize he's properly gone.'

‘Then they start looking for him?'

Amos nodded. ‘Fairness to them, they made a thorough job of it, riding round the country, checking with all his friends, even the livery stables. Not hide nor hair of him or the horse.'

‘Nobody saw him after he jumped the hedge?'

‘A couple of reapers about half a mile from the racecourse say they saw a man on a horse galloping across a stubble field not long after they started work, but it was in the distance so they couldn't describe the man or horse, except it wasn't a grey.'

‘And the man's horse wasn't?'

‘No, a bay.'

‘Then it quite possibly was him.'

‘More than likely.'

‘And that's the last anyone saw of him?'

‘Yes.'

‘How long ago was this?'

‘About ten days before the Cheltenham races. Makes it getting on for three weeks ago.'

By now Cheltenham was in sight in the distance. It's a pretty spa town, nestled in the hills, like a smaller version of Bath with its fine terraces and squares. In spite of that, my heart sank. This side of the town was Mr Godwit's village and the start of a probably hopeless case that I'd taken on for the wrong reasons. Also, Amos's story had depressed me. He hadn't meant that it should. To him, it was no more than a tale of the turf, where a gentleman's ruin was as common as a jockey's broken bones and to be taken with the same stoicism. But the despair of that lone rider had got into my mind and somehow mingled with the bleakness of the prison against the sunset the evening before. More was to come. Towards midday we watched a column of smoke rising near a farmhouse on a hill about a mile away. The smell of burning hay and shouts of men fighting the fire travelled across to us.

‘Somebody's rick,' Amos said. ‘Leave him short for winter, that will.'

He thought it probably came from careless stacking of the hay. If it were piled in the rick with any damp in it, it would gradually ferment and heat up from the centre. Then, with full summer sun, the whole thing would suddenly burst into flame.

Soon after that we came to a rough inn at a crossroads. Both we and the horses were thirsty, so we dismounted and I held the reins while Amos ducked under the low doorway of the inn's one room to arrange refreshment. A lad came out from the back with two buckets of water and then Amos emerged, holding two rough pottery mugs.

‘Just home-brewed ale. Will it do?'

It did very well, though Amos reckoned it was thin stuff. He emptied his mug at two gulps and nodded over his shoulder towards the column of smoke, now no more than a wavering line.

‘Some people talking about it inside there. Reckon it wasn't an accident.'

‘Oh?'

‘Farmer's got a bad name for laying off men and cutting wages. They say he got the warning last week and, sure enough, his rick's gone up.'

‘Warning?'

‘Dead thorn bush tied to his gate one night. Seems there's a gang of troublemakers round here, and if they don't like what a farmer's doing, they give him the thorn bush, and if he doesn't mend his ways, they set fire to his ricks or barns.'

More bad news for Mr Godwit, I thought. Rick burning was scaring farmers all over the country as labourers reacted to lost jobs and low wages. If it was breaking out round here, a jury certainly wouldn't look tolerantly on a known agitator. We remounted and rode on downhill into the afternoon sun. After an hour or so, we stopped to ask directions from farm workers at a crossroads near Mr Godwit's village and were advised to head for a church spire about a mile away. His was the second biggest house in the village, opposite the vicarage, they said; couldn't miss it. It was a small village and the second biggest house was no more than medium-sized – three storeys of honey-coloured Cotswold stone, with a short gravel driveway leading to a blue front door between rather stunted Doric columns. The first thing we noticed wasn't the house but a small figure under a horse chestnut tree some yards away from the gate: Tabby, sitting on my trunk, peaceful as a pigeon on a branch. She stood up when she saw us.

‘Thought you weren't coming today, after all.'

‘How long have you been sitting there?' I said.

She shrugged. Hours didn't mean much to her.

‘Dunno. A boy came out of the house and asked what was I doing and then an old man came out and said was I your maid and why didn't I come in and get comfortable? I said I supposed I was, more or less, but I'd wait till you got here.'

I sighed, any hope of presenting Tabby as a proper maid destroyed again. Mr Godwit was clearly a man sensitive to public opinion and this changeling camped at his gates couldn't have helped matters.

‘Well, you'd better come in with us now. Leave the trunk. They'll send somebody out for it.'

We went up the drive in procession, Rancie and I first, Amos and Senator at groom's distance, Tabby trudging along in the rear. Mr Godwit must have been watching from a window because he opened the front door in person, his smile of welcome so determinedly fixed that it looked painful. I guessed he already regretted that I'd accepted his invitation, and I entirely agreed with him.

‘T
he fact is . . .' Mr Godwit said and then hesitated. ‘I hope you won't be offended, but I thought it might be best in the circumstances and there was no time to consult you . . .'

His voice trailed away. He looked out over his orchard, where hens were scratching under apples already well formed on the branches. It was the day following our arrival and he'd proposed a little stroll after breakfast. I'd been shown his kitchen garden, his henhouse, his pond with six white ducks, the three beehives next to an herbaceous border vibrant with hollyhocks, penstemons, dahlias, his south facing wall with the espaliered apricots and pears. We were now sitting on a bench beside the hazel copse, his spaniel at our feet.

‘Consult about what?' I said, when it looked as if the pause might go on for ever.

‘The fact is I've let it be known that you're . . . that you're by way of being a member of the family. A very distant member, of course. That is to say, I shouldn't want you to be distant if you really were, but . . .' Another pause, then, in a rush: ‘It seemed best to avoid embarrassment.'

I felt like saying that it certainly wasn't succeeding as far as he was concerned, but took pity on him.

‘Oh, really? How are we related?'

‘I've said something on the lines that you're the daughter of my mother's niece by marriage. When I say I've let it be known that we're related, I mean that's what I told my housekeeper, but in a village naturally word gets round.'

He looked so ill at ease with his deception that it was hard to be angry.

‘Won't there be talk in the village anyway, when people notice that your distant relative is going around asking questions about a murder?' I said.

He blinked. ‘You'll have to do that, you think?'

‘There's no point in my being here otherwise. I can hardly sit in your garden and pluck evidence out of the air.'

‘No, I suppose not.'

He looked so doleful that I decided to get down to business before he changed his mind about the whole thing.

‘Since we happen to be sitting in your garden anyway, we might as well start here. The more you can tell me, the less I'll have to find out from other people. Did you ever meet Mary Marsh?'

‘Not to speak to. I've seen her once or twice at lectures or concerts in Cheltenham, with Colonel Kemble's daughter. The daughter's eighteen now and out in society, too old to need a governess, but I suppose they kept Miss Marsh on as a chaperone.'

‘What did she look like?'

‘Respectable-looking, dark hair, quite tall as far as I remember and carried herself well. She was twenty-nine years old, but looked younger. Pleasant face.'

The face of a young woman who'd risk position and reputation for love of a rebel? No use asking that. ‘What was the gossip, after she was killed?'