Taunton
North Town
22 September, 1817, a Monday, at about two or three in the morning.
George Lowman Tuckett, former Solicitor General of Grenada, now reduced to living in Taunton and earning a living as a jobbing barrister on the Western Circuit, loved by his family but disliked by his peers, is woken by his wife Martha. In a panic, she tells him that Maria, their sixteen-year-old niece and ward for the past four years, is not only missing from her bed, she has disappeared from the house altogether. Feeling unwell, Martha had got up and needed Maria’s help, but the girl is nowhere to be found.
Tuckett checks the chamber Maria shares with two of her young cousins. Her bed is empty. Downstairs the parlour door has been wedged shut from the inside. He forces it and sees that the sash window is up and, beyond that, the garden gate is open.
He wakes the servants and interrogates them. He has so many questions: What did they see? What did they know? Where might Maria be now? Didn’t his little daughters Lucretia and Gertrude wake when Maria was leaving their bedroom? Had Maria said anything to anyone about running away? Who opened the window and jammed the door? Where is Maria’s little red trunk?
He dresses quickly. Time is of the essence and he wants to search the streets of Taunton. He is thinking: Why was I not more attentive? Why did we not do something when Maria started withdrawing into herself and crying in her bedroom? He’d assumed she had guessed his secret — that he and Martha had decided to send her back to boarding school. But then, just yesterday, she had shaken all that off, and she had been her old self: a sweet, obedient, good girl.
He and Martha have protected and sheltered Maria. They have ensured that she has remained innocent of the wickedness in the world, but he suspects that there is evil-doing in her disappearance, and that it is the work of a man. But who? Maria knows no men, he is sure of it. He once thought that the son of Mrs Bowditch at Holway Farm had looked at her, but he had dismissed it. Young Bowditch is a handsome young man, granted, but he’s an ignorant, uneducated oaf, not someone Maria would want for a husband even if she were old enough for such things. Besides, just yesterday, at the turnpike gate, Tuckett caught Bowditch in close conversation with his girls’ nursemaid, Mary Ann Whitby. Bowditch flushed and walked away when he saw him, and afterwards Tuckett warned Mary Ann that he would tell her mother if he saw her with Bowditch again. But perhaps it was not Mary Ann but Maria Bowditch really wanted. If so, it would not be for her looks, but for her inheritance. She is a plain child and, until her grandfather dies, she has no money in her own right. So it was puzzling. If Maria has run off with Bowditch there will be no fortune at all because her grandfather will disinherit her in an instant when he finds out.
The servants are slow. It takes them an age to get him a shirt. He catches Jane muttering to Elizabeth but can’t make out what she says. Has he imagined that he heard her say ‘Bowditch’? He sees a look here. A glance there. He speaks to the nursemaid Mary Ann but she turns her face from him and looks at the floor. To his questions, she answers only, ‘I’m sure I don’t know, sir.’
Then she says that if Tuckett will promise to forgive her before she says it, she will tell him something.
‘Of course, of course I will, if you promise not to deceive me,’ he says.
Maria might have eloped with James Bowditch, she tells him.
‘She said she would poison herself if she could not have him.’
He sends the cook, Jane Marke, to Holway Green Farm. She’s back within an hour, out of breath from running, gasping out that she woke Mrs Bowditch from her bed and that Mrs Bowditch says she hasn’t seen Maria and that her son James has had no part in any of this. Indeed, she was shocked at the very idea. Tuckett knows she may be lying. After all, he’s seen people do so in a thousand court cases.
At last he pulls on his cloak and takes his stick, and slams the door as he leaves.
The morning is chilly, and a mist is settling over New Town, shrouding its new terraces in damp grey air. He shivers as he breaks into a thin sweat. A sinking feeling invades his heart. What will become of Maria? And how will this affect his career? His hopes of returning to the West Indies are crumbling. As he walks towards the Tone Bridge, the buildings themselves have taken on an impermanence. The life he has built in Taunton is no longer solid. What he thought was certain, is no longer.
He remembers the promises he had made to Maria’s mother, who is his first cousin as well as his wife’s sister: to keep her daughter safe, to supervise her future, to arrange a good marriage. These are as dust. Now Maria’s name will be in the papers. She will be ruined and his reputation will be questioned. His own children will suffer. And worst of all, Maria will be obliged to marry Bowditch, if it is Bowditch she is with.
The working people of Taunton are already up but Tuckett hardly notices them and walks on past the timber yards, chandlers’ shops, farriers and blacksmiths’ yards. At the coaching station he orders messages to be sent to inns in Bristol and London asking the keepers to be on the lookout for Maria — and Bowditch of course. They are probably heading for Gretna Green, or maybe they have decided to lie low to evade pursuers. The thought of that appals him. Maria, unmarried, in lodgings with Bowditch. For a moment, when he is asked for a description, he is hesitant. What should he say? Young. Small. Plain. Wearing a white frock and a purple pelisse, and a bonnet with a projecting hood. In possession of a small red trunk, but no other luggage, no other clothes. Innocent. Trusting. And Bowditch? He keeps it simple. Short, aged about twenty-five.
Suddenly he is exhausted and wants to be at home. Perhaps there has been some news or perhaps Maria has returned to tell them it is all a misunderstanding. That she sleepwalked away from the house.
The house is in quiet turmoil. Mary Ann, the nursemaid, asks to see him in the parlour. She tells him that in the night Jane Marke went downstairs, opened the parlour window and put the red trunk under it.
He calls for Jane. Her reaction will show her guilt, he thinks, and indeed it does. He tells her that she is dismissed and that Mrs Tuckett will pay her quarter’s wages. She does not attempt a defence but makes an accusation of her own: ‘Mary was as bad, if not worse, than me,’ she says and turns to Mary Ann saying, ‘You have done what you wished. You have tried to take away our lives. Never mind, I will tell enough of you.’ She knows she has done wrong, Tuckett thinks, and she knew the penalties for what she has done before she did it.
As she leaves by the kitchen door, she looks towards Elizabeth Snell, the housemaid, and says, ‘Come, Elizabeth, you may as well come too.’ Elizabeth does not move and just looks to the floor. Tuckett knows now that all three of his servants are involved. He cannot sack them all. He has six children and his wife is often ill. In any case, by keeping Elizabeth and Mary Ann in the house, he may learn more of what has happened and what they have done.
In his parlour, Tuckett calculates the hours Maria has been gone. Twelve or more. He has not given up hope that she will come back unwed, but he knows too that there will be a point when he will shift to the other bench and be forced to count her lucky that she is married.
The doorbell jangles. He can hear a woman asking for his wife. In the parlour this woman introduces herself as Mrs Priest. I am related to Mrs Mulraine, she says. He knows the name; Mrs Mulraine is a young woman who sometimes lodges at Holway Green Farm with the Bowditches. Maria has talked of her. ‘I have some news you will be interested to hear,’ says Mrs Priest.
It is true. Maria has run off with James Bowditch to be married. But Mrs Priest says something else, something that gives Tuckett hope, even though it disgusts him. Maria has been seen behaving in an outrageous way, says Mrs Priest. She has been parading about town with Bowditch and skipping off to meet him in French Weir Fields, sometimes without her bonnet and shawl.
Tuckett knows this is a lie. Maria would never do such things. In any case, when would she have done this? Martha keeps Maria close – she is, after all, her beloved sister’s precious only child. She is not allowed out alone except for school and errands. He struggles to be polite to Mrs Priest as he shows her the door.
By five o’clock, Tuckett is in Taunton again, heading for his solicitor’s office in Hammet Street. As he crosses the Tone Bridge, he hears his name. A pretty young woman beckons to him. ‘Do you have any news?’ she asks.
She is Mrs Mulraine, the lodger from Holway whose relative Mrs Priest has just told horrible lies about Maria.
‘You may rely on it that I will bring every one of you to justice,’ he says. He tells her that Maria’s disappearance – he can’t bring himself to say elopement – will break her mother’s heart, and that her expected inheritance will be lost.
‘I had nothing to do with it,’ insists Mrs Mulraine.
‘Was Mrs Bowditch concerned in it?’ asks Tuckett.
‘Yes, she was. They were all concerned in it but myself. I am a mere visitor in her family,’ says Mrs Mulraine. She looks straight into his face. ‘I have come to tell you where Miss Glenn is, for her sake. She has been taken to Mr Paul’s house at Thornford in a yellow gig with a top to it.’
Tuckett knows her game. Mrs Mulraine wants to distance herself from the crime. And he knows that telling him where she is means that Maria is probably already married.
Tuckett rushes away to his solicitor’s office. Within an hour, his lawyer Henry James Leigh is in a hired chaise and four, heading for Thornford in the neighbouring county of Dorset, accompanied by two of Taunton’s bailiffs. Tuckett has told him to call on Thomas Fooks, a solicitor in Sherborne, who will guide him to Thornford and assist him in finding Maria.
Night is coming on.