The Twisted Root

chapter Twelve
Rathbone shot to his feet, but the protest died on his lips.

Tobias shrugged. "I only ask if it's possible," he said reasonably. "Miss Pembroke is an observant young woman. She may know."

"I don't!" she protested. "I don't know what happened, I swear!"

"Your loquacity seems to have ended in confusion," the judge said acidly to Tobias. He turned to the jury. "You will note that the question has gone unanswered, and draw your own conclusions. Sir Oliver, have you anything to add?"

Oliver had not.

Tobias was unstoppable. His rich voice seemed to fill the court, and there was hardly an eye which was not upon him. He called the lady's maid who had seen Miriam in Verona Stourbridge's room, and drew from her a highly damaging account of Miriam's trying on the jewelry and apparently having read the diary.

"Do you know what is in the diary?" Tobias asked.

The girl's eyes widened in horror. "No sir, I do not" Her tone carried bitter resentment that he should suggest such a thing.

"Of course not," he agreed smoothly. "One does not read another person's private writings. I wondered perhaps if Mrs. Stourbridge had confided in you. Ladies can become extremely close to their maids."

She was considerably mollified. "Well... well, I know she put in her feelings about things. She used to go back and read again some from years ago, when she was in Egypt. She did that just the day before she ... died ... poor lady." She looked tearful, and Tobias gave her a moment or two to compose herself again - and to allow the jury to gather the full import of what had been said - before he continued.

He then went on to elicit a picture of Miriam as gentle, charming, biddable, struggling to fit into a household with a great deal higher social status than she was accustomed to, and unquestionably a great deal more money. It was a portrait quite innocent and touching, until finally he turned to the jury.

"A lovely woman striving to better herself?" he said with a smile. "For the sake of the man she loves - and met by chance out walking on Hampstead Heath." His face darkened, his arms relaxed until his shoulders were almost slumped. "Or a clever, greedy woman blessed with a pretty face, ensnaring a younger man, unworldly-wise, and doing everything she could, suppressing her own temper and will, to charm him into a marriage which would give her, and her foster mother, a life of wealth they could never have attained in their own station?"

He barely paused for breath or to give Rathbone the chance to object. "An innocent woman caught in a dreadful web of circumstances? Or a conniving woman overtaken by an equally cold-blooded and greedy coachman, who saw his chance to profit from her coming fortune but had fatally miscalculated her ruthlessness - and thus met not with payment for his silence as to her past, perhaps their past relationship with each other! Perhaps he was even the means of their meeting - far other than by chance? Instead, he met with violent death in the darkness under the trees of Hampstead Heath."

Rathbone raised his voice, cutting across him scathingly and without reference to the judge.

"Treadwell certainly seems to have been a villain, but neither you nor I have proved him a fool! Why in heaven's name would he threaten to expose Miriam Gardiner's past - which neither you nor I have found lacking in virtue of any kind -  before she had married into the Stourbridge family?" He spread his hands as if in bewilderment. "She had no money to pay him anything. Surely he would have waited until after the wedding - indeed, done everything in his power to make sure it took place?" He became sarcastic. "If, as you suggest, he even helped engineer the meeting between Mr. Stourbridge and Mrs. Gardiner, then it strains the bonds of credibility that he would sabotage his own work just as it was about to come to fruition."

His point was valid, but it did not carry the emotional weight of Tobias's accusation. The damage had been done. The jury's minds were filled with the image of a scheming and duplicitous woman manipulating a discarded lover into a position where she could strike him over the head and leave his murdered body on the Heath.

"Was it chance, or was it Treadwell's dying attempt to implicate his murderers that he used the last of his strength to crawl to the footpath outside Cleo Anderson's door?" Tobias demanded, his voice ringing with outrage and pity. "Gentlemen, I leave it to you!"

The court adjourned with Miriam and Cleo all but convicted already.

Rathbone paced the floor of his rooms, resisting the temptation to call Monk and see if he had made any progress. So many times they had faced together cases that seemed impossible. He could list them all in his mind. But in this one he had no weapons at all, and he did not even know what he believed himself. He still was not prepared to accept that either Cleo or Miriam was guilty, let alone both. But there was very little else that made sense - except Lucius or Harry Stourbridge. And if that were so, no wonder Miriam looked crushed beyond imagining any solution, or that even Rathbone could convince the court of the truth.

It all depended on Monk's finding something - if he even knew where to look - and collecting enough evidence to prove it, and on Rathbone's being able to prolong the case another three days at the very outside. Two days seemed more likely.

He spent the evening thinking of tactics to give Monk more time, every trick of human nature or legal expertise. It was all profoundly unpromising.

Tobias called Harry Stourbridge as his first witness of the morning. He treated him with great deference and sympathy, not only for the loss of his wife but for the disillusion he had suffered in Miriam.

Many seats were empty in the court. The case had lost much of its interest for the public. They believed they knew the answer. It was common garden greed, a pretty woman ambitious to improve herself by the age-old means of marrying well. It was no longer scandalous, simply sordid. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, and there were better things to do than sit inside listening to what could be accurately predicted.

Harry Stourbridge looked ten years older than the age Rathbone knew him to be. He was a man walking in a nightmare to which he could see no end.

"I am sorry to force you to endure this," Tobias said gently. "I will keep it as brief as possible, and I am sure Sir Oliver will do the same. Please do not allow loyalty or compassion to direct your answers. This is a time and place when nothing but the truth will serve."

Stourbridge said nothing. He stood like an officer in front of a court-martial, standing stiffly to attention, facing forward, head high.

"We have already heard sufficient about the croquet party from which Mrs. Gardiner fled. I shall not trouble you to repeat it. I turn your attention instead to the tragic death of Mrs. Stem-bridge. I need to ask you something about the relationship between your wife and Mrs. Gardiner. Believe me, I would not do it if there were any way in which I could avoid it."

Still, Stourbridge made no reply.

It seemed to unnerve Tobias very slightly. Rathbone saw him shift his weight a little and straighten his jacket.

"How did Mrs. Stourbridge regard Mrs. Gardiner when your son first brought her to Cleveland Square?"

"She thought her a very pleasant young woman."

"And when your son informed you of his intention to marry her?"

"We were both happy that he had found a woman whom he loved and whom we believed to return his feelings wholeheartedly."

Tobias pursed his lips. "You did not regret the fact that she was markedly older than himself and from a somewhat different social background? How did you imagine she would be regarded by your friends? How would she in time manage to be lady of your very considerable properties in Yorkshire? Did those things not concern your wife?"

"Of course," Stourbridge admitted. "But when we had known Mrs. Gardiner for a few weeks we were of the opinion that she would manage very well. She has a natural grace which would carry her through. And she and Lucius so obviously loved each other that that gave us much happiness."

"And the question of grandchildren, an heir to the house and the lands which are, I believe entailed. Without an heir, they pass laterally to your brother and to his heirs, is that not so?"

"It is." He took a deep breath, hands still by his sides as if he were on parade. "Any marriage may fail to provide an heir. One may only hope. I do not believe in governing the choice of wife for my son. I would rather he were happy than produced a dozen children with a woman he could not love and share his heart with as well as his bed."

"And did Mrs. Stourbridge feel the same?" Tobias asked. "Many women care intensely about grandchildren. It is a deep need..." He left it hanging in the air, unfinished, for the jury to conclude for themselves.

"I do not believe my wife felt that way," Stourbridge replied wretchedly. Rathbone gained the impression there was far more unsaid behind his words, but he was a private man, loathing this much exposure of his life. He would add nothing he was not forced to.

Step by step, Tobias took him through Miriam's visits to Cleveland Square, her demeanor on each of them, her charm and her eagerness to learn. It was obvious to all that Harry Stourbridge had liked her without shadow of equivocation. He was shattered by her betrayal, not only for his son but for himself. He seemed still unable to grasp it.

Throughout Harry Stourbridge's evidence, Rathbone glanced every now and again up at the dock, and saw the pain in Miriam's face. She was a person enduring torture from which there was no escape. She had to sit still and abide it in silence.

Never once did he catch a member of the jury looking at either Miriam or Cleo. They were completely absorbed in Stourbridge's ordeal. As he studied them he saw in each both pity and respect. Once or twice there was even a sense of identification, as if they could put themselves in his place and would have acted as he had, felt as he had. Rathbone wondered in passing if any of them were widowers themselves, or had sons who had fallen in love or married less than fortunately. He could not choose jurors. They had to be householders of a certain wealth and standing, and of course men. It had never been possible he could have had people who would identify with Miriam or Cleo. So much for a jury of one's peers.

In the afternoon, Tobias quietly and with dignity declined to call Lucius Stourbridge to the stand. It was an ordeal he did not need to inflict upon a young man already wounded almost beyond bearing.

The jury nodded in respect. They would not have forgiven it of him if he had. Rathbone would have done the same, and for the same reasons.

Tobias called the last witness, Aiden Campbell. His evidence was given quietly, with restraint and candor.

"Yes, she had great charm," he said sadly. "I believe everyone in the household liked her."

"Including your sister, Mrs. Stourbridge?"

The question remained unanswered.

Campbell looked very pale. His skin was bleached of color, and there were shadows like bruises under his eyes. He stood straight in the witness stand, but he was shaking very slightly, and every now and again he had to stop and clear his throat. It was apparent to everyone in the courtroom that he was a man laboring under profound emotion and close to losing control of himself.

Tobias apologized again and again for obliging him to relive experiences which had to be deeply distressing for him.

"I understand," Campbell said, biting his lip. "Justice requires that we follow this to its bitter end. I trust you will do it as speedily as you may."

"Of course," Tobias agreed. "May we proceed to the days immediately leading to your sister's death?"

Campbell told them in as few words as possible, without raising his voice, of Miriam's last visit to Cleveland Square after her release from custody and from the charge of having murdered Treadwell. According to him, she was in a state of shock so deep she hardly came out of her room, and when she did she seemed almost to be in a trance. She was civil, but no more. She avoided Lucius as much as possible, not even allowing him to comfort her over her fearful distress on Cleo Anderson's account.

"She was devoted to Mrs. Anderson?" Tobias stressed.

"Yes." There was no expression in Campbell's face except sadness. "It is natural enough. Mrs. Anderson had apparently raised her as a daughter since she was twelve or thirteen. She would be an ungrateful creature not to have been. We respected it in her."

"Of course," Tobias agreed, nodding. "Please continue."

Reluctantly, Campbell did so, describing the dinner that evening, the conversation over the table about Egypt, their returning and each going about their separate pursuits.

"And Mrs. Gardiner did not dine with you?"

"No."

"Tell us, Mr. Campbell, did your sister say anything to you, that evening or earlier, about her feelings regarding the murder of Treadwell and the accusation against Mrs. Gardiner?"

Rathbone rose to object, but he had no legal grounds -  indeed, no moral grounds either. He was obliged to sit down again in silence.

Campbell shook his head. "If you are asking if I know what happened, or why, no, I do not. Verona was distressed about something. She was certainly not herself. Any of the servants will testify to that."

Indeed, they already had, although, of course, Campbell had not been in court at the time, since he had not yet appeared himself.

"I believe she had discovered something ..." His voice grew thick, emotion all but choking him. "It is my personal belief, although I know nothing to support it, that before she died, she knew who had killed Treadwell, and exactly why. I think that is why she returned alone to her room, in order to consider what she should do about it." He closed his eyes. "It was a fatal decision. I wish to God she had not made it."

He had said very little really. He had brought out no new facts, and he had certainly not accused anyone, and yet his testimony was damning. Rathbone could see it in the jurors' faces.

There was no purpose in Rathbone's questioning Campbell. There was nothing for him to say, nothing to elaborate, nothing to challenge. It was Friday evening. He had two days in which to create some kind of defense, and nothing whatever with which to do it - unless Monk found something. And there was no word from him.

When the court rose he considered pleading with Miriam one more time, and abandoned the idea. It would serve no purpose. Whatever the truth was, she had already convinced him that she would go to the gallows rather than tell it.

Instead, he went out into the September afternoon and took a hansom straight to Primrose Hill. He did not expect his father to offer any answers; he went simply for the peace of the quiet garden in which to ease the wounds of a disastrous week, and to prepare his strength for the week to come, which promised to be even worse.

while rathbone was sitting helplessly in the courtroom, Monk began his further investigations into the details of Treadwell's life. He had already asked exhaustively at the Stourbridges' house and generally in the area around Cleveland Square. No one had told him anything remotely helpful. Treadwell had been tediously ordinary.

He began instead in Kentish Town, where Treadwell had grown up. It was a long task, and he held little hope of its proving successful. In time he began to fear that Miriam Gardiner was guilty as charged and that poor Cleo Anderson had been drawn into it because of her love for the girl she had rescued. She had refused to recognize that beneath the charm and apparent vulnerability, Miriam had grown into a greedy and conniving woman who would not stop even at murder in order to get what she wanted. Love could be very blind. No mother wanted to see evil in her child, and the fact that Cleo had not borne Miriam would make no difference to her.

His earlier pity for Miriam hardened to anger when he thought of the grief it would bring to Cleo when she was faced with facts she could no longer deny to herself. Miriam may not have asked to be loved, or to be believed in, but she had accepted it. It carried a moral responsibility, and she had failed it as badly as anyone could. The deception was worse than the violence.

He walked the streets of Kentish Town, going from one public house to another asking questions as discreetly as the desperately short time allowed. Twice he was too open, too hasty, and earned a sharp rebuff. He left and began again farther along, more carefully.

By sundown he was exhausted, his feet hurt merely to the touch. He took an omnibus home. Monk would earn no further money in this case, but he simply cared passionately to learn the truth. Lucius Stourbridge would have continued to pay him; indeed, he had still implored Monk to help only a week earlier. But Monk had refused to take anything further from him for something he was all but certain he could not accomplish. The young man had lost so much already; to have given him hope he could not justify would be a cruelty for which he would despise himself.

Hester looked at his face as he came in and did not ask what he had learned. Her tact was so uncharacteristic it told him more of his own disappointment, and how visible it was, than he would have admitted.

On the second day he gained considerably more knowledge. He came closer to Hampstead and discovered a public house where they knew Treadwell rather well. From there he was able to trace a man to whom Treadwell had lost at gambling. Since Treadwell was dead, the debt could not be collected.

"Someone ought to be responsible!" the man said angrily, his round eyes sharp and a little bloodshot. "In't there no law? You shouldn't be able to get out of money you owe just bydyin'."

Monk looked knowledgeable. "Well, usually you would go to a man's heirs," he said gravely. "But I don't know if Treadwell had any... ?" He left it hanging as a question.

"Nan!" the man said in disgust. "Answer to nob'dy, that one."

"Have a drink?" Monk offered. He might be wasting his time, but he had no better avenue to follow.

"Ta. Don't mind if I do," the man accepted. "Reece." He held out a hand after rubbing it on his trouser leg.

Monk took a moment to realize it was an introduction, then he grasped the hand and shook it. "Monk," he responded.

" 'Ow do," Reece said cheerfully. "I'll 'ave a pint o' mild, ta."

When the pints had been ordered and bought, Monk pursued the conversation. "Did he owe you a lot?"

"I'll say!" Reece took a long draft of his ale before he continued. "Near ten pound."

Monk was startled. It was as much as a housemaid earned in six months.

"That choked yer, eh?" Reece observed with satisfaction. " 'E played big, did Treadwell."

"And lost big," Monk agreed. "He can't have lost like that often. Did he win as well?"

"Sometimes. Liked ter live 'igh on the 'og, 'e did. Wine, women and the 'orses. Must 'a won sometimes, I suppose. But w'ere am I gonna get ten quid, you tell me that?"

"What I'd like to know is where Treadwell got it," Monk said with feeling. "He certainly didn't earn it as a coachman."

"Wouldn't know," Reece said with fading interest. He emptied his glass and looked at Monk hopefully.

Monk obliged.

"Coachman, were 'e?" Reece said thoughtfully. "Well, I guess as 'e 'ad suffink on the side, then. Dunno wot."

A very ugly thought came into Monk's mind concerning Cleo Anderson's theft of medicines, especially morphine. Hester had said a considerable amount might have gone over a period of time. Maybe not all of it had ended in the homes of the old and ill. Anyone addicted to such a drug would pay a high price to obtain it. It would be only too easy to understand how Cleo could have sold it to pay Treadwell, or even have given it to him directly for him to sell. The idea gave him no pleasure, but he could not get rid of it.

He spent the rest of the day investigating Treadwell's off-duty hours, which seemed to have been quite liberal, and found he had a considerable taste for self-indulgence. But there appeared to be several hours once every two weeks or so which were unaccounted for, and Monk was driven to the conclusion that this time may have been used either for selling morphine or for further blackmail of other victims.

The last thing Monk did, late in the evening, was to go and visit Cleo herself, telling the jailer that he was Rathbone's clerk. He had no proof of such a position, but the jailer had seen them together earlier, and accepted it. Or possibly his compassion for Cleo made him turn a blind eye. Monk did not care in the slightest what the reason was; he took advantage of it.

Cleo was surprised to see him, but there was no light of hope in her eyes. She looked haggard and exhausted. She was almost unrecognizable from the woman he had met only a month or so before. Her cheeks were hollow, her skin completely without color, and she sat with her shoulders sagging under the plain dark stuff of her dress.

Monk was caught off guard by his emotions on seeing her. She stirred in him an anger and a sense of outrage at futility and injustice, more passionate than he had expected. If he failed in this he was going to carry the wound for a very long time, perhaps always.

There was no time to waste in words of pity or encouragement, and he knew they would be wasted because they could have no meaning.

"Do you know if Treadwell was blackmailing anyone else apart from you?" he asked her, sitting down opposite her so he could speak softly and she could hear him.

"No. Why? Do you think they could've killed him?" There was almost hope in her voice, not quite. She did not dare.

Honesty forbade him to allow it. "Enough possibility to raise a need to know how much you paid him, exactly," he answered. "I have a pretty good record of how much he spent over the last two or three months of his life. If you paid him all of it, then you must have been taking morphine to sell, as well as to give to patients."

Her body stiffened, her eyes wide and angry. "I didn't! And I never gave him any either!"

"We have to prove it," he argued. "Have you got any records of your pay from the hospital, of all the medicine you took and the people to whom you gave it?"

"No - of course I haven't."

"But you know all the patients you visited with medicine," he insisted.

"Yes..."

"Then dictate their names to me. Their addresses, too, and what medicine you gave them and for how long."

She stared at him for a moment, then obeyed.

Was this going to be worth anything, or was he simply finding a way of occupying time so he could delude himself he was working to save her? What could he achieve with lists? Who would listen, or care, regardless of what likelihood he could show? Proof was all the court would entertain. In their own minds they believed Cleo and Miriam guilty. They would have to be forced from that conviction, not merely shown that there was another remote possibility.

Cleo finished dictating the list. There were eighteen names on it.

"Thank you." He read it over. "How much do you earn at the hospital?"

"Seven shillings a week." She said it with some pride, as if for a nurse it was a good wage.

He winced. He knew a constable earned three times that.

"How long do you work?" The question was out before he thought.

"Twelve or fifteen hours a day," she replied.

"And how much did you pay Treadwell?"

Her voice was tired, her shoulders slumped again. "Five shillings a week."

The rage inside him was ice-cold, filling his body, sharpening his mind with a will to lash out, to hurt someone so this could be undone, so it would never happen again, not to Cleo and not to anyone. But he had no one to direct the anger towards. The only offender was dead already. Only the victim was still left to pay the price.

"He was spending a lot more than that," he said quietly, his words coming between clenched teeth. "I need to know where it came from."

She shook her head. "I don't know. He just came to me regularly and I paid him. He never mentioned anyone else. But he wouldn't..."

It was on the edge of Monk's tongue to ask her again if she had given him any morphine to sell, but he knew the answer would be the same. He rose to his feet and bade her good-bye, hating being able to make no promises, nor even speak any words of hope.

At the door he hesitated, wondering if he should ask her about Miriam, but what was there to say?

She looked up at him, waiting.

In the end he had to ask. "Could it have been Miriam?"

"No," she said immediately. "She never did anything he could have made her pay for!"

"Not even to protect you?" he said quietly.

She sat perfectly still. It was transparent in her face that she did not know the answer to that - believe, possibly, even certainly - but not know.

Monk nodded. "I understand." He knocked for the jailer to let him out.

He arrived home still turning the matter over and over in his mind.

"There was another source," he said to Hester over the dinner table. "But it could have been Miriam, which won't help at all."

"And if it wasn't?" she asked. "If we could show it was someone else? They'd have to consider it!"

"No, they wouldn't," he answered quietly, watching her face show her disappointment. "Not unless we could bring that person to court and-pTOve that he or she was somewhere near the Heath that night, alone. We've got two days before Rathbone has to begin some defense."

"What else have we?" Her voice rose a little in desperation.

"Nothing," he admitted.

"Then let's try! I can't bear to sit here not doing anything at all. What do we know?"

They worked until long after midnight, noting every piece of information Monk had gathered about Treadwell's comings and goings over the three months previous to his death. When it was written on paper it was easier to see what appeared to be gaps.

"We need to know exactly what his time off was," Hester said, making further notes. "I'm sure there would be someone in the Stourbridge household who could tell you."

Monk thought it was probably a waste of time, but he did not argue. He had nothing else more useful to do. He might as well follow through with the entire exercise.

"Do you know how much medicine was taken?" he asked, then, before she could deny it, added, "Or could you work it out if you wanted to?"

"No, but I expect Phillips could, if it would help. Do you think it really would?"

"Probably not, but what better idea have we?"

Neither of them answered with the obvious thing: acceptance that the charge was true. Perhaps it had not been with deliberate greed, or for the reasons Tobias was saying, but the end result was all that counted.

"I'll go tomorrow to the hospital and ask Phillips," Hester said briskly, as if it mattered. "And I'll go as well and find all the people on your list and see what medicines they have. You see if you can account for that time of Treadwell's." She stared at him very directly, defying him to tell her it was useless or to give up heart. He knew from the very brittleness of her stare, the anger in her, that she was doing it blindly, against hope, not with it.

In the morning Monk left early to go out to Bayswater and get the precise times that Treadwell was off duty and see if he could find any indication of where else he might have been, who could have paid him the huge difference between what they could account for and what he had spent. He pursued it slowly and carefully, to the minutest detail, because he did not want to come to the end of it and have it proved to him what he already knew: that it would be of no use whatever in trying to save Cleo Anderson - or Miriam Gardiner either.

Hester went straight to the hospital. Fortunately, even though it was a Saturday she knew Phillips would be there. Usually he took only Sundays off, and then quite often just the morning. Still, she had to search for over half an hour before she found him, and then it was only after having asked three different medical students, interrupting them in a long, enthusiastic and detailed discussion of anatomy, which was their present preoccupation.

"Brilliant!" one of them said, his eyes wide. "We're very fortunate to be here. My cousin is studying in Lincoln, and he says they have to wait weeks for a body to dissect, and all the diagrams in the world mean almost nothing compared with the real thing."

"I know," another agreed. "And Thorpe is marvelous. His explanations are always so clear."

"Probably the number of times he's done it," the first retorted.

"Excuse me!" Hester said again sharply. "Do you know where Mr. Phillips is?"

"Phillips? Is he the one with red hair, bit of a stammer?"

"Phillips the apothecary." She kept her temper with difficulty. "I need to speak with him."

The first young man frowned at her, looking at her more closely now. "You shouldn't be looking for medicines; if one of the patients is - "

"I don't want medicines!" she said. "I need to speak with Mr. Phillips. Do you know where he is or not?"

The young man's face hardened. "No, actually, I don't."

One of the other young men relented, for whatever personal reason.

"He's down in the morgue," he answered. "The new assistant got taken a little faint. Gave him a bit of something to help. He's probably still there."

"Thank you," she said quickly. "Thank you very much." And she all but ran along the corridor, out of the side entrance and down the steps to the cold room belowground which served to keep the bodies of the dead until the undertaker should come to perform the formalities.

"Hello, Mrs. Monk. You're looking a little peaked," Phillips said cheerfully. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm glad I found you." She turned and regarded the young man, white-faced, who sat on the floor with his legs splayed out. "Are you all right?" she asked him.

He nodded, embarrassed.

"Just got a scare," Phillips said with a grin. "One o' them corpses moved, and young Jake 'ere near fainted away. Nobody told 'im corpses sometimes passes wind. Gases don't stop, son, just 'cos you're dead."

Jake scrambled to bis feet, running his hands through his hair and trying to look as if he was ready for duty again.

Hester looked at the tables. There were two bodies laid out under unbleached sheets.

"Not as many lately," Phillips remarked, following her glance.

"Good!" she said.

"No - not died here, brought in for the students," he corrected. "Old Thorpe's in a rare fury. Can't get 'em."

"Where do they come from?"

"God knows! Resurrectionists!" he said with black humor.

Jake was staring at him, openmouthed. He let out a sigh between his teeth.

"D'yer mean it?" he said hoarsely. "Grave robbers, like?"

"No, of course I don't, you daft ha'porth!" Phillips said, shaking his head. "Get on with your work." He turned to Hester. "What is it, Mrs. Monk?" All the light vanished from his face. "Have you seen Cleo Anderson? Is there anything we can do for 'er, apart from hope for a miracle?"

.

"Work for one," she said bleakly. She turned and led the way back up the stairs.

He followed close behind, and when they were outside in the air he asked what she meant.

"Someone else was being blackmailed as well, we are almost sure," she explained, stopping beside him. "Treadwell spent a lot more money than Cleo gave him or he earned..."

Hope lit in his face. "You mean that person could have killed him? How do we find out who it was?" He looked at her confidently, as if he had every faith she would have an answer.

"I don't know. I'll settle at the moment just for proving he has to exist." She looked at him very steadily. "If you had to ... no, if you wanted to, could you work out exactly how much medicine has gone missing in, say, the four months before TreadwelPs death?"

"Perhaps ... if I had a really good reason to," he said guardedly. "I wouldn't know that unless I understood the need."

"Not knowing isn't going to help," she told him miserably. "Not charging her with theft won't matter if they hang her for murder."

His face blanched as if she had slapped him, but he did not look away. "What good can you do?" he asked very quietly. "I really care about Cleo. She's worth ten of that pompous swine in his oak-paneled office." He did not need to name Thorpe. She shared his feelings, and he knew it. He was watching her for an answer, hoping.

"I don't really know - maybe not a great deal," she admitted. "But if I know how much is missing, and how much reached the patients she treated, if they are pretty well the same, then he got money from someone else."

"Of course they're the same. Wfiaf do you think she did? Give it to him to sell?" He was indignant, almost angry.

"If I were being blackmailed out of everything I earned except about two shillings a week, I'd be tempted to pay in kind," she answered him.

He looked chastened. His lips thinned into a hard line. "I'm glad somebody got that scheming sod," he said harshly. "I just wish we could prove it wasn't poor Cleo. Or come to that, anyone else he was doing the same thing to. How are we going to do that?" He looked at her expectantly.

"Tell me exactly how much medicine went over the few months before his death, as nearly as you can."

"That won't tell us who the other person is - or people!"

"My husband is trying to find out where Treadwell went that might lead us to them."

He looked at her narrowly. "Is he any good at that?"

"Very good indeed. He used to be the best detective in the police force," she said with pride.

"Oh? Who's the best now?"

"I haven't the slightest idea. He left." Then, in case Phillips should think him dishonest, she added, "He resented some of the discipline. He can't abide pomposity either, especially when it is coupled with ignorance."

Phillips grinned, then the grin vanished and he was totally serious again.

"I'll get you a list o' those things. I could tell you pretty exact, if it helps."

"It'll help."

She spent the rest of the day and into the early evening trudging from one house to the next with Monk's list of Cleo's patients and Phillips's list of the missing medicines. She was accustomed to seeing people who were suffering illness or injury. Nursing had been her profession for several years, and she had seen the horror of the battlefield and the disease which had decimated the wounded afterwards. She had shared the exhaustion and the fear herself, and the cold and the hunger.

Nevertheless, to go into these homes, bare of comfort because everything had been sold to pay for food and warmth, to see the pain and too often the loneliness also, was more harrowing than she had expected. These men were older than the ones she had nursed in the Crimea; their wounds were not fresh. They had earned them in different battles, different wars; still, there was so much that was the same it hurled her back those short four years, and old emotions washed over her, almost to drowning.

Time and again she saw a dignity which made her have to swallow back tears as old men struggled to hide their poverty and force their bodies, disabled by age and injury, to rise and offer her some hospitality. She was walking in the footsteps of Cleo Anderson, trying to give some of the same comfort, and failing because she had not the means.

Rage burned inside her also. No one should have to beg for what he had more than earned.

She loathed asking for information about the medicine they had had. Nearly all of them knew that Cleo was being tried for her life. All Hester could do was tell the truth. Every last man was eager to give her any help he could, to open cupboards and show her powders, to give her day-by-day recounting of all he had had.

She would have given any price she could think of to be able to promise them it would save Cleo, but she could only offer hope, and little enough of that.

When she arrived home at quarter past ten, Monk was beginning to worry about her. He was standing up, unable to relax in spite of his own weariness. She did notice that he had taken his boots off.

"Where have you been?" he demanded.

She walked straight to him and put her head on his shoulder. He closed his arms around her, holding her gently, laying his cheek to her brow. He did not need her to explain the emotion she felt; he saw it in her face, and understood.

"It's wrong," she said after a fewlhinutes, still holding on to him. "How can we do it? We turn to our bravest and best when we are in danger, we sacrifice so much - fathers and brothers, husbands and sons - and then a decade, a generation later, we only want to forget! What's the matter with us?"

He did not bother to answer, to talk about guilt or debt, or the desire to be happy without remembering that others have purchased it at a terrible price - even resentment and simple blindness and failure of imagination. They had both said it all before.

"What did you find?" she said at last, straightening up and looking at him.

"I'm not sure," he replied. "Do you want a cup of tea?"

"Yes." She went towards the kitchen, but he moved ahead ofher.

"I'll bring it." He smiled. "I wasn't asking you to fetch one for me - even though I've probably walked as far as you have, and to as little purpose."

She sat down and took off her boots as well. It was a particular luxury, something she would only do at home. And it was still very sweet to realize this was her home, she belonged there, and so did he.

When he returned with the tea and she had taken a few sips, she asked him again what he had learned.

"A lot of TreadwelPs time is unaccounted for," he replied, trying his own tea and finding it a trifle too hot. "He had a few unusual friends. One of his gambling partners was even an undertaker, and Treadwell did a few odd tasks for him."

"Enough to earn him the kind of money we're looking for?" She did not know whether she wanted the answer to be yes or no.

"Not remotely," he replied. "Just driving a wagon, presumably because he was good with horses, and perhaps knew the roads. He probably did it as a favor because of their friendship. This young man seems to have given him entry to cockfights and dog races when he wouldn't have been allowed in otherwise. They even had a brothel or two in common."

Hester shrugged. "It doesn't get us any further, does it?" She tried to keep the disappointment out ofher voice.

Monk frowned thoughtfully. "I was wondering how Treadwell ever discovered about Cleo and the medicines in the first place."

She was about to dismiss it as something that hardly mattered now when she realized what he meant.

"Well, not from Miriam," she said with conviction.

"From any of Cleo's patients?" he asked. "How could Treadwell, coachman to Major Stourbridge in Bayswater, and gambler and womanizer in Kentish Town, come to know of thefts of morphine and other medicines from a hospital on Hampstead Heath?"

She stared at him steadily, a first, tiny stirring of excitement inside her. "Because somewhere along the chain of events he crossed it. It has to be - but where?" She held up her fingers, ticking off each step. "Patients fall ill and go to the hospital, where Cleo gets to know of them because she works there as a nurse."

"Which has nothing to do with Treadwell," he answered. "Unless one of them was related to him or to someone he knew well."

"They are all old and live within walking distance of the hospital," she pointed out. "Most of them are alone, the lucky few with a son or daughter, or grandchild, like old John Robb."

"TreadwelPs family was all in Kentish Town," Monk said. "That much I ascertained. His father is dead and his mother remarried a man from Hoxton."

"And none of them have anything to do with Miriam Gardiner," she went on. "So he didn't meet them driving her." She held up the next ringer. "Cleo visits them in their homes and knows what they need. She steals it from the hospital. By the way, I'm sure the apothecary knew but turned a blind eye. He's a good man, and very fond of her." She smiled slightly. "Very fond indeed. He regards her as something of a saint. I think she is the only person who really impresses Phillips. Fermin Thorpe certainly doesn't." She recalled the scene in the morgue. "He even teased the new young morgue attendant that Thorpe was buying his cadavers for the medical students from resurrectionists! Poor boy was horrified until he realized Phillips was teasing him."

"Resurrectionists?" Monk said slowly.