The Twisted Root

by Anne Perry

  Cleo said nothing. She stared down at her hands, folded in her lap.

  Hester watched her closely. "Do you know why she ran away from Cleveland Square and why she had to be all but dragged back there?"

  Cleo looked up quickly. "No—no, I don’t. She wouldn’t tell me."

  Hester believed her. The confusion and distress in her eyes were too real. "Don’t answer me whether you took the medicines or not," she said quietly. "I know you did, and I know what for."

  Cleo regarded her thoughtfully for several moments before she spoke. "What’s going to happen to them, miss? There’s nobody to look after them. The ones with family are better off than those who haven’t, but even they can’t afford what they need, or they don’t know what it is. They get old, and their children move on, leaving them behind. The young don’t care about Trafalgar an’ Waterloo now. A few years an’ they’ll forget the Crimea, too. Those soldiers are all the thing now, because they’re young and handsome still. We get upset about a young man with no arms or no legs, or insides all to pieces. But when they get old we can’t be bothered. We say they’re going to die soon anyway. Wot’s the point in spending time and money on them?"

  There was no argument to make. Of course, it was not true everywhere, but in too many instances it was.

  "What about John Robb, sailor from the victory at Trafalgar?" Hester asked. "Consumption, by the sound of him."

  Cleo’s face tightened, and she nodded. "I don’t think he has long. His grandson does everything he can for him, but that isn’t much. He can’t give him any ease without the morphine." She did not ask, but it was in her eyes, willing Hester to agree.

  Hester knew what that would involve. She would have to give him the morphine herself. It would involve her in the theft. But to refuse would compound the old man’s suffering and his sense of being abandoned. When he understood, he would also know that his suffering was of less importance to her than keeping herself from risk. Alleviating pain was all right, as long as the cost was small—a little time, even weariness, but not personal danger.

  "Yes, of course:’ The words were out of her mouth before she had time to weigh what she was committing herself to do.

  "Thank you," Cleo said softly, a momentary gleam in her eyes, as if she had seen a light in enclosing darkness. "And I would like the soap, and the spoon, if it is not too much trouble."

  "Of course." Hester brushed them aside as already done. What she really wanted was to help with some defense, but what was there? She realized with bitterness that she was half convinced that Cleo had killed Treadwell. "Have you got a lawyer to speak for you?"

  "A lawyer? What can he say? It won’t make no difference." The tone of her voice was flat, as if she had suddenly been jerked back to the harshness of the present and her own reality, not John Robb’s. There was a closed air about her, excluding Hester from her emotions till she felt rebuffed, an intruder. Was Cleo still somehow defending Miriam Gardiner? Or was she guilty, and believed she deserved to die?

  "Did you kill Treadwell?" Hester said abruptly.

  Cleo hesitated, was about to speak, then changed her mind and said nothing. Hester had the powerful impression that she had been going to deny it, but she would never know, and asking again would be useless. The mask was complete.

  "Was he blackmailing you?" she asked instead.

  Cleo sighed. "Yeah, ’course he was. Do most things for money, that one."

  "I see." There did not seem much else to say. She had resolved without question or doubt that she would do all she could to help Cleo, it was a matter of thinking what that would be. Already, Oliver Rathbone’s name was in her mind.

  Cleo grasped her wrist, holding hard, startling her. "Don’t tell the sergeant!" she said fiercely. "It can’t change what he does, and ..."—she blinked, her face bruised with hurt— "and don’t tell old Mr. Robb why I’m not there. Tell him something else ... anything. Perhaps by the time they try me, and ... well, he may not have to know. He could be gone his-self by then."

  "I’ll tell him something else," Hester promised. "Probably that you’ve gone to look after a relative or something."

  "Thank you." Cleo’s gratitude was so naked, Hester felt guilty. She was on the edge of saying that she intended to do far more, but she had no idea what it could be, and to raise hope she could not fulfill was thoughtlessly cruel.

  "I’ll come back with the soap," she promised. "And the spoon." Then she went to the door and banged for the jailer to let her out.

  The next thing she did she expected to be the most difficult, and it was certainly the one of which she was most afraid. She felt guilty even as she walked up the steps and in through the hospital door. She returned the stare of two young medical students too directly, as if to deny their suspicion of her. Then she felt ridiculous, and was sure she was blushing. She had done nothing yet. She was no different from the person she had been yesterday or this morning, when she had been perfectly happy to confront Fermin Thorpe in his office and rack her brain to defend Cleo Anderson. Would Callandra in turn have to rack her brain tomorrow to defend her?

  And yet she could not escape it. Quite apart from her fondness for John Robb, she had given Cleo the promise. She had tried to form a plan, but so much depended upon opportunity. It was impractical to try stealing Phillips’s keys, and unfair to him. Added to which, he really was extremely careful with them, and might be the more so now.

  How long would she have to wait for a crisis of some sort to present a chance, the apothecary’s room open and unattended, or Phillips there but his back turned? She was suddenly furious with herself. She had been alone with Cleo and not had the wits to ask her how she had accomplished it. She had just blithely promised to do the same, without the faintest idea how to go about it. It was very humbling to realize her own stupidity.

  She stood in the middle of the passage and was still there when Kristian Beck reached her.

  "Hester?" he said with concern. "Are you all right?"

  She recalled herself swiftly and began speaking with the idea only half formed in her mind. "I was wondering how Cleo Anderson managed to steal the morphine. Phillips is really very careful. I mean, how do you think it happened, in practical detail?"

  He frowned. "Does it matter?"

  Why did he ask? Was he indifferent to the thefts? Was he so certain Cleo was guilty that the details did not matter? Or was it even conceivable that he had some sympathy with her?

  "I don’t want to prove it," she answered steadily, meeting his eyes with complete candor. "I would like above all things to disprove it, but failing that, at least to understand."

  "She is charged with murdering Treadwell," he said softly. "The jury cannot excuse that, whatever they privately feel. There is no provision or law for murdering blackmailers or for stealing medicine, even if it is to treat the old and ill for whom there is no other help." The lacerating edge in his voice betrayed his own feelings too clearly.

  "I know that," she said in little above a whisper. "I should still like to know exactly how she did it."

  He stood in silence for several moments.

  She waited. Part of her wanted to leave before it was too late. But escaping would be only physical. Morally and emotionally, she was still trapped. And that was trivial compared with Cleo—or John Robb.

  "What do you think she took?" Kristian asked at length.

  She swallowed. "Morphine, for an old man who has consumption. It won’t cure him, but it gives him a little rest."

  "Very understandable," he answered. "I hope she gave him some sherry in water as well?"

  "I believe so."

  "Good. I need a few things from the apothecary myself. I’ll go and get the keys. You can help me, if you would." And without waiting for her answer, he turned sharply and strode off.

  He came back a few minutes later with the keys and opened the door. He went inside and left her to follow him. He started to unlock various cupboards and take out leaves for infusions, cordials and vari
ous powders. He passed several of them to Hester while he opened bottles and jars, then closed them again. When he had finished he ushered her out, relocked the door, took some of the medicines back from her, then thanked her and left her standing in the corridor with a small bottle of cordial and a week’s dosage of morphine, plus several small paper screws of quinine.

  She put them quickly into her pockets and went back towards the front door and out of it. She felt as if dozens of eyes were boring holes in her back, but actually she passed only one nurse with a mop and bucket, and Fermin Thorpe himself, striding along with his face set, hardly recognizing her.

  John Robb was delighted to see her. He had had a bad night but was a trifle better towards late afternoon, and the loneliness of sitting in his chair in the empty house, even with the sun slanting in through the windows, had made him melancholy. His face lit with a smile when he recognized her step, and even before she entered the room he was tidying the little space around him and making ready for her.

  "How are you?" he said the moment she came through the door.

  "I’m very well," she answered cheerfully. He must never know about Cleo if there was any way it could be prevented.

  She could not warn Michael without explaining to him the reason, and that would place him in an impossible situation. He would then have either to benefit indirectly from the thefts, which he would find intolerable, or else have to testify against Cleo from his own knowledge. That would also be unbearable, for the old man’s sake as well as his own. Such disillusion and sense of betrayal might be more than his old and frail body could take. And then Michael’s guilt would be crippling.

  "I’m very well indeed," she said firmly. "How are you? I hope you are well enough to share a cup of tea with me? I brought some you might like to try, and a few biscuits." She smiled back at him. "Of course, it was all an excuse so you will tell me more stories of your life at sea and the places you have been to. You were going to describe the Indies for me. You said how brilliant the water was, like a cascade of jewels, and that you had seen fishes that could fly."

  "Oh, bless you, girl, I have an’ all," he agreed with a smile. "An’ more than that, too. You put the kettle on an’ I’ll tell you all you want to know."

  "Of course." She walked across the room and pulled the biscuits and tea out of the bag they were in, filled the kettle from the jug and set it on the stove, then, with her back to him, took out the cordial bottle and placed it on the shelf, half behind a blue bag of sugar. Then she slipped the morphine out of her other pocket and set it underneath the two thin papers that were left from Cleo’s last visit.

  "Was it very hot in the Indies?" she asked.

  "You wouldn’t believe it, girl," he replied. "Felt as if the sea itself were on the boil, all simmerin’ an’ steamin’. The air were so thick it clogged up in your throat, like you could drink it."

  "I think you could drink it here, too, when it gets cold enough!" she said with a laugh.

  "Aye! An’ I bin north, too!" he said enthusiastically. "Great walls of ice rising out o’ the sea. You never seen anything like it, girl. Beautiful an’ terrible, they was. An’they’d freeze your breath like a white fog in front of you."

  She turned and smiled at him, then began to make the tea. "Mrs. Anderson had to go away for a little while. Someone in her family ill, I think." She scalded the pot, tipped out the water, then put the fresh leaves in and poured the rest of the water from the kettle. "She asked me to come and see you. I think she knew I’d like that. I hope it’s all right with you."

  He relaxed, looking at her with undisguised pleasure. "Sure it’s all right. Then you can tell me some o’ the places you’ve bin. About them Turks an’ the like. Although I’ll miss Cleo. Good woman, she is. Nothin’ ever too much trouble. An’ I seen her so tired she were fit to drop. I hope as her family appreciates her."

  A lie was the only thing. "I’m sure they will," she said without a shadow in her voice. "And I’ll get a message to her that you’re fine."

  "You do that, girl. An’ tell her I was asking after her."

  "I will." Suddenly she found it difficult to master herself. It was ridiculous to want to cry now! Nothing had changed. She sniffed hard and blew her nose, then set out the rest of the things for tea and opened the bag of biscuits. She had bought him the best she could find. They looked pretty on the plate. She was determined this should be a party.

  She did not broach the subject with Monk until after they had eaten. They were sitting quietly watching the last of the light fade beyond the windows and wondering if it was time to light the gas or if it would be pleasanter just to allow the dusk to fill the room.

  Naturally, she had no intention whatever of even mentioning John Robb, let alone telling Monk that she was taking over his care from Cleo. Apart from the way he would react to such information, the knowledge would compromise him. There was no need for both of them to tell lies.

  "What can we do to help Cleo Anderson?" she said, taking it for granted that there was no argument as to whether they would.

  He lifted his head sharply.

  She waited.

  "Everything we’ve done so far has made it worse," he said unhappily. "The best service we can do the poor woman is to leave the case alone."

  "If we do that she may well be hanged," Hester argued. "And that would be very wrong. Treadwell was a blackmailer. She is guilty of a crime in law, maybe, but no sin. We have to do something. Humanity requires it."

  "I discover facts, Hester," he said quietly. "Everything I’ve found so far indicates that Cleo killed him. I may sympathize with her—in fact, I do. God knows, in her situation I might have done the same."

  She could see memory of the past sharp in his face, and knew what he was thinking. She remembered Joscelin Grey also, and the apartment in Mecklenburgh Square, and how close Monk had come to murder then.

  "But that would not excuse me in law," he continued. "Nor would it alter anything the judge or jury could do. If she did kill him, there may be some mitigation, but she will have to say what it is. Then I could look for proof of it, if there is any."

  She was hesitant to ask him about Oliver Rathbone. There was too much emotion involved, old friendship, old love, and perhaps pain. She did not know how much. She had not seen Rathbone since her marriage, but she remembered— with a vividness so sharp she could see the candlelight in her mind’s eye and smell the warmth of the inn dining room—the night Rathbone had very nearly asked her to marry him. He had stopped only because she had allowed him to know, obliquely, that she could not accept, not yet. And he had let the moment pass.

  "It’s not only what happened," she began almost tentatively. "It’s the interpretation, the argument, if you like."

  Monk regarded her gravely before replying. There was no criticism in his face, but an acute sadness. "Some plea of mitigation? Don’t you think you are holding out a false hope to her?"

  That could be true.

  "But we must try ... mustn’t we? We can’t just give in without a fight."

  "What do you want to do?"

  She said what he expected. "We could ask Oliver..." She took a breath. "We could at least set it before him, for his opinion?" She made it a question.

  She could see no change in his expression, no anger, no stiffening.

  "Of course," he agreed. "But don’t expect too much."

  She smiled. "No ... just to try."

  Hester woke in the dark, feeling the movement as Monk got out of bed. Downstairs, there was a banging on the front door, not loud, just sharp and insistent, as of someone who would not give up.

  Monk pulled his jacket on over his nightshirt, and Hester sat up, watching him go out of the bedroom in bare feet. She heard the door open and a moment later close again.

  She saw the reflection of the hall light on the landing ceiling as the gas was lit.

  She could bear it no longer. She slipped out of bed and put on a robe. She met Monk coming up the stairs, a piece of pape
r in his hand. His face was bleak with shock, his eyes dark.

  "What is it?" she said with a catch in her breath.

  "Verona Stourbridge." His voice shook a little. "She’s been murdered! Just the same way as Treadwell. A single, powerful blow to the head ... with a croquet mallet." His fist closed over the white paper. "Robb asked me to go."

  8

  IT TOOK MONK nearly a quarter of an hour to find a hansom, first striding down Fitzroy Street to the Tottenham Court Road, then walking south towards Oxford Street.

  He had left Hester furious at being excluded, but it would be in every way inappropriate for him to have taken her. She could serve no purpose except to satisfy her own curiosity, and she would quite obviously be intrusive. She had not argued, just seethed inside because she felt helpless and as confused as he was.

  It was a fine night. A thin film of cloud scudded over a bright moon. The air was warm, the pavements still holding the heat of the day. His footsteps were loud in the near silence. A carriage rumbled by out of Percy Street and crossed towards Bedford Square, the moonlight shining for a moment on gleaming doors and the horses’ polished flanks. Whoever had murdered Verona Stourbridge, it had not been Cleo Anderson. She was safely locked up in the Hampstead police station.

  What could this new and terrible event have to do with the death of James Treadwell?

  He could see pedestrians on the footpath at the corner of Oxford Street, two men and a woman, laughing.

  He tried to picture Mrs. Stourbridge on the one occasion he had met her. He could not bring back her features, or even the color of her eyes, only the overriding impression he had had of a kind of vulnerability. Underneath the poised manner and the lovely clothes was a woman who was acquainted with fear. Or perhaps that was only hindsight, now that she was dead... murdered.

  It had to be one of her own family, or a servant—or Miriam. But why would Miriam kill her, unless she truly was insane?