The Twisted Root wm-10

by Anne Perry

  "I suppose so," Campbell conceded.

  Tobias turned to the judge. "My lord, this is surely sufficient tragedy for one day. If it pleases the court, I would like to suggest we may adjourn until tomorrow, when Sir Oliver may put forward any other evidence he feels may salvage his case. Personally, I have little more to add."

  The judge looked at Rathbone enquiringly, but his gavel was already in his hand.

  Rathbone had no weapons and no will to fight any further.

  "Certainly, my lord," he said quietly. "By all means."

  Rathbone had barely left the courtroom when he was approached by the usher.

  He did not wish to speak to anyone. He was tasting the full bitterness of a defeat he knew he had brought upon himself. He dreaded facing Hester and seeing her disillusion. She would not blame him. He was certain she would not be angry. Her kindness would be even harder to bear.

  "What is it?" he said brusquely.

  "Sorry, Sir Oliver," the usher apologized. "Mrs. Anderson asked if you would speak with her, sir. She said it was most important."

  The only thing worse than facing Hester was going to be telling Cleo Anderson that there was nothing more he could attempt on her behalf. He drew in his breath. It could not be evaded. If victory could be accepted and celebrated, then defeat must be dealt with with equal composure, and at the very least without cowardice or excuses.

  "Of course," he replied. "Thank you, Morris." He turned and was a dozen yards along the corridor when Hester caught up with him. He had no idea what to say to her. There was no comfort to offer, no next line of attack to suggest.

  She fell into step with him and said nothing.

  He glanced at her, then away again, grateful for her silence. He had not seen Monk, and assumed he was on some other business.

  Cleo was waiting in the small room with the jailer outside. She was standing facing them, and she stepped forward as soon as Rathbone closed the door.

  "He’s lying," she said, looking from one to the other of them.

  He was embarrassed. It was futile to protest now, and he had not the emotional strength to struggle with her. It was over.

  He shook his head. "I’m sure you want to believe-"

  "It has nothing to do with belief! I saw her then. She wasn’t aborted. She’d gone full term." She was angry now with his lack of understanding. "I’m a nurse. I know the difference between a woman who’s given birth and one who’s lost her child or done away with it in the first few months. That child was born-dead or alive. The size of her-and she had milk, poor little thing." She swallowed. "How she wept for it…"

  "So Campbell is lying!" Hester said, moving forward to Cleo. "But why?"

  "To hide what he did to her," Cleo said furiously. "He must have raped her, and when she was with child he threw her out." She looked from Hester to Rathbone. "Though he didn’t even notice her condition. Who looks at housemaids, especially ones who are barely more than children themselves? Perhaps he’d already got tired of her-moved on to someone else? Or if he thought she’d had it aborted, and only then realized she hadn’t, to avoid the scandal."

  "It wouldn’t be much of a scandal," Hester said sadly. "If she was foolish enough to say it was his, he would simply deny it. No one would be likely to believe her… or frankly, care that much even if they did. It isn’t worth murdering anyone over."

  Cleo’s face crumpled, but she refused to give in. "What about the body?"

  "Which body?" Rathbone was confused. "The baby?"

  "No-no, the woman!"

  "What woman?"

  "The woman Miriam saw murdered the night her baby was born. The woman on the Heath."

  Rathbone was still further confused. "Who was she?"

  Cleo shook her head. "I don’t know. Miriam said she had been murdered. She saw it-that was what she was running away from."

  "But who was the woman?"

  "I don’t know!"

  "Was there ever a body found? What happened? Didn’t the police ask?"

  Cleo waved her hands in denial, her eyes desperate. "No- no body was ever found. He must have hidden it."

  It was all pointless, completely futile. Rathbone felt a sense of despair drowning him as if he could hardly struggle for breath, almost a physical suffocation.

  "You said yourself that she was hysterical." He tried to sound reasonable, not patronizing or offensive to a woman who must be facing the most bitter disillusion imaginable, and for which she would face disgrace she had not deserved, and a death he could not save her from. "Don’t you think the loss of her baby was what she was actually thinking of? Was it a girl?"

  "I don’t know. She didn’t say." Cleo looked as if she had caught his despair. "She seemed so-so sure it was a woman… someone she cared for… who had helped her, even loved her… I-" She stopped, too weary, too hurt, to go on.

  "I’m sorry," Rathbone said gently. "You were right to tell me about the baby. If Campbell was lying, at least we may be able to make something of that. Even if we do no more than save Miriam’s reputation, I am sure that will matter to her." He was making wild promises and talking nonsense. Would Miriam care about such a thing when she faced death?

  He banged on the door to be released again, and as soon as they were outside he turned to Hester.

  But before he could begin to say how sorry he was, she spoke.

  "If this woman really was killed, then her body must still be there."

  "Hester-she was delirious, probably weak from loss of blood and in a state of acute distress from delivering a dead child."

  "Maybe. But perhaps she really did see a woman murdered," Hester insisted. "If the body was never found, then it is out there on the Heath."

  "For twenty-two years! On Hampstead Heath! For heaven’s sake…"

  "Not in the open! Buried-hidden somewhere."

  "Well, if it’s buried no one would find it now."

  "Perhaps it’s not buried." She refused to give up. "Perhaps it’s hidden somehow, concealed."

  "Hester…"

  "I’m going to find Sergeant Robb and see if he will help me look."

  "You can’t. After all this time there’ll be nothing…"

  "I’ve got to try. What if there really was a woman murdered? What if Miriam was telling the truth all the time?"

  "She isn’t!"

  "But what if she was? She’s your client, Oliver! You’ve got to give her the benefit of every doubt. You must assume that what she says is true until it is completely proved it can’t be."

  "She was thirteen, she’d just given birth to a dead child, she was alone and hysterical…"

  "I’m going to find Sergeant Robb. He’ll help me look, whatever he believes, for Cleo’s sake. He owes her a debt he can never repay, and he knows that."

  "And doubtless if he should forget, you will remind him."

  "Certainly!" she agreed. "But he won’t forget."

  "What about Monk?" he challenged her as she turned to leave.

  "He’s still busy trying to find out more about Treadwell and the corpses," she said over her shoulder.

  "Hester, wait!"

  But she had walked off, increasing her pace to a run, and short of chasing after her there was nothing he could do- except try to imagine how he was going to face the court the next morning.

  Michael Robb was sitting alone in the room where until recently his grandfather had spent his days. The big chair was still there, as if the old man might come back to it one day, and there was a startling emptiness without him.

  "Mrs. Monk," Robb said with surprise. "What is it? Is something wrong?"

  "Everything is wrong," she answered, remaining standing in spite of his invitation to sit. "Cleo is going to be convicted unless we can find some sort of evidence that Miriam also is innocent, and our only chance of that is to find the body of the woman…"

  "What woman? Just a minute!" He held up his hand. "What has happened in court? I wasn’t there."

  With words falling over each other,
she told him about Rathbone’s calling Cleo to the stand and her story of how she had first met Miriam, and then Aiden Campbell’s denial and explanation.

  "We’ve got to find the woman that Miriam said was murdered," she finished desperately. "That would prove what she said was true! At least they would have to investigate."

  "She’s been out there for twenty-two years," he protested. "If she exists at all!"

  "Can you think of anything better?" she demanded.

  "No-but…"

  "Then, help me! We’ve got to go and look!"

  He hesitated only a moment. She could see in his face that he considered it hopeless, but he was feeling lonely and guilty because Cleo had helped him in the way he valued the most and he could do nothing for her. Silently, he picked up his bull’s-eye lantern and followed her out into the gathering dusk.

  Side by side they walked towards Green Man Hill and the row of cottages where Cleo Anderson had lived until her arrest. They stopped outside, facing the Heath. It was now almost dark; only the heavy outlines of the trees showed black against the sky.

  "Where do you think we should start?" Robb asked.

  She was grateful he had spoken of them as together, not relegating the search to her idea in which he was merely obliging her.

  She had been thinking about it as they had traveled in silence.

  "It cannot have been very far," she said, staring across the grass. "She was not in a state to run a distance. If the poor woman really was murdered-beaten to death, as Miriam apparently said-then whoever did so would not have committed such an act close to the road." She pushed away the thought, refusing to allow the pictures into her mind. "Even if it was a single blow-and please God it was-it cannot have been silent. There must have been a quarrel, an accusation or something. Miriam was there; she saw it. She, at least, must have cried out-and then fled."

  He was staring at her, and in the light of the lantern she saw him nodding slowly, his face showing his revulsion at what she described.

  "Whoever it was could not follow her," she went on relentlessly. "Because he was afraid of being caught. First he had to get rid of the body of the woman-"

  "Mrs. Monk… are you sure you believe this is possible?" he interrupted.

  She was beginning to doubt it herself, but she refused to give up.

  "Of course!" she said sharply. "We are going to prove it. If you had just killed someone, and you knew a girl had seen you, and she had run away, perhaps screaming, how would you hide a body so quickly that if anyone heard and came to see, they would not find anything at all?"

  His eyes widened. He opened his lips to argue, then began to think. He walked across the grass towards the first trees and stared around him.

  "Well, I wouldn’t have time to dig a grave," he said slowly. "The ground is hard and full of roots. And anyway, someone would very quickly notice disturbed earth."

  He walked a little farther, and she followed after him quickly.

  Above them something swooped in the darkness on broad wings. Involuntarily, she gave a little shriek.

  "It’s only an owl," he said reassuringly.

  She swung around. "Where did it go?"

  "One of the trees," he replied. He lifted the lantern and began shining it around, lighting the trunks one after another. They looked pale gray against the darkness, and the shadows seemed to move beyond them as the lantern waved.

  She was acutely glad she was not alone. She imagined what Miriam must have felt like, her child lost, a woman she loved killed in front of her, and herself pursued and hunted, bleeding, terrified. No wonder she was all but out of her mind when Cleo found her.

  "We’ve got to keep on looking," she said fiercely. "We must exhaust every possibility. If the body is here, we are going to find it!" She strode forward, hitching up her skirts so as not to fall over them. "You said he wouldn’t have buried it. He couldn’t leave it in plain sight, or it would have been found. And it wasn’t. So he hid it so successfully it never was found. Where?"

  "In a tree," he replied. "It has to be. There’s nowhere else!"

  "Up a tree? But someone would find it in time!" she protested. "It would rot. It…"

  "I know," he said hastily, shaking his head as if to rid himself of the idea. He moved the lantern ahead of them, picking out undergrowth and more trees. A weasel ran across the path, its lean body bright in the beam for a moment, then it disappeared.

  "Animals would get rid of it in time, wouldn’t they?"

  "In time, yes."

  "Well, it’s been over twenty years! What would be left now? Bones? Teeth?"

  "Hair," he said. "Perhaps clothes, jewelry, buttons. Boots, maybe."

  She shuddered.

  He looked at her, shining the light a little below her face not to dazzle her.

  "Are you all right, Mrs. Monk?" he said gently. "I can go on my own, if you like. I’ll take you back and then come back here again. I promise I will…"

  She smiled at his earnestness. "I know you would, but I am quite all right, thank you. Let’s go forward."

  He hesitated for a moment, still uncertain, then as she did not waver, he shone the lantern ahead of them and started.

  They walked together for forty or fifty yards, searching to left and right for any place that could be used for concealment. She found herself feeling more and more as if she was wasting her time-and more important, Robb’s time as well. She had believed Miriam’s story because she wanted to, for Cleo’s sake, not because it was really credible.

  "Sergeant Robb," she began.

  He turned around, the beam of light swinging across the two trees to their right. It caught for a moment on a tangle in the lower branches.

  "What’s that?" he said quickly.

  "An old bird’s nest," she replied. "Last year’s, by the look of it."

  He played the light on it, then moved forward to look more closely.

  "What?" she asked, with curiosity more than hope. "Clever how they weave them, isn’t it? Especially since they haven’t got any hands."

  He passed her the lantern. "Hold this onto it, please. I want to take a closer look."

  "At a bird’s nest?" But she did as he requested, and kept the light steady.

  With hands free it was easy enough for him to climb up until he was level with the nest and peer inside where it was caught in a fork in the branches, close to the trunk.

  "What is it?" she called up.

  He turned around, his face a shadowed mask in the upturned beam.

  "Hair," he answered her. "Long hair, lots of it. The whole nest is lined with hair." His voice was shaking. "I’m going to look for a hollow tree. You just hold the light, and keep your eyes away."

  She felt a lurch inside. She had no longer believed it, and now here it was. They were almost there-in the next half hour-more or less…

  "Yes," she said unsteadily. "Yes, of course."

  Actually, it took him only fifteen minutes to find the tree with the hollow core, blasted by some ancient lightning and now rotted. It was closer to the road than the nest, but the spread of branches hid the hole until it was deliberately sought. Perhaps twenty-two years ago it had been more obvious. The entire tree was hollow down the heart.

  "It’s in there," Robb said huskily, climbing down again, the lantern tied to his belt. His legs were shaking when he reached the ground. "It’s only a skeleton, but there’s still cloth left…" He blinked, and his face looked yellow-gray in the beam. "From the head, she was killed by one terrible blow… like Treadwell… and Mrs. Stourbridge."

  13

  Rathbone had slept little. A messenger had arrived at his rooms after midnight with a note from Hester:

  Dear Oliver,

  We found the body. Seems to be a woman with gray hair. She was killed by a terrible blow to the head-just like the others. Am in the police station with Sergeant Robb. They do not know who she is. Will tell William, of course. I shall be in court in the morning to testify. You MUST call me!

&
nbsp; Yours, Hester

  He had found it impossible to rest. An hour later he had made himself a hot drink and was pacing the study floor trying to formulate a strategy for the next day. Eventually, he went back to bed and sank into a deep sleep, when it seemed immediately time to get up.

  His head ached and his mouth was dry. His manservant brought him breakfast, but he ate only toast and drank a cup of tea, then left straightaway for the courtroom. He was far too early, and the time he had expected to use in preparing himself he wasted in pointless moving from one place to another, and conversation from which he learned nothing.

  Tobias was in excellent spirits. He passed Rathbone in the corridor and wished him well with a wry smile. He would have preferred a little fight of it. Such an easy victory was of little savor.

  The gallery was half empty again. The public had already made up their minds, and the few spectators present were there only to see justice done and taste a certain vengeance. The startling exceptions to this were Lucius and Harry Stourbridge, who sat towards the front, side by side, and even at a distance, very obviously supporting each other in silent companionship of anguish.

  The judge called the court to order.

  "Have you any further witnesses, Sir Oliver?" he asked.

  "Yes, my lord. I would like to call Hester Monk."

  Tobias looked across curiously.

  The judge raised his eyebrows, but with no objection.

  Rathbone smiled very slightly.

  The usher called for Hester.

  She took the stand looking tired and pale-faced, but absolutely confident, and she very deliberately turned and looked up towards the dock and nodded to both Cleo and Miriam. Then she waited for Rathbone to begin.

  Rathbone cleared his throat. "Mrs. Monk, were you in court yesterday when Mrs. Anderson testified to the extraordinary story Miriam Gardiner told when she was first found bleeding and hysterical on Hampstead Heath twenty-two years ago?"