The Twisted Root

by Anne Perry

  There was nothing he could do but sit quietly and try to keep his face from betraying him.

  "Sergeant?" Tobias prompted.

  Robb lifted his chin a little, glaring back. "I am reluctant, sir. Mrs. Anderson is well known in our community for going around visiting and helping the sick, especially them that’s old and poor. Night and day, she did it, as well as working in the hospital. She couldn’t have cared for them better if they’d been her own."

  "But you arrested her for murder!"

  Robb clenched his jaw. "I had to. We found evidence that Treadwell was blackmailing her—"

  This time Rathbone did stand up. "My lord..."

  "Yes, yes," the judge agreed, pursing his lips. "Mr. Tobias, you know better than this. If you have evidence, present it in the proper way."

  Tobias bowed, smiling. He had no cause to worry, and he knew it. He turned back to Robb in the witness stand.

  "This high regard you have for Mrs. Anderson, Sergeant, is it all upon local hearsay, or can you substantiate it from any knowledge of your own?"

  "I have it from knowledge of my own," Robb said wretchedly. "She came regular to see my grandfather, who lives with me."

  Tobias nodded slowly. He seemed to be weighing his words, judging what to say and what to leave unsaid. Rathbone looked across at the faces of the jury. There was one man in particular, middle-aged, earnest, who was watching Tobias with what seemed to be understanding. He turned to Robb, and there was pity clear in his face.

  Tobias did not ask if Cleo had brought medicines or not. It was not necessary; the jury had perceived it already. They would not want to see the sergeant embarrassed. Tobias was a superb judge of nature.

  There was nothing Rathbone could do.

  The day proceeded while Tobias drew out all the rest of the evidence, piece by piece, from an unwilling Robb. He told how, at least in part by following Monk, he had learned of the missing medicines, of Cleo’s own poverty and that she was being blackmailed by Treadwell. It provided her with a motive for murder that anyone could understand only too well. The jury sat somberly, shaking their heads, and there seemed as much pity in their faces as blame.

  That would change when Miriam became involved; Rathbone knew it as well as he knew darkness followed sundown, but there was no protest or argument he could make. Tobias was precisely within all the rules and had laid his plans perfectly. There was nothing for Rathbone to do but endure it ... and hope.

  The second day was no better. Robb finished his testimony, and Rathbone was given the opportunity to question him, but there was nothing for him to ask. If he remained silent he would appear to have surrendered already, without even the semblance of a fight, as if he had no belief in his clients and no hope for them. And yet Tobias had touched on every aspect of Robb’s knowledge of the case and there was nothing to challenge. Everything he had said was true, and not open to kinder or more favorable interpretation. To have him repeat it would not only look ineffectual, it would reinforce it in the jury’s minds. He rose to his feet.

  "Thank you, my lord, but Mr. Tobias has asked of Sergeant Robb everything that I would have. It would be self-indulgent of me to waste the court’s time asking the sergeant to repeat it for me." He sat down again.

  Tobias smiled.

  The judge nodded to him unhappily. He seemed to find the case distressing, and looked as if he would very much rather have had someone else there in his place, but he would see justice done. He had spent his life in this cause.

  Tobias called the minister from the church in Hampstead, a genial man who looked uncomfortable in such surroundings but gave his evidence with conviction. He had known Cleo Anderson for thirty years. He had had no idea she had committed any crime whatsoever and found this news difficult to comprehend. He apologized for expressing such bewilderment. However, human frailty was his field of experience.

  Tobias sympathized with him. "And how long have you known Miriam Gardiner?" he asked.

  "Since she first came to Hampstead," the vicar replied. Then under Tobias’s gentle encouragement he told the story of Miriam’s first appearance in acute distress, at about thirteen years old, how Cleo had taken her in and cared for her while seeking her family. This had proved impossible, and Miriam had remained with Cleo until her marriage to Mr. Gardiner.

  "A moment," Tobias interrupted him. "Could you describe Mr. Gardiner for us, please. His age, his appearance, his social and financial standing."

  The vicar looked a trifle startled.

  Rathbone was not. He knew exactly what Tobias was doing: establishing a pattern of Cleo’s and Miriam’s loyalty to each other, of Miriam’s marrying a man with a prosperous business and then sharing her good fortune with her original benefactress, who had become as a mother to her. He did it extremely well, painting a picture of the woman and child struggling in considerable hardship, their closeness to one another, the happiness of Miriam on finding a worthy man, albeit older than herself, but gentle and apparently devoted to her.

  It had not been a great romance, but a good, stable marriage—and certainly all that a girl in Miriam’s position might have hoped for. A love match with a man her own age and class would not have brought her much material status or security.

  Tobias made his point well and delicately. Again there was nothing whatever Rathbone could call into question.

  Had Miriam shared her new good fortune with Cleo Anderson?

  "Naturally," the vicar replied. "What loving daughter would not?"

  "Just so," Tobias agreed, and let the matter rest.

  When the court was adjourned for the day Rathbone went immediately to see Miriam. She was alone in the police cells, her face drawn, her eyes dark. She did not ask him why he had not crossexamined, and her silence made it harder for him. He had no idea if she had even hoped for anything, or how much she understood. It was so easy, when he was accustomed to the flow of a trial and its hidden meanings, to assume that others were as aware. He would have liked to allow her the mercy of remaining unaware of how serious her situation was, but he could not afford to.

  He drew in his breath to ask her the usual question as to her feelings, or to offer some words of encouragement, true or not, but they would be empty and a waste of precious time and emotion. It would make almost a greater division between them, if that was possible. Honesty, his honesty, was all they had.

  "Mrs. Gardiner, you must tell me the truth. I was silent today because I have no weapon to use against Tobias. He knows it, but if make a show of fighting him, and lose, then the jury will know it as well. Now they think I am merely biding my time. But I am walking blindly. I don’t know what he may know that I don’t. Or what he may discover—which is worse."

  She turned half away from him. "Nothing. There is nothing he can discover."

  "He can discover who killed James Treadwell!" he said sharply. The time for any consideration of feeling was past. The rope was already overshadowing not only her but Cleo also.

  She turned slowly to look at him. "I doubt that, Sir Oliver. They would not believe it, even if I were to tell them. And I won’t. Believe me, it would cause far greater injury than it would ever heal. I have no proof, and all the evidence you have, as you have said, is against me."

  The cells were warm, even stuffy, but he felt chilled in spite of it.

  "It is my task to make them believe it." He feared even as he said it that she had closed her mind and was not listening to him. "At least allow me to try?" He was sounding desperate. He could hear it in the stridency of his voice.

  "I am sorry you don’t believe me," she said softly. "But it is true that it would cause more pain than any good it would do. At least accept that I have thought long and very hard about it before I have made this decision. I do understand that I will hang. I have no delusion that some miracle is going to save me. And you have not lied to me or given me any false sense of comfort. For that I thank you."

  Her gratitude was like a rebuff, reminding him of how little he had a
ctually done. He was going to be no more than a figurehead, barely fulfilling the requirements of the law that she be represented. The prosecution need not have called in Tobias, the merest junior could have presented this case and beaten him.

  He found he was shaking, his hands clenched tight. "It is not only you who will hang—Cleo Anderson will as well!"

  Her voice choked. "I know. But what can I do?" She looked at him, her eyes swimming with tears. "I will testify that I was there and that it was not she who killed him, if you want. But who would believe me? They think we are conspirators anyway. They expect me to defend her. I can’t prove she wasn’t there, and I can’t prove he wasn’t blackmailing her or that she didn’t take the medicines. She did!"

  What she said was true.

  "Someone killed Treadwell." He picked his words carefully, trying to hurt her enough to make her tell him at last. "If it was not either you or Cleo, the only person I can think of that you would die to defend is Lucius Stourbridge."

  Her eyes widened, and the last vestige of color fled from her face. She was too horrified to respond.

  "If you will hang for him," he went on, "that is your choice. But is he really worth Cleo Anderson’s life as well? Does she deserve that from you?"

  She swung around to face him, her eyes blazing, her lips drawn back in a snarl of such ferocity he was almost afraid of her, small as she was, and imprisoned in this police cell.

  "Lucius had nothing to do with it. I am not defending Treadwell’s murderer! If I could see him hang I would tie the rope with my own hands and pull the trapdoor and watch him drop!" She took a deep, gasping breath. "I can’t! God help me, there is nothing—nothing I can do. Now go away and leave me at least to solitude, if not to peace."

  Other questions beat in his mind, but his fury and his despair robbed him of the words. He longed to be able to help her, not to increase his own reputation or to defend his honor, but simply to ease the pain he could see, and even feel, as he watched her. She was only a yard away from him, and yet an abyss existed between what she experienced and what he understood. He had no idea at all how he could cross that space. They could have been in separate countries. He did not even know what else he felt: anger; fear that she was guilty; fear that she was not and he would fail her and she would be destroyed by the wheels of the law he was supposed to guide or by pity; even a kind of admiration, because quite without reason, he believed there was something noble in her, something beautiful and strong.

  He left, walking out of the cells blind to the heat of the late afternoon and the passersby, the chatter of voices, wheels, hooves, all the clamor of everyday living. He hailed a cab and gave the driver Monk’s address in Fitzroy Street. He barely spared thought to how little he wanted to go into the house that Hester shared with Monk. It seemed secondary now, a wound to deal with at another time.

  "I pleaded with her," he said, pacing back and forth in the front room where Monk received clients. Monk was standing by the mantelpiece even though the fire was unlit, the evening being far too mild to require one. Hester was sitting upright on the edge of the big armchair, staring at him, her face furrowed in concentration. "But she knows she will hang, and still refuses to tell me who killed Treadwell!" He threw his arms wide, almost banging against the high back of the other chair.

  "Lucius Stourbridge," Monk said unhappily. "He is the only one she would hang for—apart from Cleo."

  "No, it isn’t," Rathbone said quickly. "I assumed that also. She denied it with fury—at me, not at whoever did kill Treadwell. She said she would willingly hang him herself if she could, but no one would believe her, and she would not tell me any more."

  Monk stared at him in bewilderment. Rathbone wanted an answer above all things, at this moment, but it was a very small satisfaction to see Monk just as confused as he was.

  They both looked at Hester.

  "That leaves either Harry Stourbridge or Aiden Campbell," she said thoughtfully. "I suppose Treadwell could have been blackmailing Harry Stourbridge. He had been in the house for several years. He drove the carriage. Maybe Major Stourbridge went somewhere or did something he would pay to hide?"

  "What about the brother, Campbell?" Rathbone asked.

  Monk shook his head. "Unlikely. He lives in Wiltshire somewhere. Only came up for the engagement party. I did check, and as far as the other servants knew, he barely saw Treadwell. He had his own carriage and driver, and no one ever saw him go anywhere near the mews while he was staying there. And Treadwell never went to Wiltshire in his life. And as for Campbell’s killing Mrs. Stourbridge, they were very close, everyone agreed on that, had been ever since they were children."

  "Even close siblings can quarrel," Rathbone pointed out.

  "Of course," Monk agreed a touch sharply, staring down at the polished fender where his foot was resting. "But no one with enough cold-blooded nerve to murder rather than pay blackmail is going to kill the sister who is his only link with a fortune the size of the Stourbridges’. Now she is dead, he has no claim at all. He is not especially close to either Harry or Lucius. They are friendly enough, but they will not continue Verona’s generosity."

  Another blind alley.

  Hester bit her lip. "Then we must find out if it was Major Stourbridge. However unpleasant, if that is the truth, we should know it."

  "It would make sense," Rathbone admitted, pushing his hands into his pockets and taking them out again immediately. He had been taught not to put his hands in his pockets in boyhood, because it looked casual and pulled his clothes out of shape. He turned to Monk.

  "Yes," Monk agreed, not to the likelihood but to accepting the task before Rathbone could ask him. "I should have pursued it before. I didn’t look at the Stourbridges, either ofthem."

  "I don’t know what you can find in a day or two," Rathbone said wretchedly. "I’m going in with nothing! I have no other reasonable suspect to offer the jury, only ’person or persons unknown.’ Nobody’s going to believe that when Cleo and Miriam have perfect motives and every appearance of guilt."

  "They may be guilty," Monk reminded him. "Or one of them may, perhaps in conspiracy with someone else."

  "In the Stourbridge household?" Rathbone said with some sarcasm. "That has to be Miriam. And why, for the love of heaven?"

  "I don’t know," Monk said angrily. "But there is obviously some critical feature about the whole story that we haven’t found—even if it is only the reason both women would rather hang than tell the truth. We’d better damned well discover what it is!"

  Hester looked from Monk to Rathbone. "How long can you prolong the trial, Oliver?"

  "We seem to spend our time asking him to sing songs while we scramble to find something vital," Monk said bitterly. "I’ll start tomorrow morning as soon as it’s light. But I don’t even know where to look!"

  "What can I do to help?" Hester asked, more to Rathbone than to Monk.

  "I wish I knew," the lawyer confessed. "Cleo admits to taking the medicines. There is nothing we can do to mitigate that except show how she used them, and we already have all the witnesses we need for that. We have dozens of men and women to swear to her diligence, compassion, dedication, sobriety and honesty in all respects except that of stealing medicines from the hospital. We even have people who will swear she was chaste, modest and clean. It will achieve nothing. She was still paying Treadwell blackmail money, and he had all but bled her dry. The only decent meals she ate were those given her either at the hospital or by the people she visited. She even dressed in cast-off clothes left her by the dead!"

  Hester sat silently, steeped in misery.

  "I must go home," Rathbone said at last. "Perhaps a good night of sleep will clear my mind sufficiently to think of something." He bade them good-night and left, acutely conscious of loneliness. He would lie by himself in his smooth linen sheets. Monk would lie with Hester in his arms. The clear, moonlit night held no magic for him.

  Tobias was in an expansive mood when he called his first witness t
he next day, but he was careful not to exaggerate his manner. He was too clever to alienate a jury by seeming to gloat over his triumph, although Rathbone, sitting at his table, thought his care unnecessary. As things were going at present, and from all future prospect, Tobias could hardly lose, whatever he did.

  Neither Hester nor Monk was in the court, nor was Callandra Daviot. All of the Stourbridge family had yet to testify, and therefore were forbidden to be present in case anything they heard should influence what they themselves would say.

  Tobias’s first witness was the Stourbridges’ groom. He took great care to establish his exact position in the household and his so-far blameless reputation. He left no avenue, however small, for Rathbone to call into question either his honesty or his power of observation.

  Rathbone was quite satisfied that he should do so. He had no useful argument to make and no desire to try to blacken the man’s character. It was always a bad exercise in that it offended the jurors to malign a person who was no more than a witness and in no way involved in a crime. And it had the great advantage—indeed, at the moment the only advantage—in that it took time.

  All that he showed by it, unquestionably, was that Treadwell had on a number of occasions driven Miriam from Bayswater back to her home in Hampstead, or had collected her. He had also once or twice delivered messages or gifts from Lucius to her, in the early days of the courtship, before Lucius himself had done so. Undoubtedly, Treadwell knew her home and had spent time in the area.

  Next, Tobias called the keeper of the local inn, the Jack Straw’s Castle Inn, on the corner of North End Hill and Spaniards Road, who swore that Treadwell had stopped there on more than a few occasions, had a pint of ale and played darts or dominoes, gambled a little, and struck up casual conversation with the locals. Yes, he had seemed to ask a lot of questions. At the time the landlord had taken it for concern for his employer, who was courting a woman who lived in the area.