The Twisted Root

11

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.

"Nah!" 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 prove 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 his 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 Treadwell’s 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. What 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 few minutes, 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 of her.

"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 Treadwell’s 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 cock-fights 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 of her 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."

"Treadwell’s 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 finger. "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.

"Yes-grave robbers who dig up corpses and sell them to medical establishments for…"

"I know what resurrectionists are," he said quickly, leaning forward, his eyes bright. "Are you sure it was a joke?"

"Well, it’s not very funny," she agreed with a frown. "But Phillips is like that-a bit… wry. I like him-actually, I like him very much. He’s one of the few people in the hospital I would trust-" Then suddenly she realized what Monk was thinking. "You mean… Oh, William! You think he really was buying them from resurrectionists? He was the other person Treadwell was blackmailing. But how could Treadwell know that?"

"Not necessarily that he was blackmailing him," he said, grasping her hand in his urgency. "Treadwell was friendly with this undertaker. What could be simpler than to sell a few bodies? That could have been the extra driving he was doing: delivering corpses for Fermin Thorpe-at a very nice profit to himself!"

"Wonderful!" She breathed out with exquisite relief. It was only a chink of light in the darkness, but it was the very first one. "At least it might be enough for Oliver to raise doubt." She smiled with a twist. "And even if he isn’t guilty, I wouldn’t mind seeing Thorpe thoroughly frightened and embarrassed-I wouldn’t mind in the slightest."

"I’m sure you wouldn’t," he agreed with a nod. "Although we mustn’t leap too quickly…"

"Why not? There’s hardly time to waste."

"I know. But Treadwell may not have blackmailed Thorpe. The money may all have come from selling the bodies."

"Then let Thorpe prove it. That should be interesting to watch."

His eyes widened very slightly. "You really do loathe him, don’t you?"

"I despise him," she said fiercely. "He puts his own vanity before relieving the pain of those who trust him to help them." She made it almost a challenge, as if Monk had been defending him.

He smiled at her. "I’m not trying to spare him anything, I just want to use it to the best effect. I don’t know what that is yet, but we will only get one chance. I want to save my fire for the target that will do the most good for Cleo-or Miriam- not just the one that does the most harm to Thorpe… or the one that gives us the most satisfaction."

"I see." She did. She had been indulging in the luxury of anger and she recognized it. "Yes, of course. Just don’t leave it too long."

"I won’t," he promised. "Believe me-we will use it."

On Sunday, Monk returned to the undertaker to pursue the details of Treadwell’s work for him and to find proof if indeed he had taken bodies to the Hampstead hospital and been handsomely paid for it. If he were to use it, either in court or to pressure Thorpe for any other reason, then he must have evidence that could not be denied or explained away.

Hester continued with her visits to the rest of Cleo’s patients, just to conclude the list of medicines. She was uncertain if it would be any use, but she felt compelled to do it, and regardless of anything else, she wanted to go and see John Robb again. It was over a week since she had last been, and she knew he would be almost out of morphine. He was failing, the pain growing worse, and there was little she could do to help him. She had some morphine left, taken with Phillips’s connivance, and she had bought a bottle of sherry herself. It was illogical to give it to him rather than anyone else, but logic had no effect on her feelings.

She found him alone, slumped in his chair almost asleep, but he roused himself when he heard her footsteps. He looked paler than she had ever seen him before, and his eyes more deeply sunken. She had nursed too many dying men to delude herself that he had long left now, and she could guess how it must tear Michael Robb to have to leave him alone.

She forced her voice to be cheerful, but she could not place the barrier between them of pretending that she could not see how ill he was.

"Hello," she said quietly, sitting opposite him. "I’m sorry I’ve been away so long. I’ve been trying to find some way of helping Cleo, and I think we may have succeeded." She was aware as she spoke that if she embroidered the truth a little he would probably not live long enough to know.

He smiled and raised his head. "That’s the best news you could have brought me, girl. I worry about her. All the good she did, and now this has to happen. Wish I could do something to help-but I think maybe all I could do would make it worse." He was watching her, waiting for her to reply.

"Don’t worry, nobody will ask you," she answered him. She was sure the last thing the prosecution would do willingly would be to draw in the men like John Robb who would indeed show that Cleo had handed on the medicines, because they would also show so very effectively why. The sympathies of every decent man in the jury would be with Cleo. Perhaps some of them had been in the army themselves, or had fathers or brothers or sons who had. Their outrage at what had happened to so many old soldiers would perhaps outweigh their sense of immediate justice against the killer of a blackmailing coachman. Tobias would not provoke that if he could help it.

Hester herself would be delighted if it came out into the public hearing, but only if it could be managed other than at Cleo’s expense. So far she had thought of no way.

He looked at her closely. "But I was one she took those medicines for-wasn’t I?"

"She took them for a lot of people," Hester answered honestly. "Eighteen of you altogether, but you were one of her favorites." She smiled. "Just as you’re mine."

He grinned as if she were flirting with him. His pleasure was only too easy to see, in spite of the tragedy of the subject they were discussing. His eyes were misty. "But some o’ those medicines she took were for me, weren’t they?" he pressed her.

"Yes. You and others."

"And where are you getting them now, girl? I’d sooner go without than have you in trouble, too."

"I know you would, but there’s no need to worry. The apothecary gave me these." That was stretching the truth a little, but it hardly mattered. "I’ll make you a cup of tea and we’ll sit together for a while. I brought a little sherry-not from the hospital, I got it myself." She stood up as she said it. "Don’t need milk this time-we’ll give it a bit of heart."

"That’d be good," he agreed. "Then we’ll talk a bit. You tell me some o’ those stories about Florence Nightingale and how she bested those generals and got her own way. You tell a good story, girl."

"I’ll do that," she promised, going over to the corner which served as kitchen, pouring water into the kettle, then setting it on the hob. When it was boiled she made the tea, putting the sherry fairly liberally into one mug and leaving the morphine on the shelf so Michael would find it that evening. She returned with the tea and set one mug, the one with the sherry, for him, the one without for herself.

He picked up his mug and began to sip slowly. "So, tell me about how you outwitted those generals then, girl. Tell me the things you’re doing better now because o’ the war an’ what you learned."

She recounted to him all sorts of bits and pieces she could remember, tiny victories over bureaucracy, making it as funny as possible, definitely adding more color than there had been at the time.

He drank the tea, then set down the empty mug. "Go on," he prompted. "I like the sound o’ your voice, girl. Takes me back…"

She tried to think of other stories to tell, ones that had happy endings, and perhaps she rambled a bit, inventing here and there. Now and then he interrupted to ask a question. It was warm and comfortable in the afternoon sun, and she was not surprised when she looked up and saw his eyes closed. It was just the sort of time to doze off. Certainly, she was in no way offended. He was still smiling at the last little victory she had recounted, much added to in retrospect.

She stood up and went to make sure he was warm enough since the sunlight had moved around and his feet were in shadow. It was only then that she noticed how very still he was. There was no labored breathing, no rasp of air in his damaged lungs.

There were tears already on her cheeks when she put her fingers to his neck and found no pulse. It was ridiculous. She should have been only glad for him, but she was unable to stop herself from sitting down and weeping in wholehearted weariness, in fear, and from the loss of a friend she had come to love.

She had washed her face and was sitting in a chair, still opposite the old man, when Michael Robb came home in the late afternoon.

He walked straight in, not at first sensing anything different.

She stood up quickly, stepping between him and the old man.

Then he saw her face and realized she had been weeping. He went very pale.

"He’s gone," she said gently. "I was here-talking to him. We were telling old stories, laughing a little. He just went to sleep." She moved aside so he could see the old man’s face, the shadow of a smile still on it, a great peace settled over him.

Michael knelt down beside him, taking his hand. "I should have been here," he said hoarsely. "I’m sorry! I’m so sorry…"

"If you had stayed here all the time, who could have earned the money for you both to live on?" she asked. "He knew that-he was so proud of you. He would have felt terribly guilty if he’d thought you were taking time away from your work because of him."

Michael bent forward, the tears spilling over his cheeks, his shoulders shaking.

She did not know whether to go to him, touch him; if it would comfort or only intrude. Instinct told her to take him in her arms, he seemed so young and alone. Her mind told her to let him deal with his grief in private. Instinct won, and she sat on the floor and held him while he wept.

When he had passed through the first shock he stood up and went and washed his face in water from the jug, then boiled the kettle again. Without speaking to her he made more tea.

"Is that your sherry?" he asked.

"Yes. Take what you’d like."

He poured it generously for both of them, and offered her one of the mugs. They did not sit down. There was only one vacant chair, and neither wanted to take it.

"Thank you," he said a little awkwardly. "I know you did it for him, not for me, but I’m still grateful." He stopped, wanting to say something and not knowing how to broach it.

She sipped the tea and waited.

"I’m sorry about Mrs. Anderson," he said abruptly.

"I know," she assured him.

"She took all the medicines for the old and ill, didn’t she." It was not a question.

"Yes. I could prove that if I had to."

"Including my grandfather." That, too, was a statement.

"Yes." She met his eyes without flinching. He looked vulnerable and desperately unhappy. "She did it because she wanted to. She believed it was the right thing to do," she went on.

"There’s still morphine there now," he said softly.

"Is there? I will take it away."

"In the Lord’s name-be careful, Mrs. Monk!" There was real fear for her in his face, no censure.

She smiled. "No need anymore. Will you be all right?"

"Yes-I will. Thank you."

She hesitated only a moment longer, then turned and went. Outside, the last of the sun was on the footpath and the street was busy.