The Twisted Root (27 page)

"Thank you, William. I knew you would say that."

He had not known it, but if she thought so well of him he was certainly not going to argue.

"Now go to sleep," she urged. "I’ll waken you in time to go to Vere Street and see Oliver before the end of the day."

He grunted, too tired to argue that tomorrow would do, and climbed slowly up the stairs.

Monk hated presenting himself at Rathbone’s chambers on Vere Street without an appointment, and fully expected to be turned away. If he was received, he was certain it would be because Hester was with him. He would rather she had not come, but he could understand her insistence. She wanted to be there not simply to add her own thoughts and words to the story and to try her own persuasion if Monk’s should fail, but because she would feel cowardly if she sent Monk and did not go herself. It would seem as if she wanted a favor of Rathbone but had not the courage to face him to ask it.

Therefore they stood in the outer office and explained to the clerk that they had no appointment but they were well acquainted with Sir Oliver (which he knew) and had a matter of some urgency to lay before him. It was the end of the afternoon, and the last client was presently in Sir Oliver’s rooms with him. It was a fortunate time.

Some fifteen minutes passed by. Monk found it almost impossible to sit still. He glanced at Hester and read the misgiving in her face, and equally the determination. Cleo Anderson’s life was worth a great deal more than a little embarrassment.

At twenty minutes past five the client left and Rathbone came to the door. He looked startled to see them. His eyes flew to Hester, and there was a sudden warmth in them, and the faintest flush on his narrow cheeks. He forced himself to smile, but there was not the usual humor in it. He came forward.

"Hester! How nice to see you. You look extremely well."

"We are sorry to intrude," Hester replied with an equally uncertain smile. "But we have a case that is so desperate we know of no one else who would have even a chance of success in it."

Rathbone half turned to Monk. For the first time since the wedding their eyes met. Then Monk had been the bridegroom. Now he was the husband, the last barrier had been crossed, there was a new kind of intimacy from which Rathbone was forever excluded. Rathbone’s eyes were startlingly, magnificently dark in his fair face. Everything that had passed through Monk’s mind he read in them. He held out his hand.

Monk shook it, feeling the strength and the coolness of Rathbone’s grip.

"Then you had better come in and tell me," Rathbone said calmly. His voice held no trace of emotion. He was supremely courteous. What effort of pride or dignity that had cost him Monk could only guess.

He and Hester followed into Rathbone’s familiar office and sat down in the chairs away from the desk. It was a formal visit, but not yet an official one. The late sun poured in through the window, making bright patterns on the floor and shining on the gold lettering on the books in their mahogany case.

Rathbone leaned back and crossed his legs. As always, he was immaculately dressed, but with an understated elegance and the ease of someone who knows he does not have to try.

"What is this case?" he enquired, looking at each of them in turn.

Monk was determined to answer first, before Hester could speak and make it a dialogue between herself and Rathbone, with Monk merely an onlooker.

"A nurse has been stealing medicines from the North London Hospital, where Hester is now assisting Lady Callandra." He had no need to explain that situation; Rathbone knew and admired Callandra. "She doesn’t want the medicines for herself, or to sell, but to give to the old and poor that she visits, who are in desperate need, many of them dying."

"Laudable but illegal," Rathbone said with a frown. His interest was already caught, and his concern.

"Precisely," Monk agreed. "Somehow a coachman named James Treadwell learned of her thefts and was blackmailing her. How he learned is immaterial. He comes from an area close by, and possibly he knew someone she was caring for. He was found dead on the path close to her doorway. She has been charged with his murder."

"Physical evidence?" Rathbone said with pressed lips, his face already darker, brows drawn down.

"None, all on motive and opportunity. The weapon has not been found. But that is not all...."

Rathbone’s eyes widened incredulously. "There’s more?"

"And worse," Monk replied. "Some twenty years ago Mrs. Anderson found in acute distress a girl of about twelve or thirteen years old. She took her in and treated her as her own." He saw Rathbone’s guarded expression, and the further spark of interest in his eyes. "Miriam grew up and married comfortably," Monk continued. "She was widowed, and then fell deeply in love with a young man, Lucius Stourbridge, of wealthy and respectable family, who more than returned her feelings. They became engaged to marry with his parents’ approval. Then one day, for no known reason, she fled, with the said coachman, back to Hampstead Heath."

"The night of his death, I presume," Rathbone said with a twisted smile.

"Just so," Monk agreed. "At first she was charged with his murder and would say nothing of her flight, its reason, or what happened, except to deny that she killed him."

"And she wasn’t charged?" Rathbone was surprised.

"Yes, she was. Then when a far better motive was found for the nurse, she was released."

"And the worse that you have to add?" Rathbone asked.

Monk’s shoulders stiffened. "Last night I had a message from the young policeman on the case—incidentally, his grandfather is one of those for whom the nurse stole medicines—to ask me to go to the family home in Cleveland Square, where the mother of the young man had just been found murdered ... in what seems to be exactly the same manner as the coachman on Hampstead Heath."

Rathbone shut his eyes and let out a long, slow breath. "I hope that is now all?"

"Not quite," Monk replied. "They have arrested Miriam and charged her with the murder of Stourbrldge’s mother, and Miriam and Cleo as being accomplices in murder for gain. There is considerable money in the family, and lands."

Rathbone opened his eyes and stared at Monk. "Have you completed this tale to date?"

"Yes."

Hester spoke for the first time, leaning forward a little, her voice urgent. "Please help, Oliver. I know Miriam may be beyond anything anybody can do, except perhaps plead that she may be mad, but Cleo Anderson is a good woman. She took medicine to treat the old and ill who have barely enough money to survive. John Robb, the policeman’s grandfather, fought at Trafalgar—on the Victory! He, and men like him, don’t deserve to be left to die in pain that we could alleviate! We asked everything of them when we were in danger. When we thought Napoleon was going to invade and conquer us, we expected them to fight and die for us, or to lose arms or legs or eyes..."

"I know!" Rathbone held up his slender hand. "1 know, my dear. You do not need to persuade me. And a jury might well be moved by such things, but a judge will not. He won’t ask them to decide whether a blackmailer is of more or less value than a nurse, or an old soldier, simply did she kill him or not. And what about this other woman, the younger one? What possible reason or excuse did she have for murdering her prospective mother-in-law?"

"We don’t know," Hester said helplessly. "She won’t say anything."

"Is she aware of her position, that if she is found guilty she will hang?"

"She knows the words," Monk replied. "Whether she comprehends their meaning or not I am uncertain. I was there when she was arrested, and she seemed numb, but she left with the police with more dignity than I have seen in anyone else I can recall." He felt foolish as he said it. It was an emotional response, and he disliked having Rathbone see him in such a light. It made him vulnerable. He was about to add something to qualify it, defend himself, but Rathbone had turned to Hester and was not listening.

"Do you know this nurse?" he asked.

"Yes," she said unhesitatingly. "And I know John Robb. I have been to a few of the patients she visited. I can and will testify that the medicines were used for them and that no return of any kind was asked."

Rathbone forbore from saying that that would be of no legal help. The sympathy of the jury would not alter her guilt and was unlikely to mitigate the sentence. Anyway, was hanging so very much worse than a lifetime spent in the Coldbath Fields, or some other prison like it? He stayed silent for several moments, considering the question, and neither Monk nor Hester prompted him.

"I presume she has no money, this nurse?" Rathbone said at last. "And the family are hardly likely to wish to defend her."

Monk felt anger harsh inside him. So it was all a matter of payment.

"So she is unlikely to have anyone to represent her already," Rathbone concluded. "There will be no professional ethics to break if I were to go and visit her. I can at least offer my services, and then she may accept or decline them as she wishes."

"And who is going to pay you?" Monk asked with a lift of his eyebrows.

Rathbone looked straight back at him. "I have done sufficiently well lately that I can afford to do it without asking payment," he replied levelly. "I imagine she will have no means to pay you either."

Monk felt an unaccustomed heat rise up his cheeks, but he knew the rebuke was fair. He had earned it.

"Thank you!" Hester said quickly, rising to her feet. "Her name is Cleo Anderson, and she is in the Hampstead police station."

Rathbone smiled with a dry twist of humor, as if there were a highly subtle joke which was at least half against himself.

"Don’t thank me," he said softly. "It sounds like a challenge which ought to be attempted, and I know no one else fool enough to try it."

9

OLIVER RATHBONE SAT in his office after Monk and Hester had gone, aware that he had made an utterly impetuous decision, which was most unlike him. He was not a man who acted without consideration, which was part of the reason why he was probably the most brilliant barrister currently practicing in London. It might also be why he had allowed Monk to ask Hester to marry him before he had asked her himself.

No, that was not entirely true. He had been on the verge of asking her, but she had very delicately allowed him to understand that she would not accept. It had been to save his feelings and the awkwardness between them that would have followed.

But then, if he were honest, the reason she would not accept him might easily have been her sense of his uncertainty. Monk would never have allowed his head to rule his heart. That was what Rathbone both admired in him and despised. There was something ungoverned in Monk, something even dark.

And yet he had come with Hester to try to persuade Rathbone to take the hopeless case of defending a nurse certainly guilty of theft, and almost as certainly guilty of murder. That could not have been easy for him. Rathbone leaned back farther in his chair and smiled a little as he remembered the look on Hester’s face, the stiffness in her body. He could imagine her thoughts. Monk would have done it for Hester’s sake, and he would know that Rathbone knew it also.

He was surprised how sharp the pain was on seeing Hester again, hearing the passion in her voice as she spoke of Cleo Anderson and the old sailor John Robb. That was just like her, full of pity and anger and courage, bound on some hopeless cause, not listening to anyone who told her the impossibility of it.

And he had agreed to help—in fact, to undertake some kind of defense. He would be a fool to pretend it would be less than that. Now he had begun she would not allow him to stop—nor would he allow himself. He would never admit to Monk that he would quit a fight before he had either won it or lost. Monk would understand defeat and forgive it, and respect winner or loser alike. He had tasted bitterness too often himself not to understand. But he would not forgive surrender.

And Rathbone would always want to be all that Hester expected of him.

So now he was committed to a case he could not win and probably could not even fight in any adequate manner. He should have been angry with himself, not analytical, and even in a faraway sense amused. He should have felt hopeless, but already his mind was beginning to explore possibilities, beginning to think, to plan, to wonder about tactics.

Both women had been charged with conspiracy and murder. The penalty would unquestionably be death. Rathbone had a justifiably high opinion of his own abilities, but the obstacles in this case seemed insuperable. It was extremely foolish to have such a will to win. In fact, it was a classic example of a man’s allowing his emotions not merely to eliminate his judgment but to sweep it away entirely.

He called his clerk in and enquired about his appointments for the next two days. There was nothing which could not be either postponed or dealt with by someone else. He duly requested that that be done, and left for his home, his mind absorbed in the issue of Cleo Anderson, Miriam Gardiner and the crimes with which they were charged.

In the morning, he presented himself at the Hampstead police station. He informed them that he was the barrister retained by Cleo Anderson’s solicitor and that he wished to speak with her without delay.

"Sir Oliver Rathbone?" the desk sergeant said with amazement, looking at the card Rathbone had given him.

Rathbone did not bother to reply.

The sergeant cleared his throat. "Yes sir. If you’ll come this way, I’ll take yer ter the cells ... sir." He was still shaking his head as he led the way back through the narrow passage and down the steps, and finally to the iron door with its huge lock. The key squeaked in the lock as he turned it and swung the door open.

" ’Ere’s yer lawyer ter see yer," he said, the lift of disbelief in his voice.

Rathbone thanked him and waited until he had closed the door and gone.

Cleo Anderson was a handsome woman with fine eyes and strong, gentle features, but at the moment she was so weary and ravaged by grief that her skin looked gray and the lines of her face dragged downwards. She regarded Rathbone without comprehension and—what worried him more—without interest.

"My name is Oliver Rathbone," he introduced himself. "I have come to see if I can be of assistance to you in your present difficulty. Anything you say to me is completely confidential, but you must tell me the truth or I cannot be of any use." He saw the beginning of denial in her face. He sat down on the one hard chair, opposite where she was sitting on the cot. "I have been retained by Miss Hester Latterly." Too late he realized he should have said "Mrs. Monk." He felt the heat in his face as he was obliged to correct himself.

"She shouldn’t have," Cleo said sadly, her face pinched, emotion raw in her voice. "She’s a good woman, but she doesn’t have money to spend on the likes o’ you. I’m sorry for your trouble, but there’s no job for you here."

He was prepared for her answer.

"She told me that you took certain medicines from the hospital and gave them to patients who you knew were in need of them but were unable to pay."

Cleo stared at him.

He had not expected a confession. "If that were so, it would be theft, of course, and illegal," he continued. "But it would be an act which many people would admire, perhaps even wish that they had had the courage to perform themselves."

"Maybe," she agreed with a tiny smile. "But it’s still theft, like you said. Do you want me to admit it? Would it help Miriam if I did?"

"That was not my purpose in discussing it, Mrs. Anderson." He held her gaze steadily. "But a person who would do such a thing obviously placed the welfare of other people before her own. As far as I can see, it was an act, a series of acts, for which she expected no profit other than that of having done what she believed to be right and of benefit to others for whose welfare she cared. Possibly she believed in a cause."

She frowned. "Why are you saying all this? You’re talking about ’ifs’ and ’maybes.’ What do you want?"

He smiled in spite of himself. "That you should accept that occasionally people do things without expecting to be paid, because they care. Not only people like you—sometimes people like me, too."

A flush of embarrassment spread up her cheeks, and the line of her mouth softened. "I’m sorry, Mr. Rathbone, I didn’t mean to insult you. But with the best will in the world, you can’t clear me of thieving those medicines, unless you find a way to blame some other poor soul who’s innocent—and if you did that, how would I go to
_m
y Maker in peace?"

"That’s not how I work, Mrs. Anderson." He did not bother to correct her as to his title. It seemed remarkably unimportant now. "If you took the medicines, I have two options: either to plead mitigating circumstances and hope that they will judge you from the charity of your intent rather than the illegality of your act, or else to try to misdirect their attention from the theft altogether and hope that they concentrate on other matters."

"Other matters?" She shook her head. "They’re saying as I killed Treadwell because he was blackmailing me over the medicines. You can’t misdirect anybody away from that."

"And was he?"

She hesitated. Something inside her seemed to crumple. She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "Yes."

He waited for her to say more, but she remained silent.

"How did he find out about the medicines?" he asked.

"I suppose it wasn’t hard." She stared ahead of her, a shadow of self-mockery in her expression. "Lot o’ people could have, if they’d wanted to think about it, and watch. I took stuff to about a score o’ the old ones who were really in a bad way. I don’t know why I talk about it in the past—they still are, an’ here’s me sittin’ here useless." She looked up at him. "There’s nothing you can do, Mr. Rathbone. All the questions in the world aren’t going to make any difference. I took the medicines, and it’ll be easy enough to prove. Treadwell worked it out. I don’t know how."

There was no argument to make. He heard footsteps along the corridor outside, but they continued on and no one disturbed them. He wondered briefly if the jailers here sympathized with her; even were it possible, they might sooner have had the law turn a blind eye to her thefts. Maybe they had little time for a blackmailer.

It was academic, only a wish. The power was not in their hands. Maybe it was a thought each would have had individually and never dared voice.

She was regarding him earnestly, her eyes anxious.

"Mr. Rathbone-don’t let them go talking to all the people I took medicines to. It’s bad enough they won’t get any help now. I don’t want them to know they were part of a crime— even though they never understood it."

He wished there was some way he could prevent that from happening, but it would soon enough become common knowledge. The trial would be written up in all the newspapers, told and retold by the running patterers, and in the gossip on every street corner. What should he tell her?

She was waiting, a flicker of hope in her face.

He regarded her almost as if he had not seen her before, not been speaking to her, forming judgments those last ten minutes. She had risked her own freedom, taken her own leap of moral decision in order to help the old and ill who could not help themselves. She had faced the most painful of realities and dealt with it. She did not deserve the condescension of being lied to. She would know the truth eventually anyway.

"I can’t stop them, Mrs. Anderson," he said gently, startled by the respect in his own voice. "And they’ll know anyway when it comes to trial. That is perhaps the only good thing about this whole affair. All London will hear of the plight of our old people to whom we owe so much—and choose not to pay. We may even hope that a few will take up the fight to have things changed."

She looked at him, hope and denial struggling in her face. She shook her head, pushing the thought away and yet unable to let go completely.

"D’you think so?"

"It is worth fighting for." He smiled very slightly. "But my first battle is for you. How long have you been paying Treadwell, and how much?"

Her voice hardened, and the pity vanished from her eyes. "Five years—an’ I paid him all I had, except a couple of shillings to live on."

Rathbone felt a tightening around his heart.

"And he asked you for more the night of his death. How much?"

Her voice sank to a whisper. She hesitated a moment before answering at all. "1 never saw him the night he died. That’s God’s truth."

He asked the question whose answer he did not want to hear and possibly he would not believe.

"Do you know who did?"

She answered instantly, her voice hard. "No, I don’t! Miriam told me nothing, except it wasn’t her. But she was in a terrible state, frightened half out of her mind an’ like the whole world had ended for her." She leaned towards him, half put out her hand, then took it back, not because the emotion or the urgency was any less, simply that she dared not touch him. "Never mind about me, Mr. Rathbone. I took the medicines. You can’t help me. But help Miriam, please! That’s what I want. If you’re my lawyer, like you said, you’ll speak up for her. She never killed him. I know her—I raised her since she was thirteen. She’s got a good heart an’ she never deliberately hurt anyone, but somebody’s hurt her so bad she’s all but dead inside. Help her—please! I’d go to the rope happy if I knew she was all right...."

He met her eyes and felt his throat choke. He believed her. It was a wild statement. She might have no real conception of what it would be like when the moment came, when the judge put on his black cap, and later when she was alone in the end, walking the short corridor towards the trap in the floor, and the short drop. Then it would be too late. But he still believed her. She had seen much death. There could be little of loneliness or pain that she was not familiar with.

"Mrs. Anderson, I am not sure there is anything I can do, but I promise I will not secure any leniency—or indeed, any defense—for you at Miriam Gardiner’s expense. And I will certainly do all I can to secure her acquittal, if she wishes it, and you do—"

"I do!" she said with fierce intensity. "And if she argues with you—for me—tell her that is my wish. I’ve had a good life with lots of laughter in it and done the things I wanted to. She’s very young. It’s your profession to convince people of things. You go and convince her of that, will you?"

"I can only work within the facts, but I will try," he promised. "Now, if there is anything more of that night you can tell me, please do."

"I don’t know anything else of that night," she protested. "I wish I did, then maybe I could help either one of us. I knew nothing until the police came because someone had reported finding a body on the pathway."

"When was that, what time?" he interrupted her.

"About an hour after dark. I didn’t look at the clock. I suppose Miriam must have left the party in late afternoon, and it would be close on dark by the time the carriage got as far as the Heath. I don’t know where he was attacked, but I heard say he crawled from there to where they found him."

"And when did you see Miriam Gardiner?"

"Next morning, early. About six, or something like that. She’d been out on the Heath all night and looked like the devil had been after her."

"Like she’d been in a fight?" he asked quickly. "Were her clothes torn, dirty, stained with mud or grass?"

Something inside her closed. She was afraid he was trying to implicate Miriam. "No. Only like she’d been running, p’raps, or frightened."

Was that a lie? He had no way of knowing. He recognized that she was not going to tell him any more. He rose to his feet. The fact that she had withdrawn her trust, at least as far as Miriam was concerned, did not alter his admiration for her or his intent to do all he could to find some way of helping.