Anne Perry - The Twisted Root

"Where is it now?" he asked. "Did you take it back?"

She frowned. "Where is it? Isn’t it with him … with his body?"

"No."

She lifted her shoulders very slightly, less than a shrug. "Then I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. Don’t waste your effort on it, Mr. Monk. Maybe it will find its way to someone who will like it. I would rather it were not lost down some drain, but if it is, I can’t help it now."

"What should I put my effort into, Miriam?"

She did not answer for so long he was about to repeat himself when at last she spoke.

"Comfort Lucius…" Without warning, her composure broke and she bent her head and covered her face, sobs shaking her body.

He longed to be able to help her. She was alone, vulnerable, facing trial and almost certainly one of the ugliest of deaths.

Impulse overcame judgment. He reached out and took hold of her arm.

"Words won’t comfort him when you are in the dock, or when the judge puts on his cap and sentences you to hang! Tell me the truth while I can do something about it! Why did you leave the Stourbridge house? Or if you won’t tell me that, at least tell me what happened in Hampstead. Who killed Treadwell? Where were you? Why did you run away? Who are you afraid of?"

It took her several moments to master herself again. She blew her nose, then, still avoiding meeting his eyes, she answered in a low, choked voice.

"I can’t tell you why I left, only that I had to. What happened in Hampstead is that Treadwell was attacked and murdered. I think perhaps it was my fault, but I did not do it, that I swear. I never injured anyone with intent." She looked at him, her eyes red-rimmed. "Please tell Lucius that, Mr. Monk. I never willfully harmed anyone. I want him to believe that…" Her voice trailed off into a sob.

"He already believes that," he said more gently. "It is not Lucius you have to be concerned about. I doubt he will ever think ill of you. It is the rest of the world, especially Sergeant Robb, and then whatever jury he brings you before. And he will! Unless you give some better account. Did you see who attacked Treadwell? At least answer me yes or no."

"Yes. But no one would believe me, even if I would say … and I will not." She spoke with finality. There was no room to imagine she hoped to be dissuaded. She did not care what Monk thought, and he knew it from everything about her, from the slump of the body to the lifelessness of her voice.

"Try me!" he urged desperately. "Tell me the truth and let me decide whether I believe it or not. If you are innocent, then someone else is guilty, and he must be found. If he isn’t, you will hang!"

"I know. Did you think I didn’t understand that?"

He had wondered fleetingly if she was of mental competence, if perhaps she was far more frail than Lucius had had any idea, but the thought had lasted only moments.

"Will you see Lucius? Or Major Stourbridge?" he asked.

"No!" She pulled away from him sharply, for the first time real fear in her voice. "No … I won’t. If you have any desire to help me, then do not ask me again."

"I won’t," he promised.

"You give me your word?" She stared at him, her eyes wide and intense.

"I do. But I warn you again that no one can help you until you tell the truth. If not to me, would you tell a lawyer, someone who is bound to keep in confidence whatever you say, regardless of what it is?"

A smile flickered over her face and vanished. "It would make no difference whatever. It is the truth itself that wounds, Mr. Monk, not what you may do with it. Thank you for coming. I am sure your intention was generous, but you cannot help. Please leave me to myself." She turned away again, dismissing him.

He had no alternative but to accept. He stood up, hesitated a moment longer, without purpose, then called the jailer to let him out.

Just outside the gates he encountered Michael Robb. Robb looked tired, and it was obscurely pleasing to Monk that there was no air of triumph in him.

They stood facing each other on the hot, dusty footpath.

"You’ve been to see her," Robb said, stating what was obvious between them.

"She won’t tell you anything," Monk said, not in answer but as a statement of fact. "She won’t speak to anyone. She won’t even see Stourbridge."

Robb looked him up and down, from his neat cravat and the shoulders of the well-cut jacket to the tips of his polished boots. "Do you know what happened?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

"No," Monk replied.

Robb put his hands in his pockets, deliberately casual, even sloppy by contrast. "I shall find out," he promised. "No matter how long it takes me, I will know what happened to Treadwell-or enough to make a prosecution. There’s something in his past, or hers, that made this happen." He was watching Monk’s face as he spoke, weighing his reaction, trying to read what he knew.

"You will have to," Monk agreed wryly. "All you have at the moment is suspicion-not enough to hang anyone on."

Robb winced almost imperceptibly, just a stiffening of his body. It was an ugly word, an ugly reality. "I will." His voice was very soft. "Treadwell may have been an evil man, for all I know deserving some kind of retribution, but the day we allow the man in the street to decide that for himself, without trial, without answering to anyone, then we lose the right to call ourselves civilized. Then law belongs to the quickest and the strongest, not to justice. We aren’t a society anymore." He was self-conscious as he said it, daring Monk to laugh at him, but he was proud of it also.

Monk hoped he had never done anything in the past which made Robb imagine he would mock that decision. He would probably never know. A dray rumbled noisily past them.

"I won’t stand in your way," he answered levelly. "None of us could afford private vengeance." He wondered if Robb had any idea how true that was.

"She’d be better if she told us." Robb frowned. "Can’t you persuade her of that? Otherwise I’ll have to dig for it, go through all her life, all her friends, her first husband … everything."

"That’s one of the things about murder." Monk nodded and lifted his shoulders very slightly. "You have to learn more about everybody than you want to know, all the secrets that have nothing to do with the crime, as well as those that do. Innocent people are stripped of their masks of pretense, sometimes of decently covered mistakes they’ve long since mended. You have to know everything the victim ever did that could make someone take the last, terrible step of killing him, creep as close as his skin till you see every blemish and can read the hatred that destroyed him. Of course, you’ll know Treadwell … and you’ll come to pity him-and probably hate him as well."

People passed by, and they ignored them.

"Have you solved a lot of murders?" Robb asked. It was not a challenge; there was respect and curiosity in his face.

"Yes," Monk answered him. "Some I understood, and might have done the same myself. Others were so cold-blooded, so consumed in self, it frightened me that another human being I had talked with, stood beside, could have hidden that evil behind a face which looked to me like any other."

Robb stared at him. For several seconds neither of them moved, oblivious of the noisy street around them.

"I think this is going to be one of the first," Robb said at last. "I wish it weren’t. I wish I weren’t going to find some private shame in Mrs. Gardiner’s life that Treadwell was blackmailing her about, threatening to ruin the happiness she’d found. But I have to look. And if find it, I have to bring it to evidence." That was a challenge.

Monk thought how young he was. And he wondered what evidence he had found-or lost-when he was that age. And for that matter, what he would do now if he were in Robb’s place.