Anne Perry - The Twisted Root

Harry Stourbridge met them in the library. He was fully dressed in a dark suit. His fair hair was poking up in tufts, and his eyes were sunken into the bones of his head as if the flesh no longer had life or firmness. He did not speak, but looked from Robb to Monk and then back again.

"Please sit down, Major Stourbridge," Robb said awkwardly. He did not know whether the man was a bereaved husband with whom he should sympathize, or a suspect who deserved his hostility and contempt.

Stourbridge obeyed. His legs seemed to fold under him, and he hit the seat rather too hard.

Robb sat opposite him, and Monk took the third chair in the group.

In a low, husky voice, Stourbridge retold the story of the forgotten message, of leaving his own room and going along the corridor, seeing and hearing no one else, of knocking on his wife’s door and going in.

Monk stopped him. "Was the light on, sir?"

"No … not the main light, just the bracket on the wall." He turned to look at him with a lift of interest. "Does that mean something? She sleeps with it like that. Doesn’t like the dark. Just enough to see by, a glow, no more."

"But enough if she were speaking with someone?" Monk persisted.

"Yes, I suppose so. If it were … someone she knew well. One would not receive-" He stopped, uncertainty filling his face again.

"We have already ascertained that it was not any of the servants," Robb said quietly. "That leaves only the family and Mrs. Gardiner."

Stourbridge looked as if he had been struck again.

"That is not p-possible," he stammered. "No one would-" He stopped. He was a man experienced in war, the violence and pain of battle and the horror of its aftermath. There was little that could shock or astound him, but this had cut deep into his emotion in a way the honesty of battle never could. He turned to Monk.

There was nothing Monk could alter, but he could ease the manner of dealing with it. Reality was a kind of healing-and the beginning of exerting some control over the chaos.

"We need to speak to everyone," he said, looking at Stourbridge and meeting his eyes. "Once we have eliminated the impossible, we will have a better idea of what happened."

"What? Oh, yes, I see. I don’t think I can be of much help." He seemed to focus a little more clearly. "I believe Aiden retired quite early to his room. He had a number of letters to write. He has been away from his home for a while. Verona … Verona relied on him rather a lot. They have always been close. I …" He took a deep breath and mastered himself with difficulty. "I was away a great deal during the early years of our marriage. Military duties." He looked beyond Monk into some distance within his memory. "A young army wife does not have an easy time. I was often posted to places where it was unsuitable for her to accompany me. No facilities for women, you see? We were fighting, moving about. She didn’t lack courage, but she hadn’t the physical strength. She …"-he blinked fiercely — "she lost several babies … early stages. Lucius was … long waited for. She was thirty-five. We had all but given up." His voice cracked. "She longed for a child so much."

Monk was loath to interrupt him, even though he was wandering far from the point. He had known and loved her. Perhaps it was necessary to him to bring her back even in words, to try to make others see her as he had.

"When I was in Egypt and the Sudan," he went on, "which I was quite a lot, Aiden would be with her."

"Mrs. Gardiner…" Robb asked.

Stourbridge jerked up his head. "No! No-I cannot believe it of her."

Monk could not either, and yet the alternatives were little easier. Of course, it was possible Stourbridge himself was lying, but then anyone might be.

"What time did she retire?" he asked. "Perhaps you had better tell me the pattern of the whole evening, from sitting down to dinner."

Again Stourbridge looked not at either of his listeners but into the distance between them. "Miriam did not dine with us. She said she felt unwell and would have a tray sent up to her room. I don’t think she cared whether she ate or not; she did it to oblige us, and perhaps to avoid discussing the subject or causing Lucius to try to persuade her. In fact, she would not speak to him except in company."

"They had quarreled?" Robb asked quickly.

"No." He shook his head. "That is the thing I do not understand. Nor does he. There has been no quarrel at all. She speaks to him in the gentlest manner but will not explain why she left, nor what happened to Treadwell. And since the Anderson woman has been arrested, that question is no longer at issue." He frowned, creasing up his face. "She merely sits in her room and refuses to do or say anything beyond the barest civility."

"She is deeply distressed over Mrs. Anderson," Monk interposed. "She was in every sense except the literal a mother to her, perhaps the only one she knows."

Stourbridge looked down at the floor. "I forgot. Of course, she must be distressed beyond words. But I wish she would turn to us for comfort and not grieve by herself. We are at our wits’ end to know how to help her."

"No one can help," Monk replied. "It must simply be borne. Please describe what happened during dinner, any conversation of importance, especially any differences of opinion, however trivial."

Stourbridge looked up at him. "That’s just it, there were no differences. It was most agreeable. There was no shadow upon our lives except Miriam’s silence."

"What did you discuss?"

Robb was watching him, then looking at Monk.

Stourbridge shrugged very slightly, with no more than half a gesture.

"Egypt, as I recall. Verona came out there to see me once. It was marvelous. We saw such sights together. She loved it, even the heat, and the food she was unaccustomed to, and the strange ways of the native people." He smiled. "She kept a diary of it all, especially of the voyage back down the Nile. She allowed me to read some of it when I came here again. She shared it with Lucius, too. Had she been able to remain, he would have been born in Egypt. I think it was that knowledge which made him so keen to go there himself. It was almost as if he could remember it through her eyes." He stopped abruptly, the color rising in his cheeks. "I’m sorry. I’m sure that is far more detail than you require. I just remembered … how close we were … it was all so … normal…"

"Is that all?" Monk pressed, seeking for something which could have precipitated the terrible violence he had seen. Egypt sounded such a harmless subject, something impersonal which any cultured family might have discussed pleasantly around the table.

"As far as I recall, Aiden said something about the political news, but it was a mere observation on the Foreign Secretary and his own feelings about the question of the unification of Germany. It was all…" He shook his head. "… of no importance. Verona retired to bed, Aiden to write letters. Lucius walked in the garden for a while. I don’t know when he came in, but doubtless the footman would."

They questioned him further, but he could add nothing which explained the emotions that had exploded in his wife’s bedroom, nor any fact which implicated anyone or precluded them.

Robb did not put words to his question, but it was clear in his face that he was struggling with the issue of whether Stourbridge himself could have killed his wife.

Monk was torn with the same indecision. He profoundly believed that he had not, but he was afraid it was his loyalty to a client and his personal liking for the man which were forming his judgment. There was nothing he had seen or heard that night which proved him innocent.

There was a knock on the door.

Robb rose and opened it.

Aiden Campbell came in. He was very pale, and his hands shook a little. His eyes were unnaturally bright and his body stiff. He moved clumsily.