Anne Perry - The Twisted Root

"I see. Did you hear anything after that? Any sound, movement, a cry, footsteps?"

"No. At least not that I recall."

Monk thanked him. Lucius seemed about to ask something further, then changed his mind and rose stiffly to his feet.

When he had gone, Robb turned to Monk. They had learned nothing more. No one was implicated nor excluded from suspicion. Robb ran his hand through his hair, his fingers closing so he pulled at it. "One of them killed her! It couldn’t have been an accident, and not possibly a suicide!"

"We had better see Miriam Gardiner," Monk said grimly.

Robb shot him a look of helplessness and frustration, then rose and went to the door to send the maid for Miriam.

She looked a shadow of the woman she had been, even when Monk had found her frightened and hiding. Her body was skeletal, as if she had barely eaten since then. Her dress hung on her shoulders so the bones showed through the thin clothes, and her bosom was scarcely rounded. Her skin had no color at all, and her beautiful hair had been dressed with little attention. She looked as if she was a stranger to any kind of rest of mind or body.

She moved jerkily, and refused to be seated when Robb asked her. Her hands were clenched and shaking. She seemed not to blink but to stare fixedly, as though her attention was only partly here.

Robb looked at Monk desperately, then, as Monk said nothing, he began to question her.

She replied in a voice that was unnaturally calm that she knew nothing at all. She had taken dinner in her room and had not left it except to go to the bathroom. She had seen no one other than the servant who had ministered to her personal needs. She had no idea what had happened. She had never quarreled with Mrs. Stourbridge … or with anyone else. She refused to say anything further.

And no matter how either Robb or Monk pressed her, she did not yield a word. She walked away stiffly, swaying a little, as if she might lose her balance.

"Did she do it?" Robb asked as soon as the door was closed.

"I have no idea," Monk confessed. He hated the thought, but she appeared to be in a state of suppressed hysteria, almost as if she moved in a trance, a world of her own connected only here and there with reality. He judged that if there was one more pressure, however slight, she would lose control completely.

Was that what had happened? Had she, for some reason or other, gone to see Mrs. Stourbridge in her bedroom, and something, however innocently or well meant, had precipitated an emotional descent into insanity? Had Verona Stourbridge made some remark about Cleo Anderson, suggesting Miriam leave the past and its griefs behind, and Miriam had reacted by releasing all the terror and violence inside her in one fearful blow?

But where had the croquet mallet come from? One did not keep such things in a bedroom. Whoever had killed Verona Stourbridge had brought it, and it could only be as a weapon.

The murder was premeditated. He said as much aloud.

"I know," Robb admitted. "I know. But she still seems the most likely one. We’ll have to go farther back than I thought. I’ll start again with the servants. It’s here, whatever it is, the reason, the jealousy or the fear, or the rage. It’s in this house. It has to be."

They worked all night, asking, probing, going back over detail after detail. They were so tired the whole house seemed to be a maze going around and around itself, like a symbol of the confusion within. Monk’s throat was dry, and he felt as if there were sand in his eyes. The cook brought them a tray of tea at three o’clock in the morning, and another at a quarter to five, this time with roast beef sandwiches.

They again questioned Mrs. Stourbridge’s maid. The woman looked exhausted and terrified, but she spoke quite coherently.

"I don’t know nothing to her discredit, not really," she said when Robb asked her about Miriam. "She’s always bin very civil, far as I know."

Monk seized on the hesitation, reading the indecision in her face.

"You must be frank," he said gravely. "You owe Mrs. Stourbridge that. What do you mean ’not really’? What were you thinking about when you said that?"

Still, she was reluctant.

Monk looked at her grimly until she flushed and finally answered.

"Well … I was thinking of that time I brought back Mrs. Stourbridge’s clean petticoats, to hang them up, like, an’ I found Mrs. Gardiner sitting at Mrs. Stourbridge’s dressing table … and she had one of Mrs. Stourbridge’s necklaces on. She said as Mrs. Stourbridge had said she could borrow it -but she never said nothing to me as anyone could. And … and Mrs. Stourbridge’s diary was lying open on her bed, an’ that’s a thing I’ve never seen before."

"Did she explain that, too?"

"No … I never asked."

"I see."

She looked wretched, and seemed glad to escape when they excused her.

It was half past five. Robb stood facing the window and the brilliant sunlight as the first noises of awakening came in from the street. A horse and cart rolled by. Somewhere on the farther side of the road there were footsteps on the pavement. A door opened and closed. He turned back to the room. His face was pale and he looked exhausted and miserable.

"I’ve got to arrest her," he said flatly. "Seems she couldn’t wait to get her hands on the pretty things … or to pry into Mrs. Stourbridge’s affairs. I wish that wasn’t so. Money does strange things to some people."

"She didn’t have to hurt Verona Stourbridge to have that," Monk pointed out. "No one objected to the marriage."

"Perhaps she did," Robb said, his back stiff, his head high. He was determined to stand up to Monk on the issue, because he believed it. It was a testing ground between them, and he was going to prove his own authority. "Perhaps Mrs. Stourbridge knew whatever it was Treadwell knew, or even that Miriam killed him."

Monk drew in his breath to argue, but each protest died on his lips. They were empty, and he knew it. No one else had any reason or motive to harm Verona Stourbridge, and there was no physical evidence to implicate any of them. Miriam was already deeply involved in the murder of James Treadwell. And strangely enough, she had not defended herself in any coherent way. Any jury would find it easy enough to believe that she had set out deliberately to charm Lucius, a wealthy and naive young man. He was handsome and intelligent enough, but not worldly wise, and might be easily duped by a woman older than he and well practiced in the ways of pleasing.

Then she had seen the luxury of the life she could expect, but through an unforeseeable misfortune, the coachman knew something of her past which was so ugly it would have spoiled her dream. He had blackmailed her.

Her mentor and accomplice, also blackmailed for theft by the same wretched coachman, either helped her kill him or hid her afterwards and obscured the evidence of the crime. He had no choice but to charge her.

The family was shattered. Harry stood white-faced, stammering incoherent assurances that he would do all he could to help her. He looked as if he hardly knew what he was saying or doing. He kept turning to Lucius as if he would protect him, and then realized he was helpless to make any difference at all.

Monk had never felt more pity for any man, but he did not believe that even Oliver Rathbone could do anything to relieve this tragedy. The most compassionate thing would be to deal with it as quickly as possible. To prolong the suffering was pointless.

Miriam herself seemed the least surprised or distressed. She accepted the situation as if she had expected it, and made no protest or appeal for help. She did not even deny the charge. She thanked Harry Stourbridge for his behavior towards her, then walked uprightly, quite firmly, a step or two ahead of Robb out to the front door. She hesitated as if to speak to Lucius, then changed her mind.