Anne Perry - The Twisted Root

"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."