Anne Perry - The Twisted Root

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."

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 my 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."