Anne Perry - The Twisted Root

Hester looked at his face as he came in and did not ask what he had learned. Her tact was so uncharacteristic it told him more of his own disappointment, and how visible it was, than he would have admitted.

On the second day he gained considerably more knowledge. He came closer to Hampstead and discovered a public house where they knew Treadwell rather well. From there he was able to trace a man to whom Treadwell had lost at gambling. Since Treadwell was dead, the debt could not be collected.

"Someone ought to be responsible!" the man said angrily, his round eyes sharp and a little bloodshot. "In’t there no law? You shouldn’t be able to get out of money you owe just bydyin’."

Monk looked knowledgeable. "Well, usually you would go to a man’s heirs," he said gravely. "But I don’t know if Treadwell had any…?" He left it hanging as a question.

"Nah!" the man said in disgust. "Answer to nob’dy, that one."

"Have a drink?" Monk offered. He might be wasting his time, but he had no better avenue to follow.

"Ta. Don’t mind if I do," the man accepted. "Reece." He held out a hand after rubbing it on his trouser leg.

Monk took a moment to realize it was an introduction, then he grasped the hand and shook it. "Monk," he responded.

" ’Ow do," Reece said cheerfully. "I’ll ’ave a pint o’ mild, ta."

When the pints had been ordered and bought, Monk pursued the conversation. "Did he owe you a lot?"

"I’ll say!" Reece took a long draft of his ale before he continued. "Near ten pound."

Monk was startled. It was as much as a housemaid earned in six months.

"That choked yer, eh?" Reece observed with satisfaction. " ’E played big, did Treadwell."

"And lost big," Monk agreed. "He can’t have lost like that often. Did he win as well?"

"Sometimes. Liked ter live ’igh on the ’og, ’e did. Wine, women and the ’orses. Must ’a won sometimes, I suppose. But w’ere am I gonna get ten quid, you tell me that?"

"What I’d like to know is where Treadwell got it," Monk said with feeling. "He certainly didn’t earn it as a coachman."

"Wouldn’t know," Reece said with fading interest. He emptied his glass and looked at Monk hopefully.

Monk obliged.

"Coachman, were ’e?" Reece said thoughtfully. "Well, I guess as ’e ’ad suffink on the side, then. Dunno wot."

A very ugly thought came into Monk’s mind concerning Cleo Anderson’s theft of medicines, especially morphine. Hester had said a considerable amount might have gone over a period of time. Maybe not all of it had ended in the homes of the old and ill. Anyone addicted to such a drug would pay a high price to obtain it. It would be only too easy to understand how Cleo could have sold it to pay Treadwell, or even have given it to him directly for him to sell. The idea gave him no pleasure, but he could not get rid of it.

He spent the rest of the day investigating Treadwell’s off-duty hours, which seemed to have been quite liberal, and found he had a considerable taste for self-indulgence. But there appeared to be several hours once every two weeks or so which were unaccounted for, and Monk was driven to the conclusion that this time may have been used either for selling morphine or for further blackmail of other victims.

The last thing Monk did, late in the evening, was to go and visit Cleo herself, telling the jailer that he was Rathbone’s clerk. He had no proof of such a position, but the jailer had seen them together earlier, and accepted it. Or possibly his compassion for Cleo made him turn a blind eye. Monk did not care in the slightest what the reason was; he took advantage of it.

Cleo was surprised to see him, but there was no light of hope in her eyes. She looked haggard and exhausted. She was almost unrecognizable from the woman he had met only a month or so before. Her cheeks were hollow, her skin completely without color, and she sat with her shoulders sagging under the plain dark stuff of her dress.

Monk was caught off guard by his emotions on seeing her. She stirred in him an anger and a sense of outrage at futility and injustice, more passionate than he had expected. If he failed in this he was going to carry the wound for a very long time, perhaps always.

There was no time to waste in words of pity or encouragement, and he knew they would be wasted because they could have no meaning.

"Do you know if Treadwell was blackmailing anyone else apart from you?" he asked her, sitting down opposite her so he could speak softly and she could hear him.

"No. Why? Do you think they could’ve killed him?" There was almost hope in her voice, not quite. She did not dare.

Honesty forbade him to allow it. "Enough possibility to raise a need to know how much you paid him, exactly," he answered. "I have a pretty good record of how much he spent over the last two or three months of his life. If you paid him all of it, then you must have been taking morphine to sell, as well as to give to patients."

Her body stiffened, her eyes wide and angry. "I didn’t! And I never gave him any either!"

"We have to prove it," he argued. "Have you got any records of your pay from the hospital, of all the medicine you took and the people to whom you gave it?"

"No-of course I haven’t."

"But you know all the patients you visited with medicine," he insisted.

"Yes…"

"Then dictate their names to me. Their addresses, too, and what medicine you gave them and for how long."

She stared at him for a moment, then obeyed.

Was this going to be worth anything, or was he simply finding a way of occupying time so he could delude himself he was working to save her? What could he achieve with lists? Who would listen, or care, regardless of what likelihood he could show? Proof was all the court would entertain. In their own minds they believed Cleo and Miriam guilty. They would have to be forced from that conviction, not merely shown that there was another remote possibility.

Cleo finished dictating the list. There were eighteen names on it.

"Thank you." He read it over. "How much do you earn at the hospital?"

"Seven shillings a week." She said it with some pride, as if for a nurse it was a good wage.

He winced. He knew a constable earned three times that.

"How long do you work?" The question was out before he thought.

"Twelve or fifteen hours a day," she replied.

"And how much did you pay Treadwell?"

Her voice was tired, her shoulders slumped again. "Five shillings a week."

The rage inside him was ice-cold, filling his body, sharpening his mind with a will to lash out, to hurt someone so this could be undone, so it would never happen again, not to Cleo and not to anyone. But he had no one to direct the anger towards. The only offender was dead already. Only the victim was still left to pay the price.

"He was spending a lot more than that," he said quietly, his words coming between clenched teeth. "I need to know where it came from."

She shook her head. "I don’t know. He just came to me regularly and I paid him. He never mentioned anyone else. But he wouldn’t…"

It was on the edge of Monk’s tongue to ask her again if she had given him any morphine to sell, but he knew the answer would be the same. He rose to his feet and bade her good-bye, hating being able to make no promises, nor even speak any words of hope.

At the door he hesitated, wondering if he should ask her about Miriam, but what was there to say?

She looked up at him, waiting.

In the end he had to ask. "Could it have been Miriam?"

"No," she said immediately. "She never did anything he could have made her pay for!"

"Not even to protect you?" he said quietly.

She sat perfectly still. It was transparent in her face that she did not know the answer to that-believe, possibly, even certainly-but not know.