Anne Perry - The Twisted Root

Monk nodded. "I understand." He knocked for the jailer to let him out.

He arrived home still turning the matter over and over in his mind.

"There was another source," he said to Hester over the dinner table. "But it could have been Miriam, which won’t help at all."

"And if it wasn’t?" she asked. "If we could show it was someone else? They’d have to consider it!"

"No, they wouldn’t," he answered quietly, watching her face show her disappointment. "Not unless we could bring that person to court and prove that he or she was somewhere near the Heath that night, alone. We’ve got two days before Rathbone has to begin some defense."

"What else have we?" Her voice rose a little in desperation.

"Nothing," he admitted.

"Then let’s try! I can’t bear to sit here not doing anything at all. What do we know?"

They worked until long after midnight, noting every piece of information Monk had gathered about Treadwell’s comings and goings over the three months previous to his death. When it was written on paper it was easier to see what appeared to be gaps.

"We need to know exactly what his time off was," Hester said, making further notes. "I’m sure there would be someone in the Stourbridge household who could tell you."

Monk thought it was probably a waste of time, but he did not argue. He had nothing else more useful to do. He might as well follow through with the entire exercise.

"Do you know how much medicine was taken?" he asked, then, before she could deny it, added, "Or could you work it out if you wanted to?"

"No, but I expect Phillips could, if it would help. Do you think it really would?"

"Probably not, but what better idea have we?"

Neither of them answered with the obvious thing: acceptance that the charge was true. Perhaps it had not been with deliberate greed, or for the reasons Tobias was saying, but the end result was all that counted.

"I’ll go tomorrow to the hospital and ask Phillips," Hester said briskly, as if it mattered. "And I’ll go as well and find all the people on your list and see what medicines they have. You see if you can account for that time of Treadwell’s." She stared at him very directly, defying him to tell her it was useless or to give up heart. He knew from the very brittleness of her stare, the anger in her, that she was doing it blindly, against hope, not with it.

In the morning Monk left early to go out to Bayswater and get the precise times that Treadwell was off duty and see if he could find any indication of where else he might have been, who could have paid him the huge difference between what they could account for and what he had spent. He pursued it slowly and carefully, to the minutest detail, because he did not want to come to the end of it and have it proved to him what he already knew: that it would be of no use whatever in trying to save Cleo Anderson-or Miriam Gardiner either.

Hester went straight to the hospital. Fortunately, even though it was a Saturday she knew Phillips would be there. Usually he took only Sundays off, and then quite often just the morning. Still, she had to search for over half an hour before she found him, and then it was only after having asked three different medical students, interrupting them in a long, enthusiastic and detailed discussion of anatomy, which was their present preoccupation.

"Brilliant!" one of them said, his eyes wide. "We’re very fortunate to be here. My cousin is studying in Lincoln, and he says they have to wait weeks for a body to dissect, and all the diagrams in the world mean almost nothing compared with the real thing."

"I know," another agreed. "And Thorpe is marvelous. His explanations are always so clear."

"Probably the number of times he’s done it," the first retorted.

"Excuse me!" Hester said again sharply. "Do you know where Mr. Phillips is?"

"Phillips? Is he the one with red hair, bit of a stammer?"

"Phillips the apothecary." She kept her temper with difficulty. "I need to speak with him."

The first young man frowned at her, looking at her more closely now. "You shouldn’t be looking for medicines; if one of the patients is-"

"I don’t want medicines!" she said. "I need to speak with Mr. Phillips. Do you know where he is or not?"

The young man’s face hardened. "No, actually, I don’t."

One of the other young men relented, for whatever personal reason.

"He’s down in the morgue," he answered. "The new assistant got taken a little faint. Gave him a bit of something to help. He’s probably still there."

"Thank you," she said quickly. "Thank you very much." And she all but ran along the corridor, out of the side entrance and down the steps to the cold room belowground which served to keep the bodies of the dead until the undertaker should come to perform the formalities.

"Hello, Mrs. Monk. You’re looking a little peaked," Phillips said cheerfully. "What can I do for you?"

"I’m glad I found you." She turned and regarded the young man, white-faced, who sat on the floor with his legs splayed out. "Are you all right?" she asked him.

He nodded, embarrassed.

"Just got a scare," Phillips said with a grin. "One o’ them corpses moved, and young Jake ’ere near fainted away. Nobody told ’im corpses sometimes passes wind. Gases don’t stop, son, just ’cos you’re dead."

Jake scrambled to his feet, running his hands through his hair and trying to look as if he was ready for duty again.

Hester looked at the tables. There were two bodies laid out under unbleached sheets.

"Not as many lately," Phillips remarked, following her glance.

"Good!" she said.

"No-not died here, brought in for the students," he corrected. "Old Thorpe’s in a rare fury. Can’t get ’em."

"Where do they come from?"

"God knows! Resurrectionists!" he said with black humor.

Jake was staring at him, openmouthed. He let out a sigh between his teeth.

"D’yer mean it?" he said hoarsely. "Grave robbers, like?"

"No, of course I don’t, you daft ha’porth!" Phillips said, shaking his head. "Get on with your work." He turned to Hester. "What is it, Mrs. Monk?" All the light vanished from his face. "Have you seen Cleo Anderson? Is there anything we can do for ’er, apart from hope for a miracle?"

"Work for one," she said bleakly. She turned and led the way back up the stairs.

He followed close behind, and when they were outside in the air he asked what she meant.

"Someone else was being blackmailed as well, we are almost sure," she explained, stopping beside him. "Treadwell spent a lot more money than Cleo gave him or he earned…"

Hope lit in his face. "You mean that person could have killed him? How do we find out who it was?" He looked at her confidently, as if he had every faith she would have an answer.

"I don’t know. I’ll settle at the moment just for proving he has to exist." She looked at him very steadily. "If you had to … no, if you wanted to, could you work out exactly how much medicine has gone missing in, say, the four months before Treadwell’s death?"

"Perhaps … if I had a really good reason to," he said guardedly. "I wouldn’t know that unless I understood the need."

"Not knowing isn’t going to help," she told him miserably. "Not charging her with theft won’t matter if they hang her for murder."

His face blanched as if she had slapped him, but he did not look away. "What good can you do?" he asked very quietly. "I really care about Cleo. She’s worth ten of that pompous swine in his oak-paneled office." He did not need to name Thorpe. She shared his feelings, and he knew it. He was watching her for an answer, hoping.

"I don’t really know-maybe not a great deal," she admitted. "But if I know how much is missing, and how much reached the patients she treated, if they are pretty well the same, then he got money from someone else."