The Twisted Root Read online

  He looked at her hunched figure where she sat, half turned away from him, unresponsive.

  "Miriam!" He put out his hand and touched her. Her body was rigid. "Miriam! What happened? Why did you leave the Stourbridge house? Was it something to do with Treadwell?"

  "No..." There was a driving core of emotion in her voice. "No," she repeated. "It had nothing to do with Treadwell. He was merely good enough to drive me."

  "You simply asked him, and he agreed?" he said with surprise. "Did he not require some reason?"

  "Not reason. Recompense."

  "You paid him?"

  "My locket. It doesn’t matter."

  That she would part so easily with a personal item of jewelry was a measure of how desperate she had been. He wondered what had become of the locket. It had not been with Treadwell’s clothes. Had his murderer taken it?

  "Where is it now?" he asked. "Did you take it back?"

  She frowned. "Where is it? Isn’t it with him ... with his body?"

  "No."

  She lifted her shoulders very slightly, less than a shrug. "Then I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. Don’t waste your effort on it, Mr. Monk. Maybe it will find its way to someone who will like it. I would rather it were not lost down some drain, but if it is, I can’t help it now."

  "What should I put my effort into, Miriam?"

  She did not answer for so long he was about to repeat himself when at last she spoke.

  "Comfort Lucius..." Without warning, her composure broke and she bent her head and covered her face, sobs shaking her body.

  He longed to be able to help her. She was alone, vulnerable, facing trial and almost certainly one of the ugliest of deaths.

  Impulse overcame judgment. He reached out and took hold of her arm.

  "Words won’t comfort him when you are in the dock, or when the judge puts on his cap and sentences you to hang! Tell me the truth while I can do something about it! Why did you leave the Stourbridge house? Or if you won’t tell me that, at least tell me what happened in Hampstead. Who killed Treadwell? Where were you? Why did you run away? Who are you afraid of?"

  It took her several moments to master herself again. She blew her nose, then, still avoiding meeting his eyes, she answered in a low, choked voice.

  "I can’t tell you why I left, only that I had to. What happened in Hampstead is that Treadwell was attacked and murdered. I think perhaps it was my fault, but I did not do it, that I swear. I never injured anyone with intent." She looked at him, her eyes red-rimmed. "Please tell Lucius that, Mr. Monk. I never willfully harmed anyone. I want him to believe that..." Her voice trailed off into a sob.

  "He already believes that," he said more gently. "It is not Lucius you have to be concerned about. I doubt he will ever think ill of you. It is the rest of the world, especially Sergeant Robb, and then whatever jury he brings you before. And he will! Unless you give some better account. Did you see who attacked Treadwell? At least answer me yes or no."

  "Yes. But no one would believe me, even if I would say ... and I will not." She spoke with finality. There was no room to imagine she hoped to be dissuaded. She did not care what Monk thought, and he knew it from everything about her, from the slump of the body to the lifelessness of her voice.

  "Try me!" he urged desperately. "Tell me the truth and let me decide whether I believe it or not. If you are innocent, then someone else is guilty, and he must be found. If he isn’t, you will hang!"

  "I know. Did you think I didn’t understand that?"

  He had wondered fleetingly if she was of mental competence, if perhaps she was far more frail than Lucius had had any idea, but the thought had lasted only moments.

  "Will you see Lucius? Or Major Stourbridge?" he asked.

  "No!" She pulled away from him sharply, for the first time real fear in her voice. "No ... I won’t. If you have any desire to help me, then do not ask me again."

  "I won’t," he promised.

  "You give me your word?" She stared at him, her eyes wide and intense.

  "I do. But I warn you again that no one can help you until you tell the truth. If not to me, would you tell a lawyer, someone who is bound to keep in confidence whatever you say, regardless of what it is?"

  A smile flickered over her face and vanished. "It would make no difference whatever. It is the truth itself that wounds, Mr. Monk, not what you may do with it. Thank you for coming. I am sure your intention was generous, but you cannot help. Please leave me to myself." She turned away again, dismissing him.

  He had no alternative but to accept. He stood up, hesitated a moment longer, without purpose, then called the jailer to let him out.

  Just outside the gates he encountered Michael Robb. Robb looked tired, and it was obscurely pleasing to Monk that there was no air of triumph in him.

  They stood facing each other on the hot, dusty footpath.

  "You’ve been to see her," Robb said, stating what was obvious between them.

  "She won’t tell you anything," Monk said, not in answer but as a statement of fact. "She won’t speak to anyone. She won’t even see Stourbridge."

  Robb looked him up and down, from his neat cravat and the shoulders of the well-cut jacket to the tips of his polished boots. "Do you know what happened?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

  "No," Monk replied.

  Robb put his hands in his pockets, deliberately casual, even sloppy by contrast. "I shall find out," he promised. "No matter how long it takes me, I will know what happened to Treadwell-or enough to make a prosecution. There’s something in his past, or hers, that made this happen." He was watching Monk’s face as he spoke, weighing his reaction, trying to read what he knew.

  "You will have to," Monk agreed wryly. "All you have at the moment is suspicion-not enough to hang anyone on."

  Robb winced almost imperceptibly, just a stiffening of his body. It was an ugly word, an ugly reality. "I will." His voice was very soft. "Treadwell may have been an evil man, for all I know deserving some kind of retribution, but the day we allow the man in the street to decide that for himself, without trial, without answering to anyone, then we lose the right to call ourselves civilized. Then law belongs to the quickest and the strongest, not to justice. We aren’t a society anymore." He was self-conscious as he said it, daring Monk to laugh at him, but he was proud of it also.

  Monk hoped he had never done anything in the past which made Robb imagine he would mock that decision. He would probably never know. A dray rumbled noisily past them.

  "I won’t stand in your way," he answered levelly. "None of us could afford private vengeance." He wondered if Robb had any idea how true that was.

  "She’d be better if she told us." Robb frowned. "Can’t you persuade her of that? Otherwise I’ll have to dig for it, go through all her life, all her friends, her first husband ... everything."

  "That’s one of the things about murder." Monk nodded and lifted his shoulders very slightly. "You have to learn more about everybody than you want to know, all the secrets that have nothing to do with the crime, as well as those that do. Innocent people are stripped of their masks of pretense, sometimes of decently covered mistakes they’ve long since mended. You have to know everything the victim ever did that could make someone take the last, terrible step of killing him, creep as close as his skin till you see every blemish and can read the hatred that destroyed him. Of course, you’ll know Treadwell ... and you’ll come to pity him-and probably hate him as well."

  People passed by, and they ignored them.

  "Have you solved a lot of murders?" Robb asked. It was not a challenge; there was respect and curiosity in his face.

  "Yes," Monk answered him. "Some I understood, and might have done the same myself. Others were so cold-blooded, so consumed in self, it frightened me that another human being I had talked with, stood beside, could have hidden that evil behind a face which looked to me like any other."

  Robb stared at him. For several seconds neither of them moved, oblivious of th
e noisy street around them.

  "I think this is going to be one of the first," Robb said at last. "I wish it weren’t. I wish I weren’t going to find some private shame in Mrs. Gardiner’s life that Treadwell was blackmailing her about, threatening to ruin the happiness she’d found. But I have to look. And if find it, I have to bring it to evidence." That was a challenge.

  Monk thought how young he was. And he wondered what evidence he had found—or lost—when he was that age. And for that matter, what he would do now if he were in Robb’s place.

  But he was not. He had no further interest in the case. His task was over, not very satisfactorily.

  "Of course you do," he answered. "There are hundreds of judgments to make. You have to check which are yours and which aren’t. Good day, Sergeant Robb."

  Robb stood facing him in the sun. "Good day, Mr. Monk. It’s been an interesting experience to meet you." He looked as if he was about to add something more, then changed his mind and went on past Monk towards the prison gate.

  Monk had no duties in the case now. Even moral obligation took him no further. Miriam had refused to explain anything, either of her flight from Cleveland Square or what had happened in Hampstead. There was nothing more he could do.

  Hester was still at the hospital, although it was now late.

  Monk sat at his desk writing letters, his mind only half on them, and was delighted when the doorbell rang. Only when he answered it, and saw Lucius Stourbridge, did his heart sink. Should he express some condolence for the situation? Lucius had hired him to find Miriam, and he had done so. The result had been catastrophic, even though it was none of his doing.

  Lucius looked haggard, his eyes dark-ringed, his cheeks pale beneath his olive skin, giving him a sallow, almost gray appearance. He was a man walking through a nightmare. "I know you have already done all that I asked of you, Mr. Monk," he began even before Monk could invite him inside. "And that you endeavored to help Mrs. Gardiner, even concealing her whereabouts from the police, but they found her nevertheless, and arrested her ..." The words were so hard for him to say that his voice cracked, and he was obliged to clear his throat before he could continue. "For the murder of Treadwell." He swallowed. "I know she cannot have done such a thing. Please, Mr. Monk, at any cost at all, up to everything I have, please help me prove that!" He stood still on the front doorstep, his body rigid, hands clenched, eyes filled with his inner agony.

  "It is not the cost, Mr. Stourbridge," Monk answered slowly, fighting his common sense and everything his intelligence told him. "Please come in.

  "It is a matter of what is possible. I have already spoken to her," he continued as Lucius followed him into the sitting room. "She will not tell me anything of what occurred. All she would say was that she did not kill Treadwell."

  "Of course she didn’t," Lucius protested, still standing. "We must save her from ..." He could not bear to use the word. "We must defend her. I ... I don’t know how, or ..." He trailed off. "But I know your reputation, Mr. Monk. If any man in London can help, it is you."

  "If you know my reputation, then you know I will not conceal the truth if find it," Monk warned. "Even if it is not what you wish to hear."

  Lucius lifted his chin. "It may not be what I wish to hear, Mr. Monk, but it will not be that Miriam killed Treadwell in any unlawful way. I believe it was someone else, but she dares not say so because she is afraid of him, either for herself or for someone else." His voice shook a little. "But if she brought about his death herself, then it was either an accident or she was defending herself from some threat which was too immediate and too gross to endure."

  Monk held very little hope of such a comfortable solution. If that was the case, why had Miriam not simply said so? She would not be blamed for defending her virtue. More sharply etched in his mind were the images of Treadwell’s head and his scarred knees, but no other injury at all. He had not been involved in a struggle with anyone. He had been hit one mighty blow which had caused him to bleed to death within his skull in a very short while. During that time he had crawled from wherever the attack had taken place, probably seeking help. He knew the area. Perhaps he even knew Cleo Anderson was a nurse and had tried to reach her. Had Miriam simply watched him crawl away without making any attempt to help? Why had she not at least reported the incident, if she was in any way justified? Hiding was not the action of an honorable woman, the victim of an attack herself.

  Further, and perhaps even more damning, what could she possibly have had at hand with which to inflict such a blow, and how had Treadwell, if he had been threatening her, had his back to her?

  "Mr. Stourbridge," he said grimly, "I have no idea whether I can find the truth of what happened. If you wish, I can try. But I hold far less hope than you do that it will be anything you can bear to believe. The facts so far do not indicate her innocence."

  Lucius was very pale. "Then find more facts, Mr. Monk. By the time you have them all, they will prove her honor. I know her." It was a blind statement of belief, and his face allowed no argument, no appeal to a lesser thing like reason.

  Monk would like to have asked him to wait and thus give himself time to consider all the consequences, but there was no time. Robb would be looking already. The Crown would prosecute as soon as it had sufficient evidence, whether it was the whole story or not. There was nothing on which to mount any defense.

  "Are you quite sure?" he tried one more time, useless as he knew it.

  "Yes," Lucius replied instantly. "I have twenty guineas here, and will give you more as you need it. Anything at all, just ask me." He held out a soft leather pouch of coins, thrusting it at Monk.

  Monk did not immediately take the money. "The first thing will be your practical help. If Treadwell’s death was not caused by Miriam, then it is either a chance attack, which I cannot believe, or it is to do with his own life and character. I will begin by learning all I can about that. It will also keep me from following Sergeant Robb’s footsteps and perhaps appearing to him to be obstructing his path. Additionally, if I do learn anything, I have a better chance of keeping the option of either telling him or not, as seems to our best advantage."

  "Yes ... yes," Lucius agreed, obviously relieved to have some course of action at last. "What can I do?" He gave a tiny shrug. "I tried to think of what manner of man Treadwell was, and could answer nothing. I saw him almost every day. He’s dead, killed by God knows whom, and I can’t give an intelligent answer."

  "I didn’t expect you to tell me from your observation," Monk assured him. "I would like to speak to the other servants, then discover what I can of Treadwell’s life outside Bayswater. I would rather learn that before the police, if I can."

  "Of course," Lucius agreed. "Thank you, Mr. Monk. I shall be forever in your debt. If there is anything—"

  Monk stopped him. "Please don’t thank me until I have earned it. I may find nothing further, or worse still, what I find may be something you would have been happier not to know."

  "I have to know," Lucius said simply. "Until tomorrow morning, Mr. Monk."

  "Good day, Mr. Stourbridge," Monk replied, walking towards the door to open it for him.

  Monk was in the house in Cleveland Square by ten o’clock the next morning, and with Lucius’s help he questioned the servants, both indoor and outdoor, about James Treadwell. They were reluctant to speak of him at all, let alone to speak ill, but he read in their faces, and in the awkwardness of their phrases, that Treadwell had not been greatly liked-but he had been respected because he did his job well.

  A picture emerged of a man who gave little of himself, whose sense of humor was more founded in cruelty than goodwill, but who was sufficiently sensible of the hierarchy within the household not to overstep his place or wound too many feelings. He knew how to charm, and was occasionally generous when he won at gambling, which was not infrequently.

  No maid reported any unwelcome attentions. Nothing had gone missing. He never blamed anyone else for his very few errors.
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br />   Monk searched his room, which was still empty as no replacement for him had yet been employed. All his possessions were there as he had left them. It was neat, but there was a book on horse racing open on the bedside table, a half-open box of matches beside the candle on the window-sill, and a smart waistcoat hung over the back of the upright chair. It was the room of a man who had expected to return.

  Monk examined the clothes and boots carefully. He was surprised how expensive they were—in some cases, as good as his own. Treadwell certainly had not paid for them on a coachman’s earnings. If the money had come from his gambling, then he must have spent a great deal of time at it—and been consistently successful. It seemed unpleasantly more and more likely that he had had another source of income, one a good deal more lucrative.

  Monk did enquire, without any hope, if perhaps the clothes were hand-me-downs from either Lucius or Harry Stourbridge. He was not surprised to learn that they were not. Such things went to servants of longer standing and remained with them.

  As far as Miriam Gardiner was concerned, he learned nothing beyond what he had already been told: she was unused to servants and therefore had not treated the coachman with the distance that was appropriate, but that was equally true for all the other household staff. No one had observed anything different with regard to Treadwell. Without exception, they all spoke well of her and seemed confused and grieved by her current misfortune.

  Monk spent the following day in Hampstead and Kentish Town, as he had told Lucius he would. He walked miles, asked questions till his mouth was dry and his throat hoarse. He arrived home after nine o’clock, when it was still daylight but the heat of the afternoon was tempered by an evening breeze.

  The first thing he wanted to do was to take his boots off and soak his burning feet, but Hester’s presence stopped him. It was not an attractive thing to do, and he was too conscious of her to indulge himself so. Instead, after accepting her welcome with great pleasure, he sat in the coolness of the office which doubled as a sitting room, a glass of cold lemonade at his elbow, his boots still firmly laced, and answered her questions.