The Twisted Root Read online

  One of the jurors gasped. Another clenched his fist and banged it short and hard on the rail in front of him. It must have hurt, but he was too outraged even to be conscious of it.

  Lucius started to his feet and then subsided again, helpless to know what to do.

  "But the child was stillborn," Rathbone said in the silence.

  "I reckoned so," Cleo agreed.

  "And what was Miriam doing alone on the Heath in such a state?"

  Cleo shook her head as if to deny the truth, drive it away.

  Tobias was staring at her.

  As if aware of him, she looked again at Rathbone imploringly. But it was for Miriam, not for herself. He was absolutely sure of that.

  "What did she say?" he asked.

  Cleo looked down. When she spoke, her voice was barely audible.

  "That she had fled from the house with a woman, and that the woman had tried to protect her, and the woman had been murdered... out there on the Heath."

  Rathbone was stunned. His imagination had conjured many possibilities, but not this. It took him a moment to collect his wits. He did not mean to look at Miriam, but in spite of himself he did.

  She was sitting white-faced with her eyes shut. She must have been aware that every man and woman in the room was staring at her, and felt that her only hiding place was within herself. He saw in her face pain almost beyond her power to bear—but no surprise. She had known what Cleo was going to say. That, more than anything else, made him believe it absolutely. Whether it had happened or not, whether there was any woman, whether it was the illusion of a tormented and hysterical girl in the delirium of fever, Miriam believed it to be the truth.

  Rathbone looked at Hester and saw her wide-eyed amazement also. She had known there was something—but not this.

  He asked the question the whole court was waiting to hear answered.

  "And was this woman’s body found, Mrs. Anderson?"

  "No..."

  "You did look?"

  "Of course, we did. We all looked. Every man in the street."

  "But you never found it?"

  "No."

  "And Miriam couldn’t take you to it? Again—I presume you asked her? It is hardly a matter you could let slip."

  She looked at him angrily. "Of course, we didn’t let it slip! She said it was by an oak tree, but the Heath is full of oaks. When we couldn’t find anything in a week of looking, we took it she was out of her wits with all that had happened to her. People see all sorts of things when they’ve been ill, let alone in the grief of having a dead child—and her only a child herself." Her contempt for him rang through her words, and he felt the sting of it even though he was doing what he must.

  Tobias was sitting at his table shaking his head.

  "So you assumed she had imagined at least that part of her experience—her nightmare—and you let it drop?" he pressed.

  "Yes, of course we did. It took her months to get better, and when she was, we were all so glad of it we never mentioned it again. Why should we? Nobody else ever did. No one came looking for anybody. The police were asked if anyone was missing."

  "And what about Miriam? Did you tell the police you had found her? After all, she was only thirteen herself by then."

  "Of course, we told them. She wasn’t missing from anywhere, and they were only too pleased that someone was looking after her."

  "And she remained with you?"

  "Yes. She grew up a beautiful girl." She said it with pride. Her love for Miriam was so plain in her face and her voice, no words could have spoken as clearly. "When she was nineteen, Mr. Gardiner started courting her. Very slow, very gentle, he was with her. We knew he was a good bit older than she was, but she didn’t mind, and that was all that mattered. If he made her happy, that was all I cared."

  "And they were married?"

  "Yes, a while later. And a very good husband he was to her, too."

  "And then he died?"

  "Yes. Very sad, that was. Died young, even though he was older than her, of course. Took an attack and was gone in a matter of days. She missed him very badly."

  "Until she met Lucius Stourbridge?"

  "Yes—but that was three years after."

  "But she had no children with Mr. Gardiner?"

  "No." Her voice was torn. "That was one blessing she wasn’t given. Only the good Lord knows why. It happens, more often than you’d think."

  Tobias rose to his feet with exaggerated weariness.

  "My lord, we have listened with great indulgence to this life story of Miriam Gardiner, and while we have every sympathy with her early experiences, whatever the truth of them may be, it all has no bearing whatever to the death of James Treadwell, or that of Verona Stourbridge—except as it may, regrettably, have provided the wretched Treadwell with more fuel for his blackmailing schemes. If he knew of this first child of Mrs. Gardiner’s, perhaps he felt the Stourbridge family would be less willing to accept her—a victim of rape, or whatever else it may have been."

  A look of distaste passed across the judge’s face, but Tobias’s point was unarguable and he knew it.

  "Sir Oliver?" he said questioningly. "It does seem that you have done more to advance Mr. Tobias’s case than your own. Have you further points to put to your client?"

  Rathbone had no idea what to say. He was desperate.

  "Yes, my lord, if you please."

  "Then proceed, but make it pertinent to the events we are here to try."

  "Yes, my lord." He turned to Cleo. "Did you believe that she had been raped, Mrs. Anderson? Or do you perhaps think she was no better than she should be and..."

  "She was thirteen," Cleo said furiously. "Twelve when it happened. Of course, I believed she had been raped! She was half out of her mind with terror!"

  "Of whom? The man who raped her—then, nine months afterwards? Why?"

  "Because he tried to kill her!" Cleo shouted.

  Rathbone feigned surprise. "She told you that?"

  "Yes!"

  "And what did you do about it? There was a man somewhere near the Heath who had raped this girl you took in and treated as your own, and then he subsequently tried to murder her—and you never found him? In God’s name, why not?"

  Cleo was shaking, gasping for breath, and Rathbone was afraid he had driven her too far.

  "I believed she’d been raped—or seduced," Cleo said in a whisper. "But God forgive me, I thought the attack was all jumbled up in her mind because of having a dead baby, poor little thing."

  "Until ... ?" Rathbone said urgently, raising his voice. "Until she came running to you again, close to hysteria and terrified. And there was really a dead body on the Heath this time—James Treadwell! Who was she running from, Mrs. Anderson?"

  The silence was total.

  A juror coughed, and it sounded like an explosion.

  "Was it James Treadwell?" Rathbone threw the question down like a challenge.

  "No!"

  "Then whom?"

  Silence.

  The judge leaned forward. "If you wish us to believe that it was not James Treadwell, Mrs. Anderson, then you must tell us who it was."

  Cleo swallowed convulsively. "Aiden Campbell."

  If she had set off a bomb it could not have had more effect.

  Rathbone was momentarily paralyzed.

  There was a roar from the gallery.

  The jurors turned to each other, exclaiming, gasping.

  The judge banged his gavel and demanded order.

  "My lord!" Rathbone said, raising his voice. "May I ask for the luncheon adjournment so I can speak with my client?"

  "You may," the judge agreed, and banged the gavel again. "The court will reconvene at two o’clock."

  Rathbone left the courtroom in a daze and walked like a man half blind down to the room where Miriam Gardiner was permitted to speak with him.

  She did not even turn her head when the door opened and he came in, the jailer remaining on the outside.

  "Was it Aiden
Campbell you were running from?" he asked.

  She said nothing, sitting motionless, head turned away.

  "Why?" he persisted. "What had he done to you?"

  Silence.

  "Was he the one who attacked you originally?" His voice was growing louder and more shrill in his desperation. "For heaven’s sake, answer me! How can I help you if you won’t speak to me?" He leaned forward over the small table, but still she did not turn. "You will hang!" he said deliberately.

  "I know," she answered at last.

  "And Cleo Anderson!" he added.

  "No—I will say I killed Treadwell, too. I will swear it on the stand. They’ll believe me, because they want to. None of them wants to condemn Cleo."

  It was true, and he knew it as well as she did.

  "You’ll say that on the stand?"

  "Yes."

  "But it is not true!"

  This time she turned and met his eyes fully. "You don’t know that, Sir Oliver. You don’t know what happened. If I say it is so, will you contradict your own client? You must be a fool—it is what they want to hear. They will believe it."

  He stared back at her, momentarily beaten. He had the feeling that were there any heart left alive in her, she would have smiled at him. He knew that if he did not call her to testify, then she would ask the judge from the dock for permission to speak, and he would grant it. There was no argument to make.

  He left, and had a miserable luncheon of bread which tasted to him like sawdust, and claret which could as well have been vinegar.

  Rathbone had no choice but to call Aiden Campbell to the stand. If he had not, then most assuredly Tobias would have. At least this way he might retain a modicum of control.

  The court was seething with anticipation. Word seemed to have spread during the luncheon adjournment, because now every seat was taken and the ushers had had to ban more people from crowding in.

  The judge called them to order, and Rathbone rose to begin.

  "I call Aiden Campbell, my lord."

  Campbell was white-faced but composed. He must have known that this was inevitable, and he had had almost two hours to prepare himself. He stood now facing Rathbone, a tall, straight figure, tragically resembling both his dead sister and his nephew, Lucius, who was sitting beside his father more like a ghost than a living being. Every now and again he stared up at Miriam, but never once had Rathbone seen Miriam return his look.

  "Mr. Campbell," Rathbone began as soon as Campbell had been reminded that he was still under oath. "An extraordinary charge has been laid against you by the last witness. Are you willing to respond to this—"

  "I am," Campbell interrupted in his eagerness to reply. "I had hoped profoundly that this would never be necessary. Indeed, I have gone to some lengths to see that it would not, for the sake of my family, and out of a sense of decency and the desire to bury old tragedies and allow them to remain unknown in the present, where they cannot hurt innocent parties." He glanced at Lucius, and away again. His meaning was nakedly apparent.

  "Mrs. Anderson has sworn that Miriam Gardiner claimed it was you she was running away from when she fled the party at Cleveland Square. Is that true?" Rathbone asked.

  Campbell looked distressed. "Yes," he said quietly. He shook his head a fraction. "I cannot tell you how deeply I had hoped not to have to say this. I knew Miriam Gardiner— Miriam Speake, as she was then—when she was twelve years old. She was a maid in my household when I lived near Hampstead."

  There was a rustle of movement and the startled sound of indrawn breath around the room.

  Campbell looked across at Harry Stourbridge and Lucius.

  "I’m sorry," he said fervently. "I cannot conceal this any longer. Miriam lived in my house for about eighteen months, or something like that. Of course, she recognized me at the garden party, and must have been afraid that I would know her also, and tell you." He was still speaking to Harry Stourbridge, as if this were a private matter between them.

  "Obviously, you did not tell them," Rathbone observed, bringing his attention back to the business of the court. "Why would it trouble her so much that she would flee in such a manner, as if terrified rather than merely embarrassed? Surely the Stourbridge family was already aware that she came from a different social background? Was this so terrible?"

  Campbell sighed, and hesitated several moments before replying.

  Rathbone waited.

  There was barely a movement in the courtroom.

  "Mr. Campbell..." the judge prompted.

  Campbell bit his lips. "Yes, my lord. It pains me deeply to say this, but Miriam Speake was a loose woman. Even at the age of twelve she was without moral conscience."

  There was a gasp from Harry Stourbridge. Lucius half rose in his seat, but his legs seemed to collapse under him.

  "I’m sorry," Campbell said again. "She was very pretty— very comely for one so young... and I find it repugnant to have to say so, but very experienced—"

  Again he was interrupted by an outcry from the gallery.

  Several jurors were shaking their heads. A couple of them glanced towards the dock with grim disappointment. Rathbone knew absolutely that they believed every word. He himself looked up at Miriam and saw her bend her ashen face and cover it with her hands as if she could not endure what she was hearing.

  In calling Aiden Campbell, Rathbone had removed what ghost of a defense she had had. He felt as if he had impaled himself on his own sword. Everyone in the room was watching him, waiting for him to go on. Hester must be furious at this result, and pity him for his incompetence. The pity was worse.

  Tobias was shaking his head in sympathy for a fellow counsel drowning in a storm of his own making.

  Campbell was waiting. Rathbone must say something more. Nothing he could imagine would make it worse. At least he had nothing to lose now and therefore also nothing to fear.

  "This is your opinion, Mr. Campbell? And you believe that Mrs. Gardiner, now a very respectable widow in her thirties, was so terrified that you would express this unfortunate view of her childhood and ruin the prospective happiness of your nephew?"

  "Hardly unreasonable," Tobias interrupted. "What man would not tell his sister whom he loved that her only son was engaged to marry a maid no better than a whore?"

  "But he didn’t!" Rathbone exclaimed. "He told no one! In fact, you first heard him apologize to his brother-in-law this moment for saying it now." He swung around. "Why was that, Mr. Campbell? If she was such a woman as you describe—should I say, such a child—why did you not warn your family rather than allow her to marry into it? If what you say is true..."

  "It is true," Campbell said gravely. "The state she was in that Mrs. Anderson described fits, regrettably, with what I know of her." His hands gripped the rail of the witness box in front of him. He seemed to hold it as if to steady himself from shaking. He had difficulty finding his voice. "She seduced one of my servants, a previously decent man, who fell into temptation too strong for him to resist. I considered dismissing him, but his work was excellent, and he was bitterly ashamed of his lapse from virtue. It would have ruined him at the start of his life." He stopped for a moment.

  Rathbone waited.

  "I did not know at the time," Campbell went on with obvious difficulty. "But she was with child. She had it aborted."

  There was an outcry in the courtroom. A woman shrieked. There was a commotion as someone apparently collapsed.

  The judge banged his gavel, but it made little impression.

  Miriam made as if to rise to her feet, but the jailers on either side of her pulled her back.

  Rathbone looked at the jury. To a man their faces were marked deeply with shock and utter and savage contempt.

  The judge banged his gavel again. "I will have order!" he said angrily. "Otherwise the ushers will clear the court!"

  Tobias looked across at Rathbone and shook his head.

  When the noise subsided, and before Rathbone could speak, Campbell continued. "That must be t
he reason that she was bleeding when Mrs. Anderson found her wandering around on the Heath." He shook his head as if to deny what he was about to say, somehow reduce the harshness of it. "At first I didn’t want to put her out either. She was so young. I thought—one mistake—and it had been a rough abortion— she was still..." He shrugged. Then he raised his head and looked at Rathbone. "But she kept on, always tempting the men, flirting with them, setting one against the other. She enjoyed the power she had over them. I had no choice but to put her out."

  There was a murmur of sympathy around the court, and a rising tide of anger also. One or two men swore under their breath. Two jurors spoke to each other. They glanced up at the dock. The condemnation in their faces was unmistakable.

  A journalist was scribbling furiously.

  Tobias looked at Rathbone and smiled sympathetically, but without hiding his knowledge of his own victory. He asked no quarter for himself when he lost, and he gave none.

  "I wish I had not had to say that." Campbell was looking at Rathbone. "I hesitated to tell Harry before because at first I was not even totally sure it was the same person. It seemed incredible, and of course, she had aged a great deal in twenty-three years. I didn’t want to think it was her... you understand that? I suppose I finally acknowledged that it had to be when I saw that she also recognized me."

  There was nothing for Rathbone to say, nothing left to ask. It was the last result he could have foreseen, and presumably Hester would feel as disillusioned and as empty as he did himself. He sat down utterly dejected.

  Tobias rose and walked into the middle of the floor, swaggering a little. Beating Oliver Rathbone was a victory to be savored, even when it had been ridiculously easy.

  "Mr. Campbell, there is very little left for me to ask. You have told us far more than we could have imagined." He looked across at Rathbone. "I think that goes for my learned friend as much as for me. However, I do wish to tidy up any details that there may be ... in case Mrs. Gardiner decides to take the stand herself and make any charges against you, as suggested by Mrs. Anderson—who may be as unaware of Mrs. Gardiner’s youthful exploits as were the rest of us."

  Campbell did not reply but waited for Tobias to continue.