The Twisted Root (14 page)

Mrs. Whitbread left at a quarter to five. Robb was nowhere to be seen. As Monk followed her at a discreet distance, he felt his weariness suddenly vanish, his senses become keen and a bubble of hope form inside him.

They had not gone far, perhaps a mile and a quarter, before Mrs. Whitbread, a thin, spare woman with a gentle face, turned in at a small house on Kemplay Road and opened the front door with a key.

Monk waited a few moments, looking both ways and seeing no one, then he crossed and went to the door. He knocked.

After a minute or two the door was opened cautiously by Mrs. Whitbread. "Yes?"

He had given much consideration to what he was going to say. It was already apparent Miriam did not wish to be found either by the police or by Lucius Stourbridge. If she had trusted Lucius in this matter she would have contacted him long before. Either she was afraid he would betray her to the police or she wanted to protect him.

"Good evening, Mrs. Whitbread," he said firmly. "I have an urgent message from Mrs. Anderson—for Miriam. I need to see her immediately." Cleo Anderson was the one name both women might trust.

She hesitated only a moment, then pulled the door wider.

"You’d better come in," she said quickly. "You never know who’s watching. I had the rozzers ’round where I work just today."

He stepped inside and she closed the door. "I know. It was I who sent them to you. You didn’t tell them anything?"

" ’Course not," she replied, giving him a withering look. "Wouldn’t trust them an inch. Can’t afford to."

He said nothing, but followed her down the passage and around the corner into the kitchen. Standing at the stove, facing them, eyes wide, was the woman he had come to find. He knew immediately it was Miriam Gardiner. She was just as Lucius had described, barely average height, softly rounded figure, a beautifully proportioned, gentle face but with an underlying strength. At first glance she might have seemed a sweet-natured woman, given to obedience and pleasing those she loved, but there was an innate dignity to her that spoke of something far deeper than mere agreeableness, something untouchable by anything except love. Even in those few moments Monk understood why Lucius Stourbridge was prepared to spend so much heartache searching for her, regardless of the truth of James Treadwell’s death.

"Mrs. Gardiner," he said quietly. "I am not from the police. But nor am I from Mrs. Anderson. I lied about that because I feared you would leave before I could speak to you if you knew I came from Lucius Stourbridge."

She froze, oblivious of the pots on the stove steaming till their lids rattled in the silence that filled the room. Her terror was almost palpable in the air.

Monk was aware of Mrs. Whitbread beside him. He saw the fury in her eyes, her body stiff, lips drawn into a thin line. He was grateful the skillet was on the far wall beyond her reach, or he believed she might well have struck him with it.

"I haven’t come to try to take you back to Bayswater," he said quietly, facing Miriam. "Or to the police. If you would prefer that I did not tell Mr. Stourbridge where you are, then I will not. I shall simply tell him that you are alive and unhurt. He is desperate with fear for you, and that will offer him some comfort, although hardly an explanation."

Miriam stared back, her face almost white, an anguish in it that made him feel guilty for what he was doing, and frightened for what he might discover.

"He does not know what to believe," he said softly. "Except that you could and would do no intentional evil."

She drew in her breath, and her eyes spilled over with tears. She wiped the moisture away impatiently, but it was a moment before she could control herself enough to speak.

"I cannot go back." It was a statement of absolute fact. There was no hope in her voice, no possibility of change.

"I can try to keep the police from you," he replied, as if it were the answer to what she had said. "But I may not succeed. They are not far behind me."

Mrs. Whitbread walked around him and went over to the stove, taking the pans off it before they boiled over. She looked across at Monk with bitter dislike.

Miriam stepped out of her way, farther into the middle of the room.

"What happened?" Monk asked as gently as he could.

She coughed a little, clearing her throat. Her voice was husky. "Is Cleo—Mrs. Anderson—all right?"

"Yes." There was no purpose in pointing out Cleo Anderson’s danger if Robb felt she was concealing information or even that it was not coincidence that had taken Treadwell to her front path.

Miriam seemed to relax a little. A faint tinge of color returned to her cheeks.

"Where did you last see Treadwell?" he asked.

Her lips tightened, and she shook her head a tiny fraction, not so much a denial to him as to herself.

He kept his voice low, patient, as devoid of threat as he could.

"You’ll have to answer sometime, if not to me, then to the police. He was murdered, beaten over the head—" He stopped. She had turned so ashen-pale he feared she was going to faint. He lunged forward and caught her by the arms, steadying her, pushing her sideways and backwards into the kitchen chair, for a moment supporting her weight until she sank into it.

"Get out!" Mrs. Whitbread commanded furiously. "You get out of here!" She reached for the rolling pin or the skillet to use on him.

He stood his ground, but wary of her. "Put the kettle on," he ordered. "Sending me away isn’t going to answer this. When the police come, and they will, they’ll not come in friendship as I do. All they will want will be evidence and justice—or what they believe to be justice."

Miriam closed her eyes. It was all she could do to breathe slowly in and out, or to keep consciousness.

Mrs. Whitbread, reluctantly, turned and filled the kettle, putting it on the hob. She eyed Monk guardedly before she took out cups, a teapot, and the round tin caddy. Then she went to the larder for milk, her heels tapping on the stone floor.

Monk sat down opposite Miriam.

"What happened?" he asked. "Where was Treadwell when you last saw him? Was he alive?"

"Yes ..." she whispered, opening her eyes, but they were filled with horror so deep the words gave him no comfort at all.

"Were you there when he was killed?"

She shook her head, barely an inch.

"Do you know who killed him or why?"

She said nothing.

Mrs. Whitbread came back with a jug of milk in her hand. She glared at Monk, but she did not interrupt. She crossed the floor and tipped a little boiling water into the pot to warm it.

"Who killed Treadwell?" Monk repeated. "And why?"

Miriam stared at him. "I can’t tell you," she whispered. "I can’t tell you anything. I can’t come with you. Please go away. I can’t help—there’s nothing—nothing I can do."

There was such a terrible, hopeless pain in her voice the argument died on his lips.

The kettle started to shrill. Mrs. Whitbread lifted it off the stove and turned to Monk.

"Go now," she said levelly, her eyes hard. "There’s nothing for you here. Tell Lucius Stourbridge whatever you have to, but go. If you come back, Miriam won’t be here. There’s plenty others who’ll hide her. If Mr. Stourbridge is the friend he says he is, he’ll leave well enough alone. You can see yourself out." She still held the kettle, steam pouring out of its spout. It wasn’t exactly a threat, but Monk did not misunderstand the determination in her.

He rose to his feet, took a last glance at Miriam, then went to the door. Then he remembered Robb and changed his mind. The back kitchen door probably led to an area for coal or coke and then an alleyway.

"I’ll tell Mr. Stourbridge you are alive and well," he said softly. "No more than that. But the police won’t be far behind me, I know that for certain. I’ve been dodging them for the last two days."

Mrs. Whitbread understood his thought. She nodded. "Go left," she ordered. "You’ll come to the street again. Watch for the ash cans."

"Was that all she said?" Hester was incredulous when he recounted to her what had happened. They were in the comfortable room where he received clients and which also served as sitting room. The windows were open to the warm evening air drifting in. There was a rustle of leaves from a tree close by, and in the distance the occasional clip of hooves from the traffic on the street.

"Yes," he answered, looking across at her. She was not sewing, as other women might have been. She did needle-work only as necessity demanded. She was concentrating entirely upon what he was saying, her back straight, her shoulders square, her eyes intent upon his face. All the confusion and tragedy he was aware of could not stifle the deep well of satisfaction within him that underlay everything else. She infuriated him at times; they still disagreed over countless things. He could have listed her faults using the fingers of both hands. And yet as long as she was there, he would never be alone and nothing was beyond bearing.

"What was she like?" she asked.

He was startled. "Like?"

"Yes," she said impatiently. "She didn’t give you any explanations? She didn’t tell you why she ran away from the Stourbridges’ party? You did ask her, I suppose?"

He had not asked. By that point he already knew she would not tell him.

"You didn’t!" Hester’s voice rose an octave.

"She refused to tell me anything," he said clearly. "Except that she was not there when Treadwell was killed. I don’t think she even knew he was dead. When I told her that, she was so horrified she was almost incapable of speech. She all but fainted."

"So she knows something about it!" Hester said instantly.

That was an unwarranted leap of deduction, and yet he had made exactly the same one. He looked across at her and smiled bleakly.

"So you have learned no new facts," she said.

"There’s the fact that Mrs. Whitbread was prepared to fight to defend her, and risk the police coming after her instead," he pointed out. "And the fact that almost certainly Robb will find her, sooner or later." He did not want to tell Hester about Robb’s opinion of him. It was painful, a dark thing he preferred she did not know.

"So, what was she like?" she asked again.

He did not make any evasions or comments on the obscurity of feminine logic.

"I’ve never seen anyone more afraid," he said honestly. "Or more anguished. But I don’t believe she will tell me—or anyone else—what happened or why she is running. Certainly, she won’t tell Lucius Stourbridge."

"What are you going to do?" Her voice was little more than a whisper, and her eyes were full of pity.

He realized he had already made his decision.

"I will tell Stourbridge that I found her and she is alive and well, and that she says she had no part in Treadwell’s death, but I will not tell him where she is. I daresay she will not be there by the time I report to him anyway. I warned her that Robb was close behind me." He did not need to add the risk he took in so doing. Hester knew it.

"Poor woman," she said softly. "Poor woman."

5

IT WAS the sixth day of Monk’s enquiry into Miriam Gardiner’s flight. Hester had gone to sleep thinking about her. She wondered what tragedy had drawn her to such an act that she could not speak of it, even to the man she was to marry.

But it was not that which woke her, shaking and so tense her head throbbed with a stiff, sharp pain. She had an overwhelming sense of fear, of something terrible happening which she was helpless to prevent and inadequate to deal with. It was not a small thing, or personal to herself, but of all-consuming proportions.

Beside her, Monk was asleep, his face relaxed and completely at peace in the clear, early light. He was as oblivious of her as if they had been in separate rooms, different worlds.

It was not the first time she had woken with this feeling of helplessness and exhaustion, and yet she could not remember what she had been dreaming, either now or before.

She wanted to wake Monk, talk to him, hear him say it was all of no importance, unreal, belonging to the world of sleep. But that would be selfish. He expected more strength from her. He would be disappointed, and she could not bear that. She lay staring at the ceiling, feeling utterly alone, because it was how she had woken and she could not cast it away. There was something she longed to escape from, and she knew that was impossible. It was everywhere around her.

The light through the chink in the curtains was broadening across the floor. In another hour or so it would be time to get up and face the day. Fill her mind with that. It was always better to be busy. There were battles worth fighting; there always were. She would speak to Fermin Thorpe again. The man was impossible to reason with because he was afraid of change, afraid of losing control and so becoming less important.

It would probably mean more of the interminable letters, few of which ever received a useful answer. How could anyone write so many words which, when disentangled from their dependent clauses and qualifying additions, actually had no meaning?

Florence Nightingale was confined to her home—some said, even to her bed—and spent nearly all her time writing letters.

Of course, hers were highly effective. In the four years since the end of the war she had changed an enormous number of things, particularly to do with the architecture of hospitals. First, naturally, her attention had been upon military hospitals, but she had won that victory, in spite of a change of government and losing her principal ally. Now she was bending her formidable will towards civilian hospitals and, just as Hester was, to the training of nurses. But it was a battle against stubborn and entrenched interests that held great power. Fermin Thorpe was merely one of many, a typical example of senior medical men throughout the country.

And poor Florence’s health had declined ever since her return. Hester found that hard to accept, even to imagine. In Scutari, Florence had seemed inexhaustible—the last sort of woman on earth to succumb to fainting and palpitations, unexplained fevers and general aches and weaknesses. And yet, apparently that was now the case. Several times her life had been despaired of. Her family was no longer permitted to visit her in case the emotion of the occasion should prove too much for her. Devoted friends and admirers gave up their own pursuits to look after her until the end should come, and make her last few months on earth as pleasant as possible.

Time and again this had happened. And lately, if anything, she seemed to be recovered and bursting with new and vigorous ideas. She had proposed a school for training nurses and was systematically attacking the opposition. It was said nothing delighted her as much as a set of statistics which could be used to prove the point that clean water and good ventilation were necessary to the recovery of a patient.

Hester smiled to herself as she remembered Florence in the hot Turkish sun, determinedly ordering an army sergeant to bring her his figures on the dead of the past week, their date of admittance to the hospital and the nature of their injuries and cause of death. The poor man had been so exhausted he had not even argued with her. One pointless task was much like another to him, only his pity for his fellows and his sense of decency had made him reluctant to obey. Florence had tried to explain to him, her pale face alight, eyes brilliant, that she could learn invaluable information from such things. Deductions could be made, lessons learned, mistakes addressed and perhaps corrected. People were dying who did not need to, distress was caused which could have been avoided.

The army, like Fermin Thorpe, did not listen. That was the helplessness which overwhelmed her—injury, disease and death all around, too few people to care for the sick, ignorance defeating so much of even the little they could have done.

What an insane, monstrous waste! What a mockery of all that was good and happy and beautiful in life!

And here she was, lying warm and supremely comfortable in bed with Monk asleep beside her. The future stretched out in front of her with as bright a promise as the day already shining just beyond the curtain. It would be whatever she made of it. Unless she allowed the past to darken it, old memories to cripple her and make her useless.

She still wanted to wake Monk and talk to him—no, that was not true, what she wanted was that he should talk to her. She wanted to hear his voice, hear the assurance in it, the will to fight—and win.

She would have liked to get up and do something to keep herself from thinking, but she would disturb him if she did, and that would be the same thing as having deliberately woken him. So she lay still and stared at the patterns of sunlight on the ceiling until eventually she went back to sleep again.

When she woke the second time it was to find Monk waking her gently. She felt as if she had climbed up from the bottom of a well, and her head still hurt.

She smiled at him and forced herself to be cheerful. If he noticed any artificiality about it, he did not say so. Perhaps he was thinking of Miriam Gardiner already, and still worrying about what he could do to help her and what he would say to Lucius Stourbridge.

It was midmorning, as she was coming down the main corridor, when she encountered Fermin Thorpe.

"Oh, good morning, Miss—Mrs. Monk," he said, coming to a halt so that it was obvious he wished to speak with her. "How are you today?" He continued immediately so that she should not interrupt him by replying. "With regard to your desire that women should be trained in order to nurse, I have obtained a copy of Mr. J. F. South’s book, published three years ago, which I am sure will be of interest to you and enlighten you on the subject." He smiled at her, meeting her eyes very directly.

They were passed by a medical student whom he ignored, an indication of the gravity of his intent.

"You may not be familiar with who he is, so I shall tell you, so you may correctly judge the importance of his opinion and give it more weight." He straightened his shoulders slightly and lifted his chin. "He is senior consulting surgeon at Saint Thomas’s Hospital, and more than that, he is president of the College of Surgeons and Hunterian Orator." He gave the words careful emphasis so she should not miss any part of their importance. "I quote for you, Miss—Mrs. Monk, he is"—his voice became very distinct—" ’not at all disposed to allow that the nursing establishments of our hospitals are inefficient or that they are likely to be improved by any special Institution for Training.’ As he further points out, even sisters in charge of wards do, and can, only learn by experience." He smiled at her with increasing confidence. "Nurses themselves are subordinates, in the position of housemaids, and need only the simplest of instructions."

Two nurses passed them, faces flushed with exertion, sleeves hitched up.

Hester opened her mouth to protest, but he continued, raising his voice very slightly to override her. "I am perfectly aware of Miss Nightingale’s fund for training young women," he said loudly. "But I must inform you, madam, that only three surgeons and two physicians are to be found among its supporters. That, surely, is an unfailing mark of the regard in which it is held by professional men who are the most highly qualified and experienced in the country. Now, Mrs. Monk"—he pronounced her name with satisfaction at having remembered it—"I trust you will turn your considerable energies towards the true welfare of both the nurses here and the patients, and attend to their cleanliness, their sobriety and their obedience to do what they are commanded, both punctually and exactly. Good day." And without waiting for her reply, which he seemingly took for granted in the affirmative, he strode away purposefully towards the operating theater, satisfied he had dealt with the subject finally.

Hester was too furious to speak for the first few moments, then, when she could have spoken, no words seemed adequate to express her disgust. She marched in the opposite direction, towards the physicians’ waiting room.

There she found Cleo talking to an old man who was obviously frightened and doing his best to conceal it. He had several open ulcers on both his legs which must have been acutely painful and looked as if they had been there for some time. He smiled at Cleo, but his hands were clenched till his knuckles were white and he sat rigidly upright.

"You need them dressed regularly," Cleo said gently. "Gotta keep them clean or they’ll never heal up. I’ll do it for you, if you come here and ask for me."

"I can’t come ’ere every day," he answered, his voice polite but with absolute certainty. "In’t possible, miss."

"Isn’t it, now." She regarded him thoughtfully, looking down at the worn boots and threadbare jacket. "Well, I suppose I’ll have to come to you, then. How far, is it?"

"An’ why would you be doing that?" he asked dubiously.

" Because those sores aren’t going to get any better otherwise," she replied tartly.

"I in’t askin’ no favors," he said, bristling. "I don’t want no nurse woman comin’ into my ’ouse! Wot’ll the neighbors think o’ me?"

Cleo winced. "That you’re damn lucky at your age to be pulling a nice-looking woman like me!" she snapped back at him.

He smiled in spite of himself. "But yer can’t come, all the same."

She looked down at him patiently. "Call yourself a soldier, and can’t take orders from someone who knows better than you do—and make no mistake, I’m your sergeant w’en it comes ter them sores."

He drew in his breath, then let it out again without answering.

"Well?" Cleo demanded. "You going to tell me where you live, or waste me time having to find out?"

"Church Row," he said reluctantly.

"And I’m going to walk up and down the whole lot asking for you, am I?" Cleo said with raised eyebrows.

"Number twenty-one."

"Good! Like drawin’ teeth, it is!"

He was not sure whether she was joking or not. He smiled uncertainly.

She smiled back at him, then saw Hester and came over to her, trying to look as if she were not out of composure.

"I’m not going to do it in hospital time," she said in a whisper. "Poor old soul fought at Waterloo, he did, an’ look at the state of him." Her expression darkened, and she forgot the appropriate deference to a social superior. Anger filled her eyes. "All for soldiers, we was, when we thought them French was gonna invade us and we could lose. Now, forty-five years on, we forgotten all about how fit we was, and who wants to care for some old man with sores all over his legs who’s got no money an’ talks about wars we don’t know nothing about?"

Hester thought vividly of the men she had known in Scutari and Sebastopol, and the surgeons’ tents after that chaotic charge at Balaclava. They had been so young, and in such terrible pain. It was their ashen faces that had filled her dreams the previous night. She could see them sharp in her mind’s eye. Those that had survived would be old men in forty years’ time. Would people remember them then? Or would a new generation be accustomed to peace, and resentful and bored by old soldiers who carried the scars and the pain of old wars?

"See that he’s cared for," Hester said quietly. "That’s what matters. Do it whenever you wish."

Cleo stared back at her, eyes widening a little, uncertain for a moment whether to believe her. They barely knew each other. Here they had one purpose, but they went home to different worlds.

"Those debts cannot ever be understood," Hester answered her. "Let alone paid."

Cleo stood still.

"I was at Scutari," Hester explained.

"Oh ..." It was just a single word, less than a word, but there was understanding in it, and profound respect. Cleo nodded a little and went to the next patient.

Hester left the room again. She was in no mood now to see that moral standards were observed or that any nurse was clean, neat, punctual and sober.

As she went back along the corridor she was passed by a nurse arriving with her shawl still on.

"You’re late!" Hester said tartly. "Don’t do it again!"

The woman was startled. "No, miss," she said obediently, and hurried on, head down, pulling off the shawl as she went.

Just outside the apothecary’s room, Hester passed a young medical student, unshaven and with his jacket flapping open.

"You are untidy, sir," she said with equal tartness. "How do you expect your patients to have confidence in you when you look as if you had slept in your clothes and come in with the first post? If you aspire to be a gentleman, then you had better look like one!"

He was so startled he did not reply to her, but stood motionless as she swept past him and on to the surgeons’ waiting room.

She spent the morning attempting to comfort and hearten the men and women awaiting care. She had not forgotten Florence Nightingale’s stricture that the mental pain of a patient could be at least equal to the physical and that it was a good nurse’s task to dispel doubt and lift spirits wherever possible. A cheerful countenance was invaluable, as were pleasant conversation and a willingness to listen with sympathy and optimism.