The Twisted Root (18 page)

"What is it?" he asked, seeing the droop in her shoulders and reading her too well to think it was only weariness.

"They’ve found Miriam," she replied, looking up at him from where she had sat down to unlace her boots.

He stood still in the doorway, staring at her.

"They arrested her," she finished quietly. "Michael Robb thinks she killed Treadwell, either because he knew something about her which would have ended her chance of marrying Lucius or because she was having an affair with him and wanted to end it."

His face was grave, the lines harder. "How do you know that?"

She realized the necessity for explanation, a little late. "I was visiting his grandfather, because he is seriously ill, when Sergeant Robb came home."

"And Robb just told you this?" His eyes were wide and steady.

"He knew I was your wife."

"Oh." He hesitated. "And do you think Miriam killed Treadwell?" He was watching her, trying to read not only her words but her feelings. He looked strangely defeated, as if he had felt the same unreasoning hope that Miriam could be innocent.

It was very sweet not to be alone in her sense of disappointment, even disillusion.

She took her boots off and wriggled her feet, then stood up and walked over to him. She smiled and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Thank you for the dinner."

He grinned with satisfaction. "Don’t make a habit of it," he said smugly.

She knew better than to reply. She walked a step behind him to the table.

6

MONK WAS UNABLE to rid his mind of the thought of Miriam Gardiner’s arrest. He slept deeply, but when he awoke the memory of her distress twisted his thoughts until he had no choice but to determine to see her.

In case there might be any difficulty with the prison authorities, he lied without compunction, meeting the jailer’s gaze with candor and saying he was her legal adviser, with whom, of course, she was entitled to consult.

Monk found her sitting alone in a cell, her hands folded in her lap, her face pale but so composed as to be in a way frightening. There was no anger in her, no will to fight, no outrage at injustice. She seemed neither pleased nor displeased to see him, as if his presence made no difference with regard to anything that mattered.

The cell door clanged behind him, and he heard the heavy bolt shoot home. The floor was perhaps five paces by five, black stone, the walls whitewashed. A single high aperture was heavily glassed, letting in light but not color. The sky beyond could have been blue or gray. The air was stuffy, smelling of decades, perhaps centuries, of anger and despair.

"Mrs. Gardiner ..." he began. He had rehearsed what to say to her, but now it seemed inadequate. Intelligence was needed, even brilliance, if he was to help her in this dreadful situation of confusion and pain, and yet all that seemed natural or remotely appropriate was emotion. "I hoped Robb would not find you, but since he has, please allow me to do what I can to help."

She looked at him blankly, her face almost expressionless. "You cannot help, Mr. Monk. I mean that as no reflection upon your abilities, simply that my situation does not allow it."

He sat down facing her. "What happened?" he asked urgently. "Do you know who killed Treadwell?"

She kept her eyes averted, staring into some dark space that only she could see.

"Do you know?" he repeated more sharply.

"There is nothing I can tell you which will help, Mr. Monk." There was finality in her voice, no lift of hope, not even of argument. She had no will to fight.

"Did you kill him?" he demanded.

She lifted her head slowly, her eyes wide. Before she spoke, he knew what she was going to say.

"No."

"Then who did?"

She looked away again.

His mind raced. The only reason for her silence must be to protect someone. Had she any conception of what it was going to cost her?

"Did Treadwell threaten you?" he asked.

"No." But there was no surprise in her voice or in the profile of her face. Whom was she protecting? Cleo Anderson, who had been almost a mother to her? Some other lover from the past, or a relative of her first husband?

"Was he threatening someone else? Blackmailing you?" he persisted. All sorts of arguments sprang to his lips about not being able to help her if she would not help herself, but they died unspoken because it was too painfully apparent she had no belief that help was possible. "Was Treadwell blackmailing you about something in your life here in Hampstead?"

"No." She lifted her head again. "There was nothing to blackmail me about." Tears filled her eyes. Emotion had broken through the ice of despair for a few moments, then it withered again. The stark cell with its wooden cot and straw mattress, the bare walls and stifling air were hardly real to her. Her world was within herself and her own pain. Surely, she had not yet even imagined what would follow if she did not present some defense. Either she had some reason for attacking Treadwell or else it was simply someone else who had killed him. The only other alternative was that she had not even been present and had no idea what had happened. Then why did she not say so?

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 the 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.