The Twisted Root (25 page)

"Yes, I suppose so. If it were ... someone she knew well. One would not receive—" He stopped, uncertainty filling his face again.

"We have already ascertained that it was not any of the servants," Robb said quietly. "That leaves only the family and Mrs. Gardiner."

Stourbridge looked as if he had been struck again.

"That is not p-possible," he stammered. "No one would—" He stopped. He was a man experienced in war, the violence and pain of battle and the horror of its aftermath. There was little that could shock or astound him, but this had cut deep into his emotion in a way the honesty of battle never could. He turned to Monk.

There was nothing Monk could alter, but he could ease the manner of dealing with it. Reality was a kind of healing—and the beginning of exerting some control over the chaos.

"We need to speak to everyone," he said, looking at Stourbridge and meeting his eyes. "Once we have eliminated the impossible, we will have a better idea of what happened."

"What? Oh, yes, I see. I don’t think I can be of much help." He seemed to focus a little more clearly. "I believe Aiden retired quite early to his room. He had a number of letters to write. He has been away from his home for a while. Verona ... Verona relied on him rather a lot. They have always been close. I ..." He took a deep breath and mastered himself with difficulty. "I was away a great deal during the early years of our marriage. Military duties." He looked beyond Monk into some distance within his memory. "A young army wife does not have an easy time. I was often posted to places where it was unsuitable for her to accompany me. No facilities for women, you see? We were fighting, moving about. She didn’t lack courage, but she hadn’t the physical strength. She ..."—he blinked fiercely — "she lost several babies ... early stages. Lucius was ... long waited for. She was thirty-five. We had all but given up." His voice cracked. "She longed for a child so much."

Monk was loath to interrupt him, even though he was wandering far from the point. He had known and loved her. Perhaps it was necessary to him to bring her back even in words, to try to make others see her as he had.

"When I was in Egypt and the Sudan," he went on, "which I was quite a lot, Aiden would be with her."

"Mrs. Gardiner..." Robb asked.

Stourbridge jerked up his head. "No! No—I cannot believe it of her."

Monk could not either, and yet the alternatives were little easier. Of course, it was possible Stourbridge himself was lying, but then anyone might be.

"What time did she retire?" he asked. "Perhaps you had better tell me the pattern of the whole evening, from sitting down to dinner."

Again Stourbridge looked not at either of his listeners but into the distance between them. "Miriam did not dine with us. She said she felt unwell and would have a tray sent up to her room. I don’t think she cared whether she ate or not; she did it to oblige us, and perhaps to avoid discussing the subject or causing Lucius to try to persuade her. In fact, she would not speak to him except in company."

"They had quarreled?" Robb asked quickly.

"No." He shook his head. "That is the thing I do not understand. Nor does he. There has been no quarrel at all. She speaks to him in the gentlest manner but will not explain why she left, nor what happened to Treadwell. And since the Anderson woman has been arrested, that question is no longer at issue." He frowned, creasing up his face. "She merely sits in her room and refuses to do or say anything beyond the barest civility."

"She is deeply distressed over Mrs. Anderson," Monk interposed. "She was in every sense except the literal a mother to her, perhaps the only one she knows."

Stourbridge looked down at the floor. "I forgot. Of course, she must be distressed beyond words. But I wish she would turn to us for comfort and not grieve by herself. We are at our wits’ end to know how to help her."

"No one can help," Monk replied. "It must simply be borne. Please describe what happened during dinner, any conversation of importance, especially any differences of opinion, however trivial."

Stourbridge looked up at him. "That’s just it, there were no differences. It was most agreeable. There was no shadow upon our lives except Miriam’s silence."

"What did you discuss?"

Robb was watching him, then looking at Monk.

Stourbridge shrugged very slightly, with no more than half a gesture.

"Egypt, as I recall. Verona came out there to see me once. It was marvelous. We saw such sights together. She loved it, even the heat, and the food she was unaccustomed to, and the strange ways of the native people." He smiled. "She kept a diary of it all, especially of the voyage back down the Nile. She allowed me to read some of it when I came here again. She shared it with Lucius, too. Had she been able to remain, he would have been born in Egypt. I think it was that knowledge which made him so keen to go there himself. It was almost as if he could remember it through her eyes." He stopped abruptly, the color rising in his cheeks. "I’m sorry. I’m sure that is far more detail than you require. I just remembered ... how close we were ... it was all so ... normal..."

"Is that all?" Monk pressed, seeking for something which could have precipitated the terrible violence he had seen. Egypt sounded such a harmless subject, something impersonal which any cultured family might have discussed pleasantly around the table.

"As far as I recall, Aiden said something about the political news, but it was a mere observation on the Foreign Secretary and his own feelings about the question of the unification of Germany. It was all..." He shook his head. "... of no importance. Verona retired to bed, Aiden to write letters. Lucius walked in the garden for a while. I don’t know when he came in, but doubtless the footman would."

They questioned him further, but he could add nothing which explained the emotions that had exploded in his wife’s bedroom, nor any fact which implicated anyone or precluded them.

Robb did not put words to his question, but it was clear in his face that he was struggling with the issue of whether Stourbridge himself could have killed his wife.

Monk was torn with the same indecision. He profoundly believed that he had not, but he was afraid it was his loyalty to a client and his personal liking for the man which were forming his judgment. There was nothing he had seen or heard that night which proved him innocent.

There was a knock on the door.

Robb rose and opened it.

Aiden Campbell came in. He was very pale, and his hands shook a little. His eyes were unnaturally bright and his body stiff. He moved clumsily.

"Surely, Harry didn’t call you into this?" he asked, looking at Monk with surprise.

"No. Sergeant Robb asked me to come, since I am already acquainted with some of the circumstances concerning the household," Monk replied.

"Oh—I see. Well, I suppose that is sensible enough," he conceded, coming a little farther into the room. "Anything that can be done to get this over as rapidly as possible. My family is suffering profoundly. First Mrs. Gardiner’s inexplicable behavior, and now this—this tragedy to my poor sister. We hardly know which way to turn. Lucius is—" He stopped. "Worsnip tells me you have found no indication of intruders. Is that correct?"

"Yes sir," Robb answered. "And I regret to say all your household staff are also accounted for."

"What?" Aiden turned to Monk.

"That is true, Mr. Campbell," Monk agreed. "Whoever killed Mrs. Stourbridge, it was one of her family. I’m sorry."

"Or it was Mrs. Gardiner," Aiden said quickly. "She is not family, Mr. Monk, not yet, and I fear after the events of the last two weeks, it were better that she not become so. It was a pity that the police saw fit to release her into Lucius’s custody. It would have been far better if she had gone back to her own people."

"Mrs. Anderson is the only one she has," Monk pointed out. "And she is presently in the Hampstead jail accused of murdering James Treadwell."

"Then someone else should have been found," Aiden protested. "She lived in Hampstead for twenty years. She must have other friends."

There was a moment’s silence.

"I apologize," Aiden said quietly, clenching his jaw and looking down. "That was uncalled for. This has been a terrible night." His voice broke. "I was very close to my sister ... all my life. Now my brother-in-law and my nephew are in the utmost distress, and there is nothing I can do to help them." He lifted his head again. "Except assist you to deal with this as rapidly as possible and leave us to begin a decent mourning."

Robb looked wretchedly uncomfortable. His rawness at murder showed clearly in his young face. Monk was also sharply aware that Robb could not afford to fail. He needed his job not only for himself but to provide for his grandfather. The shadows of weariness streaked his skin, and it obviously cost him an effort to stand straight-backed.

"We will do everything we can to solve this crime as quickly as we can, sir," he promised. "But we must go according to the law, and we must be right in the end. Now, if you would like to recount the evening as you remember it, sir?"

"Of course. From what time?"

"How about when you all sat down to dinner?"

Aiden sank into the large chair opposite where Robb and Monk were standing, then they also sat. He told them largely what Harry Stourbridge had, varying only in a description here and there. He had been asleep when Harry Stourbridge had awakened him to tell him of the terrible thing that had happened. He fancied that his man, Gibbons, could substantiate most of it.

"Well?" Robb asked when Aiden had gone and closed the door behind him. "Not much help, is it?"

"None at all," Monk agreed. "Can’t see any reason why he should lie. According to Stourbridge, he was on the best possible terms with his sister and always had been."

"I can’t see any money in it,’’ Robb added disconsolately. "If Mrs. Stourbridge had had any of her own before her marriage, it would belong to her husband since then, and Lucius would inherit it when his father dies ... along with the title and lands."

Monk did not bother to answer. "And if Mrs. Stourbridge gave Campbell any financial gifts or support that would end at her death. No, I can’t see any reason for him to be anything except exactly what he says. We’d better see Lucius."

This was the interview Monk was dreading the most, perhaps because Lucius had been his original client, and so far he had brought him only tragedy, one appalling disaster after another. And now it could appear as if he suspected Lucius of murder as well, or suspected Miriam, which Lucius might feel to be even worse. And yet, what alternative was there? The murderer was someone in the house—and not a servant. Not that he had seriously considered the servants.

When Lucius came he was haggard. His eyes were sunken with shock, staring fixedly from red-rimmed lids, and his dark complexion was bleached of all its natural warmth. He sat down as if he feared his legs might not support him. He did not speak, but waited for Monk, not regarding Robb except for a moment.

Monk had never flinched from duty, no matter how unpleasant. He tended, rather, to attack it more urgently, as if anger at it could overcome whatever pain there might be.

"Can you tell us what happened this evening from the time you sat down to dinner, and anything before that if it was remarkable in any way," he began.

"No." Lucius’s voice was a little higher than usual, as if his throat was so tight he could barely force the words through it. "It was the most ordinary dinner imaginable. We talked of trivia, entirely impersonal. It was mostly about Egypt." A ghost of dreadful humor crossed his face. "My father was describing Karnak and the great hall there, how massive it is, beyond our imagining. We speculated a while on what happened to a whole lost civilization capable of creating such beauty and power. Then he spoke of the Valley of the Kings. He described it for us. The depth of the ravines and how insignificant one feels standing on their floor staring up at a tiny slice of sky so vivid blue it seems to burn the eyes. He said it was a place to force one to think of God and eternity, whether one were disposed to or not. All those ancient pharaohs lying there in their huge sarcophagi with their treasures of the world around them—waiting out the millennia for some awakening to heaven, or hell. He knew a little of their beliefs. It was a strange, mystical conversation. My mother had been there to visit him before I was born. She was so lonely in England without him." His voice was so choked with tears he was obliged to stop.

Robb waited a few moments before he spoke. "And there were no disagreements?" he asked at length.

Lucius swallowed. "No, none. What is there to disagree about?"

"And Mrs. Gardiner was not at the table?"

Lucius’s face tightened. "No. She was not well. She is terribly distressed about Mrs. Anderson, who was in every way a mother to her for most of her life. How could she not be? I wish there were something we could do to help. Of course, we will find the best lawyer to represent her, but it looks terribly as if she is guilty. I would do anything to protect Miriam from it, but what is there?" He looked back at Monk as if he still hoped Monk might think of something.

"You have already done all you can," Monk agreed, "unless Mrs. Anderson herself can say something in mitigation, and so far she has refused to say anything at all. But tonight we have another issue to deal with, and that will not involve her." He saw Lucius wince. "Please continue. You were all together until your mother retired quite early?"

Lucius braced himself. "Yes. No one wanted to move; there was no point in separating," he said wearily. "We talked a little of politics, I can’t remember what. Something to do with Germany. No one was particularly interested. It was just something to say. I went for a walk in the garden. It was peaceful, and I preferred to be alone. I ... was thinking;’ He did not need to explain what troubled him.

"Did you see anyone as you came in or went upstairs?" Monk asked him.