The Twisted Root (20 page)

But was any blackmail worth the rope?

Or had she simply panicked, and now believed all was lost? That was only too credible.

He could not alone pursue all the other possible victims Treadwell might have had. That required the numbers of the police, and their authority.

He reached Robb’s home and knocked on the door. It was opened after several minutes by Robb himself, looking tired and harassed. He greeted Monk civilly but with a further tightening of the tension inside him.

"What is it? Be as brief as you may, please. I am late and I have not yet given my grandfather his breakfast."

Monk would like to have helped, but he had no skills that were of use. He felt the lack of them sharply.

"I have learned rather more about James Treadwell, and I thought I should share it with you. Let me tell you while you get breakfast," Monk offered.

Robb accepted reluctantly.

Monk excused himself to the old man, then, sitting down, recounted what he had discovered over the previous two days. As he did so, and Michael prepared bread and tea and assisted his grandfather, Monk’s eyes wandered around the room. He noticed the cupboard door open and the small stack of medicines, still well replenished, and that there were eggs in a bowl on the table by the sink and a bottle of sherry on the floor. Michael did very well by his grandfather. It must cost him every halfpenny of his sergeant’s wages. Monk knew what they were and how far they went. It was little enough for two, especially when one of them needed constant care and expensive medicines.

Michael cleared away the plate and cup and washed them in the pan by the sink, his back to the room.

The old man looked at Monk. "Good woman, your wife," he said gently. "Never makes it seem like a trouble. Comes here and listens to my tales with her eyes like stars. Seen the tears running down her cheeks when I told her about the death o’ the admiral an’ how we came home to England with the flags lowered after Trafalgar."

"She loved hearing it," Monk said sincerely. He could imagine Hester sitting in this chair, the vision so clear in her mind that the terror and the sorrow of it moved her to tears. "She must have been here some considerable time to hear such a long account."

"Seen a good bit o’ battle herself, she has," the old man said with a smile. "Told me about that. Calm and quiet as you like, but I could see in her eyes what she really felt. You can, you know. People who’ve really seen it don’t talk that much. Just sometimes you need to, an’ I could see it in her."

Was that true? Hester needed to speak of her experiences in the Crimea, even now. She shared it with this old man she barely knew rather than with him, or even Callandra. But then, they had not seen war. They could not understand, and this man could. Most of the time horror was best forgotten. Occasionally, it broke the surface of the mind and had to be faced. He knew that himself, sensing the ghosts of his past who were no more than shadows to him.

"She must have come several times," he said aloud.

The old man nodded. "Drops by every day, maybe just for half an hour or so, to see how I am. Not many people care about the old and the sick if they’re not their own."

"No," Monk agreed with a strangely sinking knowledge that that was true. It had not been said in self-pity but as a simple statement. He could imagine Hester’s anger and her pity, not just for John Robb but for all the untold thousands he represented. When he spoke it was from instinct. "Did she ask you about other sailors and soldiers?"

"You mean old men like me? Yes, she did. Didn’t she tell you?"

"I’m afraid I wasn’t paying as much attention as perhaps I should have been."

Robb smiled and nodded. He, too, had not always listened to women. He understood.

"She would care," Monk continued, hating himself for the thoughts of missing medicines and blackmail that were in his mind and that he could not ignore. "She’s a good nurse. Puts her patients before herself, like a good soldier, duty first."

"That’s right." The old man nodded, his eyes bright and soft. "She’s a real good woman. I seen a few good nurses. Come around now and again to see how you are."

Monk was aware of what he was doing, but he had to do it.

"And bring medicines?"

"Of course," Robb agreed. "Can’t go an’ get ’em myself, and young Michael here wouldn’t know what I needed, would he!"

He was unaware of anything wrong. He was speaking of kindness he had received. The darkness was all in Monk’s mind.

Michael finished cleaning and tidying everything so he would have as little as possible to do if he managed to slip home in the middle of the day. He left a cup of water where the old man could reach it, and a further slice of bread, and checked once more that he was as comfortable as he could make him. Then he turned to Monk.

"I must go to the police station. I’ll consider what you said. There could have been somebody else there when Treadwell was killed, but there’s no evidence of it or of who it was. And why did Miriam Gardiner run? Why doesn’t she tell us the truth now?"

Monk could think of several answers, but they were none of them convincing, nor did they disprove her guilt. The fear that was forming in his own mind he liked even less, but he could no longer evade it. He rose and took his leave of the old man, wishing him well and feeling a hypocrite, then followed Michael Robb out into the sunny, noisy street.

A hundred yards along they parted, Robb to the left, Monk to the right towards the hospital. He was now almost convinced he knew the cause of Hester’s anxiety and why she could not share it with him. Medicines had been disappearing from the hospital. When medicines disappeared in this way they were often stolen either to feed the addiction of the thief or to sell. Hester had been to John Robb’s house several times and must have observed the medicine cupboard. The old man had been quite candid in saying that the medicines were brought to him by a nurse. It was so easy from that to conclude that the thefts were not selfishly motivated, far from it. Someone was taking medicines to treat the old and the sick who were too poor to purchase them for themselves.

John Robb had no idea. Apart from the guilt and the danger involved, his pride would never have allowed him to accept help at such a risk. He accepted it because he believed it was already paid for.

Hester had been very precise about the words she used in denying knowledge of a crime—"not morally." Legally, it most certainly was.

The question was, could Treadwell have known?

Why not? He came to Hampstead on most of his days off. His body had been found on the path to the house of a nurse—Cleo Anderson. Monk remembered her vividly, her defense of Miriam and her denial of knowing where she was after her flight from Cleveland Square. He hated having to pursue this, but the conclusion was inescapable. It was Cleo Anderson whom Treadwell had been blackmailing, and it was anything but chance that he had been found on her path. Perhaps he had crawled there deliberately, knowing he was dying, determined to the last to incriminate her and find some kind of both justice for himself and revenge. His body would inevitably lead the police to her.

Perhaps, after all, Miriam had had nothing to do with the murder, but knowing why Cleo had stolen the medicines, and owing her a debt of gratitude for her past kindness, she could not earn her own release at the cost of Cleo’s implication. That would explain her silence. The debt was too great.

Monk found himself increasing his pace, dodging between pedestrians out strolling in the warm midmorning; peddlers offering sandwiches, toffee apples and peppermint drinks; and traders haggling over a good bargain. He barely saw them. The noise muted into an indistinguishable buzz. He wanted to get this over with.

He walked up the hospital steps and in at the wide, front entrance. Almost immediately he was greeted by a young man in a waistcoat and rolled-up shirtsleeves stained with blood.

"Good morning, sir!" he said briskly. "Is it a physician or a surgeon you require? What can we do for you, sir?"

Monk felt a wave of panic and quashed it with a violent effort. Thank God he had need of neither. The stoicism of those whose pain brought them here earned his overwhelming admiration.

"I am in good health, thank you," he said quickly. "I should like to see Lady Callandra Daviot, if she is here."

"I beg your pardon?" The young man looked nonplussed. It had obviously never occurred to him that anyone should wish to see a woman, any woman, rather than a qualified medical man.

"I should like to see Lady Callandra Daviot," Monk repeated very distinctly. "Or, if she is not here, then Mrs. Monk. Where may I wait?" He hated the place. The gray corridors smelled of vinegar and lye and reminded him of other hospitals, the one where he had awoken after the accident, not knowing who he was. The panic of that had long since receded, but it was too easily imagined again.

"Oh, try that way." The young man waved airily in the general direction of the physicians’ waiting room, then turned on his heel and continued the way he had been going.

Monk went to the waiting room, where half a dozen people sat around, tense with apprehension, too ill or too anxious to speak to one another. Mercifully, Callandra appeared after only a few moments.

"William! What are you doing here? I presume you wish to see Hester? I am afraid she is out. She has gone"—she hesitated—"to see a patient."

"Old and ill and poor, I imagine," he replied dryly.

She knew him too well. She caught the edge of deeper meaning in his voice. "What is it, William?" she demanded. Although he had naturally risen to his feet, and he was some eight inches taller than she, she still managed to make him feel as if he should respond promptly and truthfully.

"I believe you have been missing certain medicines from the apothecary’s rooms." It was a statement.

"Hester never called you in on the matter?" She was amazed and openly disbelieving.

"No, of course not. Why? Have you solved the problem?"

"I don’t think you need to concern yourself with it," she answered severely. "At least certainly not yet."

"Why? Because it is a nurse who has taken them?" That was only half intended to be a challenge, but it sounded like one.

"We do not know who it is," she replied. "And since you agree that Hester did not ask you to investigate for us, why are we discussing the matter? You can have no interest in it."

"You are wrong. Unfortunately, I do have." His voice dipped, the previous moment’s confrontation suddenly changed to sorrow. "I wish I could leave it alone. It is not the fact that you are missing them that concerns me, it is the chance that whoever took them may have been blackmailed over the thefts, even though I believe she put them to the best possible use."

"Blackmail!" Callandra stared at him in dismay.

"Yes ... and murder. I’m sorry."

She said nothing, but the gravity in her face showed her fear, and he felt that it also betrayed her guess as to what else lay beyond the thefts, to the steady draining away of supplies over months, perhaps years, to help those she perceived to be in need. It was a judgment no individual had the right to make, and yet if no one did, who would care and who would break the rules in order to show that they should be changed?

"Do you know who it is?" he asked.

She looked him straight in the eye. "I have not the slightest idea," she replied. They both understood it was a lie and that she would not change it. He did not really expect her to, nor would he have been pleased if she had.

"And neither has Hester!" she added firmly.

"No ... I thought not," he conceded with the ghost of a smile. "But you can give me an estimate as to how much and of which sorts."

She hesitated.

"Surely you would prefer to do that yourself than for me to have to ask someone else?" he said without blinking.

She realized it was a threat, very barely disguised. He would carry it through no matter how much he would dislike it.

"Yes," she capitulated. "Come with me and I will give you a list. It is only a guess, of course."

"Of course," he agreed.

Monk worked the rest of that day, and most of the following one, first with Callandra’s list of medicines, then seeing whom Cleo Anderson had visited and what illnesses afflicted them. He did not have to ask many questions among the sick and the poor. They were only too happy to speak well of a woman who seemed to have endless time and patience to care for their needs, and who so often brought them medicines the doctor had sent. No one questioned it or doubted where she had obtained the quinine, the morphine, or the other powders and infusions she brought. They were simply grateful.

The more he learned, the more Monk hated what he was doing. Time and again he stopped short of asking the final question which could have produced proof. He wrote nothing down. He had nothing witnessed and took no evidence of anything with him.

On the afternoon of the second day he turned his attention to Cleo Anderson herself, her home, her expenses, what she purchased and where. It had never occurred to him that she might ask any return for either the care she gave or the medicines she provided. Even so, he was startled to find how very frugal her life was, even more so than he would have expected from her nurse’s wages. Her clothes were worn thin and washed of almost all color. They fitted poorly and presumably had been given to her by grateful relatives of a patient who had died. Her food was of the simplest—again, often provided in the homes of those she visited: bread, oatmeal porridge, a little cheese and pickle. It seemed she frequently ate at the hospital and appeared glad of it.

The house was her own, a legacy from better times, but falling into disrepair and badly in need of reroofing.

No one knew her to drink or to gamble.

So where did her money go?

Monk had no doubt it went into the pocket of James Treadwell, at least so long as he had been alive. Since his death just two weeks before, Cleo Anderson had purchased a secondhand kitchen table and a new jug and bowl and two more towels, something she had not been known to do in several years.