The Twisted Root (37 page)

"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 the 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.

"Mrs. Gardiner fled when she realized that you had recognized her—at least that is your assumption?"

"Yes."

"Did you follow her?"

"No, of course not. I had no reason to."

"You remained at the party?"

"Not specifically at the party. I remained at Cleveland Square. I was very upset about the matter. I moved a little farther off in the garden, to be alone and think what to do... and what to say when the rest of the family would inevitably discover that she had gone."

"And what did you decide, Mr. Campbell?"

"To say nothing," Campbell answered. "I knew this story would hurt them all profoundly. They were very fond of Miriam. Lucius was in love with her as only a young and idealistic man can be. I believe it was his first love ..." He left the sentence hanging, allowing each man to remember his own first awakenings of passion, dreams, and perhaps loss.

"I see," Tobias said softly. "Only God can know whether that decision was the right one, but I can well understand why you made it. I am afraid I must press you further on just one issue."

"Yes?"

"The coachman, James Treadwell. Why do you think she left with him?"

"He was the servant in the house she knew the best," Campbell replied. "I gather he had driven her from Hampstead a number of times. I shall not speculate that it was anything more than that."

"Very charitable of you," Tobias observed. "Considering your knowledge of her previous behavior with menservants."

Campbell narrowed his lips, but he did not answer.

"Tell me," Tobias continued, "how did this wretched coachman know of Mrs. Anderson’s stealing of hospital supplies?"

"I have no idea." Campbell sounded surprised, then his face fell. He shook his head. "No—I don’t believe Miriam told him. She was conniving, manipulative, greedy—but no. Unless it was by accident, not realizing what he would do with the information."

"Would it not be the perfect revenge?" Tobias asked smoothly. "Her marriage to Lucius Stourbridge is now impossible because she knows you will never allow it. Treadwell is ruining her friend and benefactress, to whom she must now return. In rage and defeat, and even desperation, she strikes out at him! What could be more natural?"

"I suppose so," Campbell conceded.

Tobias turned to the judge. "My lord, this is surely sufficient tragedy for one day. If it pleases the court, I would like to suggest we may adjourn until tomorrow, when Sir Oliver may put forward any other evidence he feels may salvage his case. Personally, I have little more to add."

The judge looked at Rathbone enquiringly, but his gavel was already in his hand.

Rathbone had no weapons and no will to fight any further.

"Certainly, my lord," he said quietly. "By all means."

Rathbone had barely left the courtroom when he was approached by the usher.

He did not wish to speak to anyone. He was tasting the full bitterness of a defeat he knew he had brought upon himself. He dreaded facing Hester and seeing her disillusion. She would not blame him. He was certain she would not be angry. Her kindness would be even harder to bear.

"What is it?" he said brusquely.

"Sorry, Sir Oliver," the usher apologized. "Mrs. Anderson asked if you would speak with her, sir. She said it was most important."

The only thing worse than facing Hester was going to be telling Cleo Anderson that there was nothing more he could attempt on her behalf. He drew in his breath. It could not be evaded. If victory could be accepted and celebrated, then defeat must be dealt with with equal composure, and at the very least without cowardice or excuses.

"Of course," he replied. "Thank you, Morris." He turned and was a dozen yards along the corridor when Hester caught up with him. He had no idea what to say to her. There was no comfort to offer, no next line of attack to suggest.

She fell into step with him and said nothing.

He glanced at her, then away again, grateful for her silence. He had not seen Monk, and assumed he was on some other business.

Cleo was waiting in the small room with the jailer outside. She was standing facing them, and she stepped forward as soon as Rathbone closed the door.

"He’s lying," she said, looking from one to the other of them.

He was embarrassed. It was futile to protest now, and he had not the emotional strength to struggle with her. It was over.

He shook his head. "I’m sure you want to believe—"

"It has nothing to do with belief! I saw her then. She wasn’t aborted. She’d gone full term." She was angry now with his lack of understanding. "I’m a nurse. I know the difference between a woman who’s given birth and one who’s lost her child or done away with it in the first few months. That child was born—dead or alive. The size of her—and she had milk, poor little thing." She swallowed. "How she wept for it..."

"So Campbell is lying!" Hester said, moving forward to Cleo. "But why?"

"To hide what he did to her," Cleo said furiously. "He must have raped her, and when she was with child he threw her out." She looked from Hester to Rathbone. "Though he didn’t even notice her condition. Who looks at housemaids, especially ones who are barely more than children themselves? Perhaps he’d already got tired of her—moved on to someone else? Or if he thought she’d had it aborted, and only then realized she hadn’t, to avoid the scandal."

"It wouldn’t be much of a scandal," Hester said sadly. "If she was foolish enough to say it was his, he would simply deny it. No one would be likely to believe her... or frankly, care that much even if they did. It isn’t worth murdering anyone over."

Cleo’s face crumpled, but she refused to give in. "What about the body?"

"Which body?" Rathbone was confused. "The baby?"

"No—no, the woman!"

"What woman?"

"The woman Miriam saw murdered the night her baby was born. The woman on the Heath."

Rathbone was still further confused. "Who was she?"

Cleo shook her head. "I don’t know. Miriam said she had been murdered. She saw it—that was what she was running away from."

"But who was the woman?"

"I don’t know!"

"Was there ever a body found? What happened? Didn’t the police ask?"

Cleo waved her hands in denial, her eyes desperate. "No— no body was ever found. He must have hidden it."

It was all pointless, completely futile. Rathbone felt a sense of despair drowning him as if he could hardly struggle for breath, almost a physical suffocation.

"You said yourself that she was hysterical." He tried to sound reasonable, not patronizing or offensive to a woman who must be facing the most bitter disillusion imaginable, and for which she would face disgrace she had not deserved, and a death he could not save her from. "Don’t you think the loss of her baby was what she was actually thinking of? Was it a girl?"

"I don’t know. She didn’t say." Cleo looked as if she had caught his despair. "She seemed so—so sure it was a woman... someone she cared for... who had helped her, even loved her... I—" She stopped, too weary, too hurt, to go on.

"I’m sorry," Rathbone said gently. "You were right to tell me about the baby. If Campbell was lying, at least we may be able to make something of that. Even if we do no more than save Miriam’s reputation, I am sure that will matter to her." He was making wild promises and talking nonsense. Would Miriam care about such a thing when she faced death?

He banged on the door to be released again, and as soon as they were outside he turned to Hester.

But before he could begin to say how sorry he was, she spoke.

"If this woman really was killed, then her body must still be there."

"Hester—she was delirious, probably weak from loss of blood and in a state of acute distress from delivering a dead child."

"Maybe. But perhaps she really did see a woman murdered," Hester insisted. "If the body was never found, then it is out there on the Heath."

"For twenty-two years! On Hampstead Heath! For heaven’s sake..."

"Not in the open! Buried—hidden somewhere."

"Well, if it’s buried no one would find it now."

"Perhaps it’s not buried." She refused to give up. "Perhaps it’s hidden somehow, concealed."

"Hester..."

"I’m going to find Sergeant Robb and see if he will help me look."

"You can’t. After all this time there’ll be nothing..."

"I’ve got to try. What if there really was a woman murdered? What if Miriam was telling the truth all the time?"

"She isn’t!"

"But what if she was? She’s your client, Oliver! You’ve got to give her the benefit of every doubt. You must assume that what she says is true until it is completely proved it can’t be."

"She was thirteen, she’d just given birth to a dead child, she was alone and hysterical..."

"I’m going to find Sergeant Robb. He’ll help me look, whatever he believes, for Cleo’s sake. He owes her a debt he can never repay, and he knows that."

"And doubtless if he should forget, you will remind him."

"Certainly!" she agreed. "But he won’t forget."

"What about Monk?" he challenged her as she turned to leave.

"He’s still busy trying to find out more about Treadwell and the corpses," she said over her shoulder.

"Hester, wait!"

But she had walked off, increasing her pace to a run, and short of chasing after her there was nothing he could do— except try to imagine how he was going to face the court the next morning.

Michael Robb was sitting alone in the room where until recently his grandfather had spent his days. The big chair was still there, as if the old man might come back to it one day, and there was a startling emptiness without him.

"Mrs. Monk," Robb said with surprise. "What is it? Is something wrong?"

"Everything is wrong," she answered, remaining standing in spite of his invitation to sit. "Cleo is going to be convicted unless we can find some sort of evidence that Miriam also is innocent, and our only chance of that is to find the body of the woman..."