The Twisted Root

reputation but my livelihood, both of which are of great value to me. Now—was James Treadwell blackmailing you or not?"
    She seemed to reach some decision. "No, he wasn’t. He could not know anything which would harm me. Except, I suppose, a connection with Cleo and the medicines, but he never mentioned it. I had no idea he was blackmailing her. If I had, I would have tried to do something about it."
    "What could you do?" He tried to keep the edge from his voice.
    She gave a tiny, halfhearted shrug. "I don’t know. I suppose if I had told Lucius, or Major Stourbridge, they might have dismissed him, without references, and made certain it was very hard for him to find new employment."
    "Would that not have driven him to expose Mrs. Anderson in retaliation?" he asked.
    "Perhaps." Then she stiffened and twisted around to stare at him, her face bleached with horror. "You think I killed him to protect Cleo?"
    "Did you?"
    "No! I didn’t kill him—for any reason!" The denial was passionate, ringing with anger and hurt. "Neither did Cleo!"
    "Then who did?"
    Her expression closed again, shutting him out. She averted her eyes.
    "Who are you protecting, if it isn’t Mrs. Anderson?" he asked very gently. "Is it Lucius?"
    She shivered, glanced up at him, then away again.
    "Did Treadwell injure you in some way, and Lucius fought with him and it went further than he intended?"
    "No." She sounded as if the idea surprised her.
    It had seemed to him so likely an answer he was disappointed that she denied it, and startled at himself for believing her for no better reason than the intonation of her voice and the angle and stiffness of her body.
    "Do you know who killed him, Mrs. Gardiner?" he demanded with sudden force.
    She said nothing. It was as good as an admission. He was frustrated almost beyond bearing. He had never felt more helpless, even though he had certainly dealt with many cases where people accused of fearful crimes had refused to tell him the truth and had in the end proved to be innocent, morally if not legally. Nothing in his experience explained Miriam Gardiner’s behavior.
    He refused to let it go. If anything, he was even more determined to defend both Miriam and Cleo, not for Hester and certainly not to prove himself to Monk, but for the case itself, for these two extraordinary, devoted and blindly stubborn women, and perhaps because he would not rest until he knew the truth. And maybe also for the principle.
    "Did Mrs. Stourbridge know anything about Treadwell or about Cleo Anderson?" he pursued.
    Again she was surprised. "No ... I can’t imagine how she could. I didn’t tell her, and I can hardly think that Treadwell would tell her himself. He was a—" She stopped. She seemed to be torn by emotions which confused her, pulling one way and then another: anger, pity, horror, despair.
    Rathbone tried to read what she was feeling, even to imagine what was in her mind, and failed utterly. There were too many possibilities, and none of them made sense entirely.
    "He was a man who did evil things," she said quietly at last, as much to herself as to him. "But he was not without virtue, and he is dead now, poor soul. I don’t think Mrs. Stourbridge knew anything about him except that he drove the carriage quite well—and, of course, that he was related to the cook."
    "Why was she killed?"
    She winced. "I don’t know." She did not look at him as she said it. Her voice was flat, the tone of it different.
    He knew she was lying.
    "Who killed her?"
    "I don’t know," she repeated.
    "Lucius?"
    "No!" This time she turned to look at him, eyes dark and angry.
    "Were you with him?"
    She said nothing.
    "You weren’t. Then how do you know he did not?"
    Again she said nothing.
    "It was the same person who killed both people?"
    She made a very slight movement. He took it for agreement.
    "Has it anything to do with the stolen medicines?"
    "No!" Suddenly she was completely frantic again. "No, it has nothing to do with Cleo at all. Please, Sir Oliver, defend her." Now she was pleading with him. "She is the best person I have ever known. The only thing she has done against the law is to take medicines to treat the ill who cannot afford to buy them. She made nothing for herself out of it." Her face was flushed. "How can that be so wrong that she deserves to die for it? If we were the Christian people we pretend to be, she wouldn’t have had to take them. We would care for our own old and sick. We would be grateful to those