The Twisted Root

all. He is not especially close to either Harry or Lucius. They are friendly enough, but they will not continue Verona’s generosity."
    Another blind alley.
    Hester bit her lip. "Then we must find out if it was Major Stourbridge. However unpleasant, if that is the truth, we should know it."
    "It would make sense," Rathbone admitted, pushing his hands into his pockets and taking them out again immediately. He had been taught not to put his hands in his pockets in boyhood, because it looked casual and pulled his clothes out of shape. He turned to Monk.
    "Yes," Monk agreed, not to the likelihood but to accepting the task before Rathbone could ask him. "I should have pursued it before. I didn’t look at the Stourbridges, either ofthem."
    "I don’t know what you can find in a day or two," Rathbone said wretchedly. "I’m going in with nothing! I have no other reasonable suspect to offer the jury, only ’person or persons unknown.’ Nobody’s going to believe that when Cleo and Miriam have perfect motives and every appearance of guilt."
    "They may be guilty," Monk reminded him. "Or one of them may, perhaps in conspiracy with someone else."
    "In the Stourbridge household?" Rathbone said with some sarcasm. "That has to be Miriam. And why, for the love of heaven?"
    "I don’t know," Monk said angrily. "But there is obviously some critical feature about the whole story that we haven’t found—even if it is only the reason both women would rather hang than tell the truth. We’d better damned well discover what it is!"
    Hester looked from Monk to Rathbone. "How long can you prolong the trial, Oliver?"
    "We seem to spend our time asking him to sing songs while we scramble to find something vital," Monk said bitterly. "I’ll start tomorrow morning as soon as it’s light. But I don’t even know where to look!"
    "What can I do to help?" Hester asked, more to Rathbone than to Monk.
    "I wish I knew," the lawyer confessed. "Cleo admits to taking the medicines. There is nothing we can do to mitigate that except show how she used them, and we already have all the witnesses we need for that. We have dozens of men and women to swear to her diligence, compassion, dedication, sobriety and honesty in all respects except that of stealing medicines from the hospital. We even have people who will swear she was chaste, modest and clean. It will achieve nothing. She was still paying Treadwell blackmail money, and he had all but bled her dry. The only decent meals she ate were those given her either at the hospital or by the people she visited. She even dressed in cast-off clothes left her by the dead!"
    Hester sat silently, steeped in misery.
    "I must go home," Rathbone said at last. "Perhaps a good night of sleep will clear my mind sufficiently to think of something." He bade them good-night and left, acutely conscious of loneliness. He would lie by himself in his smooth linen sheets. Monk would lie with Hester in his arms. The clear, moonlit night held no magic for him.

    Tobias was in an expansive mood when he called his first witness the next day, but he was careful not to exaggerate his manner. He was too clever to alienate a jury by seeming to gloat over his triumph, although Rathbone, sitting at his table, thought his care unnecessary. As things were going at present, and from all future prospect, Tobias could hardly lose, whatever he did.
    Neither Hester nor Monk was in the court, nor was Callandra Daviot. All of the Stourbridge family had yet to testify, and therefore were forbidden to be present in case anything they heard should influence what they themselves would say.
    Tobias’s first witness was the Stourbridges’ groom. He took great care to establish his exact position in the household and his so-far blameless reputation. He left no avenue, however small, for Rathbone to call into question either his honesty or his power of observation.
    Rathbone was quite satisfied that he should do so. He had no useful argument to make and no desire to try to blacken the man’s character. It was always a bad exercise in that it offended the jurors to malign a person who was no more than a witness and in no way involved in a crime. And it had the great advantage—indeed, at the moment the only advantage—in that it took time.
    All that he showed by it, unquestionably, was that Treadwell had on a number of occasions driven Miriam from Bayswater back to her home in Hampstead, or had collected her. He had also once or twice delivered