The Twisted Root

raped her, it would hardly be the first time that had happened. Let us even say the woman on the Heath was a cook or housekeeper who knew about it, that’d be no reason to kill her."
    "Well, somebody killed her," Monk said flatly, setting out across the busy street, disregarding the traffic and obliging a dray to pull up sharply. He was unaware of it and did not even signal his thanks to the driver, who shouted at him his opinion of drunkards and lunatics in general and Monk in particular.
    Robb ran to catch up with him, raising a hand to the driver in acknowledgment.
    "We’ve nowhere else to start," Monk went on. "Where did you say Campbell lived—exactly?"
    Robb repeated the address. "But he moved to Wiltshire less than a year after that. There won’t necessarily be anyone there now who knows him or anything that happened."
    "There might be," Monk argued. "Some servants will have left; others prefer to stay in the area and find new positions, even stay in the house with whoever buys it. People belong to their neighborhoods."
    "It’s the far side of the Heath." Robb was having to hurry to keep up. "Do you want to take a hansom?"
    "If one passes us," Monk conceded, not slackening his pace. "If she wasn’t part of the household, who could she be? How was she involved? Was she a servant or a social acquaintance?"
    "Well, there was nobody reported missing around that time," Robb replied. "She wasn’t local, or somebody’d have said."
    "So nobody missed her?" Monk swung around to face Robb and all but bumped into a gentleman coming briskly the other way. "Then she wasn’t a neighbor or a local servant. This becomes very curious."
    They said no more until they reached the house where Aiden Campbell had lived twenty-one years before. It had changed hands twice since then, but the girl who had been the scullery maid was now the housekeeper, and the mistress had no objection to allowing Monk and Robb to speak with her; in fact, she seemed quite eager to be of assistance.
    "Yes, I was scullery maid then," the housekeeper agreed. "Miriam was the tweeny. Only a bit of a girl, she was, poor little thing."
    "You liked her?" Monk said quickly.
    "Yes—yes, I did. We laughed together a lot, shared stories and dreams. Got with child, poor little soul, an’ I never knew what happened to her then. Think it may ’ave been born dead, for all that good care was took of ’er. Not surprising, I suppose. Only twelve or so when she got like that."
    "Good care was taken of her?" Robb said with surprise.
    "Oh, yes. Had the midwife in," she replied.
    "How do you know she was a midwife?" Monk interrupted.
    "She said so. She lived ’ere for a while, right before the birth. I do know that because I ’elped prepare ’er meals, an’ took ’em up, on a tray, like."
    "You saw her?" Monk said eagerly.
    "Yes. Why? I never saw ’er afterwards:’
    Monk felt a stab of victory, and one of horror. "What was she like? Think hard, Miss Parkinson, and please be as exact as you can ... height, hair, age!"
    Her eyes widened. "Why? She done something as she shouldn’t?"
    "No. Please—describe her!"
    "Very ordinary, she was, but very pleasant-looking, an’ all. Grayish sort of hair, although I don’t reckon now as she was over about forty-five or so. Seemed old to me then, but I was only fifteen an’ anything over thirty was old."
    "How tall?"
    She thought for a moment. "About same as me, ordinary, bit less."
    "Thank you, Miss Parkinson—thank you very much."
    "She all right, then?"
    "No, I fear very much that she may be the woman whose body was found on the Heath."
    "Cor! Well, I’m real sorry." She said it with feeling, and there was sadness in her face as well as her voice. "Poor creature."
    Monk turned as they were about to leave. "You didn’t, by chance, ever happen to notice her boots, did you, Miss Parkinson?"
    She was startled. "Her boots?"
    "Yes. The buttons."
    Memory sparked in her eyes. "Yes! She had real smart buttons on them. Never seen no others like ’em. I saw when she was sitting down, her skirts was pulled sideways a bit. Well, I never! I’m real sorry to hear. Mebbe Mrs. Dewar’ll let me go to the funeral, since there won’t be many others as’ll be there now."
    "Do you remember her name?" Monk said, almost holding his breath for her answer.
    She screwed up her face in the effort to take her mind back to the past. She did not need his urging to understand the importance of it.
    "It began with a D," she said after a