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The Twisted Root

The Twisted Root

Titel: The Twisted Root Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Anne Perry
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half-open box of matches beside the candle on the window-sill, and a smart waistcoat hung over the back of the upright chair. It was the room of a man who had expected to return.
    Monk examined the clothes and boots carefully. He was surprised how expensive they were—in some cases, as good as his own. Treadwell certainly had not paid for them on a coachman’s earnings. If the money had come from his gambling, then he must have spent a great deal of time at it—and been consistently successful. It seemed unpleasantly more and more likely that he had had another source of income, one a good deal more lucrative.
    Monk did enquire, without any hope, if perhaps the clothes were hand-me-downs from either Lucius or Harry Stourbridge. He was not surprised to learn that they were not. Such things went to servants of longer standing and remained with them.
    As far as Miriam Gardiner was concerned, he learned nothing beyond what he had already been told: she was unused to servants and therefore had not treated the coachman with the distance that was appropriate, but that was equally true for all the other household staff. No one had observed anything different with regard to Treadwell. Without exception, they all spoke well of her and seemed confused and grieved by her current misfortune.
    Monk spent the following day in Hampstead and Kentish Town, as he had told Lucius he would. He walked miles, asked questions till his mouth was dry and his throat hoarse. He arrived home after nine o’clock, when it was still daylight but the heat of the afternoon was tempered by an evening breeze.
    The first thing he wanted to do was to take his boots off and soak his burning feet, but Hester’s presence stopped him. It was not an attractive thing to do, and he was too conscious of her to indulge himself so. Instead, after accepting her welcome with great pleasure, he sat in the coolness of the office which doubled as a sitting room, a glass of cold lemonade at his elbow, his boots still firmly laced, and answered her questions.
    "Expensive tastes, far more than Stourbridge paid him. At least three times as much."
    Hester frowned. "Gambling?"
    "Gamblers win and lose. He seems to have had his money pretty regularly. But more than that, he only had one day off a fortnight. Gambling to that extent needs time."
    She was watching him closely, her eyes anxious. Unexpectedly, she did not prompt him.
    He was surprised. "I considered a mistress with the means to give him expensive gifts," he continued. "But in going around the places where he spent his time off, he seems to have had money and purchased the things himself. He enjoyed spending money. He wasn’t especially discreet about it."
    "So you think it was come by honestly?" Her eyes widened.
    "No ... I think he was not afraid of anyone discovering the dishonesty in it," he corrected. "It wasn’t stolen. There are other dishonest means—"
    "Available to a coachman? What?"
    The answer was obvious. Why was she deliberately not saying it? He looked back at her, trying to fathom the emotion behind her eyes. He thought he saw reluctance and fear, but it was closed in. She was not going to share it with him.
    He felt excluded. It was startlingly unpleasant, a sense of loneliness he had not experienced since the extraordinary night she had accepted his proposal of marriage. He was uncertain how to deal with it. Candor was too instinctive to him; the words were the only ones to his tongue.
    "Blackmail," he replied.
    "Oh." She looked at him so steadily he was now doubly sure she was concealing her thoughts, and that they were relevant to what they were discussing. Yet how could she know anything about Treadwell? She had been working at the hospital in Hampstead—hadn’t she?
    "It seems the obvious possibility," he said, trying to keep his voice even. "That or theft, which he had little time for. He lived in at the Stourbridges’, and they have nothing missing. He liked to live well on his time off, eat expensively, drink as much as he pleased, go out to music halls and pick up any woman that took his fancy."
    She did not look surprised, only sad and, if anything, more distressed.
    "I see."
    "Do you?"
    "No ... I meant that I follow your reasoning. It does look as if he might have been blackmailing someone."
    He could not bear the barrier. He broke it abruptly, aware that he might be hurt by the answer. "What is wrong, Hester?"
    Her back stiffened a little and her chin came up. "I don’t know

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