The Twisted Root

that would be very wrong. Treadwell was a blackmailer. She is guilty of a crime in law, maybe, but no sin. We have to do something. Humanity requires it."
    "I discover facts, Hester," he said quietly. "Everything I’ve found so far indicates that Cleo killed him. I may sympathize with her—in fact, I do. God knows, in her situation I might have done the same."
    She could see memory of the past sharp in his face, and knew what he was thinking. She remembered Joscelin Grey also, and the apartment in Mecklenburgh Square, and how close Monk had come to murder then.
    "But that would not excuse me in law," he continued. "Nor would it alter anything the judge or jury could do. If she did kill him, there may be some mitigation, but she will have to say what it is. Then I could look for proof of it, if there is any."
    She was hesitant to ask him about Oliver Rathbone. There was too much emotion involved, old friendship, old love, and perhaps pain. She did not know how much. She had not seen Rathbone since her marriage, but she remembered— with a vividness so sharp she could see the candlelight in her mind’s eye and smell the warmth of the inn dining room—the night Rathbone had very nearly asked her to marry him. He had stopped only because she had allowed him to know, obliquely, that she could not accept, not yet. And he had let the moment pass.
    "It’s not only what happened," she began almost tentatively. "It’s the interpretation, the argument, if you like."
    Monk regarded her gravely before replying. There was no criticism in his face, but an acute sadness. "Some plea of mitigation? Don’t you think you are holding out a false hope to her?"
    That could be true.
    "But we must try ... mustn’t we? We can’t just give in without a fight."
    "What do you want to do?"
    She said what he expected. "We could ask Oliver..." She took a breath. "We could at least set it before him, for his opinion?" She made it a question.
    She could see no change in his expression, no anger, no stiffening.
    "Of course," he agreed. "But don’t expect too much."
    She smiled. "No ... just to try."
    Hester woke in the dark, feeling the movement as Monk got out of bed. Downstairs, there was a banging on the front door, not loud, just sharp and insistent, as of someone who would not give up.
    Monk pulled his jacket on over his nightshirt, and Hester sat up, watching him go out of the bedroom in bare feet. She heard the door open and a moment later close again.
    She saw the reflection of the hall light on the landing ceiling as the gas was lit.
    She could bear it no longer. She slipped out of bed and put on a robe. She met Monk coming up the stairs, a piece of paper in his hand. His face was bleak with shock, his eyes dark.
    "What is it?" she said with a catch in her breath.
    "Verona Stourbridge." His voice shook a little. "She’s been murdered! Just the same way as Treadwell. A single, powerful blow to the head ... with a croquet mallet." His fist closed over the white paper. "Robb asked me to go."

8
    IT TOOK MONK nearly a quarter of an hour to find a hansom, first striding down Fitzroy Street to the Tottenham Court Road, then walking south towards Oxford Street.
    He had left Hester furious at being excluded, but it would be in every way inappropriate for him to have taken her. She could serve no purpose except to satisfy her own curiosity, and she would quite obviously be intrusive. She had not argued, just seethed inside because she felt helpless and as confused as he was.
    It was a fine night. A thin film of cloud scudded over a bright moon. The air was warm, the pavements still holding the heat of the day. His footsteps were loud in the near silence. A carriage rumbled by out of Percy Street and crossed towards Bedford Square, the moonlight shining for a moment on gleaming doors and the horses’ polished flanks. Whoever had murdered Verona Stourbridge, it had not been Cleo Anderson. She was safely locked up in the Hampstead police station.
    What could this new and terrible event have to do with the death of James Treadwell?
    He could see pedestrians on the footpath at the corner of Oxford Street, two men and a woman, laughing.
    He tried to picture Mrs. Stourbridge on the one occasion he had met her. He could not bring back her features, or even the color of her eyes, only the overriding impression he had had of a kind of vulnerability. Underneath the poised manner and the lovely clothes was a woman who was acquainted with fear. Or