The Twisted Root

anyone as you came in or went upstairs?" Monk asked him.
    "Only the servants ... and Miriam. I went to her room, but she would not do more than bid me good-night. I didn’t see anyone else."
    "Did your man assist you to undress, or lay your clothes out for the next day?"
    "No. I sent him to bed. I didn’t need him, and I preferred to be alone."
    "I see. Did you hear anything after that? Any sound, movement, a cry, footsteps?"
    "No. At least not that I recall."
    Monk thanked him. Lucius seemed about to ask something further, then changed his mind and rose stiffly to his feet.
    When he had gone, Robb turned to Monk. They had learned nothing more. No one was implicated nor excluded from suspicion. Robb ran his hand through his hair, his fingers closing so he pulled at it. "One of them killed her! It couldn’t have been an accident, and not possibly a suicide!"
    "We had better see Miriam Gardiner," Monk said grimly.
    Robb shot him a look of helplessness and frustration, then rose and went to the door to send the maid for Miriam.
    She looked a shadow of the woman she had been, even when Monk had found her frightened and hiding. Her body was skeletal, as if she had barely eaten since then. Her dress hung on her shoulders so the bones showed through the thin clothes, and her bosom was scarcely rounded. Her skin had no color at all, and her beautiful hair had been dressed with little attention. She looked as if she was a stranger to any kind of rest of mind or body.
    She moved jerkily, and refused to be seated when Robb asked her. Her hands were clenched and shaking. She seemed not to blink but to stare fixedly, as though her attention was only partly here.
    Robb looked at Monk desperately, then, as Monk said nothing, he began to question her.
    She replied in a voice that was unnaturally calm that she knew nothing at all. She had taken dinner in her room and had not left it except to go to the bathroom. She had seen no one other than the servant who had ministered to her personal needs. She had no idea what had happened. She had never quarreled with Mrs. Stourbridge ... or with anyone else. She refused to say anything further.
    And no matter how either Robb or Monk pressed her, she did not yield a word. She walked away stiffly, swaying a little, as if she might lose her balance.
    "Did she do it?" Robb asked as soon as the door was closed.
    "I have no idea," Monk confessed. He hated the thought, but she appeared to be in a state of suppressed hysteria, almost as if she moved in a trance, a world of her own connected only here and there with reality. He judged that if there was one more pressure, however slight, she would lose control completely.
    Was that what had happened? Had she, for some reason or other, gone to see Mrs. Stourbridge in her bedroom, and something, however innocently or well meant, had precipitated an emotional descent into insanity? Had Verona Stourbridge made some remark about Cleo Anderson, suggesting Miriam leave the past and its griefs behind, and Miriam had reacted by releasing all the terror and violence inside her in one fearful blow?
    But where had the croquet mallet come from? One did not keep such things in a bedroom. Whoever had killed Verona Stourbridge had brought it, and it could only be as a weapon.
    The murder was premeditated. He said as much aloud.
    "I know," Robb admitted. "I know. But she still seems the most likely one. We’ll have to go farther back than I thought. I’ll start again with the servants. It’s here, whatever it is, the reason, the jealousy or the fear, or the rage. It’s in this house. It has to be."
    They worked all night, asking, probing, going back over detail after detail. They were so tired the whole house seemed to be a maze going around and around itself, like a symbol of the confusion within. Monk’s throat was dry, and he felt as if there were sand in his eyes. The cook brought them a tray of tea at three o’clock in the morning, and another at a quarter to five, this time with roast beef sandwiches.
    They again questioned Mrs. Stourbridge’s maid. The woman looked exhausted and terrified, but she spoke quite coherently.
    "I don’t know nothing to her discredit, not really," she said when Robb asked her about Miriam. "She’s always bin very civil, far as I know."
    Monk seized on the hesitation, reading the indecision in her face.
    "You must be frank," he said gravely. "You owe Mrs. Stourbridge that. What do you mean ’not really’? What were you