Twisted Root - Anne Perry [101]
Some fifteen minutes passed by. Monk found it almost impossible to sit still. He glanced at Hester and read the misgiving in her face, and equally the determination. Cleo Anderson’s life was worth a great deal more than a little embarrassment.
At twenty minutes past five the client left and Rathbone came to the door. He looked startled to see them. His eyes flew to Hester, and there was a sudden warmth in them, and the faintest flush on his narrow cheeks. He forced himself to smile, but there was not the usual humor in it. He came forward.
"Hester! How nice to see you. You look extremely well."
"We are sorry to intrude," Hester replied with an equally uncertain smile. "But we have a case that is so desperate we know of no one else who would have even a chance of success in it."
Rathbone half turned to Monk. For the first time since the wedding their eyes met. Then Monk had been the bridegroom. Now he was the husband, the last barrier had been crossed, there was a new kind of intimacy from which Rathbone was forever excluded. Rathbone’s eyes were startlingly, magnificently dark in his fair face. Everything that had passed through Monk’s mind he read in them. He held out his hand.
Monk shook it, feeling the strength and the coolness of Rathbone’s grip.
"Then you had better come in and tell me," Rathbone said calmly. His voice held no trace of emotion. He was supremely courteous. What effort of pride or dignity that had cost him Monk could only guess.
He and Hester followed into Rathbone’s familiar office and sat down in the chairs away from the desk. It was a formal visit, but not yet an official one. The late sun poured in through the window, making bright patterns on the floor and shining on the gold lettering on the books in their mahogany case.
Rathbone leaned back and crossed his legs. As always, he was immaculately dressed, but with an understated elegance and the ease of someone who knows he does not have to try.
"What is this case?" he enquired, looking at each of them in turn.
Monk was determined to answer first, before Hester could speak and make it a dialogue between herself and Rathbone, with Monk merely an onlooker.
"A nurse has been stealing medicines from the North London Hospital, where Hester is now assisting Lady Callandra." He had no need to explain that situation; Rathbone knew and admired Callandra. "She doesn’t want the medicines for herself, or to sell, but to give to the old and poor that she visits, who are in desperate need, many of them dying."
"Laudable but illegal," Rathbone said with a frown. His interest was already caught, and his concern.
"Precisely," Monk agreed. "Somehow a coachman named James Treadwell learned of her thefts and was blackmailing her. How he learned is immaterial. He comes from an area close by, and possibly he knew someone she was caring for. He was found dead on the path close to her doorway. She has been charged with his murder."
"Physical evidence?" Rathbone said with pressed lips, his face already darker, brows drawn down.
"None, all on motive and opportunity. The weapon has not been found. But that is not all...."
Rathbone’s eyes widened incredulously. "There’s more?"
"And worse," Monk replied. "Some twenty years ago Mrs. Anderson found in acute distress a girl of about twelve or thirteen years old. She took her in and treated her as her own." He saw Rathbone’s guarded expression, and the further spark of interest in his eyes. "Miriam grew up and married comfortably," Monk continued. "She was widowed, and then fell deeply in love with a young man, Lucius Stourbridge, of wealthy and respectable family, who more than returned her feelings. They became engaged to marry with his parents’ approval. Then one day, for no known reason, she fled, with the